5 thoughts on “The Atomic Bombs”

  1. Not according to David Holloway, in his book Stalin and the Bomb, considered the authoritative source on the subject of nuclear weapons and the Soviets under Stalin. While Stalin was toying with the idea of the conquest of Europe, a great many factors ultimately restrained hm. The American atomic bomb was low on the list of those factors. Stalin had his military evaluate all of the weapon effects data they could gather on HIroshima and Nagasaki. Their conclusion was that it would take at least 320 atomic bombs to give the Americans a chance of defeating the Soviet Union, and at the time of that evaluation Stalin knew that we didn’t have anywhere near that number, and wouldn’t for some time.

    1. The American atomic bomb was low on the list of those factors. […] Their conclusion was that it would take at least 320 atomic bombs to give the Americans a chance of defeating the Soviet Union, and at the time of that evaluation Stalin knew that we didn’t have anywhere near that number, and wouldn’t for some time.

      Stalin would have also been aware of the US’s production capabilities and the tendency of his people to tell him what he wanted to hear. Even if we do take the report at face value, the US would have eventually produced 320 nuclear bombs and then more. What would happen to Russian cities and Stalin’s industrial base in the meantime?

      Something stopped the Soviet war machine cold in 1945 such that it never invaded Western Europe. I doubt it was the “greater” factors on that list.

  2. More likely the presence of the Allied forces in Western Europe plus what remained of the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht joining with the Allies. The US could also make more bombs and they’d have been fine weapons against troop concentrations.

  4. I would say that there was a point where Stalin the ‘Leader of the Comintern’ and Stalin “The Communist Tsar of Greater Russia’ had a debate. A war ravaged Russia to repair, the countries that would make up the ‘Warsaw Pact’ to assimilate, and the knowledge of all the Military-Industrial power the West still had. Lend-Lease trucks, radios, truck tires and many other supplies had helped the Red Army march forward. The ever lengthening logistics lifeline that would be vulnerable to western air power …there were many reasons for Stalin to say “Hold! Enough!”

    Invoking the A-Bomb as a reason for everything that happens is a shallow response.

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