At 8:16 a.m. on August 6, 1945, the atomic bomb "Little Boy" exploded 600 meters above the Hiroshima Hospital, at that time at the peak of work, at that moment more than 70,000 people were "gasified" alive, and the shock wave caused by the nuclear explosion swept through the city, and more than 200,000 people died one after another, which was the first time that the world witnessed the power of the atomic bomb.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="3" > mao zedong angrily criticized the head of the newspaper</h1>
On the night of August 8, 1945, Mao Zedong was busy deploying the counter-offensive plan against Japan, and after work, he sat down and read the "Liberation Daily" of the same day, and mao Zedong was furious after reading it, and threw the newspaper on the table.
The reason was the news on the front page of the newspaper about the United States using atomic bombs to bomb Japan.
It is reasonable to say that such reports are normal, especially when Japan suffered heavy losses as an enemy country during the war, we should vigorously report it, not only to inspire the people, but also to boost morale.
But the bad is that the report is so exaggerated that it almost loses its political considerations. Its reaction far outweighs its positive impact, and more importantly, behind this report is the struggle between the world's two major ideologies.
So Mao Zedong's phone went directly to the headquarters of the newspaper.
The person in charge of the report was Comrade Bogu, who was immersed in the joy of Japanese bombing with his comrades in the office until a phone call came from Mao Zedong.
After taking the microphone, Bogu clearly felt that Mao Zedong's tone was not the same as usual, and Bogu's excitement disappeared after a phone call, because mao Zedong said sternly on the phone: "This is a very political error of principle"!
The next day, Bogu brought Yu Guangsheng, deputy editor-in-chief of Jiefang Ribao, and Chen Kehan, chief of the Xinhua News Agency's editorial section, to Mao's office. They stood where they were and were criticized for more than an hour, before they understood how serious the error in the report was.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="8" > Japan's surrender was not due to the atomic bomb</h1>
The first point of this report's mistake is that it seriously downplays the achievements of the Broad Masses of the Chinese People in the War of Resistance over the past ten years and the achievements of the vast number of anti-fascist fighters in the world, and places the credit extremely exaggerated and unrealistically on the two atomic bombs and the United States behind them.
Even now, some people still think that Japan chose unconditional surrender because it was afraid of the powerful atomic bomb, ignored many other elements, and simply and rudely associated the huge power of the atomic bomb with the surrender of the Japanese army, and came up with a one-sided, superficial, and incorrect cognitive result.
This is still the cognition of contemporary people who have received many years of education in the new era, not to mention that the country was plagued by war and chaos, and there were very few educated people.
The publication of this article did inspire people's hearts, but it also made the broad masses of the people diverted their attention, and the people gradually formed the remark that the United States is a "hero to save the world."
However, this was not the case, and even without the American atomic bomb, Japan's defeat would have been inevitable.
By then the pattern of war worldwide had completely changed.
The Allied powers group encircled and suppressed the Axis group on a large scale, fascism was on the verge of collapse, Italy and Germany surrendered one after another, leaving only Japan to stubbornly resist in the negative corner, and under the general pattern of the international environment, Japan could not get aid and support and was doomed to defeat.
Militarily, most of Japan's troops were mired in the quagmire of China's war, and in the past ten years, they had invested a lot of manpower, financial and material resources, but they still could not conquer China, and the loss was huge. In addition, they also lost one after another on the battlefields of Southeast Asia, and were jointly stopped by the Chinese Expeditionary Force and the British burmese army.
Moreover, the United States tore up Japan's "absolute defense circle" in the Pacific, and the troops approached the Okinawa Islands, and the next step was to attack the Japanese mainland; the Soviet Union also sent 200,000 troops to the south, defeated half a million Japanese Kwantung Army and captured 200,000, and when the war was carried out at the last moment, the number of Japanese Kwantung Army joint prisoners was as high as 600,000.
In addition to the huge external pressure, Japan was also on the verge of collapse, first of all, the cabinet represented by Prime Minister Taro Suzuki proposed unconditional surrender, and there was a serious dispute with the military represented by The Minister of War, Anan, and the Japanese Imperial Family, represented by Emperor Hirohito, hesitated but also had the intention of surrendering.
Secondly, it has been trapped in the swamp of war for many years, the livelihood of the people in Japan is withering, the society is in turmoil, and the ideas of various forces are mixed.
On February 14, 1945, Konoe Fumimaro wrote to the Emperor that since the war situation had become more and more chaotic, some people had instigated it behind his back to achieve the revolutionary purpose of the domestic chaos, and Konoe Fumimaro regarded him as a communist.
Finally, Japan is an island nation with poor strategic resources.
When it was under siege, it could no longer obtain supplies from the outside world, and japan could maintain stability in various battlefields by plundering resources, but after 1944, even the materials shipped to the battlefield on the mainland were lost one-half at a time, and japan was really unable to support it.
In terms of mining production, the general mining output in 1944 was only half of what it was in 1941, already below the level of 1937; agriculturally, rice production in 1945 was 58.55 million stones, a decrease of 10 million stones from 1940; in January 1944, urban households in central Tokyo had less than 100 grams of vegetable rations per household per day, and fish rations were less than 25 grams per household per day.
All of the above reasons are enough to show that the atomic bomb was only an accelerator for Japan's surrender, and even without it Japan would only be a grasshopper in the autumn - it would not last for a few days, it was not the direct cause of Japan's surrender, nor was it a key cause, let alone a fundamental cause.
Japan's surrender was achieved by relying on the unremitting struggle of the anti-fascist people of the world, and it must not be confused, let alone take credit for the crown and the wearing of a crown.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="20" > the background of the 1945 world pattern</h1>
In February 1945, the heads of state of the Soviet Union, the United States, and Britain, Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill, held a wartime conference in Yalta, Soviet Union, and signed the famous Yalta Agreement, in which the real protagonists were the Soviet Union and the United States, and this agreement was the agreement between the two superpowers on the distribution of post-war interests.
In 1945, at the end of World War II, the fascist military state was crumbling. The Western European powers have completely declined after the devastation of war, and even the former British Empire is now only a foreign power.
As a result, the only countries that have the ability to compete for the right to speak in the world are the Soviet Union and the United States, and thus form the two poles of the world.
The United States was already the world's first economic power before World War II, and during World War I, it earned a lot of money just by reselling arms, and used this money to vigorously develop the military, and by the time of World War II, the military strength of the United States had ranked among the top levels in the world.
During World War II, countries purchased a large number of high-quality weapons produced by the United States, and the cost of arms earned by the United States was an astronomical amount.
And because the United States has a special geographical location, it is protected by the two oceans in the middle of the battlefield, so the United States mainland has not been affected by the war at all, but has taken advantage of the East Wind of World War II to make war wealth, and for a time, the economic, political, and military strength of the United States has developed rapidly.
Backed by the world's first economic and military strength, the United States participated in the war and played an active role in the late second world war, standing under the beacon of moralism, establishing its position as the hegemon of the capitalist world, and its international influence is unparalleled.
In 1945, the total strength of the Soviet Army reached a staggering 12 million people, and the Army deployed in the European battlefield alone had 6.7 million equipment, 107,000 artillery pieces of various types, 12,000 tanks, 15,000 aircraft, and the Strength of the Soviet Army even the United States was ashamed of itself.
Bearing such a huge military expenditure, the economic strength of the Soviet Union, although inferior to that of the United States, is also far superior to that of the Western European countries, and during World War II, it was also the Soviet Union that shattered the myth of Germany's invincibility, trapped Germany in the European battlefield, and snuffed out the illusion of the Axis powers group intending to converge.
The Soviet Union made great contributions in the anti-fascist war, played a decisive role in international affairs, and became the first power in the socialist camp.
The international context at that time was such that the discerning person could see that the war was about to end, and for the world, who was in charge had become the most critical issue.
This is not just a question of the two superpowers vying for who is the boss, but a question of whether the world is a surname or a surname, another deadly question of a war without smoke.
Capitalism and socialism are natural opposites, and the contradictions between the two sides are sharp, the gap is extremely large, and disputes are inevitable.
Capitalism can greatly stimulate individual initiative and expand the market to develop the productive forces, but the development of this doctrine to a certain stage will inevitably lead to cyclical economic crises and a high disparity between the rich and the poor.
Moreover, the more capitalism develops, the more serious the monopoly phenomenon becomes, and then it will widen the class gap, seal the channels for class transitions, lead to huge class contradictions that cannot be avoided, and monopolistic behavior will seriously exploit the broad masses of the people and limit the development of the productive forces.
The purpose of socialism is to liberate and develop the productive forces, to apply all the achievements of civilization created by human society to social practice, and to put an end to monopoly and exploitation. The difference between the two doctrines dooms them to fight each other.
The two ideologies formed by these two doctrines took root in the Soviet Union and the United States. The rest of the world chooses one of the two, and in wartime no one cares what a country's system is like, but after the war, it is necessary to draw a mountain and divide the camps.
The reason why Mao Zedong was the leader was that he did not consider the immediate gains and losses, but considered everything from the perspective of the future and the overall situation, and the Liberation Times, as the official newspaper of the party at that time, had to carefully consider every word and deed, so that such a hype about the power of the AMERICAN atomic bomb was actually shaking the people's hearts, increasing the morale of others, and destroying their own prestige.
Moreover, at that time, there were still differences between the two parties of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and it was still unknown who was in charge in Post-War China, and if the people felt in their hearts that the Kuomintang had the support of the United States and were afraid, it would really put the Communist Party in danger and would be stuck by the United States in everything.
On August 10, 1946, the 61-year-old American writer Anna Louis Strong came to Yan'an, met with Mao Zedong, and had a conversation in which Mao Zedong first proposed the concept of a paper tiger.
In response to Strong's question about how China should deal with nuclear weapons, Mao Zedong calmly replied:
"The atomic bomb is a paper tiger used by American reactionaries to scare people, which looks terrible, but in fact it is not terrible. Of course, the atomic bomb is a weapon of mass murder, but it is the people who decide whether the war will be won or lost, not the new weapon. ”
Mao Zedong's exposition that the atomic bomb was a paper tiger was later widely circulated, just as Lenin described imperialism as a "mud-footed giant" in those years, which saw the essence of the problem and became a world famous saying.