Talk:Project Hula

Serious problems with Hokkaido invasion claim

There are numerous problems with the section titled "Soviets still lack naval capability to invade Japan" and I recommend that it be removed.

1) The title is in the present tense, making a claim about current military capacities.

2) The second sentence, "However, many historians agreed it it was still not enough for the Soviets to pose a serious threat to Tokyo", has no cited support, and as a historian familiar with this period and topic, I seriously doubt that this claim is true. Most of the citations for this section come from a single historian, Richard A. Russell.

3) While I have not personally held a physical copy of the book cited in my hands, Amazon lists it as having 56 pages. This makes citation 42, for example, which says it is drawn from page 77 of the work doubtful.

4) The section has many factual with errors. For example, the author of this section says that "Two days before Japan's surrender on August 15, 1945, Commissar Nikita Khrushchev and Marshal Meretskov suggested that they should invade Hokkaido, but majority of Soviet diplomats and officers, including Vyacheslav Molotov and Georgy Zhukov opposed it on the grounds that they still didn't have enough landing crafts and equipment needed for the invasion; thus, if they tried anyway, it would dangerously expose their troops to a fierce Japanese defense, and that it would violate the Yalta agreement with the Western Allies, which forbade the Soviets from invading the Japanese home islands." and cites Russell (footnote 49).

A PDF copy of Russel's book is available online at http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/NHC/NewPDFs/USA/USA%20Project.Hula.Secret.Soviet-American.Cooperation.WWII.pdf.

4A) The online copy shows Russell saying, on page 32, "In late June, at a meeting on the military preparations of the Red Army in the Far East, the Politburo had discussed the subject of occupying Hokkaido." Therefore date of the discussion was not August 13th but late June.

4B) The contribution's author says that Khushchev and Meretakov "suggested" the invasion. Russell says that Meretakov suggested that Hokkaido be occupied and Khrushchev "supported" him.

4C) The contribution's author says, "but majority of Soviet diplomats and officers . . . opposed it." There were 21 members of the 18th Politburo of the Soviet Union. First, I'm not aware that there was even one diplomat, much less "diplomats" in the body. Diplomats typically are people serving with Ambassadorial rank and are often posted out of the country. Second, Russell says simply that "Others, including Marshall Zhukov and Foreign Minister Molotov, opposed the idea." There is no indication that a majority opposed the idea.

4D) While it is true that Russell reports that Molotov and Zhukov opposed the occupation, the claim that they did so because the Soviets "didn't have enough landing crafts [sic]," while it supports the claim made by this section, is not supported in the cited work. Russell's text says simply that they "opposed the idea."

I could go on.

This section draws conclusions unsupported by the evidence, cites non-existent pages, misstates facts and claims support for its argument where none exists in the sources. This section is opinion, not a factual report of a scholarly debate.WardHWilson (talk) 14:34, 10 August 2018 (UTC)