It's the greatest misconception of ww2 that the nukes shortened the war. If
the bomb shorted the war at all, it shorted it by days not even weeks or
months.
The day before the first bomb was dropped the USSR invaded Japanese held
Manchuria. While being the last big operation of the war it's one of the
most overlooked. Image 6 million soviet soldiers invading a territory
bigger than Texas from almost all sides tearing through all the Japanese
defenses with a unit count in every category (air, tank, land) of greater
than ten to one making hundred of kilometers of progress each day. This
was back drop of the last days of ww2 from the Japanese perspective.
The correspondence between the generals and the Japanese Emperor on the
days following dropping of both bombs show conclusively that they took note
of the fact that the bomb was something new but it didn't intimidate them
to surrender at all! It's a complete myth. Keep in mind the dropping of
those bombs did no more damage than a conventional fire bombing. The
prospect of being colonized by Stalin on the other had does show up in the
letters of the Japanese leadership.
The Japanese people had been told the Americans would do to them what
Japanese soldiers did to the Chinese, mass rape, murder, baby killing etc.
The Japanese leaders believed the only way the Japanese public would accept
surrender after giving so much for a lie was if the alternative was
complete annihilation. The threat of Soviet invasion was the reason Japan
surrendered when they did, the bomb was a convenient scapegoat. So
technically the bomb gave the Emperor a way out without accepting blame and
without being invaded by the Soviets, so in that way it did technically end
the war.
