What REALLY forced Japan’s surrender – Atomic bombs or the Soviet Invasion of Manchuria?

What REALLY forced Japan’s surrender – Atomic bombs or the Soviet Invasion of Manchuria?

On the 6th August 1945, the Atomic Bomb was revealed to a horrified world, obliterating the city of Hiroshima. This heralded the age of nuclear weapons. Three days later the city of Nagasaki was destroyed by a second nuclear bomb and 1.5 million Soviet Red Army troops swept across the border into Manchuria, to occupy the ‘jewel in the crown’ of the Japanese colonial empire. Credit to: Imperial War Museums