Why read Racing the Enemy?

Book cover of Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan

Book description

With startling revelations, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa rewrites the standard history of the end of World War II in the Pacific. By fully integrating the three key actors in the story--the United States, the Soviet Union, and Japan--Hasegawa for the first time puts the last months of the war into international perspective.…

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War
History

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Why read it?

1 author picked Racing the Enemy as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Sean McMeekin

Author

Using newly available Soviet sources, along with Japanese and American documents, Hasegawa fills a gaping hole in the vast literature on the dropping of the atomic bombs and the conclusion of the Pacific war in August-September 1945. For too long, western historians have told this story without reference to the immense Soviet role in the drama – or if they mention the Soviets at all, it is to use the Red Army’s last-minute intervention to argue either for or against the necessity of dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to break Japanese resistance. What Hasegawa shows is how…

From Sean's list on Stalin and the Second World War.