We are now taking orders for a new four-page A5 PN briefing setting out the facts about Churchill’s belief in 1944 and early 1945 that a Japanese surrender could be gained without an atomic bomb being dropped and without the Allies having to invade Japan (PN 2667).
Churchill believed by July 1945 that there were two diplomatic tools which could end the Pacific War, especially if combined.
In September 1944, Churchill pleaded with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to declare war on Japan because this alone ‘might be decisive’ in gaining a Japanese surrender.
In February 1945, Churchill tried to persuade US president Franklin D Roosevelt to publicly promise that Japanese emperor Hirohito would not be prosecuted as a war criminal after the war, and would remain on the throne.
Churchill told Roosevelt this compromise could lead to a Japanese surrender and ‘the saving of a year or a year and a half of a war’. (After Nagasaki, the US did decide to spare Hirohito; the war criminal remained on his throne until he died in 1989.)
There’s a PN talk on this subject on YouTube: tinyurl.com/Churchill-Hiroshima
If you’d like briefings for your stall, please order by 24 June and we’ll print a batch and get them out to you in early July.
Cost: £4 for 50 copies of the briefing; £6 for 100 copies – all including p&p.
The briefing will be on our website soon or we can post you a sample. Please order by phone on 07547 394 289 or online: www.peacenews.info/shop