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American presidents and British prime ministers aren’t overly welcome in Iran these days, but in 1943 Tehran was host city for the meeting of Allied superpowers to discuss how they were going to beat the Axis. One aspect of the resulting agreement played a pivotal role in the decision to nuke Japan two years later.
--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: November 28, 1943--
The Tehran Conference—a meeting of Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt—began on November 28, 1943. Why was it held in Tehran? Well, because the Soviets and British had invaded it a couple of years earlier. They wanted to secure a corridor to get Allied supplies to the Soviets, who were busy doing the lion’s share of the killing and dying fighting the fucking Nazis. They also wanted Iran’s oil for the war effort. Neutral Iran’s opinion was basically yeah sure come in and do what you want and take our oil because it’s not like we can stop you, dicks.
Anyway, the primary purpose of the conference was for Stalin to say will you two fucknuts hurry up and open a western front on those Nazi assholes so we don’t have to do ALL the dying? And the other two were like yeah we’re fuckin’ working on it and they finally did invade Normandy six months later.
One foreboding instance was when Churchill asked Stalin, yo what are your postwar “territorial ambitions” and Stalin said, “There is no need to speak at this present time about any Soviet Desires.” If it was a movie, that would be where the music switches to a minor key.
A lesser-known aspect of the conference involved the war in the Pacific. Specifically, that once war with Germany was over, Stalin promised he would help in finishing off Japan. At the time, it seemed like a great idea, because the U.S. was struggling in the Pacific. By the time Hitler blew his murderous brains out while hiding in that Berlin bunker in May of 1945, the situation regarding Japan had changed. The U.S. was a mere two months away from successfully testing its first atomic weapon, and Japan was just about done for in the war anyway.
The U.S. no longer needed Soviet help with Japan, and really didn’t want it anymore, because that would mean the Russians having postwar influence in how Japan was governed, and America didn’t like that commie shit. But with the fucking Nazis defeated, the Soviets were all hey we said we’d help here we are, because they didn’t want the Americans being the only ones to conquer Japan. And then America was all oh fuck we need to end this shit fast, let’s nuke the bastards and at the same time we can freak the shit out of the Russians with our awesome new kaboom toys.
And so, they did.
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