In the closing days of the Second World War, the entire world knew that Japan had lost.

Even The Japanese government was aware that by 1945 they had no realistic chance of winning the war.

Their navy and air force had been shattered.

They were out of fuel.

They were losing ground all over.

And after the surrender of Germany in Europe, they knew that they would become the focus of 100% of the continued Allied War effort, which was basically the entire rest of the world.

By this point, Japan knew that they couldn't win the war.

But Japan also didn't want to surrender unconditionally the same way that Germany just had.

So they prepared on all out defense of the Japanese home islands, and the United States planned an insane invasion that would have dwarfed the D Day landings in both scale and loss of life.

It would have been the largest military operation in human history, and it would have prolonged the war at least into 1946 and probably into 1947 or even beyond million's of casualties on both sides would have probably taken place.

But in the end, none of it ever happened because in reality, the United States dropped two atomic bombs and the Soviet Union entered into the war against them.

Two extremely bad circumstances that finally convinced Japan to surrender unconditionally.

But if the atomic bombs were never utilized, for whatever reason, and Japan continued to refuse a surrender, here is how a United States led invasion of the Japanese home islands would have played out.

The United States co named their invasion of Japan.

Operation Downfall.

America knew that any invasion of Japan would be an incredibly difficult prospect in her entire history.

Japan has never once been conquered by an outside invader, largely because of Japan's sheer geography.

I recently made an entire video about this, so go check that out if you need a refresher.

But in summary, the Japanese islands are far away from any other major landmass, which makes transporting troops and supplies across the open ocean to fuel the invasion difficult.

There are very few suitable beaches to choose from.

For a D Day style amphibious landing which enables the Japanese to basically defend all of them, since there aren't that many to defend.

And Japan's interior is covered in mountains and rivers that don't really connect to each other, which would make a guerrilla style resistance in the interior extremely difficult to defeat.

Nonetheless, America had invaded and occupied the island of Okinawa by June 1945 in order to use it as a base of operations in the future invasion.

Okinawa, you see, is only 550 kilometers away from the Japanese mainland, and it would be from here that America would launch Operation Downfall, tentatively scheduled to begin on November 1st, 1945 14 American divisions, or over half a million men, were going toe land across 35 separate beaches at three different points on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu.

They were to storm the beaches and pushed deeper into the island before halting.

Once roughly one third of the island was occupied.

The attack would then switch into a defense and an occupation, while the occupied portion of Kyushu would be used as the new base of operations for air attacks across all of Japan and as a base to launch the main Allied offensive on Tokyo from the subsequent invasion of the island of Han Shu was code named Operation Cornett and it would have been even bigger.

Tentatively scheduled to begin on March, the 1st 1946 operation Cornett was planning on using 40 divisions from the United States, United Kingdom and Commonwealth Forces tow launch from occupied key Yushu and land at two points on the Conta plane surrounding Tokyo on the bow so peninsula and at Sagami Bay.

For comparison's sake, the entire D Day invasion utilized on Lee, too.

12 divisions compared to the 40 required for Operation Cornett and the 14 previously required for occupying Kyushu.

After landing and establishing a beachhead, the allies would then have driven north and inland from their landing positions in a pincer attack on Tokyo.

They would have landed at least 12 Mawr divisions for reinforcements and then attack Tokyo together with well over two million soldiers following the occupation of Tokyo.

It was then assumed that the Japanese government would surrender.

The allies planned to use over six million men, 42 aircraft carriers, 24 battleships, 400 destroyers and tens of thousands of bombers and fighters in their invasion of the Japanese mainland.

But what we're Japan's plans for a defense against the biggest armada ever assembled in human history.

The Japanese defensive strategy for the home islands was code named Operation Cats ago, and it was quite formidable.

It called for an all out, fanatical defense of the island of Kyushu to halt the Allies before they could get a foothold on the mainland and threatened Tokyo.

40% of all of Japan's remaining ammunition was concentrated on the island, while Japanese intelligence correctly assumed the landing beaches that the allies would attack at.

By this point in the war, Japan had been shattered, but they still had 4.3 million train soldiers that they were planning on committing to the defense of the island's.

However, Japan on Lee had enough ammunition and supplies to properly equipped 1.2 million of those men, so it would be those men on the beaches that would be confronting the allies.

In addition to those trained soldiers, Japanese government planned on literally committing the entire population of Japan to resist the invasion.

All men in the country, aged 15 to 60 and all women aged 17 to 40.

We're going to be conscripted and armed with basic rudimentary weapons or even bamboo spears to join in the defense.

That amounted to roughly 31.5 million people in Japan, in addition to the 4.3 million trained soldiers.

Technically, the Japanese defense vastly outnumber of the Allied invasion force of six million total men.

But again, only 1.2 million of the Japanese numbers would be properly equipped and trained soldiers, In addition, because of Japan's poor natural resource is the government was essentially out of oil.

By this point, Japan on Lee had five aircraft carriers and four battleships remaining, all of which were damaged and none of which had enough fuel to carry out sorties.

So they planned on keeping the ships anchored in harbors and using their anti air guns to defend against allied air attacks.

But one thing that Japan still had a lot of at this point was planes well over 12,000 of them.

Still, even at the end of the war, the vast majority of these planes were intended to be used as kamikaze suicide attacks on allied ships and transports As they came close to the beaches, the Japanese planners assumed a hit rate of one in every six kamikaze attacks.

But they hoped to simply overrun the allied ships with their vast swarms of thousands of planes, all at once as if they were Locusts.

The Japanese planners hoped to sing 400 allied ships and transports with the style of attacks combined with small man suicide torpedoes, suicide divers who had swim underneath ships with mines, and thousands mawr of kamikaze motor boats laden with explosives.

The Japanese defensive key Yushu, was going to be all out and metal, but it left little in reserve for the defense of Tokyo and the Kanto Plain.

If they failed, Japan's primary objective was to make the cost of invasion too high for the allies to accept and force a kind of armistice where Japan could hopefully hang on to some of its conquests.

Rather than admitting a total defeat and losing everything.

It's unknown exactly how many lives would have been lost as a result of the invasion.

American planners estimated that somewhere between 500,000 and one million American soldiers would have died as a result of the operation, along with hundreds of thousands of additional British and Commonwealth soldiers.

At the same time, estimates for Japanese deaths as a consequence ranged between five million and 10 million.

The war would have been extended well into 1946 and probably pushed into 1947 or even beyond.

The United States minted 5/100 1000 Purple Heart medals in anticipation for how many they'd have to give out toe wounded American soldiers.

But none of that ever happened.

The American government decided to use the atomic bomb, and the Soviet Union invaded Manchuria and Japan surrendered without the invasion ever taking place.

And honestly, it's probably ultimately a good thing that events went that way and millions of people managed to stick around with us when they otherwise wouldn't have.

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And as always, thank you for watching.