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This Sunday marks the 72nd anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, followed three days later by the bombing of Nagasaki.

Residents of former Allied countries all generally agree on what happened next: An awed Japan surrendered and the world was spared the devastating human cost of a land invasion of the Japanese home islands. A particularly chilling fact is that United States has yet to use up the vast supply of Purple Hearts minted in anticipation of a bloody landing.

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Arguments against the bombings usually take a moral tack. That whatever the ends, it’s never right to intentionally vaporize women and children. But in recent years an entire new argument has emerged: Bomb or no bomb, the war would have ended anyway.

Below, some things you may not have known about the momentous events of August 1945.

The bombings coincided with one of the largest invasions in history

On Aug. 9, just three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, as many as 1.6 million Soviet troops launched a surprise attack on Japanese positions in Manchuria. For comparison, D-Day involved 150,000 troops. Across a 4,400-km front, the war-hardened Red Army utterly steamrolled through Japanese defences — and within two weeks Soviet landing craft had begun hitting islands off the Japanese coast. When Imperial Japan came to the United States to talk surrender, they weren’t just facing nuclear bombs, they were staring down an unstoppable communist juggernaut that was just as ambivalent about death as they were.