Japan gets bloodied in WW1

GBW

At the outbreak of the Great War, the Imperial Japanese Army was looking forward to a way to prove itself because they felt they had lost prestige during the Russo-Japanese War as opposed to the Navy. Japan seized Germany's holdings in Micronesia and captured Tsingtao from German and Austro-Hungarian forces after a week long siege. The relative ease of Japan's actions are thought to have helped contribute to the rise of militarism in the late 1920s and 30s.

How could Japan have been bloodied worse in its involvement in World War One? Could the Battle of Tsingtao have turned out worse for Japan, with heavier casualties? Or might Japan have ended up sending troops to another front?

With a harsher experience in the Great War, how will this ATL Japan proceed through the political instabilities of the 1920s? How will the IJA proceed now that it has lost prestige, as they see it, in both wars against European powers? Will the voices calling for the modernization of the Army be heeded and the traditionalists shouted down?
 
MrP

MrP

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Well, the IJN sent units to the Med, IIRC, to help with convoy duties. I s'pose y'could have them send men to Gallipoli. However, they were reasonably sensible in WWI, in that they stayed in their own sphere and didn't antagonise anyone big.
 

CalBear

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This is actually one of the better questions regarding IJA tactics in the Pacific War. When one looks at IJA doctrine it is striking at how little it had changed from the Japanese/Russian War in 1904.

The Japanese never really understood that elan and proper discipline was trumped by combined arms, hence the Banzai charges into the teeth of USMC .50 machine guns across the Pacific. The Japanese never developed sound armored or air/ground doctrine, nor did they develop the proper weaons to exploit conbined arms. Throughout the War the IJA remained primarily a light infantry force, one that was crushed whenever it met "Western" forces in equal situations.

The belief that courage and determination was the sole key to victory was universal among the Great Powers prior to WW I. This belief died for the North Americans and Europeans in No Man's Land, where Maxim guns and Artilley proved that warfare was now an industrial process, not simply a matter of "bravery is all". Japan never suffered the appalling losses of a Verdun or Somme and consequently never learned that war had radically changed since 1904/05.
 

Trotsky

Just have the Germans reinforce Tsingtao prior to the outbreak of war, and inflict far more devastating losses on the Japanese. Do the same for the Pacific islands under Berlin's control that Tokyo seizes.
 
MrP

MrP

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Trotsky said:
Just have the Germans reinforce Tsingtao prior to the outbreak of war, and inflict far more devastating losses on the Japanese. Do the same for the Pacific islands under Berlin's control that Tokyo seizes.
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The Germans have no OTL reason to reinforce Tsingtao, old boy. They can't augment its naval strength enough to hold off the IJN without fatally weakening the home fleets,* so reinforcing its Army is throwing away good men. Then again, I s'pose the Kaiser might decide to do it anyway. Hm, a new local rebellion just before WWI leads to deployment of another German expeditionary force to augment Tsingtao's defences. Maybe.

* There's a rationale for sticking additional cruisers there so they can break out for commerce raiding, but any capital ships are on their own. I dunno if Tsingtao's got large scale facilities, either. Hm, that's a bugger. I've just recalled I sent a BC there in my TL . . . d'oh!
 

Grimm Reaper

Why wouldn't the Japanese just lay siege longer instead of charging an enemy garrison behind fortifications which is utterly cut off from resupply or reinforcements?

What we need is for Japan to be offered something above OTL in return for two or three Japanese divisions being deployed in Europe...
 
MrP

MrP

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Grimm Reaper said:
Why wouldn't the Japanese just lay siege longer instead of charging an enemy garrison behind fortifications which is utterly cut off from resupply or reinforcements?

What we need is for Japan to be offered something above OTL in return for two or three Japanese divisions being deployed in Europe...
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I wonder if the IJA was asked to contribute any troops to the Italian front after Caporetto.
 

Trotsky

MrP said:
The Germans have no OTL reason to reinforce Tsingtao, old boy. They can't augment its naval strength enough to hold off the IJN without fatally weakening the home fleets,* so reinforcing its Army is throwing away good men. Then again, I s'pose the Kaiser might decide to do it anyway. Hm, a new local rebellion just before WWI leads to deployment of another German expeditionary force to augment Tsingtao's defences. Maybe.

* There's a rationale for sticking additional cruisers there so they can break out for commerce raiding, but any capital ships are on their own. I dunno if Tsingtao's got large scale facilities, either. Hm, that's a bugger. I've just recalled I sent a BC there in my TL . . . d'oh!
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Having no reason to do something != doing it anyway. If Germany wants to build up forces in Tsingtao, why wouldn't they?

True - there's no tangible reason to do so. They can't be reinforced once war begins, and so the garrison is a fixed number while the opponent can change his at will; thus it's a near-worthless asset unless they build some amazingly strong fortresses.
 
MrP

MrP

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Trotsky said:
Having no reason to do something != doing it anyway. If Germany wants to build up forces in Tsingtao, why wouldn't they?

True - there's no tangible reason to do so. They can't be reinforced once war begins, and so the garrison is a fixed number while the opponent can change his at will; thus it's a near-worthless asset unless they build some amazingly strong fortresses.
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Why would they want to? :confused:
 

Wozza

I am sure we could bloody Japan by putting her on the other side, but that is quite a POD with quite a few ramifciations.

Earlier war with China otherwise?

The problem is Japan is not militarist in this period, and there is no-one to attack her.
 

Matthais Corvinus

CalBear said:
This is actually one of the better questions regarding IJA tactics in the Pacific War. When one looks at IJA doctrine it is striking at how little it had changed from the Japanese/Russian War in 1904.

The Japanese never really understood that elan and proper discipline was trumped by combined arms, hence the Banzai charges into the teeth of USMC .50 machine guns across the Pacific. The Japanese never developed sound armored or air/ground doctrine, nor did they develop the proper weaons to exploit conbined arms. Throughout the War the IJA remained primarily a light infantry force, one that was crushed whenever it met "Western" forces in equal situations.
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Hmmm, I don't agree with that. The Japanese were really good soldiers, with a tenacity that I don't think even the Americans fighting them ever matched. Look at those Pacific battles and tell me that they didn't have a sound doctrine for extracting the maximum number of enemy causalities. If the Americans hadn't used the atom bomb in Japan and were forced to invade, it would have been bloody beyond comprehension.

The belief that courage and determination was the sole key to victory was universal among the Great Powers prior to WW I. This belief died for the North Americans and Europeans in No Man's Land, where Maxim guns and Artillery proved that warfare was now an industrial process, not simply a matter of "bravery is all". Japan never suffered the appalling losses of a Verdun or Somme and consequently never learned that war had radically changed since 1904/05.
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War in China was grinding and bloody and difficult. I think the issue was that Japanese were never in a situation where the kind of combined arms operations that the Western powers became good were necessary. Look at their neighborhood. The Japanese needed a light infantry force, since their main battles were basically going to be in really crappy places, where tanks and mechanized forces were useless. Even in China (where you won't facing the kind of jungle that you did in Indochina, Indonesia, Philipines and the Pacific islands) there was no infastructure that would make anything other than a light infantry army necessary. Plus, one of Japan's big strategic shortcomings was its lack of access to petroleum. Their navy was already being hamstrung by reliance on foreign oil, why would they want their army hamstrung as well?

Even if the Japanese had managed to emerge from the war with some of their colonial possessions still under their control, they would need that light infantry to do counter-insurgency. I think that as the West has found out several times over the past 60 odd years, the armies that win wars in Europe are very different than the armies that win wars in the colonized world.
 

CalBear

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Matthais Corvinus said:
Hmmm, I don't agree with that. The Japanese were really good soldiers, with a tenacity that I don't think even the Americans fighting them ever matched. Look at those Pacific battles and tell me that they didn't have a sound doctrine for extracting the maximum number of enemy causalities. If the Americans hadn't used the atom bomb in Japan and were forced to invade, it would have been bloody beyond comprehension.

War in China was grinding and bloody and difficult. I think the issue was that Japanese were never in a situation where the kind of combined arms operations that the Western powers became good were necessary. Look at their neighborhood. The Japanese needed a light infantry force, since their main battles were basically going to be in really crappy places, where tanks and mechanized forces were useless. Even in China (where you won't facing the kind of jungle that you did in Indochina, Indonesia, Philipines and the Pacific islands) there was no infastructure that would make anything other than a light infantry army necessary. Plus, one of Japan's big strategic shortcomings was its lack of access to petroleum. Their navy was already being hamstrung by reliance on foreign oil, why would they want their army hamstrung as well?

Even if the Japanese had managed to emerge from the war with some of their colonial possessions still under their control, they would need that light infantry to do counter-insurgency. I think that as the West has found out several times over the past 60 odd years, the armies that win wars in Europe are very different than the armies that win wars in the colonized world.
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The IJA lost every stand-up or set piece battle in the war, be it against the Indian Army, the Americans or the Red Army. Their success was solely against surprised colonial troops or mixtures of colonial/local forces. In the Philippines, despite overwhelming logistial superiority, air supremacy, and being engaged against a fairly poorly armed and prepared force, it took four months to capture the Bataan Peninsula (succeeding then due to the American/Filippino forces running out of supplies, including rations). The IJA lost in New Guinea to American Forces, and, most notably, got manhandled by the Red Army on both ends of the War. This is hardly a record to be happy about.

The Japanese were incredibly brave, to the point of foolhardiness. Being willing to fight to the last man in a lost cause, such as Saipan or Okinawa is NOT a positive; it is simply a waste of good men. The ability to cause casualties is only useful if you manage to inflict MORE casualties than your opponent. The Japanese did not manage this on the ground after early 1942. The invasion of Japan would have been a bloody affair, although, perhaps far less so than imagined (there was an increasingly strong movement at the top levels to abandon the move against Kyushu and go straight for Honshu, thereby trapping the masses of troops moved to Kyushu). It would, however, been mostly bloody for the Japanese. Japanese casualties would have been at least 4:1 to American casualties, with a far higher percentage of KIA. American losses would have been in the area of 125,000 - 250,000 total (roughly 15% KIA), with Japanese losses being one million+, proably with 85%+ KIA.

Japan never developed a decent tank, a decent attack fighter/bomber, strong artillery train, or even a decent motorized base to transport troops. Against a modern (WW II era) combined arms force the IJA could not manuever, bring sufficient firepower, or induce shock effect (the three critical elements in warfare dating back to the introduction of the chariot). This was not a serious failing when fighting poorly armed forces in China, or even against ill-equipped colonial forces; it was, however, fatal once the IJA had to face 1st Line European/North American forces.

Every battle against the heavier forces proved this, as did the way that the regular U.S. & Soviet Armies more or less blitzed through Japanese forces where ever they were encountered.
 
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TimKeck84

Both Matthais & Cal raise good points, even if Cal is more correct. But back tot he question. What would have to happen to make the IJA wake up and make the changes necessary to be an equal fighting force to the US Army?
 

Grimm Reaper

They would have to engage in the same sort of combat as the major participants of WWI and suffer accordingly. The problem is determining what the Allies are going to offer in return for Japan sending a few hundred thousand men into the inferno.
 

ZaphodBeeblebrox

Grimm Reaper said:
They would have to engage in the same sort of combat as the major participants of WWI and suffer accordingly. The problem is determining what the Allies are going to offer in return for Japan sending a few hundred thousand men into the inferno.
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Blood, Sweat, and Tears ...

What ...

It Worked for Churchill!

:p
 
Pkmatrix

Pkmatrix

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Hm... what if Germans send an oriental version of the Zimmermann Telegram? Perhaps promising the Chinese control of Korea and the return of Taiwan in return for their declaring war on Japan and liberating Germany's holdings in Shandong? Would the discovery of such a message convince the Japanese to become more involved in the European front?
 

CalBear

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TimKeck84 said:
Both Matthais & Cal raise good points, even if Cal is more correct. But back tot he question. What would have to happen to make the IJA wake up and make the changes necessary to be an equal fighting force to the US Army?
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That would have been remarkably difficult. Japan only had so much production capacity, so much available steel, and also had centuries of tradition to overcome.

Every tank or SP or prime mover/towed artillery combination took steel that could go into warships & the IJN had been, virtually from the moment Perry arrived, seen as the critical force to Japan's defense. Japan had used the British Empire as their guide, seeing almost exact parallels between that island kingdom and Japan. Battleship or a division of tanks? The BB was going to win out every time, not just because of the defensive/offensive potential of the warship, but because domestically produced battleships were proof of a nation's status as a major industrial power.

The even more serious problem is that the Japanese had, as did every other army prior to the 20th Century, generations of tradition related to battlefield behavior and the importance of bravery and discipline to success. In Japan this was magnified in the interwar years as the Cult of the Samurai, along with many other traditions from the 16th Century, were used by the government to help convince the population of the correctness of the government's path. As I noted earlier, the other industrial powers had the belief in the bayonet mashed out of them by the horrors of the trenches, although it took FOUR YEARS for the British & French to understand the change that had occured (the Germans figured it out in about two years).

Just these factors would make it hard to shift the IJA to a different doctrine, much less to create a combined arms force capable of meeting the other industrial powers on an equal basis. You would probably need a POD somewhere in the 1700's if not earlier, with Japan controlling a reasonable stretch of the Asian mainland (i.e. what Japan was trying to do by invading China in the mid-30's) to allow for a different Japan. At the minimum you would need to have Japan lose the Japanese/Russian war since victory over the Russians in this war convinced the IJA AND theIJN of how they should fight future wars.

As far as facing the U.S. with any hope of winning, that was something that Imperial Japan, barring the appearance of a miracle weapon, would never be able to achieve. Japan simply lacked the logistics, production capacity and gross manpower necessary.

One of the classic stats that illustrate Japan's difficulties is their merchant marine. At the start of the war with the Allies, Japan had 6.4 million tons of shipping available for all purposes. After subtracting the shipping co-opted by the IJA & IJN, the civilian sector was left with 2.4 million tons of available shipping transport to support the economy; unfortunately the civilian secton needed 10 MILLION tons of shipping to maintain the economy. Japan entered the war 3.6 million tons of merchant shipping short of civilian needs, much less military requirements; this shortfall had been made up before the conflct began by foreign bottoms, mostly British and American, which immediately became unavailable as soon as the bombs began to fall.

Japan, an Island nation utterly reliant on off-shore resources, entered the war with a quarter of the shipping needed to support itself. That kind of math will kill you every time.
 

Titus_Pullo

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GBW said:
How could Japan have been bloodied worse in its involvement in World War One? Could the Battle of Tsingtao have turned out worse for Japan, with heavier casualties? Or might Japan have ended up sending troops to another front?

quote]


You want a harsher Japanese experience in WWI? How about letting them send an expeditionary force to the Western Front? And having Japanese troops wedged between the French and British troops at Verdun. That should bloody the Japanese experience for a bit.
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