JAG88
Banned
Defeat is a harsh teacher, people learn, you mean a racist USA/USN didnt change its views at all on the IJN/IJA even after suffering defeats against people they considered racially inferior?
No Pearl Harbour raid. Victory for Japan?
- Thread starter Draconis
- Start date
Defeat is a harsh teacher, people learn, you mean a racist USA/USN didnt change its views at all on the IJN/IJA even after suffering defeats against people they considered racially inferior?
trurle
Banned
Views can change. The translation of changed views into tactical advantage is another story. Usually, it does not work like "commander become cautious after hearing news" but rather like "defeats have induced split of attitudes among officers, and more cautious ones were preferentially promoted by simply virtue of staying alive for longer".
Is it? I've always been under the impression that forum consensus is that it was impossible, requiring ASBs and the like
I find it revealing that in both of his edited German victory anthologies, Germany wins the war in the vast majority of the short stories, while in Rising Sun
Victorious the Japanese only win the war in 2 of the 10 scenarios
trurle
Banned
It was a close call IOTL. Manpower shortage in Soviet Union during late stages of WWII was critical. The Soviet Union will make separate peace or collapse if war continue until 1946.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1946–47
I don’t see why the US is doomed to lose such a battle. The Americans were reading Japanese messages as fast as the Japanese themselves were, and had plenty of ships of their own. And it’s not like the IJN thought carriers were some sort of war winner, so a carrier duel to decide everything wouldn’t happen.
Considering the number of Essex Class carriers getting launched it really, really wouldn't matter if the Japanese sank a carrier or two. I mean, we lost carriers at Midway and it didn't make a difference. We had the potential to build and train more carriers and the IJN didn't.
marathag
Banned
Yet in WWI, they took good care of Austrian crews they captured, and refused to hand them over to the Italians, for fear of bad treatment.
That is a sticking point alright. It could require an unlikely level of foresight at the very top level of the Japanese high command as to the usefulness of the POWs as bargaining chips and an understanding of the value of not further inflaming the Allies when word of the mistreatment of POWs becomes known.
Perhaps if the POWs are deemed and declared the "property" of the Emperor. And as such are not to be misused or "wasted" by the common IJA soldier. In the early stages of a Pacific War without the Pearl Harbour attack I wonder just how much leverage the return of more than 20,000 POWs would have on FDR to accept a peace treaty with Japan. How important would retaking the Philippines be to a U.S. embroiled in war with Germany if Japan offers the return of all the POWs and some other minor concessions?
The Americans could lose every pre-war carrier in the SAME BATTLE and it wouldn't extend the war a single day.
The US and Germany were already at war long before Pearl Harbour, they just weren't admitting it. Battles had been fought, ships sunk and men killed on both sides. Sooner or later Hitler was going to snap and declare war.
Or a US ship would be sunk that couldn't be brushed off, IE a battleship or something and then the US declares war first.
The Bushido Code don't exist.
There is no reference text about what Bushido is, no single list of maxims or sentences defining Bushido, no books to serve as litteral references.
And if you know a book that present Bushido as a unified Code, I will be glad if you give me some references. I read at least a hundred book about Japan History and military traditions and don't find any reference text about Bushido.
But I have read books stating that Bushido should include Compassion, among Courage, Courtesy, Loyalty, Duty, Honesty, Justice and Honor as core values.
I don't think there is a single text of Bushido that imply that you have the right to use prisoners as target practice, as slaves, and that you have the right to torture them or even eat them.
Loyalty and Honor are core values of Bushido, and the Japanese don't respect these values when they don't respect the international agreements about treating POWs, they signed forty of fifty years before and that they respected during the Russo-Japanese War and WW1.
Bushido had nothing to do with the horrors commited by the Japanese during the China War or during WW2. Something snaped in the collective minds of Japan military after WW1.
Just to put the US' intentions after the Fall of France front and center, let's review the naval procurement bills in mid-1940:
June 1940 - 3rd Vinson Act - 3 CV, 6 CA, a handful of submarines
July 1940 - Two Ocean Navy Act - 18 CV, 7 BB, 6 BC, 27 CA/CL, 115 DD, 43 SS, 15,000 aircraft.
Faced with that avalanche of warships, Japan needs Britain to join the Axis to have a chance of defeating the USN.
June 1940 - 3rd Vinson Act - 3 CV, 6 CA, a handful of submarines
July 1940 - Two Ocean Navy Act - 18 CV, 7 BB, 6 BC, 27 CA/CL, 115 DD, 43 SS, 15,000 aircraft.
Faced with that avalanche of warships, Japan needs Britain to join the Axis to have a chance of defeating the USN.
Well it might prevent the demand for unconditional surrender I suppose, at least until the P.O.W. camps in the Philippines are liberated. I can't see Luzon not falling even without Pearl Harbour.
I think what the OP is suggesting is that with a less EMOTIONAL (for want of a better word) commitment to the war against Japan their strategy of setting up a defensive perimeter and holding it until the Allies got tired of the conflict may have worked. For those who scream ASB think about Korea(A mere 4 years after 1945) and later Vietnam. If they would have read and UNDERSTOOD the principles of Art of War ....It is still a long shot but they COULD have achieved their goals. IF war was determined ONLY by economics (and yes they are important) then Prussia would not have rose to dominate Central Europe, the USA wouldn't have won its own revolution (yes even with French help), and Finland wouldn't have been able to fight the USSR to a standstill 18 months previous. The point I think he is trying to make is CONTEXT matters in a calculation of military potential and being far less committed to war against Japan reduces that potential for the USA..Personally I don't think its enough(my great uncle was a marine in the Pacific and my grandfather a soldier in Normandy--second wave Thank God. But would a USA have decided a "Kissinger Peace" ala Vietnam was preferable to a long two front war? I think its in the realm of possibility without ASB.
Sure. That's because it was not the "Bushido code" proper that led the Japanese to treat WWII POWs badly. If anything, true Bushidō would require compassion and respect. It was the militaristic perversion of those theoretical principles, arisen in the 1920s-30s, that led to that outcome.
Personally, I also suspect that there was a dynamics like this: we tried to play by your rulebook up until 1918, yet at Versailles you still considered us inferior. OK, now we throw your rulebook away.
...and a mere few months after the Soviets tested their first nuclear weapon. And the Westerners knew that they had. Soon after the stalemate had begun (mid 1951), the Soviets tested their 3rd bomb.
That's my point exactly- since there is no one unified Bushido code, it was used as an excuse by the militarists for the evils they perpetrated against PoWs and conquered peoples. On a smaller scale, Hideki Tojo also stated that he slapped the faces of junior officers because they didn't understand Bushido, and he had to do it in order to impart understanding.
Bushido, in a more reasonable interpretation, would be about fighting hard and refusing to surrender while fighting as clean a war as possible, seeking to minimize harm to civilians, and treating prisoners with dignity.
I'm also in complete agreement that something went really wrong in Japan's collective psyche after WWI. The League of Nations refusing to pass a Racial Equality resolution, and Britain refusing to renew the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1922 were both interpreted as huge insults which certainly didn't help either.
Ninja'd (no pun intended) by @Michele
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marathag
Banned
Or the Great Kanto Quake unhinged them/released Evil Oni, Yokai and Yurei that possessed the Japanese Military