AHC: Make Japan win the Pacific War.

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Scenario: A General Wever lives Luftwaffe scenario (Like a "better show in 40", but the Germans don't actually invade). The Germans in this TL have a weapons system that could allow them a real chance to beat Britain 1 on 1 so Hitler delays Barbarossa until 1942 and goes in it to win it against Britain. However the Americans and Japanese are in on December 7th 1941 so Germany never finds a good opportunity to do Barbarossa.

a) The Germans really have the British on the ropes. Requiring large USA commitments early to mid east and Africa. Including an extra carrier or two in the Atlantic as top cover for important convoys.
b) The Japanese don't do Pearl Harbor but still attack the Philippines. Holding the Carrier strike force back if the American commit their fleet.
b) Minus a carrier or two in the Pacific, The Americans don't do their little carrier raids in the Pacific pre Coral Sea, including no Doolittle raid. Result is the Japanese bring all 6 carriers to midway, and the Americans don't engage (the direct effect of this are that the Japanese invade Port Moresby and Midway and fail miserably but their carrier force is intact and no longer try to push forward, but build the ring where they are. The Americans wait until November 43 to start to counterattack.
c) The Japanese don't commit their Navy and large air force contingents (either navy or army) preferring to wait until the "decisive battle" and to force the Americans to have to take losses grinding against fortified islands.
d) The Germans and Japanese are both able to buy stuff from the Soviets and a limited exchange of goods, advisers and tech is allowed across the trans Siberian railway.
e) The Germans and Japanese, with more shared intelligence and focus, and with some tips from the Soviets figure out sometime in early 43 the Allies are decoding their communications and try to tighten their codes.
f) The decisive battle occurs June 1944. The result is at least attritional. And the resulting fight for the Marianas is a real grinder.
g) The Allies wanting to focus everything on a cross channel invasion of France in 1945 offers the Japanese peace on 1937 boundaries which the new Japanese government accepts after the loss of Saipan (along with a Japanese halt on Naval construction).
 
That's winning the Peace, not winning the War. The US also won that peace, since they got a strong bulwark of Capitalism in East Asia, decades of cheap hardware, a more stable and extensive Breton Woods international trade system, ect. I'll readily agree though: losing the war allowed Japan to far better adapt to the kind of international climate that emerged in the wake of American acendency and the Atomic age (IE: safe access to international resources, vastly reduced chance of conventional warfare, ect.) than the ideas of the pre-war Empire would have produced. One could argue that this woulden't be the case in a less stable and open international order though.



And the US is just blissfully unaware of all this? Any realistic scenario has to assume America is at least semi-compitent and intelligent, and a mass Japanese infiltration of such a broad segment of society would be obvious (in its existance if not in the exact details) to any counter-intelligence efforts, which in the wake of social unrest and the threat of international communism would undoubtably exist...



Could you elaborate? I'm not sure what you means. Are you talking about Operation Barbarossa?

I agree, I was just referring to the old joke from the 1980s when the US was supposedly getting its lunch handed to it economically by Japan and West Germany and people said that the best way to win a war was to lose a war with the US.
 
I agree, I was just referring to the old joke from the 1980s when the US was supposedly getting its lunch handed to it economically by Japan and West Germany and people said that the best way to win a war was to lose a war with the US.

affiche-la-souris-qui-rugissait-the-mouse-that-roared-1959-2.jpg
 
Scenario: A General Wever lives Luftwaffe scenario (Like a "better show in 40", but the Germans don't actually invade). The Germans in this TL have a weapons system that could allow them a real chance to beat Britain 1 on 1 so Hitler delays Barbarossa until 1942 and goes in it to win it against Britain. However the Americans and Japanese are in on December 7th 1941 so Germany never finds a good opportunity to do Barbarossa.

a) The Germans really have the British on the ropes. Requiring large USA commitments early to mid east and Africa. Including an extra carrier or two in the Atlantic as top cover for important convoys.
b) The Japanese don't do Pearl Harbor but still attack the Philippines. Holding the Carrier strike force back if the American commit their fleet.
b) Minus a carrier or two in the Pacific, The Americans don't do their little carrier raids in the Pacific pre Coral Sea, including no Doolittle raid. Result is the Japanese bring all 6 carriers to midway, and the Americans don't engage (the direct effect of this are that the Japanese invade Port Moresby and Midway and fail miserably but their carrier force is intact and no longer try to push forward, but build the ring where they are. The Americans wait until November 43 to start to counterattack.
c) The Japanese don't commit their Navy and large air force contingents (either navy or army) preferring to wait until the "decisive battle" and to force the Americans to have to take losses grinding against fortified islands.
d) The Germans and Japanese are both able to buy stuff from the Soviets and a limited exchange of goods, advisers and tech is allowed across the trans Siberian railway.
e) The Germans and Japanese, with more shared intelligence and focus, and with some tips from the Soviets figure out sometime in early 43 the Allies are decoding their communications and try to tighten their codes.
f) The decisive battle occurs June 1944. The result is at least attritional. And the resulting fight for the Marianas is a real grinder.
g) The Allies wanting to focus everything on a cross channel invasion of France in 1945 offers the Japanese peace on 1937 boundaries which the new Japanese government accepts after the loss of Saipan (along with a Japanese halt on Naval construction).

What is “in it to win it against GB?”
If Germany built large bombers they would be taking resources away from something else. And even if Germany had some success bombing, the channel is still there.

Confused by “Americans and Japanese in on Pearl Harbor” Does this mean Pearl happens, because later you say it does not.

The submarine warfare part will still take place. According to wiki US subs sunk around 1300 merchant ships and 200 warships in the Pacific.

There might be some attrition in June 44, but by then the US has 6 Essex’s and the F6F. Plus a crap ton of baby carriers. IMHO Japan will still lose badly, it just might take slightly longer. They could never, ever hope to come close to the industrial might of WW2 US. America produced around 300,000 planes during the war. Japan built around 76,000.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_aircraft_production
 

trurle

Banned
There might be some attrition in June 44, but by then the US has 6 Essex’s and the F6F. Plus a crap ton of baby carriers. IMHO Japan will still lose badly, it just might take slightly longer. They could never, ever hope to come close to the industrial might of WW2 US. America produced around 300,000 planes during the war. Japan built around 76,000.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_aircraft_production
This is a common-sense argument claiming what the force which has ~9 times more productivity (i.e. US vs Japan) always wins. The argument (9 times manpower or industry = decisive victory) is demonstrably false.
Counter-example: Winter War of 1939-1940 (manpower ratio: 54:1, result: weaker opponent (Finland) lost 11% of territory and counter-attacked next year)

In general, shorter wars tends to have more unexpected outcomes.
Japanese worst-case military planning before Pearl Harbor have assumed the war in Pacific will continue for 2 years, while optimal schedule was to finish war in 6 months. Such short conflict have significant probability of weaker opponent winning.

Besides OTL Pacific war continuing for too long, Japanese has make one more huge strategic mistake, as described below.

The Japanese basic strategy was to secure a chain or network of mutually-supporting airfields, separated from hostile airfields by wide stretch of open water. Japanese initial advantage in long-range aircraft (G3M, G4M, Ki-43 and A6M) was expected to concentrate force better than Allies and to defeat en route any plausible air or seaborne attack on Japanese-held airfields network.

Japanese strategy has demonstrably failed first time during bombing of Rabaul in late February 1942, when low-altitude Allied bombing have destroyed ~400 of Japanese aircraft in transport crates at heavily defended airbase. The defensive network has failed to function for a number of reasons on both Japanese and Allied sides. Later, the pattern of isolation and destruction of Japanese outposts or carrier groups was repeated again and again till the end of Pacific War.

No easy answer exist how to make attempted Japanese "air defensive network" operational or Allied attacks against it inefficient. The efforts to implement such non-leaking networks have actually failed during WWII for all participants and conditions, without exception. Even in 1945, with all technical and numerical advantages, US air patrols allowed 1/9 of Japanese kamikaze pilots to ram to their targets. All weapons of era were simply too short-ranged for effective 3D aerial interception.

First war when effective anti-air defense has become possible, was IOTL Yom Kippur War in 1973. Japanese needed actually some sort of homing SAM tech (ground or aircraft based) to make their grand strategy working, but it was well beyond their or anybody state-of-art IOTL. First homing heads were designed in 1945 in Germany, but it was at lab testing stage when the WWII ended. Even much simpler and less effective radar-triggered proximity fuses for AA shells (fielded by US since late 1942) were well beyond Japanese capability IOTL.
 
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Well, how about this: POD is Hitler’s assassination in early ‘45. War in Europe ends soon after in German surrender. Three months later, in April or May, Stalin attacks the Japanese as he had promised. But soon after there is a falling out among the Allies, as the Red Army pushes far beyond what was agreed to with the West. This eventually escalates into Operation Unthinkable during the summer. As Japan is also fighting the Russians now, the Americans make a strategic calculation that burying the hatchet with the Japanese is preferable to having the Red Army conquer all of Europe. Japan gets to keep everything north of Singapore and the Philippines as well as what it takes from the Russians, plus pays significant reparations for Malay, Indochina and the cost of the war effort once the Soviets are defeated.
There is no way in hell the allies are gonna accept the Japanese to retain that much territory. Best case scenario they are able to keep pre-invasion of Manchuria Borders at best, even more likely is they get pre-manchuria borders minus a bunch of pacific Islands, both cases are still very unlikely to occur. The Allies would simply stop fighting the Japanese, sit and starve them out as the full American might turns to beating the crap outta the soviets. Whether or not they could succeed is another question entirely. But otherwise, the government in Tokyo must find a way to get rid of the military leaders before then and beg the Americans for an armistice with unconditional surrender before the Soviets can be defeated, or else the Home Islands are getting decimated, more so then OTL. And even if the japanese join the war against the soviets, all they're doing is tying down soviet divisions until the IJA is kicked off the mainland and gets obliterated. Either way, Japanese are screwed. And the American public won't just ignore what happened at Pearl harbor to support a war with their former ally over some territorial dispute over Nazi wasteland.

There is the scenario in "Careful what you wish for" where the Japanese attack the Phillipines instead of Pearl Harbour and lure the US fleet into a decisive engagement in the Luzon Strait. The Americans are defeated and lose many battleships in deep water, while the US public loses enthusiasm with a war fought over a colony rather than American soil itself. Peace is made in early 1942 as Japan gets the Phillipines and American oil supplies. That's pretty much the only way they can get victory in my opinion.
As interesting as a it is, the scenario, to me, seems unlikely. If the Japanese attack the philippines, American service men are still dying in this surprise attack and Japanese forces are still gonna be incredibly brutal. If the Japanese are able to force a "decisive battle" it will only hold off the inevitable. Unless the USA declares war, then its hopeless for Japan. A war the US started will be unpopular, not the other way around. And even if the Japanese sink battleships, Carriers would decide the war, the age of the battleship had its last gasp by Jutland/Tsushima. It's been a while since I've read the scenario in Rising Sun Victorious so please correct me if i've gotten anything regarding it incorrect.
 
There is no way in hell the allies are gonna accept the Japanese to retain that much territory. Best case scenario they are able to keep pre-invasion of Manchuria Borders at best, even more likely is they get pre-manchuria borders minus a bunch of pacific Islands, both cases are still very unlikely to occur. The Allies would simply stop fighting the Japanese, sit and starve them out as the full American might turns to beating the crap outta the soviets. Whether or not they could succeed is another question entirely. But otherwise, the government in Tokyo must find a way to get rid of the military leaders before then and beg the Americans for an armistice with unconditional surrender before the Soviets can be defeated, or else the Home Islands are getting decimated, more so then OTL. And even if the japanese join the war against the soviets, all they're doing is tying down soviet divisions until the IJA is kicked off the mainland and gets obliterated. Either way, Japanese are screwed. And the American public won't just ignore what happened at Pearl harbor to support a war with their former ally over some territorial dispute over Nazi wasteland.

The reason why the Allies wouldn’t just wait and let Japan starve is because they would fear a truce between them and the Soviets (a war that neither side now has the appetite for). Getting Japan into the fold against the Soviets is important, because the Red Army has so much more than what the Allies can field in Europe and forcing them to keep two fronts open across the opposite ends of Asia is the best way of reducing that advantage. The Americans are not gonna “beat the crap out” of the Red Army without the bomb, and I don’t understand how you think it’s irrelevant “whether or not they succeed”. Political leaders are always making calculations of what is possible, and play the game accordingly. The goal of the game is to keep the balance of power in America's interest. The very fact that Japan has been weakened so much by the war is a reason to bring it back into the fold, because it is not gonna be again challenging America like that anytime soon. A Soviet Union that controls all of Europe on the other hand... As for he American public, it probably would have preferred to have seen Germany and Japan wiped off the map after the war, but that didn’t prevent the US from rebuilding these countries. There is no presidential election for three more years, and Truman is riding the coattails of the most popular president since Lincoln. In other words, he has a lot of political capital. And as someone else said, the US probably sheds few tears for French Indochina and British Malay (excluding Singapore). Only a decade later they threw the Europeans under the bus at Sues, after all. And maybe the Japanese jail a few hothead generals for some massacres, apologise for Pearl Harbour as well as giving those reparations after the Soviets are defeated, if that allows them to come out with most of their gains.
 
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As for he American public, it probably would have preferred to have seen Germany and Japan wiped off the map after the war, but that didn’t prevent the US from rebuilding these countries.

Sure - but only after they had completely liquidated the regimes in place.

Reconstruction could happen because it was entirely under American control.

There's just no scenario, short of alien space bats, in which any plausible American government is going to accept a postwar with even a shred of the Japanese militarist regime left in place.
 
Sure - but only after they had completely liquidated the regimes in place.

Reconstruction could happen because it was entirely under American control.

There's just no scenario, short of alien space bats, in which any plausible American government is going to accept a postwar with even a shred of the Japanese militarist regime left in place.

I disagree. I think between a severely weakened Japanese empire and a Soviet Union that controls continental Europe, the Americans would choose the former. The Japanese probably won't be expanding anytime soon, and might just end up getting done in by the Chinese later on, but the Soviets will just keep on expanding, probably to the Middle East after Europe.
 
I disagree. I think between a severely weakened Japanese empire and a Soviet Union that controls continental Europe, the Americans would choose the former. The Japanese probably won't be expanding anytime soon, and might just end up getting done in by the Chinese later on, but the Soviets will just keep on expanding, probably to the Middle East after Europe.

But the USA doesn't need to choose. The Soviets aren't going to break the naval blockade of Japan no matter what, and the USN isn't needed to fight the Soviets. The IJA meanwhile has been practically destroyed by August Storm, so is no help if it was to be suddenly thrown against the Red Army.

If Stalin DOWs America before Japan surrenders, America will send the Army to Europe, leave the Navy to blockade Japan into starvation, and probably drop Little Boy on Moscow. They don't need to make peace with Japan to fight Stalin.

- BNC
 
Counter-example: Winter War of 1939-1940 (manpower ratio: 54:1, result: weaker opponent (Finland) lost 11% of territory and counter-attacked next year)

The United States Navy, Marine Corps and even Army were pretty competent, very well equipped forces with superb logistics and increasingly superior technology. None of which was true of the Soviet Army in 1939-40.

Also, Genera Winter is not going to come to the rescue of the Japanese (though the odd hurricane might slightly staunch the blood flow for a moment).
 
But the USA doesn't need to choose. The Soviets aren't going to break the naval blockade of Japan no matter what, and the USN isn't needed to fight the Soviets. The IJA meanwhile has been practically destroyed by August Storm, so is no help if it was to be suddenly thrown against the Red Army.

If Stalin DOWs America before Japan surrenders, America will send the Army to Europe, leave the Navy to blockade Japan into starvation, and probably drop Little Boy on Moscow. They don't need to make peace with Japan to fight Stalin.

- BNC

Well, August storm happens three months earlier, so that might affect how it plays out. And I wasn’t aware it destroyed the IJA, just the Kwantung Army. In any case, if the Japanese are not a threat, then the Marines can do a landing in the Russian Far East (though fighting side-by-side the Japs might a bit too much to ask). I already outlined the benefit of a second front, as the Russians now have to handle the world’s longest supply line. This is why they wanted three months to prepare for the attack on Manchuria, after all. And the bomb is months away, I’m not sure if the Americans would be willing to plan their strategy around an untested weapon.
 
I disagree. I think between a severely weakened Japanese empire and a Soviet Union that controls continental Europe, the Americans would choose the former. The Japanese probably won't be expanding anytime soon, and might just end up getting done in by the Chinese later on, but the Soviets will just keep on expanding, probably to the Middle East after Europe.

Bataan Death March.
 
Coup and counter coup in 1941 before war with the United States. The peace faction comes out on top. “The pacific war” is the name given to Post-coup Japan’s anti German and Italian actions.
 
Well, August storm happens three months earlier, so that might affect how it plays out. And I wasn’t aware it destroyed the IJA, just the Kwantung Army. In any case, if the Japanese are not a threat, then the Marines can do a landing in the Russian Far East (though fighting side-by-side the Japs might a bit too much to ask). I already outlined the benefit of a second front, as the Russians now have to handle the world’s longest supply line. This is why they wanted three months to prepare for the attack on Manchuria, after all. And the bomb is months away, I’m not sure if the Americans would be willing to plan their strategy around an untested weapon.

OTL August Storm only knocked out the Kwantung Army, you're right, but that's just because the rest of the Army was deep in China. If Japan was to pull out of China and send those units against the Soviets, they'll get destroyed just as thoroughly. Japan has no equivalent to the Il-2, the Katyusha, the IS-2, the PPSh or any other type of heavy equipment that the Red Army is spewing out in multi-thousand quantities.

The second front idea is good, but it also doesn't depend upon the US having actually beaten Japan. Okinawa is close enough for the US to threaten the Soviet Pacific coast and Manchuria, so Stalin has to keep troops there regardless of which flag is flying in Tokyo. Maybe he keeps a few more troops if B-29s are flying out of Tokyo, but in a war between the Allies and USSR, the main battlefield is Europe, numbers are above 100 divisions on both sides (once both sides are committed that is). 50,000 extra men guarding Vladivostock isn't going to influence anything.

Simply put, a war with Stalin doesn't impact the war with Japan in any way beyond possibly slowing it down (Hiroshima not getting nuked may delay the surrender of Japan by a few months). Different parts of the US Armed Forces are involved in the two conflicts, so they can be conducted simultaneously.

Would it be the first time a great power has put raw geopolitical interest over justice?

Japan in 1945 contributes nothing to America's interests no matter who's side it is on. If it fights, it dies and dies fast, so it might as well not be there in the first place. The Americans are angry at Japan, they can't get anything from allying them and they will beat them fairly easily if they don't change what they've been doing.

- BNC
 
This is a common-sense argument claiming what the force which has ~9 times more productivity (i.e. US vs Japan) always wins. The argument (9 times manpower or industry = decisive victory) is demonstrably false.
Counter-example: Winter War of 1939-1940 (manpower ratio: 54:1, result: weaker opponent (Finland) lost 11% of territory and counter-attacked next year)

In general, shorter wars tends to have more unexpected outcomes.
Japanese worst-case military planning before Pearl Harbor have assumed the war in Pacific will continue for 2 years, while optimal schedule was to finish war in 6 months. Such short conflict have significant probability of weaker opponent winning.

Why would the war end as the Japanese intended?
 
The United States Navy, Marine Corps and even Army were pretty competent, very well equipped forces with superb logistics and increasingly superior technology. None of which was true of the Soviet Army in 1939-40.

Also, Genera Winter is not going to come to the rescue of the Japanese (though the odd hurricane might slightly staunch the blood flow for a moment).

@trurle

Furthermore, Finland lost more after the Continuation War and was forced into Finlandization by the USSR.
 
OTL August Storm only knocked out the Kwantung Army, you're right, but that's just because the rest of the Army was deep in China. If Japan was to pull out of China and send those units against the Soviets, they'll get destroyed just as thoroughly. Japan has no equivalent to the Il-2, the Katyusha, the IS-2, the PPSh or any other type of heavy equipment that the Red Army is spewing out in multi-thousand quantities.

The second front idea is good, but it also doesn't depend upon the US having actually beaten Japan. Okinawa is close enough for the US to threaten the Soviet Pacific coast and Manchuria, so Stalin has to keep troops there regardless of which flag is flying in Tokyo. Maybe he keeps a few more troops if B-29s are flying out of Tokyo, but in a war between the Allies and USSR, the main battlefield is Europe, numbers are above 100 divisions on both sides (once both sides are committed that is). 50,000 extra men guarding Vladivostock isn't going to influence anything.

Simply put, a war with Stalin doesn't impact the war with Japan in any way beyond possibly slowing it down (Hiroshima not getting nuked may delay the surrender of Japan by a few months). Different parts of the US Armed Forces are involved in the two conflicts, so they can be conducted simultaneously.

Japan in 1945 contributes nothing to America's interests no matter who's side it is on. If it fights, it dies and dies fast, so it might as well not be there in the first place. The Americans are angry at Japan, they can't get anything from allying them and they will beat them fairly easily if they don't change what they've been doing.

- BNC

Japan in 1945 was going to die if it did not surrender, it's just the matter dying fast by US invasion or slow by US blockade and the resulting famine.
 
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