I'm going to reply to this bit by way of also responding to your last post.
As I believe I've said before, I think Pearlman played fast and loose with his sources, selectively quoting where necessary to paint a picture of overwhelming war weariness in America by summer of 1945, and worse, fearful appreciation by some by senior leaders in the Truman Administration. I don't think the balance of evidence bears that out, no matter how many industrial strikes you can point to.
To boil it down to just "industrial strikes" is to create a Strawman. Both Fred Vinson and Henry Stimson both make particular note of the state of overall morale of the American public, buttressing the points made by Marshall; all of these men had ready access to polling data as well to confirm what they were seeing and hearing. That Truman echoed this speaks volumes, and forces us to pick between two options:
A) Everyone was completely and utterly incompetent
B) They were correct and the evidence, as they said, was leaning in this direction
Obviously I lean towards B and in that prospective, American actions in 1945 make perfect sense. If you have no doubts about the continued endurance of American morale, the invasion of Japan is borderline insanity; the starve and bomb strategy in that case is by far the proper course of action. Why would everyone in the U.S. command structure thus support such a high casualty operation? The simple-and most likely answer is that, indeed, public morale was weakening and American leadership realized the war needed to be decisively won and
soon.
I think you also fail to provide an appreciation for the depth of Roosevelt's commitment to "Germany First." The record here, from Roosevelt's own correspondence and eyewitness testimony, is extensive. And Roosevelt, a wartime president who had fought and won three landslide elections to the presidency and, more amazingly, had never lost either house of Congress in that time, was notably bulwarked against public opinion, especially given that even as late as mid-summer, polling suggested that Democrats might actually *gain* seats in the House. In a scenario where the U.S. loses at Midway, we can't so easily characterize how it would be received back home, since the Navy - while more honest than its Japanese counterpart - was not going to provide a comprehensive or detailed picture of losses on both sides, but it *would* play up the propaganda value (complete with John Ford's on-the-scene footage) of the Marine demolition of Kondo's invasion, which would look like Wake Island times five. We also don't know how U.S. strategy would have adjusted to this alt-Midway, but it is hard to think that Nimitz would simply stand pat. And, above all, it would likely push Roosevelt even harder in Germany's direction, since TORCH was the one obvious major operation in the hopper that the Allies could mount and reasonably count on quick success for - and FDR would, even more than in OTL, want to see it moved up a few weeks, to be sure to have an impact before the November midterms. (And Churchill, being sensitive to the need to keep Roosevelt on side, would be as accommodating as he was in OTL.)
I don't doubt Roosevelt's commitment, I just recognize the man didn't enjoy the same benefits Stalin, Hitler and Tojo did in terms of being able to force his opinion through no matter what given he is the leader of a Democracy. He personally might not be up for re-election, but his Party as a whole is in 1942 and if the public turns sour on him, the political retribution would be, in a word, fierce. I also think overall you're engaging in a bit of rose tinted glasses with Roosevelt; as you note, even IOTL the 1942 midterms were close and public opinion polling clearly showed-as did the actual results in 1944-that opinion on him could and did fluctuate and his continued rule was largely dependent on fears of switching leadership during the war. Case in point: see how after 1938 his domestic agenda was completely stalled out by the Conservative Coalition of Southern Democrats and the GOP.
Also, there is not evidence of a consistent push by congressional Republican candidates for an explicit switch to a "Japan First" strategy.
Could the GOP have won the House in 1942 in the wake of a U.S. defeat at Midway? Sure. It's possible. Obviously in OTL they came fairly close to doing so. But in the first place it has to be perceived by Roosevelt that this is a likelihood. And in the second place, it actually has to force Roosevelt to make a fundamental switch in war strategy, a switch would risk a grave breach with both of its wartime allies - Britain and the USSR. And doing so, no less, at a time (summer 1942) where the Soviet Union looked like it was on its last legs. "Hey Joe, I know you've got your backs to the wall at the Volga, but we really need to focus on Japan for a few years here. You can hang on, can't you?" They were afraid enough as it was that Stalin would make a separate peace that fall even *with* a Germany First strategy.
A defeat at Midway and likely following Japanese victories gives such an opening, no? See
American Popular Opinion and the War Against Germany: The Issue of Negotiated Peace, 1942 by Richard W. Steele,
The Journal of American History , Dec., 1978, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Dec., 1978), pp. 704-723:
The coming of war to America changed but did not destroy the peace issue. Many of those who had stubbornly resisted involvement now hoped to terminate it as quickly as possible, and apparently only a lack of organization significantly differentiated sentiment for a negotiated peace from the isolationism of 1941. Moreover, as the President quickly learned, the leadership for an effective negotiated peace movement seemed likely to emerge from the die-hard remnants of the America First Committee, particularly in the person of the isolationist national hero, Charles A. Lindbergh.
America First officially disbanded in February, and many of its officials announced their support for the war effort. Nevertheless, the activities of some members, including Lindbergh, remained the subject of government interest and concern. In mid-February Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover informed the President that former members of the Committee had "gone underground" and were "biding their time," awaiting the opportunity to emerge again as a "political force." Hoover cited as evidence a mid-December meeting at which the renowned flyer had allegedly held forth on the yellow and Bolshevik menaces, on the foolishness of the current war in Europe, and on what might be done to reverse American policy.
According to Hoover's informant, Lindbergh declared that "when the American people, by reason of the lists of the missing and the statements of war losses, realize that they have been betrayed by the British and the Administration," the Committee should be ready to "advocate a negotiated peace." Hoover also noted that he had obtained information from other sources to the effect that the America Firsters had a "secret mailing list of 8,476,000"; that lately a "great many individuals among foreign speaking groups have been circularized"; and that the leaders of the underground organization planned to hold a "series of house parties . .. to keep alive contacts."34
Further:
Nevertheless, the President could not rest easy, for the fate of the extremists notwithstanding, he had reason to ponder the possibility that his more respectable political enemies might use the peace issue to unsettle and embarrass the administration. In April OFF warned that in the fall congressional campaigns "subversion will probably be intermingled with politics" as both administration opponents and Nazi propagandists seek to "promote defeatism or play upon the war weariness of the people." Fleshing out this prediction was a report informing the President that three leading isolationist Republicans, Congressman Joe Martin, former Congressman Bruce Barton, and publisher Roy Howard, had "just held a secret meeting in far off Tucson," leading to speculation that they were planning an "isolationist attack" against administration war policies. A more explicit warning came to Roosevelt from a friend, New Dealer Gardiner Jackson, who told him in the fall of 1942 that the business interests behind the presidential candidacy of Thomas E. Dewey were working hard for a negotiated peace and had taken a recent conciliatory speech by Hitler as the "opening gun of the drive to call the war off. . . ." The problem raised by these reports (if true) was, as OFF warned, that even if the agitation of the peace issue could not force the administration into negotiations, it could do "much damage" by strengthening "the hand of those in Congress whose main goal is the harassment and obstruction of the President."37
As for Roosevelt, if he losses in November, the decision quickly is taken out of his hands. As it were, he was already closely following the situation and this was entirely why he wanted an offensive into North Africa. To quote from
The 'Pacific-First' Alternative in American World War II Strategy by Mark A. Stoler,
The International History Review, Jul., 1980, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Jul., 1980), pp. 432- 452
But these factors did not prevent a partial turn to the Pacific in 1942 and 1943 which Roosevelt supported and which clearly modified the Germany-first strategy for the duration of the war. In his 1943 biennial report to the Secretary of War, Marshall bluntly stated that for the United States, the defensive phase of the Second World War had ended not with any actions in the European theatre, but with the Guadalcanal campaign. By the end of 1943, the United States was still deploying more men against Japan than against Germany.55 Roosevelt's support for this partial strategic shift is not difficult to reconcile with his absolute refusal in July 1942 to reject formally and completely the Germany-first approach. While the President retained his strong belief in the primacy of that approach throughout the war, he was by no means blind to the political as well as military repercussions, especially at home and in China, of continued and unchecked Japanese successes. He simply did not believe that those repercussions, drastic as they might be, would be as serious as those which would follow a total overthrow of Germany first.
The question of the public's perception of who was Enemy #1 is an interesting one. Through 1942, the public consistently saw Germany in that slot. It was only in early 1943 that there was a dramatic shift to Japan, and it looks like the reason why had much to do with Soviet successes on the Eastern front at Stalingrad and the Caucasus (though one has to think that TORCH played a role, too). Allow me to excerpt some things from "Japan: An American Problem," by Louise Merrick van Patten, Far Eastern Survey Vol. 14, No. 9 (May 9, 1945), pp. 114-117:
But there's much more interesting things than that in von Patten's survey, which she published in May 1945. Because what polls also showed was that the public was much more hostile in its perception of the Japanese - something that also cuts against emerging war weariness. The public, across the board, wanted the Japanese to pay, and pay good and hard, an attitude that remained strong as ever by spring of 1945 - a sentiment driven no doubt in part by racialist attitudes as much as by Pearl Harbor and treatment of American POW's:
To quote from Steele again:
On concentrating on the Japanese, the question asked was: "Granting that it is important for us to fight the Axis every place we can, which do you think is more important for the United States to do right now: put most of our effort into fighting Japan or put most of our effort into fighting Germany?" 62 percent responded Japan, and 21 percent Germany. Bureau of Intelligence, OFF, "Survey of Intelligence Materials," No. 21 (April 29, 1942), PSF "OWI," Roosevelt Papers.
Note that bit: "13 percent who would kill all the people of Japan left alive when the war is over." Yikes.
Note that Gallup didnt even have a significant response to any option that looked like a Versailles treatment. Half the country wanted Japan hacked up. A little over a third favored something that looked like what the U.S. actually did after the war.
A pity that Pearlman never incorporated discussion of this aspect of American public opinion in the last year of the war.
Primarily because it doesn't really contradict the underlying issues; the public may hate Japan and want a harsh peace, but that doesn't invalidate the growing war weariness all the same. Again, either the entirety of American leadership was incompetent or they recognized a growing problem. Non-withstanding the opinions of a minority of 13%, I firmly feel the data points into the "problem" category.