Did the Japanese government think they could winn WWII?

What if the Japanese simply occupy the land in China they want and declare the war to be over? Will the Chinese accept that or will they continue an offensive war they can't win?

Worse: build up strength for an offensive war. A big Japanese objective involved disruption of any attempts of the KMT to unify China or strengthen their forces.
 
The Japanese were hoping to catch at least some carriers at PH as well as the BBs, but the battleships were the main target. Whether or not the carriers were at Pearl, the IJN was going to have a carrier superiority for a while until the planned US production kicked in, and of course any new builds. This was not the case for battleships (remember the 5:5:3 rule) and as noted the US was cranking out a fair number in the near term. Since the war was planned to last only 6-12 months not getting the carriers was unfortunate but not a short term issue, the possibility of salvage which took 18-24 months at least before ships sunk (as opposed to the Nevada which was beached) were back in action, was unimportant as these ships would not be back before the war was over. When you throw out the bells and whistles the entire Japanese plan was "we win in 6-12 months, maybe a little longer". There was no plan for "oh crap, the Americans didn't give up what is plan B".

Had the Japanese offered Chiang a deal that cemented Manchukuo and gave Japan major trade/commercial concessions he might very well have taken it. The USA with a few exceptions would have seen this as reasonable and therefore the US support for China fighting Japan would be much reduced or gone. Since Japan and Germany were allies, German support for Chiang would not be there (as per OTL), and very soon Russia would be too busy to support anyone (Chiang or Mao) in China. Not fighting Japan would have allowed Chiang to go after the communists with the blessing of Japan. The IJA in China was out of control, and the more they advanced the more they wanted so Chiang basically had no incentive to negotiate, he could count on US support and the vast size of China to keep the Japanese from a complete victory. Even after a peace with Chiang, covert Japanese support for warlords & anti-KMT elements could have continued. The world might tut-tut about Japanese atrocities, but it was far away and yellow people trashing yellow people, and nobody did squat about what the Nazis were doing to Jews and others and they were white and closer.

Japan making that sort of peace with China did not mean they were going to become the client of anybody. They would be the local Asian hegemon, and when the European powers left their SEA colonies, as was inevitable and the USA left the PI Japan would be the big guy locally and able to step in commercially. Absent what japan did in Asia/SEA/PI in WWII there would be no automatic anti-Japanese prejudice to commercial efforts, and more of an acceptance of the trope "Asia for the Asiatics". Bottom line is Japan dug the deep hole they found themselves in in 1941, and were busy shoveling dirt in on top of themselves. It was by no means the only way for them to remain a significant power.
 
The Japanese were hoping to catch at least some carriers at PH as well as the BBs, but the battleships were the main target. Whether or not the carriers were at Pearl, the IJN was going to have a carrier superiority for a while until the planned US production kicked in, and of course any new builds. This was not the case for battleships (remember the 5:5:3 rule) and as noted the US was cranking out a fair number in the near term. Since the war was planned to last only 6-12 months not getting the carriers was unfortunate but not a short term issue, the possibility of salvage which took 18-24 months at least before ships sunk (as opposed to the Nevada which was beached) were back in action, was unimportant as these ships would not be back before the war was over. When you throw out the bells and whistles the entire Japanese plan was "we win in 6-12 months, maybe a little longer". There was no plan for "oh crap, the Americans didn't give up what is plan B".

Had the Japanese offered Chiang a deal that cemented Manchukuo and gave Japan major trade/commercial concessions he might very well have taken it. The USA with a few exceptions would have seen this as reasonable and therefore the US support for China fighting Japan would be much reduced or gone. Since Japan and Germany were allies, German support for Chiang would not be there (as per OTL), and very soon Russia would be too busy to support anyone (Chiang or Mao) in China. Not fighting Japan would have allowed Chiang to go after the communists with the blessing of Japan. The IJA in China was out of control, and the more they advanced the more they wanted so Chiang basically had no incentive to negotiate, he could count on US support and the vast size of China to keep the Japanese from a complete victory. Even after a peace with Chiang, covert Japanese support for warlords & anti-KMT elements could have continued. The world might tut-tut about Japanese atrocities, but it was far away and yellow people trashing yellow people, and nobody did squat about what the Nazis were doing to Jews and others and they were white and closer.

Japan making that sort of peace with China did not mean they were going to become the client of anybody. They would be the local Asian hegemon, and when the European powers left their SEA colonies, as was inevitable and the USA left the PI Japan would be the big guy locally and able to step in commercially. Absent what japan did in Asia/SEA/PI in WWII there would be no automatic anti-Japanese prejudice to commercial efforts, and more of an acceptance of the trope "Asia for the Asiatics". Bottom line is Japan dug the deep hole they found themselves in in 1941, and were busy shoveling dirt in on top of themselves. It was by no means the only way for them to remain a significant power.

The big problem with that is the junior officers. No matter what else Japan does it has to get control of its junior officers first.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
What did they hit at Pearl Harbor though? A bunch of battleships. So basically nothing that mattered. Everything they sunk was obsolete by 1941. They didn't even hit the service facilities that might have crippled the USN logistics. A pathetic military operation if there ever was one.
As is too often the case, this perspective takes advantage of hindsight, it is also incorrect factually. In late 1941 no one knew that the battleship was done as the final arbiter of naval warfare. Churchill didn't send Repulse and Prince of Wales out simply to be slaughtered, with the certain blow it would have on British morale (which was already nearing its ebb tide). He sent them because they were a legitimate threat, had Force Z maintained its original course it would have collected around 1/3 of the entire Japanese force assigned to attack Malaya. For that matter, Halsey would have given up a limb to have had West Virginia and Maryland off Guadalcanal on October 14-15, 1942 when Kongo and Haruna came down the slot to pound Henderson Field not to mention Admirals Scott and Callahan (and their families) in November of 1942.

The Japanese didn't have the forces to make a worthwhile attack on the repair facilities, nor did the have the time. While the carrier force was a serious threat to warships, it was notably less useful against major ground targets. The D3A had a max bomb load of 550 pounds. That means each CARRIER'S D3A squadron had the bomb capacity of two B-17, while each squadron of B5N added 6 B-17 equivalents. Since the attack force had been dispatched in two waves that mean all six of the Kido Butal carriers could, for ground attack dispatch four B-17 equivalents. Simply not going to do that much damage. The Japanese could launch a maximum of one additional wave due to time of sundown, otherwise they would have to delay, in waters known to have U.S. submarines, and within six hours surface travel for any undamaged submarine, battleship, cruiser, and destroyer out of Pearl Harbor to catch them in the dark for a surface action. Carriers are not the right tool for the job, not at night, especially not with enemy subs simply itching to get some back (keep in mind that no one, on either side, was aware of the problems with USN torpedoes).
 

thorr97

Banned
Late to the party but, yes, the Japanese government did think it could win WWII. Why else did it start the Pacific War?

But this is, as others have pointed out, dependent upon the definition of "win."

If by "win" that means completely defeat the might of the US and British fleets and armies? No, for all but the most rabid of Japanese militarists such a feat was not anticipated.

If however, "win" is defined as the Empire of Japan emerging from the conflict in a better strategic position than when the war started, then, yes, they did think they could win.

The strategy of grabbing all those atolls and digging in to them was part and parcel of that. The islands gained were usually but barely above sea level at high tide and thus essentially worthless in terms of territory or assets gained. Even strategic position was questionable on many of them. However, the Japanese hoped that by occupying them they would force the US to pry them out of each and every one of them. And the Japanese planned on making that as bloody a thing as possible for the Americans. They gambled that as the costs continued to escalate and the gains all too minor for those costs, that the US and the UK would become ever more tractable to a negotiated peace with the Empire.

A peace in which the Empire was recognized as the dominant force in Asia and got to keep its control and access to the strategic materials - i.e. oil - it had gained through conquest. All those islands the Japanese had fought so bitterly to retain? Well, they were always but bargaining chips to be spent at the peace table achieving the greater glory of the Empire.

The factions controlling Japan also reasoned that going to war to achieve those aims was a far better thing for them, politically, than in letting the economy contract as it would if they met America's demands. Such a contraction would violate the pact they had made with the Japanese people in which they promised nothing but "good times" economically in exchange for absolute power over them. This, just like the Nazis both promised and were cornered by in Germany. An economy that, by its very nature, requires constant increases in funding just to stay even is one which, inevitably, turns to conquest as spending without growth will always destroy that economy. Hence both Germany and Japan's need for more, more, more conquests.

The Japanese, like their German counterparts, well understood that time was against them. The economies of their major opponents were all vastly larger than theirs and those opponents were rearming at rates neither Germany nor Japan could hope to match. The longer they waited to go to war against the US and UK and Soviet Union, the worse position they'd be in when the war started. So, September 1st was the kickoff in '39 for Germany and December 7th in '41 was for Japan.

We can say, in hindsight, that their efforts were obviously doomed from their outset. That, I think, severely underestimates real world effects and how close - but for want of that nail - things actually were.
 
Know?

Yes.

Consider the ramifications if the war lasted into 1943? Not really.

Agreed. The problems in Japanese strategic thought going into WWII were pretty complex, and not really something they could see w/o hindsight. If you haven't read it yet, check out a book called 'Kaigun' for an in-depth study of where the Japaqnese Navy's mind was on the eve of the war:
1. CONCRETE DESIGN ADVANCEMENTS VS. INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY LEAPS: Japan invested heavily in producing more advanced designs of existing, accepted world naval technology. This is epitomized in the building of the Yamato class, but also can be seen in investment in larger destroyers, in light cruisers geared to command destroyer squadrons, and the ever-increasing design scale of their submarine-float-plane-carriers for a 1945-46 raid on the Panama Canal. In contrast, the USA invested in nukes, constantly evolving aircraft designs, mass produced Essex carriers and everything else, focused on targeting freight with our subs, etc.
2. INDUSTRIALIZATION: Japan did not have any concept (aside from Yamamoto) of the industrial power of the USA. Nor did Germany for that matter, and perhaps not even the USA itself. What people like Henry Kaiser and the automotive industry did in WWII truly had no precedent. Building Hoover Dam was a massive project, but it was the training wheels version of what Kaiser did with the Liberty ships.
3. LOGISTICS: Japanese Navy strategic thinkers were never really trained with any focus on logistics; that was work for people not on a career track for command. Everything focused on winning the one decisive battle as Mahan had taught them.
4. NOT FIGHTING VERY MUCH IN WWI: Japan missed the hardships of WWI. Consequently, she missed the lesson of how Germany was defeated. Japan couldn't conceive of total war because they had never experienced it.
5. PEARL HARBOR: If they hadn't staged a surprise strike on Pearl, the USA reaction might have been very different. Keep in mind that Wendell Wilkie only lost the 1940 election to FDR because FDR mimicked his isolationist platform & speeches long enough to win the election. Imagine if Japan had done everything else besides attacking Pearl, and if they hadn't gotten greedy in spreading their forces thinly at Coral Sea or sending their fleet to Midway? In other words, if they had actually stuck to the plan for the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. Maybe the USA wouldn't have taken a total war approach vs. Japan...a negotiated peace with honor might have been possible.
6. NAVAL AIR TRAINING: Japanese naval air standards were very high, but they didn't implement a training program to keep pace with attrition.
 

PlasmaTorch

Banned
They got pushed into a corner (their own fault) where they had a choice of war now or a certain loss due to no fuel for their navy.

At that point they convinced themselves (cognitive dissonance) that the almost zero chance they understood they had was actually a decent chance.

Very good point. There wasn't alot of clear thinking going on at the time.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
2) Germany would do better

To be fair, the official US Army intelligence assessment in late 1941 was that Russia would be knock out of the war. From memory, the US Army thought Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad would fall in the Winter of 1942. It was unclear the UK could stay in the war, and if so, it might just be on the defensive.

So understand their position, someone just needs to write the correct ASB ATL. Roughly, take Calbears ATL. Have the war stay hot in Europe. Have the USA lose a decisive naval battle in February 1942 where the Pacific fleet is sunk along with say half the Japanese Fleet. The Italians rally in the Med with massive German help. Roll around to mid-1943, where the Japanese have been building there defenses for over a year. Put a generous peace deal on the table. PI independence without Japanese occupation. Maybe return of demilitarized Guam and Wake. Some fig leaf of dignity for the UK around Singapore, along with accepting India/Burma as UK's sphere.

It might be tempting to a USA president.
 
For an answer to this question, I recommend this book. It provides real insight into the decision making that eventually lead to Pearl Harbor.

There were, of course, many people in positions of real authority in the government of Militarist Japan in 1941 who knew Japan couldn't win, and opposed the war. The problem was that they were by and large too cowardly to speak up when it counted. There were multiple instances of things like the Navy Minister (IIRC) privately saying, in one-on-one meetings, that the Navy didn't want war and couldn't defeat the US. Only, when it comes time for the general council meetings in the Imperial Palace that will ultimately decide on launching the war, when someone states that they have heard the Navy is opposed to war, the Navy Minister responds with (paraphrasing) "What?! How dare you! Of course the Navy is 100% confident of our eventual inevitable victory over any enemy!" It didn't help that this was a time in which insufficiently patriotic officers were terrified of being assassinated. It also didn't help that Militarist Japan was ruled, to the extent that it was ruled, by opposed interest groups, with multiple factions within both the Army and Navy, and protecting your group's influence often meant seeming strong, confident, and even bellicose. Finally, it also didn't help that Tojo was irrationally confident about both Militarist Japan and Nazi Germany's chances. Since Tojo was Prime Minister, an active-duty General, the Army Minister, and Home Minister all at once, his views carried weight. (He would even add three more ministries to his list before being forced out after Saipan.)

To sum up, it wasn't as though all or even most leaders were confident of victory. It was that a group of leaders wanted war, and saw war with the "West" as inevitable, and the rest were unwilling to stand up to them.
 
It is also important to note that Japanese culture places a very high premium on consensus. Open disagreement/continued debate is stopped at a point well before where this would happen in the US or UK for example. A typical Japanese proverb is "the nail that stands up is pounded down". Add to that the reality of assassination (why Yamamoto lived aboard ship where he was safe) and the navy falling in line is more understandable.
 
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