Germany or Japan: Which military was worse off in 1944?

As of D Day 1944 which military was in the worst position (whether qualitatively or situationally) between the Wehrmacht and the Imperial Japanese military?
 
The majority of Japan's land army was completely intact, and in fact was expanding. The Germans, on the other hand, took catastrophic losses in France and Belorussia during the summer and fall of 1944 which had to be made good by the hasty mobilization of volksgrenadier divisions. The German Luftwaffe virtually went extinct that year, while even in August 1945 the Japanese still had 17,000 planes.

Japan also had a powerful surface fleet prior to Leyte Gulf, something Germany never possessed at any point.
 
The majority of Japan's land army was completely intact, and in fact was expanding. The Germans, on the other hand, took catastrophic losses in France and Belorussia during the summer and fall of 1944 which had to be made good by the hasty mobilization of volksgrenadier divisions. The German Luftwaffe virtually went extinct that year, while even in August 1945 the Japanese still had 17,000 planes.

Japan also had a powerful surface fleet prior to Leyte Gulf, something Germany never possessed at any point.
Yeah, in fact the Battle off Samar during the Battle of Leyte Gulf could have easily been a huge Japanese victory and a catastrophic loss for the Americans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_off_Samar
 
Yeah, in fact the Battle off Samar during the Battle of Leyte Gulf could have easily been a huge Japanese victory and a catastrophic loss for the Americans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_off_Samar

The myth that the Japanese fleet at Samar could have accomplished anything more than inflicting slightly heavier losses on the United States is just that, a myth. The transports had already unloaded their supplies and a few warships bombarding troops was not going to defeat them. As Guadalcanal demonstrated even concentrated Japanese Army attacks could not break an unsupplied beachhead. The beachhead was also defended by over 200 destroyers, two other Taffy groups were arming their planes, and Admiral Oldendorf had a superior force of battleships close at hand so the depleted and damaged Japanese fleet would never have even reached the transports.
 
The majority of Japan's land army was completely intact, and in fact was expanding. The Germans, on the other hand, took catastrophic losses in France and Belorussia during the summer and fall of 1944 which had to be made good by the hasty mobilization of volksgrenadier divisions. The German Luftwaffe virtually went extinct that year, while even in August 1945 the Japanese still had 17,000 planes.

Japan also had a powerful surface fleet prior to Leyte Gulf, something Germany never possessed at any point.


They had a fleet, but as Leyte demonstrated, it wasn't capable of all that much (carriers without pilots kinda makes them useless outside of distractions). They had a fleet in being, nothing else.

I'm going to argue that Japan was worse off. Yes, they still had a strong troop presence in China, but that doesn't matter all that much when your home islands are about to get bombed to the stone age and starve. I'm not saying that Germany was much better off, and without citing authenticated sources, I believe Germany was able to produce foodstuffs in greater numbers than Japan's home islands.
 
As of D Day 1944 which military was in the worst position (whether qualitatively or situationally) between the Wehrmacht and the Imperial Japanese military?

The outcome of the war had already been decided long before 6 June 1944. It's no coincidence that Claus von Stauffenberg tried to assassinate Hitler just a few weeks later, on 20 July 1944. It had become overwhelmingly clear that the war was lost.

The best course for Germany would have been an armistice. If the Allies would even accept such a thing (which they said they wouldn't - but it could still be worth a try). Failing that, unconditional surrender was the only realistic option.

One might wonder what (if any) terms Germany could have got in the summer of 1944. Probably a better deal than OTL outcome in 1945. At best, they might be allowed to keep their pre-war borders. I believe Stauffenberg and his supporters were hoping for 1914 borders. At least if that was achieved Germany would have gained something from the war (the Danzig corridor) although the price could hardly have been considered worth it, given how many lives had been lost by then.

The Allies however might not have been willing to accept this and may have simply refused to accept anything less than unconditional surrender, in which case Germany may still have faced total destruction as per OTL.

Really, Germany would have done better to make peace a year earlier, in April 1943. It should already have been clear by then that Germany faced destruction if it did not end the war immediately. A separate peace with the Soviets might have resulted in a return to the status quo ante, in which case the Germans keep their original gains in Poland and everything else they gained up to June 1941. That would be a much more favourable deal even than 1914 borders - although Germany would then still have to somehow stop the British and Americans from successfully invading from the west.
 

If the July 20 plot works like a charm and Hitler and Co are deposed/killed, I think maybe the Allies would have accepted an armistice leaving Germany with more or less her modern OTL borders. They still had to worry about Japan after all.

In my July 20 novel that I'm slowly working on they don't accept said armistice, but that's only because I thought it would be more dramatic if the war kept on happening post-Valkyrie and I took some literary license, not because of any historical inkling one way or the other.

When did the Allies/USSR decide on the Oder-Niesse line as the eastern border in OTL?
 
That was decided at the Potsdam conference from 17 July to 2 August 1945. So there is a chance surrendering a year earlier could have resulted in Germany salvaging more of its territory from the war.

Possibly the Oder itself as the border so Germany keeps Silesia? I dunno. But I think Stalin wanted to push Poland as far west as possible.

Thanks for the answer.
 
They had a fleet, but as Leyte demonstrated, it wasn't capable of all that much (carriers without pilots kinda makes them useless outside of distractions). They had a fleet in being, nothing else.

I'm going to argue that Japan was worse off. Yes, they still had a strong troop presence in China, but that doesn't matter all that much when your home islands are about to get bombed to the stone age and starve. I'm not saying that Germany was much better off, and without citing authenticated sources, I believe Germany was able to produce foodstuffs in greater numbers than Japan's home islands.

Germany in general had much better food security than Imperial Japan. I gotta remember the source at the moment, but Germans did not see a real reduction in caloric intake until the start of 1945, and rapidly plummeted with the collapse of German infrastructure. The Japanese however were already feeling a food pinch as submarine warfare picked up pace.
 
Japan, unquestionably. Even during the summer of 1944, German army did manage to score some operational victories against overwhelming odds whereas the only achievement of the Japanese land army of any note is beating up more on the barely functional Chinese warlord's armies that the Japanese had vast superiority over for what was in the end no meaningful gain. Everywhere else, they were consistently eviscerated. The Japanese surface fleet was soundly thrashed, as had generally been the case since Midway. It boils down to the fact that Germany had a greater military capacity to resist up to the bloody last then Japan did.
 
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nbcman

Donor
Japan. They were at best treading water in most theaters but they were facing a smaller percentage of Allied war fighting potential and nothing of the Soviets. They were doomed and too blind to see the disaster that was coming. The only thing that was slowing the Allies from beating Japan down was Germany First.
 
They had a fleet, but as Leyte demonstrated, it wasn't capable of all that much (carriers without pilots kinda makes them useless outside of distractions). They had a fleet in being, nothing else.

I'm going to argue that Japan was worse off. Yes, they still had a strong troop presence in China, but that doesn't matter all that much when your home islands are about to get bombed to the stone age and starve. I'm not saying that Germany was much better off, and without citing authenticated sources, I believe Germany was able to produce foodstuffs in greater numbers than Japan's home islands.

Compared to any other fleet in the world besides the US Navy's the Japanese surface forces were still a fearsome instrument of war. Even at Leyte Gulf, if Kurita handled his unit more competently he could have slaughtered both "Taffy" groups in his path and shot up the Gulf itself, which, given the historical outcome of both that battle and the war in general would have justified the sacrifice of his entire force. Through a number of factors the US narrowly avoided what could well have been a disaster.

As for strategic bombardment, the Combined Bomber Offensive had been hammering Germany and its occupied territories since 1943; similar operations against Japan would not commence until the aftermath of the Marianas Campaign. Japan, moreover, was not close to starvation at any point in 1944. Starvation in general is something that tends to be blown out of proportion in discussions about late war Japan.
 
If the July 20 plot works like a charm and Hitler and Co are deposed/killed, I think maybe the Allies would have accepted an armistice leaving Germany with more or less her modern OTL borders. They still had to worry about Japan after all.
Germany is getting whatever borders the Allies say it’s getting. The wishes of whatever German government surrenders are not relevant.

Even at Leyte Gulf, if Kurita handled his unit more competently he could have slaughtered both "Taffy" groups in his path and shot up the Gulf itself, which, given the historical outcome of both that battle and the war in general would have justified the sacrifice of his entire force. Through a number of factors the US narrowly avoided what could well have been a disaster.


No he couldn’t have. The vulnerability of the forces at Leyte is overstated.
 
Arnhem was more due to luck rather than strategic brilliance.

Which is a strawman: I never said that German victory was a result of strategic brilliance. The German strategic position was hopeless and the defeat of Market Garden didn't do anything but kick-the-can down the road for a bit in that regard. The Germans were only "lucky" in as far as the WAllies made a series of slip-ups in the operation... but that's just how war goes. Both sides make mistakes and in the end other factors are what really carry the day. More to the point, quibbling about why precisely the whole thing was a German victory doesn't change the fact it was, ya know, a German victory, and represents a military achievement beyond that which was achieved by the Japanese in the same period. You know: the topic of the thread?

It's fairly easy to curb stomp an under-armed parachute division with Panzers.

This characterization of Market Garden, however, is oversimplified to the point of uselessness: the Germans fought far more then "under-armed" airborne divisions. They also faced a massive mechanized thrust that they had to hold up long enough to contain and destroy the airborne landings, and they had to do so with "panzer divisions" whose tank strengths amounted to little more then battalions. What's more, the airborne divisions in question were made up of some of the most well-trained, experienced, and motivated troops available to the American and British forces. Those are factors which can have much more weight then degree of armament, doubly so in terrain which favors light forces such as the heavy urban regions of Arnhem, so even their destruction was not a simple and straightforward task particularly since the Germans were on a timer in the form of the WAllied mechanized thrust throughout the whole thing.
 
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