If Japan avoids Pearl Harbor...

No embargo = no reason for Japan to attack the US or anyone else. Those forced Japan into a impossible position where the desperate gamble of war seemed like a alternative. So yes delaying the embargo very likely delays a war. Maybe it even avoids it, with the Japanese leaders facing a clearly stronger opposition & accepting the humiliation of negotiating concessions & even a end to the China Incident.

This question can be turned around. WI the Embargos are imposed in November or December 1940, when Japan first lands soldiers in FIC ports and wrings concessions for occupation from retains government? This accelerates the situation approx six months, perhaps more.

The more frantical mid and low rank IJA officers may go for another coup against both the opposition and the government in the face of such humiliation.
 
I was referring to the weak near pointless sanctions of 1937-1940. Not those of the 1941 embargo. If Japan stays out of FIC the latter would not be imposed in 1941 & probably not in 1942 either.


Japan and China are at war, and the China lobby in the USA is demanding action. Plus Japan's alliance with Germany is making it worse. The other issue is that the US blundered into the 1941 embargo, it was not planned as such by FDR. The sanctions are going to increase.

If Japan was to a line herself with Britain as in WW1, hold off her attacks on Japan, what you say is right otherwise the sanctions are getting worse. But if for example, the embargo was delayed and come into effect in 1943, now the Japanese would not go to war. In 1943 it was becoming clear that Russia was not collapsing, that Hitler was in trouble.
 
Actually from what I have read it seems that if the Japanese would have gone for the DEI in 1940 - mid-1941 there would not have been a armed response from the UK and thus not from the US. In fact, on behest of the Royal Navy the UK refused to guarantee the territorial integrity of the DEI at several times. They would only do so if the US would guarantee their positions in turn. This stance caused the DEI government to take every precaution to ensure its neutrality vis-a-vis the allied war against Germany. This whole matter was the reason that the forces fighting Japan hadn't prepared for allied warfare causing the whole ABDA clusterf*ck.

I think there is a basic disagreement on this thread about how willing America was to go to war in late 1941. I am with what I think is the minority on this thread. Namely that America would not go to war about an attack on a single US warship or even several attacks on different warships. I also believe the US was not willing to declare war to defend Dutch colonial possessions. I am uncertain how to resolve this disagreement.

in reading on the German-Japanese naval cooperation (such as it was), the Japanese concern was that Germany would assert some claim over the DEI and/or French territories.

wonder how it would scramble the situation if they created Dutch State and HAD attempted to control the Dutch colonial empire? (mirror image of Vichy regime)

where would that leave Japan? if the German-controlled regime tried to keep selling them oil do they just concentrate on China?
 
Easy.

"USN vessels engaged in a routine training mission were subjected to an unprovoked surprise attack by Japanese forces. The USS Unlucky has been sunk and hundreds of our men are feared dead."
Then Congressmen start asking whereinthehell is Balikpapan, and what training they were doing in Dutch Territory, anyway

It's no Pearl Harbor, but a worse Panay
 
This, Japan had a chance with Manchuria to speed up it's industrialization. But with the greater CHina war, a massive amount of their GDP went to the war effort. They slowly cannibalized their industry to keep fighting wars

John Ellis in 'Brute Force' mentions how 1942-44 Japans industry was converting oil fired power plants back to coal, to keep them operating. Seizing the DEI oil industry was a fail as Japan had neither the tanker capacity to bring adequate amounts of oil to Japan & Manchuria, nor the number of oil industry technicians to keep the refineries operating properly. Programs started for building ships and ramping up its own labor force were projected to pay off in a decade or so. As with so much else Japans 'win' depended on reaching a favorable peace in six months and regaining access to the Allied cargo/tanker fleets, Standard Oils technical expertise, New York banking capitol, Peruvian fertilizer, Canadian timber, ect, ect, ect...
 
Japan and China are at war, and the China lobby in the USA is demanding action. Plus Japan's alliance with Germany is making it worse. The other issue is that the US blundered into the 1941 embargo, it was not planned as such by FDR. The sanctions are going to increase.

I'm not a expert, but my reading of them suggests the sanctions would not be ramped up to where Japan feels forced to war. The Europe first concept was already in place & until relatively late in 1941 the Roosevelt administration had hoped to avoid war in the Pacific/Asia entirely. The Embargos backfired, there was a very deep misunderstanding by both sides that crippled negotiations, and Japans imperialists were far to committed to their empire.

If Japan was to a line herself with Britain as in WW1, hold off her attacks on Japan, what you say is right otherwise the sanctions are getting worse. But if for example, the embargo was delayed and come into effect in 1943, now the Japanese would not go to war. In 1943 it was becoming clear that Russia was not collapsing, that Hitler was in trouble.

Japan remaining aligned with Britain and not getting crossways with the Brits & US in the late 1930s is one of the most powerful of the alternate history forks. waiving away the very threat of a Pacific war between Japan & the Allies is a huge game changer. Japan avoiding the catastrophic moves in FIC and after is close to the same scale of change to the historical flow.
 
I'll go ahead and ask. Do you mean that Japan attacks the USA, but doesn't do the Pearl Harbor attack, or that Japan doesn't attack the USA at all?

I meant that Japan does not initiate a first strike against the US. I'll take either scenario or both, though.

Also, Japan had a rapidly developing synthetic chemical industry. If allowed to mature it might have made a signifcant impact, just as their semi-automatic Pedersen rifle derivative from the mid-30s might have.
 
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elkarlo

Banned
John Ellis in 'Brute Force' mentions how 1942-44 Japans industry was converting oil fired power plants back to coal, to keep them operating. Seizing the DEI oil industry was a fail as Japan had neither the tanker capacity to bring adequate amounts of oil to Japan & Manchuria, nor the number of oil industry technicians to keep the refineries operating properly. Programs started for building ships and ramping up its own labor force were projected to pay off in a decade or so. As with so much else Japans 'win' depended on reaching a favorable peace in six months and regaining access to the Allied cargo/tanker fleets, Standard Oils technical expertise, New York banking capitol, Peruvian fertilizer, Canadian timber, ect, ect, ect...
Yes , and it was bad before the Pacific war started. Even without allied bombing, I believe that Japanese industry woukd collapse due to cannibalizing, as well as over taxing it, little investment and no merchant fleet capable of exploiting their conquests.
Even if China surrendered and the US was like it's ok to conquer SE Asia, have fun, Japan would've been a mess economically . To the point where a collapse may have happened even if they roped all 6s and beat everyone
 

elkarlo

Banned
I'm not a expert, but my reading of them suggests the sanctions would not be ramped up to where Japan feels forced to war. The Europe first concept was already in place & until relatively late in 1941 the Roosevelt administration had hoped to avoid war in the Pacific/Asia entirely. The Embargos backfired, there was a very deep misunderstanding by both sides that crippled negotiations, and Japans imperialists were far to committed to their empire.



Japan remaining aligned with Britain and not getting crossways with the Brits & US in the late 1930s is one of the most powerful of the alternate history forks. waiving away the very threat of a Pacific war between Japan & the Allies is a huge game changer. Japan avoiding the catastrophic moves in FIC and after is close to the same scale of change to the historical flow.
Japan I feel helped make a wedge between the nazis and the USSR . Without a Japanese ally, Germany and the USSR may have tried to carve up the world together
 
Japan I feel helped make a wedge between the nazis and the USSR . Without a Japanese ally, Germany and the USSR may have tried to carve up the world together

I would not think so, Hitler did not try to get Japan to go to war with Russia.
 
Without a Japanese ally, Germany and the USSR may have tried to carve up the world together

Now that is utterly ridiculous.

Hitlers entire philosophy required the destruction of Soviet Russia,
  • his plan for German expansion was "liebensraum" to the east of Germany
  • and not least because he believed that the Jews controlled Bolshevism which aimed at the down fall of National Socialism
 

elkarlo

Banned
Now that is utterly ridiculous.

Hitlers entire philosophy required the destruction of Soviet Russia,
  • his plan for German expansion was "liebensraum" to the east of Germany
  • and not least because he believed that the Jews controlled Bolshevism which aimed at the down fall of National Socialism
Of course, but in the mean time they were working together. Not forever, but a fee more years of their cooperation and things coukd get dicey
 

Ian_W

Banned
Then Congressmen start asking whereinthehell is Balikpapan, and what training they were doing in Dutch Territory, anyway

It's no Pearl Harbor, but a worse Panay

Marathag,

Again, the problem for the Japanese is not that USS Unlucky was sunk.

It's that before she was sunk, she broadcast the location of the Balikpapan invasion fleet in clear, and SS Maybe More lucky was following her.
 
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