Japanese Victory in WW2 (or at least, keeping the US Navy away)

Warsie

Banned
Okay, let's think of an alternate timeline where Japan wins the Pacific heater of WW2. Or at least manages to make the war so painful for the US early on that they don't go foo far into things.

I see some divergent points:

1. Japan does not fall into the Marco Polo bridge incidents or the response is a lot more restrained, Chiang does not consider this his last measure/straw-that-broke-the-camel's-back limit for massive mobilization etc. Or the Japanese tries to limit their respond and not conquer all of China.

2. The Japanese don't mess up and send the message a few minutes before the Pearl Harbor battle removing the 'dastardly attack' propaganda the US has....or lessens it substantially.

3. The Pearl Harbor attack is more effective and Yamamoto gambles and sends more waves of fighters. The fighters sink more US warships and fucks up the 'salvageable' ones (like the one beached) a lot more, to the point of them being unsalvgeble - or to emotional to ressurrect a la Arizona. The United States fuel facilities are also bombed and destroyed. Dry Docks and submarine facilities are also hit. Basically, the things -not- hit in OTL Pearl Harbor IS hit in ATL Pearl Harbor

4. The Battle of Midway losses are more evenly matched; the US carriers are sunk in the battle as well - something that delays the US response.

5. The Phillipine Campaign goes a lot worse for the US navy because radar (perhaps the Soviet Union gave Japan radar plans or tech somehow - fitting with OTL Japan getting intel from the Soviet Union to keep Japan from attacking the USSR/thinking they are friendly neutrals). The US navy takes afar heavier casualties from their carrier force and landing forces, but ATL Japanese losses are similar?

6. The Japanese develop better tanks which make land campaigns against US marines more effective and giving a more balanced casualty rate compared to the Japanese.

Where else can you see ATL ideas made by Japan that can result in a 'victory' (Japan keeping most of its' empire') or keeping the US away at least. Oh, and there's the 'Japan stays afloat after the western European powers are devastated harder than OTL)

Also, anti-colonialist militias in the former colonies and a more effective plan to take India out of the war via propaganda....

EDIT: I sesrched for other threads and did not find any...though the search was a bit messed up for some reason now.
 
For point number four, you could just have the first and second US waves massacred. In OTL the first one was slaughtered in TTL you could have it so that both waves are so ineffective and so few planes make it through that the Japanese barely suffer any losses while the US has a much higher number of casualties and ships lost.
 
I think the best they could hope for would be to stay away from the US bases and complete the conquest of China. Their navy would be running on fumes until the Dutch East Indies reserves could be fully exploited but if they can do that, then potentially take out India, they do just fine.
 
The huge disparity in industrial power between the US Japan is always going to make it nigh-impossible for Japan to outright win a total war. Even if Japan manages a better loss ratio, they'll pretty quickly run into the problem of not being able to replace the losses they take.

Japan's best chance to win the war would be to somehow get the US to fire the first shot; keeping a viable mainstream isolationist/anti-war movement in the US makes a negotiated peace far more plausible.
 
There have been several threads on this, though sometimes the thread drifts into the subject. The problem, of course, is the enormous disparity between US and Japanese industrial resources and access to raw materials.

Japan planned a Soviet-style massive heavy industry industrialization, which might have partly made up the disparity, but it got side-tracked by the invasion of China and immediate wants of the Army and Navy.

If the Japanese went with the buildup and didn't go with the invasion of China, they could come closer to matching the US in terms of industrial muscle, but unless they also developed sources for raw materials the additional industry would just make them more vulnerable to raw material or balance of payments issues. There is also the issue of why a Japan which hadn't invaded China would end up in a war with the US.
 
The only way to have a Japanese Victory without a PoD before the 1930's is for Japan to not attack the USA At all.

As long as American Public fully supports the war, the U.S Will Grind Japan to death with its massive industry.
 
I have this mentak image of the attack on Pearl ending with a full scale bombardment by battlewaggons...
The sheer destruction from a couple hundred 12+" shells would turn Pearl into a wasteland.

Not gonna happen though, as the carriers are 10+ "battleship hours" from Pearl, thus the bombardment ships would have to be AT LEAST 100 clicks ahead of the carriers, steaming at full speeds for Pearl to get there before the shock wears off.
That may give early warning and spoil the attack, and unless the air attack is REALLY succesful, they will need a lot of luck to get close enough...

Ah well, one can dream...
 
I resurrected one of the better recent threads on the Japanese doing better in World War II. Bottom line from my perspective: They could have done better, but it wouldn't have changed the overall result.
 
could there have ever been a way for the US to sell the Philippines to Japan during the Great Depression? Would FDR have even considered it? Would some other ATL President have considered it? Would the Japanese have been able to afford it? Or what if the US sold the Philippines to a European country? Or simply granted it it's independence before WW2 rather than afterwards. Any of these three scenarios i think lets Japan put off directly getting into a fight with the US for a bit longer. BTW, how much would the Philippines go for?
 
Japan would not gain much by purchasing the Phillipines, and its doubtful that the United States would sell it anyways. They spend 15 years pacifying the Philippines, and it was in a pretty good strategic location.

a PoD where the United States has a much greater, more immediate threat, would be Japans only hope for victory. Say for some reason or another Relations between the USA, and the British Empire got really bad, really fast. Or the USA Collapses into a massive civil war due to communist/fascists/etc etc rebellions during the Great Depression.
 
I have this mentak image of the attack on Pearl ending with a full scale bombardment by battlewaggons...
The sheer destruction from a couple hundred 12+" shells would turn Pearl into a wasteland.

Not gonna happen though, as the carriers are 10+ "battleship hours" from Pearl, thus the bombardment ships would have to be AT LEAST 100 clicks ahead of the carriers, steaming at full speeds for Pearl to get there before the shock wears off.
That may give early warning and spoil the attack, and unless the air attack is REALLY succesful, they will need a lot of luck to get close enough...

Ah well, one can dream...

We had this discussion a couple of years ago. The bottom line was that in addition to many other problems, the Japanese battle line didn't have the range to reach Pearl. Just getting the carriers and their escorts (which included two battleships) to the vicinity of Hawaii took all but (I think) one of the functioning Japanese fleet tankers, and desperate measures like stacking fuel drums on the decks of carriers and pumping out their bilges and storing oil there.

The Japanese designed a fleet with short range because they expected to fight a decisive battle with the US near the Philippines, after the US fleet had been bruised by having to fight through chains of Japanese-held islands. The Pearl Harbor attack was a departure from that idea, and one that the Japanese were only able to pull off by a series of brilliant improvisations.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
The Japanese could, if all of the near ASB items you propose actually occur, extend the war by six months to a year.

Okinawa is probably never invaded, Iwo is a toss up but still likely since it proves such a handy spot for Allied escort fighters and for B-29's with battle damage to roost.

This means that the Japanese lose the war after being starved and burned to the ground, eating at least three, perhaps as many as seven, nuclear weapons, winds up with Hokkaido (and possibly part of Honshu) occupied by the Soviet Union and become something other (and almost certainly less) than actually happened. It also means that a minimum of 1,000,000 additional civilians on the Asian Mainland die under Japanese occupation, not to mention the vast majority of Allied PoW in Japanese hands.

The U.S. is not going to be able to recreate Japan into the society from OTL if the USSR manages to turn it into a front line in the Cold War. A absolute disaster for the Japanese people (and for those in South Korea, which almost certainly winds up in Soviet hands).

On the up side the magnificent F8B sees series production. Hardly seems to balance the books, but that is about the only positive.
 
can you all post those threads that this was discussed earlier?
I found one of the more recent good threads on the Japanese doing better that ran out of steam back in mid-December of 2010 and added a comment that bumped it back onto the first page. It should still be close to the top, either the first or second page of the "after 1900" forum's list of topics.

The thread discussing the Japanese battleships hitting Pearl Harbor is at least a couple of years old. It's worth looking for. I also did a "Japanese do better" thread sometime in 2010, probably before the one I bumped.

Edit: I can't seem to find the thread I thought I started. Maybe I just joined an existing thread on Japanese victory. The battleships at Pearl thread is at:

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=96687

By the way: If you do a search for Japanese Battleships Pearl Harbor you'll find at least 5 or 6 "The Japanese do better" threads. There has been a thread of that nature going on just about continuously for the last at least four years. That doesn't mean the topic is played out or that we shouldn't take another look. It just means that people who have been on the board a while may consider it old news--been there, said what there was to say.
 
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Warsie

Banned
Arigatou ;)

one thing I forgot(read about it earlier). Japanese propaganda aimed towards black people in the USA - something that can result in a noticeable slowdown in production. OTL Japanese propaganda in that department dates from the 1920s I believe

In an effort to exacerbate racial tensions in the United States, the Japanese enacted what was titled, “Negro Propaganda Operations.”[41] This plan, created by Yasuichi Hikida, the director of Japanese propaganda for Black Americans, consisted of three areas.[41] First was gathering information pertaining to Black Americans and their struggles in America, second was the use of Black prisoners of war in the propaganda, and third was the use of short-wave radio broadcasts.[41] Through shortwave radio broadcasts, Japanese used their own radio announcers and African American POWs to spread propaganda to the United States. Broadcasts focused on U.S. news stories involving racial tension, such as the Detroit Race riots and lynchings.[42][43] For example, one broadcast commented, “notorious lynchings are a rare practice even among the most savage specimens of the human race.”[41] In an effort to gain more listeners, POWs would be allowed to address family members back home.[42] The Japanese believed propaganda would be the most effective if they used African American POWs to communicate to African Americans back home. Using programs titled "Conversations about Real Black POW Experiences" and "Humanity Calls", POWs would speak on the conditions of war, and their treatment in the military. POWs with artistic strengths were used in plays and or songs that were broadcast back home.[41] The success of this propaganda is much debated, as there was only a small minority of American citizens that actually had shortwave radios.[42] Even so, some scholars believe that the Negro Propaganda Operations, “evoked a variety of responses within the Black community and the sum total of these reactions forced America’s government to improve conditions for Blacks in the military and society."[41] Even the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) saw the propaganda as, “...a media tool in the struggle against racial discrimination”.[41] Despite these debates both sides agree that these programs were particularly dangerous because of their foundation in truth.[41][42][43]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_propaganda_during_World_War_II#Negro_Propaganda_Operations

EDIT: Wonder how this would work, putting black people into concentration camps as well if this gets popular.
 
Sorry, but this scenario is impossible without ASB intervention. The resources of the United States, once mobilized, were of overwhelming power against a semi-industrialized country with few natural resources. If the Japanese started doing well in some area, the U.S. could have just stepped up its submarine attacks. There is no way the U.S. was going to agree to anything but total victory, because the Japanese had foolishly unleashed a war to the finish. The Japanese were outclassed in resources, manpower, technology, strategy and tactics. They were also outclassed by the creativity and ability to think outside the box of American fighting men. They were going down no matter what.

If anyone wants to pursue this scenario further, I suggest that it be moved to the ASB section and that appropriate magical help be provided for the Japanese Empire.
 
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