Just How Stupid Was Japan?

Napoleon, actually the Japanese beat the Tsarist Russian navy in separate chunks back in 1904-1905, which certainly doesn't give any reason to make assumptions about the Red Army in 1941.

That's like suggesting the British could have intervened successfully in the ACW ergo there was no reason the British couldn't fight the US after WWI.

In fact the Japanese Army DID provoke several clashes with the Red Army starting in 1938, as Trotsky notes, and the Soviets mopped up the floor with the Japanese.



Earling, the only problem is that it wasn't a gamble. At no point did any prominent Japanese figure have the slightest idea how to WIN the war, as opposed to win a particular battle. Basically they decided that Japan would never lose an important battle and eventually the US and British Empire and China would all grow weary of the fighting.



CalBear, you forgot one minor detail. They didn't attack a series of nations, they attacked each in turn and then attacked the next on the list without bothering to finish the first war.
 
Well Japan was only at war with China before Dec 7 1941 barring the Nomahan Incident with the USSR. Attacking the U.S. and the Allies was the only logical step in getting the materials they needed after the embargo, if they wanted to have any chance of getting a empire.

If they didn't attack, they wouldn't have any chance at all. If they attacked, atleast they tried.
 
In the histories I have read of the Japanese Military preWWII is that there was a split between the generals and the admirals. The difference wasn't just information but outlook as well. How do you compare military forces forces from different countries. Naval officers are used to thinking in terms of throw weights and rounds per minutes and other quantifiable details. Army attaches may look at equipment but are also concerned of espirit de corps. The Japanese generals thought that their morale and will to power would allow them to keep attacking past the point when other armies would break, they were right. the Admirals were used to thinking not in terms of individual will and morale but the different fighting qualities of ships. The Japanese generals were able to make their madness win out politically over the Japanese Admirals' realism. Realism is too often termed defeatism
 
The Case for Stupidity . . .

Japanese strategic decisions may have been rational, except that they took on too much too soon. But the brutality & hubris of Japanese troops is undeniable. You can't prate about a "co-prosperity sphere," & then arbitrarily rape women & systematically subjugate/enslave everybody else.

To win & keep the territory of the Chinese or even the Europeans in Asia, the Japanese needed to present a counter-point to the warlords' & colonial overlords' exploitation. This idea did occur to the political elites in Japan. They tried with propaganda at first.

The harshness of the social hierarchy, however, was the proverbial feces rolling downhill. The aristocratic & professional officer classes enforced brutal discipline on their grunts; & the grunts took it out on the occupied peoples.

According to bushido, a warrior's first duty is discipline . . . SELF-discipline! In the "peasant" ranks of the Japanese military (thrust into the horrors of total war BEFORE being adequately steeped in the less brutal aspects of bushido) this was lost.

In this the Japanese allowed their (military) culture of the time to betray & ultimately destroy their war effort. At the time, Japan was not a modern nation or culture. They were a medieval culture w/an industrial economy: technologically advanced, politically astute, but oafish & brutal to those on the lower rungs of society.

IF, on the otherhand, Japan had "liberated," China & the European colonial lands, their military & industry would have been provided with a VAST source of manpower that would have compensated for a lot of their material/technological shortcomings & been motivated to A) stabilize their territorial gains & B) repel counter attack by Americans, Soviets, or whomever came at them.

But there was no "upward mobility," for the subject peoples of Asia, under the Japanese. If your weren't non-Ainu/non-Buraku Japanese, you were just gaijin. You were always going to be gaijin & so was your family -- no matter your accomplishments or contributions to the empire as a whole.

For all you budding conquerors/dictators out there: you can win a lot & keep it. But you have to A) offer HOPE to the masses, & B) then be seen to work toward delivering what you've promised.

So the answer is: the Japanese, IMHO, may have been rational in concept, but woefully stupid (short-sighted is a better word, I think) in their execution.

And even if they hadn't been, it all would have gone wrong anyway -- If the US Navy College is anything to go by.
 
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In hindsight the war with the USA and the British Empire was doomed. This however didn't appear to be the case at the time. Obviously its foolish to make any miscalculation, but if the choice is accept defeat or gamble and possibly lose, its only irrational to gamble if your certain your going to lose. Atleast going south secured immediate short-term gains, going north into the USSR is unlikely to be as immediately profitable.

It didn't appear to the Japanese to be the case.

One of the reasons the surprise @ Pearl Harbor was possible for the IJN to pull off was that the US Naval War College had been gaming out general war scenarios b/t the US & Japan every few years since the '20s. Each & every time the problem was examined it ALWAYS worked out the same.

A war b/t the US & Japan, in the Pacific, was going to be won by the US, no matter the particulars!

Reports of Japanese movements in the Pacific, leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, were repeatedly ignored because American military academia & command KNEW that Japan could not win such a war & they ASSUMED the Japanese knew it, too.
 
It didn't appear to the Japanese to be the case.

Thats what I meant. American policy would have been different if they didn't have confidence they could defeat Japan.

Earling, the only problem is that it wasn't a gamble. At no point did any prominent Japanese figure have the slightest idea how to WIN the war, as opposed to win a particular battle. Basically they decided that Japan would never lose an important battle and eventually the US and British Empire and China would all grow weary of the fighting.

I'd argue that this is exactly how they beat Russia in 1905. The Japanese didn't seem to grasp that the war they were entering was a total war which would be fought to the finish. It seems, atleast to me, the aim was to grab some territory, fight to something approaching a stalemate and then pursue terms which would leave them with some winnings. The miscalculation was that first they would never really reach this stalemate and secondly that the USA (and the UK etc) had no interest in a comprimise peace.

Basically my point is that while its foolish to make such a miscalculation, the attack was not irrational since it serves some logical ends. Going after the USSR doesn't serve these ends, so they have no motivation which is really plausable. Helping Nazi Germany 'because they can' wasn't motivation enough in OTL, it is unlikely to be so here.
 
It didn't appear to the Japanese to be the case.

One of the reasons the surprise @ Pearl Harbor was possible for the IJN to pull off was that the US Naval War College had been gaming out general war scenarios b/t the US & Japan every few years since the '20s. Each & every time the problem was examined it ALWAYS worked out the same.

A war b/t the US & Japan, in the Pacific, was going to be won by the US, no matter the particulars!

DB

On a naval site I'm a member of I know in the past that there has been mention by very knowledgeable people that in the event of a war between the USN and IJN in the 1920's the odds would be on the Japanese winning. Basically because of the unbalanced nature of the US fleet, with very little investment in light elements and scouts rather than a big heavy battle-line and also a battle-plan at the time, of advancing quickly to relieve their various Pacific outposts. The former meant they would be highly vulnerable to attacks and ambush because of lack of information while the latter would fit right into Japanese plans for a new Tsushima.

Not saying that in a longer war, given the edge on population and massive edge on industrial resources the US wouldn't have had a big edge but there would have been a lot of doubt about a US victory in the 20's. [Just because the US navy officers thought they would have won doesn't mean their right].

Actually possibly a more likely reason that the USN ignored some of the signs for the Pearl Harbour attack is that it was so much outside all the Japanese planning. Which was and had been for decades, to lure the US [basically the only realistic naval enemy for most of this period] deep into Japanese controlled waters, attrictioning them on the way before finally defeating them in a pitched battle. [As I've said before I think that the Japanese lost their only real chance of managing a victory by attacking the US at Pearl].

Steve
 
They need to take out the Trans-Sierian railway as far west as they can, preferably no farther west than Omsk or Novosibersk. Then they need to take everything they can, I would make Irkutsk the easternmost border, maybe farther. Then cut a peace deal *or* create massive airfields and bomb the stuffing out of Soviet industry after Barbarosa.
 

Kiwiguy

Banned
In real world the Japanese were passionately anti-communist. Stalin actually wanted to be accepted into the Axis Pact, but Japan opposed this.

The real stupidity was Japan's clash with Russia in 1937 at the nomohan incident or their inability to forgive and make up.

It was a peculiarly Asian inability to lose face. Had they swallowed pride in 1937 and made up with Stalin, the Axis would have included Russia and have been unstoppable.

Hitler's dumbest mistake was to attack Russia in 1941 when Stalin was happy to export oil and food to Germany.

In 1940 France and Britain were planning Air raids on oil fields at Baku (from Syria) to prevent Russia supplying oil to Hitler.

Had Japan kissed and made up and the air raids taken place, Russia would have declared war on Britain.
 
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