McPherson
Banned
Because Mao was the very model of competence and integrity.
Compared to Jiang Jieshi or 蔣中正 or Chiang Kai Shek (the Peanut) as the Americans (Stilwell) knew him; Mao was very competent and "somewhat" honest.
No War in Europe: Does Japan still launch the Pacific Campaign?
- Thread starter Reagent
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Compared to Jiang Jieshi or 蔣中正 or Chiang Kai Shek (the Peanut) as the Americans (Stilwell) knew him; Mao was very competent and "somewhat" honest.
The same guy who had the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution to his credit? That bozo? What Mao was able to do was to let the Nationalists do all the fighting during WW2 and then beating a greatly weakened Chiang. Whatever else you think of him he never did anything as dumb as the GLF.
He was a competent military leader, which is why he opted to let the Nationalists bleed dry against the Japanese while holding back his guerrilla forces for the final civil war. That was pretty much all he was competent at. Everything else he did after showed he should have stuck to fighting, let other party members run the day-to-day matters, or outright retired.
And honest? Ideologically consistent, sure, but the guy who actively inflated the PLA's role against Japan, set up reeducation camps, and hyped up mobs of frenzied youths on the threat of reactionaries in the form of everyone older than themselves that aren't him? Not a chance.
McPherson
Banned
What Mao was able to do was unify China and throw the foreigners out. THIS puts him in the same class as Ho Chi Minh. The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution was as bad as anything Stalin did and for about the same political reasons, but that does not change his achievements one jot. I doubt that some people will agree with my bald observations about Mao's achievements, but the achievements are quite real.
Ho Chi Minh was nothing write home about either. Just another Communist dictator.
McPherson
Banned
Objectively; he defeated two great powers (France and the US) and diddled two more (Russia and China.). How does that make him; "Just another communist dictator"?
Ichi-Go was a disaster for the KMT but their management of the economy post war was what destroyed public support for their government. Hyperinflation, corruption and desertion of troops from the KMT to the Communists all factored in to their collapse.
Another possible outcome in this ATL is that once the Japanese are out of China, China gets nominally unified under the Nationalists who have an uneasy United Front alliance with the Communists who defacto control Manchuria and Shanxi and are backed by the Soviets.
Because he acted like a typical Communist dictator by not holding free elections, not allowing any freedoms and being generally oppressive.
McPherson
Banned
Given his circumstances, and his objectives, that is kind of unrealistic, don't you think? To take the American example, George Washington in 1776, when you dig into the details, old George was kind of ruthless and most undemocratic during the American revolution. I would suggest that Uncle Ho, in his time and place, given his peculiar education and his expected enemies, would have been a most ruthless and single minded character. And given the circumstances of post WWII decolonization in east Asia having to be a violent process because the colonial powers were still trying to reassert their imperialist aspirations militarily, one can expect that successful national liberation movement leaders will not be liberal democrats? As an aside, the same set of historical operators explains Mao. Ruthlessness and a certain authoritarian mindset kind of is a given.
Nah, Mao was just a manipulative fraud whose "achievements" were made by using the KMT as a meatshield. Your crediting Mao with "throwing out the foreigners" is strange considering almost all the CCP's fighting was against fellow Chinese. The Japanese were defeated on the KMT's watch, the foreign concessions were closed as a diplomatic gesture to Nanking, and it was the Republic of China that got listed as one of the "Big Four" allied countries and earned a seat on the UN security council.
Same class as Ho Chi Minh? Sure, the class of "organize your countrymen into mobs by convincing them their governments are run by foreigners, overthrow said governments, and kill millions of your own people after promising them a socialist utopia." Wouldn't be be great if we could have more leaders capable of such great achievements?
What's your logical action as Japanese government from say 1936 on? How do you do better?
This seems to be the post that got us derailed, so I'll answer it:
The KMT was incompetent and corrupt. However, they were always the main opposition to Japan in China, since they had the biggest standing armies and were fighting the most battles against the IJA. This is significant. If the KMT had just melted away and indulged in their usual bad habits, the Japanese would have free reign for its counterinsurgency operations in North China and elsewhere. If the Japanese were the ones to slowly "Sinicize" the China Incident and retreat back to the other side of the Great Wall, then it would be the KMT with the free hand to carry out the counterinsurgency, as the CCP lacked skilled or well-equipped forces.
It would take quite some time, perhaps several years or more, for the KMT to gain a decisive defeat over the CCP, given the KMT's issues with warlord politics and other complications. But not having the Japanese breathing down his back would make the job much easier for Jiang Jieshi.
In the meantime, the Soviet Union could become a much greater threat. Manchuria could have become much more developed and well-defended. For the Japanese, the period it takes for the KMT to crush the CCP and carry out Chinese unification may well have yielded them some semi-plausible paths to keeping their colonies, had the Japanese had a rational or unified decisionmaking process, that is.
The KMT was incompetent and corrupt. However, they were always the main opposition to Japan in China, since they had the biggest standing armies and were fighting the most battles against the IJA. This is significant. If the KMT had just melted away and indulged in their usual bad habits, the Japanese would have free reign for its counterinsurgency operations in North China and elsewhere. If the Japanese were the ones to slowly "Sinicize" the China Incident and retreat back to the other side of the Great Wall, then it would be the KMT with the free hand to carry out the counterinsurgency, as the CCP lacked skilled or well-equipped forces.
It would take quite some time, perhaps several years or more, for the KMT to gain a decisive defeat over the CCP, given the KMT's issues with warlord politics and other complications. But not having the Japanese breathing down his back would make the job much easier for Jiang Jieshi.
In the meantime, the Soviet Union could become a much greater threat. Manchuria could have become much more developed and well-defended. For the Japanese, the period it takes for the KMT to crush the CCP and carry out Chinese unification may well have yielded them some semi-plausible paths to keeping their colonies, had the Japanese had a rational or unified decisionmaking process, that is.
trurle
Banned
Logic was nothing to do with the Japanese politics around 1936. The Japanese were actually seeking "consensus", not "truth". The problem for China (or for ordinary Japanese citizen) was what nobody among Japanese elites have included them into "consensus group" (peer group in modern sociology). Also, peer groups were really tiny (ten-twenty members typically), while hierarchy was complicated and non-transparent. Therefore "groupthink" and bouts of inter-groups violence were natural, if not endemic in prewar Japan.
Well, by 1936 social situation in Japan was too bad already. More social lifts and generally better social mobility would help to break existing peer groups and make their edges fuzzy, but the most urgent would be elimination of age-based promotion system. The Japanese elite groups were simply too old, resulting in obsolete and frequently weird goal-setting, strategies and tactics. Democratic society in ~1936 acted on social problems with latency of 10-20 years. Japanese goal-setting was lagging by additional 10 years may be.
With younger decision makers, it would become for example obvious it was counter-productive to kill US garrisons in Philippines - because Philippines was slated for independence since 1935.
Problems imposed by segregation of Japanese society was realized by top leaders by late 1939 after Nomonhan incident though; actions (especially prohibition of violence against subordinates, and introduction of merits-based promotion) were taken, accelerated after 1943, and set the base for the post-surrender reforms of Japanese society. Earlier start of such reforms would be highly beneficial (to Japanese society as whole, not so sure about other societies or specific groups), but no trigger was present.
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Without Indochina Japan can't hit the DEI or Malaya or pressure Siam.
Attack Indochina and Japan is in another grinding stalemate until the MN and RN show up at Singapore. Probably with the bonus that neither the US or Dutch will be selling them oil. Or rubber. Or tin. etc.
The Japanese government notes show the push to the south does not become practical until the once in a lifetime chance to pick up Indochina for free. Once Japan has Indochina it has some serious choices to make about the other possible once in a lifetime chance. Pushing back the Europeans. No European War, no Indochina.
Now would the ongoing Chinese quagmire push the Japanese into something stupid to get the resources that they need? Maybe... But there are practical limits as to what they can do and they are too far away from the resources that they need to jump straight there from Formosa. They knew that, and as frustrating as it might be, ye canne change the laws of physics.
Attack Indochina and Japan is in another grinding stalemate until the MN and RN show up at Singapore. Probably with the bonus that neither the US or Dutch will be selling them oil. Or rubber. Or tin. etc.
The Japanese government notes show the push to the south does not become practical until the once in a lifetime chance to pick up Indochina for free. Once Japan has Indochina it has some serious choices to make about the other possible once in a lifetime chance. Pushing back the Europeans. No European War, no Indochina.
Now would the ongoing Chinese quagmire push the Japanese into something stupid to get the resources that they need? Maybe... But there are practical limits as to what they can do and they are too far away from the resources that they need to jump straight there from Formosa. They knew that, and as frustrating as it might be, ye canne change the laws of physics.
That's a lot of text with no answer. The reality is under the constraints presented to them the Japanese government took a completely logical route.
They had no viable alternatives. Unless they could sell leaving Chinese supply lines up to the army which would do nothing but lengthen the Chinese incident and keel Japan quagmired
Derek Pullem
Donor
They don't have to operate from Formosa. They occupied Hainan from 1939. It is not enough to support a full attack against all the Western powers. It might be enough to support operations against Java only supported by Kido Butai if a Japanese sponsored revolt took place. Pretty sure America would intervene but to some extent the anti-colonial attitudes would hamper a full fledged response.
McPherson
Banned
1. The KMT was US supported and both were defeated in the Chinese civil war. If you don't think the US was part of that KMT defeat, then from where did "Who Lost China?", come.
2. Korean War? Remember that one? When was the last time the Chinese fought a great power or coalition of them to a draw?
3. When Mao felt strong enough and he no longer had a use for them, when did he tell the Russians to go pound sand? (1972 Nixon goes to China.)
Not exactly equivalent, but Woodrow Wilson:
1. Organized mobs through propaganda inside the US to engender unreasoned hate of "foreigners".
2. Got a lot of Americans killed fighting those "foreigners" by a combination of {German} foreign inept political judgments, conspiracy theory propaganda and outright lies.
3. Overthrew a lot of European governments and did so without proper consultation with his own country's "democratic" institutions. (and tried to do the same to our neighbor, Mexico.)
4. Promised a "progressive utopia" but actually engendered a most undemocratic and ill-liberal history of racism and bigotry through his actions that damaged American civil liberties and human rights for two whole generations, and some might say down to the present.
IOW, it depends on a PoV.
McPherson
Banned
Uhm, the correct term applied is logistics. Fuel, sustainment, tactical reach in the naval and air power context. Physics can be tweaked inside the limits if one knows how to apply the kinetics; but I digress.
A quick look; Southern Resources Area 1.
More or less it can be done without French Indochina, but the Japanese have to have Hainan Island and they have to have Thailand. After that, a nutcracker against the British and Dutch is quite feasible with their inevitable defeats and some kind of brokered peace. Only one problem exists from the analysis. The Philippine Islands is solidly in the way, so war with the US is... also inevitable with the consequences that entails. You cannot change the dynamics of the geopolitics of the era without ASBs. Now can the Japanese win? No, not against the Americans. They came closer than Germany, but once the American total war mindset kicks in, the Japanese are finished.
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Yes, Tojo and the militarists in the saddle in Tokyo may have been fanatics, they may have horribly misread American society; but they weren't insane. It was the war in Europe, by crippling France and the Netherlands as colonial powers, and severely distracting America and Britain, that gave Japanese leaders what they thought was their chance to expand.
Hainan was certainly very gettable by Japan, and by 1939 they had it. But my caution on Thailand is that you absolutely need the Fall of France to make a Thai-Japanese alliance happen.
Phibun admittedly spent most of the 30's making Thailand's regime proficiently fascistic, but this did not manifest itself in foreign policy until the collapse of France made possible the Franco-Thai War (Oct. 1940). And this in turn gave Japan an opportunity to intervene on Thailand's side. But even then, the Thais only knuckled under at the outbreak of war.
And without a Japanese presence in Indochina (esp. southern Indochina - Cambodia and Laos especially) it is really hard to see how Japan has the leverage to get its way into Thailand.
And in this respect, the American presence in the PI astride Japanese supply lines south kind of becomes superfluous.