Plausibility Check: Japanese Mechanized Warfare

But first Japan would have to make up its mind regarding the war it was going to fight instead of haphazardly fighting two wars and losing badly in each...
It did. The long term objective was to conquer Siberia for its resources. However if it attacked the Soviet Union China would attack it, but not he other way round. Hence it started a war with China to take it out and not get in more of a conflict with the Soviet Union than it had to.

The only problem was that the Americans declared an oil and steel embargo which would have eventually brought the Japanese war machine to a halt. The solution was a) invade the Dutch East Indies for the oil fields and b) hit the USA so hard that it would sue for peace. Unfortunately the last bit did not work so everything started to unravel.

Instead if because of the loss of their fleet the Americans had done the logical thing, they would have sued for peace, the Japanese would have agreed then returned to taking out China. Once that was done they could have then invaded Siberia. OK, so it is cloud cuckoo land stuff, but rational in their mind set.

This strategy did not require much in the way of tanks until the invasion of Siberia is launched because a) manpower in China was more important than fast mobile units and in spite of being regularly defeated the Chinese were not suing for peace and b) they need as a big a fleet as they could build.

In effect until the last stage a Japanese Panzer unit would be about as useful to their war effort as a chocolate teapot.
 
One could just as easily argue that your 6 points apply equally to the Germans. Yet somehow they managed to build a mechanized force in less than 6 years.

Germany in 1934 was FAR more industrialized than Japan even in 1941. The original Volkswagen was all tooled up and ready to begin mass production in 1939... pity about the whole 'war starting' bit. Instead they produced over 50,000 Kubelwagen.
 
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