Russia Trained the IJA

The German army and the Russian army were two of the best armies in the world at the time and so that makes me curious, what if Russia trained the Imperial Japanese Army instead of Germany? If Russia trained the IJA, I believe that during World War I, the IJA would not be sympathetic towards Germany's cause and later there would be no Tripartite Pact. How differently would the Russo-Japanese War turn out? With Russia having trained their army and with no Tripartite Pact, would Japan work out some kind of deal with the Soviet Union once the Anglo-Japanese Alliance is terminated?
 

Saphroneth

Banned
When do you mean? I've got no idea what "time" you're talking about here...

Heck, your painting of the Japanese being sympathetic to Germany in WW 1 is exactly backwards. Japan was allied to Britain and Russia against Germany in WW1.

The Tripartite Pact comes many years after the termination of the A-J Alliance.
 
When do you mean? I've got no idea what "time" you're talking about here...

Heck, your painting of the Japanese being sympathetic to Germany in WW 1 is exactly backwards. Japan was allied to Britain and Russia against Germany in WW1.

1870s-1890s, around the time in OTL when French and German military advisors trained the Imperial Japanese Army. The Imperial Japanese Navy was sympathetic to the United Kingdom, which served as its model and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was the heaviest factor in Japan joining the Allies. The Imperial Japanese Army, on the other hand was sympathetic to Germany because, Prussia served as their model. So ultimately, the Japanese military was divided in who they saw as Japan's ally. Even between world wars, the IJA was sympathetic for Germany. The termination of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and the IJA militarists getting more involved in politics drew Japan closer to Germany, allowing the Tripartite Pact to come into being.
 
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Ryan

Donor
The German army and the Russian army were two of the best armies in the world at the time and so that makes me curious, what if Russia trained the Imperial Japanese Army instead of Germany?

I thought that Russia's army was seen as pretty crap at the time.

If Russia trained the IJA, I believe that during World War I, the IJA would not be sympathetic towards Germany's cause and later there would be no Tripartite Pact.

they weren't sympathetic OTL, hence why they joined the war against Germany and took as many of their far east possession's as possible.

also, geopolitics are very fluid. just because two countries are allies or enemies doesn't mean that they will remain so 10/20 years down the line.

How differently would the Russo-Japanese War turn out?

assuming pretty much otl Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese would probably do worse thanks to being trained by a pretty crap force.

With Russia having trained their army and with no Tripartite Pact, would Japan work out some kind of deal with the Soviet Union once the Anglo-Japanese Alliance is terminated?

with a PoD in 1888 why are you even assuming that the world follows otl until ww2?

nonetheless, as I said before geopolitics are very fluid. especially when you throw in a communist revolution (look how quickly the entente dropped the SU)
 
The German army and the Russian army were two of the best armies in the world at the time and so that makes me curious, what if Russia trained the Imperial Japanese Army instead of Germany? If Russia trained the IJA, I believe that during World War I, the IJA would not be sympathetic towards Germany's cause and later there would be no Tripartite Pact. How differently would the Russo-Japanese War turn out? With Russia having trained their army and with no Tripartite Pact, would Japan work out some kind of deal with the Soviet Union once the Anglo-Japanese Alliance is terminated?
WTF?When exactly was the Russian army the best in the world?Most countries don't have a good opinion of the Russian army either.It was a pretty backward force.
 
my reaction when I read that title:

HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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abc123

Banned
Royal navy sent the Japanese a sample of Nelson's hair. That didn't prevent them to attack them in 1941.
 
I thought that Russia's army was seen as pretty crap at the time.



they weren't sympathetic OTL, hence why they joined the war against Germany and took as many of their far east possession's as possible.

also, geopolitics are very fluid. just because two countries are allies or enemies doesn't mean that they will remain so 10/20 years down the line.



assuming pretty much otl Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese would probably do worse thanks to being trained by a pretty crap force.



with a PoD in 1888 why are you even assuming that the world follows otl until ww2?

nonetheless, as I said before geopolitics are very fluid. especially when you throw in a communist revolution (look how quickly the entente dropped the SU)

WTF?When exactly was the Russian army the best in the world?Most countries don't have a good opinion of the Russian army either.It was a pretty backward force.
My bad you guys. I must have been thinking of the Soviet Union. I only assumed the Russian army was good because Japan, Austria-Hungary, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire were on the ropes against them during the Russo-Japanese War and World War I. In my previous threads, they told me that the Russian Army was strong enough to make the British struggle on an Indo-Persian front.
 



My bad you guys. I must have been thinking of the Soviet Union. I only assumed the Russian army was good because Japan, Austria-Hungary, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire were on the ropes against them during the Russo-Japanese War and World War I. In my previous threads, they told me that the Russian Army was strong enough to make the British struggle on an Indo-Persian front.

I think anybody would struggle in the Indo-Persian front unless you're an indegenous power, the terrain is too harsh.
 

Saphroneth

Banned



My bad you guys. I must have been thinking of the Soviet Union. I only assumed the Russian army was good because Japan, Austria-Hungary, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire were on the ropes against them during the Russo-Japanese War and World War I. In my previous threads, they told me that the Russian Army was strong enough to make the British struggle on an Indo-Persian front.
I'm sorry to say that - no, the Russian Army was not good in quality. It did have numbers (largest army in the world, by a factor of about 1.8 in 1880 - discounting China because it's the done thing) but when you want to get foreign trainers you want them from an army which is good by something other than sheer mass.

The main reason it was considered a threat to the British in the East was basically that sheer mass - the standing Russian army was about 900,000 men, and the British Indian establishment is nowhere near that size. But then again, the invasion route to India does go through Afghanistan, so who knows what would happen.


Returning to the point.

The Japanese could have solicited training assistance from:
The British (the British Army isn't what it was before Cardwell but is still fairly serviceable at this time)
The French (who were extremely modern in this time period)
Or possibly the US (but the US army is a bit small for full-throated assistance at this time) instead of the German.

But the German Army is the one with the most impressive, technically polished victory in its recent history so it's the one they went for.
 

nbcman

Donor



My bad you guys. I must have been thinking of the Soviet Union. I only assumed the Russian army was good because Japan, Austria-Hungary, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire were on the ropes against them during the Russo-Japanese War and World War I. In my previous threads, they told me that the Russian Army was strong enough to make the British struggle on an Indo-Persian front.

You've been misinformed with regards to the Imperial Russian Army in the late 1800s and early 1900s. They never had the Germans on the ropes; they only were a threat initially up until the Battle of Tannenberg. A-H did take a pasting from the Russians in 1914 but by mid-1915 the Russians were rolled completely back and the Russians lost hundreds of thousands of men and all of Poland and much of Galicia. The Russians did do well against the Ottomans but that was a combination of superior Russian numbers and poor strategy by Ottoman leaders.

Overall, the Russians could do well in situations where they could bring superior numbers to bear but they were never well considered as a fighting force.
 
It would be funny though.

"Teach us how to fight Russia-senpais!"

"You run forward... And beat the shit out of them!"

"Would that really work?"

"Sure, why not"

Sometimes nations do not make good decisions.
 

abc123

Banned
It would be funny though.

"Teach us how to fight Russia-senpais!"

"You run forward... And beat the shit out of them!"

"Would that really work?"

"Sure, why not"

Sometimes nations do not make good decisions.

Funny yes, but that was more-less everyone's strategy in WW1...;)
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Funny yes, but that was more-less everyone's strategy in WW1...;)
At the risk of taking a joke seriously, it really wasn't.

It's easy to write off the battles of WW1 as showing a lack of ability to learn - what they instead show is a lack of a "magic bullet" to easily solve the problem of the trenches. As it turned out, it took a combination of new technology, superior production and sheer hard work to solve things.


A little illustration of the problems involved - this time, at the Somme.



At the Somme, you first had the political problem - this attack was required not because it was an easy place to attack but to give succor to allies. As such it was not possible to pick the "easiest" place to attack.
(But because machine guns and trenches are cheap and easy, there's no flank to outflank. Wherever you attack there will be machine guns, there will be trenches and there will be barbed wire.)

Second you have the military problem - whatever way you slice it, there are a large number of Germans in that trench and they want to kill you as much as you want to kill them. They've spent at least a year learning how to defend, they've sited machine guns and barbed wire, and it's going to be costly no matter what you do unless you can somehow kill them all before you arrive.

The generals decide to try simply doing that - killing everyone in the German trenches. As such, they send in a week long preparatory bombardment. This involves a huge amount of firepower - so much firepower that the guns can be heard across the Channel and the ground is churned to craters.

Now you have one of the problems that will be solved in the war, but has not yet. When do you attack?
Remember that you need to plan this days in advance, since you're going to be moving hundreds of thousands of men, and if you order the attack too soon you're going to blow up your entire assault wave as they advance into the teeth of the artillery barrage.
Would you like to try to coordinate tens of thousands of people across an area several miles deep and over a dozen miles wide to stop at exactly the same time?

Later in the war, they learned how to do it - they learned how to do the creeping barrage, which is something which is frankly insanely risky with any of the guns anyone had used in any war before then. You absolutely need recuperators to pull off a creeping barrage, anything else means you can't control the gun targets well enough.



So much for that yet-unsolved problem.

Next you have the ultimate problem, the one that stymied Napoleon at Waterloo. How do you advance under fire?

It's hard enough for trained regular troops with experience. But most of the British army didn't exist two years ago, and the sudden expansion caught everyone on the hop - many of the New Army divisions drilled with broom handles in civilian clothes for much of the time since volunteering.
Not surprisingly, the generals feel that they can't trust them doing coordinated rushes over fire-swept ground. This is probably a correct assumption.
But more important is that they don't clump. If you have men in a long line abreast, they're easy to shoot down with a machine gun slowly traversing along them; if they clump up, they're all dead in seconds because the gun can just aim at the clump.

And they can't run, either. If they run, they'll be exhausted at the end - if you don't appreciate this problem, try running up a muddy hill wearing full combat gear.
So a brisk walk in long, even lines is actually the best you can do.



But why do they need to do that at all? Why can't they use tanks to break the defensive line?

Tanks! That's what you need... but they've only just been invented. (Two and a half months after the start of the battle, there are 49 tanks available to be deployed in support of eleven divisions - and that was still considered too soon.) The commander of the army ordered a thousand the moment he saw one, but it takes time to produce engines on that scale and it takes time to get the tanks to the front. They are being made as fast as they can.



So where does that leave us?

It leaves us decrying generals for sending men to briskly walk at machine guns. Despite that the generals did everything they could do to make sure the attack succeeded with the troops they had, and that anything else would have probably been worse.






TL;DR it's easy, from the distance of a century, to ask why the things you're so familiar with didn't occur to men struggling with all their wit to completely reinvent warfare.



EDIT: One example of getting it wrong from the distance of a century what they got right at the time is the magazine cutoff. It sounds silly - why would you take a ten-shot weapon and turn it into a one-shot weapon - but the answer can be summed up in a simple question.
What do you do when the enemy counterattack?

With the magazine cutoff, the answer is a bit simpler. You slide back the cutoff, effectively giving you nine rounds instantly, and deliver aimed fire on the counterattacking enemy.
 
OMG this is a PERFECT timeline idea to have an alternate First Sino-Japanese War! Maybe we can get rid of Japanese militarism! :d
 

Saphroneth

Banned
OMG this is a PERFECT timeline idea to have an alternate First Sino-Japanese War! Maybe we can get rid of Japanese militarism! :d

I'm coming to the opinion that you could actually have a post-WW1 PoD to avoid Japanese ultranationalism - prevent the end of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and you don't have Japan's main ally ditching them in favour of what amounts to racial solidarity (from the PoV of Tokyo, at least).
 

BooNZ

Banned



My bad you guys. I must have been thinking of the Soviet Union. I only assumed the Russian army was good because Japan, Austria-Hungary, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire were on the ropes against them during the Russo-Japanese War and World War I. In my previous threads, they told me that the Russian Army was strong enough to make the British struggle on an Indo-Persian front.

I think I can guess who that member might have been...
 
I only assumed the Russian army was good because Japan, Austria-Hungary, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire were on the ropes against them during the Russo-Japanese War and World War I.

Wait, what? Japan pasted the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War. It was kinda their defining moment as a world power.
 
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