Subtracting Japan from the League of Aggressors, will the west resist Germany/Italy any earlier?

If Japan was not projecting any military or naval power in the 1930s

  • the other powers would have sanctioned Italy in 1935 and contained the Germans btwn 1936-38

    Votes: 2 10.0%
  • the other powers would have sanctioned Italy, but not contained Germany before Poland

    Votes: 1 5.0%
  • the other powers would have contained Germany between 1936-38, but not sanctioned Italy

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • the other powers would have appeased Germany & Italy as much as OTL

    Votes: 13 65.0%
  • an imploded chaotic Japan is more plausible than a shiny, happy, peaceful Japan

    Votes: 6 30.0%
  • a shiny, happy, peaceful Japan is more plausible than an imploded chaotic Japan

    Votes: 5 25.0%

  • Total voters
    20

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
OK, let's imagine that Japan, with some alterations going back as early as 1918, is facing societal stresses, internal disorder and possibly civil war to the point that the country is not paying for a great power fleet in the 1920s and 1930s and is not invading its neighbors at all. I am contriving the end result of no aggressive & threatening Japan in the 1930s and early 1940s. My view is that it is at least a bit more plausible to have Japan not show up as a revisionist, expansionist power because it is internally chaotic and rent by strife rather than the opposite scenario of being a coherent democracy and simply not choosing to compete navally and commit military aggression.

Paul Kennedy made alot of the "two-front" dilemma posed for the UK and USSR (and I would extrapolate France & the USA also) posed by simultaneous aggressiveness by Imperial Japan and the European Fascist powers.

If Japan is a not a significant military-naval threat, will the British, French or Soviets be more willing to oppose Mussolini or Hitler earlier? Might they (and perhaps the U.S.) seriously sanction Italy over the Ethiopia invasion? Might they oppose the Germans and Italians in Spain with greater vigor. Or, if all else fails, might they decide they are not putting up with Hitler's crap when he starts claiming Czechoslovakia and will resist him by force?

Or, will all the powers follow the same appeasement and nonaggression pact policies pursued in OTL until the Germans and Italians bring war to Poland, and then to their own homelands?
 
I think this depends on what's happening in Europe and how German rearmament is going which is what affected the Anglo-French alliance's thinking during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War.
 

trurle

Banned
OK, let's imagine that Japan, with some alterations going back as early as 1918, is facing societal stresses, internal disorder and possibly civil war to the point that the country is not paying for a great power fleet in the 1920s and 1930s and is not invading its neighbors at all. I am contriving the end result of no aggressive & threatening Japan in the 1930s and early 1940s. My view is that it is at least a bit more plausible to have Japan not show up as a revisionist, expansionist power because it is internally chaotic and rent by strife rather than the opposite scenario of being a coherent democracy and simply not choosing to compete navally and commit military aggression.

Paul Kennedy made alot of the "two-front" dilemma posed for the UK and USSR (and I would extrapolate France & the USA also) posed by simultaneous aggressiveness by Imperial Japan and the European Fascist powers.

If Japan is a not a significant military-naval threat, will the British, French or Soviets be more willing to oppose Mussolini or Hitler earlier? Might they (and perhaps the U.S.) seriously sanction Italy over the Ethiopia invasion? Might they oppose the Germans and Italians in Spain with greater vigor. Or, if all else fails, might they decide they are not putting up with Hitler's crap when he starts claiming Czechoslovakia and will resist him by force?

Or, will all the powers follow the same appeasement and nonaggression pact policies pursued in OTL until the Germans and Italians bring war to Poland, and then to their own homelands?
The Japanese ambitions were mostly irrelevant for European politics before OTL December 1941.

Regarding Japanese economic situation, not having an export markets in Manchuria and China will result in larger impact of Great Depression on Japan, overlapping with Showa Financial Crisis. Overall, very likely the Japanese empire will start crumbling by 1950, and state will be poorly functional similar to OTL Spain for several decades afterward.
 
The Japanese ambitions were mostly irrelevant for European politics before OTL December 1941.
Japanese ambitions were the only relevant factor in British defence planning from singing the Washington Treaty to the Nazis taking power in Germany. It remained a very important factor after the Nazis came to power in Germany and Fascist Italy invaded Abyssinia.

IOTL the British set up a Defence Requirements Sub-committee of its Committee of Imperial Defence to work out the size and shape of the armed forces needed to fight a war against German and Japan at the same time. IIRC the Third Report was published in February 1936 and that is what British rearmament was based on. However, the Report wanted a rearmament programme costing £1,650 million when the Treasury said that it could only raise £1,500 million. IIRC amongst the things that were cut were the modernisation of the Territorial Army and the expansion of what would become Anti-Aircraft Command had to be spread over more years than recommended by the Report.

With no Japanese threat money spent on expanding the Royal Navy so it could be expanded to fight Germany and Japan at the same time could have been spent modernising the Army.

OTOH taking Japan out of the equation might mean that the British armed forces are run down even further than they were IOTL. This would in turn mean that the British armaments industry was run down even further than OTL. So although the British Government was theoretically in a stronger position against Germany and Italy it might actually be in an even weaker position than the one it found itself in IOTL.
 
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