The Worst WWII Alternate History Cliche

[Obergruppenführer Smith]

I honestly have no idea what you are trying to say here. It sounds like you are claiming we are willing to excuse the war crimes of Nazis and their European allies due to the views which caused them. Which is literally the opposite of views normally expressed.

People do not put in as much effort into researching Japan as the other Axis members, and as such they write the same OTL insanity without understanding how Japan arrived at that point.

A common example: Japan is considered ignorant of the lessons of WW1 because they were not in the trenches, and so they rely on outdated esprit de corps that other countries grew out of. The reality was that IJA perfectly knew the path they had to take, but couldn't because the industrialists never went into building the industrial capacity and capabilities needed for such a modern military. Those industrialists were just happy getting fat by selling the same old goods to Korea, China, and the European colonies. This is the root cause of why IJA was so reliant on willpower, why we had the radicalization of the officers who were against the "evil capitalists tricking the emperor and the nation", the factional infighting, the push into Manchuria, the argument between fighting the Soviets or the Chinese, etc. Yet most of this is ignored in almost all the discussions, this thread included.

 

[Obergruppenführer Smith]

I will admit, my views can be colored by all the years I've been in East Asia, so what I might consider the appropriate level of due diligence could be abnormally higher than the norm.

 

[CalBear]

While the actions of the Showa Japan period are indefensible, during the Taisho period, they were hardly any more aggressive than other powers on the stage -- in between the 1st Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War are the Spanish-American War (as blatant a land grab as could be), the Second Boer War, the Boxer Rebellion, the Melilla War, various wars against Native American tribes by Americans and Canadians, British wars against various African or Asian potentates, American interventions in Latin America, and on and on.

The Taisho period was marked by a significant tension between those who wanted some kind of military/militarist dictatorship and those who wanted civilian rule. Ultimately, in the end, those pressing for civilian rule lost -- but even the civilians were in favor of asserting themselves upon the global stage, and particularly onto China -- the infamous Twenty-One Demands were drafted by one of the most pro-civilian, pro-parliamentary governments that Japan had in the entire period. Kato Komei was an Anglophile of the first order, and if Japan was overfond of imposing its will on China, it was not alone in doing so. The Yangtze gunboats of the USN and the RN weren't there as a favor to the Chinese government, after all.

Even so, the IJA of the first quarter of the twentieth century was a different creature than the monstrosity of the Showa period: the treatment of Russian POWs in 1905 is vastly different than what the IJA did a generation later to their captives.

Much as the Second Reich was not the Third (though the seeds were present), Taisho Japan was not Showa Japan.

Actually by 1894 the Indian Wars in the American West were effectively over, not that this excuses what is one of the darkest events in American history.

The Spanish American War was much of a land grab as such things go. It was primarily fought over Cuba, which was an independent country post war, although beholden to the U.S. in a number a ways (the most long lasting being Gitmo under Article 7 of the 1904 Treaty). The U.S. has retained Puerto Rico (although there is a strong minority that has, virtually from the day the Treaty Of Paris was signed that have wanted to change that), however it damned near made the Philippines walk the plank so unhappy was the U.S. with the far off colonial entanglement. The Treaty of Paris was far from accepted by acclimation, it passed in the Senate by the required 2/3 majority by a single vote and was challenged through the Federal Court system all the way to the SCOTUS.

The U.S. was actually a really lousy example of a global colonialist. In North America it was absolute hell on wheels, Manifest Destiny or bust (I still don't understand how Tyler & Polk managed to avoid a third War with Great Britain over the Oregon Territory), but as far as global, not so much. Even in China the American effort was, compared to most, sort of pitiful.

The Taisho Period was less aggressive than those that bracketed it, but the Japanese government was still entirely dependent on the pleasure of the Army and Navy for day to day survival. The Empire engaged in WW I during that period (the cause belli being a dispute over the Kaiutschuo Bay Concession, not as is sometimes believed, any Treaty requirements with Great Britain), using it as an opportunity to acquire virtually all of the German possessions in the Central Pacific along with the Kaiutschuo Bay Chefoo and Tsingtao Concessions. It was also the era when the Japanese conducted the Siberian Intervention into the Russian Civil War, remaining in occupation of the Vladivostok area for two years after the rest of the Entente had withdrawn all forces.

 

[CalBear]

People do not put in as much effort into researching Japan as the other Axis members, and as such they write the same OTL insanity without understanding how Japan arrived at that point.

A common example: Japan is considered ignorant of the lessons of WW1 because they were not in the trenches, and so they rely on outdated esprit de corps that other countries grew out of. The reality was that IJA perfectly knew the path they had to take, but couldn't because the industrialists never went into building the industrial capacity and capabilities needed for such a modern military. Those industrialists were just happy getting fat by selling the same old goods to Korea, China, and the European colonies. This is the root cause of why IJA was so reliant on willpower, why we had the radicalization of the officers who were against the "evil capitalists tricking the emperor and the nation", the factional infighting, the push into Manchuria, the argument between fighting the Soviets or the Chinese, etc. Yet most of this is ignored in almost all the discussions, this thread included.

An interesting argument. Not that I agree with it.

It effectively means that the senior Japanese leadership was, from the outset, functionally insane and fought a war using tactics that would result in unsustainable casualties and inevitable defeat. It makes them a dozen times worse than the generally accepted idea that they hadn't had the full impact of modern weapons pounded into them so the simply didn't conceptualize the modern battle field. To have fully conceptualized it, truly understood it on the visceral level, and still relied on Elan makes them some of the most callous murderers of all time.

The thing about the Western Front was that is wasn't just bad, it wasn't just awful, it was almost literally indescribable, so absolutely hellish that it had to be experienced for the real impact to soak in. There is not a single person who can truly claim to know (AFAIK the last combat veteran of WW I was Frank Buckles, who was a 16 year old Ambulance driver for the AEF who passed in 2011). The Americans reached France and they KNEW, sure as the Sun had risen that morning, that they would be able to succeed where the British and French had failed. They knew all about trench warfare thanks to the Civil War and the sieges of Vicksburg, Petersburg and Richmond. They had that beat out of them in about two months of fighting, although they still took stupid risks (that occasionally seemed to work, creating even more risk taking) they understood how warfare had changed. The Japanese KNEW, sure as the Sun had risen that morning, that they would be able to succeed where the Americans, British and French had failed. They knew all about trench warfare thanks to the Civil War and the siege of Port Arthur in 1904-05. They never had that silly notion beaten out of their heads, and that was the only way the belief could be eliminated, officers and NCOs, those who would train the next generations, had to have experienced modern warfare, not so they could say the words, so the students could see the reality of the words in the instructor's eyes, hear it in the tone of their voice, read it in their body language.

There is knowing about something, and there is knowing about it. The IJA didn't know. If they had they would have spent what money they had differently.

 

[cpip]

The Taisho Period was less aggressive than those that bracketed it, but the Japanese government was still entirely dependent on the pleasure of the Army and Navy for day to day survival. The Empire engaged in WW I during that period (the cause belli being a dispute over the Kaiutschuo Bay Concession, not as is sometimes believed, any Treaty requirements with Great Britain), using it as an opportunity to acquire virtually all of the German possessions in the Central Pacific along with the Kaiutschuo Bay Chefoo and Tsingtao Concessions. It was also the era when the Japanese conducted the Siberian Intervention into the Russian Civil War, remaining in occupation of the Vladivostok area for two years after the rest of the Entente had withdrawn all forces.

After the first time the Army brought down the Katsura administration, in 1913, the succeeding Prime Minister (Yamamoto Gonnohyoe) prevailed upon the Emperor to compel the Army to provide a Minister, and relaxed the rule that it had to be a serving General. That requirement didn't come back into force until 1936. In the 23 years between, the military lost its direct veto power and had to rely on lobbying, influence peddling, and, eventually, the sort of nonsensical "do something now and let the politicians follow behind" that led into the Mukden incident.

The Empire actually engaged in internal debate over whether or not to enter WW1, and it was not immediately clear as to which side they would join. Several of the elder statesmen who were indeed militarist of one stripe or another (led by Field Marshal and Prince Yamagata Aritomo) actually were attempting to steer Japan into siding with Germany under a belief that the Central Powers were going to make a speedy victory; they were outmaneuvered by Foreign Minister Kato, who invoked the Anglo-Japanese Treaty and managed to drag the government along with him, and then promptly issued ultimatums against the Germans. Had Yamagata's faction prevailed, Japanese forces might well have deployed against the British holdings in China instead of the German ones. Either way, the main focus of Japanese foreign policy was always "local": they wanted the same sort of hegemonic control that they perceived European nations having. Some of it was dressed up in anti-Western colonialist rhetoric, or racial animus (pan-Asianism, or what have you), or the like, but in the end, the goal was for Japan to be the regional power, with all the nations of the Pacific Rim (and maybe even beyond) reduced to at best client states of the Empire.

Was it aggressive? Surely. I dispute that it was significantly more aggressive than most of the other Great Powers, and for militarism and military control of the government, it certainly bore some strong similarities to Germany (which Yamagata's militarist faction, who had worked with the Prussian advisors to the IJA, admired greatly) or Tsarist Russia (who, by 1913, the Japanese were negotiating rapprochement with, including a pipe dream of some sort of German-Russian-Japanese alliance that was being entertained in the final years of Meiji), and even in the face of all that, there were voices of dissent. They lost in the end, and by the 1930s were sidelined into irrelevance, but the Japanese weren't some sort of monolithic mustache-twirling villain of the Far East from 1890 on.

 

[CalBear]

Indeed. If someone were to say, for instance, "Imperial Japan was a hyper-agressive military dominated de facto, if not de jure, military dictatorship basically from the adoption of the Meiji Constitution until the document was entirely rewritten follow Japan's surrender"...

Exactly when was the Meiji Constitution amended to prevent the IJA and/or IJN from being able to bring down any government by withdrawing their minister?

To Quote Dune: "He who can destroy a thing controls a thing". The IJA and IJN controlled Japan's government. That is, pretty much by definition, a de facto military dictatorship

"We have civilian rule, but if an ACTIVE DUTY Army or Navy officer is withdrawn from the Government the government must be disbanded and can not reform until the Army and/or Navy assign a minister."

 

[Obergruppenführer Smith]

An interesting argument. Not that I agree with it.

It effectively means that the senior Japanese leadership was, from the outset, functionally insane and fought a war using tactics that would result in unsustainable casualties and inevitable defeat. It makes them a dozen times worse than the generally accepted idea that they hadn't had the full impact of modern weapons pounded into them so the simply didn't conceptualize the modern battle field. To have fully conceptualized it, truly understood it on the visceral level, and still relied on Elan makes them some of the most callous murderers of all time.

There was no different between the IJA and Soviet mindset, except that the Soviets had the resource to industrialize while Japan did not. So I would say criminal, not insane.

But yes, IJA was one of the most callous murderers of all time..

There is knowing about something, and there is knowing about it. The IJA didn't know. If they had they would have spent what money they had differently.

How could they have spent anything differently? When Japan tried doing that in 1925 under Ugaki, they found that they simply did not have the industry or finances to do anything differently without gutting the army.

 

[CalBear]

After the first time the Army brought down the Katsura administration, in 1913, the succeeding Prime Minister (Yamamoto Gonnohyoe) prevailed upon the Emperor to compel the Army to provide a Minister, and relaxed the rule that it had to be a serving General. That requirement didn't come back into force until 1936. In the 23 years between, the military lost its direct veto power and had to rely on lobbying, influence peddling, and, eventually, the sort of nonsensical "do something now and let the politicians follow behind" that led into the Mukden incident.

The Empire actually engaged in internal debate over whether or not to enter WW1, and it was not immediately clear as to which side they would join. Several of the elder statesmen who were indeed militarist of one stripe or another (led by Field Marshal and Prince Yamagata Aritomo) actually were attempting to steer Japan into siding with Germany under a belief that the Central Powers were going to make a speedy victory; they were outmaneuvered by Foreign Minister Kato, who invoked the Anglo-Japanese Treaty and managed to drag the government along with him, and then promptly issued ultimatums against the Germans. Had Yamagata's faction prevailed, Japanese forces might well have deployed against the British holdings in China instead of the German ones. Either way, the main focus of Japanese foreign policy was always "local": they wanted the same sort of hegemonic control that they perceived European nations having. Some of it was dressed up in anti-Western colonialist rhetoric, or racial animus (pan-Asianism, or what have you), or the like, but in the end, the goal was for Japan to be the regional power, with all the nations of the Pacific Rim (and maybe even beyond) reduced to at best client states of the Empire.

Was it aggressive? Surely. I dispute that it was significantly more aggressive than most of the other Great Powers, and for militarism and military control of the government, it certainly bore some strong similarities to Germany (which Yamagata's militarist faction, who had worked with the Prussian advisors to the IJA, admired greatly) or Tsarist Russia (who, by 1913, the Japanese were negotiating rapprochement with, including a pipe dream of some sort of German-Russian-Japanese alliance that was being entertained in the final years of Meiji), and even in the face of all that, there were voices of dissent. They lost in the end, and by the 1930s were sidelined into irrelevance, but the Japanese weren't some sort of monolithic mustache-twirling villain of the Far East from 1890 on.

One of the major issues is that the Empire started late. Had it begun its aggressive expansion in 1790 instead of 1890 it would have been little different than the other colonial powers who were busily piling up native populations wherever they could be stacked. It didn't. The Empire missed the Golden Age of colonization, didn't miss it by much, but it was clean miss. "Civilized" (yes a very variable term) had begun to move past the old model of expansion at bayonet point to the, possible worse because it is more insidious and less readily identifiable, pure economic colonialism (this is where the U.S. "colonial empire" does become a thing), but the Empire did not change horses. (That took well into the 1960s, after the destruction of the war was repaired, but has since that time exploded into today's remarkable Japanese economy which features four of the world's largest banks, same as the U.S., the world's largest auto maker (and five of the largest 15), and one of the benchmark stock exchanges.)

 

[Gudestein]

Plan H

And the Admiralty drinking lead based cocktails and not reacting

Is there actually an OTL plan Z TL where the admiralty does nothing.
Lots of variations on the theme, thats granted, but a genuine plan Z.?

 

[cpip]

Exactly when was the Meiji Constitution amended to prevent the IJA and/or IJN from being able to bring down any government by withdrawing their minister?

May 8, 1913, at the Cabinet Meeting, Yamamoto made the presentation, the Emperor endorsed it as Imperial Ordinance 168. The repealing ordinance ended up striking the "active-duty" requirement, which allowed reserve and retired officers, not beholden to the direct command of the military, to be appointed, and thus depriving the active services of their right to veto, and so between 1913 and 1936 a number of Army officers outside of the Choshu clique were appointed, and none brought down the government, and so the Army had to fight for its budgets. It certainly still enjoyed considerable influence -- the Choshu clique still carried significant political power -- but it was a step towards civilian government.

Its reinstatement happened during Hirota Koki's administration, so I'd say somewhere in March or April of 1936; that I don't have right at hand and have been unable to find.

In any case, the law that required that the Minister of War and the Minister of the Navy be active-duty officers was not a part of the Meiji Constitution itself, but rather two 1900 Imperial Ordinances (Nos. 193 and 194, dated May 9, 1900) put forward during the administration of the aforementioned Yamagata Aritomo -- so for the first fifteen years of the Meiji Constitution, it also wasn't a military dictatorship by the definition you argue. To argue against myself, the fact that prior to the establishment of the Meiji Constitution the feudal nature of the samurai blurred the lines between governance and military command meant that many senior officials would inevitably be soldiers of some sort, so many prominent statesmen of the early Meiji period undeniably had a strong military background.

 

[Obergruppenführer Smith]

Its reinstatement happened during Hirota Koki's administration, so I'd say somewhere in March or April of 1936; that I don't have right at hand and have been unable to find.

May 18, to be exact.

More importantly, this needs to be understood in context: the 2.26 Incident was the trigger for the Control Faction to "unify" IJA under its influence, and so for the first time since the fall of Yamagata, IJA had a strong voice ready to dictate terms against the government. This isn't understandable unless one actually looks into how the Great War influenced IJA poltics in the 1920s, and how many here actually knows that era outside of a few snippets abused to portray Japan as insane?

 

[TRH]

May 18, to be exact.

More importantly, this needs to be understood in context: the 2.26 Incident was the trigger for the Control Faction to "unify" IJA under its influence, and so for the first time since the fall of Yamagata, IJA had a strong voice ready to dictate terms against the government. This isn't understandable unless one actually looks into how the Great War influenced IJA poltics in the 1920s, and how many here actually knows that era outside of a few snippets abused to portray Japan as insane?

Maybe this process would go better if you didn't try to educate in one breath and insult the entire thread in the next.

 

[CalBear]

May 8, 1913, at the Cabinet Meeting, Yamamoto made the presentation, the Emperor endorsed it as Imperial Ordinance 168. The repealing ordinance ended up striking the "active-duty" requirement, which allowed reserve and retired officers, not beholden to the direct command of the military, to be appointed, and thus depriving the active services of their right to veto, and so between 1913 and 1936 a number of Army officers outside of the Choshu clique were appointed, and none brought down the government, and so the Army had to fight for its budgets. It certainly still enjoyed considerable influence -- the Choshu clique still carried significant political power -- but it was a step towards civilian government.

Its reinstatement happened during Hirota Koki's administration, so I'd say somewhere in March or April of 1936; that I don't have right at hand and have been unable to find.

In any case, the law that required that the Minister of War and the Minister of the Navy be active-duty officers was not a part of the Meiji Constitution itself, but rather two 1900 Imperial Ordinances (Nos. 193 and 194, dated May 9, 1900) put forward during the administration of the aforementioned Yamagata Aritomo -- so for the first fifteen years of the Meiji Constitution, it also wasn't a military dictatorship by the definition you argue. To argue against myself, the fact that prior to the establishment of the Meiji Constitution the feudal nature of the samurai blurred the lines between governance and military command meant that many senior officials would inevitably be soldiers of some sort, so many prominent statesmen of the early Meiji period undeniably had a strong military background.

Well, I just learned something today.

Thank you.

 

[Obergruppenführer Smith]

Maybe this process would go better if you didn't try to educate in one breath and insult the entire thread in the next.

If that was an insult, it's justifiable when even fairly educated individuals such as CalBear doesn't seem to understand the industrial and resource bind Japan was in nor understand that IJA was at its weakest during the 1920s and 1930s, which was why we had "government by assassination", failed military reductions, backtracking on military modernization in favor of "spirit" since there were no alternative ways to spend money, attempted Choshu purges, Kantogun's utter ignoring of Tokyo, people's support for radical movements when the civilian government seemed impotent to do anything while the old imperialists were setting up economic blocs, and a few other things that combined makes the Nazi infighting seem like a tea party.

Of course, we can partly blame the fact that there is practically only one book that manages to give some organization to this hodgepodge of chaos, but at the same time there is just not the effort compared to other Axis countries before making conclusions.

 

[SsgtC]

Here's the thing. We don't need to abuse certain snippets to show imperial Japan as insane. They did well enough on their own

This isn't understandable unless one actually looks into how the Great War influenced IJA poltics in the 1920s, and how many here actually knows that era outside of a few snippets abused to portray Japan as insane?

 

[Obergruppenführer Smith]

Here's the thing. We don't need to abuse certain snippets to show imperial Japan as insane. They did well enough on their own

You mean just like how the USSR was "insane" by using snippets of their industrialization process and purges? That's the double standard.

 

[TRH]

You mean just like how the USSR was "insane" by using snippets of their industrialization process and purges? That's the double standard.

The truly abusive parts of the Holodomor, say? Yes, we would make that characterization, a point you've been persistently ignoring.

 

[Obergruppenführer Smith]

The truly abusive parts of the Holodomor, say? Yes, we would make that characterization, a point you've been persistently ignoring.

I suppose we are at an impasse then, since just about anything is insane by such a cheap way of using the word.

 

[SsgtC]

I'm sorry, but you'll have to explain this to me: how does invading a country 30 times your size with an 8-1 population advantage makes Japan sane. It how declaring war on a country with 20 times your industrial output and 3 times your population is a smart move.

You mean just like how the USSR was "insane" by using snippets of their industrialization process and purges? That's the double standard.

 

[TRH]

I suppose we are at an impasse then, since just about anything is insane by such a cheap way of using the word.

More like any society with more than ten minutes' worth of history has its insane moments. Actions are insane, not societies, although some societies might commit more insane acts in a given period than others. And going straight from "Everybody but me calls Imperial Japan the only insane society in history!" to "Everyone in history can be called insane by your definition!" isn't a good look for you.