What If Japan Wins WW2?

[lionhead]

- With this move, Japan is "given" the Southeast Asian nations and whatever it could hold onto in China, including Manchuria and some coastal regions. Peace with KMT.

Chiang will have no reason to make peace with the Japanese, they where making severe casualties to Japanese forces and delaying them so heavily they where practically halted on al fronts. The UK itself too will see no reason to make peace with Japan while they are fighting and winning in Burma. The UK will take over Thailand and recapture Singapore and after that they will easily reinforce and resupply the Chinese troops, the Japanese army will be defeated on the mainland. The USSR will then take its chances and attack Manchuria.

There is just no way Japanese is going to win, not even from China and the UK alone.

 

[LeX]

To survive, Japan has to keep the US and USSR from attacking, at any costs.

LIMITED war, dude. Could Russia have crushed the Japanese in 1904 had the war gone on a bit longer and their people not revolted? Surely.

Contradictory points, if the US is already at war Japan isn't likely to get the chance to pull it off due to Pearl Harbour having proper defences.

US Fleet, not necessarily Pearl Harbor.

There are plenty of things that could happen which would essentially recreate the 1904 situation for the Japanese. Of course, this wouldn't help their already-serious case of victory disease much. Another problem exists in that even if Japan defeats the early USN at sea and comes to favorable peace terms, the USSR will sooner or later attack in Manchuria, and/or the KMT's troops may suddenly start appearing on the front lines with T-34/85s and Katyusha rockets.

 

[LeX]

Chiang will have no reason to make peace with the Japanese, they where making severe casualties to Japanese forces and delaying them so heavily they where practically halted on al fronts. The UK itself too will see no reason to make peace with Japan while they are fighting and winning in Burma. The UK will take over Thailand and recapture Singapore and after that they will easily reinforce and resupply the Chinese troops, the Japanese army will be defeated on the mainland. The USSR will then take its chances and attack Manchuria.

There is just no way Japanese is going to win, not even from China and the UK alone.

Why use such linear thinking? Does Japan have to attack Burma? Does it have to go all-out in China? Even in that case, wasn't it kicking ROC ass for years?

 

[Max Sinister]

But could Japan have attacked SE Asia without touching the Philippines?

 

[HMS Warspite]

To be purely speculative and supposing that the USA were hit by some unknown sort of catastrophy, it could not cope with (just imagine one yourself), Japan would likely be destroyed by itself, as even with all the gaining of territories, it could not support its own conquests by its own means in both economical and human resource means. A more limmited conquest in a more geographically concentrated patt of Asia (China), was the best it could do, as the overstretched Empire, including the Dutch East Indies and Malaya, up to Burma, simply was too much for Japan to hold for long, as the far too long lines of communication were impossible to protect all the time aong the whole length.

In the aftermatch, a more pragmatical leadership in Japan could transform the conquered parts at the outer bounderies into semi protectorate independent states, sort of forming a Dominion under Japanese leadershiop, but leaving the new states more or less independent in most cases, especially economically. An anti colonial form of nationalism, supported politically by Japan would doo the rest and retain the new nations their newly won "freedom".

 

[lionhead]

Why use such linear thinking? Does Japan have to attack Burma? Does it have to go all-out in China? Even in that case, wasn't it kicking ROC ass for years?

It wasn't kicking the ROC ass as it wanted to. They expected the ROC to fall apart pretty quickly. It didn't. They kept on fighting, and scored victories. Thats why they had to go all out or else they would have been kicked out of the country. Especially in the North.

Even if you make the war "limited" Chinese goals and alliances won't change.

Chiang stopped fighting with the Communists(or was forced IIRC) and forged a unified front with the other warlords to fight the Japanese and it worked. He wouldn't give up half his country to the Japanese as he was planning on attacking the communists again right after. Can't defeat the communists with half a country.

Even if the Japanese didn't attack Burma or Malaya and used those forces in China the advances of Japan would have been further then OTL, but they wouldn't have won. It would have just meant more casualties, more atrocities and a weaker ROC and Japan at the end of it. No matter how you slice it, Japan was in a totally impossible situation which they never would have come out of as the victor.

 

[WhatIsAUserName]

My suggestion is that things would be a lot easier for a Japanese invasion of China if there is no coherent Chinese opposition to speak of. Perhaps there could be Jiang Jieshi's dying and never completing the Northern Expedition, or maybe the split with Wang Jingwei creates two dueling Nanjing and Wuhan based Republics of China, or perhaps Jiang dies in the Xi'an Incident. On the other hand, I'm not sure the resulting conflict can still be called WW2 given possible divergences and butterflies.

 

[Rich Rostrom]

So, how does Japan have less of a chance than Germany did?

Japan fought longer and harder against the Americans (the fighting beginning before D-Day, and ending after the war ended in Europe)...

U.S. combat against Germany began long before D-Day.

U.S. combat against Japan lasted all of three months after V-E Day.

... the war with them was more costly for America (financially and in manpower) than the war in Europe was.

On what do you base this astonishing claim? The U.S. had far more ground troops in the ETO than in the Pacific, and more aircraft. The Pacific theater had more naval forces, but that was not the bulk of the war effort.

Also, the U.S. provided enormous Lend-Lease aid to the USSR for the European War, more Lend-Lease aid to Britain primarily for the European War, and Lend-Lease aid to France for the European war (the Free French army was equipped almost entirely from U.S. sources).

Against this there is Lend-Lease to China, and the airlift "over the Hump" (costly, to be sure), and whatever was provided to Australian and New Zealand forces in the Pacific.

I know this sounds very Americo-centric, but if America was such a big factor to take into account in Europe, and the Japanese were doing better fighting the Americans than the Germans were, why do they have less of a chance?

Japan's successes in the Pacific all came in 1941 and early 1942, when neither the U.S. nor Britain had first line forces in the Pacific. After that first seven months, the Allies got organized, and the Japanese had no further successes. That should tell you something.

And from late 1942 onward, Allied forces systematically crushed every Japanese force they attacked. (The one exception being the British attack in the Arakan region of Burma in 1943.) That should tell you something.

Finally, look at the industrial capacity of Japan compared to the United States. That should tell you something.

 

[CalBear]

Japan has zero chance against the U.S. Maybe less.

Mexico would have a better chance of Invading the U.S. today and defeating the U.S. military by October 4th. Japan was dead from the word Go.

 

[Unconsensual]

I say again, just like Viet Nam was a US rollover. NVN had no chance of winning in Viet Nam.

& like all Nam-revisionists you ignore the part where the war wasn't fundamentally a military engagement whereas Japan was.

If it was North Vietnam/Viet Cong vs. The US in a vacuum, then the Communists would have been smashed with overwhelming firepower. There won't be a bleeding insurgency with sanctuaries that are off-limits for 10 years.

So what? It wasn't, there's no point to constructing these false scenarios except to say: The average US soldier was a "ethnically" better soldier and would've won if they warred like we wanted.

My suggestion is that things would be a lot easier for a Japanese invasion of China if there is no coherent Chinese opposition to speak of. Perhaps there could be Jiang Jieshi's dying and never completing the Northern Expedition, or maybe the split with Wang Jingwei creates two dueling Nanjing and Wuhan based Republics of China, or perhaps Jiang dies in the Xi'an Incident. On the other hand, I'm not sure the resulting conflict can still be called WW2 given possible divergences and butterflies.

A brutal foreign racist vs your estranged brother? Hard choice, even if we had a Chinese Stalin mass murdering political enemies the foreign mass murdering invader would take the cake, at least Stalin could take the label of a nationalist strongman. Unless the Japanese Empire decides to change it's view on other races, it's not happening.

 

[joho6411]

Or you could fix Japanese codes, maybe compromise USA codes. Say traitor in Magic program. It is a relatively hard TL to write, but no where near impossible.

Working on it right now BlondieBC,.....minus any traitors whatsoever, .....it's on paper right now....not ready for AH.com.......yet. Joho

 

[MattII]

LIMITED war, dude. Could Russia have crushed the Japanese in 1904 had the war gone on a bit longer and their people not revolted? Surely.

The further back you go, the more butterflies there are, so shifting it back 35 years means a whole flock of the things, not the least of which is a different outcome to WW1.

US Fleet, not necessarily Pearl Harbor.

No, it pretty much has to be Pearl, there's nowhere else to catch the fleet so off-guard (it was supposedly out of range of the Japanese, and indeed they were deck-loading drums of oil to get there), you couldn't pull the same thing in PI.

 

[Bob in Pittsburgh]

One plausible scenario would involve a German Russian peace treaty in 1943. The resulting increase of German concentration on Britain and the North Atlantic may have made a negotiated peace possible. A withdrawal from the Philippines allowing an independent state might have been enough of an inducement to the United States.

 

[LeX]

The further back you go, the more butterflies there are, so shifting it back 35 years means a whole flock of the things, not the least of which is a different outcome to WW1.

That was only an example of a limited war, not that the PoD would be then. What I meant was that it should be possible for the US to suffer a similar setback and have the war end on favorable terms for the Japanese despite the former being far more powerful.

No, it pretty much has to be Pearl, there's nowhere else to catch the fleet so off-guard (it was supposedly out of range of the Japanese, and indeed they were deck-loading drums of oil to get there), you couldn't pull the same thing in PI.

But you could conceivably have the two fleets meet somewhere else (a US attack) and then have the American fleet get defeated. It doesn't have to be one-sided even, just enough for the Americans to think "well okay maybe this isn't really worth it after all".

Oh and the Japanese treating US POWs nicely (like they did for the Russians in 1904-05 and the Germans in 1914) would help.

 

[WhatIsAUserName]

A brutal foreign racist vs your estranged brother? Hard choice, even if we had a Chinese Stalin mass murdering political enemies the foreign mass murdering invader would take the cake, at least Stalin could take the label of a nationalist strongman. Unless the Japanese Empire decides to change it's view on other races, it's not happening.

Did you not forget the part that many Chinese, a few of which were fairly prominent, did end up working or collaborating with the Japanese? Or the fact that both Nationalists and Communists kept troops in reserve for the inevitable post-WW2 civil war even as the Japanese were occupying much of the country? Or the fact that post-WW2, both the Nationalists and Communists treated the Japanese fairly well even when they didn't have to? While I'm sure that in occupied territories, the Japanese were despised more than either Nationalist or Communist, in terms of the upper leadership of both sides, the irrational hatred of the opposite side means that earlier division would make either side more willing to align themselves with the Japanese.

 

[LeX]

Did you not forget the part that many Chinese, a few of which were fairly prominent, did end up working or collaborating with the Japanese? Or the fact that both Nationalists and Communists kept troops in reserve for the inevitable post-WW2 civil war even as the Japanese were occupying much of the country? Or the fact that post-WW2, both the Nationalists and Communists treated the Japanese fairly well even when they didn't have to? While I'm sure that in occupied territories, the Japanese were despised more than either Nationalist or Communist, in terms of the upper leadership of both sides, the irrational hatred of the opposite side means that earlier division would make either side more willing to align themselves with the Japanese.

Also keep in mind that unlike with Germany and the USSR, the Japanese didn't have the goal of exterminating the Chinese or enslaving them from the very beginning; what they wanted was to keep ahead of it by keeping it beaten down or disunited among some puppets. It was through the escalation of belligerence that eventually it effectively became a war of extermination. The Japanese did not do what they did according to political policy, rather, the insanity was largely military.

 

[LeX]

Chiang stopped fighting with the Communists(or was forced IIRC) and forged a unified front with the other warlords to fight the Japanese and it worked. He wouldn't give up half his country to the Japanese as he was planning on attacking the communists again right after. Can't defeat the communists with half a country.

The Xi'an incident was lucky in the sense that a) it happened and b) it ended the way it did, with CKS agreeing to the treaty instead of getting killed or something similarly disastrous. Ironically the united front's formation may have been what caused Japan to make war in 1937 instead of some other time.

I'm also not sure if CKS could've crushed the CCP at the time due to logistics and good intelligence on the part of the Communists, but it should be known that in 1936 they had like 10,000 people left. Had the KMT armies reached Yan'an Mao's head may have very well ended up on a silver platter.

 

[Unconsensual]

Did you not forget the part that many Chinese, a few of which were fairly prominent, did end up working or collaborating with the Japanese? Or the fact that both Nationalists and Communists kept troops in reserve for the inevitable post-WW2 civil war even as the Japanese were occupying much of the country? Or the fact that post-WW2, both the Nationalists and Communists treated the Japanese fairly well even when they didn't have to? While I'm sure that in occupied territories, the Japanese were despised more than either Nationalist or Communist, in terms of the upper leadership of both sides, the irrational hatred of the opposite side means that earlier division would make either side more willing to align themselves with the Japanese.

& organize guerrillas after

 

[CalBear]

Also keep in mind that unlike with Germany and the USSR, the Japanese didn't have the goal of exterminating the Chinese or enslaving them from the very beginning; what they wanted was to keep ahead of it by keeping it beaten down or disunited among some puppets. It was through the escalation of belligerence that eventually it effectively became a war of extermination. The Japanese did not do what they did according to political policy, rather, the insanity was largely military.

The Japanese didn't have a written policy of brutality, it was a racist way of thinking going back to the end time of the Shogunate, one that extended well beyond the military. Look at Korea and Formosa. Look at the remarkably casual brutality that was displayed across China, or shown toward PoW of every nationality, hell, look at the brutality showered upon the private soldier in the IJA.

The artificial "Samurai" mentality that the Ultra Nationalists, led by the military, especially the Army, made it so everyone who was not Japanese, and among Japanese, of equal status, nothing more than meat.

The fact that the Japanese didn't have Einsatzgruppen and factory style Death Camps doesn't mean that they were not committing genocide. They were simply doing it the old fashioned way, with bayonets and fire (much like other conquerors over the ages, up to and including the U.S. against the Plains Indian nations) against their "inferiors". The advantage that the IJA had was industrialization, which allowed for a bigger death total per man year of effort than any previous campaign.

The real difference between the Reich and Imperial Japan was that the Reich had better tailors.

 

[LeX]

Those are all true and fair points. But I'd say that the Japanese and Nazi fanaticisms, while they did support very similar wartime behavioral patterns, were not altogether the same and that the differences do carry with them some legitimate potential behind them when one is exploring PoDs and which direction the butterflies might point.

The Japanese army was not always the raping, looting horde that it was in 1937. And it was not out of control. As I mentioned earlier, it treated Russian and German POWs with respect and in accordance with international treaties. In the Boxer Rebellion its soldiers were instructed not to loot or rape on pain of death, a order they followed until the looting done by Western soldiers made it "acceptable". I am not yet sure, since I'm not done with the book that has told me the above, when the ultra-nationalist samurai indoctrination really started getting out of hand, but I do not think it was inevitable. In the 20s the Japanese were still making rational decisions about China. Their rule over Taiwan while not a good thing was as far as colonialism goes rather successful at making the locals feel more or less okay.

What you need the Japanese to be able to do, or have the fortune of encountering, is either keeping the KMT from successfully uniting North and South China or if the whole thing splinters by itself due to an alternate path. Instead of being a successful all-China party, have the KMT confined to the southern Guangdong region. Perhaps the ROC might exist on paper but in reality it would be a fractured state of contending warlords calling themselves political parties. A lot can be done to keep China from uniting for a long time. It is something that has happened several times historically.

All the Japanese have to do in this scenario (PoD could be in mid or late twenties) is keep and expand their concessions and economic enterprises in the 20s and 30s, exploiting the mainland indirectly. They did this in OTL as well. It was mainly the supremacy of the KMT, and then as the last straw their pact with the CCP, that led the Japanese to believe that they had to go into all-out conflict in order to maintain their position. Anyhow, if Japan stays more or less peaceful with their enterprises in China, and if China remains a political mess, it can profit.

Then we have the problem: Won't WW2 be butterflied? It might to a certain extent but by the late 1920s (assumed that is the PoD) a failure of the KMT probably isn't going to prevent a major war of some kind to erupt in Europe in the 30s or 40s. And Japan has had America in sights for some time already. Moreover, China that is neither united nor in a state of war with Japan would still be subject to competition, economic or otherwise from other powers. In order to protect its milking cow, Japan would have the same impetus it already did to keep strengthening its military force, and from here they could still easily if not inevitably come to blows with a major Western power. Then, provided they are not the aggressor, they can fight and win a limited war for an enlarged sphere of influence that gives them China and some portion of SE Asia. Since they have not felt cornered by Chinese unification, nor broken their aim to be a great power of Western standard, they may very well do a better job of not brutalizing everyone they touch, perhaps more "Taiwan" and less "Nanjing", more semicolonialism and less "three-alls". With a PoD in the 20s this shouldn't be impossible.