WI Japan Only Invades the DEI's?

[tallthinkev]

Instead of going to all the bother of fighting everyone and losing as soon as the first shot is fired, The Dutch East Indies are the only target?
This will not stop the US and UK from joining in somewhere down the line, yet 100,000's of men will still be able to fight in China and maybe win once the supply of oil and rubber have been taken.
Could Japan take this route or were they always on a course that they have to go all in?

Type about this for a bit.

 

[Deleted member 109224]

The British and Americans already guaranteed the DEI protection.

Meanwhile Australia would freak out if the Japanese took the DEI.

 

[GlobalHumanism]

Instead of going to all the bother of fighting everyone and losing as soon as the first shot is fired, The Dutch East Indies are the only target?
This will not stop the US and UK from joining in somewhere down the line, yet 100,000's of men will still be able to fight in China and maybe win once the supply of oil and rubber have been taken.
Could Japan take this route or were they always on a course that they have to go all in?

Type about this for a bit.

Not really doable as bypassing the Philippines would leave a semi hostile power flanking there critical DEI shipping lanes. What's to stop the US from stationing the entire Pacific fleet in the middle of it and daring the Japanese to attack?

Also the IWA had to eventually attack the Brits because cutting the Burma road was key to eventual victory in China.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

The British and Americans already guaranteed the DEI protection.

The Brits might follow through on that, bit have fun getting a declaration of war through Congress to protect a European colony.

I would assume that FDR would spend the next 4-6 months building up infrastructure in Hawaii, Midway, Wake and the Philippines. Remember, Macarthur insisted that by April 1942, he'd have the PI ready to hold off any attack.

Once everything was in place, FDR orders aggressive patrolling to provoke the Japanese into attacck.

With all Buffalos out of service, and forward bases being well supplied with Wildcats and Corsairs, with subs hunting out of Wake instead of Hawaii, the Japanese will be defeated a lot earlier.

But. Because they won't have attacked Pearl, and because B-29s aren't available yet, the peace treaty might let them keep Taiwan, perhaps.

 

[Pelranius]

The Brits might follow through on that, bit have fun getting a declaration of war through Congress to protect a European colony.

I would assume that FDR would spend the next 4-6 months building up infrastructure in Hawaii, Midway, Wake and the Philippines. Remember, Macarthur insisted that by April 1942, he'd have the PI ready to hold off any attack.

Once everything was in place, FDR orders aggressive patrolling to provoke the Japanese into attacck.

With all Buffalos out of service, and forward bases being well supplied with Wildcats and Corsairs, with subs hunting out of Wake instead of Hawaii, the Japanese will be defeated a lot earlier.

But. Because they won't have attacked Pearl, and because B-29s aren't available yet, the peace treaty might let them keep Taiwan, perhaps.

Japan won't be allowed to keep Taiwan (due to the latter's location next to SE Asia).

 

[mspence]

Japan gets involved in a bloody stalemate in China after the Brits send Indian & British troops in.
Alternatively:
FDR maybe moves the fleet to California, depriving the Japanese of their primary target in delaying American entry into the war. They go ahead & invade the Philippines instead as some feared they would.

 

[MatthewDB]

By Dec 1941 is was quite evident, and by spring 1942 it is clear to the world, including Japan that Germany (and Italy) is getting its ass kicked in the Soviet Union, North Africa, the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic. By spring 1943 it’s a frigging mess. Meanwhile the thirteen Essex class ordered before Pearl Harbour are now beginning to enter service. Japan is being out built, and it depends on submarine-enticing tankers to transit Philippine and Malayan waters to get its ill-gotten DEI oil back to Japan.

The likely spark for the USA will be a desperate Germany declaring unrestricted submarine warfare on the USA. That drags the US Congress into war, and soon Japan will be forced into the fight. If that’s in 1943 the IJN is massively outgunned and doomed. The IJA is already on the run in China since Britain’s Burma Road has continued its supply to China unmolested.

Japan needs more than DEI oil. It needs iron, copper, steel, tin, rubber and food for its people. Forcibly taking the DEI without securing the Pacific doesn’t help them.

 

[HJ Tulp]

Instead of going to all the bother of fighting everyone and losing as soon as the first shot is fired, The Dutch East Indies are the only target?
This will not stop the US and UK from joining in somewhere down the line, yet 100,000's of men will still be able to fight in China and maybe win once the supply of oil and rubber have been taken.
Could Japan take this route or were they always on a course that they have to go all in?

Type about this for a bit.

It all depends on when the Japanese make this move. If it's at the same moment as OTL Pearl Harbour then no dice. Days before the US had guarenteed the European possessions. In private but that should have been enough, and even if not, there is no way a Japanese invasion fleet can steam across the Southern China Sea unmolested.

The situation in December 1941 was very different from a year before though. If Japan had attacked the DEI at that point - or even months later - there was nothing the British could, or the Americans would, do. The RNN might have given the IJN some surprises but the end result would never be in doubt. If the Japanese then go for full support of the Indonesian nationalists they are all set for a nice, resource and manpower supplying, puppet-regime. The big question is then if they now have enough resources to end the conflict in China before the US comes knocking. Still a vastly better move than OTL if you ask me.

 

[Parma]

The Dutch government and DEI government, was since the Russo-Japanese war of 1905 afraid of a "coup de main" by the Japanese Navy, of the DEI or a part of it. This fear was the basis for the battle ship plan of 1913 and the submarine strategy developed during the 1920ties and 1930ties.
I cannot find the documents any more, but it seam that there was a large alarm/panic of such a coup de main by the Japanese Navy in 1933. This panic resulted that all submarines and surface vessels and planes what was available in the DEI was send to the open sea and their designated patrol area's.

 

[Vitalian]

And leave a pissed off America and Britain to their rear?

 

[Citycat]

Japan's strategy in OTL was to swiftly kick out the Allies from SE Asia, and then establish control so that they could defend their gains from potential Allied counter-attacks. This relied on the element of surprise, and clearing out the Allies in the hope that they did not have the will or the strength to come back. Of course, this did not work out for them.

ITTL, tip toeing around the Allies to take the DEI, while leaving their potential foes intact and putting their own forces in the DEI in a vulnerable and over-stretched position, would be even more disastrous for the Japanese than their strategy in OTL.

 

[thaddeus]

what if they just went after the British possessions? Hong Kong, British Borneo, Malay states, and Singapore? in the book Reluctant Allies dealing with some of the naval cooperation, or lack thereof, between Germany-Japan, the KM was very concentrated on Japan seizing Singapore.

anyone have a figure for oil production from just British part of Borneo? it would be kind of threading the needle and leaving the colonies of the Axis occupied states alone, of course out of character for Japanese at the time.

 

[MatthewDB]

what if they just went after the British possessions? Hong Kong, British Borneo, Malay states, and Singapore?

Come on, how do you take Sarawak without encroaching into the DEI? There’s no chance that the IJA troops will stop at some indiscernible border line, especially since it’s DEI oil that Japan wants. But I’ll say no more, since we‘re going OT.

 

[thaddeus]

Come on, how do you take Sarawak without encroaching into the DEI? There’s no chance that the IJA troops will stop at some indiscernible border line, especially since it’s DEI oil that Japan wants. But I’ll say no more, since we‘re going OT.

the Op was asking converse, I was simply trying to state the obvious that UK was at war with Japan's nominal ally, the Japanese forces would simply have to stop at the oilfields of North Borneo, during an earlier period, they could still trade for Dutch oil?

all likely to end in larger conflict but why try to grab the "neutral state's" oil and leave British enclaves all along the way?