Would it actually have gone better for the IJN had they not done Pearl Harbor? It was Yamamato's idea. Originally they wanted to build up the western Pacific which may have helped them maintain their oil supply longer. Additionally, Pearl Harbor was intended to make the Americans want to fight less, but achieved the opposite. Obviously we all know the deciding factor would always be America's industry and logistics, and there really wasn't a way to win; however, I wonder if the Japanese could have negotiated a ceasefire with still some holdings I'm the Pacific had they stuck with their original defensive plan and not let Yamamato go forward. That said I do think he was absolutely correct with Pearl Harbor and Midway, and in his overall assessment. It's just interesting to wonder if America had been less motivated, ironically without Pearl Harbor occurring, would the IJN actually have had better luck all things considered.
If Imperial Japan had stuck with fricking around in China and not chimped out in the rest of SE Asia, they may have been able to sit out a war with the US while it was focused on events in Europe. Though one has to wonder if Hilter would have declared war on the US had they not declared war in the Japs first.
>entire economy grinds to a halt with no fuel
>what if they were on the Allies side and not the axis
>dude just invade an enemy stronghold at the very ass end of your logistical train
I'm drunk as a preemptive excuse
Where are they getting the fuel and the Japanese knew they would be going after the Americans eventually.
>I wonder if the Japanese could have negotiated a ceasefire
no
what if they offered assitance to UK and joined on their side?
Japs shoulda brought in the Yamato and taken over Hawaii, then pushed to shell USA's West Coast.
95% of USA's West Coast would be in range of battleship's guns.
No capital ships were lost to airpower alone in WW2 if they had ANY CAP.
Carriers only worked because they were out of range of land based aircraft you moron. Carriers can only carry somewhere around 50 or so planes per ship and will get swarmed by shitloads of planes from the mainland that can use any highway as an impromptu runway.
Also what
they will run out of munitions and fuel too
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Dash
another example of real WW2 capital ships VS aircraft
this was well into 1942 and RAF all ramped up after winning Battle of Briton.
in Dec 1941 USA really didn't have shit for aircraft, and even less shit for trained effective pilots.
I'm not saying anchor off the coast, but a shelling raid up and down the coast would be doable.
Channel Dash is a poor example of trying to argue that surface ships can operate near land. In addition to taking major damage to a good portion of the fleet, the German ships had land based air cover, the British only realized the Germans were there halfway through the dash and the German ships only had a few hundred miles to go before reaching safety compared to several thousand. Also add to that fact that a majority of the West coast is a terrible target for coastal bombardment
no shit brain its an epic example because not only were they forced into a 20 mile wide channel, they were known to be trapped in a narrow channel off Brit's coast for extended period, with no way to put any distance between them and RAF and RN heavy units, coastal subs, etc, etc. IIRC much of the damage was from mines in the narrow and shallow channel.
My point is that the Channel Dash only succeeded due to frickup after frickup on the part of the British, not the inherent resiliency of capital ships in that environment. To say it proves that is a bad idea because pretty much everything went the Germans way that day, from weather to ammo supply to communication failures, which isn't something you can count on.
>no way to put any distance between them and RAF and RN heavy units, coastal subs
None of that was present, just some torpedo boats and obsolete destroyers so I'm not sure your point.
Pearl Harbor was at the very edge of what a Japanese striking force could reach, during the Dec 7 attack several Japanese carriers had to carry additional barrels of oil on deck to extend their range. They had absolutely no logistical capability to maintain an invasion.
Yeah just how that tiny Marine airstrip on Guadalcanal gave up as soon as Japan sailed a few battleships up to it right?
Doesn't mean the Japanese shouldn't have tried a landing. Take Hawaii and you force what remained of the US Pacific Fleet back to the West Coast. It definitely would have been a very costly invasion but success might have won the war.
Look at something like Okinawa, an invasion where the Americans had sea and air supremacy 24/7, God-tier logistics, Shermans vs nothing and a dozen other factors going their way, and they still took months to capture a smaller, less important island with heavy casualties. An invasion of Hawaii would require a logistical network that did not exist. It needed an amphibious warfare capability that did not exist. It needed a fleet train and ship sustainment system that the Americans wouldn't have until years later. And all of this would be thousands of miles from a square inch of Japanese soil that could support it. Everyone mocks Sealion for being fanciful bullshit, this is worse.
The only way it functions is if the Americans are just so demoralized they instantly surrender without a fight. We saw how that idea played out.
>the Channel Dash only succeeded due to frickup after frickup on the part of the British
no
>pretty much everything went the Germans way that day, from weather to ammo supply to communication failures, which isn't something you can count on.
yes
the Channel Dash was pure nat d20 luck for the Germans
you don't know jack about the Channel itself, weather has always been a massive concern which is why the British for nearly 300 years prior always made extensive anti-invasion preparations in case the planets aligned and the RN couldn't stop a landing
>Channel Dash is a poor example of trying to argue that surface ships can operate near land
the Channel, the Norwegian coast and the Arctic convoys are some of the only places which had such intense weather conditions that naval aviation of any kind, carrier or land-based, could not reliably operate until the mid-late 20th century when all-weather combat jets became ubiquitous
lol no
lol no
> nazis humiliate bongs everywhere for 3 years straight
> "b-but the channel dash was pure luck"
The channel dash was just another day at the office for the blackadder bongs.
Bong naval aviation was trash throughout the war, and competent forces would have devastated the channel dash.
Agreed attempt a landing and take over Hawaii cut off Midway it's only a matter of weeks till the entire garrison would be forced to surrender there. Then dump everything into building Hawaii into an unsinkable aircraft carrier. Maybe just maybe you can force the Americans to reconsider attacking you directly and instead focus all efforts on Europe. Giving Japan the time it needs to consolidate their holdings in the Pacific around 2-3 years. The sue for peace and maybe get to keep some of it.
once a battleship (and maybe a cruiser or two) sets up off coast its Game Over and you could land an official in a row boat to accept the surrender.
Pretty much the whole point of HMS Hood doing a world wide "Good Will" cruise to remind the Colonies who calls the shots.
also, the Japs shoulda blown the Panama Canal, one way or another.
One of the reasons we locked up the Japs, besides there pattern of using their Ex-Pats in the other dozen invasions they'd just done, was that our War Planners figured a very few guys with simple explosives could cut USA in half by blowing a few key bridges and rail tunnels.
the frick kinda fanfic is this? might as well imagine an I-400 sailing up the Potomac and shell the White House
Literal weeaboo physics ignoring anime fanfic.
>What if they just did a bunch of stuff that they didnt ever have the resources to do
>and then projected an industrial base they didn't have all the way the way across the entire pacific ocean to force terms on an economy 50 times their size with blood in its eyes and revenge in its heart.
>Surely they just didnt antagonize and provoke America enough!
>bombing them un provoked and unannounced, murdering servicemen and civilians wantonly as they woke up wasnt enough!
>They needed to occupy the Islands and commit further atrocities to the civil population of Hawaii directly and kill tens of thousands instead of 2400.
>That will get the giant we have enraged to do what we demand of him!.
The Japs in 1940 and the Weebs of today profoundly misunderstand America.
We are the laziest, most aloof and lethargic people in the world we will ignore literally anything. Until you attack us and kill people in some way we deem offensive, then we turn into the most violent warlike people in the world and burn whoever offended us to ash before going right back to sleep. WEve done it several times and people keep mistaking our "no fricks given" attitude for weakness.
We are so intrinsicly powerful that we do not need to throw tantrums over slights and threats. Us vs any other nation is like a full grown man being punched by a woman.
We started the war with 6 carriers, we lost like 20 carriers over the course of the war and ended the war with 104 Carriers.
There is no version of events in which japan win.
They lost their minute their war plans depended on taking stuff from us.
>The USA was going to attack them anyways
Like I said, delusion and profound misunderstanding.
There was ZERO political will to enter the war in the US. NO ONE wanted it except FDR and the President cannot declare war.
The Japs handed FDR a excuse and Churchill was quoted as saying "Thank god, we have won the war" in response.
>The Japs handed FDR a excuse and Churchill was quoted as saying "Thank god, we have won the war" in response.
>Mr President, Japs are heading to Pearl Harbor!
>fake and gay!
911 moment...
>surely they wouldn't be this moronic
>they were, in fact, this moronic
The IJN would never ever have been able to take Hawaii and hold it.
Utterly impossible, the raid was stretching their logistics capability to the utter maximum; invading and holding Hawaii is historic-fantasy tier.
>No capital ships were lost to airpower alone in WW2 if they had AN.... ACK!
Dude, maybe they should have like attacked and invaded San Diego too. Like, why didn't they even try an ambphibious assault of Los Angeles? Wow I'm smart as frick I didn't even Google this shit and I'm smarter than these dumb Japanese guys heh
>No capital ships were lost to airpower alone in WW2 if they had ANY CAP.
have you not been informed about the battle of fricking Midway?
Things would have gone better for them if they hadn't gone to war with the US in the first place.
If the japs just attacked the bongs and left the US alone, they would have been better off, perhaps for years, maybe longer.
>Originally they wanted to build up the western Pacific which may have helped them maintain their oil supply longer
They'd have to grab a whole bloody lot of shit from the US' friends and allies to have that oil supply in the first place. Just assuming the US wouldn't object violently to that seems like a rather risky bet.
Of course, to the Japanese the war had in many ways already started back in 1854. They had seen what the colonial powers had done to everyone around them, and they had felt the first encroachment of colonialism themselves in the trade deals the US had forced upon them at gun point. As far as they could tell just sitting by and not making a fuss wasn't an option, that'd just get you conquered whenever someone felt like it. To remain their own it seemed that they had to become powerful enough to fight it out with the big boys. The path to such power was to become the colonial overlord of their corner of the world, but since the US was also a major up-and-coming power in the region (having forcibly ejected Spain form the Philippines for example) it seemed unlikely that Japan could get what they wanted without colliding head-first with American ambitions. Then to make matters worse the US was seen as taking Russia's side in the peace negotiations after the Russo-Japanese war (whether that was true being a different matter), and worse still when Japan got their colonial plans underway in China the US went and slapped them with an oil embargo that was about to make the Japanese military run out of fuel in a hurry. All of this taken together and a fight with the US seemed both inevitable and, if Japan wanted to not become just another brutally exploited colony, necessary. Given that would you prefer the fight to start on your enemy's terms, or with a devastating surprise blow?
>had they stuck with their original defensive plan
The US oil embargo had put Japan on a pretty short countdown to "no fuel", at which point they wouldn't have been able to put up any fight of note defensively or offensively. So that too made sitting still and not making a fuzz an unviable option.
Not that the method was devoid of madness of course. Japan in the twenties was basically governed by assassination, and the psychological impact of Pearl Harbor was obviously grossly miscalculated. I rather doubt Pearl Harbor was all that fatal of a decision though, after some initial teething problems ("our italians") the Americans fought well enough in Africa and Europe too after all.
Too bad the bongs never managed to fight well enough, and not at all in the Pacific.
They were still fricked either way because they would have run out of oil. The real question is what would have happened if they left China and French Indochina alone like the US had asked.
The real question is why the US felt the need to stop them at all. We'd be a lot better off today if they'd been allowed to trample China into dirt
True. The japs would run out of steam soon, if the US let them be.
China was a quagmire they would never have been able to win. We could have just let them have at it
>real question is why the US felt the need to stop them at all
Operation Barbarossa. There was a fear that the continued success of Germany's offensive into Russia would lead to Japan making a move to claim Russian oil fields. By cutting off Japanese oil imports Japan would have faced the possibility of trying to sustain a protracted ground campaign against Russia on a massive time limit.
>Yamamoto himself knew it was over when none of the bombers reported hits on any carriers.
Are we repeating fuddlore?
I'm sorry, but you there is a limit to the amount of evil you can get away with
>continues to ally itself and hardcore simp for the third, most vile, delinquent that started the war together with the germans and nipps
after many years of pondering this question as isolationism is a natural position for burgers seems it really does boil down to who the pres is/was. Anything internal power structure wise is carefully divided in separation of powers and decision making. Outer policy wise the us president has near dictatorial powers and can even wage war without nobodys permission for a short vile. Reason is that when it was formed they did not have much in the way of hostile outside interference, occasional imperial bong meddling aside, and all the focus was on creating a not kingdom republic as was envisioned by those designing the system.
in ww2 case the wheelchair crippled fdr is a well known closeted marxist, together with his crew, and thus the absolute raging boner for imperialist germany and nipps but weird simping for vatnik union that was just as awful if not more then the other two. Pearl harbor merely gave him the excuse he needed to gather enough voter support at home to jump directly into the combat. Material aid was a thing for many years before the event
literal moron. They were fighting a nationalist government.
Chang Kai Snek is who the US is fighting for symbolically against the CCP to this day. If the nips hadn't invaded china would still have european legations (which Japan liquidated. very based and honorary ayran) and a nationalist junta influenced by European powers to this day.
Ofc that also would mean the US not fricking over European imperialism with the Suez. Thanks Ike you homosexual.
No you don't get it. China needs to stay in at best warlords era state because otherwise there's too many of the damn bugmen and they start being a problem. Communist China isn't even that bad though, imagine if they were actually competent and democratic, US would have been cooked long ago.
It's West vs The Rest, Europe and US cannot hope to maintain their status without aggresive imperialism and colonialism. Europe stopped and look how that turned out for them, practically US colonies.
>European imperialism with the Suez
The eurocucks fricked themselves looooooooong before that. Now shut up and obey your globohomosexual masters. You choose this, remember.
Because America had imperial designs in China as well. WWII was not about good vs evil. It was a turf war among gangsters. America was late to the Imperialism game and after winning the war against Spain, was chomping at the bits to stake their claim.
>after winning the war against Spain, was chomping at the bits to stake their claim
50 years later, while in the process of granting the Philippines their independence?
It was really the only play they had. The US was never going to not support the European colonial claims that the Japanese were threatening, so war was inevitable. To rethink the Japanese moves in WWII is to rethink everything that led up to it, starting with all the bullshit political maneuvering the Japanese did internally for years before. You would need to go back decades to reprioritize Japanese Imperial ambitions in such a way that the US and European interests aligned with them in such a way that Japan does not get crushed by the US.
Dumb Nips should have nuked Los Angeles first, you cannot have any moral qualms in a fight to the death.
They pussied out and paid the price.
>Nuked
Since when did the nips have nukes in 1941?
Yeah, I remember the alternate reality where the Japs ever had a single fricking nuke ever. That shit was crazy, you should take your lithium moron
The only way the things could have gone better is if Pearl Harbour actually had the carriers the day they attacked and they managed to sink them. Yamamoto himself knew it was over when none of the bombers reported hits on any carriers.
Japan would have been better off not declaring war on America in the first place. America might still have intervened (i.e. when inevitable war with the Dutch or British happened, because they had the oil Japan needed) or just given China a lot of material support, but there would have been far, far less support at home. What little damage Japan managed to deal with the surprise attack on Pearl Harbour wasn't worth the enormous level of domestic support for war it created in the US.
The war in Europe was already unpopular and most American troops didn't want to be there, but the war in the Pacific was VERY popular, because Japan had actually attacked them + wasn't at war with commies. If America was just going there to bail out the Dutch or whatever, I don't think there would have been very much enthusiasm and Japan might actually have been able to accomplish their theoretical goal of getting America to back off, if they were able to inflict some damage in a defensive war rather than one they started.
But that would depend on a realistic appraisal of Japan's military capability relative to America's - which many Japanese commanders had, understanding it was a suicidal war, but the top brass wouldn't hear it.
This.
But neither Japs nor Hitler understood nuances of US internal politics. They perceived US as themselves, able to start wars at flick of teh fingers when it was not the case foe US.
I think Hitler understood the US well enough. Thing is, the vast bulk of America's meaningful contribution to the European theatre was Lend-Lease. In terms of actual combat, they didn't do a whole lot, relatively speaking (that's not to say "America didn't fight", just that they didn't tip the scales of the war by their direct combat - Lend-Lease is what determined WW2), and Germany's eastern front was already collapsing when D-Day happened. If anything declaring war was a rather good call since the US presence in continental Europe was basically the limit to how far east the Russians could push; without a formal declaration of war, Germany would still have lost, but it's likely the Russians would have pushed at least to the French border, possibly even through France itself and set up a communist government there.
>and Germany's eastern front was already collapsing when D-Day happened.
Vatniks propaganda.
Eastern Front actually collapsed when Germans send 80% of their working tanks to stop Allies on the West.
Before D-Day soviets were on steady relative casualty course to run out of manpower.
The Eastern Front was already lost by early 1942 with the complete failure of Barbarossa. It didn’t seem that obvious to outside observers at the time but now we know that the Germans themselves understood that they were cooked and everything past that point was a desperate struggle to somehow salvage the situation.
>The Eastern Front was already lost by early 1942 with the complete failure of Barbarossa
Soviet casualties say otherwise. They literally run out of Russian meat in the beginning of the 1944 (human waves finally paid themselves) and started drafted previously protected industrial workers and Asians (westerners dont actually know by Soviet didn't draft Asians in 1941-1943 because considered them politically unreliable).
The German high command understood that Germany could never, ever hope to compete with the numbers the USSR could mobilize so it was imperative to topple the Soviet government before the winter of 1941. They deemed the winter to be the deadline because if the USSR survived into the winter their forces would be forced to stop while the USSR reached into the vast territory and mobilize an insurmountable flood of meat — which is exactly what happened. The fact that the German high command knew it was exposed in Nuremberg.
Did you even read my post?
Go read it and rewrite your answer.
? I did, and it remains irrelevant so I repeated the relevant factors. The goal of Barbarossa was to topple the USSR, and it failed. I explained why that failure led to Germany’s inevitable defeat and explained that the German high command KNEW that would be the outcome which is exactly why Barbarossa had such an ambitious target date. If the USSR was still there by the time winter set in = defeat. That’s all there was to it.
>soviets losing is irrelevant factor so I just repeated commie blabbering
Don't bother to answer anymore.
> complete failure of Barbarossa
they wiped out most of the home grown offensive capacity of the red army in the first year. Capacity created in the previous decades. Since the red army was stacked against the border in attack formations looking for an opportunity to stab the germans in the back
without the lend lease simp aid stalemate was guaranteed as vatniks lacked the food, the ammo, the wheels and the fuel for any serious deep penetration
Irrelevant. The German high command knew they had until winter or else the USSR would mobilize a completely insurmountable numeric advantage while their forces were stuck for the winter. And that is exactly what happened, and everything past that point was nothing but the Germans desperately trying to unfrick the situation.
>Since the red army was stacked against the border in attack formations looking for an opportunity to stab the germans in the back
Nah. Soviets fully stuffed new lands because of the thief mind guilty conscious. "We stole land but stolen can be easily taken back, its not mine" So they stuffed this new soviet territories with troops to protect them from changing hands again.
Best time for striking Germany in teh back was during 1940 German offensive in France when Soviet border was protected by just 11 German infantry reserve divisions. If soviets didn't strike back then they would never consider their relative forces strength enough for invasion after that.
I'm tired of seeing this shit circulated.
Soviet attack preparation nonsense is literal Nazi apologia. The invasion was part of their greater plans, not some preemptive strike. The Red Army was disorganized, in the middle of reform, and deployed here and there across Poland, Ukraine, Belarus etc. in peacetime groupings at the time of the German invasion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_offensive_plans_controversy
The entire modern legend stems its roots from one guy who pulled it out of his ass.
>Many other western scholars, such as Teddy J. Uldricks,[33] Derek Watson,[34] Hugh Ragsdale,[35] Roger Reese,[36] Stephen Blank,[37] and Robin Edmonds,[38] and Ingmar Oldberg[39] agree that the Suvorov's major weakness is "that the author does not reveal his sources" and rely on circumstantial evidence.[40] The historian Cynthia A. Roberts is even more categorical and claims that Suvorov's writings have "virtually no evidentiary base".[41]
The US was actively fighting a war with Germany in the Atlantic as of 1941. The US was at war in all meaningful ways except legally.
>The US was at war in all meaningful ways except legally.
There are different states of war and doing some subs hunting with minuscule casualties is on completely different level comparing to full air campaign and another different level to full scale land invasion.
It all commie Marxist propaganda steaming from their "objective laws of historical development" that states that history cant be changed and ends with communism.
Japs were put in camps because in the several months after Pearl Harbor when US based Japs were ONLY source of intell about WTF was going in 98% of Japan (Japs were allowed and did visit Japan frequently and allowed free travel, unlike anyone else), not a single "loyal US citizen" give any FACTUAL intell on Japan.
The Jap Govt made the right call in allowing "US citizen" Japs to visit Japan as full Japs and learn where RR lines and airbases, etc etc all were. They all stayed 110% loyal to Japan, including BEFORE sent to camps.
Also because a couple planes were shot down at Pearl Harbor and Japanese Hawaiians immediately decided to help the pilots.
you're moronic
Got to hand it to the Japs, they made some A E S T H E T I C as frick ships
For real. The forms followed some really creative ideas on how to maximize their few advantages. Obviously they were inexcusably averse toward radar and sonar which, similar to the industry and logistics of America, was always going to be an insurmountable disadvantage; but, all their kit was just so beautiful in comparison.
This is what I mean. We KNOW that there would never be a remotely plausible win condition beyond "make peace before getting nuked," but I srsly believe there's an alternate timeline without Pearl Harbor where Japan still has some random territories in the western Pacific because they took the Dutch and British holdings, dug in like a tic, and didn't inspire such anger from Americans as to motivate a need for total unconditional victory.
But realistically, for many reasons well stated in this thread, even that would have been miraculous.
Yes. They could have focused on seizing british and dutch possessions and pushing through SEA. They would obtain their oil and mineral resources and not inspire the US. Without the sneak attack the american people were NOT interested in war and would likely not be roused for at least two more years. By this point russia would have collapsed if not the UK as well.
>It needed an amphibious warfare capability that did not exist.
The other points you made were correct, but Japan had some of the best amphibious warfare capabilities early in the war and a decent fleet of landing ships. A bunch of countries post war structured their entire Marine Corps around Imperial Japanese amphibious warfare doctrine.
>Japan had some of the best amphibious warfare capabilities early in the war
I wouldn't disagree, but it still wasn't to the degree required
>Would it actually have gone better for the IJN had they not done Pearl Harbor?
Yamamoto knew before the whole thing that Japan can't win the war. It was a bold, brilliant stratagem and it probably would have worked like they intended if the carriers were home.
No, they had to attack when they did.
FDR was determined to go to war in europe and deal with Japan. It was going to happen, just later.
The american public was against it, but the economy had already been structured around building up vehicles and equipment for war.
The Japanese knew the usa would only get further ahead the longer they waited.
The USA was going to attack them anyways, but maybe 2-3 years later with more ships, planes, and bombs, better weapons, and after the japs had suffered economic failures from lack of resources and attrition in china.
USA would have stomped them out much more thoroughly with another few years to prepare. They only did as well as they did by choosing to start the fight sooner.
The nazis and soviets would also have been even more drained a few years later and easier for the usa to crush.
No Pearl Harbor would have gone INFINITELY worse for the IJN. Pearl Harbor was nothing short of a miracle of luck and timing which gave the IJN almost free rein for the better part of a year. There’s a very good reason why the Japanese committed to such a risky maneuver to begin with. The ultimate failure of the IJN was national, ie Japan just didn’t have the industry or economy to complete their imperial domain even without the U.S. getting in their face. The only chance they had was if the U.S. supported them at the U.S. simply was never going to do that.
Midway was 6 months later dude. Japan would have had YEARS to stomp indonesia, australia and any other commonwealth land with next to zero resistance.
They didn’t have years, the US was already getting into a war footing against Japan. There’s a REASON why they launched such a risky operations.
sanctions are one thing but just like today no one in america was going to die just so the homosexual dutch could keep their colonies. basically every war we have fought since the spanish american war only happened because of some bullshit incident that convinced the public we had been hit first. without that excuse people would rather stay home.
I read a book that claimed there was an army faction that wanted to ignore america and invade siberia with germany attacking from the other side, but the molotov-ribbentrop pact dumpstered that plan so they had to go ahead with the navy plan to capture the philippines. so according to this theory it's all hitler's fault.
>Could japan in any conceivable way won a full out war against the US?
No moron
Peace with the US was not an option. That's why the US rejected Japanese offers to come to an agreement over China, why the US press went all in on killing the Japs before Pearl, and why things like the Flying Tigers were established. Whether they liked it or not, war was coming.
The only option to preserve peace was to withdraw entirely from China, which would've caused a violent coup in Japan. So not actually an option.
They could have passed on Pearl, since it really wouldn't make much of a difference, of course. For that mattery Pearl was awful, with Japanese pilots high on themselves plinking battleships with 250 kg bombs instead of attacking cruisers, and the actual AP bombs having a 60% dud rate.
In an ideal world, where McArthur was in charge, the US would respond to the invasion of the Philippines (which was necessary unless Japan wanted Taiwan to get bombed by B-17s and its supply lines to French Indochina and Malays cut) by rushing the USN there only to get massacred by the Japs. Free reign until '44.
But McArthur wasn't in charge, and the US military leadership was a lot more resistant to stupid politicians proposing idiotic plans than the Brits were. The US would attack when they were ready and not a day earlier.
Still, even so, Midway was avoidable. It was not, in fact, a good idea to sail the Japanese navy to an American base where the Americans would have numerical superiority in the air, and Hawaii's fuel depots next door.
The play to make was to keep pushing for the Solomon islands, where American logistics were a lot more tenuous and even exchanges were possible, as demonstrated historically.
It won't win the Japs the war, but it can delay the yanks by maybe half a year.
Honestly their best bet was to just go for the Dutch East Indies and Malaya and gamble that isolationism would prevent FDR from declaring war on them over it
>but FDR said he would and also it leaves your supply lines hopelessly exposed to American interdiction
Yes and yes
But it's the best bad bet Japan had available
This. With such strategy they had chance to win if amerians fumble and trip over their shoe lasses. That was possible.
Going total war with US left no chance to win, even if US sustain tactical defeats they would eventually win through numbers spam, you cant win this war, no chances here.
Considering that the ABDC (later just called Allied forces) forces in the West Pacific fell rapidly anyway, probably this would not have made much of a difference. Pearl Harbour also didn't make *that* much of a difference considering key infastructure and aircraft carriers were not targetted and it was still used as the main forward base.
>It was Yamamato's idea
No
He was forced into it, he had been the strongest and most powerful voice AGAINST going to war
Having been given his marching orders however he proceeded to make the best out of a bad thing, like a good general
The Pearl Harbor plan was really the only thing that could be done given the moronic requirements Tojo et al laid down
>I wonder if the Japanese could have negotiated a ceasefire with still some holdings I'm the Pacific had they stuck with their original defensive plan
There was no defensive plan at any level above Yamamoto's
The US had a chokehold on Japan’s oil supply and were restricting them pretty hard over the fricked up shit they were doing in China. The idea was to smash America’s ability to intervene militarily while they gobbled up SEA and its oil reserves and then bunker down too hard for America to realistically dismantle.
Even Yamamoto knew that they had maybe 6 months to subdue several countries, secure their resources, and build up their defences before the overwhelming American response crushes them. Everything had to go exactly right and even then it would be tenuous. The upper brass of Japan had a serious case on toxic optimism, so when they heard ‘it’s possible, but-‘ they went for it. They also had a very wrongminded conception of the American mindset, seeing the public lack of support for war as a weakness of national character and not Americans having the right to voice their opinions. As such, they thought the American public would flinch away from a sucker punch rather than, you know, get immeasurably pissed. Yamamoto knew what the reaction would be, but even Japan’s head tard wrangler could only do so much.
>Pearl Harbor was intended to make the Americans want to fight less, but achieved the opposite
There's no eventuality where the IJN realistically survives. Yamamoto's plan was most preferable of the realistic alternatives: Japan was going to war with the Allies, they needed oil and they could not get it without war. Pearl Harbor allowed them to claim one success after another for almost an entire year, as Yamamoto predicted. After that, as American industry geared up, it was predictably all downhill. WOULD it have gone better if the IJN cut their losses and sued for peace in 1940 and retained their holdings? Yes. But real life is not HoI 4 and no imperial power ever stops when the going is good, that's why they're an imperial power.
A great deal of that success wasn't dependent on the attack on Pearl Harbor, the string successes stopped around halfway through the year and the going wasn't that great in China by 1940.
Japan and Germany arguably suffered from the same affliction: Russia Autism. In Japan's case, if they had just concentrated on non-Russian Asia, they would have been in a materially stronger position to invade Russia (and Pacific—in both senses of the word—America) later.
>if they had just concentrated on non-Russian Asia, they would have been in a materially stronger position to invade
In mid 1941 China was being Lendleased and they were being embargoed, they had already overstepped their bounds in the eyes of the British and USA. That means they would have had to give up some or all of what they had gotten, and they were unwilling to.
If they sued for peace with China at that point I think the best they could have held on to would be Taiwan, Korea, and maybe Manchuria, and they weren't happy with that. Would you?
>Would you?
If I was Tojo in 1941 I guess not, on account of Japanese delusion. I'm hindsight it would have been a good starting point though.
They'd just started a war to get the rest of China. It's exactly the same as Russia being told today to roll back to the 2021 border. The reputational loss (to say nothing of material) would be significant, both at home and abroad..
Also, Taiwan and Korea didn't have much in the way of key strategic resources, e.g. petroleum, metals. Not even much pasture or any cash crops, just basic agricultural land
That's why I said "in hindsight". Of course, indulging in counterfactuals at any hypothetical resolution is problematic. But ROK and Taiwan have grown rich in spite of the constraints you stated. So has Japan, for that matter.
On the matter of petrochemicals specifically, weren't there enough accessible reserves for Japan to exploit in the 40s?
>But ROK and Taiwan have grown rich in spite of the constraints you stated. So has Japan, for that matter.
with great difficulty, and bootstrapped by American tech and trade (which might be restricted in a hypothetical scenario where Japan had shown its belligerence and been forced to back down), and helped by the IT revolution and resulting late 20th century shift away from heavy industry to a majority service economy, which plays to their strengths.
remember, post-WW1 relations between Japan and the British and Americans steadily deteriorated, and Japan was perceived as the next major source of conflict besides Soviet Russia. the naval rearmament and naval treaties of the late 20s / early 30s were all borne with the idea of an Anglo-Japanese war in mind.
p.s.
>On the matter of petrochemicals specifically, weren't there enough accessible reserves for Japan to exploit in the 40s?
none which are significant so far as I'm aware