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The Million Dollar Questions - 1/17/2003 10:31:19 PM   
SoulBlazer

 

Posts: 839
Joined: 10/27/2002
From: Providence RI
Status: offline 		For your debating pleasure, I'd be interested in knowing your opinions and/or thoughts on the following two questions that no one has come up with a solid answer for since WWII ended:

Was the Pacific War impossible to avoid? Could anything have been done to prevent it, or was the fate of two nations fighting for control of a important area of the world combined with very different attitudes and mindsets something that could not be avoided?

Japan entered the war under no illusions of getting the United States or the other Western nations to surrender, rather, they just wanted to take as much as possible and inflict such high losses they would have to give up. After Pearl Harbor, however, this seemed very remote. As it is, Matrix made some small changes to the fighting in the Solomons in UV by (in most cases) giving a lot more fuel and supplies then Japan had and allowing Midway to be avoided. Even still, did Japan have any realsitic chances of getting what she wanted out of the Pacific War, or of 'winning' in the Solomons? Or was the nation doomed to commit, in the words of one observer before the war started, "national hara-kiri?"
Post #: 1
Re: The Million Dollar Questions - 1/17/2003 10:39:16 PM   
CapAndGown


Posts: 3206
Joined: 3/6/2001
From: Virginia, USA
Status: offline 		[QUOTE]Originally posted by SoulBlazer
[B] As it is, Matrix made some small changes to the fighting in the Solomons in UV by (in most cases) giving a lot more fuel and supplies then Japan had and allowing Midway to be avoided. [/B][/QUOTE]

Midway took place on June 4. Any scenario starting after then has Midway factored in. In scenarios that start on May 1 Midway HAS NOT HAPPENED. And it makes for a reasonable scenario to say that it will not happen. Indeed, Admiral Nagano and the Naval General staff had drawn up plans to make the South Pacific the site of the next major operation but was "persuaded" by Yamamoto to go for Midway instead. I think their is every reason to believe scn 17 is not fanatasy. Rather, if I were playing WitP, I would have used Nagano's plan, not Yamamoto's, in which case scn 17 would be precisely the situation I found myself in.
(Except for the unlimited fuel and supplies at Truk, of course.)

(in reply to SoulBlazer)
Post #: 2
- 1/17/2003 10:42:21 PM   
SoulBlazer

 

Posts: 839
Joined: 10/27/2002
From: Providence RI
Status: offline 		Okay, would you feel better if I had said "In MANY of the sec's you can avoid the effects of Midway?" :)

(in reply to SoulBlazer)
Post #: 3
- 1/17/2003 11:01:20 PM   
Feinder


Posts: 6589
Joined: 9/4/2002
From: Land o' Lakes, FL
Status: offline 		Knavey sent me this. It's an interesting link that discusses the TOTALLY lop-sided economic capabilities of the US vs. Japan. Or for that matter, US vs. every other country in the world in the 1940s.

Japan never even really stood a chance. They didn't know it, and were certainly deluded into believing that they could hang in there by their leaders towards the end. The US certainly didn't even know this sort of comparision at the time. But it speaks volumes that the US was actually gearing DOWN production in various areas by the end of 1944.

Here's the link. It a bit of reading (or you can just skim it). But I've read the whole thing, it's amazing. It even tackles the "What if Midway never happened, and in fact went completely the other way?" (loss of 3 US CVs and retention of Japan's 4). The effect? Not much. Pushes the war out another 6 months. But even if we had lost Midway, weren't about to sue for peace.

[URL=http://64.124.221.191/economic.htm]Japan was doomed before she even thought about bombing Pearl Harbor.[/URL]

-F-

(in reply to SoulBlazer)
Post #: 4
- 1/18/2003 12:34:03 AM   
PzB74


Posts: 5076
Joined: 10/3/2000
From: No(r)way
Status: offline 		The dry facts of hindsight is always convincing....
Playing the 'what if' game is the opposite approach.

Japan aimed to win a series of knock out victories that would force the US to sue for peace.
This might sound unrealistic, but that's from todays point of view.

In late 41 it seemed like Germany would defeat the Soviet Union, leaving them as masters of the entire European continent.
How would that have influenced the war in the pacific'?
Impossible to tell.

A lot of what if scenarios can be discussed, but wouldn't really get us anywhere.
The worst case scenario could always have ended up with another end than the one history provided us with....

Link:

The worst horrors of 'what if scenarios'
http://www.luft46.com/armament/abomb.html

_____________________________



"The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without"
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

(in reply to SoulBlazer)
Post #: 5
- 1/18/2003 1:02:56 AM   
rcwkent

 

Posts: 51
Joined: 11/6/2002
From: New York City
Status: offline 		Aggressive and warlike nations, such as Imperial Japan, usually believe that one devastating early strike will cower an enemy, destroy his morale and lead to a quick and easy victory.


Of course, the opposite effect always occurs.

(in reply to SoulBlazer)
Post #: 6
- 1/18/2003 1:26:40 AM   
Veldor


Posts: 1531
Joined: 12/29/2002
From: King's Landing
Status: offline 		[QUOTE]Originally posted by rcwkent
[B]Aggressive and warlike nations, such as Imperial Japan, usually believe that one devastating early strike will cower an enemy, destroy his morale and lead to a quick and easy victory.
Of course, the opposite effect always occurs. [/B][/QUOTE]

"Victory goes to those who want it the most"...

For the most part this has usually been true, assuming your willing to accept a broad definition of what "Victory" even is..
It is, after all, possible for both sides in a battle or war to feel "victorious" at its conclusion.. Perhaps not on every count or issue, but "victorious" none-the-less.

Wouldn't you say, for instance, that Saddam Hussein/Iraq was in their own way "victorious" on some accounts at the conclusion of the "Gulf War"... It's not as if they achieved absolutely nothing they set out to do... In reality I think they really achieved quite a bit of it..

But that's a seperate debate..

(in reply to SoulBlazer)
Post #: 7
US Reputation - 1/18/2003 1:35:00 AM   
dtx

 

Posts: 72
Joined: 8/13/2002
From: Pennsylvania
Status: offline 		To further rcwkent's point, the idea that the US would easily give up is an idea that much of the world has always believed - to the present day. In 1998, the "aggressive & warlike" Osama bin laden spoke of a black day for the US that would cause it to fragment into separate states:
http://www.infowar.com/survey/99/InfowarThesisCopy1.doc (it's a long download). He thought that a single devasting attack would crumble the country.

Because we put such a high premium on the value of American lives, the world often assumes we don't have the stomach to fight. In discussing this with an Afghani friend, I told her that Patton best described the American view of war; that we don't want to die fighting for our country, we want the other dumb bastard to die fighting for his.

Another aspect of this is that at the outbreak of WWII, we were quite weak. The US had an army that my vague memory says was 17th (?) largest in the world, just under that of Rumania - i.e., it was very very small.

My view on the question: The US had peacefully tried for ~10 yrs to get Japan to stop the slaughter of the Chinese. Its increasingly stringent, but peaceful, economic actions to stop Japan's aggression helped trigger the war, but were ethically the right thing to do (see R. Spector, The Eagle Against the Sun for a superb look at both the US and Jap positions before the war as well as their conduct in the war).

(in reply to SoulBlazer)
Post #: 8
- 1/18/2003 4:49:59 AM   
Knavey

 

Posts: 3052
Joined: 9/12/2002
From: Valrico, Florida
Status: offline 		Here is a link describing conduct during the war...reading it almost makes me never willing to play IJN again.

http://www.marshallnet.com/~manor/ww2/atrocity.html

Oh and don't forget the even more detailed one...

http://www2.gol.com/users/winjerd/Pwcmp1_a.htm

_____________________________

x-Nuc twidget
CVN-71
USN 87-93
"Going slow in the fast direction"

(in reply to SoulBlazer)
Post #: 9
- 1/18/2003 6:25:25 AM   
CapAndGown


Posts: 3206
Joined: 3/6/2001
From: Virginia, USA
Status: offline 		[QUOTE]Originally posted by Feinder
[B]Japan was doomed before she even thought about bombing Pearl Harbor
[/B][/QUOTE]

I wonder. Materially, yes, if the US was willing to prosecute the war until the end, or at least until it had the A-bomb. What if, however, there was no Pearl Harbor? In fact, I would argue that it was the attack on Pearl Harbor that guaranteed Japan would lose.

Let us assume that instead of attacking the US, Japan had simply decided to declare war on the UK and Netherlands without declaring war on the US. Sounds far fetched, of course, since Japan knows that this would be a causus belli for the US. But let us say that the planners in Japan, in order to win their morale victory over the allies decide to put the onus of DOWing on the US. FDR must now explain to a leery and mostly anti-war populace why the US must go to war against Japan. He would no doubt get his DOW. But would Americans be in it for the long run? I think that is questionable. The admistration would constantly have to explain why we were fighting the Japs. Of course, this explanation would be much easier to make than why we were fighting in Vietnam, for instance. Nevertheless, the reason we were fighting, to prevent Japanese hegemony in the Far East, would not be as compelling as a simple "we was bombed!" Just look at the war in Afganistan versus the war against Iraq. Afganistan was a slam dunk. Nobody (almost nobody) said boo, anywhere in the world, much less in the US. The case for war against Iraq is much tougher and one can see that Americans are much less comfortable with this one. (Please, no political arguments for or against the war. I just wanted to use this as an analogy.) I see the case that FDR would have to make as being equally hard to sustain, especially were the US doing badly.

Another problem with Pearl Harbor, besides ensuring that Americans would have the will to fight to the end, was to immediately make obsolete any thoughts of sending the battle fleet west for the "Decisive Battle." Instead, the US learned, better than Japan, the new nature of naval warfare: i.e. the supremacy of the carrier. Losing generally is a better teacher than winning!

So let us say that there is no Pearl Harbor and that America DOW's Japan. Preparedness levels on the US side will most certainly be higher. But the planners in Japan have already worked out how to conquer the PI, Wake, and Guam and I see nothing that could stop them from taking these points. So where does that leave Japan? Well the US still has its battle fleet plus its carriers. Of course, with Pearl Harbor, the US still had its carriers and its battle fleet proved to be mostly superfluous anyway. So, would the addition of some highly questionable battle wagons to the US OOB materially worsen Japan's position compared to its historic position? I think not. Indeed, there is a possibility that the US could have experienced a disaster had it tried to sortie the battle fleet westward, tied as it was to the older ideas about naval warfare.

All in all, I think a good argument can be made that it was Pearl Harbor itself that sealed the fate of Japan. In some ways this argument is similar to the one concerning why the Nazis lost to the Soviet Union. There would have been no war, obviously, if Germany had not been controlled by Nazis. But being who they were, with their ideas of racial supperiority, the Nazis ensured their defeat by their treatment of the Russian and Ukranian people.

(in reply to SoulBlazer)
Post #: 10
- 1/18/2003 6:46:07 AM   
Veldor


Posts: 1531
Joined: 12/29/2002
From: King's Landing
Status: offline 		[QUOTE]Originally posted by cap_and_gown
[B] In fact, I would argue that it was the attack on Pearl Harbor that guaranteed Japan would lose.
[/B][/QUOTE]

Yes, they knew that even then. Thus why they let it happen even though it could have been prevented. No, not some conspiracy theory, just the realities of war. Someone has to make the big decisions. People are going to die one way or the other, its just a matter of how many and when.. Immoral to let Pearl Harbor happen and those that died die? No, just unfair to those particular men and their families, but overall great for the war.

FDR knew this, that's why he let it happen. Ultimately he was making a move (or not making one) that would win the war. As time goes on, more evidence supports this.

The same is happening now with Iraq & the US. Trillions of dollars in satellite surveillance and other defense equipment and you don't think the U.S. already knows what Iraq is and isn't doing?... does and doesn't have? Of course the US knows, being a mostly desert country doesnt help them much. After all its a lot easier to spy on Iraq's terrain than it is North Korea's...

(in reply to SoulBlazer)
Post #: 11
- 1/18/2003 6:46:21 AM   
Nikademus


Posts: 25684
Joined: 5/27/2000
From: Alien spacecraft
Status: offline 		Sticking to the military situation, id say yes, with a better organized and far more prioritized strategic agenda, the Japanese could certainly have won the SoPac theater. Historically they lost their "window of opportunity" allowing the Allied forces to catch their breath and bloody them back. After that it was a buildup, won by the Allies because the Japanese never saw the theater as a decisive one until well into the Guadalcanal campaign. And even then they refused to commit their entire fleet to the ops. Instead they committed the most grave error of all, instead of either conceeding and consolidating their defensive position or going full tilt into winning it back, they half committed and got caught up in an attrition war they had no chance of winning. After that it was all downhill

In terms of winning the war though it wouldn't have changed anything even had the Japanese won the Solomons and New Guinea. Nothing really would have changed the fact for as Cap mussed on.....with the Pearl Harbor attack, the US was in it with both feet. Conclusion of the SoPac ops with a Japanese victory would only have forced the USN to go with it's central Pacific strategy exclusively (something that many wanted in the first place, most notably Admiral King)

I recently completed a full scale home spun wargame which had that exact result.

(in reply to SoulBlazer)
Post #: 12
- 1/18/2003 9:45:34 PM   
Buchon

 

Posts: 36
Joined: 10/20/2002
From: Castellón, Spain
Status: offline 		[QUOTE]Originally posted by PzB

Japan aimed to win a series of knock out victories that would force the US to sue for peace.
This might sound unrealistic, but that's from todays point of view.




In fact, this was the same strategy than Japan used againts Russia during the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War. They were able to win some land and naval battles that forced Russia, that hadn't been defeated but forced to retreat, to sign the peace.

(in reply to SoulBlazer)
Post #: 13
- 1/18/2003 11:40:26 PM   
Cap Mandrake


Posts: 23184
Joined: 11/15/2002
From: Southern California
Status: offline 		Ultimately, Japan's fate was sealed when they began to apply their racist and militarist world view to people that could (and would) fight back. What if the Allies lost New Guinea..or the USN lost all three carriers at Midway? What if Japan captured Oahu, resulting in thousands of civilian deaths and a terible wounding of national pride? Would the American people clamour for peace, accepting an ignoble defeat, or would they turn their massive industrial capacity toward the defeat of Japan? An improbable string of Japanese victories could have prolonged the war and diverted resources from the war with Germany. By the winter of '45 the Plutonium breeder reactors at Hanford and the Uranium enrichment program was capable of producing enough fissionable material for a 20 Kiloton bomb every 2 weeks!

(in reply to SoulBlazer)
Post #: 14
- 1/19/2003 1:51:19 AM   
Hard Sarge


Posts: 22741
Joined: 10/1/2000
From: garfield hts ohio usa
Status: offline 		Hi Guys, interesting post

one thing that I never really hear or see about the PTO, but you hear it all the time about the Nazi's, the Nazi's lost the war when it went to a two front war, GE could not win a war on two fronts

but you don't hear that said about Japan, and in the end, that is what ended up happening, while we talk about Ships and Planes, and they could of this and they could of that, they never really had the man power to do anything, and why is that ?, because most of it was tied up in China and Burma

we landed a Div + on Lunga, they basicly send in a BLT, gets crushed, we bring in part of a 2nd Marine Div, they send in a RLT,and by the time they decide, to bring in a ful unit, the Allies were there to stay

with out being locked into the fighting in China and Burma, it could of been interesting, to see what would of happened, but, they were locked, and in the long run, didn't stand a chance, but with there mindset, they had to try, they would lose in the end if they did or if they didn't, so go down fighting

HARD_Sarge

_____________________________


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Post #: 15
- 1/19/2003 3:45:36 AM   
Buchon

 

Posts: 36
Joined: 10/20/2002
From: Castellón, Spain
Status: offline 		And there were also several divisions stacioned near the manchurian border, awaiting for an hipothetical soviet attack.

(in reply to SoulBlazer)
Post #: 16
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