wdolson -> RE: Questions from someone considering buying.. (3/15/2007 3:44:35 AM)
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ORIGINAL: Reg Depends on whether you mean winning the game or winning the war. I don't think there is anyone out there (with the benefit of 20/20 hind sight) that will say that the Japanese ever stood a chance in real life. Not the way it was fought anyway!! Even the most optimistic of Japan's leaders never expected to conquer the US. They mistakenly believed that if they hit the US Pacific forces hard enough, the US would roll over and give up. To an outsider, unfamiliar with the American psyche, it makes sense. The issolationists were a very strong force in American politics in the 30s. The Japanese were trying to force the issolationsists into predominance. Their plan backfired completely because they didn't fundamentally understand the American psyche. If they had bothered to study the causes of the Spanish American War they might have reconsidered. Japan just doesn't have a large enough popuation to take large swaths of territory. Their control in China was tenuous because they didn't have enough troops to cover everything. I couldn't find any population statistics online, but I have an atlas of WW II with mobilization numbers: China 5 million US 11.49 million Australia 680,000 India 2.4 million New Zealand 150,000 UK 4.6 million Japan 7.4 million China and India's troops were generally low quality and the US and UK deployed the majority of their troops in Europe. However, the Allies had a lot of warm bodies with guns. That's before taking into account that the US was producing 50% of the world's manufactured goods in 1940 and that grew during the war. It also doesn't take into account the Soviet Union and the threat they posed to Manchuko. The Japanese fought the Soviets in a short war in 1940 and the Red Army of the period, who lost to Finland in the Winter War, got the upper hand against Japan fairly quickly. I have heard it said that the biggest concern Japan had in August 1945 was not US nuclear weapons, but the Soviets who had just jumped into the war. A game that would give Japan a chance to dominate the entire map covered by WitP would be very unrealistic. The Germans and the Japanese took virtually all their territory early when the Allies were unprepared for defense. After the Allies got organized and got war production going, it wasn't a fair fight. The war went on as long as it did because the Axis powers had stubborn leadership and they played defense well. Churchill's first comment upon hearing of Pearl Harbor was, "so we have won after all." Bill
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