So why did Japan refuse to open a second front against the soviets in Manchuria after all its other axis allies entered into war against the USSR?
Stalin would not have been able to send the siberian divisions to defend moscow at the end of 1941 had they done this. I think it's safe to say that after Italy attacking greece this was the biggest fuckup of a member of the axis powers in the entire war.
So why exactly did Nippon fuck up so badly here? Inb4 their earlier bad experiences with soviet forces from khalkin gol
There also wasn't anything they could take from the soviets that would immediately aid their war effort like the Oil they desperately needed that could be found readily in the Dutch Indies.
Blake Mitchell
They already fought the Russkies in 1939 and got BTFO so they signed a nonaggression pact. Also they were busy fighting the Chinese and Americans and Australians.
Also what said. They had already occupied half of Siberia in the 1920s and got jack shit from it. Instead they invaded Indochina, Singapore, and Indonesia to get that sweet, sweet oil.
Jason Butler
The simple illuminations a game of Hearts and Iron can teach you.
Fuck you, I am not dealing the 1000 pound steel gorilla that is the USSR until I finish with also immense but theoretically far easier China.
David Young
because the Japanese army was already strain to its breaking point pacifying china and Burma, while most of the Japanese industry was focused on airplanes and replenishing its navy after Midway. Also, the Russians had superior armored land vehicles in every way. The Japanese tanks were pseudo ww1 relics that a well placed rifle shot could penetrate. The Japs cut funding to land vehicles because pretty much all of the terrain they faced was dense jungles, mountains, or sand-bars. None of which are conducive to tanks.
Japanese tank in pic is pretty much only a step above those weird polish or Italian tankettes that were pretty much only intended for pulling carts or artillery.
t. HoI3 sperg
Jack Rodriguez
Because the last time they clashed with soviets they've got destroyed despite having numerical superiority and being closer to supply lines. At the same time USSR's numbers in the theatre grew with each year even during the disastrous 1941-1942 period.
Ryan Brown
Siberia is full of natural resources. There's even oil in what was the Soviet part of Sakhalin, but they didn't know at the time.
But if Japan didn't invade China, or attack the US, they could have decisively helped Germany in bringing down the USSR and gained access to caspian oil. And secured a solid empire.
It wcould have been less profitable than conquering all of east Asia and north pacific, sure. But it would have been possible, which is much better.
Thankfully they were idiots.
John Kelly
>Japanese tank in pic is pretty much only a step above those weird polish or Italian tankettes that were pretty much only intended for pulling carts or artillery. It was also reduced to being used as a tractor for artillery and carts when the war broke out.
That doesn't change the fact that Japanese armour sucked ass and couldn't compete with anybody at any point. Their "most powerful" tank by the beginning of the war was Type 97 Chi-Ha and it was comparable(in fact little bit inferior) to Soviet T-26 that was like 5 years older design. By the time they've attacked Americans, the US was producing M3 Lee's in masses and they've started delivering them on Pacific Theatre as well and even though they were more than enough for Japanese, they've got replaced by Shermans either way because US had surplus of those. Japanese never had "surplus of tanks", they didn't replaced Type 97 by anything either even though they knew they're shit since 1938 when Chinese, of all people, got their first batch of 37 and 45mm AT guns and started blowing them up en masse.
Their small arms and artillery was shit too, maybe except for LMG's and rifles.
Oliver Gutierrez
wasn't the Japanese plan that they would take China first for the raw food production capabilities? Japan had chronic problems feeding its people, and to facilitate growth, a large portion of arable land was required. Korea wasn't producing enough rice to feed the markets, so China was the next best thing.
Juan Cox
>Siberia is full of natural resources. That weren't exploited at the time. >But if Japan didn't invade China, or attack the US, they could have decisively helped Germany in bringing down the USSR and gained access to caspian oil see Japanese couldn't defeat Soviets and the only actual prize there was Vladivostok, then you have whole fucking bunch of nothing with poor infrastructure until your reach Irkutsk which was like 600-800 km from the nearest border with Manchuria.
Jaxson Ward
>There's even oil in what was the Soviet part of Sakhalin, but they didn't know at the time.
There's oil in fucking Manchuria. Which they also didn't know at the time.
Jordan Hughes
>Chinese, of all people, got their first batch of 37 and 45mm AT guns and started blowing them up en masse. I loved the fucked up systems of lend lease that Kuomintang China had. They were getting uniforms from both the Germans and Brits simultaneously, and made their own copies of western weapons (general lius rifle). Not to mention a lot of the pistols for the militias were made by underground workshops or hidden machinery factorys that had workers that barely understood the principles of firearm design.
IIRC, they planned to take China first. When that plan went tits up because of "muh Khalkin Gol", they went for the Dutch East Indies and Malaya.
The Chi-ha is a very nice design. Then the Chinese upgraded the main gun to a 47mm. Then it started eating tanks.
It was a very surprising tank. In a good way.
t. World of Tanks faggot
Evan Flores
bumping for interest
Justin Thomas
When Japan did fight USSR in 1939 its Axis ally Germany returned the favor by allying with the USSR and selling it weapons.
Leo Thomas
Because Japan was one of the only countries that realized the USSR's performance in Finland was a red herring, and that Germany was going to be stomped. Russia's size, combined with its rapid modernisation, meant no one was going to be defeating it in a mechanised war.
Austin Long
>The Chi-ha is a very nice design
>terrible clearance >low as fuck range >slow as fuck due to bad track design >placement of turret would cause balance issues on slopes >turret had to be hand cranked to turn >gun had to be elevated and depressed by the gunners shoulder >machine gun on the back of the turret >no coaxial MG >terrible ergonomics for the crew
sorry, but the chi-ha is fucking trash
Jaxon Robinson
Japanese tanks weren't limited by terrain, which the M4 was perfectly capable of traversing. The bottleneck was the shitty bridges in China which wouldn't support 20 ton tanks let alone 35 ton mediums.
John Jones
Good luck driving ANY tank through a dense jungle in borneo with no roads and soft squishy muddy ground
Benjamin Watson
Tanks were used in jungles pretty much constantly throughout WW2 by both sides so yeah I guess they had a lot of good luck.
Dominic Price
>Stalin would not have been able to send the siberian divisions to defend moscow at the end of 1941 had they done this. OP, you do not seem to be aware of the fact that despite facing the German onslaught from mid-1941, Soviet forces in the far east DOUBLED between 06/1941 and 12/1941 despite the needs of the front in the west of the country. Even in 1942 they continued to grow.
Mason Ramirez
IJA had 2 tank regiments for their DEI ops.
Isaiah Kelly
Because it's a retarded idea on just about every level.
For starters, the Soviets had thrashed the Japanese pretty badly the last time they clashed in those border conflicts from 36-38. Secondly, there's not a lot that's easy to access in Siberia. Taking over thousands of square kilometers of frozen wasteland isn't that appealing.
Sure, eventually you hit stuff further west, but most of the valueable lands in Siberia were past Irkutsk, which is already thousands of kilometers away from your borders, across some of the most hellish terrain in the world, where it's feet high snow 6 months a year.
>Stalin would not have been able to send the siberian divisions to defend moscow at the end of 1941 had they done this.
You do realize that most of those divisions were transferred west before the end of August, right? And that troop presence in the Far East command rose, not shrunk, despite sending the Siberians along?
And even if they had done so, you're severely overestimating how much it would have hurt the Soviets in the short run. If they pull back from the border and guard along the ONE rail-line you can advance along, tearing it up behind them as they retreat, you're not going to make much progress, and the Soviets don't have to commit all that much.
So why should Japan embark on a largely pointless and expensive foreign adventure?
Jackson Allen
Yeah the Siberian divisions were a myth
Ryan Roberts
Bolsheboo delusion at work again
Gavin Adams
>They were getting uniforms from both the Germans and Brits simultaneously Pretty sure German help stopped when they allied with Japan.
James Peterson
Do you have anything to support your shitposting?
Jaxon Wright
The sino-german agreement was basically germanys way of offloading all of that ww1 surplus while making a profit They cut the agreement when japan started invading after marco polo bridge. There are pictures of chinese garrisons with british brody helmets and nazi uniform with all of tge swastikas replaced with the rising white sun
