Underdogs of history

Underdogs of history

>have huge advantages over all your neighbours
>Underdog
Great thread OP

>Fight against 2 superpowers,one which has 6x your GDP and the other 500+ million life count, and numerous small country at once.
>Your logistics are stretched beyond its limits, your troops continuing the fight solely on high morale
>resource poor country dominating anything at all
>having autistically high work output of your people, including pilots which had over double the flight hours than their american counterparts, autistically at their purpose until it is achieved.

Face it, if had same geographic/resource advantages as America had (with which are frankly impossible to fuck up), they would literally wipe the floor with shitty Americans.

>Talking about Japan exclusively in WW2
wew

Unironically these guys.
While they accomplished little, they never really stopped fighting for their own. They provided excellent warriors, writers and thinkers.

I was talking about their highest moments of decision, but ok, we can take it further back.

>Extremely small mountainous island in the middle of pacific earthquake fire ring, poor in resources, arable land and unforgiving climate.
>Meiji restoration
>Emperor Meiji literally making his country industrializing overnight, WITHOUT any human death toll taking part. (Unlike, Mao and Stalin did)
>Come Russo-Japanese war, first country to defeat an European one. Though Russians were no slouches, their fleet was fighting EXTREMELY long distances away from home, while Japan was fighting in its proximity. At the high cost of their peoples lives in war they are recognized as "the first Asian tiger". Defeating European power, was a literal world shattering move, that defined the wars and politics of 20th century.
>Come up with annexation of Korea as in its sphere of influence starts a Japanese hegemony in east. Invading a country with almost 12x time armed forces takes accomplishment, even if the country was struck with internal strife, continuing on to subjugate the rest of Asia, thus finally creating greater east Asian co- prosperity sphere.
>implying Australia would escape this fate would not the Americans intervene
>Come up after the losing war, Japan is demolished, although with the help of USA extreme injection of money into its economy, with sheer hard work, the country transformed into economic power. Not because the country had any natural resources, but extremely hard work and high education in the field work of an individual.
>In the 80's, Japan is an economic super power, threatening to overtake America,
>Come up 90's and 00's the miracle that they produced has disappeared into a thin air, eaten by house market bubble.

You can't tell me it hasn't been a good run.

>be a useless backwater archipelago since neolithic
>one day get off your ass and say I want an empire
>got to war with China for no reason
>get them to cede Taiwan to you
>start shit with Russia for no reason
>kick their ass up and down the street until they actually realize someone is fighting them and start sending reinforcements
>realize you're gonna get eaten alive by hungry ivans on some godforsaken peninsula nobody really wants
>scurry to America to get Roosevelt help you signing a peace treaty
>get off scott free and annex whole fucking Korea on top of it
>Germans are getting owned in WWI
>take all their islands because why the fuck not
>Russians revolt, turn red
>suddenly you're in love with the monarchy you fought 10 prior and agree with Wilson to send your troops to occupy Primorye with anglos
Peasant partisans grind you all down, anglos GTFO, you stay like an autistic faggot you are until Harding tells you to back the fuck off.
>later invade Manchuria, take all of it
>invade China proper AGAIN, 6 month later you're raping Nanking while anglos watch with glee, but you never really "win" just get tied up
>year later try to start shit with Russia AGAIN
>get BTFO by Zhukov
>take french indochina (Vietnam), anglos embargo your shit
>instead of fucking off back to your island with dignity, you start taking over more and more European territories in southeast Asia, including British Malaya
>Anglos are livid, you shrug and ally with Nazis and Fascists for good measure
>year later you go fullretard and sink half of US Pacific fleet for no reason
>Germany is now at war with Russia, you're on your own against fucking Murrica.
>you lose your shit, start taking over entire south east asia that wasn't already yours
>America hands Canada its fucking beer and goes to rape you in 50 different meanings of the word
>get your entire navy sunk, then get firebombed and nuked
>Soviets come back for shits and rape what's left of your army on mainland

>underdog

Anglo-Irish writers and thinkers

britain

>Threatening to overtake America
ISHYGDDT

britain

>implying the Japanese giant of 80's wasn't able to take up on America.
If the lost decade started in 2011, instead of 1991, you would be driving your Japanese car, and browsing on your Japanese flip phone, still using fax machines.

>Emperor Meiji literally making his country industrializing overnight, WITHOUT any human death toll taking part.
Ah right, the entirely bloodless Boshin war.
>Come Russo-Japanese war, first country to defeat an European one.
Ethiopia defeated Italy a decade and a half before.

>Ah right, the entirely bloodless Boshin war.
To be fair, few people died in that war. Even the shogun agreed to give up his power.

>Extremely small mountainous island in the middle of pacific earthquake fire ring, poor in resources, arable land and unforgiving climate.
Having no particularly exceptional resources or wealth is and advantage of its own. It was China and India's wealth that led Britain to so aggressively push into both and still respect Japan's nominal isolationism.

Same could be said of Thailand, which had neither the vital resources to be considered worth taking by France or Britain nor the maritime significance of Siam and Burma.

You literally conceded they were an underdog with your first line of green text.

imperial japan was certainly not an underdog

your sense of perspective is massively flawed

they were the big, big bad

>2017
>flip phones
>fax machines
two nukes really weren't enough

in all seriousness, I'm actually looking forward to what Japan will be like after muh tradition company CEO's who still remember WWII finally return to earth.

>Ethiopia defeated Italy a decade and a half before.
Ethiopia defeated basically a small italian expedition. Japan defeated Russia, a country that is its direct neighbour, could send many troops. Russia suffered both naval and land defeats. What Japan did during that war is far different from what Ethiopia managed to do.

No I didn't.
Russia, Germany and USA were fucking geopolitical nobodies until 20th century.

It's easy to think that this was an achievement due to the recency, but if you think about it, from its defeat of China (where it became considered the most powerful nation in East Asia) in the Sino-Japanese War and the dropping of the Atomic Bomb, the Japanese Empire's hegemony spanned 50 years. Certainly not short, but its achievement isn't that amazing compared to other empires.

The Netherlands, a scrap of bogland, dominated the seas for a century. The Mongolian Empire at its apex lasted about that long and was known for its ephemerality. Sparta's dominance following the Peloponnese lasted 60 years. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth dominated by 70. Older empires like the various Persian, European and Chinese dynasties lasted far longer.

Japan's dominance was a blip on the calendar when you look at it from a macro point of view, like Sweden's age as a great power or Napoleon's hegemony over Europe, though it certainly transcends the empires defined by a single individual like Alexander or Tamerlane.

Sure, it was nice that it had a moment of glory, and it was kind of impressive; but it left behind an empire nearly burnt to the ground. Even a dumpster fire can burn bright, but it sure won't burn long.

>>implying Australia would escape this fate would not the Americans intervene
Australia is a guerilla's paradise, and a rather large one at that. Japan's logistics was pretty fucked.
Put them together and you get a terrible waste of manpower and resources.

I don't want that. I think that Japanese way, are fantastic in the way that they have taken the positives of capitalism and their loss in WW2, but have heavily kept their culture, and wouldn't get Americanized like the rest of the world. I respect them for that. I wish many more countries did the same. We would have more unique countries cultures.

I don't know what the fuck do you mean by "didn't get americanized" talking about a country which restructured its government, constitution, military and economy into a carbon copy of Murrican ones and fellates american globalist popculture so hard, scientists are baffled how the fuck did it not choke to death yet, including having literally largest number of McDonald's per capita on the planet, but I didn't really mean I wanted them to stop wearing bathrobes and having tea ceremonies and clapping in front of bells on New Year, but rather drop the drone mentality that was forced upon them in National Spiritual Mobilization Movement days and it's still pretty much in effect in larger society and makes people fucking miserable, even though they don't admit it, but it shows through the cracks with whole neet culture, suicide rates and herbivore business

...

Can the Japenese even speak fucking English?

They have no problem learning it, if you give them an actual reason to do it.
High school kids usually don't learn more than bare minimum to pass final exams (which are fucking joke), university students can and usually do communicate in pretty solid English, but realize this is something they really have no real need for unless they actually count with the possibility of being sent overseas by their future employer, which I would wager isn't that common of a foresight. Otherwise, English is fucking useless to them. They have 100+ million countrymen to speak to on the street and on the internet - which is large enough and so segregated by the language barrier - almost nobody besides those proficient college kids actually browses English webs.

Thats actually a cool thing to do. The country is esentially obstructing its peoples migrating mobility in a "good" way. They get to keep, preserve and further develop their culture.