Can’t even defeat the Chinese

>intelligent, informed, relevant replies
thank you ww2 Veeky Forumstorians
serving with an island hopping unit against muh honor enemies must have been HELL

I wonder what would've happened if they just stuck with defeating the Dutch. The American people are not going to tolerate their sons, brothers, and husbands being sent to die for European colonialism. But what about the British? Would they bother? I don't think so, the Dutch are too weak to be useful and they've already got their hands full with Germany and Italy.

Part of the reason why Island Hopping was so bad was because of the shift in American priorities after Midway. When America first entered the war, the first priority was Japan, which was logical because Japan was the country which had actually brought America into the war by bombing an American naval base. However, after the Battle of Midway, Japan no longer seemed to be an immediate threat to the US. Japan's assault on the Pacific had been blunted, and Hawaii was considered secure from any potential attack.

Churchill persuasively argued to Roosevelt that defeating Germany should be the top priority, because of the Axis Powers, Germany was by far the most likely to develop the Atom Bomb. Roosevelt agreed that Germany had both the intellectual capacity and the industrial output necessary to produce an atomic weapon. Japan did actually have her own atomic bomb project, but it was mismanaged and chronically underfunded, unlikely to produce a working weapon in time to be used in the war. For these reasons, defeating Germany quickly became America's top priority.

American forces in the pacific were severely reduced as men and material were shifted to the European theater. Generals like MacArthur bitterly protested this, but the decision had been made. The end result is that American forces in the Pacific were left in such a condition that they could continue the war, but not quickly. This is a big part of the reason why battles in the Pacific were such a slow grind; the Allied Powers focused most of their attention on the Europe. Allied forces in the Pacific were given just enough support that they could keep pushing forward, but at the pace of a snail.

“Hey Takeshi as long as you have a sword and the willpower to finish,we’d win!”

>At the start of 1938, the leadership in Tokyo still hoped to limit the scope of the conflict to occupy areas around Shanghai, Nanjing and most of northern China. They thought this would preserve strength for an anticipated showdown with the Soviet Union, but by now the Japanese government and GHQ had effectively lost control of the Japanese army in China.
Ridiculous.

>The American people are not going to tolerate their sons, brothers, and husbands being sent to die for European colonialism.

Remember when Americans sent their youth to die in Vietnam to prop up a failed French colonial project? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

A lot of these answers make it seem the invasion of China was comically unplanned. But this just doesn't make sense. An invasion of that scale doesn't just happen without buy-in from the entire country. I'm not expecting Vietnam protests, but surely there were strong dissenters if it was as whimsical as it's sounding.

What cocksucking apologist drivel

Feels like it's way too easy in a modern post WW1 context to think about militaries being neat and tidy affairs where they are just automatrons existing to fulfill the political agenda. Clausewitz and all that. When it might be the sheer complexity of moving parts means even with modern technology a proper organizational setup becomes even more important. You know that whole "amateurs study strategy, generals study logistics" might well be rephrased to be "amateurs study strategy, historians study logistics, generals study administration".

Post WW2 they had a better handle on propagandizing (not in a pejorative way, just in the sense of convincing people) why it was worth fighting. Perceptions of having to go fight and die to further European colonial interests was a real big restraint on participation in WW2. Hell, I think it even took time for the propaganda machine to work after WW2 because we damn well poured ice-water on the French and British when they tried a last-gasp of colonialism with 1956 Suez.

I have to be rather suspicious of passing off the Japanese conquest as nothing more than benign humanitarian interest in obtaining rice and not starving to death.

Adding to what others said is the perception of the Japanese that America was a mercantile nation which would fight after Pearl Harbor but would eventually call it quits and sign a white peace at best or demand a conditional surrender at worst.

Hard to dissent in a fascist regime. Doubly so if all the meaningful information is under control of the junta.

...

>The Japanese didn’t have a choice.

They could’ve, you know, not invaded all of Asia?

It’s not that simple, to have Japan not get on th road of Pan-Asian Conquest, you have to change a century of political development along with centuries of cultural development.

Late Imperial Japan is kind of fascinating to me a really morbid way. The people in charge simply didn't have any clue about the implications of what they were doing, and the people who did know kinda just got sucked along for the ride. The fact that they still somehow believed after Leyte Gulf that they were going to somehow turn things around and win is really kind of incredible. Leyte Gulf really should have been the end of the war.

Worked plenty of times for the Germans, they just did it too often.

It did work against France once.

Thought it is stupid to try it on a nation with unreachable hinterland and immense industrial and human resources like Russia or the U.S.

was just a joke.

If I recall, Marines did have some equipment issues early on and in places like Guadalcanal, but I haven't seen information that shows US efforts in the Pacific were hampered by a lack of commitment from US command. Maybe it's a meme, but I've always read that US progress was slow by the nature of island hopping warfare. Coordinating massive amphibious landings that require crazy logistics chains means progress will be slow.

Maybe that's just a dumb American narrative. Can you think of any examples that demonstrate how the Allies (primarily the US) neglected the Pacific Theater in favor of focusing on Europe? What did they lack that could have made the campaigns go faster?

pic semi-related

>inb4 muhreens weren't the only ones in the Pacific u retard

>Can you think of any examples that demonstrate how the Allies (primarily the US) neglected the Pacific Theater in favor of focusing on Europe? What did they lack that could have made the campaigns go faster?
There was no "neglect". That previous user is an unread dolt, and is spewing similar crap in other discussions. The USN confronted the IJN at nearly every turn, and the first Allied ground offensive of the war took place at Guadalcanal 8 months after Pearl Harbor, which precipitated the Solomons Campaign that basically ground down the Japanese and set the table for the rest of the war. The only thing holding up the American advance was shipping, both merchant and naval, and that required a full year to really build up to a critical mass. It would have been political suicide for Washington to ignore the Japanese, and they didn't. Ignore the dolts.

>What the fuck were the Japanese thinking?
"the past 40 years of experience fighting in peasant wars gives up the necessary military/logistic experience and pride to fight in a secondary war with a nation that has only ever fought real wars"
"We'll be have [american moscow] captured by japanese christmas"

Not him, but there were also other things holding it up besides the necessary shipping volume, but most of them were also different points of logistical in nature. Campaigns go quicker the more overwhelming of an advantage in men and materiel you bring. But there's only so much room for harborage or even just landing troops on these tiny pacific islands and atolls, and once you've secured them, they can only host air base to so many planes, which often can only be used against the next island in the chain, distances between islands being what they are.

It forced the Americans into a bunch of smaller actions instead of larger, more decisive ones, and that takes time and causes more casualties.

>It’s not that simple
Yes it is. Your justification that their were prior causes is true for everything every human or human organisation has ever done in the history of the existence of the species.

Wow, it’s almost as if nothing in History is as easy as “They could have just not”

>kill 300+ seppos with zero troops deployed

feels good

They made up their loses by impregnating thrice as many australian harlots though

>What the fuck were the Japanese thinking?

They weren't.

>Using the pilot example
>Instead of Tojo (the fucking PM) not finding out about the results of the Battle of Midway until seven months after it had happened

There are Australian harlots in Alaska?

thanks again for an actual informative thread

FREEDOM'D

Who is asian alfred next to MacArthur?

It's Hirohito you absolute retard

>File: Macarthur_hirohito.jpg (136 KB, 650x802)
You didn't get the joke...

Honestly, Imperial Japan is one of the ultimate examples as to why there needs to be civilian control of the military. Because when there isn't, they do whatever the fuck they want.

... nani?

Your image confuses me

The person on the left is a marine. The person on the right is in the army. The asvab is a military aptitude test.
The marine is stupid.

Oh. Well either way, we don't have entire divisions of our military going off to war on nobody's orders but their own. Last time someone tried that, he got sacked.

What specifically are you referring to? Patton?

>What the fuck was the Japanese thinking?

Trying to liberate their Asian Brothers.

>tfw Mikawa could have sunk the transports
>tfw the Guadalcanal offensive could have been destroyed right at its beginning
>tfw the US would most likely have concluded that attacking Japanese-occupied territory was a horrible idea
>tfw Japan missed a chance to sue for peace early
I feel sad

It wouldn't have stopped the USA, once they pulled us into the war nothing short of unconditional surrender was going to appease us. Also why the heck would you be sad about the USA winning?

Delet this

Did the average Japanese soldier believe this? If so, why did they treat the Korean and Chinese so badly?

They really weren't. I'm sure other posts in this thread go into more detail but essentially:
>Control faction win the day in the February 26nd attempted coup by the Imperial faction
>Now control faction control the army, the Liberal cabinet government system is essentially dead
>Army stumbles into a war with China, there's no-one with the power to restrain the hard-right nationalists in the military
>Meanwhile the Navy is reading old American textbooks on naval strat that say that drawing your enemy far away from there home naval bases and forcing attrition through mechanical and personnel failures is the key to defeating them
>worked in 1905 so why not in 1941?
>meanwhile they missed 39-41's important lessons, and those they did they ignored because politically saying all those Yamato class battleships and cruisers that nearly bankrupted the nation were actually getting progressively bigger waste of resources was not possible
>Haha we will defeat America!
>*midway intensifies*

And then the grand strategy was; fight because we can't do anything else without the whole Emperor system crashing down around us.

>"We'll be have [american moscow] captured by japanese christmas"

This is, by far, the best summary of Japanese military leadership ever conceived. I'm literally going to steal this.

>Did the average Japanese soldier believe this?
I dunno about the jap soldier but most people that live under western colonial rule really want the japs to come and 'liberate' their nation like my country, malaya.

Pic shows a jap propaganda written in jawi which means " O' Allah! Save us from any danger with the help of the japanese"

My grandma told me that her father was really happy when he saw the japanese arriving on his village, the villagers gave the japanese food and intel about the brits position.

A few months after that...shit happened.

No, when MacArthur tried to nuke China.

>I dunno about the jap soldier but most people that live under western colonial rule really want the japs to come and 'liberate' their nation like my country, malaya.
Yeah until it was clear that the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was basically designed as an excuse for Japanese superiority over all other east asian peoples.

I guess The Who were right. "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss"

I don't think the average Japanese soldier believed anything except that it was his duty to follow orders no matter how painful.

>Can’t even defeat the Chinese

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by this. Based on what I've read, Japan conquered Manchuria very easily, and local resistance was never strong enough to push them out.

To be fair, Manchuria was under warlord control during the Mukden incident, and Zhang knew he couldn't do anything. Besides that during the actual war the Japanese came to a screeching halt on their mainland offensive. Hence they couldn't defeat the Chinese.

Chang Kai-Shek was never really in power in the north, due to the awkward nature of both china's population distribution (pre-industrial) and the course of the civil war.
Adding on to what said: The Xi'an affair led both China's conventional military and the PLA's guerrilla forces against Japan.
The Rape of Nanking was supposed to be Japan's making an example of a city: if China wouldn't capitulate, this would happen across the country. The Chinese people took it as an insult instead and the affair became propaganda fuel. It also helped that China was the specific economic market that the US had tried to keep open for 40 years, but that's another story. Moral is, capturing China isn't worth it, and you need to have CHina levels of resources to do it.

did the malays already hate chinks back then?

Has any race group not hated/felt superior to the surrounding race groups?

The reason why they attacked america was to secure the oil in South East Asia, while they were willing to withdraw from china except for manchuria

the person on the right is in the air force judging by his camo and the fact that the marine calls him airman

Wrong. It wasn't supposed to be a "knock-out blow"
It was supposed to be a bet that America would say "this is not worth it."

You can't compare the INVASION of China with the attack of American bases and peripheral territories colonies. That being said they were still idiots to think it would work...they were no thinking indeed.

The Japanese lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the Chinese...and the war in China was basically at a stalement when the Japanese attacked the U.S.

There was no racism in pre-colonial Africa

>He thinks racism only involves skin color

>It was supposed to be a bet that America would say "this is not worth it."
Did they not know shit about Americans?

The only part of China that Japan really cared about was Manchuria, and that took control of Manchuria with relative ease. There was some resistance, but Chinese peasants, unarmed and unorganized, couldn't hope to push the Japanese out on their own.

>There was no racism in pre-colonial Africa

Wew lad. Without going into specifics, that's just completely wrong.

>Wrong. It wasn't supposed to be a "knock-out blow."

In terms of naval strategy, knock-out blow is exactly what the Japanese were going for. There was a brief period during the span of 1941-42, where the Japanese Navy was superior to the USN. The Japanese Navy was bigger, more experienced, and the technological gap between American and Japan wasn't as prominent as it became later in the war. Japan understood this, and so they believed that in order to win the war, they had to force a decisive battle with the American surface fleet as soon as possible.

Japan even had a name for this kind of strategy, the called it "Kantai Kessen" which literally means "naval fleet decisive battle." This was based on their experiences during the Russo-Japanese war, in which they were able to force Russia to the negotiating table after the Imperial Navy annihilated a large fleet of Russian battleships in the Tsushima Strait. They believed that if they could inflict a defeat of similar magnitude upon an American surface fleet, then America would be forced to accept a negotiated peace, just like Russia had in 1905. The two massive 65,000-ton battleships, Yamato and Musashi, were created with this kind of engagement in mind.

>The only part of China that Japan really cared about was Manchuria
This is why when, negotiations between Japan and the US happened after the Oil embargo, Japan was willing to give up all their Chinese possessions and withdraw from with them, provided they could keep manchuria since it was economically vital to them.

Exactly. Japan never intended to occupy all of China. Even at the peak of their megalomania, they understood that was an impossible goal. Seizing Manchuria, and keeping it, was always their real interest in China. They didn't care about the rest of the country.

>They made 2 battleships for a single hypothetical engagement
heh

that's always the problem of winning the "last war"

Two words: Khalkhin Gol

This guy has the right idea. Allow me to expand on it a little.

It comes down to a simple inter-service rivalry between the Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy. The IJN wanted to expand into the Pacific simply because that was a campaign which by its nature would place the majority of Japan's resources at their command. Japan had spent a great deal investing in a shiny, modern navy, and it's officer core were eager to use it. When you have a super-expensive hammer and a bunch of nails, not hitting them doesn't seem like an option. The Japanese army on the other hand wanted a more land-focused campaign, possibly with an attack on the Soviet Union.

So where does Khalkhin Gol come into it, you ask? That was where the Japanese got their shit kicked in by the Soviets in 1939. It severely reduced the Japanese government's taste for taking on the USSR, and reduced the prestige of the army, tipping the political balance in favour of the IJN and their ambitious pacific plan.

This Pacific expansion plan led to the attack on Pearl Harbour simply because the Japanese assumed that the Americans would enter the war if they attacked the European colonies in South East Asia. The irony is that with the exception of the Philippines, Japan could have overrun the whole of South East Asia and the Americans wouldn't have done a goddamn thing. (militarily, there might have been more sanctions).

No. Firstly, Japan could have got a significant amount of rice through trade. Conquest was simply preferred because of the psychology of the Japanese government. Secondly, the American embargo didn't mean that Japan would simply have to give up all of China. They still had two years of projected reserves, and if Japan would have taken the lower offer from the Dutch East Indies after the ultimatum to hand over their oil, they could have stretched that out even further. They could have withdrawn to the areas of China that they had already secured and only launched limited offensives while they tried to negotiate the Americans into letting them keep some of their gains, which they probably could have done.

What the oil embargo /did/ mean was that if they'd waited another year they wouldn't have been able to launch any grand offensives with the most oil-hungry section of their military, their Navy. And as I mentioned above, the IJN was in the political ascendancy at home, and this was not acceptable to them.

>The Japanese believed that since the US would not suffer direct economic effects from their attack (except for the damage done at Pearl), the US would look at it from a financial point of view. The Japanese really believed US policy was based on economic needs only, they believed the US would look at the attack on Pearl like an accountant and conclude that a long war was too costly.
Eh. Sort of but not really.

American culture was simply alien to the Japanese. According to everything Japanese were raised from birth to believe, American values should render them weak and effeminate. It really was a cultural misunderstanding on a scale even bigger than 'the Iraqi people will welcome us a liberators'. It didn't /entirely/ Japanese racial arrogance - looking at America's isolationism during the 1930s, the strong political movements to keep America out of another European war, the lack of interest in the military in an age of intense militarism, if you squint a little (no pun intended) you can sort of see how this lack of aggressiveness could be perceived as an expression of the average American's congenital cowardice, and love of frivolity over proper martial pursuits. America, after all, was a liberal democracy in the same vein as Britain and France, and look what Germany had done to them in 1940.

So it was half the belief that America wouldn't fight, and half the belief that even if they did fight the Japanese would be so entrenched by the time they recovered from Pearl Harbour that a trans-Pacific campaign wouldn't be logistically feasible for them (for the weak gaijin surely wouldn't be willing to fully commit in the manner necessary for such a war). So what you said was sort of right, but more that the Japanese viewed America as being politically weak rather than politically calculating.

'neglect' is perhaps the wrong word, but America certainly did commit far more resources to the war in Europe. It was more a case of apportioning forces relative to the strength of the enemy, and Germany was a much stronger enemy than Japan.

I've never seen it stated that the decision to focus on Germany was mainly down to the prospect of an atomic bomb. Do you have a source for that?

I think it came from this book, which I read recently. It might have also come from Max Hasting's "Retribution" which I'm currently working my way through. I'll admit that most sources do not mention the atom bomb as a factor in the Germany First! policy. However, the basic logic of it makes sense.

>However, the basic logic of it makes sense.
I think you're forgetting that you have the benefit of hindsight. Before they actually tested the first nukes it was still anybody's guess whether the things would actually work. Of course, they knew that the science behind it was pretty solid, otherwise they wouldn't have bothered investing billions in it. But before the first tests confirmed how potent they were, they weren't at the forefront of everyone's strategic planning. Hitler actually scaled back atomic research after the fall of France in 1940 because he didn't think there was a need for expensive science projects with the war basically won, and only started pouring more money into it when things started going badly in Russia.

As I said, it was simply logical to apportion forces relative to the strength of the enemy. I'm not saying that Germany's nuke program wasn't a serious concern to the allies, and might have played a part, but I don't think it was /the/ reason for the Allies' concentration on the war in Europe.

After Manchuria in 1932 and the big success at the start everyone was just cheering them on. I mean they had taken over whole Manchuria and created the puppet-state that made japan much richer with industry and food. It wasnt until when they started loosing a lot that some people started to get upset with the war.

Japanese were running out of oil, and US wouldn't supply them due to embargo. Nips would have to cease their military expansion in China if they wouldn't seize US oil fields on Philippines.

>Before they actually tested the first nukes it was still anybody's guess whether the things would actually work.

That's not really true. Physicists already believed that such a weapon was theoretically possible.

Yes, but you had physicists of the Manhatten Project taking bets on how the Trinity-test would go, with options ranging from "just a pop" to "the atmosphere will ignite". Even with the theory and science done, you still have to make the thing work

>There was a brief period during the span of 1941-42, where the Japanese Navy was superior to the USN.
No, this is a false statement, and you really should stop spewing this unread garbage, lad.

>I'll try spinning that's a good trick!

Amazing argument. You really convinced me.

>America certainly did commit far more resources to the war in Europe.
You truly need to stop spewing this unread garbage, lad. It is trite and foolish.

Amazingly-spewed unread garbage, lad, once again.

from who?

China was the largest producer, with the best fields, they were a very easy target.

Is this the new sweetie-posting?

Nah, the Japanese believed that they were not inferior to Whites.
The Anglos/Americans treated them like a joke and believed them subhuman apes.
The League of Nations also refused the Japanese proposal to recognise all Humans to be equal,
or at least Japanese to be equal to Whites.
To be fair, everyone believed that the Imperial Japanese were a joke
and there is no way some Jap's lookalike rip-off navy can beat the Mighty British Navy or even the French/Dutch,
let alone the Americans

The Americans especially treated the Japanese like subhuman monkey specimens.
Beheading their skulls, boiling them and sending them home as war souvenirs.
This is entirely anathema in Shinto/Buddhist religion as the skulls are to be laid to rest in Nihonji or they will never be at peace.

The Conquest of China was very poorly thought-out.
Traditional Japanese war strategy was to conquer the Capital and topple the King/force a submission.
The assumption is that the entire country will surrender once the centre of power is gone.
However, the Chinese refused to surrender and the worst fighting of the Japanese war campaign became trapped in China.
Even when the Japanese captured Nanjing and literally 'raped' China's capital, the Chinese just moved inland and resisted harder.
Eventually, the Japanese 'Blitzkrieg' became bogged by fiercest resistance of the World War and territory control went back and forth.
Imperial Japan began running out of fuel.

Knowing that, Hitler proposed an alliance with the Japanese, wanting a coordinated attack towards the Soviet oil reserves in Tunisia and Central Asia
(This will be his downfall, considering a fuckton of raw material feeding the German War machine comes from China).
The Japanese however, had vastly inferior tanks and equipment to the Soviets and got destroyed in the Battles of Khalkhyn Gol.

So the Japanese instead began an invasion of Southeast Asia while the Colonial powers are occupied.
They invaded Burma (To stop Allied reinforcements and arms from India), Vichy Nam, British Malaya/Singapore (Rubber) and the Dutch East Indies (oil).
Before that, they attacked the American fleet in Pearl Harbour to prevent/stall an American intervention and drove the Americans off the Philippines.
All the while, massacring/terrorising any Overseas Chinese enclave for DARING to fund the Anti-Japanese war in China (Sook Ching Massacre)

However, the Japanese were grossly overstretched and despite their efforts at forced/slave labour, were entirely starved of resources and exhausted.
They couldn't get the resources to fight a simultaneous war with China (Supported by Soviet tanks/arms and American/British tanks/arms/aircraft), the USSR and the USA, not with their dwindling resources.

Does someone have relevant sources to actually compare American material and manpower in Europe versus Pacific? I know in the Pacific by the war's end there were roughly 3.6 million Naval, Army, and USMC personnel. Not including personnel in India or Burma. "Europe First" was a thing that was said, but was it just a political meme to reassure Britain?

I'm guessing this is a hard comparison to measure. Do you count number of troops, tanks, and ships? What about material? Do you add Lend Lease to the total of direct American contribution to European theater?

Because they defeated Russia so who knows

If the words of Ernest King can be considered reliable, then roughly 15% of allied resources were devoted to the Pacific. The rest were devoted to Europe and North Africa.

>Pearl Harbor was supposed to be a knock-out blow

The decisive battle plan was a thing, but Pearl Harbor was just supposed to gain an upper-advantage/gain time to prepare for American incursion into East Asian waters. THEN a significant decisive battle would be executed, forcing America to the negotiation table.

Also, to the brainlets who thought Japan was stupid for not considering American resolve: the admiralty was split, with Admiral Isoruko Yamamoto believing Japan could never win against the U.S. versus admirals who disagreed. In the end, though, it was the Army who held the government and made the decisions, and gave fuck-all to the admiralty's opinions.

>Pearl Harbor was supposed to be a knock-out blow

Nobody has said this, at least not in this thread. Pearl Harbor was an attempt to soften up the Pacific fleet in advance of the Decisive Battle. Important to note, is that the Japanese command believed that when the decisive battle finally came, it would manifest itself as in Tsushima strait, as battleship vs. battleship slugfest in which the massive guns of Yamato and her sister would obliterate their puny American counterparts. As it turned out, when the Decisive Battle finally happened (Midway), it was the aircraft carriers which carried the day, with battleships quickly being relegated to a less glamorous supporting role. Japan realized far too late the mistake they had made in over-investing in battleships, and under-investing in fast fleet carriers. To be fair, American planners almost made the exact same mistake, but they had a large enough budget that it didn't hurt them nearly as much. America could afford to produce both BB's and CV's in relevant numbers. Japan had no such luxury.