WWII: japan dececive moment

[Debi]

mexihiperboreo,

it is very hard to re-write history with "IF".

Let's put us back in situation.

at the end of the XIXth, the imperialism is at its Zenith.

Every part of the world are colonized or almost.
At this time, Japan awake as the first asian industrialized country.

Japan begin an imperialist policy of expansion and win its war against China and Russia to get control of Taiwan, Korea and part of Manchuria. Japan is also on the winning side in WW1 and get control of german asian colonies.
A bit later, during the Showa period, Japan turned even more agressive and began the invasion of China.

An Empire have the capacity to expand until he meet a resistance large enough to stop it, which is most of the time another Empire. In Japan case, the 2 empires limiting it's expansion was USA on sea and Russia on land.

When Japan signed the tripartite in 1937, Germany and USSR didn't sign the non-agression pact yet, by the way. 1937 is the year Japan started to invade China again. Do you see the corelation ? Japan backed his ass with the tripartite pact to protect his Manchurian flank from USSR. Japan never wanted to expand in Far-east russia. It is only wasteland. The fact is that USSR were pressuring Japan on the Manchurians borders for it's own security.

Japan signed his own neutrality pact with USSR in 1941, just before Germany begin Barbarossa. In fact, Germany and Japan was allied only on paper and never really helped each others.

So, Japan decided to invade China in a very long war. It's not an easy task and it require a LOT of ressources.

When the western powers put an oil embargo to pressure Japan to stop it's invasion of China, what were the choices of Japan ?

1. Give up and get out of Japan (loser choice)
2. Find the ressources (winner choice)

So yeah, Japan thought about getting the ressources they needed to continue it's war in China. They figured that if they invaded the East Indies, the American would ripost right away and that would result in a war that couldnt be won.

So, their ultimate strategy was to strike the americans first, invade the places they had to invade and then defend against the americans on the pacifics islands until the americans get tired and negotiate peace.

And we know the result of this strategy, it just failed.

So that's it. Forget the "What if" questions and stick to the facts.

[fluffy0000]

The claim that Japan and Germany were only ' allies on paper' is not historically correct. The greatest intelligence operation perhaps in history was located in Tokoyo and run by a one Richard Sorge ; excerpt:
Richard Sorge, a Soviet spy, succeeded in infiltrating Japanese society by recruiting Japanese agents for eight years, from 1933 to 1941. Sorge, a German who became a Soviet citizen and worked for the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence arm, maintained the cover story of being a German journalist.
Sorge’s job was to provide intelligence on relations between Japan and Nazi Germany and to assess Japan’s intentions toward the Soviet Union. Moscow feared Japan’s territorial ambitions on her eastern borders.
In October 1941, the Kempei Tai, Japan's military counterintelligence arm, and Tokko, the domestic "thought police," moved on Sorge’s network. Sorge and his chief asset, Ozaki, were arrested, tried, and found guilty. They were executed by hanging on November 7, 1944. Ozaki said before his death, “I sometimes thought secretly that, as a Communist in Japan, it is even something to be proud of that I engaged in such a difficult and disadvantageous work.”

[cridgit001]

Since we are throwing out "what if" senarios, I want to propose this. Was Japan better off in the long run by dropping the nukes or would have it been better to do a full scale land invasion?

[Debi]

Originally Posted by cridgit001

Since we are throwing out "what if" senarios, I want to propose this. Was Japan better off in the long run by dropping the nukes or would have it been better to do a full scale land invasion?

Hiroshima and Nagasaki was actually a bless for both the japanese and americans. A full scale invasion would have resulted into widespread misery all around Japan and a lot more casualties.

Even better for the japanese, the japaneses used the atomic bombs to sound like "victims" of the war. Even now, people say things like "poor japaneses who got nuked"

The incendiary raid on Tokyo in March 1945 caused more casualties than the 2 atomic bombs combined.

[cridgit001]

From what I have heard about the incendiary raids in WW2, temperatures in the millions of degrees, utter insanity.

And yeah, that's was I was thinking about the bombs vs invasion.