If after Pearl Harbor there was still sufficient political will not to fight, what would have happened in terms of a Peace Treaty? What would Japan demand? Would they even accept peace? Or would Japan simply be even more emboldened, wishing as well to go after Hawaii?
If the US public still wanted peace, but only say, 55% to 60% of the voters, could a peace treaty be signed by the two powers? Since Japan might make harsh enough demands that the US couldn’t agree without turning the American public in favor of war.
For extra credit, another question I have would be what would have happened had the US declared war on Japan, but gone entirely defensive, withdrawing from everything west of Hawaii, and building up forces for at least a year, if not more. Would the situation be so much in Japan’s favor that it would be too late to really challenge them? Or would the US be better off, even with possibly Australia / NZ lost, since the US could strike all at once, with updated ships, planes, and hordes of well trained troops, anywhere in the vast Empire?
I’m as big a fan of alternative history as the next guy, provided the next guy isn’t reading a Harry Turtledove book, but the idea that the United States wouldn’t declare war is so outside of the realm of possibility that coming up with what if scenarios is difficult. Not declaring war would have been such a cowardly act of American politicians that I would have hoped my grandparents had the good sense to have moved to Canada.
I can’t see any realistic scenario where the US was attacked as we were at Pearl Harbor and there wouldn’t be a war. That said, what the hell…
My guess is they would demand the embargo be dropped and probably that the US demilitarize our over seas possessions (and pay some kind of reparations). They would probably also ask us to turn over to them most of our overseas possessions in the Marshals, Guam and our territory in the PI. In addition, they probably would have demanded something stating that the US would not interfere further in their justified (to them…wink wink, nudge nudge) expansion into China or the south Pacific, including NZ and Australia.
I doubt they would have demanded Hawaii…they would have simply been thrilled that the US rolled over and that we were out of their way for their expansion in the southern Pacific rim, which was their real target at this time.
It wouldn’t really be in the hands of the voters, honestly. Congress would have been who decided if there would be a war or not. At a guess, even if after we were deliberately attacked as we were the American people STILL didn’t want war (:dubious:!!), Congress probably would have still voted for it anyway, unless the Congress in this theoretical universe were also made up with die hard anti-war types, along with a fundamentally different President. Assuming it was, however, again, the voters opinions wouldn’t have mattered wrt any treaties that would be signed, at least not in the short term. We don’t vote on treaties, or whether or not we go to war…we vote in people who make those decisions for us, for good or ill.
Well, we mainly did go on the defensive, though not to the extent you are asking. Our main emphasis (at the urging of our allies in Europe) was to focus on the Germans first, and deal with Japan later. Had we totally pulled back (again, not something realistic from any number of perspectives), my guess is that Japan would have run wild, and almost certainly have taken NZ and probably parts of Australia as well. The Brits were in no position to defend either, and if Japan could have focused on the conquest of these without having to even think about an American presence in the region I’m pretty sure they could have taken just about anything they wanted in the southern Pacific. China to, for that matter.
Could we have taken it all back? Maybe…eventually. It would have taken a lot longer, since Japan would have had a lot more resources, and a lot more time to build defenses and fleets, not to mention fighter air craft and more modern army weapons and doctrine. I’d say that, in the end, had the US gone with such a strategy, we COULD have worn the Japanese down, but probably would have settled for some kind of truce, which is what the Japanese were actually planning for and was their real goal. They never thought they could defeat the US militarily, their goal was to defeat us politically, to make the cost of taking them out not worth the price we’d have to pay.
There’s also the small matter of the Phillipines. They had already been upgraded from a U.S. territory in 1935, and given commonwealth status with a goal of full independence in 10 years. Given that status, the Phillipines were still a U.S. possession, but the Japanese couldn’t use the rationalization that they were liberating their greater Pacific brothers from the yoke of colonialism.
Then there was the whole “they should have stopped Hitler at Munich” thing. Your scenario just wouldn’t have played out.
Now, if lizard like space aliens had come down during the war and attacked every major power on earth, using hydrogen powered battle tanks and killer craft…
how about something more realistic? America declares war, there is a big undecided naval battle with great losses on both sides and American managers called upon to rebuild the navy say “sorry, folks, no can do, not on this budget, not so quickly” (in real life there was much innovation done to achieve faster rates of shipbuilding than was thought possible). And then Japan offers excellent peace terms - let’s say they promise paying big reparations and behaving very nicely in the Pacific. All in return for America stopping the war and either removing oil embargo or letting them get oil from Indonesia. Of course the people of America are strongly against that, but the “wise” American government convinces them using, I don’t know, the “Slaughter” rule :-). Maybe they also publicly scapegoat a few State Department people for making unreasonable demands on Japan previously.
The key point is, there is no need to pretend that Japan was as bent on world conquest as it may sound from contemporary propaganda. If there were no immediate massive war, it doesn’t mean that they would have immediately drawn up plans of conquering America or even the little Philippines. Maybe they would have said, thank God, the diplomatic crisis is over with little blood spilled and we have access to oil again and nobody is demanding that we withdraw from Korea any more.
Eh, this scenario completely ignores the concurrent war arising in Europe, as well as the fact that after such a massive attack on “our home soil” and “our resources” that there was just no way we’d be able to deny declaring war on them. How could we have possibly pulled the isolationist or even the appeasement card (after witnessing the ineffectualness of such in Europe) after that?
What they did was a bold move that would have been more successful if their intel (carriers being present) was accurate, but it wasn’t, and…we declared war and won.
Right, I think that Japan would have been happy with any deal that ended with them getting oil, and possibly with us getting out of their way in the Philippines. If they had the negotiating position to get, say, Hawaii from us, they certainly wouldn’t have passed that up, but that wasn’t their goal.
Would Japan agree to give up their territorial gains in China and South East Asia as well? That was the reason for the embargo after all. I seriously doubt they would do that, or give up their expansionist goals in the Southern Pacific either. They wanted those oil, rubber, iron and other assets in region. I don’t really see this as any more realistic, to be honest, since I don’t see Japan agreeing to any of those terms, regardless of the size of the reparations…and having attacked the US, I don’t see us settling for anything less (in fact, I don’t see us settling for even this, to be honest).
Um, but they WERE bent on conquest…that was the point of the war. Pretending otherwise is, well, pretending. That they weren’t bent on world conquest (at that time) doesn’t mean they weren’t bent on regional conquest. The point of the war, from Japan’s perspective, wasn’t to simply stop the US embargo, it was to seize the entire region for their own resource area (in fact, I believe they called it something like the Southern Resource Area) and to create a defense in depth that the US and the European colonial powers wouldn’t easily be able to recapture…or be willing (by their calculations) to pay the price it would take to recapture them. Japan then, as now, is a resource poor country, and they eyed the southern Pacific and South East Asia as a huge treasure box that THEY could exploit, instead of the Euro’s and America.
no, they were bent on getting the oil and in getting American politicians out of their Chinese policy. Not to mention their Korean policy…
If tomorrow Chinese politicians tell America to get the hell out of California, let me tell you, America will become “bent on conquest” too. You don’t treat nations this way if you want to have peace.
No…they were bent, as you say, on conquering China, Korea, Vietnam, South East Asia, and large portions of the Southern Pacific Rim region, because all of that had the raw materials they wanted and felt was rightfully theirs. The US’s embargo was directly due to the fact that Japan had invaded China and refused to get leave, while causing numerous atrocities that had riled up the American people, mainly due to the fact that they were being shown regularly in American theaters.
Huh? This doesn’t even make any sense, as far as I can tell. How does it relate to the context of the discussion? If the US invaded MEXICO tomorrow, and China embargoed or boycotted our products because of it, do you not feel China would be justified in doing so? Especially if the Mexican markets were important to China, and Mexico was a trading ally??
This should have been either ‘refused to leave’ or ‘refused to get out’. Posting on my phone makes it hard to edit stuff. I didn’t mean to imply that Japan didn’t get permission to invade first, and that had they it would have been ok then.
Keep in mind it only takes one side to start a war. The United States didn’t have to declare war on Japan in 1941 because Japan had already declared war on us. What Roosevelt subsequently asked for and Congress passed was a declaration that a state of war existed and formal authority to carry out that war.
If the United States didn’t want to fight, Japan might have agreed to terms. That probably would have included turning over the Philipines, Guam, Midway, and Wake Island to Japan, ending the trade embargo, ending any aid to China, and recognizing Japan’s control of conquered territroy in China and other occupied territory.
There’s a breakdown of how carriers and thier aircraft would match up here between the US and Japan assuming a ‘reverse Midway’ in which Japan loses no carriers and every US carrier at Midway is sunk. The result:
Not voting for war after Pearl Harbor would have been political suicide for most of those involved, and may even have lead to a Second Revolution. The American public is not going to allow a sneak attack to go unavenged.
This is the key problem. The Japanese were getting almost all their oil from the Dutch East Indies (DEI), now Indonesia. If you look at a map, the only route between the DEI and Japan goes right past the Phillipines.
Oil was blood to Japan and Japan couldn’t last long without it. There is no way Japan could allow the US to control the Phillipines. With the USA in control of Manilla, it was so easy to cut Japan off from the oil.
In reality, Japan expanded very quickly after Dec 1941 but didn’t really get a firm grasp on it. Even in China, Japan was able to hold the key urban areas by the coast but never had a real grip on China’s rural areas or inner urban cities. Japan was way to over extended.
NZ was never on the Japanese wish list. No strategic resources and all that dairy produce is of no value if you’re lactose intolerant.
Not that NZ would have represented a that tough nut to crack. Most of their armed forces were still in Europe. When lone gunman Stanley Grahamwent on a rampage in 1941 he virtually put the whole South Island in lock down for 12 days, leading the Nazi propagandist Lord Haw-Haw to announce that Hitler had sent Graham a telegram: “Hold the South Island. Sending another man to take the North Island”
So NZ would have been considered only after Australia was overrun.
It’s also questionable whether Japan wanted to extend to Australia. By the time they had control of the Indonesian archipelego their supply lines were stretched. When Japanese marines assault on Milne Baywas repelled by Australian forces, the Japanese withdrew and abandoned further strategic objectives to the east. Although they bombed Darwin, no troops crossed the Torres Strait and all Australia’s strategic resources were still 2,000 miles away. The oil/natural gas reserves in the North West Cape/Timor Sea weren’t known of then.
