Right. :smack: Velocity was asking about the practical benefits of invading France. Of course, for Hitler a very important personal consideration was revenge for Germany’s humiliating defeat in WWI. But once France had declared war, Germany didn’t have much choice but to attack it.
Fair enough and a good distinction to make but my take on “doomed” was more that their plans for victory were “doomed to failure”
I’ll concede that it wasn’t an official declaration, but according to the Times, it was a virtual declaration of war. Mind you, I’m no expert on what does or doesn’t constitute such a thing.
Yes, if the Philippines had been attacked, especially a sneak attack*? A definite maybe on the US declaring war. But not with the huge wave of support that Pearl harbor caused.
But still in alt hist, we can imagine the Imperial forces leaving the Philippines alone, while the DEI are taken out.
However, FDRs Trade embargo was very reasonable, considering Japans bad conduct in China.
- that is my weird conspiracy theory, born out by the fact that my Dad served in “Dug-out Dougs” HQ unit and knew things. Why was MacArthur taken by surprise? because the US thought that the IJN was gonna attack the Philippines (Not Pearl), and FDR ordered Doug to be taken by surprise to get FDRs war.
But again this is a difference between ‘was doomed’ and ‘knew was doomed’ comes in. Attacking British and Dutch possessions without neutralizing the Philippines would have been extremely unorthodox. They were not just items on a menu, Luzon Strait between that island and Formosa was a critical sea lane. If the US was willing to provoke Japan in the extreme with the oil embargo, why would it not just build up military forces in the Philippines, and continue building its huge new fleet started in earnest in 1940 (the ships that made the naval war in the Pacific a completely unfair fight by 1944) until it could cut off Japanese sea lines of communication to the new oil rich possessions at its leisure?
This, without benefit of hindsight, is why not including the Philippines in the conquest plan was never seriously considered by the Japanese. Conquering the eastern part of the DEI in the actual plan also relied on first taking bases on the Philippines. But that could have been gotten around. The basic geography is why they didn’t believe it was feasible to leave the US out of the war.
As to US morale and motivation, this can be debated endlessly without getting anywhere really IMO. Nobody knows how important if at all it would have been in pure military terms if the ‘sneak attack’ was just in the Philippines. There’s no way to measure ‘public outrage’ in direct military terms. Plus the US would have started with a significantly stronger naval (and to some extent air, 200+ planes lost in the Japanese attack) force in the Pacific without the attack on Hawaii.
Read “December 8, 1941: MacArthur’s Pearl Harbor” by William Bartsch for the best account IMO of that episode. No historical work based on available sources can ever refute what people insist would be shown by sources nobody has ever seen, but that book explains the known from a wide variety of known sources very well. Anyway the main potential false assumption about both the early operations in the PI as well as the PH attack is that the US forces were ready to perform like US forces usually did in 1944-45 if only given a bit of warning. In fact their readiness problems were much deeper and broader, material, training, and basic mentality. Besides which the USAAF contingent in the PI wasn’t really that powerful even on paper. The US/Philippine Commonwealth military position in a war with Japan in December 1941 was ‘doomed’, and a lot of people on the Allied side knew that. Even MacArthur’s target was readiness by around April 1942.
I disagree that the USA provoked Japan in the extreme with the oil embargo. All Japan had to do was stop it’s quagmire of a war. It was Japan that provoked the USA. In no way shape or form was the US wrong in it’s embargo.
Because if Japan knew the people of the uSA, they should have know that’s not the way the US works. At that time the USA was devoutly isolationist, due to the British conning us into WW1.
Nor am I claiming that “the US forces were ready to perform like US forces usually did in 1944-45 if only given a bit of warning” but we *were *caught with our pants down. There’s no good reason for that.
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Sure it did. Japan attacked because of the oil embargo, that’s clear.
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Japan morally (as well as practically for the disastrous situation it eventually ended up in) should have taken a very different approach in China long before 1941. But by mid 1941 it was extremely difficult for Japan to satisfy US and British demands.
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Which means the US and Britain should have viewed a military attack by Japan as a high likelihood. Which they did, especially within the last few weeks of peace, and the Japanese invasion convoy headed to Malaya from Indochina was even detected. But, there as a failure of imagination on the US side in not expecting the Hawaii operation. That was a big mistake as far the people responsible for avoiding such mistakes. That might even have extend to not basing so much of the fleet there rather than the West Coast if there had been a realistic assessment of relative capabilities and readiness. Again for the first day’s action v the USAAF in PI read Bartsch. The to and fro events between PH and successful JNAF raid on Clark Field some hours later was complicated. However, that air contingent, which was approximately halved in strength on the first day not wiped out, was simply too small, and the bombers later proved not effective enough against ship targets and the US fighters not effective enough in air combat with Japanese fighters, to have affected the course of the Japanese operation against the PI. Nor was there any tactical surprise involved in the failure of the partly US Army but predominantly Philippine Commonwealth Army ground combat force to defeat the Japanese forces which landed on Luzon in the following days/weeks. They were just not militarily capable enough at that time, even though they outnumbered the IJA force by headcount.
supposedly according to sources that they used for the movie “the longest day” Rommel called berlin for orders during the initial invasion on d-day
he was told that “Hitler had taken a sleeping pill and wouldn’t be available for several hours”
when Rommel hung up the phone and turned to the aide and said "in the history books they’ll mark this day as the day that we lost the war because our "furher took a sleeping pill "
That’s a Japanese apologist answer, it’s like saying the British caused WW2 as they didnt let Germany attack Poland without declaring . The Japanese didnt need to attack the USA, they could have simply pulled out of China (except Manchuko). They were losing anyway. They could have gone for the Northern Strategy.
I dont need to read Bartsch. My Dad had the Philippines defense (and liberation & independence) medals. He was there. I am sure it’s a fabu book, I have read many other books about that period, however.
The argument that the US Air Corps could not have *affected the course of the Japanese operation * is a specious one and one I am not making. The argument i am making is that MacArthur was caught with his pants down and his planes not ready. Sure, the IJN would have won in the end, that’s not the point. The point is that there was no reason at all for Dug-out Doug to have been caught by surprise. Unless he had been ordered to be 'surprised".
For Germany, the point of doom was probably when the commitment was made to invade the USSR without enlisting the aid of the Byelorussians, Ukrainians, POWs/deserters, etc. that would have cheered the Germans as liberators. Instead, Hitler did the almost impossible: made Stalin look like the lesser of two evils. Once it became clear that there was no alternative to fighting to the death, the USSR would inevitably defeat Germany.
To clear up one point, Japan very clearly declared war on the United States. It’s true that the official note delivered to the United States government was ambiguous (although the concurrent bombing of Pearl Harbor made the intended meaning clear). The note says “The Japanese Government regrets to have to notify hereby the American Government that in view of the attitude of the American Government it cannot but consider that it is impossible to reach an agreement through further negotiations.” full text
However, the Japanese government also issued an official proclamation publicly in Japan that same day. It was clear: “We hereby declare War on the United States of America and the British Empire.” full text
But clearly after the sneak attack.
See, my point is that Adm Kimmel and Gen Short were raked over the coals by the Roberts comm, and found guilty of “dereliction of duty.” Whereas Dug-out Doug was made into a hero.
It wasn’t orders; Rommel knew what he should be doing. And it was von Runstedt, not Rommel, who made the call. Von Runstedt and Rommel wanted two reserve armor units to be moved into the battle. However, Hitler had left orders that those reserve units weren’t to be moved unless he personally authorized it. So they remained in place for six hours while he slept.
I fully agree MacArthur’s performance was disgraceful.
I read an excellent book titled “Japan’s War Plans: Preparing for Armageddon” which stated that before the war the Japanese did extensive war-gaming against Western forces and even with the most optimistic scenarios that Japan was doomed by 1944 as by then Japan would be within reach of Allied bombers which would be able to bomb their cities with impunity (though in their war games the Japanese expected the United States and the UK to bomb them via Chinese air bases, as opposed to the island hopping that actually happened. The year was right though.) At that point even if their all-powerful navy was entirely intact there would be nothing they could do to win the war against the number of bombers the Allies could muster.
Interestingly enough, despite knowing this Japanese High Command were still confident in their abilities to win the war, partly because they assumed they could sue for peace very quickly (with some assuming the Pearl Harbor attack would cause this) and that some divine miracle ala the kamikaze against the Mongols would pop up and save them. So Japan literally went into WW2 expecting a miracle to win the day as part of their strategy.
Nobody ever thought it was going to work in the first place. That it did work for a while came as a surprise to many people. This then lead to the situation late in the war where people who were suprised in the first place, still thought that some new surprise might turn the war their way.
One problem is what exactly is meant by ‘Axis nations’ - there were a lot of people in leadership positions or aspiring to leadership positions in Germany who fully expected the Western Allies to negotiate a soft peace with Germany, then ally with remaining German forces to defeat the ‘real’ enemy, the USSR. The July 1944 plotters, for example, expected this to happen, as did a lot of people putting out unofficial peace feelers, and I think it’s a bit much to say that the ‘nation’ knew they were doomed when a large number of people with significant power believed that they could negotiate something that definitely wasn’t the abject surrender they ended up having to accept.
The end of 1941 can be seen as a turning point, although it was not obvious to most people at the time. Throughout 1941 Germany had been in the ascendant, until the Russian counter-attack on December 6th. This showed that Russia was not beaten. And the day after … need I say more? When Germany declared war on the USA, the more prescient of the generals must have wondered what the hell the politicians were getting them into, knowing the potential resources of the USA.
But the propaganda machine put a brave face on it, and 1942 showed a string of successes from North Africa to Russia, while the Japanese rampaged through Asia. Then things looked less rosy, with the defeat at El Alamein, the slowdown in Russia and the developing catastrophe at Stalingrad. The defeat at Midway and the battles around Guadalcanal showed that Japan was vulnerable. It could be argued that the surrender at Stalingrad was so big that it could not be covered up and it would have left many ordinary citizens with doubts as to what the true situation was.
Both Germany and Japan had an increasingly acute problem with oil by 1943, or to be more precise, lack of oil. The strategists could see that no more resources could be captured, and the stocks were dwindling fast. In hapan’s case it was losing too many ships bringing the goodies back to Japan, the US torpedo problems were sorted out by then.
A turning point in 1943 was Kursk, the last major offensive that Germany mounted (the battle of the Bulge was a relatively small last-ditch effort done in desperation). After that, the German forces were steadily pushed back out of Russia. In the Far East the Japanese were losing the naval battles and were being held or pushed back. But the propaganda machines generally managed to deceive the populace. It was another story in 1944; as one Japanese man wryly said, “our glorious victories are coming closer to home each time.”
I think it really must have sunk in during August 1944 in Europe. The Allied landings in France had succeeded, Paris was taken, and in the east Operation Bagration took the Red Army from Minsk to Poland in a matter of weeks, while in the north Finland had to sue for peace, the Baltic republics were overrun, and down south Romania changed sides. In the east, the landings in the Philippines and the destruction of most of the Japanese navy in October 1944 must have made it clear to all but the fanatics that time was running out.
The problem was the self-deception at the higher levels and draconian action against the faint-hearted. The ordinary citizen got at best a highly edited version of the facts, so he was in no position to see what was going on. In Germany Hitler put his faith in the “miracle weapons” and hoped for a repeat of the dramatic change of sides that had saved Frederick the Great in 1762. Wishful thinking, of course.
“Until we were told to surface, and head for a British port,” said a former submariner who used to come here annually for sporting contacts, “we were under the impression that we were still winning”.