This is spot on, and I’d say the professor’s theory is pretty much what the Japanese were hoping for. They thought America would be so damaged and intimidated that it wouldn’t fight, or just put on a show of force as a gesture.
The Japanese attained pretty much all their goals in the first couple of moths of the war, except for maybe on China, and I’m not even sure they knew what they wanted out of China. But they got all the oil they needed and lots of other natural resources.
“Containment” at that point was water already under the bridge.
I’m still trying to understand where the Japanese would have stopped. Various parts of Southeast Asia? India? Australia? And does the professor propose that the British, French, and other European powers–seeing as how they were kinda busy in Europe–have also decided that it wasn’t worth trying to keep their possessions? For that matter, what if Japan decided to go for Soviet territory? And like it or not, the Philippines were US territory. Should the US not have fought the Battle of Bataan and allowed the Japanese easy access to Indonesia and other territory?
If Japan had parts of China and Southeast Asia and possibly even at least parts of India and Australia, could it have been an effective autarky?
I’m not a huge fan of the post WWII wars to “protect US interests”, especially since most of the time they seem to have been failures. But a sneak attack by a legitimate government on US territory, followed by invasion of additional US territory, and threats to the territory of US allies seems about as defensible a war as I can imagine.
It seems to me that without the United States, the Japanese could have sailed a fleet into the Persian Gulf, and there would have been no one to stop them. That would have solved their oil problems, to say the least.
It’s already been said here many times, but yeah, the professor isn’t taking public opinion into account. The problem with containment is that it’s a strategy that requires public support over a LONG period of time to bear fruit. But there are other problems with the idea, many of which have been mentioned here already, but hopefully I’ve got a couple of new ones:
Containment can be more expensive than war because it takes longer and requires the US to keep up in arms. Containment came into vogue because the alternative to containment was nuclear war. It is not at all clear that containment is cheaper than conventional war.
Containment isn’t sure to work. Conventional war in that situation was 99.9% sure to work. The US was going to beat Japan if it devoted all its resources and will to doing so. The professor was advocating a strategy with an uncertain chance of success as an alternative to a strategy that was almost certain to work, however terrible it was.
Containment is a lot easier when you’re containing one power in a bipolar world than if you’re trying to deal with a multi-polar world. Containment of the Soviet Union was relatively simple: The Communist bloc is our adversary, we’re going to prevent their advancement, and anyone who is willing to help us do that is our friend. If we’re containing Japan, what are we doing about the Communist bloc? If war breaks out between Japan and the Soviets, do we take a side? Do we let Japan become part of the Soviet bloc?
Deterrence. Containment is not a threat likely to deter anyone. Responding with overwhelming force to their aggression is a deterrent.
I do think that the professor is representing a pretty common thread in how the West thinks about war nowadays though. Total war is almost unthinkable, and limited war is usually unsuccessful unless the objectives are also limited(free Kuwait). So now we start thinking more and more in terms of “isolating” countries that are aggressive. This period reminds me a lot of the interwar period of the 1920s-1930s.
The oil fields on the northern shore of the Persian Gulf were already in full operation. The oil fields on the southern shore of the gulf were discovered in the late twenties and early thirties and were still being developed during WWII.
I agree. Not only did the Imperial Japanese attack the USA elsewhere, it was taking over the rest of the Pacific. Great gains in the DEI, Thailand rolled over, and Australia might well have been next. If the IJN had been free then other British colonies could be taken- places where the Army had to slog thru jungles and mountains could have been taken by a seaborn invasion.
And yes, the Imperial Japanese were mired down in China, but once they had all the raw materials from the DEI and Indochina, things would be different. Not to mention the Chinese may have well lost heart.
Overall "staggeringly idiotic" is almost too kind.
There was oil several thousand miles closer in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and perhaps north Borneo too (I am not sure if the copious fields there were up and running by 1941).
As for points West the UK did have an Indian Ocean Fleet, although this was thoroughly defeated by the Japanese in the months after PH. Then Doolittle recalled the Japanese main fleet east again, to Midway, and to doom.
Popular attention in the US today seems focused on US involvement in:
Protecting Israel, a country without borders that is so small as to be difficult to find on a world map.
Preventing the development of nuclear technology in Iran, a country that operates essentially within it’s borders.
Defending the US against ISIL, a well organized militia that controls a miniscule land base and is funded by extortion and proxy donations.
The situation on 8 Dec 1941 was:
Japan was the world leader in the strategic and tactical use of air power
Japan had attacked the territorial United States and was about to launch occupying forces.
Japan controlled the east coast of the entire Asian continent and the islands formally held by Europe.
Japanese exceptionalism justified enslaving native populations, casually, routinely beheading civilians and military captives and the immolation of humans. Compared to the Japanese, ISIL and the Islamic jihadists are choir boys.
Due to a non-aggression pact between Japan and the USSR there was no force to balance Japan outside of the United States.
The war with Japan was necessary. US involvement in the war in Europe perhaps not. The USSR was a sufficient force against Germany.
I would disagree with much of the previous post. I don’t think the United States is particularly focused on Israel’s defense. Israel gets a lot of news attention because the Middle East is a turbulent region. But the main priorities of American defense are the Americas, Western Europe, and East Asia. Even in the Middle East, we devote as much attention to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states as we do to Israel.
Iran may not be sending troops to other countries but I don’t think it’s honest to say it’s staying within in its own borders. Iran has clearly been supporting militant groups in other countries. And I think the world would be better off if Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons. It’s just a question of whether preventing that is worth the price.
Japan wasn’t a world leader in air power in 1941. A lot of modern aviation ideas had been developed in Italy of all places. Germany ended up taking these ideas and developing them. And it was the United States that really built a strategic bomber force. Japan did well in carrier aviation but it never matched the United States in this.
It’s only in retrospect that we can see that the Soviet Union was going to beat Germany. It certainly didn’t appear that way in December of 1941 when the Germans were occupying a lot of Soviet territory and seemed to be on the verge of capturing Moscow. Reasonable observers thought the Soviet Union was only a few weeks from surrendering.
No, the USSR was gonna get whupped by Nazi Germany. The Soviets desperately needed lend-lease goods and Allied supplies. Also if GB had bowed out, Germany would have no issues with supplies and could easily blockade the USSR- at least in the Atlantic side. Stalin himself said that Lend lease was *absolutely necessary *to Soviet success.
Not to mention, Stalin was unstable and obsessed with getting Allied aid and intervention. If the USSR had no allies or friends, he would have gone even more bonkers, causing the collapse of the USSR.
In 1941 Japan was the leading country in technology and strategic and tactical use of air power. I would be interested in specific information to the contrary.
The United States was in the process of deploying B-17s to Hawaii and the Philippines for coastal reconnaissance and defense. But, the services lacked a plan for strategic and tactical use of the weapon. That is evidenced by the disastrous introduction of that aircraft in the UK and lack of effectiveness in both Hawaii and the Philippines.
Russia was the only country that had purposefully developed a successful airplane for close support of ground troops - the IL1. The IL1, Russian superiority in tanks, lend lease and the vastness of Russian territory doomed the Germans from the start.
However, the core topic here is the Pacific war. The US was wounded and insulted by Japan. The war was necessary.
You never heard of the Stuka? The first such aircraft was used in 1917, anyway.
The Ilyushin Il-1 was a complete failure, it was a fighter and they built exactly one.
Maybe your thinking of the Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik? A great plane. In fact, possibly the greatest ground attack plane of the war, being cheap, reliable and tough. The German Henschel Hs 129, a plane in the same role- slightly preceded it, however.
No problem, I thought that was what you meant.
Henschel 129
First flight 25 May 1939
Introduction April 1942
Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik
First flight 2 October 1939
Introduction 1941
So it’s close. Hs129 designed first, produced later.
Hs129 was likely the heaviest armored production plane of WWII: “The entire nose section formed a welded armoured shell 6 mm to 12 mm thick around the pilot, with toughened 75 mm thick glass in the canopy. The total weight of the nose armour was 2,380 lbs (1080 kg).”
Sturmovik:
*The armored tub, ranging from 5–12 mm (0.2-0.5 in) in thickness and enveloping the engine and the cockpit, could deflect all small arms fire and glancing blows from larger-caliber ammunition. *
What do you feel was the Japanese equivalent of the B-17?
The Japanese strategic bomber fleet in 1941 consisted of six Ki-20’s. And these weren’t even Japanese designs - they were really German Junkers G.38’s. The main Japanese bomber was the Ki-1 - a badly outdated medium bomber by 1941 (and like the Ki-20 it was actually a German design).
Yes, the Japanese had no effective heavy bombers. The Mitsubishi G3M is sometimes classed as one, but it could carry less than a ton of bombs, whilst the B17 could carry 2-4 tons.
Late in the war there was the Nakajima G8N Renzan, which looked quite a bit like the B17- they built around four prototypes and not until 1944. The IJN did have some bigass flying boats such as the Kawanishi H8K. It could carry just over one ton of bombs, and had a great range.
Note that the Nazis never really developed a successful heavy bomber either.