My understanding of the primary reason for the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in 1942 was to strike so hard and furiously so as to convince the US to back down and accept Japan’s claims in Asia. Instead of course, this galvanized the nation and had the opposite effect on public support for war.
But what would the likely outcome of Japan been if the US had backed down after the Pearl Harbor attack and accepted Japanese claims on these lands? I think it would be safe to say that the US would still enforce a trade/oil embargo necessitating that the IJN invade the DEI for the oil and resources, bringing it in to conflict with Great Britian. Nazi Germany would had likely still been defeated (though slower) even without direct US military support leaving Japan to fend for itself against Great Britain and the rest of free Europe.
What would had been the end results - Would Japan been pushed out of mainland Asia anyways by the Chinese/British/Dutch? Would Russia gotten involved? Would Japan still be a viable country today or would it be under the rule of another government?
Not that I think this was a likely response…nor do I think the Japanese thought the US would simply back down. Their plan IIRC was to strike hard enough that it would take us time to rebuild, giving them time to solidify and fortify their empire, and that by the time we were in a position to do something about it they would be in an unassailable position strategically.
As for the oil/materials embargo, they didn’t care. They planned to grab those resources from the pacific rim nations controlled by the various colonial powers. This would negate the US’s (and anyone else’s) embargo. I don’t think the Japanese were especially worried about the UK or France…they saw the US as their primary enemy, the only nation that could do them serious harm in aquiring their empire.
I’d say if the US had played along (or, more likely, if the US carriers had been caught at Pearl Harbor as well), then the Japanese would have probably captured New Zealand and maybe parts (all?) of Austrailia, and pushed their empire out to the full extent they planned. Who else could have done anything about it? The UK was fighting for its life against the Germans, the French were finished (and I’m not sure how much either could have done in any case even if they were completely free…they were half way around the world, and Japan was a hell of a lot closer). I don’t think the Austrailians had a fleet large enough to do much against Japan (though I’m sure they would have fought hard to defend their homes on land). Who else was there?
If the US had backed down? After Japan attacked Pearl and declared war on us. If we didn’t go to war at that point then when?
Why would Germany have eventually lost. Could UK & USSR fought and won the war alone. Germany was already consolidating their gains in France. Italy would have lasted much longer. They may have succeeded in causing wide scale rebellion in the Middle-East from the Brits. How could the Brits ever launch an assault on Europe without help.
No USA in WWII and probably Germany would have won. Could they conquer the Soviet Union, I doubt it, but they could have held most of Central and Western Europe and eventually sued for Peace with Soviets and divided up part of Eastern Europe with them.
Japan would have held Korea and possibly Manchuria, Philippines, Malaysia and maybe South East Asia. They would have become very strong if they could have controlled the natural resources they were seeking.
I think if the US had backed down the world would be a very bad and sad place.
Why would this scenerio necessarily effected the war in Europe…or America’s involvement? After all, our fleet in the pacific didn’t really have much bearing on how we prosecuted the war in Europe. Great Britian was able to get the US to agree to concentrate on Germany first, even though Germany was really no threat to the US. Germany would have presumably still declared war on the US shortly after Pearl Harbor, so all that would have been the same. The difference is, if we lost the carriers, the US wouldn’t have been able to mount any major offensive operations against the Japanese on a fleet level. We probably would have relied on submarine warfare instead (and probably hurt them just as badly as we did in cutting off all those supplies getting back to Japan). We would have gone into a much more defensive posture, probably building up defenses in Hawaii on a larger scale (and for nothing too as I doubt the Japanese would have bothered, having other goals in mind).
I suppose rebuilding a fleet from scratch would have taken away some resources we used in Europe, but really the fleet we had in '42/'43 was a shadow of the massive fleet we had in the pacific by '45 anyway so I doubt it would have been that different. We probably would have fought all the harder in Africa/Europe without the distraction of offensive operations in the pacific (we could maintain a defensive stance much easier than what we actually did after all)…so perhaps the war in Europe would have been actually over sooner.
The thing is, I don’t see ANY real scenerio where the US would simply roll over after taking one in the nuts by Japan when we weren’t looking…not to the extent implied by the OP. The only way I see Japan even being party successful is if they caught the carriers…and that would only buy them time to expand and consolidate their empire while we rebuilt a fleet from scratch and went completely on the defensive. I don’t see how or why this would effect our participation in Europe, as it was really Churchill’s big plan to get us in…and FDR was leaning that way anyway.
In the end I still think the US would have gone after Japan…with a vengance so to speak. And all the things that allowed us to win would have still be there. It just would have taken longer but the end result would have been the same. The Japanese, even with an expanded empire, simply couldn’t fight off the US indefinitely. The Japanese system of having very small cadre’s of highly trained pilots and sailors would still have been as disasterous. They still would have ignored anti-submarine warfare to their detriment, and we’d have still managed to hurt them badly there reguardless (after all, the submarine fleet was pretty much untouched after Pearl Harbor)…in fact, we might have changed doctorine sooner to unlimited submarine warfare and relied even more heavily on subs as offensive weapons had we lost the carriers. Its easier and quicker to put out a lot of subs quickly after all, and we had a pretty damn good sub model already out there.
I agree that given the attack there was no way we would not go to war. I think it is more interesting to consider what would have happened if there was no attack.
I see two opposing pressures. The first was the extensive isolationism still present, which might have forced FDR to accept the Japanese expansion. The second was the presence of American territories in the Pacific, especially the Philipines. Would the Japanese have felt secure with a huge potential enemy base right in the middle of their territory?
And this seems the right place to recall FDR’s speech on the Nick Danger side of the second Firesign Theatre record.
Why would Japan have invaded, of all places, New Zealand? New Zealand has nothing the Japanese needed and is very, very far from Japan.
Japan’s intended empire was, first and foremost, the conquest of China. The invasion of the Allied possessions in Asia was for the purpose of acquiring the resources needed to prosecute the war with China (which in turn was at least in part being done to be strong enough to fight Russia.) Australia and New Zealand weren’t the intended targets.
The United Kingdom may in fact have tried to convince the U.S. of this, but words are cheap. If you look at the facts with respect to relative efforts dedicated to the two theatres, the U.S. was pouring it on Japan from the get-go. There was no “concentration” on Germany at the expense of the war against Japan.
It seems the best course for Japan is to avoid attacking the US. That’s always a disaster. Take French Indochina, British Malaysia and Burma, and the Dutch East Indies. All the European countries are busy getting their asses kicked by Germany. The problem with the US is the Phillipines, the Phillipines are right in the middle of your invasion plans, but you can’t take over the Phillipines without DOWing the US.
Anyway, the main prize is China and the Soviet Far East. The US is a threat, but only a potential threat. Eventually the US is going to go to war in Europe, wait until they’re fully commited against Germany THEN attack.
I misspoke…I meant New Guinea, not New Zealand. Its a stepping stone to Austrailia. The Japanese certainly planned to invade and capture New Zealand eventually, but their main goal was Austraila, and to get that they wanted New Guinea (as well as the Solomon Islands, the East Indies, Borneo, etc)…that was the point of their attempt on Port Moresby in New Guinea, why we battled it out in Guadalcanal in the Solomons, and fought the Battle of the Coral Sea (IIRC). You are right that its far from Japan…but it wasn’t far from the resources they wanted to capture and that WAS a primary goal of the Japanese.
Yes they were unless my memory is totally shot. China was in the bag so to speak (especially without US and British aid). Japan’s main goal wasn’t simply capturing China but to give itself strategic defense in depth by capturing the entire pacific rim including Australia. Strategic depth AND oil, rubber, iron, etc…all the things Japan lacks. It was all out there for the taking (to their minds)…but it wasn’t all in China by any means.
Again, not true, at least not from my understanding of history (granted that could be faulty). The US certainly didn’t neglect Japan, but we poured the bulk of our effort into supplying our allies in the European theater, into building up our combat capability there. It wasn’t until Germany was defeated that we shifted full focus on Japan. Had the US ignored Germany entirely and just gone after Japan the war in the Pacific would have been much shorter…at least thats what I’ve always heard.
Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, after bombing Pearl Harbor, reportedly said, “I fear that we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve.”
He may have realized all was not a bed of roses, but in regarding U.S. industrial might, he didn’t have a clue; nothing he could foresee likely came close. And he had lived in and supposedly had studied the United States. Hitler and his crew of brainiacs were just as clueless.
Regarding the U.S. industrial might, the Department of the Navy Historical Center says:
Even a fictional German nuke or two (that could not have been delivered, anyway) would not have wiped out the majority of this. Even if the U.S. aircraft carriers had been hit at Pearl Harbor, the end of the war probably would have been delayed by only a matter of months. At the end of the war Germany’s industry was a spent force, along with its military. Those of the United States had yet to hit their peak.
It seems to me the Axis powers may have reckoned the industrial might of the United States with that of Germany or Britain, or perhaps Germany and Britain combined. A B-24 an hour! For what might as well be forever! They did not conceive of it. But industrialists in the United States did. So did Roosevelt. So did Churchill. For that matter, so did Stalin.
Had the Axis dictators understood the U.S. reality instead of seeing what they wanted to see, they would have gone back to bed.
In truth, a number of Japanese knew that victory against the United States would be almost impossible. However, they (incorrectly) believed that they had little to lose by going to war that they would not lose by allowing economic strangulation.
From Akira Iriye’s The Origins of the Second World War in Asia and the Pacific:
In my mind, the fatal flaw of the Japanese was not so much underestimating the strength of the US as much as it was underestimating the possible consequences of losing. They can be forgiven this to some extent, since the “unconditional surrender” policy that the US adopted was, AFAIK, unprecedented in international warfare.
(BTW, the Yamamoto quote was invented for the movie Tora, Tora, Tora)
Indeed, Wikipedia makes it clear the quote is a screenwriter’s fabrication.
I had doubts the quote was legit because it is almost too pithy (and I have not seen the movie Pearl Harbor), so I hedged with “reportedly said.” However, I wish I had checked Wikipedia. The sources on the net I found to refresh the so-called quote in my mind said nothing about it being fake.
Although the quote is too pat, the Wikipedia article goes on to say it probably sums up Yamamoto’s opinion. Not that it mattered.
Reason I asked the question like I did was that I was watching a history channel documentary over the weekend about the IJN that said that Yamamoto knew that any extended battle against America would most certainly result in defeat and that he strongly urged not starting a war with the US. He was overruled however and had to come up with a “winning” strategy.
According to the show, the only plan that Yamamoto had that had any potential of success was if he could convince the US to back down by an extravagant show of might. And by doing so convince the US that waging a war would be too costly and thus be willing to negotiate a peace over indo-china and Japanese influence over Asia.
But of course, it was a miscalculation and the US was enraged instead.
But I’m also happy exploring any outcome had the US simply never been attacked. I’m sure the US would had gotten involved after DEI was invaded but would they had gone for unconditional surrender or even had pressed for victory as hard as it was if PH never happened? Would the US population supported it?
The subs were fine , it was the torpedo’s that sucked large, more over it was the fleet bureaucrats that kept telling line sub commanders that their torpedos worked just fine. As well, if subs are your only option , sooner or later the japs will do a crash course on anti-sub warfare.
In the real universe they never did…and we completely crippled them with our subs during WWII. The problem is that sub warfare is defensive in nature…something the Japanese despised.
Excellent citation. The overall “index of war production”, a fairly arcane analysis of industrial output relevant to warmaking, is estimated to have been 20:1 in America’s favor over Japan.
I would argue, however, that Yamamoto Isoroku had more than a “clue” of this. Although I can’t find a citation online, historian John Keegan quotes Yamamoto as having said (going from memory here) “Anyone who has seen the automobile factories of Detroit and the oilfields of Texas knows Japan cannot win such a war.”
Yamamoto had attended the University of Chicago, and well understood that war with the US would mean defeat. He also predicted that if the Pearl Harbor attack was successful, “I can run wild for six months to a year, but after that, I have no confidence.”
Japanese forces did indeed “run wild” across the Pacific until the battle of Midway. Pearl Harbor was Decembber 7, 1941; the Japanese carriers sank at Midway June 4, 1942 – three days short of exactly six months.
For the record, Sailboat accidentally made a paragraph written by me look like a quotation from the U.S. Navy’s Historical Record (perhaps a coding error).