# When did they anticipate victory in WWII? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 11, 2014, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-they-anticipate-victory-in-wwii/698178 "2014-09-11T13:57:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Kropotkin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kropotkin/32/18045_2.png) [@Kropotkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kropotkin)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2014, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-they-anticipate-victory-in-wwii/698178/61 "2014-09-17T03:50:59Z")
But FWIW, the Canadian government created the Committee on Post-War Reconstruction in 1941, with the Marsh Report issued in 1943. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2014, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-they-anticipate-victory-in-wwii/698178/62 "2014-09-17T04:19:15Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Well, both the Allies and the Japanese questioned that, so I guess there\* had\* been a question. Mind you yes, there were apparently a small group of Japanese leaders who thought they couldn’t win- but didnt say anything. > > Yes, with 20/20 hindsight we can see that a Japanese victory was unlikely. But the Americans were scared and many Japanese leaders were confidant. No. Simply no. Of course, a lot of Japanese thought they were going to win, or at least it was preferable to caving into what they considered unthinkable demands made in '41 by the US. Before Midway, they were already planning how to spend their summer holidays. But we don’t really put too much stock in delusional people. Please provide a cite that the Allies were “scared.” I’m not talking about the man on the street. Show me one of the key leaders who seriously believed it was possible for the Japanese to “win.” Imperial Japan could not militarily defeat America. Simply no way. All they ever hoped for was that the US would decide it wasn’t worth it any longer and go home. After PH, that would not have happened. The US had 10 times the industrial capacity even prior to the war. Much larger population and considerable natural resources. With the relative positions of the two countries, even without the addition of the other Allies, there simply wasn’t anyway for Japan to win. With the Two Oceans Act, the US had many more ships coming. What’s more, anytime the fight went against us, we just had to drop back and regroup. Cite for any leader showing a concern that we would lose. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2014, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-they-anticipate-victory-in-wwii/698178/63 "2014-09-17T19:11:56Z")
From Wiki: > [@](#): > > On August 15, a recording of the Emperor’s surrender speech … (“Jewel Voice Broadcast”): “Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should We continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization…” Sounds like using the excuse “we can’t fight that weapon” to bow out with some shred of honor. Also: > [@](#): > > On August 9, 1945, following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet declaration of war, Emperor Hirohito told Kido to “quickly control the situation” because “the Soviet Union has declared war and today began hostilities against us.” The Russians and Japanese still argue over the Kuril Islands, which Russia took the Japanese ones and has not yet given them back. ---
**Author:** ![syncrolecyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f08c70/32.png) [@syncrolecyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/syncrolecyne)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2014, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-they-anticipate-victory-in-wwii/698178/64 "2014-09-17T23:20:14Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > This is wrong. Really, really, really wrong. **Askance** explained about Bagration, but the Germans were in constant retreat on the Eastern Front from November 1942 until the end of the war with early summer 1943 being the only pause, and that pause being a result of the deliberate Soviet decision to remain on the defensive and deliver a riposte after defeating the German 1943 summer offensive at Kursk. From August 1943 until the end of the war, the Soviets were constantly on the offensive on some part of their front and the Germans were losing ground every day. A picture being worth a thousand words, maps of the [Eastern Front 18 November 1942 to March 1943](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Eastern_Front_1942-11_to_1943-03.png) and [Eastern Front 1 August 1943 to 31 December 1944](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Eastern_Front_1943-08_to_1944-12.png). I think Germany could have benefitted from having those shorter lines to defend, if not for Hitler’s general reluctance to tactically retreat or pull back to more defendable positions. At the very least, such an approach could have prolonged the war until Berlin was nuked. As late as February 1, 1945 Germany held about as much ground as it did in the peak years of World War I (with some losses around Aachen and Alsace-Lorraine), with an added empire of Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, and northern Italy. But after extending from Brittany to the Volga, holding this reduced empire had little psychological benefit to German morale. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2014, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-they-anticipate-victory-in-wwii/698178/65 "2014-09-18T16:10:29Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > No. Simply no. > > Of course, a lot of Japanese thought they were going to win, or at least it was preferable to caving into what they considered unthinkable demands made in '41 by the US. Before Midway, they were already planning how to spend their summer holidays. But we don’t really put too much stock in delusional people. > > Please provide a cite that the Allies were “scared.” I’m not talking about the man on the street. Show me one of the key leaders who seriously believed it was possible for the Japanese to “win.” > > Imperial Japan could not militarily defeat America. Simply no way. All they ever hoped for was that the US would decide it wasn’t worth it any longer and go home. After PH, that would not have happened. > > The US had 10 times the industrial capacity even prior to the war. Much larger population and considerable natural resources. With the relative positions of the two countries, even without the addition of the other Allies, there simply wasn’t anyway for Japan to win. > > With the Two Oceans Act, the US had many more ships coming. What’s more, anytime the fight went against us, we just had to drop back and regroup. > > Cite for any leader showing a concern that we would lose. Well, few leaders are gonna say anything other than Victory is Ours! But the Allies poured everything into WWII. Certainly not the actions of leaders who figured victory was 100% certain no matter what they did. Whether or not 20/20 hindsight can see the Japanese could not win, this means nothing to the attitudes and plans of the period. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2014, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-they-anticipate-victory-in-wwii/698178/66 "2014-09-18T16:58:41Z")
And of course, the model freshest in their minds for the final assault would be battles like Iwo Jima. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-they-anticipate-victory-in-wwii/698178/67 "2014-09-19T01:39:52Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Well, few leaders are gonna say anything other than Victory is Ours! > > But the Allies poured everything into WWII. Certainly not the actions of leaders who figured victory was 100% certain no matter what they did. > > Whether or not 20/20 hindsight can see the Japanese could not win, this means nothing to the attitudes and plans of the period. This is not a logical argument. Let’s look at what you said: [Quote=you] Well, both the Allies and the Japanese questioned that, so I guess there had been a question. Mind you yes, there were apparently a small group of Japanese leaders who thought they couldn’t win- but didnt say anything. [/quote] Please provide a cite for where the Allies questioned if victory were possible. ---
**Author:** ![slaphead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9bcb4/32.png) [@slaphead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slaphead)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 10:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-they-anticipate-victory-in-wwii/698178/68 "2014-09-19T10:50:50Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > But the Allies poured everything into WWII. Certainly not the actions of leaders who figured victory was 100% certain no matter what they did. No-one with half a clue is ever 100% certain of anything in a war, because you never know if the other guys are gonna pull a rabbit out of the hat. But I think from the moment the US were fully engaged I think they expected to win barring the Axis producing some sort of miracle. The sort of thing that might have qualified would have been an Axis A-Bomb, hence the massive effort put into making sure the Allies got there first. In terms of bombers, tanks, battleships, divisions etc. it was a foregone conclusion. As early as 1943 the plans for the US army were scaled back to 90 divisions from the original 185, in order to free up more men for industry and the other services. They weren’t worried about beating the Axis, just about how to do it most efficiently. In fact they cut it rather fine and there were some army manpower shortages after the Ardennes offensive, but the point is that they were planning very carefully against what they believed was needed, not the maximum achievable if they put the US economy through the wringer. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-they-anticipate-victory-in-wwii/698178/69 "2014-09-19T11:27:18Z")
> [@Jim\_s\_Son](#): > > I have heard that Branch Rickey traded Johnny Mize, who was 28, four days after Pearl Harbor because he thought the war would last five years (pretty close) and Mize would be washed up when it was over (wrong). Rickey got 3 players and $50,000…people say Rickey got 10% of any cash received in a trade. > [@Baron\_Greenback](#): > > This is the sort of code that Bletchley Park managed to decrypt. Anyone? ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-they-anticipate-victory-in-wwii/698178/70 "2014-09-19T11:30:06Z")
Japan is a fairly small set of islands with little in the way of natural resources. Since their nearest neighbour (China) was not on their side, they would have been totally blockaded by the combined navies of the allies. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-they-anticipate-victory-in-wwii/698178/71 "2014-09-19T14:08:16Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > Japan is a fairly small set of islands with little in the way of natural resources. Since their nearest neighbour (China) was not on their side, they would have been totally blockaded by the combined navies of the allies. They pretty much already were, U.S. submarines achieved a stranglehold on the home islands. The Japanese had few anti-submarine capabilities and the U.S. Navy punished them heavily for it. It came up in the trial of Admiral Karl Donitz, when the legality of unrestricted submarine warfare was questioned. On Japanese ‘victory’, I’d always read that their strategy was never a complete defeat of the U.S., which everyone knew was impossible, but to make continued war so costly that a favourable peace could be negotiated; keep their possessions in China, deal with their own war criminals etc. In this regard the Soviet declaration of war and bombs were a double-whammy; Stalin would be completely undeterred by casualties and there was no way to extract blood from a-bomb runs. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-they-anticipate-victory-in-wwii/698178/72 "2014-09-19T16:24:25Z")
> [@Mr.Kobayashi](#): > > They pretty much already were, U.S. submarines achieved a stranglehold on the home islands. The Japanese had few anti-submarine capabilities and the U.S. Navy punished them heavily for it. It came up in the trial of Admiral Karl Donitz, when the legality of unrestricted submarine warfare was questioned. As well as the mining by the strategic bombers. **Dissonance** has [an excellent post](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17741098&postcount=18) on the thread in GB. > [@](#): > > They weren’t. Option number 3 was to continue the blockade of Japan and the firebombing of its cities; Japan could not feed itself without large imports of food which it was being denied as a result of the sinking of most of its merchant fleet by that point in the war and the continued submarine blockade as well as the mining of Japanese harbors by B-29s which proved to be extremely effective and was carried out at the Navy’s insistence over the objections of the Army Air Corps which felt it was a wasteful diversion of the B-29s from firebombing Japanese cities. It in fact proved to be the most efficient means of both sinking Japanese shipping and denying the use of harbors. The name of the operation leaves little to the imagination as to what the point of it was; Operation Starvation. Starving Japan out would take an indeterminate amount of time and the effects of starvation alone, never mind the continued firebombing, would have been the deaths of civilians reaching at least one if not several million. > > Something to bear in mind is the mindset of the ultranationalists running Japan during the war; they were quite prepared to commit national suicide before admitting defeat. The slogan since mid 1944 had been ichioku gyokusai, literally 100 million shattered jewels, figuratively the 100 million die together. > [@](#): > > On Japanese ‘victory’, I’d always read that their strategy was never a complete defeat of the U.S., which everyone knew was impossible, but to make continued war so costly that a favourable peace could be negotiated; keep their possessions in China, deal with their own war criminals etc. Yes, (except for the part about dealing with war criminals, that only came up at the end, when they saw what was happening in Germany). They expected that the war wouldn’t be that long and that the Allies would be so much in awe of their fighting spirit that the US would roll over and give them a blank check. > [@](#): > > In this regard the Soviet declaration of war and bombs were a double-whammy; Stalin would be completely undeterred by casualties and there was no way to extract blood from a-bomb runs. Yes and no. It was a double whammy and the historians who argue that it took both events seem to make more sense to me. However, it was not that they were afraid of an invasion by the Soviets, and hence that was not a question concerning casualties from them. As I wrote in the other thread, > [@me](#): > > Japan and the USSR had a neutrality pact which was to have expired in April of 1946. The Soviets informed Japan that they would not renew the pact, but the pact was still in effect at the time the Soviets attacked Japan. > > The Japanese were hoping that the Soviets would intervene on their behalf, and Stalin basically stalled them until the end. > > The two bombs and the Soviet entrance to the war forced the hand of the Emperor. The militants had refused to look at surrender until the discussions with the Soviets had progressed and once that was known, the decision came down to the question of surrendering or fight to the bitter end. > > The IJA was making plans to impose martial law, which would have placed them in a position to control the Emperor. He really had no other choice. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-they-anticipate-victory-in-wwii/698178.md?page=3)