Dec 1942... Pacific Japan still winning and attacking Hawaii

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JtD
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Re: Dec 1942... Pacific Japan still winning and attacking Hawaii

Post by JtD »

RF wrote:This as I say is the tunnel vision Hitler and yourself are in.

The USSR was not Hitler's main enemy. He (and you) imagine it to be. But the USA posed the biggest threat. And while Britain was still in the war the US could strike directly at Germany, while Germany could not reach the US.
Sorry, the US weren't a threat. Germany was. They picked their enemies, and the SU was in the top spot.
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Re: Dec 1942... Pacific Japan still winning and attacking Hawaii

Post by lwd »

In Wages of Destruction the case is made that Hitler considered his two long term threats to be the US and the British. However these were economic threats and in order to combat them Germany had to be bigger and have access to more natural resources. He decided that the Ukraine was the best source of these at least initially. The Soviets on the other hand were a military threat and perhaps also a threat to the "Volk" so going after them killed two birds with one stone or at least that seamed to be his logic.
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Re: Dec 1942... Pacific Japan still winning and attacking Hawaii

Post by RF »

JtD wrote:
Sorry, the US weren't a threat. Germany was.
I am having difficulty following this. What I was saying was that the US was a threat to Germany, and a more dangerous one than the USSR.
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Re: Dec 1942... Pacific Japan still winning and attacking Hawaii

Post by RF »

lwd wrote:In Wages of Destruction the case is made that Hitler considered his two long term threats to be the US and the British. However these were economic threats and in order to combat them Germany had to be bigger and have access to more natural resources. He decided that the Ukraine was the best source of these at least initially. The Soviets on the other hand were a military threat and perhaps also a threat to the "Volk" so going after them killed two birds with one stone or at least that seamed to be his logic.
Hitler was never really clear on his strategic path, even in Mein Kampf. He appeared to view Russia in very much the same way as Britain viewed India as part of the British Empire without really understanding what was involved. As part of that he viewed Britain as a potential ally, completely contradicting the view of the book you quote.

The Soviets certainly were a military threat. But to Germany a manageable military threat, in that Germany was capable of defeating the USSR if the Soviets were to attack, particulary if it were with their forces as of 1941 or 1942.

The USA posed a more distant threat, but one that Germany could not defeat without allies outside Europe. The nature of that threat, in stark military terms, was that the USA could strike directly at Germany, with aerial bombing. as they were to do in WW2, and indirectly by seaborne blockade (which the British were able to do anyway).
Hitler had no real idea of the USA or of its economic and military strength.

But if your goal is to conquer or dominate the world, you eliminate the most dangerous threats first, and manage the lesser threats so that they pose no immediate real danger. Hitler even started that off the right way, with the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, so that he could defeat Poland without having to fight the Soviets alongside the Poles. However Hitler could not manage the political price that came with it - and his only answer was to attack, originally as early as September 1940.

I have no doubt that without Barbarossa, Stalin would have wanted to attack Germany. What Hitler should have done was to make sure it would fail. In that eventuality, what would be relevant are not the theoretical postulates of books like the Wages of Destruction, but the blueprint for armoured warfare as outlined in Achtung Panzer. The Heer applied the lessons of that book to defeat the French Army in 1940, when the French had more and heavier tanks than the Germans. If Stalin had attacked the resulting blitzkrieg encirclement battles would have been easier for the Germans than in Barbarossa because the Russians, in advancing westwards, would have walked straight into the flanking countersrikes, wheras in Barbarossa the Russians were retreating eastwards, and many thousands of Soviet troops escaped the German entrapments.
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Re: Dec 1942... Pacific Japan still winning and attacking Hawaii

Post by lwd »

RF wrote:
lwd wrote:In Wages of Destruction the case is made that Hitler considered his two long term threats to be the US and the British. However these were economic threats and in order to combat them Germany had to be bigger and have access to more natural resources. ...
Hitler was never really clear on his strategic path, even in Mein Kampf. He appeared to view Russia in very much the same way as Britain viewed India as part of the British Empire without really understanding what was involved. As part of that he viewed Britain as a potential ally, completely contradicting the view of the book you quote.
Not really. Note the bolding. Britian which he viewed as a potential military ally could also be a significant encomic threat if Germany didn't have access to adequate resources and markets.
The USA posed a more distant threat, but one that Germany could not defeat without allies outside Europe. The nature of that threat, in stark military terms, was that the USA could strike directly at Germany, with aerial bombing. as they were to do in WW2, and indirectly by seaborne blockade (which the British were able to do anyway).....
At that point the US could hardly bomb Germany. Even with longer range bombers that the US was working on attacking Germany would not have been very productive. A blockade was a threat but if Germany isn't at war with the Soviet Union then it isn't going to be very effective.
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Re: Dec 1942... Pacific Japan still winning and attacking Hawaii

Post by RF »

lwd,

I don't think that you have grasped what I am saying.

Firstly, the USA. The USAF in 1942 could and did fly planes across the Atlantic and use British airfields to bomb Germany from August 1942 onwards. The Americans thus had airfields from which Germany could be assaulted. They did not have to use airfields in mainland America. Germany had no airfields from which the USA could be bombed, either in Europe or anywhere else.
That is why the USA was a threat. They could attack Germany, while Germany couldn't touch the US hinterland. Hitler even acknowleged this in admitting to both Warlimont and later to Japanese ambassador Hiroshi Oshima that he had no idea on how to defeat the USA.

Secondly Hitler's atitude to Britain was always contradictory. But by following the geopolitical ideas of people like Haushofer Britain wouldn't really matter if Germany was able to exploit the Eurasian hinterland. There is nothing really definate about Hitler's intentions long term beyond the vague ''table talk'' about which so much has been written since 1945.
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Re: Dec 1942... Pacific Japan still winning and attacking Hawaii

Post by lwd »

RF wrote:lwd,

I don't think that you have grasped what I am saying.

Firstly, the USA. The USAF in 1942 could and did fly planes across the Atlantic and use British airfields to bomb Germany from August 1942 onwards. The Americans thus had airfields from which Germany could be assaulted. They did not have to use airfields in mainland America. Germany had no airfields from which the USA could be bombed, either in Europe or anywhere else.
OK I thought you were talking pre war
That is why the USA was a threat. They could attack Germany, while Germany couldn't touch the US hinterland.
But prewar when a lot of these decsions were made Hitler thought of Britain as an ally. If that's the case the shoe is on the other foot to a large extent. Germany threatens the US and the US has little leverage to do much to Germany without an ally in Europe.
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Re: Dec 1942... Pacific Japan still winning and attacking Hawaii

Post by RF »

Prewar the Americans knew that there was no chance of the British going in with Hitler as a military ally, that was not the appeasers aim. During the time Ribbentropp was German ambassador in London this was made very clear, as Ribbentropp was there from the start to get Britain on Germany's side, and all his inept attempts to do so resulted in embarassing public gaffes.

From what I recall the USA for the five or six years following the end of WW1 regarded Britain as its biggest potential enemy because Britain had a huge navy and had an alliance with Japan. The US naval staff even went so far as to plan a war with Britain, involving a similar strategy against Britain as the British practised against Germany in WW1 - to bottle up the RN by a distant blockade and starve Britain into surrender. This strategy became redundant when the US obtained naval parity with Britain at the 1925 Washington Naval Conference, and Japan had to settle for less than parity and the loss of its alliance with Britain.
Gerrmany was not seen as a threat by the Americans as it had practically no navy.

After 1925 Japan was regarded as the power most hostile to the US. It was recognised that a resurgent Germany might ally with Japan, but with the North Atlantic as a buffer the Germans were still not seen as a threat.

That effectively leaves Britain as at least a friendly neutral towards the US, and the leading power to contain a resurgent Germany. This was quite apart from the fact that Russia would also bar a resurgent Germany. So America was left solely with its Asaiatic nuisance facing it across the Pacific.
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Re: Dec 1942... Pacific Japan still winning and attacking Hawaii

Post by lwd »

RF wrote:Prewar the Americans knew that there was no chance of the British going in with Hitler as a military ally, ....
But I thought we were talking about Hitlers view of who his opponets were. American opinions are irrelevant to this.

Of course looking at the title of this thread so is most of this whole line of discussion...
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Re: Dec 1942... Pacific Japan still winning and attacking Hawaii

Post by RF »

lwd wrote:
But I thought we were talking about Hitlers view of who his opponets were. American opinions are irrelevant to this.
Hitler's view of his opponents and what his view ought to have been if he were to win WW2 cannot be seen in isolation. The atitudes and actions of such opponents are directly relevant to what Hitler's considerations should have been.

This thread started off by postulating continuing Japanese victory. I don't think that the scenario postulated was possible, so developed around it the conditions where Japan could win a military conflict with the US. My view is that this could only happen with powerful allies - the only one around was Hitler, already pre-occuppied with Russia. And if Hitler was to be of any help to the Japanese, then the USA comes before Russia and Britain has to be defeated.
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Re: Dec 1942... Pacific Japan still winning and attacking Hawaii

Post by lwd »

RF wrote: ...This thread started off by postulating continuing Japanese victory. I don't think that the scenario postulated was possible, so developed around it the conditions where Japan could win a military conflict with the US. My view is that this could only happen with powerful allies - the only one around was Hitler, already pre-occuppied with Russia. And if Hitler was to be of any help to the Japanese, then the USA comes before Russia and Britain has to be defeated.
Ok but the problem here is that Hitler can't do anything about the USA before Japan runs out of oil. Even if he defeats Britain it's not going to happen in time to save Japan. Now if he can avoid going to war with Britain and take out the Soviets maybe he has access to enough oil that he can supply the Japanese but I'm not sure he has the incentive to.
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Re: Dec 1942... Pacific Japan still winning and attacking Hawaii

Post by BlackBirdZGTR »

Hmm looks like the subject has changed quite alot since i last visited. What about this scenario, the Japanese worked on a nuclear weapon in 1930's and abandoned the Yamato battleship program devoting all of its funding and resources into developing a nuclear weapon then later on a stockpile. Would the Japanese then be able to win in the pacific with the ability to produce a small stockpile of nuclear weapons? :whistle:
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Re: Dec 1942... Pacific Japan still winning and attacking Hawaii

Post by lwd »

If the same resources are required for the Japanese to build a bomb that the US did they won't be able to build any in the 40s and possibly well afterwards. There economy will crash sometime in the early 40s without oil.
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Re: Dec 1942... Pacific Japan still winning and attacking Hawaii

Post by epeon »

First, the only scenario that would allow Japan to win would be if they did not attack Pearl Harbor or the Phillipines and honored American neutrality. They continue their advance to the south. This puts FDR in a political bind. He would find it very hard to wage active war against the japanese.

Secondly, once the Japanese attacked the US at Pearl Harbor, their fate was sealed. Japan could never invade australia or the US because they just did not have the logistic support for such an adventure. The number of ships it would have taken was at least an order of magnitude beyond what Japan had available to it. Thirdly, at some point, the US submarine warfare campaign was going to breakdown the maritime fleet of the Japanese.

Thirdly, I can envisualize the Japanese winning much in 1942. Midway, even with Yammoto's mistakes, could have broken the wrong way. Had the Japanese not been caught at exactly the wrong time (with armed planes on decks). Had the Japanese scouts seen the American carriers first. Such outcomese were possible. The opposing forces were pretty evenly matched, in fact, I would say that the Japanese had an edge. But, by 1943 the flood of Essex carriers, the better aircraft (Hellcats, TBFs, etc), the improvement in US torpedoes (they had to get better), and the superior crew and pilot training would simply overwhelm the Japanese. The Americans could trade two carriers to one throughout 1943 and eliminated the Japanese. However, with the superior aircraft, ships, and crews that was very unlikely.
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Re: Dec 1942... Pacific Japan still winning and attacking Hawaii

Post by lwd »

epeon wrote:First, the only scenario that would allow Japan to win would be if they did not attack Pearl Harbor or the Phillipines and honored American neutrality. They continue their advance to the south. This puts FDR in a political bind. He would find it very hard to wage active war against the japanese.
I disagree here. For one thing their are polls dating to Oct or Nov of 41 that indicate that the majority of the US populace thought war with Japan would probably be necessary. FDR also apparently said that US facilities would be open to the British and Dutch if they were attacked by Japan. So even without the US in the war can the Japanse afford to ignore say a British naval force based out of the Philipines? If they attack then the US is in the war. They also can't afford for the US to enter the war on their time schedule the Philipines are too close to Japan and it's vital sea lanes.
Secondly, ....
I pretty much concur.
Thirdly, I can envisualize the Japanese winning much in 1942. Midway, even with Yammoto's mistakes, could have broken the wrong way. Had the Japanese not been caught at exactly the wrong time (with armed planes on decks). Had the Japanese scouts seen the American carriers first. Such outcomese were possible. ....
A lot of this while previously accepted as correct appears to be wrong. For instance there weren't armed planes on the decks with the possible exception of a few zeros. I recommend Shattered Sword for anyone interested in Midway.
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