How could Imperial Japan have defeated the United States during the Second World War?
I'm not much of one for alt-history; it's too much like writing fiction, a genre for which I have no gift. Prophesying about what would have happened had one of the antagonists done this or that quickly degenerates into a guessing game. Still, it is possible to identify some things Tokyo could have done to improve its chances of prevailing over an industrial giant that only needed time and resolve to build up overwhelming military power. Bottom line, the weaker side has to fight smart to win against the strong.
Herewith, my list of five ways Imperial Japan could have offset the resource disparity:
Don't fight land and sea wars simultaneously. Unable to referee between the army, which espoused war in continental Asia, and the navy, which beckoned his attention seaward, the emperor permitted both campaigns to proceed. Tokyo thus disregarded the strategic wisdom of a Carl von Clausewitz, who warned against opening new theaters that place success in the primary theater at risk. The emperor failed to adjudicate between the military services — and thus compelled the empire to fight a far stronger power with only a fraction of its strength. Dispersing power is misbegotten strategy for the weaker belligerent.
Don't awaken sleeping giants. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto famously warned that he could run wild against American forces for six months or a year, but that he feared for Japan's future if Washington refused a compromise peace after that. How could Tokyo have accomplished its goals in the Pacific — roughly speaking, a partition of that expanse between Japan and America — without striking preemptively at the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Hawaii? Well, it could have chosen its targets to achieve its goals without rousing American fury. Evicting U.S. forces from the Philippines, for instance, would have helped Japan firm up its control of the Western Pacific — and it's hard to imagine the United States waging a war to the death afterward. Americans simply didn't attach the same importance to the Philippine as to the Hawaiian Islands. Operational logic sometimes begets colossal strategic and political mistakes.
Realize protraction sometimes favors the strong. We tend to assume that stringing out a conflict favors the weak, especially when the weak face extraregional opponents. The idea — a sound one — is that the home team usually attaches more importance to events on its home turf than any outsider would. If the defender can prolong the conflict while exacting steep costs and sapping enemy morale, it can hope to wear out that enemy despite the mismatch in resources. But that only works if the outside power declines to summon up the forces to mount a massive effort across long distances. That assumption fell flat during the Pacific War, when the United States prosecuted an active defense until ready to go on the offensive.
Recognize quality has a quantity all its own — to a point. The Imperial Japanese Navy was obsessed with force ratios, but it also had a bad habit of assuming away numerical inferiority. Skill and elan, that is, trumped U.S. material preponderance in many commanders' minds. And indeed, the human factor is the most important arbiter of combat results. But a quasi-mystical faith in one's martial excellence makes a poor basis for tactics and operations. A respectful attitude toward prospective foes is a far safer outlook for those contemplating the hazards and hardships of war at sea. Japanese commanders were prone to using fudge factors in military calculations — always bad practice.
Don't get cute with fleet dispositions. Japanese commanders displayed a proclivity for overly intricate tactics and operational methods. For example, the navy undertook a massive sideshow in the Aleutians to provide cover for operations against Midway Island, far to the south. Why? And speaking of the Battle of Midway, fleet commanders dispersed carrier and battleship detachments too far from one another to render mutual support. Being deceptive carried a frightful cost. Flouting basic principles like concentration of firepower and effort is asking for trouble — and Japanese mariners asked for it repeatedly. To win, think and act strategically — or forego the effort altogether.
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Chris
Japan could have "won" by not fighting the US at all. Japan could have-and should have-coordinated with Germany and Italy to attack the USSR. Oil could have been captured from the Soviet Far East and from a limited operation in the Dutch East Indies. The Japanese Navy should have stayed concentrated and in reserve… and been ready to fight potential batlle against the USN in the western Pacific… just as it had been designed to do. Fighting the numerous and powerful USN in the South (eastern) Pacific , many thousands of miles from Japan, was NOT was the IJN was designed to do. And it was clear to Yamamoto that a protracted war against the US was very possible… and not winable. Therefore, he was AGAINST a war with the US. I'm sure many in the Japanese high command knew this. Japan's real problem was that their Army lacked the proper equipment to go head-to-head against the Soviets in the Far East. Japan was simply unable to execute the obvious strategic move at the critical moment.For all the Bushido BS-this was the brutal truth.
C-Low
Well the only real turn of choices I see that Japan could have made to alter the final outcome is just one.
Delay the attack on the US and allied nations by 1-2yrs. In addition to that if Japan had done as their allies the Axis powers had requested and used their land forces to invade Eastern Russia and threaten/invade Siberia, they would have changed the whole dynamic. The Soviets had over a million men in Siberia and E Siberia that once they saw Japan was not going to attack were then able to redeploy this force around Moscow at a critical time when the Nazi momentum was just slowing but they Soveit western army was exausted or gone. The Japanese forces holding down this Soviet force in the east would have seen the Nazi's capture Moscow before the winter and probalby force Stalin into a peace settlement putting the border east of the ural mountians.
The Nazis then would have turned south to the ME and instead of n africa the allies would have had to fight the gerth of the Nazi army across the ME (tank land). The US would have been drawn in with the balance shift but it would have been much more bloody without the Soviets to grind the Nazis.
Don't know if the final outcome even then would be different the US is a beheomath but it would have been very different and the axis would have had a very good shot if nothing else the war would have been much longer. Japan unfortunatley regardless of the final winner would have been destroyed neither the US nor the Nazis had any plan on letting Japan be a Asian power giant.
Walt
Good points, I wanted to comment on the last part of your post. I have always wondered about German-Japan relations following an Axis victory. The Germans, of course, felt the were the superior race and all others subservent. What would keep the Nazis from invading and destroying the Japanese Empire once they had Europe/North Africa under their control.
KatrinaAnon
Some good points. The seeds for Japan's entry into war with the Western powers lay in its treatment after the Boxer rebellion. The way Japan saw itself, and probably still sees itself is the leader of Asian world. Japan being hemmed in by Western powers was preventing it from establishing a larger empire.
There was little Japan could have done to win this war once it attacked the US. Yamamotto understood this clearly as he had seen the industrial might of the US. Possibly sinking the US carrier fleet would have helped, but that might have added a few years to the Pacific war.
Japan had too small a population to control the region it envisioned as its empire. One of the reasons (and I said one) they did not invade Australia were the number of divisions it would have taken to occupy Australia. The same for West Coast. It is possible they could have held parts of the West Coast, but that would have had little impact on US war production.
You can really almost say that Japan lost the war because the Germans failed at Dunkirk and failed in invade England. Had Germany done that, Britain, France, etc would not have been able to hold onto their Asian holdings and sued Japan for peace.
Long term though, I think Europe would have crumbled under German occupation due to economic pressures. But that is what frequently happens under Fueher system.
Jacob Kovalio
The piece is interesting "Monday night quarterbacking." The Japanese empire would have existed today had it not , unnecessarily, attacked the US . Instead, the Japanese should have focused on supplying their energy needs from the Dutch East Indies [Indonesia of today] which they had taken before Pearl Harbor ,from Sakhalin [ the southern part of which they owned] and from Siberia since the non-aggression pact with Stalin lasted until August 1945. And yet, given the clashes the Japanese had initiated with the Soviets in 1937 [ Changkufeng] and 39 [ Nomonhan] , Stalin did not move forces from the border after June 1941, out of fear of another even more serious Japanese attack. In principle , Japan could have played the most perfect card had it joined Germany in attacking the Soviets in June 1941 and not the US, six months later. Given the isolationist mood in Congress, the US would not have joined Britain and the USSR without Pearl Harbor. The most popular slogan in Japan in mid-1941 was that it should not "lose the bus" of opportunity , i.e. join its ally, Germany and attack the USSR. However, foreign minister, Matsuoka was fired by prime minister Konoe, for insisting that Tokyo join Berlin. And yet, even without attacking the US, Japan could not in earnest have joined Germany since it – Japan- was mired in China since late 1937 and had to allocate up to 2 million soldiers to maintaining and expanding its positions in China and SE Asia. Last, but not least, especially in the context of our times, the US, Britain, Canada, , Australia defeated Japan for…China's sake. China, by itself would never have defeated Japan since the Nationalists [ Jiang Jieshi] and the Communists [ Mao] did not see eye to eye even after the united front agreement on 1936 and Jiang had actually wanted to agree to Japan's takeover of Manchuria. Postwar Communist propaganda crediting themselves with defeating Japan is just bunk. In the end, to paraphrase Mr. Holmes' reference to admiral Yamamoto , Japan's only chance to defeat the US would have been to psychologically paralyze that "inferior" [ for being multi-ethnic and racial] nation , thus not react in kind to the sneak attack on December 8 [ Japan Time], 1941. The rest , as they say, is history.
Alwyn
The author makes some good points, but they key pint is that Japan had no hope in defeating the United States in a total war. Their only hope was to keep it a limited war and exploit Roosevelt's political problems — and his focus on Europe.
That's why I've never understood the admiration for Yamamoto. He is supposed to be the one Japanese lead with this deep insight into the United States. But he elects to start the war with the one thing that makes it unlikely (if not impossible) that the United States would afree to a negotiated settlement. If he understood America, he would have known that he was "awakening a sleeping giant" (which is a line from the movie Tora, Tora, Tora — not anything Yamamoto actually said).
Strategically, Japan and Germany might have won the war if in 1942, they had coordinated their strategies while the US was rearming and driven to link up in the middle East — Japanm driving through the Indian Ocean, German going on the defensive in Russia and committing major resources to the middle East. But there was never the slightest coordination or even cooperation between the two Axis Powers. so that's an unlikely 'what if' scenario.
JimmyPete
I haven't read all the comments, so this might be redundant, but Japan went to war with the US because of the oil embargo, suppose they left all American territory alone and invaded the Dutch East Indies [Indonesia] which had huge oil reserves. They could have done it on a pretext, to "restore order" keep it from falling to Communist rebels. Roosevelt would have been in quite a bind. Would the US public support a war to restore the Netherland's colonies??
William McDill
Excellent point. Japan had already pulled off a 'soft conquest' in French Indo-China. A similar insinuation of troops and personnel into the Dutch East Indies would have probably not faced military action from the Brits (they already had a lot on their plate) and getting the US to get involved would have been impossible- after all, the main threat was Germany and the Dutch were insignificant. But the Japanese never thought about war in a Clauswitzian way- never as a rational exercise.
Fred
Japan played into the US's hand by attacking Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt desparately wanted to enter the war. They were in dire straits because of the US embargo since they got 80% of their oil from the US. They assumed that if they attacked British and Dutch possessions in the south pacific to get oil that the US would enter the war, but that may not have been the case.
I think Japan might have been better off attacking Russia and cooperating with Germany instead of attacking Pearl Harbor. As it was Russia saw that Japan wouldn't attack them and moved many troops from Siberia to the German front. I'm not sure where they would have gotten their oil from. Perhaps Indonesia.