What Japan Could've Done to Win WWII

What Japan Could’ve Done to Win WWII

History • February 2013 • Views: 1,669

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:

More: Five Things Japan Could Have Done to Beat America

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7 comments

Destro Thu, Feb 14, 2013 8:58:28am

Here is what happened that stopped Japan from joining Hitler and invading the USSR from the east (or the west from the Japanese view) while Hitler invaded from the West (the east from Hitler’s view) and the two Axis empires meeting in the middle and moving onto take British India.

The Japanese attacked Zhukov’s Siberian army in the late 30s. And got decimated.

It scared the Japanese to death about the dealing with the USSR - info they should have shared with their nutso ally Hitler but didn’t because the defeat was so bad they tried not mentioning it (and Hitler would not have listened anyway).

Those Soviet-Japanese battles in Mongolia pretty much sealed the fate of the Japanese AND the Germans. That is the true “butterfly effect” of WW2 where a small distant and seemingly unrelated battle (the butterfly wings of the theory) snowballed into the eventual defeat of the Axis powers.

Romantic Heretic Thu, Feb 14, 2013 9:07:33am

I got a book a couple of years ago that dealt with that subject, along with numerous others.

The author of the essays in the book about how the Axis could have won said the cause was the same in both Germany’s and Japan’s case: racism. Whether it was refusing to treat people like Poles and Ukrainians as people, or treating the people of other Asian nations as serfs, in both cases they lost a tremendous amount of goodwill and manpower for both industry and their armed forces.

Stupid of them, but thank the Lord they were that stupid. It would be an unpleasant world if they had even achieved a draw.

Destro Thu, Feb 14, 2013 9:17:47am

re: #2 Romantic Heretic

I got a book a couple of years ago that dealt with that subject, along with numerous others.

The author of the essays in the book about how the Axis could have won said the cause was the same in both Germany’s and Japan’s case: racism. Whether it was refusing to treat people like Poles and Ukrainians as people, or treating the people of other Asian nations as serfs, in both cases they lost a tremendous amount of goodwill and manpower for both industry and their armed forces.

Stupid of them, but thank the Lord they were that stupid. It would be an unpleasant world if they had even achieved a draw.

That is true, the ideology of the Germans and Japanese was one where the people they conquered were to be serfs/slaves and not allies - a million words have been written about how the Germans were greeted as liberators by the Soviet people at first and that the Red Army that surrendered along with her officers actually thought they would be turned around and used against Stalin.

The Japanese wanted a co-prosperity sphere and talked about freeing Asians from European domination but treated the people they conquered even worse.

I think that was because Germany and Japan were late to the empire game. The British and the Europeans in general did treat conquered non-Europeans very badly. For example, in the wake of the mutiny of Sepoy’s the British laid waste to Indian rebel strong holds and really killed a lot of the natives but right after the fighting was done decided to treat the Indians way better and to make sure that no further cause would be given for an armed uprising. This in the wake of losing the American colonies. So by experience from their failures the British became better and more humane colonizers and empire builders.

The late arrivals to European empire like the Germans and Japanese did not have that learning curve and of course also had a toxic ideology fueling the need for empire on the quick (the Europeans kind of stumbled into empire over time so there was no ideology that developed for conquest that was as toxic for the British or French with this hunger for empire).

The USA also was one of those lat arrivals to colonialism but unlike the Germans and Japanese the Americans really did not want colonies or an empire - they just felt they needed one because of the need to have coal stations for world spanning fleets to protect overseas raw material imports like rubber and the like for the American manufacturing boom.

Destro Thu, Feb 14, 2013 9:24:40am

re: #2 Romantic Heretic

[Link: en.wikipedia.org…]

Wiki article about this Mongolian battle few know about in the West.

Also note that the Soviets took Japanese prisoners - a shocking thing for the Japanese military to contemplate. The Japanese forces were literally shell shocked by Zhukov’s tactics and became encircled and were destroyed and those that survived surrendered.

I also think this battle is the reason modern China, with all it’s new wealth and power does not contemplate a war with the Russians for Siberia (nukes of course help that decision, also).

jamesfirecat Thu, Feb 14, 2013 12:02:36pm

re: #2 Romantic Heretic

I got a book a couple of years ago that dealt with that subject, along with numerous others.

The author of the essays in the book about how the Axis could have won said the cause was the same in both Germany’s and Japan’s case: racism. Whether it was refusing to treat people like Poles and Ukrainians as people, or treating the people of other Asian nations as serfs, in both cases they lost a tremendous amount of goodwill and manpower for both industry and their armed forces.

Stupid of them, but thank the Lord they were that stupid. It would be an unpleasant world if they had even achieved a draw.

WW2 could not in any realistic situation I can think of end in a draw.

It would always end with nukes, decisively and unless the axis managed to invade America we were probably gonna get those nukes first.

Robur Thu, Feb 14, 2013 2:08:48pm

They also had a nuclear weapons program and had one test that was promising. Germany had sent several U-Boats with fissionable material along with jet technology and many vessels of mercury wich now lay at the bottom of the North sea. Germanys heavy water program had too many setbacks including various missions to destroy their plants.

JeffFX Thu, Feb 14, 2013 2:12:55pm

re: #1 Destro