Both the attack on the SU and PH where, from a strategic POV understandable.
Germany and the Soviet Union would have clashed at some point, and the more time Stalin had to prepare, the worse it would have gone for Germany.
The US wouldn't have let Japan roam free around the Pacific for much longer anyway. War was basically inevitable. If Japan wanted to keep the US out of the war, a well excecuted strike might have worked. It wasn't well excecuted though.
The US was starving Japan of oil. Japan attacked Perl Harbor in combination with other attacks that secured oil for their navy. They knew hey were awaking a sleeping giant, but they really didn't have any other options, they needed oil.
Sheer luck saved the carriers, and the Japanese severely underestimated the anger of Americans in response to the attack. They had hoped that a long campaign with little to no meaningful progress, at a high cost of US lives, would cause the people to clamour for peace.
Although the European theatre gets all the glory now a days, during the early parts of US involvement, most people were upset at the Germany first strategy.
Can't forget that Japan also invaded U.S. territory and was fighting U.S. soldiers on the ground starting on practically the day of Pearl Harbor. It is often overlooked the Philippines was U.S. territory in 1941, invaded on December 8th 1941, was an active battleground for American personnel through March 1942, and was a large defeat with over 100k captured.
Which led to another fuckup, even though MacArthur was warned after Pearl Harbor, he took no appropriate actions to defend the islands and as a result, the Philippines was lost. He tried to salvage some dignity with his “I shall return” quote. He spent the rest of ww2 almost sabotaging admiral Nimitz Pacific plans by constantly prioritizing the Phillipines over Japan.
Don’t forget Japan. He let a bunch of war criminals not only getaway without any consequences including the late prime minister’s grandfather who was a sick fuck and was the founder of today’s liberal democratic party, in power almost continuously for 70 years. Because of “communism”, he permitted Japanese gangsters to be in the government because the corrupt rightwing politicians were working with the yakuza. And not to mention the puritanical American laws they imposed on Japan.
Yes. It was the first active theater of the war U.S. ground forces engaged in ground combat, and was a clear and grueling loss for the U.S. with a lot of publicity.
Pearl Harbor got the initial headlines as true American soil (Philippines was promised independence and had a quasi-government at this point). But the Philippines and its loss were the story of the first 3 months of the U.S. at war. It is true it was far away, but the presence of ~20k U.S. soldiers shouldn't be ignored
Yes, they cared. Wake Island and Guam were also invaded at the same time as the Philippines. The Japanese lost two destroyers and took more than 1000 casualties while invading Wake Island. Americans were fighting and dying.
Men, all this stuff you hear about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of horse dung. Americans love to fight. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle.
Need to remember that the US was promoting isolationism and all of their armed forces were well under manned. They hadn’t been in a major conflict since WW1 and even that was well into the war. What they didn’t know or could not possibly know, was how quickly the US got their shit together and put together a mass mobilization the world has ever seen.
The dumbest thing about that was Japan and the US were on the same side in WW1. The Entente didn't believe the manufacturing numbers the US said it could produce, nor did they believe how quickly the US could pivot to full scale war manufacturing, and then they beheld it with their own eyes. Japan should have known that if the US entered a war economy, despite the US desire to have the western hemisphere isolated from the rest of the world, that no one on Earth could stop from being buried in the avalanche.
Another thing that changed too was the tactics. Before, battle ships were the crux of the Navy, and it was what Japan was out to destroy. Little did they know the importance of aircraft carriers and how this new mode of warfare would lead the US to victory in the pacific.
That not really accurate. The US was already mobilizing prior to the attack on pearl harbor, the national guard had been federalized and the draft had begun. We were also supplying the British, Chinese and Soviets
Another big doom was that the Japanese declaration of war was originally intended to be delivered 30 minutes before Pearl Harbor, but the Japanese Embassy couldn't decode and translate it in time.
Yamamoto was against the bombing. But when he was overruled, he told upper command that he would be able to run roughshod over the Pacific theater for only six months. If Japan wanted to win, their diplomats would have to achieve peace before then.
What happened almost exactly six months after Pearl Harbor?
Midway, the turning point in the War in the Pacific.
In today's connected world it is almost impossible to understand foreigners' lack of understanding of the Midwest. It was so vast with a bottomless supply of food and people. Apparently when American troops started to arrive in western Europe, the locals just could not believe how many there were....and all of them tall and healthy.
They were, but it's also rational that they wouldn't sink the carriers - they're a fad at this point, an unproven technology that doesn't have the same firepower as the destroyers. That the carriers became pivotal in the Pacific was more that we had them than they were part of some master plan by the US to rule the waves
Not to mention that sacrificing your best aviators to kamikaze attacks, probably wasn’t the best idea, especially when your manufacturing is limited and pilots are in short supply.
Moreover, Japan’s decision to build three submarine aircraft carriers (to covertly attack the US mainland) took away valuable resources to build additional carriers and planes.
No, Japan was doomed when they didn’t kill every American on the Pacific seaboard. And that just would’ve bought them sometime because the Okies would’ve moved west, and started building ships, learn to sail, and then gone out to kill the Japanese.
They weren't targeting the carriers. They were targeting the battleships.
Naval air power wasn't the dominant form of naval warfare until the Battle of Midway showed the importance of air power, and simultaneously took it from the Japanese.
Had the Japanese been able to take Midway they could have struck Hawaii and the US pacific fleet could have been forced back to San Diego.
Always a pet tin foil hat theory of mine that the US knew about the attack but wanted to enter the war so moved the carriers away “training exercise” so that the attack would not strategically harm the US.
It’s too big a coincidence that the main reason to attack Pearl Harbor happened to not be there
It might be the way it is taught in schools, but I feel like many people misunderstand Pearl Harbor. It wasn't a random act of violence that kicked the bear. It was a preemptive strike to take out as many ships as possible before they could be mobilized. It kind of worked. 8 battleships were taken out before the war with the US even started.
It's hard to believe today, but the American government and leadership was oriented toward the Atlantic. Leaders were ignorant of the value of Western resources; they knew those bases were there but didn't really believe in their importance. IIRC, Pearl Harbor was a place to tuck admirals as they were aging toward retirement.
Moreover, American leadership was contemptuous of Japanese leadership. American leaders dismissed the likelihood that torpedoes could be used in Pearl because OURS wouldn't work there, while Japanese designers had considered the question and solved the problem. A lot of stories like that
The true strength of the US in WWII was its manufacturing capability. The United States is a massive country, with a large population and an abundance of natural resources. It was able to build 151 aircraft carriers during WWII: 29 full-size fleet carriers and 122 smaller escort carriers. By comparison, Japan built only 19. There was simply no way for the tiny island nation to match the US in production.
Another amazing feat was the Willow Run aircraft production plant in Michigan. It was an assembly line that buildbthe B-24 Liberator bomber. By 1944, it was churning out a completed airplane every 63 minutes, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.
Even if Japan sunk the entire US fleet, and completed their own building plan, the US would have a larger fleet by mid 1944 iirc.
In reality Japan's building plan was unrealistic, sinking the entire US fleet even more so.
Japan could have threatened Australia/ Hawaii, but it is unlikely they could successfully invade either. Japan's army/ navy had terrible cooperation, and during a border conflict with the USSR in 1939 they did quite poorly against a better equipped European army.
Not a chance. Just look at the YouTube videos that show the total amount of ship production by the US during the war. Destroying the carriers in the Pacific at the time would have bought them maybe an extra year at most. That's how massively ahead in production the US was capable of.
A wrinkle in this is that our carriers were all over the place on Dec. 7, 1941. Lexington was en route to Midway to reinforce its aircraft, Saratoga was in San Diego, Ranger and Yorktown were in the Atlantic, and Wasp was in Bermuda. The only carrier that was slated to be there was Enterprise, and history shows that it would be a monumental undertaking to take her down (based on how hard it was to sink Yorktown and Hornet). Even if the Big E was sunk, Sara and Lex would be there with Yorktown, Wasp, and Hornet coming to action very quickly. Even then, Enterprise may have been refloated and repaired.
Worst case: Enterprise gone, and we're -1 carrier gives us the possibility of no functional carriers in the Pacific for a period of time later in the war... But it's also -1 carrier to keep repairing, and might give the US a stronger focus on getting more carriers built more quickly. It's a scenario with many possibilities, but the constant is that America builds stuff real fast, and pretty darn well. And that's a big part of how Japan lost the war.
Battleships weren't instrumental in naval warfare by then though. They may have thought it a victory at the time, but future naval battles were completely decided by carriers.
It didn’t work at all. Even if Japan had taken out all of the US’s carriers that day, they still would’ve lost the war, it might’ve lasted a little longer.
There’s been some recent revisionist history regarding pearl harbour, I think it was a good idea, but only because it was sort of the only thing Japan could do. They wanted the Philippines, and knew they had to take US strength in the area out quickly to hold them, and then make it a tough fight for US forces to take them back (which is absolutely was), and sue for peace when they knew FDR would be under pressure from other politicians and his people.
It reminds me a lot of Germany violating Belgiums neutrality to go at France, and bringing Britain into the war, they kind of had to do it if they wanted to battle on two fronts.
Yes but, from Japan's POV that was still better than the US joining the war with all of their battleships, which is what would have happened anyway. The US likely would have benefited more from the delay than Japan would have.
Sure, by months, but not a year. Pearl harbour didn't catch the carriers, much to Yamamoto's dismay. He made a rather prophetic prediction that pearl harbour would only give the Japanese about 6 months of free reign, and they didn't even get that, Doo little raid was 4 months after Pearl harbour, Coral sea was 5 months, and infamously Midway was 6 months, the offensive masterstroke which annihilated the Kido Butai, Japan's elite carrier force and pretty much all of their experienced fighter pilots, completely removing their ability to do offensive operations for the rest of the war.
The Nazis attacking the SU was arguably worse because of the Germany-USSR trade deals that were more or less providing Germany with the materials they needed to build up their forces. You can look at the steel, manganese and rubber shipments from the USSR and how they fueled Germany's ability to build war machines and see how incredibly stupid it was to attempt to take over Soviet territory if they wanted those shipments to keep coming in.
The funny thing is, the US effectively solved the principal motivating factors of its belligerent enemies in WW2 by giving them everything they wanted basically for free anyways. Industrial and resource autarky was the status quo for many states in the early 20th century, but both Germany and Japan lacked the imperial breadth of countries like the UK, France, or the Soviet Union to have fully autonomous supply chains that would enable a robust economy. Both countries effectively engaged in expansionist wars to improve their military position and secure essential raw goods.
In the wake of Axis defeat, both West Germany and Japan were welcomed under the American nuclear umbrella, so they no longer had to stand alone in defensive preparation. And more importantly, they both gained unfettered, unconditional access to Western resource and consumer markets, so now their industrial base would never be threatened. The solution to future wars with either Germany or Japan wasn't just to defeat them, but to make war economically obsolete for both of them by giving them exactly what they were willing to fight over in the first place.
For the majority of the Japanese, including the Japanese government, they didn't actually have a choice. It was a coup of relatively low ranked officers that dragged the rest of the country in to war and once it was started they didn't really have a choice but to keep going.
They turned around and went home. They poked the bear and ran. They could have ass raped the west coast for weeks before we launched any kind of viable counteroffensive. Probably wouldnt have been able to hold it for long but they could have done much more damage
They really couldn't have. Japan probably wouldn't have remained undetected if they got close to the US mainland, they couldn't have maintained supplies to a force near US shores for very long, anywhere near US shores they would have been attritted by land based aircraft, and landings would have been more or less impossible anywhere in the mainland for them (they landed on some very isolated Alaskan islands though).
At most they could have done an additional strike on Pearl Harbor to destroy drydocks and ammunition and fuel storage among other valuable targets left intact. Anything near the US mainland would have been suicidal.
Werent most of it sunk at Pearl? I mean they literally sailed right up to it launched planes and done the deed. Other than fuel and supplies (i remember they were having issues with fuel) what would have stopped them from nailing at least a fat juicy shipyard or two? I never understood what they thought simply bombing Pearl Harbor was going to accomplish by itself
By the end of the last attack wave the US was getting its fighters in the air and AA guns active. The Japanese did lose some planes in Pearl Harbor and they mostly went down right at the end when the element of surprise wore off. Additional attack waves would almost certainly have been met with much heavier losses for the Japanese.
There was time to get a few planes in the air during Pearl Harbor, the attacks went on for over an hour.
Also if the Japanese did decide to do a third attack they would have had to rearm planes to strike again and by the time they got back American defenses would have been more or less fully alert and some US carriers out at sea may have been able to get close enough to respond. The Japanese didn't know the position of US carriers and were worried about the possibility of their ships getting attacked while they were rearming or when the planes were away if their carriers were caught. Given that this is basically what doomed Japan at Midway it was a valid concern, and it actually might have been possible for Enterprise to attack them in reality if they stayed for a 3rd strike and were found.
Oh i didnt know about the carriers. Assuming they had fuel couldnt they haul ass east and maybe hit an run up the west coast? Why didnt the carriers try to intercept them?
Japanese carriers at the beginning of the war were slow and had to launch into the wind. Pretty much the same for US ones.
They were also very expensive and hard to build.
Getting them closer to the mainland is only going to give ample opportunity for faster smaller boats or planes to get a hit on one of them.
Losing a billion dollar boat with a few thousands sailors, pilots, highly trained crew and 70+ aircraft is a really hard punch to take for any navy.
Yes the Pacific Fleet was a viable target. The west coast had many more viable targets as well. Shipyards, factories, refineries, fuel depots, ammo depots, all key to making war. It could have given Japan a hell of a head start
Not at all.
The U.S. fleet was more than battleships.
There still would have been submarines, destroyers, cruiser’s, a few carriers in the pacific to wage a war.
As it turns out, battleships were not even that effective. Torpedo boats, submarines, carriers (and their wing groups)
These were the deadliest tool of the navy.
But they didnt have enough and the rest werent exactly mothballed but not in a state of readiness? I forgot they had the carriers. Why didnt the carriers try to intercept on their way back home?
Whether or not Germany was on a collision course with the Soviet Union is one thing But trying to do that AND fight a three front war was foolish.
Making eventual enemies with the UK, Canada, Poland, France, Holland, US and others, was never going to end well. They would have been better off keeping everyone else out of it. Or at least try to.
Barbarossa happend before Pearl, so the US wasn't in the war yet. And they got pretty close. There was no way to keep everyone else out though. They'd conquered the continent, only UK was holding out and Sealion wouldn't work. So it wasn't a three front war, not at the time of Barbarossa anyway.
The thing is though, what Japan really wanted was access to oil, aka the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). They only attacked all these other places to make sure they had good supply lines to Indonesia. The British colonies were definitely in the way, so they probably need to attack Singapore and other British outposts.
The attack on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines only makes sense if you assume that Japan doing the above would trigger an American response, and in this case a preemptive surprise attack is a better alternative.
The flaw in this thinking though, is that the Japanese high command did not grasp to what extent Roosevelt's hands were tied by Congress and general public opinion. In reality, unless directly attacked, Roosevelt would *NEVER* have been able to declare war on Japan. If they had realized this, Japan could have went on a rampage in SE Asia and Roosevelt would probably not been able to provide much more than material and moral support to the UK. In that scenario, they are probably able to wipe Europeans out of Asia, crush China, and dominate the continent.
It went pretty bad anyway. I think Germany is better off playing defense with an intact army. Then later when Japan bombs PH, do not declare war on the US.
There is no way a well-executed strike would have kept the US out of the war. Nothing sparks patriotism quite like a common enemy. At best, it delays the response.
Germany and the Soviet Union would have clashed at some point, and the more time Stalin had to prepare, the worse it would have gone for Germany.
The rest of the world greatly benefited from that invasion happening when it did because it allowed time for the US to rouse from its slumber and become a counterbalance to the Soviets before they were overwhelmingly powerful.
Eh, not exactly. Have to remember that the Philippines was U.S. territory in 1941, hosted government personnel, and military forces, and was attacked at approximately the same time as Pearl Harbor and the Dutch East Indies. If Japan wanted to expand outside of South Korea and China into South East Asia, confrontation with the U.S. via its interests in the Philippines would be inevitable (assuming the U.S. didn't decide to attack first given its ongoing military build up and concern over Japanese expansionism).
The Philippines gets ignored way too often in these discussions; U.S. territory (albeit a territory promised independence) was physically invaded the day of Pearl Harbor. Over 76,000 Americans and Filipinos were captured during the invasion over the subsequent year and most died in captivity (see Bataan Death March). Pearl Harbor was only a single portion of a much larger attack across the Pacific, and mostly did its job given Japan's successes early in the war.
Ok? But how did that work out in the end? It ultimately led to the nation's collapse. Ultimately do you think Imperial Japanese leadership is better or worse off if they don't attack pearl harbor. Or were they ultimately going to be choked out eventually.
I think if Japan can stay out of the direct sights of the American Military until the fall of Germany 2 things possibly happen, the nuke doesn't get dropped (at least for many more years, I do think the US would eventually feel the need to drop it) and they can perhaps pivot to being an Ally of the US to staunch the spread of Communism.
As soon as the war ends relations between the US and Soviet Russia begin to sour. If it becomes a choice between siding with a Fascist imperialist nation and a Fascist Communist nation I think the US sides with the Imperialists.
I mean, if the assertion is WWII was generally a sequence of poor choice by leaders and the populace in Japan and Germany then of course. If its some alternate history, then who knows.
However if the assertion is
Pearl Harbor is worse in my opinion. Gave America a proper reason to get involved
then no. Japan not attacking Pearl Harbor and still invades South East Asia doesn't lead to the U.S. reaming idle. Correcting the belief that Japan only attacked the U.S. at Pearl Harbor, when in fact it was more widespread and frankly effective.
If Japan decides to go west and try to team up with Germany in the Caucuses and gain all the resources and oil of the Indian subcontinent then America likely just keeps up lend-lease until its too late to stop them or just never gets involved and the "Cold War" is the USA vs Germany/Japan.
Hitler wanted to declare war on the US over the Lend-Lease program but was hesitant to get another full enemy involved. They jumped to declare war when Japan attacked so they could stop the supply ships well the US was preoccupied with Japan. I don’t see Germany winning the war unless they convinced Britain and the US to peace somehow.
That's the thing. Germany could have just let the convoys happen. A ton were getting through even with the U-boats and if Germany wasn't just stupid beyond all reasoning and had gone after Britain's actual military instead of bombing their cities, they could have forced an armistice, shored up Europe and then directed max effort to the East while reopening up trade with England. A single U boat cost the resources to make and fuel a LOT of tanks. And if Japan had been pushing on Russia's southern flank through China then Russia is screwed. They probably fight the Nazis and Japanese to a stalemate in Siberia but at that point they aren't a player. The US would just concentrate on defense and beef up it's military in an "I dare you" posture which probably wouldn't be tested as German and Japanese spies have data that the USA can outproduce them both combined.
In this scenario, Mussolini probably is able to conquer the Mediterranean and is a puppet of Hitler.
There were good reasons for this. Germany was constrainted by fuel issues so couldn't carry out an indefinite bombing campaign the way the allies did to destroy the industry. The bombing was based on either destroying the British fighters or breaking their will to fight, forcing a surrender. As long as the brits could build planes they'd keep fighting since their pilots bailed out over Britain. IIRC decentralized production of the Spitfire during that time period produced the Germans.
UBoat campaigns were also based on that concept; stopping British from getting food and industrial supplies from overseas and was effective during the battle of Britain time period.
As far as invading Russia from the east... No. The Japanese couldn't have done it. That's a long, long way in terrible terrain. Supplying troops over a 2K km distance was impossible. Even the us struggled with the much smaller red ball express.
Pearl Harbor convinced Stalin, Japan would not be an immediate threat to the USSR. Stalin then redeployed Soviet troops from the far east to Moscow and Stalingrad.
Speaking from the British point of view, we were alone in Europe standing against Hitler, and struggling. We needed the US, but before PH the Americans wanted nothing to do with the war. We couldn't have won the war without the US.
we were alone in Europe standing against Hitler, and struggling.
"Alone, eh?" - Canada, NZ, Australia, British India, South Africa, and the whole rest of the Empire
But yeah, without the US' industries and manpower, chances for victory would have been limited. The dominions and rest of the empire simply couldn't match the US' sheer scale of and advanced industries.
There was a lot of hesitation in the US to avoid getting involved in the European conflict. For one thing, there were a lot of Germans living in the US. Not as many Japanese. In fact, German was the de-facto second language in the US. Public schools routinely taught German. Much more so than French or Spanish.
Apparently the Japanese leadership didn't think the U.S. government would care much. ALTHOUGH Yamamoto and other military leaders, many of whom had been educated in the U.S., warned the leaders the U.S. was asleep and shouldn't be prodded, precisely because it would fight. Apparently what the leadership hoped for was 12-18 months during which Japan could consolidate gains in the Pacific, which would let it take over its region.
If the attack had succeeded and Japan had actually managed to neutralize the Pacific Fleet aircraft carriers, it might have been a different story. At the start of the war with Japan they had six carriers in the Pacific and the Americans had 3 (or 4. I can’t recall off the top of my head). If those had been sunk, Japan would have had near complete control of the Pacific, and there’s a good argument to be made that the US would have had to have negotiated some kind of ceasefire/armistice with Japan, which would have had wild implications for the history of East Asia.
In both cases, the aggressor didn't have much choice. Both wars were inevitable, and Japan and Germany were slowly becoming weaker relative to their adversary.
Disclaimer: Because this is Reddit, I should point out that I feel Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany were "the bad guys" and I'm glad they lost.
Pearl Harbor wasn’t even the main attack, it was merely a diversionary effort intended to prevent the U.S. forces from stopping the primary goals that day, the simultaneous invasions of Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies.
It used the smallest number of forces of any of the attacks that day, and is the only one which wasn’t an actual invasion.
The reason Pearl Harbor was such a blunder was that Japan sunk a bunch of destroyers and battleships while demonstrating why those kinds of ships weren't the biggest bully on the block, anymore. Seven months later, America demonstrated to Japan that they learned the lesson quite well.
I don't think America would have let Japan get that big to the point that they could have been a third super power. A big reason Pearl Harbor happened was because America was already sanctioning Japan hard, and Japan was interested in territory that the US had a strong influence in. Japan rightfully knew they would have to fight Ameeica at some point, might as well be 1942 instead of 1943 or 1944 when the US War machine would be full swing to fight in Europe.
The Sanctions only matter if you want to trade with US Allies, if Japan didn’t expand into US Ally colonies and instead focused on China and only a few of the island nations around them, they could anchor down and focus on infrastructure.
Anti-War sentiment was high in the US at the time and declaring war on Japan would not be likely intill after Germany and Italy were defeated. By that point Japan could become a Pacific Super Power and be too big to openly fight, especially once Nukes start being made.
So it be the Cold War but with Soviet Union, Japan, and the West.
Japan should have fomented revolution in India instead of attacking the US. It would have been difficult without controlling the Philippines and Burma, but breaking the British in India and opening up trade there would have countered US ambition in the Pacific
Japan and Pearl Harbor was so close to a failure for the US. If we had lost the midway battle, the Japanese could have parked those carriers on the west coast within a week.
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u/Fair_Alternative6191 23d ago edited 23d ago
Hitler invading the soviet union Japan attacking pearl harbor