TotallyInOverMyHead t1_iy3xu4m wrote on November 28, 2022 at 3:56 PM

Reply to comment by Drs83 in On April 2, 1941, a Japanese foreign minister asked Pope Pius XII to speak to U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, so as to avert "a war of mutual destruction” by marketrent

> but Japan never had any chance of defeating the USA

Correct.

It was all about delaying and holding the Americans in the pacific. If any of my bullet points above would have been achieved it would have made America shift focus from the Atlantic to the pacific in order to secure the homeland.

That would have spelled doom for Britain (), that only held on by a thread due to American Lend lease - and the Soviets (that were supplied 400k jeeps/Trucks, 8k tractors, 13k tanks, 14k planes, 350 locomotives, 1.5mil blakets, 30 mil boots, 4.5mil tons of food via Iran [likely unaffected], Vladivostok [likely affected] and Archangel/Murmansk [likely affected]),

Not being able to control the pacific for a couple of months also would have spelled doom for the chinese that where supplied via the pacific (about 1/10th of what Russia received). And have delayed/scrapped operations in SE Asia, dependant on how far along the Japanase would have made it.

It is quite easy to look at this with hindsight, taking industrial figures into account and forgetting about the phsycological effect of having the enemy in your backyard, claiming your dog as their own.

Drs83 t1_iy5zk1u wrote on November 29, 2022 at 12:17 AM

The Japanese strategy at the time was built on the idea that they would win a decisive navel battle which would cause the United States to just decide it wasn't worth it and they'd quit. Even after Pearl Harbor they were trying to accomplish this through 1942 - 1943 when it finally dawned on the few reasonable individuals in leadership that they were going to lose.

The Japanese really had no intention of working with the Germans to accomplish much of anything and didn't really concern themselves with what was happening in Europe. The United States didn't use military force in Europe until Germany declared war on them. Some would even wonder if Germany hadn't declared war if the USA would have ever sent troops over. Even before Stalingrad, the Japanese were under the correct assumption that the Germans were not going to find success against the Russians. They were very resistant to offering any military support that might bring the Soviets into the conflict.

The Japanese simply made a wrong assumption about the military dedication of the United States once sovereign territory had been attacked. There were more than a few reasonable individuals in the Japanese government who tried desperately to dissuade Hideki Tōjō's hawkish desire to neutralize American holdings. The reality of the situation is that if the Japanese had not attacked any US holdings in the Pacific, the United States probably wouldn't have been drawn into al-out war and things would have gone better for the Japanese.