Posted on 06/10/2015 8:11:38 AM PDT by Pan_Yan
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First, the history. Although by 1944 the war’s outcome was never in doubt, if all efforts failed the Soviet Army would eventually have crushed the Reich by itself. Victory at that point was a national and industrial effort, and would belong to the countries with the most steel plants and masses of citizens under arms.
Midway was different. It was not a national effort but instead a battle of individuals, a rickety shootout by a few highly trained people under extremely confused conditions, and — incredibly — the underdog won. There’s no reason the United States, with a second-string commander, green troops and two-and-a-half aircraft carriers, should have been able to defeat the Japanese with their four carriers and the most experienced planes, pilots and admirals in the world.
Had Japan annihilated the rest of the Pacific Fleet carriers, it would have taken Midway. With land-based planes on Midway, it would have taken Hawaii. With Hawaii…well, who knows? Maybe San Francisco, maybe Alaska. Maybe pause in the Pacific and knock out the British in India. And then maybe peace, under a new Pax Japania.
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In the long run, the Battle of Midway and other boldface WWII names like D-Day and the Bulge have perhaps warped America’s national memory of conflict. War in the public consciousness — the right wars, anyway — became a mostly clean duel of professionals, what we are pleased to call the “American way of war,” rather than the extended contests of national will and resources they more accurately resemble.
World War II erased every memory of the groaning exertion of the Civil War, which was something similar to what the Soviets were fighting against the Nazis.
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The Japanese Navy could not have done much to help against the Soviets. Everything I've read indicates that the Japanese wanted no part of tangling with the Soviets after those initial encounters.
Concur, but then the Germans also thought that Stalin would surrender after they had destroyed vast Soviet armies and advanced on Moscow.
You all might be interested in my novel, “Halsey’s Bluff” (http://www.amazon.com/Halseys-Bluff-Larry-Schweikart/dp/1605301299/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1433952949&sr=8-1&keywords=Halsey%27s+Bluff) in which the Japanese win the battle of Midway against Halsey (not Spruance in this book). The exciting stuff is what happens next. Endorsed by the Battle of Midway Roundtable (vets).
Those Ford trucks (and for that matter the T-34 tanks) would have gone nowhere except for the modern refineries built in the Soviet Union by Fred C. Koch - the father of the Koch brothers.
We did the same at Tarawa.
By definition aviation is the most flexible of the military forces. At Midway the aviators used that capability to wander around until they found the target. Not without sacrifice as note by the author. But that same capability today is throttled by the WH and Pentagon. It was also throttled during the Vietnam war. We are once again fighting with “one hand tied behind our back.” Not to mention that the adversary fully understands Competitive Strategies. They sacrifice a few with car bombs or 9/11 and cause us to expend vast amounts of our National Capital in defense. We will continue to be on the wrong end of the fight until we take the fight to them with a level of violence that they will find “eye-opening”. Controlled escalation didn’t work in Vietnam and it won’t work in SWA. We need something on a scale of Hiroshima without the radiation to make them stop and think twice.
Midway, on the other hand, even if the Japanese won, was never going to be the knockout blow. A great historical work on his is "Shattered Sword." Japan built ONE fleet carrier between 1941 and 1945. We built 17, plus another 25 "baby flattops." It wasn't close.
Let's not overlook the strategery of the Nazi leadership. They fortunately made some real boneheaded calls.
At the beginning of the American Civil War The South had the better army, better generals, and superior infantrymen. The South did not have near the industrial capacity of the North.
The South lost!
You are 100% right. We fought the Pacific War on 20% (!!!) of our resources, with 80% going to defeat Hitler. And that was after the a-bomb program took whatever was needed off the top.
It is truly folly to play the “if” game. The “if” game usually changes one thing and then assumes everything else would have been the same and plays off the logical conclusions based on that. However, once you change one thing, many other things are changed that are in a lot of ways beyond our ability to perceive. I think we would have still won the war in the Pacific, but there’s also the possibility that we would have had to sue for peace after the Japanese took Hawaii. It’s hard to say really.
One thing that is for sure, it’s a good thing that Germany and Japan didn’t have a true alliance where they actively worked together. (I’ll play the if game) If Japan would have taken their million man army sitting in Manchuckuo (what the Japanese called Manchuria) and attacked the Soviets they could have walked into Moscow without opposition as Stalin had diverted all of his forces guarding the border to face the Nazi onslaught.
Exactly. Our “Patriot’s History of the Modern World,” volume 1, hammers this point really hard.
Very true.
One of the most boneheaded of all calls was built-in.
Had the Germans invaded with genuine intent to liberate, a significant number of Soviets would have chosen to fight on the other side.
Deduct 2M or 4M from the Soviet side and add it to the German side.
But of course the vast majority of Soviets quickly decided, accurately, that the Nazis, at least for them, were even worse than the commies.
If the Nazis had been able to genuinely try to liberate the Russians, Ukrainians, etc. they wouldn't have been Nazis.
We did the same at Tarawa.
The Japanese fleet couldn't stick around if the initial assault fails. They simply don't have enough of a fleet train..
Ichiki doesn't even have the radios to tell the cruisers where to shoot.
Keep in mind that the Wake Island assault by the Japanese was almost a disaster against a much smaller garrison that wasn't nearly as well equipped.
Boneheaded enough to make Colonel Klink look like a military genius and Sgt. Schultz look like a model enlisted man.
America delivered more than 357,000 aircraft; 12 million small arms; 47 billion rounds of small arms ammunition; 11 million tons of artillery ammunition; 1.6 million trucks, tanks, tank chassis; 5777 supply type ships; 107 CVL/CVE carriers; 29 CVB/CV carriers; 8 BB; 1050 LST; 76 CB/CA/CL cruisers; 857 DD/DE; 203 SS.
Compare US aircraft production figures to those of the major combatants and you'll see the numbers that led to victory.
ALLIES
USAAF — 297,199
USN — 60,456
Great Britain — 131,549 [RAF,RN]
Russia — 158,218
AXIS
Germany — 119,871
Italy — 11,508
Japan — 76,320 [IJAF,IJN]
US Submarine production (for domestic use - I don’t know how many we exported, if any):
1940: 5
1941: 13
1942: 33
1943: 56
1944: 79
1945: 42 (part year)
Pretty impressive ramp up from 5 and 13 pre-war to 56 and then 79, more than one per week, in the last two full years of the war.
The Germans were up against it when it came to defeating the Soviets and the principle problem was manpower, which could only be overcome with allies. NAZI policies ensure that very few allies existed, and of those none were ardent.
Had a different world existed, an alliance between Poland and Germany could have been a real problem for Stalin.
That said, such an alliance could have also likely turned many Russians and Ukrainians against Stalin. The Soviet Army only really got serious about fighting after it became clear to the average soldier that Stalin might kill them, but Hitler would definitely kill them. When the Soviet soldier was fighting to protect Stalin and the Soviet way, he was beaten and badly, but when it was clear that surrender was suicide it became a fight to avoid extermination and they fought desperately.
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