“I don’t believe that for a minute; there simply weren’t enough Japanese to possibly administer such an empire.”
Thank you for so ably demonstrating the Argument from Incredulity or the Divine Fallacy in which you base your belief upon one or more false assumptions.
1. The Japanese were not to be the only Asians to serve as administrators in the conquered territories.
2. The Japanese found innumerable collaborators to assist them within their captured territories.
3. The Japanese conducted a variety of experiments upon prisoners of war for the purpose of finding the means to exterminate large populations in the territories they captured. In addition to the chemical and biological research for such purposes, the Japanese also worked on the means to use starvation to murder millions of civilians. The Japanese experimented with a new type of rice that had virtually no nutritive value remaining in the rice, yet it appeared to be normal rice. This experimental rice was being fed to British Commonwealth prisoners of war to see how long it would take them to die when OSS agents parachuted into the jungle to arrange the peaceful Japanese surrender of the POW camp at the end of the war. the Japanese objective was to use such a method of starvation to exterminate the White population in Australia and New Zealand and make way for re-colonization by Japanese settlers. It was envisioned that the Japanese could enslave and exterminate as needed to control the conquered territories.
“I hear the same stuff about Hitler wanting to “take over the worldâ€, yet a simple examination of his war machine makes it very clear that was never a realistic goal.”
Whether such grand strategies were realistic or not did not dissuade German and Japanese leaders from pursuing such objectives in the short term and/or the long term. Hitler envisioned his successors pursuing such objectives after he colonized the Lebensraum eastwards to the Ural Mountains and pursued the Soviets beyond the Urals to the treaty line with the Japanese in Siberia. Japan envisioned pursuing such global conquests after they completed their earlier steps in Asia and Oceania and had perfected the atomic bomb, nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons needed for their ambitions.
“It was a military based on projecting maximum force over relatively short distances; the USSR itself was far too much real estate to cover.”
The Japanese objectives against the Soviets became predicated by a Soviet defeat by Germany and subsequent starvation of resources to the rump Soviet regime making it weak and divided enough for exploitation. during World War One the Japanese Army advanced most of that distance into Russia, so it could have been done again once similar circumstances could be caused to arise again.
“Anyone with global ambitions would at least have more long-range four engine bombers and aircraft carriers; Germany was lacking both. Their few long-range planes were never used much.”
Hitler’s ambitions were curtailed, especially with respect to the Kriegsmarine, because Britain and France unexpectedly declared war years before Hitler wanted the war with the West to begin. It had been his intention to add some eight German aircraft carriers, numerous super battleships and other surface warhsips, and large numbers of U-boats before he initiated the war with them. Once the war began earlier than he intended, he played catch up with the navy and the development of the Amerika bombers. The fact that his ambitions proved to be greater than his skills at realizing those ambitions does not change the fact of those objectives, ambitions, and attempts.
Japan had the Z Plan to produce six engine intercontinental heavy bombers. So, they did envision such bombers to pursue their long term objectives pursuing world conquest.
“The Japanese surrendered with over a million armed men in China; there was simply no way for them to advance meaningfully beyond their “co-prosperity sphere†in Asia.”
Japan was hardly going to send all or even most of those million Japanese soldiers away from their existing missions in Asia. What they were going to do was send smaller numbers all over their empire, and that is just what they did do. Had Japan provided expeditionary sealift for an invasion force of only 50,000 combatants, they would have enjoyed a more than 3 to 1 advantage over the existing U.S. Army forces in the entire Western United States and parity with the entire active duty U.S. Army soldiers in the entire Continental United States (CONUS). The United States had a total of about 3.5 divisions of active duty U.S. Army troops in CONUS on December 7th, 1941, and most of them were scattered all over the United States. If japan had realized the opportunity and transferred the sealift away from the other projects, there could have been untold mischief in the United States as a consequence.
Distance in nautical miles
Tokyo - Guadalcanal 3,000
Tokyo - Honolulu 3005
Etorufu - Honolulu 3354
Wake Island - Honolulu 2000
Etorufu - Dutch Harbor 1820
Etorufu - Kiska 1240
Kiska - Dutch Harbor 584
Dutch Harbor - Juneau 1097
Dutch Harbor - Seattle 1693
Juneau - Seattle 775
Midway Island - Honolulu 1293
Honolulu - San Francisco 2083
Honolulu - San Diego 2269
“Many of their troops in Alaska eventually committed suicide when they realized they were cut off and had no prospect of victory - or even a return to Japan. Since they had been fighting in China in the 1930s, I’m sure they were well aware of their limitations by 1941.”
Only because of the American victory at the Battles of the coral Sea and Midway. Better communications code security, better battle planning and execution, and a wide variety of chance events could have reversed the fortunes of war in these battles. the sinking of all three American aircraft carriers would have left the U.S. with just the USS Saratoga in the Pacific for awhile. Few Americans realize just how bad and dangerous the situation was in 1942. We were spoiled by good fortune and success and became overconfident.
Were the Japanese policy makers overconfident and negligent for disregarding the cautionary warnings from their military and naval operations planners? Yes, but that did not stop their ambitions and attempts to realize those ambitions.
“during World War One the Japanese Army advanced most of that distance into Russia, so it could have been done again once similar circumstances could be caused to arise again.”
Japan fought for the Allies in WWI. As far as dealing with the continental US, their strategy apparently consisted of sending bomb-laden balloons to fall on the West Coast - not a recipe for success. They had no way to transport an army to the Americas; they couldn’t even take Hawaii. Their initial successes were caused by using a 1930s military against Western militaries geared for 1918; when the war ended, Western militaries geared for the 1940s defeated that same 1930s Japanese military. Their machinery was designed for greater distances than that of Germany because everything is farther away from them (due to the expanse of the Pacific Ocean); one can take a globe and turn it in such a way that almost one whole side is water.
Hitler knew his ambitions were limited to continental Europe and with luck, areas within a very short distance from it (Britain, North Africa); he had no means of projecting force beyond that, and the rapid destruction and retreat of Germany’s surface fleet makes that very clear. While U-boats were effective against a nearby island neighbor, they were useless after the first year of the war for anything else. They certainly weren’t going to transfer large bodies of troops anywhere, and they couldn’t bring in desperately needed supplies in any quantities.
Luck played a role in the disastrous 1942 for the Axis, but even if they hadn’t suffered those setbacks it would have only prolonged the war into 1946; Japan could never subjugate China, and Germany couldn’t beat the USSR, regardless of what was happening elsewhere; they were both bled dry in those efforts alone.