Posted on 12/07/2011 6:21:38 PM PST by Hojczyk
By a peculiar twist of fate, the Japanese admiral who masterminded the attack had persistently warned his government not to fight the United States. Had his countrymen listened, the history of the 20th century might have turned out much differently.
Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto foresaw that the struggle would become a prolonged war of attrition that Japan could not hope to win. For a year or so, he said, Japan might overrun locally weak Allied forces but after that, its war economy would stagger and its densely built wood-and-paper cities would suffer ruinous air raids. Against such odds, Yamamoto could see little hope of success in any ordinary strategy. His Pearl Harbor operation, he confessed, was conceived in desperation. It would be an all-or-nothing gambit, a throw of the dice: We should do our best to decide the fate of the war on the very first day.
During the Second World War and for years afterward, Americans despised Yamamoto as an archvillain, the perpetrator of an ignoble sneak attack, a personification of Oriental treachery. Time magazine published his cartoon likeness on its Dec. 22, 1941, cover sinister, glowering, dusky yellow complexion with the headline Japans Aggressor. He was said to have boasted that he would dictate terms of peace in the White House.
Yamamoto made no such boast the quote was taken out of context from a private letter in which he had made precisely the opposite point. He could not imagine an end to the war short of his dictating terms in the White House, he wrote and since Japan could not hope to conquer the United States, that outcome was inconceivable.
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(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Which would make the Bomb available while Germany is still fighting.
Hmm. I suspect this would have negated the idea that we dropped the Bomb on Japan out of sheer racism.
Can you say, "Goodbye, Berlin?"
And London, and Moscow. Glad the Japs only bombed us at Pearl. lol
I assume you mean the Germans would have taken the UK out if we had a Pacific First strategy.
I disagree, as I think even with a Pacific First strategy we would have kept enough resources flowing to UK to prevent its fall. Its strategic value as an unsinkable aircraft carrier and base is just too obvious. Could have been designed for the purpose.
OTOH, I tend to agree that USSR would likely have collapsed, or at least been driven beyond the Urals. If so, it becomes highly unlikely, IMO, that UK and US could have successfully invaded Europe without the Eastern Front absorbing the majority of German and allied forces.
IOW, I don’t think D-Day would have happened, and if we’d tried it would have been a disaster.
All this would have only postponed the inevitable, of course and August of 1945 would still have ended in the surrender of both Germany and Japan. Little bit later, possibly, in order to stockpile more Bombs before using them.
What is a really insteresting alternate history flows from the fact, little known in USA, that Hitler declared war on us, not USA on Germany. He was under no obligation to do so, and why he made the decision will never be known. Had he not done so, it is entirely possible we might have been at war with Japan and at peace with Germany for some time, although that “peace” would have been largely theoretical.
It seems strange that, although Japan and Germany were allies and both were sworn enemies of Russia, they never coordinated their attacks. Japan took advantage of the war in Europe as an opportunity to grab colonial territory but it never really did much to help Germany. (Bringing the United States into the war by bombing Pearl Harbor certainly did not help Germany.) There was never any coordinated strategy.
I believe this is the major reason they lost the war.
Pearl Harbor was a huge defeat for Japan, because they failed to get any of our aircraft carriers, which were out to sea on that day.....Japan lost the war then and there.
Or "Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book."
Interesting what if Germany didn’t declare war on the US.
I still suspect the US basically would have simply heightened their shipments to Britain, and the moment any of our ships were attacked, that would have been the Casus Belli, and we would have declared war on Germany anyway, probably within the next few weeks at the most.
No, I pretty much agree you on that. The US would have done everything it could to keep both the UK and the USSR in the war. I am just saying that a Pacific first strategy (which the USN wanted) would have given Hitler a little more time. And since the Nazis were working on a-bombs/rockets/fighter jets a little more time would have been bad for us. The allies were going to win either way but Europe first was the better strategy in terms of overall cost to us and our allies. Now one could make the argument that allowing the Nazis defeat the USSR might have worked out better in the long run. It's still a little too soon to know if that would have been a better strategy.
Be nice talking to you.
Yup the US was going to war against the Nazis, no if and or buts about that.
In December 1941, Hitler believed he was on the verge of winning the war. German troops were at the gates of Moscow. He believed that the United States was not in a position to attack him any time soon. By declaring war on the US, he was trying to get Japan to declare war on the Soviet Union.
Rommel: “Patton, you magnificent bastard! I watched your movie!”
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