German-Japanese Cooperation

[Shosties]

Originally posted by Michael emrys:

Without oil, everything grinds to a halt, the economy and the war in China. Going after the NEI theoretically guarantees them a supply of oil, provided they can get the refineries back into production and protect their tankers. Big if there.

Of course, none of this assures them of victory in China, merely that there is no immediate defeat.

That's why I wrote the strike southers had the best seeming answer to the first strategic goal: resources (POL: petroleum oil and lubricants! But also iron ore, rubber, and food!). As for the second, defeating China, I was thinking of a direct rather than indirect factor. The strike north people would have needed to advocate a very ambitious invasion of the Eastern Soviet Union in order to cut off the land lines to China (Akira shaking hands with Fritz in the Urals? "That's your half, this is ours!?").

You bring up the vulnerability of Japan's lines of supply. This was indeed a major instance of why Japanese conduct of the war as a whole wins almost no points in my book. Even more of a head-slapper was that the Japanese did almost nothing to exploit the vulnerability of *our* lines of supply, despite having a large submarine fleet and excellent cruisers. Japanese admirals fixated on big fleet battles, and even then didn't pull them off at all (Coral Sea, Midway, etc.). When it was time to pull out all the stops they got cold feet (Solomons) and we were able to eke out a victory even then, with only one operating fleet carrier in the theater.

[Michael Emrys]

The idea of an attack on asian USSR was hashed out in soc.history.war.world-war-ii a few weeks ago, and the most compelling arguments were all against it. They ran along these lines:

There was nothing there that the Japanese wanted.

There was very little there that the Soviets could not afford to lose, at least temporarily.

Operations there for the Japanese would range from difficult to impossible, mostly due to logistics.

Rationale: the Soviets could withdraw in the face of any attack they could not defeat outright destroying the trans-Siberian railway as they go, making it next to impossible for the Japanese to follow. Once the Japanese reach the end of their supply tether, that's it. No more offensive. What's more, as soon as that supply tether starts to get strained, it becomes vulnerable to partisan warfare, if the Soviets choose to play that game.

Michael

[Shosties]

Michael,

Good points. Siberia is pretty vast, and that railway was (and mostly still is) the only transport infrastructure out there. If their intention was just to help out the Germans, they could have cut the railway by airstrike/airborne ops and prevented the redeployment that gave Stalin the muscle for his winter counteroffensive. However, there was very little incentive for them to do this. If they even knew about the wealth of Siberia, it was well underneath the ground and would have taken too much time to even begin to exploit for their purposes.

The correct answer to Japan's quandry was not (a) Strike North or ( Strike South, but, of course, © No Strike... forget about conquering China, get back in good graces of the international community, and obtain resources the smart and ethical way, by buying them with the money made by exporting manufactured goods. As John Belushi would say, "But Nooooooooo!!!".

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Shosties4th:

The correct answer to Japan's quandry was not (a) Strike North or ( Strike South, but, of course, © No Strike... forget about conquering China, get back in good graces of the international community, and obtain resources the smart and ethical way, by buying them with the money made by exporting manufactured goods.

Absolutely.

Interesting to see how close Germany and Japan have come to realizing their prewar goals of prosperity and regional dominance by pursuing them through peaceful means.

Too bad countries just didn't think that way in the first half of the twentieth century. They hadn't snapped to the realization that industrialization as well as burgeoning populations had made old-style imperialism obsolete.

Michael

[Hamstersss]

Originally posted by Michael emrys:

Too bad countries just didn't think that way in the first half of the twentieth century. They hadn't snapped to the realization that industrialization as well as burgeoning populations had made old-style imperialism obsolete.

Michael

That's not quite accurate. Old-style imperialism was not only profitable but necessary up to World War II, especially if you consider Western and Japanese relations with China and Southeast Asia but also in political interaction throughout the third world.

It wasn't expanding population or industrialization that killed imperialism, it was the sudden political and military cost of warfare, due to modern weaponry and modern conceptions of human rights, both forged during World War Two.