Candadian MPP

[SeaMonkey]

Okay Shaka and JJ, I can see a Pacific co-prosperity alliance between US and Japan among the other Asian players.......but.....you know there is a but....how is this China thing resolved between the two?

[JerseyJohn]

An excellent point SeaMonkey, and one I hadn't given much thought to -- obviously as I hadn't mentioned it at all.

I'd say the United States would serve as the middleman, convincing Japan that it would need to halt in China before the two countries would be able to come any closer as economic allies.

In light of being able to keep both Indochina and Indonesia and not have to deal with U. S. trade sanctions, I believe Japan would have readily agreed to America's Chinese terms.

China would have either accepted the situation or been required to continue fighting it's war without outside aid.

In light of this revised world situation I don't think American public opinion would have been as concerned with China as it was historically. The stakes would have changed too dramatically and Japan, as an ally against the European Axis, would have become much more important than supporting a Chinese regime that had never truly been more than a vague government in revolution.

[Edwin P.]

In game terms a co-prosperity sphere between the US and Japan might encourage Japanese aggression against Russia, thus preventing the Siberian transfer while allowing the US to send more resources to the war in Europe.

[JerseyJohn]

Edwin,

The situation we were talking about had Europe already conquered and Germany turning east, already invading the USSR.

In Asia, Japan makes it's move to absorb French Indochina and the Dutch East Indies on the premise that both are alligned with nazi dominated Europe.

This leaves the United States with two options: fight Japan even while it's fighting Hitler's Reich, or support it, fighting Hitler's regime by proxy.

Hypothetically the United States and Japan cooperate as it's the best course for both.

If Japan is fighting Germany and the USSR is also fighting German and presumably being driven out of it's European domains, it would make between little and no sense at all for Japan to be bothering the USSR!

The natural course, and one the United States would certainly have encouraged, would be to form a triple alliance of the USSR-Japan and the United States.

Prior to Barbarossa, Japan sought a German-Japan-USSR Alliance; this would have been a variant of that strategic view.

The last thing Japan would have wanted to see was the removal even of Asiatic Russia and the complete freeing up of all of the new and hugely powerful Third Reich to be directed through the Middle East and Indian Ocean against the Japanese!

[SeaMonkey]

JJ correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't this China recognition(Chiang Kai'chek)and subsequent pull out coupled with the French Indochina and Dutch East Indies pullback the main sticking point. Didn't the Japanese want it all as well as the strategic material(oil and steel) exports from the USA as a condition of cooperation. I will agree that the American public, for the most part, didn't care enough to go to war. Definitely a political situation with neither side making any real compromises. I think the general public weighed in on the side of the Chinese because of the war atrocities widely reported at Nanking among others of lesser press. One other point, didn't the Japanese originally explain their invasion of China(Manchuria) as a need for a buffer from USSR communistic expansion? Not saying that this "what if" is inconceivable, just throwing out some misgivings on my part,... perhaps miss conceptions of my infantile dementia and tightroping that thread of hypocrisy that I am susceptible to.

[ January 26, 2005, 12:26 PM: Message edited by: SeaMonkey ]

[JerseyJohn]

SeaMonkey

Originally the Japanese said the Manchurians fired on their trains moving through leased land in Manchuria. They sent their troops in and quickly conquered the place, which had been independent of China.

I've never heard them say they were looking for a buffer zone. Actually, I've never heard of them having justified it on any grounds other than the safety of their rail roads and mining rights. Which was all bogus anyeay and everyone knew it. This was a UN issue and, typically, it was botched about with Japan simply walking out and there being no consequences at all.

Not long afterwards, they claimed that Chinese troops were marauding their Manchurian outposts and responded with a full fledged invasion of China! This didn't evoke any particular response in the United States. Nothing happened even later on when two American gunboats were sunk by Japanese aircraft -- the second one with considerable American casualties. Most Americans wondered why we even had naval vessels going up and down Chinese rivers! In truth, that was a good point.

America's role in Asia at the time was a very confused one. As for it's part with Japan, if we hadn't been in the Phillipines there would most likely not have been a problem. The trouble was entirely a geographical one, the Japanese couldn't guarantee their merchant marine link with the United States having naval and air bases perfectly located to sever them!

To the Japanese it was a matter of either trusting the United States, or being sure they couldn't use the knife. Most aggressor states would have felt the same way as the Japanese, that the American presence in the Phillipines was a risk to great to tolerate.

Once the European empires began falling, Japan felt it was their turn to grab the Asian colonial spoils. It's hard to argue with their justifications, they were, after all, Asians! It came down to the Americans and Europeans telling them they were wrong to steal from those fallen empires the lands that they'd already stolen from their rightful owners!

Getting back to your original point, I think you mean the Japanese push into Outer Mongolia. They did say in that instance that they wanted a buffer zone. The Soviets, under Zhukov, soundly defeated the Japanese in two large battles during 1939. The defeats were so one sided that it left the Japanese permanently fearful of fighting the Russians -- an exact and total reversal of the contempt they'd had up to that point, which they'd carried over from the Russo-Japanese War of 1905.

I don't think China, in our hypothetical scenario, would have occypied the same position that it occupied during WWII with the Government and Hollywood combining to put it on a propaganda stage similar to the one proved for the USSR after June of 1941.

Once Germany emerged as the master of Europe and, inevitably began extending it's feelers to sympathetic South American governments, the United States would have broken records to woo Japan into it's camp. A Japanese seizure of Indochina and the Dutch East Indies would, in my opinion, have been vastly preferable to the USA than seeing those areas being used to profit the Third Reich.

[SeaMonkey]

I have to agree with your reasoning, the facts seem to discount my viewpoint. Just goes to show you how easily perspectives can be skewed by rhetoric and propaganda, and just plain bad memory. I usually take a common sense approach to the presentation of the "facts" and yours seemingly makes sense and has rattled out some old recollections of these past events. Thanks for the clarification.

[Shaka of Carthage]

To back up a little bit, SeaMonkey does have a point.

China was in the midst of a bitter civil war, before the Japanese invaded. The US backed Nationalist China, while the USSR backed Communist China.

The Japanese "government" wasn't of one mind in how it wanted to conduct "foreign" diplomacy. The Imperial Japanese Navy and the Imperial Japanese Army were rivals. Many politicians wanted to industralize and become more Western, while others didn't want to lose thier Japanese identity.

If I remember correctly, part of the problem Tokoyo had was that some of the military officers in Manuchuria/Greater China refused to obey orders from Tokoyo they disagreed with.

Bottom line was, that Japan couldn't back out of China, even if it wanted to. Nor do I belive that it wanted to, for the reasons JJ gave above (it considered itself a Great Power, and was doing no different than what the European Powers had done in its colonial possesions).

I do belive that the US would have abandoned Nationalist China for the greater good, as long as Japan limited its expansion and made no grap for the remains of the British Empire (ie India).

So SeaMonkey is correct about the disagreement over China, but since Japan didn't want all of China, just the coastal areas it had, a political agreement would have been reached with the US... like JJ outlined above.

US would have agreed to Japan taking over French IndoChina and Dutch East Indies (ie Indonesia), as long as it meant that India was free to pursue its own independence. As Australia would have politically align itself with the US, the US would have achieved another one of its goals, being the breakup of the British Empire.

[JerseyJohn]

Shaka,

Excellently put -- I think that about rounds it out as much as we ever will, considering all the speculation required.

The loose cannon Japanese officers both in Manchuria and even in Japan itself throw an interesting factor into the mix. Chiang's regime was also suspect and Mao's wasn't something the West wanted to deal with. The Japanese officers in Manchuria, of course, fought those two battles against the Soviets without approval from Tokyo! The had their heads handed to them, deservedly, because they went into it half-assed lacking in everything the Siberian Soviet troops had in abundance, including good leadership!

Interesting point about the United States favoring the break up of the British Empire, and I'm sure the French Empire as well. It's easy to forget these days that in 1939 the British Empire was still huge. It was reeling from WWI but slowly recovering. When Chamberlain appeared to be so weak at Munich, a large part of it was he knew the Empire would not have survived another major war. Of course, the U. S. had everything to gain with the final collapse of the Union Jack.

Hitler, on the other hand, wanted it to remain intact. Even while he was courting the Japanese he told those around him, "We must be careful that we don't replace the Red Empire with a Yellow Empire."

A complicating factor would have been the former Dutch East Indies proclaiming independence and calling upon the United States for protection! I have no idea of how that would have affected all of this.

SeaMonkey,

You're always too hard on yourself.

The whole thing is only speculation and there's no telling how it would actually have gone.

It reminds me of another what-if from the same era. Huey Long is not murdered and runs for president with a third party in 1936, drawing enough votes away from FDR to allow Herbert Hoover to come back for another try. The changes would have been huge, including an entirely different and far more isolationalist foreign policy. -- And, if Huey Long had lived and somehow become president himself -- Whew, how's that for an imponderable!

-- Actually, it's believed now that he was paving the way as an independent in 1936 to run as the Democratic successor to FDR in 1940. Nobody thought Roosevelt would run for 3rd and 4th terms!

[SeaMonkey]

"You're always too hard on yourself."

JJ, seems we are "Birds of a Feather"

Always aspiring to greater heights,

Thanks for the consideration, and to you to Shaka.

[JerseyJohn]

SeaMonkey

Appreciated, if we have to be birds, that would certainly be the bird we'd both choose to be and I'm sure many of our friends here would be flocking with us -- and no, I'm not hanging around to see what Shaka does with that remark!

=== We now resume normal broadcasting, returning this thread to the Curry Network

[DutchStorm]

Originally posted by Curry:

In SCI when England falls the Candian MPP's go kind of into a limbo.

I am in a game currently where England (UK) falls. But the USSR and the USA are at war quickly with the Axis. Canada is still allied. But her MPP goes into a sort of limbo hold that the US cannot use. In reality I am sure that if the NAZI's took over the UK Canada would stand with the USA as they did in WWII with the UK.

And I think I have mentioned this before, no UK ships stay free and head to the US or Canada. Ha. I think the Royal Navy would have never given up. For sure a better percentage of staying in the fight then the French who are factored into the game.

Jersey can help me, but I believe the UK had plans to send the Royal family to Canada if the Nazi's did invade England when all seemed so dark.

Good game, isn't it Curry

But I experienced it myself also on the other side, and it then is frustrating not being able to anything with those MPP's..

[JerseyJohn]

On the original quote, Curry, that's also my understanding, that the next stop would have been North America.

In Churchill's rousing fight them on the beaches speech, he says it specifically, that if the British Isles fall, the battle would be carried on in Canada.

But, as we've been saying, that might not have gone on very long before a peace treaty was signed.

[cannon123]

i have to agree with kelley....Canada would have stayed in the fight...waiting for the US to join, which it surely was bent on doing ....which is why the US probably permitted the attack on Pearl Harbor.