The Short Victorious War

tlb wrote:

tlb wrote:What I have solely rejected was the statement that Japan was offered "only the choice between war and starvation". The option preferred by Washington was that Japan would end the war in China and the embargoes would be lifted; which does not fit neatly into that binary choice. Instead Japan elected to keep the war in China going and as the pressure increased from Washington, to greatly expand that war.

n7axw wrote:It was a choice between war and starvation. Without the oil, Japan's industry shuts down. Given the size of Japan's population, we have starvation as a consequence. As it happened, they got war and starvation.

Don

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As I said I totally reject that binary choice. The Japanese rejected ending their war in China and so rejected ending the embargo. Instead they chose to expand their war to include the US. But that could not cause trade to resume unless they won, and that was impossible.

The attack on Pearl Harbor ensured that the US would never sue for peace and there is no way that Japan could attack the US industry nor its ship building capacity. Which meant that the US would eventually have a navy too huge to defeat.

“For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”

n7axw wrote:They weren't going to stop their war in China. That would have been humiliating as well as making them look weak. In fact, speaking as a history buff, I can't think of any country who would have accepted that demand. For Japan as a shame culture, that goes double. In Japanese eyes, that demand was both unrealistic and unreasonable.

I am sure that is one reason the demand was made and Roosevelt was expecting and counting on the response.

Don

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tlb wrote:

n7axw wrote:They weren't going to stop their war in China. That would have been humiliating as well as making them look weak. In fact, speaking as a history buff, I can't think of any country who would have accepted that demand. For Japan as a shame culture, that goes double. In Japanese eyes, that demand was both unrealistic and unreasonable.

I am sure that is one reason the demand was made and Roosevelt was expecting and counting on the response.

Don

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Whether Roosevelt knew, or did not, I expect that an acceptance of the demand would have been welcome. But for the Japanese to think that by means of the Decisive Battle Doctrine (Kantai Kessen) the Japanese navy would win a war by fighting and winning a single, decisive naval action was also unrealistic and unreasonable; particularly after Pearl Harbor. The simple fact is they did not expect US soldiers to be able to act in a sustained way as warriors, that one big defeat would cause Washington to sue for peace. But the attack on a Sunday, meant that would never happen. Even if the Pacific Fleet were sunk, the Japanese could not stop the US from building an even bigger one; since they could not touch the industrial base of the US.

n7axw wrote:How solid the Intel, we are not sure. But from what I have been able to read, they believed that an attack was coming, but didn't know where. It was believe that the first blow would fall on the Philippines. It wasn't until before the Battle of Midway that the Japanese naval codes were broken.

Still there was enough intel for war warnings to be sent out to all of our Pacific outposts. Admiral Kimmel and General Short received the warning but didn't give it sufficient priority.

Don

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Jonathan_S wrote:And the US was expecting an attack. They were expecting an attack to land on their forces in the Philippines. They were not expecting the attack to land on Pearl Harbor. IIRC Japan had only developed the capability to project an attacking fleet that far within the proceeding year or so -- it was a very new capability for them.

So, the US wasn't expecting an significant attack to land on the West Coast, as it was beyond the effective combat range of the Japanese Navy. But US intelligence, somewhat behind the times given their poor penetration of the fairly closed and secretive nature of the military government of Japan, believed that Pearl Harbor was also (still) beyond the effective combat range of the Japanese Navy.

(And like I said, a year or so earlier they'd have been correct in that assessment -- at that point Japan did not yet have the skill or numbers of oilers and other underway logistics vessels to push an attack force that far West. Not without first seizing and securing a forward base in at least the Philippines.
Don't forget that the technology of underway refueling/resupply was still a pretty nascent one)

n7axw wrote:

tlb wrote:I am in agreement with this statement with the understanding that the US did expect an attack. As KZT has pointed out at various times, the US did not expect that Japan could or would have the massive successes that they did in the opening months of the expanded war. This was an intelligence failure, not a failure of policy. The authorities in Hawaii only expected sabotage from the local people of Japanese descent, not a full fleet attack. As KZT has also said there was a lot of racist dismissal in the intelligence appraisals.

What I have solely rejected was the statement that Japan was offered "only the choice between war and starvation". The option preferred by Washington was that Japan would end the war in China and the embargoes would be lifted; which does not fit neatly into that binary choice. Instead Japan elected to keep the war in China going and as the pressure increased from Washington, to greatly expand that war.

It was a choice between war and starvation. Without the oil, Japan's industry shuts down. Given the size of Japan's population, we have starvation as a consequence. As it happened, they got war and starvation.

Don

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n7axw wrote:Robert, You are right, of course. I didn't think about coal. That doesn't completely negate my point since most of the things Japan needed they had to import including an unhealthy percentage of their foodstuffs.
What the militarists in control of Japan's foreign policy would have been focused on would have been the armed forces and the war in China. So I think we arrive at my bottom line even though my previous thinking to reaching that bottom line doesn't apply. In Japanese eyes, Roosevelt's demand would have been seen as unrealistic and unreasonable.

Don

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Despite the existence of an undeclared naval war between Germany and the United States, however, Roosevelt hesitated to ask for a formal declaration, because most of the American public still supported neutrality. At this point, according to the revisionists, he believed that he could obtain a public consensus in favour of war only if the country were attacked by a foreign power.

He allegedly created this consensus by provoking the Japanese into the attack on Pearl Harbor. As the revisionists describe it, Roosevelt purposefully increased tensions between Washington and Tokyo by introducing embargoes in 1940–41 on scrap metals and petroleum products that Japan needed for its war machine. By the fall of 1941, according to the revisionists, American policy makers had concluded that Japan would attack the U.S. fleet in Hawaii in the belief that the United States would then seek a settlement in the Pacific, thereby freeing Japan to create an East Asian “co-prosperity sphere.” Although Roosevelt and his closest advisers in the State, War, and Navy departments knew that an attack was imminent, the revisionists argue, they did not alert the military, believing that a surprise attack would create an overwhelming consensus for involvement in both the European and Pacific wars. As evidence of Roosevelt’s duplicity, they cite the fact that the administration failed to notify the military of decoded Japanese messages indicating that an attack would take place on December 6–7.

-- snip --

Among the first historians to argue in favour of the back-door-to-war theory were Charles Beard, author of American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932–1940 (1946) and President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941 (1948), and Charles C. Tansill, author of Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy, 1933–1941 (1952). Half a century later, journalist and presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan gave continuing life to the theory by insisting in his book A Republic, Not an Empire (1999) that, contrary to accepted opinion, the United States need not have fought in World War II. The country was forced into a conflict with the Axis powers only by Roosevelt’s determination to aid Britain and Russia against Hitler. Without American involvement in the fighting, Buchanan argued, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia would have destroyed each other, thereby sparing the world the post-1945 Cold War.

-- snip --

Most historians have rejected the claims of Beard, Tansill, and Buchanan as reductionist and unconvincing. These historians do agree that Roosevelt engaged in deception and manipulation to advance his foreign policies and that he was prevented from seeking a formal declaration of war in the first years of the fighting because of continued public support for U.S. neutrality. Nevertheless, they argue that this does not show that Roosevelt intentionally provoked the Japanese to attack the United States or that he allowed the country to be surprised at Pearl Harbor.

-- snip --

The draft, the destroyer-bases exchange, the lend-lease program, convoying, and economic sanctions against Japan were all undertaken with Roosevelt’s belief that the public regarded them as vital to American national security. Contrary to the revisionist view, most historians regard these incremental decisions not as attempts to drag the country into the war but rather as efforts by Roosevelt to exercise all other options, in keeping with his deep reluctance to enter the fighting without the firm support of the American public.

Although Roosevelt did admit to Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin that it would have been difficult to gain public support for war without the Japanese attack, nevertheless, according to most historians, he actually tried to avoid a war with Japan throughout 1941, fearing that it would limit America’s aid to Britain and lengthen the struggle against Germany. For example, in a discussion of the American embargo on Japan at a cabinet meeting on November 7, 1941, he said that the administration should “strain every nerve to satisfy and keep on good relations” with Japanese negotiators. He told Secretary of State Cordell Hull not to let the talks “deteriorate and break up if you can possibly help it. Let us make no move of ill will. Let us do nothing to precipitate a crisis.”

-- snip --

Roosevelt and his advisers did foresee a Japanese military action on December 6–7. Nevertheless, most historians agree that they did not know where the attack would come. Intercepted Japanese diplomatic and military messages indicated an attack somewhere, but information suggesting that the target would be British, Dutch, or French possessions in Southeast Asia obscured other information suggesting Pearl Harbor. Moreover, as most historians point out, it is implausible to think that Roosevelt, a former assistant secretary of the Navy, would have exposed so much of the U.S. fleet to destruction at Pearl Harbor had he known an assault was coming. If his only purpose was to use a Japanese attack to bring the United States into the war, he could have done so with the loss of just a few destroyers and some airplanes. In fact, he was genuinely surprised by the target, if not the timing, of the Japanese attack. According to one scholar, Roberta Wohlstetter, this was partly the consequence of a tendency among U.S. military leaders to see the fleet in Hawaii as a deterrent rather than a target. It was also the result of a failure by U.S. military intelligence to measure Japanese capabilities accurately: the Americans did not believe that Japanese air and naval forces could mount a successful attack on U.S. bases in Hawaii.

tlb wrote:

n7axw wrote:Robert, You are right, of course. I didn't think about coal. That doesn't completely negate my point since most of the things Japan needed they had to import including an unhealthy percentage of their foodstuffs.
What the militarists in control of Japan's foreign policy would have been focused on would have been the armed forces and the war in China. So I think we arrive at my bottom line even though my previous thinking to reaching that bottom line doesn't apply. In Japanese eyes, Roosevelt's demand would have been seen as unrealistic and unreasonable.

Don

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I do not know if Roosevelt was aware of the Japanese military's mindset or if he was just concerned about stopping the aggression in China. There are revisionist historians that claim his entire purpose was to get the US into the war. This is what the Encyclopedia Britannica's website had to say about that:

Despite the existence of an undeclared naval war between Germany and the United States, however, Roosevelt hesitated to ask for a formal declaration, because most of the American public still supported neutrality. At this point, according to the revisionists, he believed that he could obtain a public consensus in favour of war only if the country were attacked by a foreign power.

He allegedly created this consensus by provoking the Japanese into the attack on Pearl Harbor. As the revisionists describe it, Roosevelt purposefully increased tensions between Washington and Tokyo by introducing embargoes in 1940–41 on scrap metals and petroleum products that Japan needed for its war machine. By the fall of 1941, according to the revisionists, American policy makers had concluded that Japan would attack the U.S. fleet in Hawaii in the belief that the United States would then seek a settlement in the Pacific, thereby freeing Japan to create an East Asian “co-prosperity sphere.” Although Roosevelt and his closest advisers in the State, War, and Navy departments knew that an attack was imminent, the revisionists argue, they did not alert the military, believing that a surprise attack would create an overwhelming consensus for involvement in both the European and Pacific wars. As evidence of Roosevelt’s duplicity, they cite the fact that the administration failed to notify the military of decoded Japanese messages indicating that an attack would take place on December 6–7.

-- snip --

Among the first historians to argue in favour of the back-door-to-war theory were Charles Beard, author of American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932–1940 (1946) and President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941 (1948), and Charles C. Tansill, author of Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy, 1933–1941 (1952). Half a century later, journalist and presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan gave continuing life to the theory by insisting in his book A Republic, Not an Empire (1999) that, contrary to accepted opinion, the United States need not have fought in World War II. The country was forced into a conflict with the Axis powers only by Roosevelt’s determination to aid Britain and Russia against Hitler. Without American involvement in the fighting, Buchanan argued, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia would have destroyed each other, thereby sparing the world the post-1945 Cold War.

-- snip --

Most historians have rejected the claims of Beard, Tansill, and Buchanan as reductionist and unconvincing. These historians do agree that Roosevelt engaged in deception and manipulation to advance his foreign policies and that he was prevented from seeking a formal declaration of war in the first years of the fighting because of continued public support for U.S. neutrality. Nevertheless, they argue that this does not show that Roosevelt intentionally provoked the Japanese to attack the United States or that he allowed the country to be surprised at Pearl Harbor.

-- snip --

The draft, the destroyer-bases exchange, the lend-lease program, convoying, and economic sanctions against Japan were all undertaken with Roosevelt’s belief that the public regarded them as vital to American national security. Contrary to the revisionist view, most historians regard these incremental decisions not as attempts to drag the country into the war but rather as efforts by Roosevelt to exercise all other options, in keeping with his deep reluctance to enter the fighting without the firm support of the American public.

Although Roosevelt did admit to Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin that it would have been difficult to gain public support for war without the Japanese attack, nevertheless, according to most historians, he actually tried to avoid a war with Japan throughout 1941, fearing that it would limit America’s aid to Britain and lengthen the struggle against Germany. For example, in a discussion of the American embargo on Japan at a cabinet meeting on November 7, 1941, he said that the administration should “strain every nerve to satisfy and keep on good relations” with Japanese negotiators. He told Secretary of State Cordell Hull not to let the talks “deteriorate and break up if you can possibly help it. Let us make no move of ill will. Let us do nothing to precipitate a crisis.”

-- snip --

Roosevelt and his advisers did foresee a Japanese military action on December 6–7. Nevertheless, most historians agree that they did not know where the attack would come. Intercepted Japanese diplomatic and military messages indicated an attack somewhere, but information suggesting that the target would be British, Dutch, or French possessions in Southeast Asia obscured other information suggesting Pearl Harbor. Moreover, as most historians point out, it is implausible to think that Roosevelt, a former assistant secretary of the Navy, would have exposed so much of the U.S. fleet to destruction at Pearl Harbor had he known an assault was coming. If his only purpose was to use a Japanese attack to bring the United States into the war, he could have done so with the loss of just a few destroyers and some airplanes. In fact, he was genuinely surprised by the target, if not the timing, of the Japanese attack. According to one scholar, Roberta Wohlstetter, this was partly the consequence of a tendency among U.S. military leaders to see the fleet in Hawaii as a deterrent rather than a target. It was also the result of a failure by U.S. military intelligence to measure Japanese capabilities accurately: the Americans did not believe that Japanese air and naval forces could mount a successful attack on U.S. bases in Hawaii.

From the following page:
Britannica topic: Pearl Harbor and the backdoor to war

n7axw wrote:Yep. I know which side of the discussion I'm on. I don't think that there is serious doubt but what Roosevelt was boxing in the Japanese with his sanctions and expecting the result he got. Why on earth would Japan back down when they thought they were winning? Heck the Japanese didn't know how to back down when they were losing... If not for the emperor, we probably would have invaded Japan...

Don

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