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Post by SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman on Nov 3, 2015 14:33:20 GMT -5
Also, I don't think Japan was dumb enough to think attacking Russia directly was a good idea. Why not? They did it 30 years before and won a pretty one-sided war with them. Granted, a lot of it had to do with Japan's navy, but they still won numerous land battles. Yeah but in order to do what the OP suggested, the land battles would be key, they couldn't afford to lose any. And assuming they miraculously succeeded, it wouldn't end once they got to the oil fields as they would need to prevent the Russians from taking them back, while at the same time setting up infrastructures to transport the oil, and of course they would have to protect these infrastructures as well. Just imagine the amount of Russian land they would have to invade and hold for it to work. And don't forget the soldiers doing that would not be available to do anything else during the war, not to mention after a stunt like that, they'd become a much bigger target for the Allies. And that's assuming they managed to do it by only going through Russia. If they had to go across China as well then that makes two countries that are already hostile that they'd have to go through, set infrastructures in and then defend them while taking fire from half the World. |
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Post by Hit Girl on Nov 3, 2015 14:35:39 GMT -5
The Japanese won their war with Russia while Russia was ruled by an oblivious and deluded tsar. They knew that Stalin was more formidable.
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ICBM
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Post by ICBM on Nov 3, 2015 16:58:30 GMT -5
Japanese Naval power, it's huge pacific stronghold and the belief a strike on Pearl Harbor could triple American ability or will to fight Japan. The thought that all thee above would force America to just let Japan keep their gains, trade with them under duress while the Americans worried themselves with supplying Europe. Germany declaring war changed some of that possible course of action.
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Post by BorneAgain on Nov 3, 2015 16:59:21 GMT -5
The Japanese won their war with Russia while Russia was ruled by an oblivious and deluded tsar. They knew that Stalin was more formidable. And its entirely possible it was Russia's poor performance against Finland that convinced Hitler the former was weaker than it actually was. The Japanese meanwhile had their experiences in 1939 to convince them that the Soviet Union was not quite the paper tiger Germany was convinced it was. |
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Post by Hit Girl on Nov 3, 2015 17:05:37 GMT -5
The Japanese also would have taken note of Napoleon's invasion (Hitler apparently never read War and Peace). Russia's tendency to make tactical retreats drawing enemies deeper in a harsh landscape devoid of useful crops and resources, with terrible winters and willing to take huge losses in order to win, made invading it a bewilderingly stupid idea.
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Glitch
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Post by Glitch on Nov 3, 2015 17:53:35 GMT -5
Why not? They did it 30 years before and won a pretty one-sided war with them. Granted, a lot of it had to do with Japan's navy, but they still won numerous land battles. Yeah but in order to do what the OP suggested, the land battles would be key, they couldn't afford to lose any. And assuming they miraculously succeeded, it wouldn't end once they got to the oil fields as they would need to prevent the Russians from taking them back, while at the same time setting up infrastructures to transport the oil, and of course they would have to protect these infrastructures as well. Just imagine the amount of Russian land they would have to invade and hold for it to work. And don't forget the soldiers doing that would not be available to do anything else during the war, not to mention after a stunt like that, they'd become a much bigger target for the Allies. And that's assuming they managed to do it by only going through Russia. If they had to go across China as well then that makes two countries that are already hostile that they'd have to go through, set infrastructures in and then defend them while taking fire from half the World. What should I added is the fact that Russia would have their forces split in half, and that the Japanese could have stopped at least the production of tanks in eastern Russia. I also meant getting the oil after Russia had been conquered. Not sure that plan would have worked, but that's what I meant. |
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Post by Ryback on a Pole! on Nov 3, 2015 23:08:06 GMT -5
Maybe I'm wrong but, Japan found themselves overstretched in the Pacific campaign. Perhaps they just couldn't support large wars on two separate fronts. By invading Russia, I'm guessing they'd have needed to take troops/supplies from the Pacific Campaign (which was the priority) and so weakened that.
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Arrow
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Post by Arrow on Nov 4, 2015 11:48:43 GMT -5
Japan and the USSR had a nonaggression pact in 1941 that Tokyo pursued because of how badly outclassed they were against the Red Army at Khalkhin Gol. A full-scale invasion of the Soviet Union would have been logistically unfeasible by the Japanese Army under the best circumstances, let alone one where it was already overextended in China and couldn't match a Red Army still suffering from Stalin's purges.
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Post by RI Richmark on Nov 4, 2015 19:14:08 GMT -5
guys, where could I find good reads online of both world wars to get a better understanding of them? Buying books isn't an option since I don't had the money and is a bit complicated for me to buy thing in the states There's this great series on World War I called The Great War on Youtube. They give a week by week recap of what happened this week 100 years ago. Since the series is already a year old there also a couple of 6 month recaps so newer viewers don't have to sit through a year's worth of videos. They also have specials on the countries, weapons, and people involved in the war as well as a question & answer session. You can check it out here: www.youtube.com/user/TheGreatWarJust a warning, after you start watching you'll probably get a strong urge to find Conrad von Hötzendorf and kick him in the nuts. |
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Post by BorneAgain on Nov 4, 2015 19:23:27 GMT -5
Try wikipedia. Seriously, that's a good start. Wikipedia is a good source that I read lots of times, but I had this bad habit of reading an article, and start opening more articles from there just to get a better understanding of things and covering everything Like one day I was reading about the german invasion of the USSR and somehow ended reading about the live in russia in the era of Ivan the Terrible There's a great podcast called Hardcore History which follows various historical events; it has an older four part series looking at the Eastern Front war between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in WWII called Ghosts of the Ostfront as well as a newer six part series looking at WWI. The former is pay to download but all six of the latter are free to get now. |
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Post by N E O G E O B O Y S on Nov 4, 2015 21:56:45 GMT -5
guys, where could I find good reads online of both world wars to get a better understanding of them? Buying books isn't an option since I don't had the money and is a bit complicated for me to buy thing in the states There's this great series on World War I called The Great War on Youtube. They give a week by week recap of what happened this week 100 years ago. Since the series is already a year old there also a couple of 6 month recaps so newer viewers don't have to sit through a year's worth of videos. They also have specials on the countries, weapons, and people involved in the war as well as a question & answer session. You can check it out here: www.youtube.com/user/TheGreatWarJust a warning, after you start watching you'll probably get a strong urge to find Conrad von Hötzendorf and kick him in the nuts. Which were his biggest sins? his wikipedia entry makes him look like an incompetent general but there is a lot of praising too |
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Post by RI Richmark on Nov 4, 2015 23:22:41 GMT -5
There's this great series on World War I called The Great War on Youtube. They give a week by week recap of what happened this week 100 years ago. Since the series is already a year old there also a couple of 6 month recaps so newer viewers don't have to sit through a year's worth of videos. They also have specials on the countries, weapons, and people involved in the war as well as a question & answer session. You can check it out here: www.youtube.com/user/TheGreatWarJust a warning, after you start watching you'll probably get a strong urge to find Conrad von Hötzendorf and kick him in the nuts. Which were his biggest sins? his wikipedia entry makes him look like an incompetent general but there is a lot of praising too I agree his legacy is mixed like a lot of people in WWI but to me he comes off as stubborn and arrogant. While Chief of Staff for Austria-Hungary he pushed for preventive war against Serbia and Italy years before the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. But when war actually came the Austrian army were ill-prepared and ill-equipped and lost many early battles, even to tiny Serbia. One of his biggest sins was a series of attacks against Russian forces in the Carpathian Mountains. Desperate to break the Russian Siege of the fortress of Przemyśl, he sent soldiers into the mountains in an attempt to draw the Russians away. But the attacks were ill timed and the soldiers weren't prepared for mountain fighting (some went into the sub zero temperatures wearing cardboard shoes). And when the first attack failed Conrad refused to change tactics and ordered two more attacks. He ended up losing about 800,000 men. He also refused to take any responsibility for any failures. |
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Post by N E O G E O B O Y S on Nov 5, 2015 7:27:32 GMT -5
Which were his biggest sins? his wikipedia entry makes him look like an incompetent general but there is a lot of praising too I agree his legacy is mixed like a lot of people in WWI but to me he comes off as stubborn and arrogant. While Chief of Staff for Austria-Hungary he pushed for preventive war against Serbia and Italy years before the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. But when war actually came the Austrian army were ill-prepared and ill-equipped and lost many early battles, even to tiny Serbia. One of his biggest sins was a series of attacks against Russian forces in the Carpathian Mountains. Desperate to break the Russian Siege of the fortress of Przemyśl, he sent soldiers into the mountains in an attempt to draw the Russians away. But the attacks were ill timed and the soldiers weren't prepared for mountain fighting (some went into the sub zero temperatures wearing cardboard shoes). And when the first attack failed Conrad refused to change tactics and ordered two more attacks. He ended up losing about 800,000 men. He also refused to take any responsibility for any failures. Well, time to build a time machine and kick him in the nuts! Is still funny, in that war most of the generals didn't care about their mens, but since some of the got important victories they get a pass |
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Post by -Lithium- on Nov 5, 2015 7:29:22 GMT -5
There was a constituents among Japanese generals that thought it was the way to go: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokushin-ronThey really should have, IMO. The Soviets were on the ropes, even after the weather had first turned against Germany and severely halted their progress. A second front from the opposite direction really could have led to the destruction of the USSR. Keep in the mind that the Soviet counter offensive at Moscow was only really possible because a spy of Stalins gave word that Japan had no plans to invade, thus freeing up reserves of troops trained in winter warfare that were able to stop Germany when some parts of the Wehrmacht were only miles from Moscow. Now the best case scenario for the Axis would have been Hitler listening to his generals like Heinz Guderian and going straight for Moscow that summer/autumn. I think Japan might have been more likely to invade if Germany had just totally ran over the Soviets and had reached their capital that quickly... |
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Post by N E O G E O B O Y S on Nov 5, 2015 8:29:10 GMT -5
Like people said, logistically it would had been nightmare for japan and germany to conquer the USSR, is a very large territory
I always liked in the movie fatherland were even in an scenario where hitler defeated the britians and conquered most of europe, ten years later he still couldn't finish the job in Russia (even though the movie implied that they were in the ropes and that with the help of the USA they will finally defeat them)
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Post by Deleted on Nov 5, 2015 12:20:43 GMT -5
I'd lead with the blunder of Hitler's Operation Barbarossa (the "nice idea, that" Nazi invasion of Russia), but regarding Japan the more relevant historical fact is that Japan had been at war with China since 1937 (the Second Sino-Japanese war, which basically merged into the larger picture of WW2 after a few years).
And in that war, Stalin and Russia backed China. Japan was already in hot water with Russia as it was, so had they decided to branch out and try to strike at & take Russian territory, they'd have felt the wrath of Stalin as directly as Hitler and the Nazis did.
Theoretically a double pronged attack on Russia from both ends (Germany from the west, Japan from the east) could've worked, but there were far too many variables (ie, giant wars already in progress) for it to have actually succeeded. In the end, Japan moreorless left Russia alone in that regard, and especially after Hitler turned his eyes east it was probably wiser to not rile Stalin up by trying to grab oil fields .
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Dr. T is an alien
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Post by Dr. T is an alien on Nov 5, 2015 22:26:54 GMT -5
My understanding was that attacking Pearl Harbor was not about gunning for the US. It was about clearing a path to invade Indonesia for the oil fields there. The US had made it clear that invading them was unacceptable and that they would oppose that act. Considering that the US had a navy that could contain the Japanese navy and the attack on Pearl Harbor was an attempt to cripple that navy long enough to gain enough ground in the South Pacific to become entrenched. It did not work, obviously.
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Mackenzie Gorn
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Post by Mackenzie Gorn on Nov 6, 2015 0:18:25 GMT -5
I've never understood why asians would team up with white supremacists. Cause the Empire of Japan was basically the same. |
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Post by -Lithium- on Nov 6, 2015 1:04:53 GMT -5
I dont understand the idea that any invasion of the USSR in 1941 stood no chance. Had Hitler listened to his generals, they WOULD have reached Moscow by the fall of 1941. Had they not been idiots and didn't try to liquidate people like in the Ukraine, they would have been treated as liberators and those people would have fought WITH the Nazis against Stalin. It was possible under the right leadership...
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Glitch
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Post by Glitch on Nov 6, 2015 4:02:46 GMT -5
Which were his biggest sins? his wikipedia entry makes him look like an incompetent general but there is a lot of praising too I agree his legacy is mixed like a lot of people in WWI but to me he comes off as stubborn and arrogant. While Chief of Staff for Austria-Hungary he pushed for preventive war against Serbia and Italy years before the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. But when war actually came the Austrian army were ill-prepared and ill-equipped and lost many early battles, even to tiny Serbia. One of his biggest sins was a series of attacks against Russian forces in the Carpathian Mountains. Desperate to break the Russian Siege of the fortress of Przemyśl, he sent soldiers into the mountains in an attempt to draw the Russians away. But the attacks were ill timed and the soldiers weren't prepared for mountain fighting (some went into the sub zero temperatures wearing cardboard shoes). And when the first attack failed Conrad refused to change tactics and ordered two more attacks. He ended up losing about 800,000 men. He also refused to take any responsibility for any failures.Hötzendorf:"The thing you gotta understand about that battle ,bro." |
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