Japan and the Soviet Union

[Juha]

Clay
SU wasn't a big bad bear to FDR's administration, or to many US industrialist in 30s, most Soviet trucks were SU made Fords from late 30s onwards because Ford sell a big lorry factory to them, US also sell to SU aviation fuel even during the Winter War IIRC and IIRC one big tyre firm sold a big tyre factory there and a US naval architect firm made BB design for Soviets.
Japan on the other hand was seen as a treat and as wrote earlier was punished by harsh economic sactions because of its actions in China and Indo-China.

Juha

 

[Amsel]

The Japanese did not have a whole lot to fear on the high seas as well. The IJN clearly outmatched the USN in ships and tactics from WWI and on. The Japanese were a major threat to the Pacific rim.

 

[renrich]

Michael, the Chinese did not make a great deal of effort to fight the Japanese during WW2, especially the Communists. They were more interested in fighting one another and stealing from the people. Chiang made just enough effort to keep the US sending support. Mao was more interested in getting ready for the struggle when the war was over. They both fought one another as much or more than the Japanese. The idea of China being a market for Japanese goods in the 1940s is far fetched. China was very poor and had little buying power for manufactured goods. The FDR administration did not regard the Soviet Union as a major threat during WW2. Churchill continually tried to get FDR to understand the Russian menace but failed. FDR actually wrote that, after the war, the Soviets would become more like us and we would become more like them. Prophetic!

 

[Freebird]

The Japanese did not have a whole lot to fear on the high seas as well. The IJN clearly outmatched the USN in ships and tactics from WWI and on. The Japanese were a major threat to the Pacific rim.

Hard to see that except in hindsight. The US Pacific fleet was seen as at least equal to the Japanese, and if the British could muster a smaller fleet, they would outnumber the Japanese 3 to 2 in everything except aircraft carriers, which would be about equal. This was the thinking in the fall of '41

I only see this as potentially workable if the Japanese attacked Russia but NOT China and the other Asian nations. If the US saw Imperial Japan attacking a communist regime that was not well regarded here, who is to say we wouldn't SELL the Japanese weapons?

Imagine them driving into the Russian far east in Shermans and Jeeps.

Not doing to get too far in a Sherman vs a KV I.

It still doesn't work Clay, because capturing China was the whole reason for the Pacific war, it was like the "Lebensraum" for the Japanese. They were willing to sacrifice everything for this.

Since I was the one who started this discussion, I don't recall that having Japan continuing to invade China was part of the scenario. .

It's not really possible to see how they would do this. The Japanese intent was to subjugate China, which was weak at the time, and the Japanese preferred to avoid conflict with the US Europeans, at least until the late 40's when their industrial base would be bigger

I said that the Japanese would only attack the British in China(Hong Kong) and Malaya and the Dutch in the East Indies and not the US at PH..

The scenario could be plausible - but if the Japanese still keep the front open in China. It would be possible
to attack Russia using 70 or 80 thousand, drawn from the troops that would have been used to attack the Philippines.

If they decided to launch an offensive against the Soviets to help their allies, Germany and Italy, they might very well have discontinued any advances in China or even pulled back from that country..

Not likely, as there not nearly as much of value in the Soviet Far East, compared to China. The Japanese showed almost zero interest in "helping their allies", as the 3rd largest source of lend-Lease aid to Russia was made through Vladivostok by Russian freighters, under the noses of the Japanese fleet!

Japan could have held it's gains in China and conquered most of Southeast Asia including Australia with all the natural resources included..

Australia was never in their plans, it was seen as too difficult and too far away
Southeast asia WAS in their long term plans, just not as soon as 1941-1942

Hitler could have have ceased submarine warfare against Britain,and negotiated a truce with that country, maintained his gains in Europe and subjugated Russia..

That was exactly what he tried, but Churchill refused. The British stranglehold on German imports, continued bombing of German targets, and meddling in operations {ie Greece, Yugoslavia, Aid to Russia meant that no truce was possible

Course, if Hitler and Tojo, et al, had been rational, they would probably have not started the war at all.

Indeed, had the Axis cooperated even a quarter as much as the Allies, they could very well have beaten Russia China

 

[Soren]

Look your photo in your message #193 inside the hood of the upper white camo parka one sees the green redbrown non-winter camo, so one can turn it over and use it also in summer. Are you suggesting that Germans were using their warmest cloth also as summer camo suit or at least spring/autumn camo. And everyone can see that the parka is made from rather thin material and thickness is very important for insulations.

Sorry Juha but again you are wrong. The camo you see on the inside (dark brown, light green etc) outside (White) of the Parka I presented is the German late autumn/winter camoflage pattern, it was NOT used in the summer. The camoflaged summer uniforms or smocks which you seem to be refering to are a lot thinner and NOT meant for winter! The padded Parka in post #193 is thick and meant for winter use only, it was NOT worn in the summer (Unless one wished to get a heat stroke ofcourse). I've tried on several of these pieces of clothing at reenactment fairs, and during my stay in the miltary we wore similiar type Parkas in snowy winter conditions such as in Norway Greenland, having been to both places many many times. Only time we wore something even thicker was when we went out on long expeditions in Greenland, we wore thick anoraks for that.

Same padded Parka as in post #193, part of the Wintertarnanzug series:

Another German padded parka, this one with Autumn Oak camo:

And here's a camoflaged summer uniform smock (BIG difference from the Parka!):

As for the magnitude of layers, there you are right however, but a thick overcoat like a winter Parka is always needed when the temperature is at or below -30 degrees Celcius. Staying warm at such a temperature is hard enough as it is.

 

[renrich]

FB, I have a recent book which I have quoted which claims that the Japanese planned to have 2 M of their people moved to Australia by 1950. Sounds like they intended to take over to me. Good book about the last year of the war in the PTO, "Retribution" by Hastings.

 

[parsifal]

Michael, the Chinese did not make a great deal of effort to fight the Japanese during WW2, especially the Communists. They were more interested in fighting one another and stealing from the people. Chiang made just enough effort to keep the US sending support. Mao was more interested in getting ready for the struggle when the war was over. They both fought one another as much or more than the Japanese. The idea of China being a market for Japanese goods in the 1940s is far fetched. China was very poor and had little buying power for manufactured goods. The FDR administration did not regard the Soviet Union as a major threat during WW2. Churchill continually tried to get FDR to understand the Russian menace but failed. FDR actually wrote that, after the war, the Soviets would become more like us and we would become more like them. Prophetic!

The Chinese , particularly the Communists were responsible for over 1.5 million casualties to the Japanese Army, prior to 1941. After 1941, the total casualty bill for the Japanese was about 1.5 million. These are military deaths, so I am excluding the Civilain deaths from places like Hiroshima. Of this latter total, the US and Australians were responsible for approximately 350000 and the British, Indian, and other Commonwealth forces were responsible for another 350000 roughly (I can get more precise figures, but these will do for the purposes of this discussion). The Russians are estimated to have caused approximately 100000 casualties in their 1945 offensive (a rough guess, because the figures get mixed up with postwar deaths.....Russia took a million Japanese prisoner, 200000 returned from the death camps in 1952. If you include the estimated postwar deaths at the hands of the Russians the Japanese butchers bill clims to about 2.2 million military deaths and approximately 800K civilian deaths )

After factoring in all these other effects, that leaves 7-800000 casualties as a result of Chinese activities . That is a marked turn down in lethality, caused by the Nationalists unwillingness to engage in open battle after 1941. That unwillingness was brought about by an expectatiuon that the US could win without Chinas continued help, and by the simple logistic relaities arising from the Burma Road. The KMT was also perparing for the post war show down with the Communists. All of this is true , but your assertion that the Communists were busily ripping off the peasants was not true as a generalization. The communists survival was based on their successful implementation of a "hearts and minds" campaign. They relied very heavily on the goodwill of the peasantry to survive. They certainly managed to do this, as the final outcome in 1949 demonstrates. Its also untrue that the Communists were sitting back doing nothing, or even that they doing less than the KMT. The greatest victory of the Chinese, prior to 1941 was "100 Regiments" in 1940. This was fought by the Communits, and inflicted approximately 50000 casualties on the japanese. Thats Iwo several times over just to put it into a US perspective. I would not call that "sitting back and doing nothing.

China was critical to the battles in the Pacific for the simple reason that it tied down so much of the Japanese Army and air force, allowing the Allies a great deal of freedom in other theatres. If the US had not entered the war, AND the Chinese can be given better access to logistic support, based on the pre-1941 trends, it is very likley that Chinese activity would have increased markedly. The style of warfare in China is not so much one of sweeping, successful offensives, rather it was a constant battle of attrition, small scale battles (that nevertheless would register as large battles in western vernacular).

If the Chinese were getting better access to resources, and the japanese were the same or smaller in their force structure, the inevitable is going to happen, the japanese are going to buckle, and possibly break.

IN 1940 China was seen as the sleeping giant that she was. With a populatiuon of 50000000 people, she was seen as a latent market, a manpower source, and a source of raw materials, not just by the Japanese, but by everybody. The US wanted a continuation of the open door policy, ie competion on a level playing field for Chinese trade. The Japanese wanted to establish thei "greater east asian co-prosperity sphere" which is a fancy way of saying they wanted to establish a closed trading bloc, excluding the european nations from trade in China. If they had managed to do that, the japaneseeconomy would have exploded. It was far fetched as you say, because it was an unnattainable goal, but it was a goal believed in nevertheless by the Japanese

 

[renrich]

" Most of Mao's forces, however spent the war struggling to feed themselves and survive, skirmishing only spasmodically with the Japanese. Today, the myth of Communist dominance of the struggle against the ocuppiers is discredited even in China. If Chiang's armies were less than effective on the battlefield. Mao's guerillas lacked either the will or the combat power to do more than irritate the Japanese. By 1944, 70 per cent of Japan's forces in China were committed against the Nationalists. A staff officer at Japan's army headquarters in Nanjing, Maj. Shigeru Funaki, said: 'The Communists operated in regions that were strategically unimportant to us.Their troops were much more motivated than the Nationalists, but we sought only to contain them. Our attention was overwhelmingly concentrated on confronting Chiang's forces further south."
"The Communists were not strong enough to offer a major challenge to the Japanese occupation," says a modern Chinese historian, Yang Jinghua. "In the anti-japanese war the Kuomintang did most of the fighting and killed far more of the enemy--- I say this, as a Communist Party member for 30 years. Statistics tell the story. Some 1200 KMT generals died fighting the Japanese, against just ten Communist ones." Page 405, "Retribution," Max Hastings, copyright, 2007. Joe Stilwell and the British Generals in the CBI would probably disagree with your evaluation of the KMT's contributions toward winning the war against Japan.

 

[Amsel]

I thought the comment was kind of odd, that the Chinese Reds were the main cause of Japanese casualties.

 

[Juha]

Hello Renrich
Chinese were not particularly rich much there were many of them. And the upper and middle class had reasonable spending power. Next is from an article I read some 35 years ago from Kuohuva Vuosisata magazine, not entire sure on timeline but otherwise it should be correct.
Japan was hit very hard by the Great Depression and the rise of protectionism that followed. Sometimes during 20s Japan had given 21 demands to China but nationalist Chinese had replied with boycotting Japanese goods. When the depression hit part of Japanese elite saw that they needed a great closed marked area, China, for the products of their economy because their society could not stand massive decreasing of production and they could not rely on Western markets.
Manchuria was a different scenario, from there they got at least coal and Jap Gov actively encouraged emigration of Japanese there. Mostly to farmers IIRC.

Juha

 

[Juha]

Removed as Njaco asked

 

[Njaco]

Juha, the Stalingrad posts have been moved to a seperate thread to keep the continuity of this thread. If there is something you want to add regarding the previous posts about Stalingrad or the German equipment, I would suggest posting it there. Thanks.

http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/ww...ange-name-when-i-find-one-suitable-19573.html

 

[parsifal]

QUOTE=renrich;527172]" Most of Mao's forces, however spent the war struggling to feed themselves and survive, skirmishing only spasmodically with the Japanese. Today, the myth of Communist dominance of the struggle against the occupiers is discredited even in China. If Chiang's armies were less than effective on the battlefield. Mao's guerillas lacked either the will or the combat power to do more than irritate the Japanese. By 1944, 70 per cent of Japan's forces in China were committed against the Nationalists. A staff officer at Japan's army headquarters in Nanjing, Maj. Shigeru Funaki, said: 'The Communists operated in regions that were strategically unimportant to us.Their troops were much more motivated than the Nationalists, but we sought only to contain them. Our attention was overwhelmingly concentrated on confronting Chiang's forces further south."
"The Communists were not strong enough to offer a major challenge to the Japanese occupation," says a modern Chinese historian, Yang Jinghua. "In the anti-japanese war the Kuomintang did most of the fighting and killed far more of the enemy--- I say this, as a Communist Party member for 30 years. Statistics tell the story. Some 1200 KMT generals died fighting the Japanese, against just ten Communist ones." Page 405, "Retribution," Max Hastings, copyright, 2007. Joe Stilwell and the British Generals in the CBI would probably disagree with your evaluation of the KMT's contributions toward winning the war against Japan.[/QUOTE]

Ren

Your comments are not valid for the fighting prior to June 1941. In that period, the Communists fought more battles than the nationalists, and inflicted more casualties on the Japanese than did the KMT. There 14 major battles, of which 5 are considered Chinese victories. Threee of those battles were fought and won by the Communists, including the largest single victory by the Chinesse until the great batles in central China that virtually destroyed the Japanese forces in that region. I have mentioned this battle before, it is called the "Battle Of the 100 regiments" and resulted in approximately 50000 unrecoverable casualties for the japanese.

The reason for the greater level of activity in the Communist camp is twofold. Until well into the war (before 1940), the Nationalists were concentrating the majority of their efforts in defeating the Communists rather than fighting the Japanese. However, much of their foreign aid was linked to the proviso that they fight the Japanese rather than pursue the Communists. By comparison, the Communists concentrated most of their efforts on fighting the Japanese.....not because they were interested in achieving a coherent national defence, but simply because in the initial phases of the war the Japanese concentrated thei attacks in the North, where the Communists were ensconced (I admit that the very early battles around Peking are the exception to this, but after the retreat of the Nationalists to Chungking, the Japanese operations were directed almost completely, for a while, against the Communist strongholds).

The second reason for the greater Communist effort and effect lay in their better access to arms. Up to June 1941, the Soviets were heavily supporting the Communists (who at that time did not include Mao, who had been relegated to a second line position in the hierchy by the Soviet dominated politburo. Mao never forgot or forgave that action by the Russians). After 1941 the situation was reversed, with the nationailist having the greates access to wepons, via the allied airlift over the "Hump".

Even so, the Communists, now under Mao conducted operations strongly reminiscent to the Spanish irregular campaign during the napoleonic wars. It is true that in this period 1941-45 the Communists did not engage in any major campaigns against the Japanese, until 1945, when they supported the Russian attacks into Manchuria and Northern China. There was much activity expended in wresting provincila control from the Nationalists.

I dont doubt that the sources you are quoting would support the line that it was the nationalists who were the major protagonists of the war, and from 1941 this was in fact th case.....the Chinese lacked the resources to dictate the initiative, and were forced, as a result of resources and their peculiar doctrines, to merely react to Japanese initiatives. Because the Communists no longer controlled areas that were vital to the japanese, and because the Communists had inflicted a number of nasty defeats on the japanese earlier in the war, before 1941, and because the KMT was now th greatest threat to Japanese interwsts, courtesy of Allied aid, and air activity, the Japanese naturally concentrated the majority of their efforts on the KMT. The trend that had been set prior to 1941 (with the Communists doing the lions share of the effective fighting) was now reversed.....nearly all the major battles fought, were now fought between Japan and the KMT.

Wiki has this to say with respect to the effectiveness of the CCP forces:

During the Sino-Japanese War, Mao Zedong's strategies were opposed by both Chiang Kai-shek and the United States. The US regarded Chiang as an important ally, able to help shorten the war by engaging the Japanese occupiers in China. Chiang, in contrast, sought to build the ROC army for the certain conflict with Mao's communist forces after the end of World War II. This fact was not understood well in the US, and precious lend-lease armaments continued to be allocated to the Kuomintang. In turn, Mao spent part of the war (as to whether it was most or only a little is disputed) fighting the Kuomintang for control of certain parts of China. Both the Communists and Nationalists have been criticised for fighting amongst themselves rather than allying against the Japanese Imperial Army. Some argue, however, that the Nationalists were better equipped and fought more against Japan.[20]

In 1944, the Americans sent a special diplomatic envoy, called the Dixie Mission, to the Communist Party of China. According to Edwin Moise, in Modern China: A History 2nd Edition:

Most of the Americans were favorably impressed. The CPC seemed less corrupt, more unified, and more vigorous in its resistance to Japan than the Guomindang. United States fliers shot down over North China...confirmed to their superiors that the CPC was both strong and popular over a broad area. In the end, the contacts with the USA developed with the CPC led to very little.

My opinion is that with Russia engaged in the war against Japan, the CCP would be less concerned about scrounging for resources, and more concerned about prosecuting the war against Japan more effectively. I believe they would have continued their effective "major battle" campaigns, rather than being forced into the realm of the "poor mans war" that they were after 1941. Japan could not sustain the casualties she suffered against the communists as demonstrated by their reaction to the 100 regiments defeat (they stopped attacking the communists after that and decided to concentrate on the weaker, less effective KMY....another reason why the KMT was the object of most Japanese attacks after 1941), so the logical conclusion to draw is that if Russia was involved in the war, the Communists would be re-invigorated to continue their successful land campaigns, and would drive the japanese to an even quicker defeat.

There is only one flaw in all of this. The Russians did not support Mao, rather they supported a politburo opposed to Mao. Mao may not have emerged as the leader of the CCP (after his temporary eclipse in the late '30s), but then the Russian demonstated their flexibility her by working with Tito and the western allies during the war, so I dont see too much problem in this respect either

 

[parsifal]

Links for further reading on the "Dixie Mission", the US first attempts at establishing a liason with the CCP. I dont agree with every statement i these links, but they provide some good background nevertheless

Dixie Mission Remembered in Beijing
http://en.allexperts.com/e/d/di/dixie_mission.htm

 

[vanir]

I think a little formative background is also enlightening. Both the kuomintang and communists were relatively recent phenomenae amid Chinese culture, which had previously been living under the yoke of foreign dictatorship, the Manchurian Qing dynastic rule, which was extremely racist and authoritarian (a bad combination).

Roughly speaking the nationalists represented southern coastal industrialist interests in governing china, whose corruption was bigger than their ambition. The Qing of course represented an imperial rule farther afield. The communists in fact developed most during the thirties within a very small region in the Yellow River Valley, the seat of original Chinese civilisation and represented traditional values and interests in Chinese government. During the late thirties, due to Soviet interests in regaining territories lost since the Revolution (expanding Vladivostok westwards for one), they decided to back the Yellow Valley conservatives in fighting Japanese attempts to reinstate the Qing with a tailored and biased treaty reflecting their industrial interests. In 1939 the Chinese communists were still a very small and ineffectual organisation without direct Soviet support but were easily the best of bad choices for a future Chinese government, their political ascendancy was at least genuine. Most of China was cut up into warlord provinces who withdrew from national interests with the overthrow of the Qing, because they didn't back the kuomintang who even then were so corrupt they overthrew their own leader immediately following the revolution and made a coastal property grab.

It was not at all like a democratic election where you've got a stable country and a variety of Parties to choose from. Even attributing Party names is misleading, the terms isolationists, industrialists and conservatives would be more reflective of what the warlords, kuomintang and chinese communists represented.