== The Grand Strategy of Japan, 1919-1941 == Why, in December 1941, did Japan go to war against the United States? In examining Japan’s grand strategy from
1919 to 1941, this video will focus on two problems: why did Japan choose military solutions to solve its strategic problems? And why were these solutions eventually directed at the US? == 1. The Problem: Total War == Japan came out of WWI with a very benign strategic environment in East Asia. By 1918, three regional powers – China,
Russia and Germany – had collapsed, with the surviving European empires financially
and politically exhausted. Into this vacuum stepped the Japanese, who
had not only increased their economic presence throughout the region, but had also acquired
strategic depth through the South Pacific Mandate and the anti-Communist intervention
in Eastern Siberia. But behind the façade was a concerning development. WWI had seemingly demonstrated that future
wars would be total in nature, with the economic dimension especially important. Without a large and independent resource and
industrial base, even a military titan like Germany could be blockaded and bled into submission. And Japan, which was nearly bankrupted after
only 18 months of the Russo-Japanese War, lacked both. Worse, Japan’s competitors – the Soviet
Union and the United States – did not lack either. At sea, the 1916 US Naval Program planned
to add 16 capital ships, which was the size of Japan’s existing fleet, by 1919. On land, with half the budget eaten up by
a mere 70,000 troops in Siberia and no financial will for further increases, Japan had no choice
but to withdraw in 1921 and hand the region back to the Soviets. Both did not bode well for Japan’s future
security. In considering the problem of total war, Japanese
policymakers came up with three grand strategic responses. First was the ‘internationalist’ response. Internationalists, consisting of establishment
civilian and naval moderates, accepted that future wars would be total and Japan had no
way of winning them alone. Military expansion was therefore impossible. Instead, internationalist grand strategy would
have Japan accept the political status quo, tying its interests to a negotiated political
order. Anybody that threatened Japanese interests
would therefore also threaten the order as a whole, creating a defensive coalition that
could overawe the enemy and, at worst, collectively sustain total war. Second was the ‘traditionalist’ response. Consisting of establishment army and navy
leaders, traditionalists did not accept that future wars would necessarily turn total. They argued that Japan could still wage ‘Limited
Wars’ without triggering escalation, using the Russo-Japanese War as an example, where
Japan opened by seizing and fortifying strategic objectives, beat back Russian counter-attacks,
and eventually convinced the enemy that, while they would win a total war, the additional
cost in blood, treasure and morale simply made victory not worth it. So traditionalist grand strategy argued that
Japan needed to be ready for opportunistic military expansion through Limited War. It therefore demanded a large, quality military
capable of seizing strategic objectives and dealing decisive blows to the enemy. The third blueprint, still new as of 1919,
was the ‘totalist’ response. Totalists, consisting of anti-establishment
army and civilian hawks, accepted not only that future wars would be total, but that
Japan could also win such a war. Impressed by the results of Soviet and later,
Nazi economic and societal planning, totalists argued that similar efforts could overcome
Japan’s economic deficiencies. Totalist grand strategy focused on two areas. Firstly, Japan’s economic limits could be
extended through internal reform. Wasteful societal processes – like social
inequality, public debate and individual freedom – would be replaced by a technocratic elite
with control over everything. The state would then mobilize resources, capital
and labor for economic buildup, not just through industrial expansion but also through research. Through totalitarian economic planning, Japan’s
small but intensively-utilized economy would sustain total war, with resources it lacked
being replaced by synthetic substitutes. Secondly, while the process of internal reform
was ongoing, Japan’s economic limits could also be extended by acquiring, peacefully
or militarily, new territories and resources to build and fuel industrial capacity. Many totalist thinkers such as Kita Ikki,
believed that a future total war was inevitable. Influenced by Marxist and fascist geopolitics,
they divided the world into landowning ‘haves’ – meaning established Empires – and the
proletarian ‘have-nots’ – meaning latecomers like Germany or Japan, or for racialists,
the non-whites. Under the Social-Darwinian struggle between
peoples, the ‘have-nots’ must either resign themselves to exploitation, or grow strong
enough to take land and become ‘haves’ in their own right. Note that this last goal was not necessarily
limited to totalists – even moderates believed in Japan’s Manifest Destiny to lead Asia
against colonialism. == 2. 1919-1931: The Internationalist Washington
Order == Generally speaking, Japan had two core interests. First was keeping its superior regional position. Second was maintaining Japan’s economic
interests, largely concentrated in China and northeast China in particular. One particular interest was the South Manchuria
Railway, a colonial asset seized from the Russians in 1905. In peace, the Rail monopolized Manchuria’s
transport economy; in war, it let the Army out-mobilize the Soviets. To protect it, the Japanese set up the Kwantung
Army as a guard force, and also supported the semi-independence of the local warlord,
Zhang Zuolin. Arrayed against these interests were three
threats. Both the US and the Soviet Union could leverage
their warmaking potential to overthrow Japan’s position or eject it from China. There was also Chinese nationalism, which
if properly channeled could overwhelm Zhang Zuolin and deal mortal blows to Japan’s
economy through non-cooperation, boycotts or nationalization. Throughout the long post-WWI recession, civilian
and naval moderates, such as Foreign Minister Shidehara and Naval Minister Tomosaburo, wanted
to maintain Japan’s interests with as little spending as possible. They therefore adopted the internationalist
grand strategy and sought to place Japanese interests within a negotiated political order. Key to this was engaging constructively with
the Washington Conference of 1921-22. The first pillar of the new order was the
1922 Naval Treaty, which set a 10:10:6 capital ship ratio between the UK, US and Japan. This was less than the 10:10:7 minimum Navy
traditionalists wanted for Limited War, but in return the US had capped its fleet far
below its potential. The treaty also banned new naval base development
in the Pacific, which left only Japan with modernized bases between Singapore and Hawaii,
guaranteeing superiority in the Western Pacific. So by conceding a theoretical disadvantage,
the US threat was neutralized and Japan’s regional position secured. The other pillar was the 9-Power Treaty on
China, signed by most relevant powers including China, but excluding Germany and the USSR. In return for respecting Chinese territorial
integrity – something that Japan had tried to reduce in 1915 – all signatories would
enjoy equal economic access in the country. So again, in return for accepting the political
status quo in China, Japan’s economic interests there would be protected by international
law. Now Japan had to uphold the Washington order. As long as the internationalists were in charge,
it upheld the Naval Treaty – though like the others, began exploiting an oversight
by building cruisers instead of battleships. It also upheld the Chinese status quo, avoiding
railroad construction in the Soviet sphere of influence in northern Manchuria, and unlike
Britain, tolerating Soviet support for the Chinese Revolutionaries in 1924. Even when it intervened, as when the Soviets
launched a proxy war against Zhang Zuolin in 1924, or when Zhang attempted to invade
north China in 1928, the Japanese kept to the original boundaries. The internationalist grand strategy was demonstrably
successful throughout the mid-20s. Japan kept its position while avoiding a naval
arms race with the US, while the Soviets, who had hoped to spread revolution in China,
soon backed off for fear of triggering a Japanese-European-American coalition: by 1925 they were exchanging ambassadors
with Japan and dealing with Zhang Zuolin. When the Chinese Revolutionaries threatened
to overturn the colonial ‘unequal’ treaties in 1927, the coalition again forced them to
back down, with the revolutionaries collapsing into the Nationalist-Communist Civil War shortly
thereafter. All this was achieved at a low cost in blood,
treasure or reputation. Still, it’s worth asking whether this grand
strategy was long-term workable. There were already problems at the micro-level:
Zhang Zuolin’s growing independence, in particular, was threatening Japanese interests. But at a macro-level, the Washington order
was established when both China and the USSR were at a low ebb, and their recovering power
would likely threaten it in time. A challenge during the depths of the Great
Depression or the European war might have seen the UK and US cut their losses, leaving
Japan, as the power most dependent on East Asia, to defend its interests alone in a ruinous
total war. More fatally, the internationalists did not
convince either limited-war traditionalists or total-war totalists. Army traditionalists complained that the order
stopped Japan from striking a weak China and, for totalists, monopolizing the country as
a resource bloc. Naval traditionalists protested that fleet
inferiority – especially the cruiser limits of the 1930 Naval Treaty – meant that Japan
could only protect interests that the US was OK with. All sides doubted that the West would actually
defend Japan in Asia, instead of finding someone to balance it out. These non-internationalists also felt that
they were under time pressure. The Nationalists had nominally unified southern
and central China by 1928, raising the prospect of a stronger central government able to act
against Japanese economic interests. The same year, Stalin launched the first Five-Year
Plan, whose forced industrialization threatened to boost Soviet power beyond Japan’s military
abilities. Fearing that the internationalist grand strategy
would soon make it too difficult to maintain Japan’s interests, the Kwantung Army decided
on unauthorized action. On June 1928, they assassinated Zhang Zuolin,
expecting to replace him with a more reliable puppet. It backfired: Zhang’s son unexpectedly succeeded
him and united with the Nationalist Chinese, who began acting against Japanese and Soviet
influence in Manchuria. This setback only increased the urgency to
act, and by 1931 the Army was ready to try again. == 3. 1931-1937: The Totalist ‘National Defense
State’ == On September 1931, again without authorization,
Kwantung Army totalists under Ishiwara Kanji staged a false flag attack on the South Manchurian
Railway and used it as a pretext to attack the Chinese. Within 6 months Japan had pushed out Chinese
and Soviet influence in Manchuria, reorganizing it into the state of Manchukuo. This totalist move ended the internationalist
grand strategy. Civilian leaders, seeing public support for
the Army, refused to return to the 9-Power status quo, meaning that Japan now became
the threat to the order. The US threatened to terminate the Naval Treaties,
the Soviets rushed 4 divisions to the Far East, and China skillfully used ‘weak-nation
diplomacy’ to reinforce Japanese isolation. A total-war coalition against Japan was seemingly
forming. It was in this environment that Ishiwara Kanji,
promoted in 1935 to Army Chief of Operations, unveiled his totalist grand strategy of the
‘National Defense State’. To meet the impending threat, Japan had to
prepare for total war by extending its economic limits: it had to become economically larger
and more independent. The National Defense State demanded both external
expansion and internal reform. With Manchukuo added to existing Japanese
economic assets in China, Ishiwara judged that Japan now had taken enough external resources
and territory. Manchuria pre-conquest produced 70% of China’s
iron and 33% of its trade; totalists now wanted to remake it into a complementary economy
to Japan. This involved the standard colonial relationship
of Manchukuo exporting raw materials to and importing finished goods from Japan, but at
the same time, Manchukuo would also be the site of heavy industry development that Japan’s
limited space and resources couldn’t allow. To fund this, totalists proposed temporarily
downsizing the military to free up budget, while maintaining stable relationships with
Japan’s key suppliers: China for raw materials, the US for machine tools. Regarding internal reform, guidelines issued
in the 1936 ‘Five Year Plan’ called for revolutionary change: eliminating the party
and cabinet system in favor of a ‘National Affairs Board’ with totalitarian control
over Japanese national life. More practically, totalist bureaucrats wanted
to set up capital, labor and export controls, bureaucratic infrastructure like planning
boards, and a harsher line against Big Business and the pursuit of ‘unpatriotic’ profit. Intense time pressure was reflected in the
National Defense State’s tight schedule. General rearmament by the mid-1930s meant
that total war was expected to break out by the early 40s: the 1936 Plan set 1941 as the
year for war with the USSR. And in those five years, the National Defense
State had to deliver, among other things, a doubling of iron and steel production, a
15-fold increase in normal and synthetic oil production, and a 70% increase in the Army
to 50 divisions. Things were not helped by Japan’s fragmented
political structure. Under the Meiji Constitution, the Army and
Navy were each responsible solely to the Emperor, not civilians, which meant that there was
no real institution that could set strategy or coordinate between Army, Navy, and Government. Opposing factions could therefore easily disrupt
strategic implementation. The National Defense State had a pretty clever
solution for this. Manchukuo was not meant to be just a complementary
economy for Japan, but also a policy test lab where totalists could gain experience,
experiment with planning, and form a policymaking network ready to export successful schemes
back to Japan. Two members of that network, Tojo Hideki and
Kishi Nobosuke, would oversee Japan’s war economy as Prime Minister and Minister for
Commerce during 1941 to 1944. But this was in the medium-run. In the short-run, implementation of the National
Defense State ran into furious opposition from politicians and business on one hand,
and on the other, traditionalists who did not believe that Japan could prepare for total
war in so short a time. In 1933, even before the totalist strategy
got going, traditionalists changed it to an immediate army buildup for a 1936 Limited
War against the USSR, and it was only after they were purged in the wake of the failed
coup of February 1936 that the totalists reclaimed their strategy. The Navy also set its own obstacles. The Army and Navy had lacked a common strategy
since 1907: the Army wanted to focus on Russia, the Navy on the USA. As an Army man, Ishiwara Kanji tailored the
National Defense State against the USSR – the so-called ‘Northern Advance’. The Navy, fearing that this would divert budget
to the Army, replied with its own ‘Southern Advance’, claiming that the economic independence
of the National Defense State also required taking the metal, rubber and oil resources
of Southeast Asia. The two sides tried negotiating a common strategy
in 1937, but could only agree that Japan should fight only one power at a time. In practice, the National Defense State ignored
the Navy’s demands. Even setting aside these things, the National
Defense State was conceptually flawed. Ironically, the strategy actually reduced
Japanese economic independence. From 1929-32, Japan imported an average of
500,000 tons of scrap metal for steel production; by 1937 it was importing 2.5 million, most
of this coming from the US. Japan also became more dependent on US machine
tools, rare materials and oil. The totalist belief in synthetic substitutes
was completely misplaced: Manchukuo was meant to produce half a million kiloliters of synthetic
oil annually– still just 2 months of estimated Navy use – but in 1938 made 2% of that. Still, by early 1937 the totalists had reason
to be optimistic. They had won the bureaucratic battle with
their strategy and personnel relatively intact. New Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro was a supporter
of economic development and even limited internal reform. Western powers were busy with events in Europe. All the totalists needed was a few years of
peace. To guarantee this, Japan attempted to reconstitute
the old internationalist order by proposing an Anti-Comintern Pact in late 1936 against
the Soviet Union, with its Asian components being Japan, Nationalist China, and Britain. However, due to Japan’s need to ally with
Nazi Germany to preempt a German-Chinese alliance, Britain was not interested and the effort
failed. China proved to be the fatal contradiction
for the National Defense State. Japanese development required complete access
to northern China’s resources, which the Chinese clearly would not give. So the resources could only come through constant
low-level aggression and attempts to set up autonomous regimes in the region throughout
1933-36. Unsurprisingly, this only inflamed regional
tensions and in 1936, the Chinese Nationalists and Communists ended their civil war to unite
against Japanese expansionism. The period of peace the totalists hoped for
was unlikely to last long. == 4. 1937-1941: Desperation and Synthesis ==
From 1937 to 1941, Japan was mired in deep grand strategic uncertainty. Even as total war drew nearer, crisis after
crisis exposed flaws in Japan’s strategic assumptions. But gradually, under the threat of impending
economic and military catastrophe, Japanese leaders synthesized the traditionalist and
totalist strategies into a hybrid strategy that, while vague, would serve as the general
strategic framework for the Pacific War. We should note three decision-making dynamics
when considering the Japanese reaction to crisis. The first is perceived time pressure, not
just in terms of WWII, but also other powers’ rearmament programs and estimates of the time
Japan had before victory became unlikely. As time went on, smaller and smaller factors
contributed to pressure: from naval programs and economic embargoes in 1937 to the stationing
of bombers in the Philippines in 1941. The second is circular reasoning. Traditionalist leaders argued for military
buildup to preempt threatening enemy action, triggering responses that would be used to
justify further buildups. And as Japan neared buildup limits, aggression
was left as the only way to even the odds. Last was ‘crisis reform mentality’. Totalists recognized that crises helped push
radical internal reforms. That doesn’t mean that totalists went around
creating them, at least not after Manchuria, but it does mean that they were more comfortable
with crisis escalation, strategic gambling, and playing up Japan’s odds in future conflict. == July 1937: The 2nd Sino-Japanese War ==
Actual implementation of the totalist National Defense State barely lasted a year before
the Marco Polo Bridge Incident broke out with China on July 1937. Ishiwara Kanji saw that war would suck resources
away from development, and so was initially reluctant to escalate. Still, Japan had the resources to pursue both
buildup and a short Limited War, so 3 divisions were sent on a 3-month operation to settle
north China once and for all. The survival of the totalist National Defense
State depended on Japan successfully executing the traditionalist strategy of winning a Limited
War before it escalated into total war. Instead, the 2nd Sino-Japanese War proved
that the traditionalists could not stop escalation. As per Limited War, the Army opened by occupying
north China and waiting for counter-attack. Instead, the Chinese escalated by opening
a southern front at Shanghai, successfully drawing in large Japanese forces and leading
them into China’s interior. Wary of overextension, the Japanese themselves
switched to total war by 1938, seeking to encircle and destroy enemy forces in decisive
battle. But since Japanese industry was too weak to
support Army logistics or mechanization, the Chinese had time to retreat before they were
surrounded. So, far from winning a Limited War, Japan
was now supplying 800,000 soldiers, deep in enemy territory, in a total war. And the Japanese military was not prepared
for total war. Its logistics broke down halfway into the
1938 campaign against Wuhan, and it struggled to find transports for simultaneous operations
against Guangzhou. The economy was no better: war imports doubled
Japan’s 1937 spending, and to conserve resources, civilian industries by 1938 were cutting steel
and oil consumption by 30%. The foreign exchange that was earmarked for
production expansion was instead spent on armaments. By mid-1938, the National Defense State was
dead, with 1939 production expansion targets cut by half to fund the war. Still, totalists had established labor and
resource controls, along with the Cabinet Planning Board as an economic superagency. The declaration of ‘A New Order in East
Asia’ in November 1937 also recognized totalist logic, arguing that a Japan-Manchukuo-China
axis would be self-sufficient in all resources except copper, rubber and oil. But these victories meant little when war
left Japan’s economy lagging behind competitors. In 1934, the US Navy was already adding 102
extra ships to get up to Naval Treaty Limits; now in 1938, it would exceed these limits
by 20%, pushing past the Japanese Navy’s 10:7 ratio. The Soviets had tripled their Far Eastern
forces to 24 divisions and 2000 planes, 3 and 10 times that of Japan’s Manchukuo forces. To keep up, the Army demanded 20 new divisions
and the Navy 64 warships, which strained Japanese resources to the limit. == July-September 1939: Nomonhan and War in Europe ==
The next crisis period began in July 1939. In response to Japanese attempts to end the
China War through terror-bombing, the US terminated its Commercial Treaty with Japan, opening
the way for embargoes starting 1940. Still, the key limitation for Japan at this
point was lack of foreign currency, meaning that Japan could only import as much as it
could export. And exports – and production in general
– was now severely affected by rationing, with 1940 targets now being a 14% decline. Totalists responded by setting price controls
and profit caps. More serious was the border clash with Soviet-backed
Mongolia at Nomonhan in August 1939, which saw an entire Kwantung Army division destroyed
by Soviet units backed up by tanks and trucks. At a time when Japan produced about 30 tanks
and 1000 automobiles a month, Nomonhan fully demonstrated that the Army would not even
win a Limited War without an industrial base that could support mechanization. Even traditionalists had to accept that some
economic development was needed. That meant stopping the China War, and plans
were drawn for a retreat back to north China and Shanghai. But apart from the loss of face, Japanese
drawdowns also increased Chinese attacks, whether in the form of Nationalist conventional
warfare or Communist guerrilla warfare. In this environment, the outbreak of European
War in September 1939 presented both a threat and an opportunity. With Southeast Asian colonies now rerouting
resources to their homelands, Japan’s chances of total war preparation looked even more
remote. But with European forces also leaving Asia,
there was the chance that Japan could get the resources it needed from these vulnerable
colonies. Military leaders now began to reconsider the
‘Southern Advance’, and the possibility of fighting multiple powers at once. == June-October 1940: Fall of Western Europe
and the New National Defense State == Whatever doubts there were about the European
War being a golden opportunity vanished with the unanticipated collapse of Western Europe
to Nazi Germany by June 1940. There now seemed to be nothing between Japan
and the resources of Southeast Asia, offering an alternative pathway to fuel economic development. Even the surviving British yielded to Japanese
pressure to close the Burma Road to China in June 1940. And not a moment too soon. The US’ 2-Ocean Navy Program of July 1940
would add another 200 ships, creating an unmatchable force 4 times that of the Japanese Navy, in
the same month it ended aircraft, chemicals and machine tools exports. Meanwhile, Japan was rationing everything
from oil to rice and production was still falling. The solution was an updated version of the
totalist National Defense State, unveiled in September 1940. The notorious ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity
Sphere’ was actually the external expansion prong of this strategy: stretching from Siberia
to the South Pacific, the Sphere’s regions, collectively possessing all the resources
needed for total war, would be developed according to their economic advantages, all complementing
Japan’s position as the leadership and technological ‘inner core’. Internal reform would come in the form of
a ‘New Economic Structure’ that would, once again, impose state direction over all
economic activity. And like the last time, strident opposition
caused this plan to die a quick death. Again, totalists won something when all Japanese
parties merged into the Imperial Rule Assistance Association in October 1940, mimicking the
Communist and fascist mass parties to drive reform. So how could Japan turn the Sphere into reality? The best option, for all concerned, was to
diplomatically pressure Southeast Asia into supplying Japan. But if it came to war, both Army and Navy
had their own strategy. For the Army, British Singapore was the key
obstacle, so it proposed another Limited War where the opening strike would take it out,
opening the way for the Dutch East Indies. Attacking the US in the Philippines would
escalate this into total war and so was to be avoided. Instead, the US would be deterred through
the Axis alliance, which hopefully after Britain’s downfall would dominate Eurasia. The Navy predictably opposed this plan, which
would have relegated it to escort duty. Still, it raised good points: the Army had
failed to prevent escalation in China, and leaving the Philippines alone would violate
the purpose of the new National Defense State, as US bombers and the Asiatic Fleet could
still intercept Southeast Asian convoys at will. Instead, the Navy insisted that a Southward
Advance would mean going to war against the US, so it must have time to prepare – and
also, the Navy should get a larger budget. With no overarching coordination, the two
sides compromised. The Navy agreed to begin war mobilization,
while the Army limited its immediate moves to northern French Indochina, representing
the latest effort at cutting Chinese aid flows and forcing surrender. But compromise meant that Japan got the worst
of both worlds: interpreting this as Japan intending to establish the Sphere by force,
the British reopened the Burma Road, the Dutch issued export restrictions, and the US imposed
bans on strategic materiel to Japan, key among them iron, steel and scrap metal. == June-July 1941: USSR or Southeast Asia? == The scrap ban sank the Japanese economy even
further. The question was now less whether Japan could
prepare for total war, and more whether it could fight at all. By August 1940, the Navy estimated that it
had enough oil for 1 year of war. The Army, in March 41, gave Japan 2 years
before it ran out of resources and ammunition. Another key deadline was mid-1942, when US
naval construction would allow it to fight on 2 oceans, sharply curtailing Japan’s
freedom of action. This meant that the time to do something about
Southeast Asia’s resources was shrinking even as the stakes were rising. With them, the Navy extended Japan’s warfighting
capability by 2 years, and for the Army, indefinitely – precious time needed to build the National
Defense State. There was also hope that capturing Southeast
Asia would trigger a domino effect that would destroy Britain’s Empire, let Nazi Germany
dominate Europe, cause an isolated China to collapse and ultimately keep the US out of
Eurasia. An unexpected alternative presented itself
with Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. The Army now argued that a 16-25 division
advance into Eastern Siberia would now also solve Japan’s resource problems, while at
the same time allowing it to make common cause with Western anti-Communists. This was highly unwelcome news for the Navy,
as an Army engaged in China and Siberia was bound to take budget from itself. Fatefully, the Navy now argued that the time
was right for a more forceful approach in Southeast Asia, reasoning that without the
region’s resources, Japan really had no staying power or strategic options, Siberia
or otherwise. Again, both sides compromised and the Army
occupied Southern Indochina in July 1941, triggering the famous US asset freeze and
oil embargo. == A Hybrid Strategy for the Pacific War ==
Instead of opening up Japan’s strategic horizons, the oil embargo brought on by the
Southern Indochina Occupation sealed the decision for a militaristic Southward Advance. Without US oil, Japan’s forces were estimated
to be inoperable by mid-1942, and the country would have to submit to US terms. Imminent disaster meant that Army, Navy and
civilians were finally united under a common grand strategy. With no more time to prepare, the military
would have to work with what it had and thus launch a traditionalist Limited War against
the US and the European powers lasting 6-12 months, with phases to seize Southeast Asia,
establish a defensive perimeter and dig in. The best-case scenario was an Allied domino
collapse, or America, like Russia 40 years before, would refuse to sacrifice for Asia. But even in the likely total-war scenario,
a slow attritional grind against Japanese defenses would buy time to establish the totalist
National Defense State, allowing the war to stalemate indefinitely. Indeed, for totalists this latest crisis was
a bit of a relief, since total war with the US would certainly bring about the reforms
they wanted. There would be further debate over timing
but, with UK naval and US air assets coming to East Asia, December 1941 was agreed as
the launch date. As the success of the first phase was all-important,
Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku proposed to strike the Pacific Fleet to prevent any chance of
it intervening and drawing off Japanese naval assets during this critical stage, perhaps
explaining why the battleships, rather than the carriers or the docking facilities, were
so prioritized. None of this means that Japanese leaders disregarded
the risks involved. British Singapore, US airpower and Chinese
disrupting attacks were seen as particular hazards, and estimates showed that Japan might
not have enough shipping to exploit Southeast Asia if intensive operations dragged beyond
6 months. Prime Minister Tojo compared the effort to
jumping off the veranda of Kiyomizu Temple. But time was running out, the window of opportunity
was shrinking, and the rewards for succeeding were great. == Conclusion ==
Japan’s decision to begin the Pacific War was neither nihilism nor suicidal overconfidence,
but instead the culmination of a strategic process, albeit distorted by events and time
pressure, to prepare for future war. As the international situation deteriorated
and the time to turn Japan into a self-sustaining industrial and resource bloc ran out, hope
fell on military solutions to provide the decisive blow for victory. The US became the target because it suited
the totalist impulses of the Army and the bureaucratic needs of the Navy, both of which
were only reinforced by US embargoes and rearmament. Despite the major institutional weaknesses
in Japanese strategymaking, Japan did have a strategy for the Pacific War and chose a
good enough time to execute the Limited War phase of it. Catching the deploying Americans and British
unprepared, by mid-June Japan had a resource zone from Burma to Timor to the Central Pacific. The shock of war also finally caused Big Business
to acknowledge totalist economic direction. But the same problems that afflicted the old
National Defense State now came to haunt this one. The scale and speed of US mobilization was
higher than expected, and Yamamoto’s attempt to repeat Pearl Harbor ended in disaster at
Midway. The Japanese military was not geared for total
war and thus did not invest in the relevant assets, most notably civil engineering. Interservice rivalry and compromise continued
to result in substandard strategy. But most fatally, totalists overestimated
the results that could be achieved by planning alone, eventually leaving Japan helpless before
an economic behemoth. Thanks for watching the video, and please
like and subscribe! If you have any comments or questions, I’ll
be happy to respond to them in the comments section.
Video summary:
Why did Japan decide to fight the United States? This video argues that the decision was the culmination of a 20+ year-long quest for Japan to achieve the industrial size + resource security needed for modern total war. Inspired by Soviet and Nazi-style planning, 'totalist' thinkers argued that Japan could overcome its economic deficiencies (small size, reliance on imports) by a) reforming into a totalitarian state able to efficiently mobilize the nation's resources (including the creation of synthetic substitutes) and b) acquiring territory + resources and developing them efficiently.
Japan's totalist drive lay behind its acquisition + development of Manchuria and its aggression towards China. However, Japan's fragmented political structure meant that the totalist strategy could never be imposed on the entire state organization, leading to strategic compromise and half-hearted execution. In particular, this video puts the 2nd Sino-Japanese War back at the front and center of Japanese strategy, as dealing with the drain of resources caused by the war was what made Japanese leaders decide on increasingly militant and risky gambits to 'get back on track' before the anticipated eruption of total war in the 1940s.
So how does this all tie back to Pearl Harbor? Japan's increasingly dire economic situation, far from being a deterrent to war as the US expected it to be, actually increased Japanese aggression as Japanese leaders were faced with either risking war with an economic behemoth (which some totalists argued would actually speed up the process of national reform), or being subjugated to Washington (or Moscow). The 1941 US oil embargo was what ultimately forced Japan into deciding for war, but pressure also came from the pace of US rearmament (mid-1942 being the critical period) and redeployment of assets to Asia. If Japan was to have a chance at developing the 'Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere' needed to fight the US to a stalemate, it had to strike the Allies before they were prepared in East Asia. This puts the raid on Pearl Harbor in strategic context: the Pacific Fleet had to be neutralized at base during the critical 6-12 months, so that Japan's naval assets could be devoted solely to Southeast Asia. After that period, totalists expected/hoped that Japan would have built up the strength to grind the US counter-offensive down into stalemate.
This video hopefully shows that Japan's decision for war was (without hindsight) not completely suicidal nor based on some massive underestimation of America. Japan's totalist logic may also explain similarly risky gambits taken by Germany or Italy. I should note that the video does simplify the duverse viewpoints Japanese leaders had regarding total war, as well as the debates between Army and Navy in the run-up to the Pacific War.
Thank you for making such wide spanning videos, they are really impressive, hope for you all of the success!