So is the consensus that the Japanese soldier was a fearsome beast that pulled their army to their early success but was later let down by the logistical and tactical incompetence of it´s army´s leadership?
WW2 Japanese Army - Do they get a Complete Crap Army Award?
I vote third option: The war was started and lost on a political level. Just like with Germany, once the war was declared, it was pretty much lost from the start. Every nation had both good and bad soldiers, and good and bad technology, and good and bad generals. WW2 was a war of production and logistics.
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No. That conclusion overreaches.
I think it's more complicated than that. 1930's Japan over-populating and struggling to modernize. Even though allied with the victorious Entente Powers of WW1, France and England treated them poorly in the peace settlements. Japan was desperate to avoid the fate 19th Century Europe imposed on China. Japan suffered the Showa Depression during 1930-1932, it's deepest economic downturn in modern history. It faced the problem of insufficient natural resources and was ambitious to become a major global power at a time when power was measured by colonial expansionism. Seizing Manchuria and contolling Korea fulfilled both needs but weren't enough to insure long term Japanese stability. Politically, the military extremists were in control and hell bent towards military dominence in Asia. Those militarists thought they had a reasonable chance for ultimate success based on their past successes in the Russo-Japanese war, World War One, and Chinese conquest experiences. Still, they made the political choice to prosecute a war which they utterly lost.
Well, that does describe well the political/social condition of Japan leading up to the war, but I think we may have slipped of topic.
We started out appraising the Japanese war machine.
I think @Gunsalot is on point with the Japanese's military performance without going into great detail.
I'd throw in their culture just wasn't ready/equipped for modern warfare so that wasn't helpful either.
We started out appraising the Japanese war machine.
I think @Gunsalot is on point with the Japanese's military performance without going into great detail.
I'd throw in their culture just wasn't ready/equipped for modern warfare so that wasn't helpful either.
Japan did what they did, and they paid the price. Their soldiers were brave, fierce, and poorly equipped. The USA blasted them out of the sky, and off the face of the ocean, then we nuked two of their cities. After that, we helped them rebuild, and they became an economic powerhouse, and still are. Hell, they make better cars than we do.
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You have to remember that Japan's first priority was their Navy. Their technology spend and their best recruits went there. And their Navy was damn good.
The Imperial Army was tough as hell. In the early war they spanked some US and UK forces in the PI and Singapore. Brilliant campaigns.
But the Imperial Army was hampered by low priority, bad logistics, bad small arms, and very little in the way of good AT weapons. They also never had air superiority again and were under naval gunfire in the island campaigns. They were cut of from reinforcement and resupply. They depended upon a Navy that didn't care much about them. We also listened in on their communications. These things are huge.
The "fatalist" thinking and "honorable death" culture hurt them early on. Lots of good men were just thrown away in Banzai counterattacks. They stopped doing this by Iwo and Okinawa. They might not have done it on Japan.
Those casualty ratios that you posted are a little faulty. The Allies posted some similar results in Europe as German Armies were encircled. The same pattern held in both cases. The Axis army would bloody the Allied army trading casualties at a 1 to 1 rate. But once the Axis army ran out of infantry to hold the line, a breakthrough and rout ensued. In Europe, the Germans just surrendered. In the Pacific, the Japanese were killed.
In any case, the Allies bagged huge German armies. Does that mean that German armies are bad? No. It just means that WW2 combat was winner take all. Once you depleted enemy combat formations and broke down their anti tank defense, the rout was on. Hell, look at what the Germans did to the Russians in 1941.
Imagine that you played a normal, multiplayer CM battle. Once you won the battle, your forces would enter a new phase (which we never get to play in CM) where you overrun enemy airfields, HQs, supply depots, artillery parks, field hospitals, and ran down shattered and fleeing combat formations caught in the open, etc.. The enemy would have no AT weapons and few effective front line units. Your men would constantly trap little groups of fleeing / scared / ill equipped men and blast them with tanks. Your kill statistics would be off the chart, even if you traded casualties at a 1 to 1 ratio in the "first phase" battles that we play in CM.
There are a lot of armies that I would fight before I would fight the Japanese.
The Imperial Army was tough as hell. In the early war they spanked some US and UK forces in the PI and Singapore. Brilliant campaigns.
But the Imperial Army was hampered by low priority, bad logistics, bad small arms, and very little in the way of good AT weapons. They also never had air superiority again and were under naval gunfire in the island campaigns. They were cut of from reinforcement and resupply. They depended upon a Navy that didn't care much about them. We also listened in on their communications. These things are huge.
The "fatalist" thinking and "honorable death" culture hurt them early on. Lots of good men were just thrown away in Banzai counterattacks. They stopped doing this by Iwo and Okinawa. They might not have done it on Japan.
Those casualty ratios that you posted are a little faulty. The Allies posted some similar results in Europe as German Armies were encircled. The same pattern held in both cases. The Axis army would bloody the Allied army trading casualties at a 1 to 1 rate. But once the Axis army ran out of infantry to hold the line, a breakthrough and rout ensued. In Europe, the Germans just surrendered. In the Pacific, the Japanese were killed.
In any case, the Allies bagged huge German armies. Does that mean that German armies are bad? No. It just means that WW2 combat was winner take all. Once you depleted enemy combat formations and broke down their anti tank defense, the rout was on. Hell, look at what the Germans did to the Russians in 1941.
Imagine that you played a normal, multiplayer CM battle. Once you won the battle, your forces would enter a new phase (which we never get to play in CM) where you overrun enemy airfields, HQs, supply depots, artillery parks, field hospitals, and ran down shattered and fleeing combat formations caught in the open, etc.. The enemy would have no AT weapons and few effective front line units. Your men would constantly trap little groups of fleeing / scared / ill equipped men and blast them with tanks. Your kill statistics would be off the chart, even if you traded casualties at a 1 to 1 ratio in the "first phase" battles that we play in CM.
There are a lot of armies that I would fight before I would fight the Japanese.
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Production, logistics, air power.
Since the Japanese conquered 25% of China I can't agree that they had the crappiest army of WW2. The Chinese Nationalists could probably take that title although I would say that their sorry state towards the end of the war was not entirely their own fault. The Ichi Go offensive in 1944 proved that the Japanese could still mount a large overland campaign and achieve all of it's objectives. They smashed the Chinese Nationalists and captured multiple US airbases and although technically it was a tactical victory, it was overshadowed by events in the Pacific which rendered it a useless victory.
The cannibalism did occur but was mainly due to isolated garrisons on islands that had been bypassed (quite rightly) by the US Navy. The islands could no longer be supplied by the Japanese and the marooned soldiers were ordered to fend for themselves. Initially this would be stealing from the locals but eventually this descended into cannibalism and human flesh became regarded as a necessary food source.. In New Guinea, hunting parties were organised to kill and butcher locals and POW's including some American and Australian prisoners. Later on they began to eat each other and on the Philippines, Japanese soldiers became more afraid of their own than any enemy. It's estimated that 60% of all the Japanese soldiers who died in the war died of starvation or disease.
The cannibalism did occur but was mainly due to isolated garrisons on islands that had been bypassed (quite rightly) by the US Navy. The islands could no longer be supplied by the Japanese and the marooned soldiers were ordered to fend for themselves. Initially this would be stealing from the locals but eventually this descended into cannibalism and human flesh became regarded as a necessary food source.. In New Guinea, hunting parties were organised to kill and butcher locals and POW's including some American and Australian prisoners. Later on they began to eat each other and on the Philippines, Japanese soldiers became more afraid of their own than any enemy. It's estimated that 60% of all the Japanese soldiers who died in the war died of starvation or disease.
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I think that speaks to my original point of terrible logistics.: you invest money in training and equipping a soldier, sending him far away, and then...letting him starve...not really admirable.
It was OK though. Dying for the Emperor was what was important.
And how much of that was entirely up to the islands these troops were on being blocked from supply?
The Japanese chiefs of staff basically committed a war crime against their own soldiers, but as had been acknowledged in other posts the culture of the Japanese soldier was to accept it as his duty. Whilst the case can be made that the Japanese army was crappy compared to the Americans, they gave the Chinese Nationalists drubbing after drubbing despite Allied support. It's just a question of perspective.
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Whether or not dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was meant to end the war or as a demonstration of power for the Soviet Union is hard to tell. I've heard several historians claim that, no matter their purpose, the bombs didn't actually make the Japanese surrernder. Apparently, the Japanese government hardly reacted to them at all. Previous air raids on Tokio for instance had already been devastating and the Japanese didn't really care if it was one atomic bomb or tons of incendiary bombs. What really scared the Japanese was the large scale invasion of Manchuria by the Soviets. They feared the Soviets would kill or at least abolish the Emperor which was much more threatening than more civilian casualties. So they rather surrendered to the USA in the hope that they would let them keep their Emperor. Well, all from the top back of my head, so take with a grain of salt.
Edit: There was propaganda on both sides of the Iron Curtain and nuking two relatively unimportant cities (military wise) to make a statement doesn't sound as good as killing some civilians in order to save many more lives by ending the war earlier. Just trying to get on the bad side of the US citizens here. :runner:
Edit: There was propaganda on both sides of the Iron Curtain and nuking two relatively unimportant cities (military wise) to make a statement doesn't sound as good as killing some civilians in order to save many more lives by ending the war earlier. Just trying to get on the bad side of the US citizens here. :runner:
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That's an interesting take on it, but I find it hard to believe. Imagine having two major cities in your (small) country burned to cinders by two bombs (one bomb per city), in 1945, and not knowing how many more such weapons your enemy had. No, I think Japan was more worried about being nuked than about the USSR at the end of the war. But, who really knows?