Re: Further costs of war (fwd)

[dlv@bwalk.dm.com (Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM)]

Fabrice Planchon <fabrice@math.Princeton.EDU> writes:

>
> On Sun, Nov 23, 1997 at 09:15:20PM -0600, Jim Choate wrote:
> >
> > > Had the U.S. concentrated on its own affairs, on just trade, it is unlike
> > > that what the Japanese were doing in Malaysia, Manchuria, Korea, Indochin
> > > and the Phillipines would have had any major interest for us.
> >
> > The Phillipines at the time were a US protectorate, is your position that w
> > should have simply turned them over without a fight? Korea was ceeded to
> > Japan as a result of the 1903 defeat of Russia, how is this relevant to you
> > position? Let's assume for a moment that the US hadn't gotten involved. The
> > Japanese would have eventualy gotten to Australia. Once there what would ha
> > kept them from expanding their co-prosperity sphere eastward in order to
> > better stabalize their resources. When they knocked on Guam or Midway's doo
> > should we have let them go like the Phillipines? How about the Japanese's
> > eventual expansion into the Allutians? Should we have simply given Alaska t
>
> I guess what Tim means is at some point a equilibrium is reached, such
> as in this case 2 dominant players (Japan and USA) face each other and
> rather coexist than fight, because trading is more beneficial to them
> than war. The problem with such a theory is that it supposes both actors
> are intelligent enough to figure out when war isn't the best
> solution. In that particular case, I have little to no faith in the
> japanese side...

While I have no love for the japs, I mus point out in all fairness that
FDR was attacking them on all fronts for years: 1) stopping the japs
from immigrating into the us, 2) cutting off their supplies of raw
materials (and therefore pushing the japs to conquer the territories
that would assure the supply). In particular, right before the japs
attacked pearl harbor, the US embargoed oil shipments to the japs.
The japs had said previously that they'd consider such an embargo
as a declaration of war. In particular, their line about p.h. was
that it wasn't a "sulplise attack", and that the US had previously
declared war on the japs by imposing the embargo.

> > Really? How so? Is your position that Germany would have benignly left the
> > US alone once they had defeated Britian (I am assuming of course the US
> > hadn't shipped resources such as oil and fuel to them)? Had the US not
> > gotten into the war the resources available to Germany and Japan were such
> > they could realisticaly have beaten the Russian. One of the reasons that
>
> Hum hum. I frankly doubt that. Somehow your ability to expand durably
> depends on your ability to keep your new possessions. While occupying
> France, using a satellite gouvernment, isn't that hard, occupying Russia
> (for the germans) and China (for the japanese) is another, quite
> impossible, task if you don't get the population support (or, at least,
> indifference). So, if Hitler had known better, he would have stuck to
> western europe...

My recollection is that Hitler's generla staff was busily designing the
plans for invading the US, to be implemented after he  was done with
the GB and the USSR. They involved invading via his latin american
allies (notably mexico) and possibly canada. However there was no
way to sell the war against germany to the american public, except
as part of a package deal with the war on japs.

Hitler probably made a mistake by attacking the USSR before he was finished
with the GB.  On the other hand, there's good evidence that Stalin was
hoping to attack Germany in the summer of 1941 while it was busy invading
the british isles. He made another mistake by pissing off the population,
which initially was very supportive of him, viewing him as the liberator
from the communists.

By the way, the Nazis and the Japs were never very close. Recall that the
japs became friendly with the soviets after several skirmishes in the 1930's;
the japs never joined hitler in his attack on the USSR (which would have
surely fallen had they attacked from the east); and the soviets kept trading
with the japs (at war with their british and us allies) all the way until 1945,
when they finally attacked the japs.

---

<a href="mailto:dlv@bwalk.dm.com">Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM</a>
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps