Victorious Japanese Arms

Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

The ATL I am going to propose here may seem absurdly unlikely to those who look at WW2 backwards from Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, and Tokyo Bay. However, the participants read history forwards.

If quagmire has a meaning in historical terms, the Japanese war in China could be the poster child.

As part of a political struggle having both internal and external aspects the Japanese militarists had taken over both the government of Japan and control of Japanese forces already on the Asian mainland. Their weapons were assassinations, coup attempts, military riots and conspiracy. This produced very muddled situations in which there were no clear lines of responsibility or command. To this day we have no precise knowledge over how much control Tokyo had over events or how much control the Emperor had over either.

Be that as it may, in 1937 Japan went to war with China. The Japanese won battle after battle but could not induce Chiang to negotiate / capitulate or force the collapse of his government and forces. China was too big. It had too many people. It had no industrial heart the capture of which would force a decisive response. Chiang received just enough help from the US, UK and Soviets to keep in the field. Chinese xenophobic nationalism and endless Japanese atrocities did the rest.

In addition to a China war, the same aggressive Japanese militarists had been skirmishing with the Soviets on the borders of Manchuria and Mongolia. It is doubtful if Japan had the strength to fight the Soviets. Japan certainly lacked the strength to fight the Soviets and China while also guarding their back against the twin Anglo-Saxon navies. Japan’s only alliance of note was the anti-Comintern Pact, a nebulous declaration of intent between Japan and the European Axis, with the Soviets as the specified enemy.

Thus the news of the Nazi-Soviet Pact came as a bolt out of the blue. In OTL, the Japanese dithered through the window between this bombshell and its reversal with Barbarossa. This ATL will presume a very different response.

All polities are prone to inaction. It is always easier to get a blocking veto than to move a system to action. However, Japan seems to be at the extreme end of the spectrum. There is a history of endless deadlock / dither alternating with incredible rapid change. Thus Japan dithered from Poland to Pearl, then jumped off a cliff. Faced with a lost war, they dithered from Saipan to Nagasaki. For the last decade they have dithered through an economic winter.

Some real dates from OTL should be seen as providing context to what I will propose below:

8/25/39 – Japan protests Nazi-Soviet Pact, announces itself at liberty diplomatically

9/3/39 – Western powers declare war on Hitler

4/17/40 – US warns Japanese against attempting to take Netherlands East Indies

5/20/40 – Guderian’s panzers reach the sea at Abbeville in France

5/26/40 – fall of Bologne

5/28/40 – Belgian surrender seals fate of trapped Western army group

6/4/40 – evacuation at Dunkirk completed

6/5/40 – second phase German offensive begins

6/9/40 – Soviet-Japanese border treaty settles frontier issues in Manchuria

6/10/40 – Italy declares war on Western powers

6/13/40 – fall of Paris

6/17/40 – Petain asks for an armistice; US announces that it will not allow transfer of title on any European colonies in the Western Hemisphere

6/22/40 – Franco-German armistice

6/24/40 – Franco-Italian armistice

6/25/40 – Japanese make demands on French Indochina, send warships

7/3/40 – British attack French fleet

7/5/40 – Vichy severs relations with UK

7/18/40 – British close Burma road cutting off Chiang’s supply line through port of Rangoon

7/20/40 – FDR signs 2 Ocean Navy Bill

7/26/40 – Japanese occupation of French Indochina begun

8/6/40 – Italy invades British Somaliland

8/8/40 – Battle of Britain begins

8/9/40 – British withdraw their garrisons from Shanghai and north China

9/4/40 – US warns Japan against ‘aggression’ in Indochina

9/13/40 – Italian invasion of Egypt begun

9/2/40 – destroyers for bases deal between US and UK

9/16/40 – US draft act signed

9/22/40 – Dakar fiasco – British and Free French fail to take French West Africa

9/27/40 – Tripartite Pact between Germany, Italy and Japan

Look at this list and think it through in strategic terms. Japan is blown lose by the Nazi-Soviet Pact. The US and UK are blown lose by the collapse of the French army. By September things have begun to clarify. Germany and Japan kiss and make up. The UK survives the fall of Europe and the US begins to align itself with the UK. However there is a gap for a calendar quarter [June-July-August of 1940] where everything was in flux. A more adroit Japanese leadership could have taken advantage of this.

Let us recap the situation:

1. This is should and could logic, not a statement of probabilities. There were only a few major powers in the world of 1940. So there were only a finite number of alignments.

2. I do not propose to explore the real power relationships in Tokyo 1939-40. I regard that as unknown and unknowable. Japan essentially wrote its own self-serving history of the period. The imperial bureaucracy had weeks between the formal surrender and effective occupation to purge the files. They then served as the administration under Macarthur. So to the largest of extents we know what that continuously governing elite wanted us to.

3. For this to work I must follow the thesis that the Emperor had real power. The official account has him as a passive front for the militarists until post-Nagasaki when he forces the surrender. There is a revisionist school that makes him an active ruler and a warmongering imperialist. I will make him an active ruler but either an intelligent actor on the scene or well advised. I do not assert that this is true. However, it may not be false. Unknown but necessary for this ATL.

4. The Japanese Army would not accept ending the China war on any terms other than total victory.

5. The Japanese Army at this stage of the war would not accept a real alliance with the Soviets. They lusted for Siberia and were rabidly anti-Communist. This would change under pressure of the war in 1944-45.

6. Neither the Japanese Navy nor the US would accept a sphere of influence agreement between Japan and the US. The US had a sentimental thing about China, plus the influence of the China Lobby. FDR didn’t like Japanese militarism which he lumped with the Nazis and Fascists. The Japanese and US navies were traditional rivals who planned their forces for a war they regarded as inevitable.

7. France and Italy, while major European powers, were marginal as far as Asia and the Pacific were concerned.

8. Japan was totally economically dependent on the Anglo-Saxons and their economic dependents [Netherlands East Indies, British formal and informal empire, etc.]. Faced with any embargo the Japanese could not continue the China War.

9. The UK had the 3^rd major fleet in the world. The UK had assets Japan needed for the China War [oil, tin, rubber]. With the Dutch government in London, the Netherlands East Indies were a de facto British possession.

10. The UK and Japan had been allied for twenty years. That alliance was ended when after WW1 the US essentially forced the UK to choose between the US and Japan. However, the alliance had permitted Japan to grow and prosper while advancing Japanese interests on the mainland of Asia. This allowed Japan to pursue WW1 by looting Germany of her Pacific colonies while be subsidized by the UK and then US.

11. The UK needed all its forces to fight the European Axis. It had nothing to spare for defending the Far East.

12. The UK had depended on the French Army. With its loss, the UK desperately needed help and limitation of its non-European commitments.

13. The US essentially had counted on the UK-French alliance to shield them from Hitler. FDR was now panicked that the French and British fleets would fall into German hands. The US was rearming but needed years. It also needed the UK not to fall.

The solution was obvious. On May 20^th, 1940, the Emperor calls an imperial conference. The heads of both services and the major cabinet ministers are informed of the analysis above. The navy is told it has ten days to prepare the fleet for a major expedition. Destination to be announced later. The army is told to assemble four divisions of lesser troops [Koreans, Taiwanese, White Russians, Manchurians, Mongols, Chinese] plus a second corps of two Japanese divisions built around the Imperial Guard. They are to be ready to sail with the fleet. Merchant ships may be seized as needed regardless of nationality. There is to be no attempt at secrecy except for the destinations. These will be announced in ten days.

Obviously the embassies and news services in Tokyo get wind of this. No attempt is made at censorship. The Emperor allows the crisis to build for a week. He then requests that the British ambassador attend him for lunch with his military attachés. The Emperor is polite but firm. London is to be told there are two alternatives.

First, the Anglo-Japanese alliance is reinstated. Japan will declare war on the European Axis. Churchill will sever relations with Chiang’s Chinese government. In due course he will recognize whatever new [puppet] Chinese governments Japan deems appropriate. The two allies will jointly occupy the Netherlands East Indies to protect them from Axis attack [the four second rate Japanese divisions mentioned above plus whatever few garrison units the British Empire can scrape together]. The East Indies will be a joint economic zone between the two allies. China will be a predominantly Japanese economic zone but with some undefined protection for British economic interests. The Japanese carrier force will convoy the good corps to East Africa to fight Italy.

Second, the six divisions will attack the East Indies, British Borneo, Singapore and Malaya. The British Empire will have a world war at the worst possible moment.

Given this London would have no choice but to go with choice #1. The US would be upset. However, the primary US interest at this moment would be keeping the UK alive as a shield for the US. This Japan would be seen as doing.

Essentially, Japan would be on the Allied side in WW2. There would be no war in the Pacific. Japan would be an unpalatable ally. However so was Stalin. The two Japanese divisions would easily take Italian Somaliland and Eritrea [backed by six carriers]. This would remove a major danger to the UK and free up the Red Sea route. Several of the carrier air groups would then deploy to Egypt. With the extra air strength and without the need to divert 4^{th and
5th} Indian divisions to Eritrea, Wavell and O’Conner would finish off Libya before Rommel arrives. In turn the extra air strength would make it possible to hold Crete in 1941.

Japan trades several more divisions over the next year for having the US put Japan into the Lend Lease program. Just as we financed the French Indochina War to keep France happy in NATO, we would finance Japan’s China war to keep the Japanese army and fleet fighting the Axis in the Mediterranean.

From these changes flow vast consequences:

1. The US never actually enters WW2. There is no Pearl Harbor, no German declaration of war.

2. The British and Japanese take Sicily in 1941 and south Italy in 1942. They can probably take much of the Peloponnesus and Sardinia in 1943. However, it ends there. Japan will only commit divisions in dribs and drabs while the Empire’s ground strength is limited by the large forces needed to defend the British Isles.

3. Without the US, the war in Europe burns itself out in a compromise peace sometime in 1944-45. Somewhere between Moscow and Warsaw a balance point is reached between the two land contestants. The British cannot fight Hitler without Stalin. At the price of the Franco-Belgian sub-Saharan colonies, the British agree to peace.

4. Japan never actually beats Chiang, but they do bottle him up in Chunking while destroying the Maoists.

5. So we have a world where Hitler survives, Stalin is weaker, the British Empire is stronger and Japan wins.