Recent comments in /f/history

asdf9988776655 t1_iy3p259 wrote

Reply to comment by TotallyInOverMyHead in On April 2, 1941, a Japanese foreign minister asked Pope Pius XII to speak to U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, so as to avert "a war of mutual destruction” by marketrent

No. The attack, even if successful beyond the Japanese wildest dreams, would have only delayed America's offensive across the Pacific.

The only way to win a total war against a major power is to destroy their ability to wage war. Japan did not have the capability to damage America's ability to wage war (since America's resource and industrial base were in the continental US, out of reach of Japan's striking power), so at best the could fight a delaying action.

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>kill/sink all U.S. Carriers (4x) in their berths,

This would have delayed the US by about a year. It would have given Japan a great opportunity to consolidate their holdings in the Pacific and SE Asia and made it a harder slog for America, but it would not have stopped them.

>have the carrier strike group include an invasion force and take Hawaii

The US had 30,000 troops on Hawaii; this means it would take roughly 120,000 troops for the Japanese to launch a successful invasion. This is about the size of the D-day landing in Normandy in 1944; Japan simply did not have the ability to land and supply that size of an invasion across thousands of miles of sea.

>destroy the Fuel Depots on Hawaii

This would have delayed the US by several months as they rebuilt their logistic network, but it wouldn't have damaged America's ability to actually wage war, since their fuel production facilities were all on the mainland, safe from attack.

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Nickrobl t1_iy3nxcq wrote

Reply to comment by huntimir151 in On April 2, 1941, a Japanese foreign minister asked Pope Pius XII to speak to U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, so as to avert "a war of mutual destruction” by marketrent

I'm not saying it is a moral or correct choice, just that leaving China was a non-starter for their government. As a result, the leadership felt they only had bad choices left and picked the least bad one from their point of view.

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oCools t1_iy39hn7 wrote

Reply to comment by Red_dragon_052 in On April 2, 1941, a Japanese foreign minister asked Pope Pius XII to speak to U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, so as to avert "a war of mutual destruction” by marketrent

The Japanese were looked down upon by the US for quite some time, same with Southeast Asia in general. The Immigration Act of 1924, and the others before it which excluded Asian immigrants. The internal pressure the Executive put on the Judicial regarding Executive Order 9066 in Hirabayashi v US, and further Korematsu v US, including the falsification of evidence by the Executive. Hell, the US levelled virtually every urban region in Japan. I doubt America, especially under Roosevelt, cared deeply for the atrocities taking place in China. They just didn't want Japan to threaten nearby Allied territories.

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Fresh-Ad4987 t1_iy2wce6 wrote

Reply to comment by Augustus923 in On April 2, 1941, a Japanese foreign minister asked Pope Pius XII to speak to U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, so as to avert "a war of mutual destruction” by marketrent

Right, we need to remember that Pearl Harbor was a retaliation for the US asset freezing and oil cutoffs. It wasn’t unprovoked as is commonly portrayed. The imperial war machine was running on high back then.

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KingHunter150 t1_iy2tuuy wrote

Reply to comment by sung_hoon_ in Simple/Short/Silly History Questions Saturday! by AutoModerator

The easiest way would be to view imperialism as an ideology, or policy of a country, and expansionism as more vague, but with the simple goal of increasing one's territory, however that may be.

Imperialism is viewed by most historians in this field as both a verb, the actions or forces of imperialism, and a noun, the Imperial state or project. In this understanding you have more nuance and can then see that many subjects of imperialism actually end up assisting in the Imperial Project or are affected by it in unseen ways in the verb sense. While in the noun sense an Imperial state or project has the metropole or the center, that is the imperialist, and the periphery, the colonies, or outer sphere of influence the metropole exercises hegemony over.

An example. India was an Imperial project of GB. As a project, GB is the metropole and India its periphery, the purpose being the exploitation of cash crops, and with the advent of globalism a cheap labor force for goods to send back to the center. Imperialism in action was done via trade companies asserting influence that were then nationalized by the British government. The agents of imperialism being in many cases sepoys of India itself to maintain control. The very population being exploited was part of that exploitation process. This was due to imperialism in action having many unforseen affects on Indian culture, mainly the regimented caste system the British used to organize Indian society benefiting the Indians on top who then had a vested interest in propelling the Imperial project forward.

In this case the British hardly expanded their natural territorial boundaries, but did so in a grand Imperial sense by having a massive area firmly under their exclusive sphere of influence.

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TheGreatOneSea t1_iy2owuu wrote

Reply to comment by getBusyChild in Simple/Short/Silly History Questions Saturday! by AutoModerator

It certainly happened: Robert of St. Albans being one of the more famous examples, when he joined Saladin. Leon Cazelier also famously betrayed a castle, and later converted.

The Templars even ended up with a reputation for converting to Islam, but it was mostly undeserved, since pretty much everyone had their share of traitors.

It was never a common occurrence, of course.

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superbit415 t1_iy2n0yv wrote

Reply to On April 2, 1941, a Japanese foreign minister asked Pope Pius XII to speak to U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, so as to avert "a war of mutual destruction” by marketrent

The Japanese civilian government before Tojo did try their best to avoid a war but people on both sides did not want to listen. War became inevitable. I am however surprised that the narrative in the west still exist that pearl harbor was totally unprovoked. The US and the British had been provoking the Japanese for months at that point.

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danteheehaw t1_iy2m7jx wrote

Reply to comment by kdogg2077 in On April 2, 1941, a Japanese foreign minister asked Pope Pius XII to speak to U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, so as to avert "a war of mutual destruction” by marketrent

Also, the Allies would only settle for a non conditional surrender. WWI ended in a conditional surrender. Everyone believed that Japan and Germany both had to surrender unconditionally to stop WWIII from happening in a decade or two.

As for Japan, they would had likely happily accepted an armistice (they've done so many times, making sacrifices on their end as well). But they would most certainly demand they keep what they conquered in mainland Asia.

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