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And POW rescue missions in both theatres were sideshows. It took a nation retreating from Vietnam to make combat search and rescue as opposed to rescuers operating under a Red Cross shield, as well as POW rescue a priority.
After the surrender of the American and Filipino forces in April of 1942 and the Bataan death march and so many American POWs being held in brutal captivity , the US made the decision to direct the majority of it's war machine toward Europe instead of liberating thousand of American POWs in the Phillipines first.
I am not criticizing the overall strategy, it may have been the right one, but do you think Roosevelt could have made that decision if he was dealing with today's media?
Was it the right thing to do not to try and liberate the Americans first with everything the US had?
That's wouldn't have been a strategy, it would have been a disaster that might have cost us the war right at the beginning.
America lost the Philippines to superior Japanese forces and it wasn't for lack of trying to defend it. Even MacArthur himself just barely got out alive on a PT boat.
We just didn't have the capability to waltz back in and pick up our boys in Bataan, nor did we know the extent of their suffering until after the Japanese were eventually beaten back.
They needed landing craft for North Africa, then for Sicily, then for Italy, and then for D Day. MacArthur and Nimitz never got as many as they needed.
If landing craft were in abundant supply the war in the Pacific would have went quicker.
Many wanted the Philippines to be bypassed. MacArthur kept pushing for it or the pows wouldn't be free until after the surrender.
After the surrender of the American and Filipino forces in April of 1942 and the Bataan death march and so many American POWs being held in brutal captivity , the US made the decision to direct the majority of it's war machine toward Europe instead of liberating thousand of American POWs in the Phillipines first.
Part of the problem is, that's not an entirely accurate reflection of what happened. This is actually a much more complex issue than it may seem. There are several factors we need to consider.
First of all, you have to look at the situation in the context of what was known at the time. If Germany somehow managed to defeat both England and Russia before we could bring our manpower and industrial might to bear, the war in Europe was over. With Russia and England out, we could not have beaten Germany, and in fact would not have even tried. We would have just written Europe off as a lost cause. And while it's easy to look back now and say that there was no conceivable way for Hitler to have won the war, in late 41 and early 42, things looked very different.
By late 1941, the Wehrmacht had already torn through the Western Soviet Union like a tornado, killing or capturing over 3 million Russian troops in just 5 months and knocking on the door of Moscow. The Soviets lost over a half a million men in just the first week. Britain was isolated and begging for help; we can look back now and see that Germany could not have successfully invaded the British Isles, but that was not certain at the time, and at any rate if the Soviets capitulated or were defeated there was a strong chance that Britain would have had no alternative but to seek a peace that would have left all of continental Europe under German control. This was the reality in late 41 and early 42, and there was a strong possibility that Germany was on the verge of winning the war in Europe.
But on the other side of the world, the same could not be said about Japan. Pearl Harbor was the highwater mark of the Japanese Empire; from December 7th on, they never matched it. Less than 6 months after the start of the war, we knocked them on their back with the one-two punch of the Battle of the Coral Sea followed weeks later by the Battle of Midway. They never recovered from those two reversals. That's where we stopped them, and two months later we began to drive them back with the invasion of Guadalcanal and the Solomons Campaign. From that point on, the war was basically just a logistical exercise - simply a matter of chasing them back to Japan, one island at a time.
So, by the fall of 1942, the outcome of the war in the Pacific was never really in doubt. On the other hand, there are credible - very credible - scenarios in which Germany could have won their war (or at least negotiated a stalemate) as late as mid-1944. Given all of this, focusing on defeating Germany first while fighting a "holding action" in the Pacific was clearly the best strategy.
Now. Having said all of that... even though "Europe First" was our official policy, the actual allocation of resources did not reflect that commitment. In the first year of the war, American military forces in the Pacific Theatre were roughly triple what we had dedicated to Germany. There are limits to how fast a country can train and equip an army and a navy from a standing start, and for most of 1942, we could not have thrown any more at Japan than we already were. We were already sending some troops and equipment to Africa and England, but as Unsettomati points out, most of what we sent to that theatre wouldn't have been much use in the Pacific anyway. In the Pacific, we needed aircraft carriers, naval fighters, landing craft, and the Marine corps. We weren't sending any of those things to Europe or Africa, especially not in 1942.
You have to also consider that the strategy we followed in the Pacific saved a lot more lives than a more aggressive approach would have. The "island-hopping" doctrine called for attacking and reducing only the islands that were strategically necessary to advance us to Japan, while leaving other, more heavily-defended islands cut off to "die on the vine." That was bloody enough as it was; any other strategy would almost certainly have cost far more lives than the 12,000 POWs we might possibly have freed a few months earlier than we did.
Last edited by Mr. In-Between; 03-06-2015 at 10:10 PM..
The loss of shipping access across the Atlantic and the possibility that Great Britain might be invaded and held by the Germans would have made it highly unlikely that we could have brought sufficient forces to bear in Europe to defeat the Nazis.
The notion that the UK would be invaded and occupied firmly ended in 1940.
You are correct in that the Pacific War in 1942 was mostly about containing the Japanese first and keeping them away from Australia, Hawaii, etc. Forces were being formed to attack the Japanese in force. The British built up a 2.6 million army on the Burma India border. They US was amassing ships. The Soviets kept troops on their border with Japanese held China. Once Allied forces had a firm hold in France, British and US naval forces were released and prepared for Japan. Once they started to roll, British, Soviet and US, the inevitable occurred.
The Philippines was side show to the whole scale of defeating Japan. Many top US generals opposed going into the Philippines but MacArthur got his way.
Britain was isolated and begging for help; we can look back now and see that Germany could not have successfully invaded the British Isles, but that was not certain at the time,
Begging? They were paying for any materials. It was certain the Germans could not invade the UK. They hardly had a surface navy.
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But on the other side of the world, the same could not be said about Japan. Pearl Harbor was the highwater mark of the Japanese Empire;
Not so. They took over large parts of the Pacific and south east Asia after Dec 1941.
I always wondered why we did not abandon the PI before 1941. We could not win and knew that those troops would just die or be captured. It would have been better to pull out and retreat to Australia. Then, toss in the huge losses we suffered defending Dutch Indochina, it was a terrible strategy by FDR.
The notion that the UK would be invaded and occupied firmly ended in 1940.
You are correct in that the Pacific War in 1942 was mostly about containing the Japanese first and keeping them away from Australia, Hawaii, etc. Forces were being formed to attack the Japanese in force. The British built up a 2.6 million army on the Burma India border. They US was amassing ships. The Soviets kept troops on their border with Japanese held China. Once Allied forces had a firm hold in France, British and US naval forces were released and prepared for Japan. Once they started to roll, British, Soviet and US, the inevitable occurred.
The Philippines was side show to the whole scale of defeating Japan. Many top US generals opposed going into the Philippines but MacArthur got his way.
The Philippines was side show to the whole scale of defeating Japan. Many top US generals opposed going into the Philippines but MacArthur got his way.[/quote]
I agree with this. There was no way that Hitler could've invaded the UK. Looking at the Pacific, the US strategy was sound. I don't think the timetable could've been accelerated. Whether the Philippines should have've been bypassed is a fascinating topic. Did the US endanger the POWs more by invading the Philippines? Would the was have ended just as quickly without the casualties suffered in the Philippines? Was the invasion of the Philippines agreed to soley because of satisfying MacArthur or was there a strategic basis?
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Originally Posted by totsuka
I always wondered why we did not abandon the PI before 1941. We could not win and knew that those troops would just die or be captured. It would have been better to pull out and retreat to Australia. Then, toss in the huge losses we suffered defending Dutch Indochina, it was a terrible strategy by FDR.
Maybe if MacArthur would've done a better job of defending the Philippines they wouldn't have been captured. He had advance warning of the attack and was caught with his planes on the ground.
Why would you have abandoned the Philippines before 1941? How could you assume the Japenese would attack and capture them? We had substantial forces stationed there that should have deterred the Japanese.
Well by the winter of 1940-41, Churchill had come to Roosevelt and told him that the British were out of money, they were busted. They had no way to continue paying for the supplies which they so desperately needed from the United States. Also there were still on the statute books those neutrality laws which said we couldn't lend the British the money to buy the supplies from us.
So Roosevelt needs to find a means to keep supplying the British without antagonizing the isolationists and particularly the Congress of the United States. The idea that he would go through the Congress was unacceptable to him because he knew it would be hung up in some kind of long-winded and painful debate. And this would demoralize the British more than help them. So he invents this thing called Lend-Lease. And he's marvelous at selling it again to the public.
By early 1941, Britain was broke and Churchill was begging the United States for help.
I always wondered why we did not abandon the PI before 1941. We could not win and knew that those troops would just die or be captured. It would have been better to pull out and retreat to Australia. Then, toss in the huge losses we suffered defending Dutch Indochina, it was a terrible strategy by FDR.
Because America had substantial economic interests in the Philippines and wasn't at war with Japan.
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