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Old 12-11-2010, 10:42 AM
 
Location: Los Angeles area
14,017 posts, read 20,830,387 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jtur88 View Post
If we were on the brink of war with France today, would we quietly tolerate France putting their entire fleet of missiles in Martinique and St. Pierre?
You seem to specialize in apple and oranges comparisons. Here, you equate the U.S. naval forces in Hawaii with hostile missiles in Martinique. Let's see if this stands up to rational scrutiny. The missiles in Martinique would be an immediate threat to the U.S., as they could reach our territory in minutes without advance warning, whereas our Pacific fleet in Hawaii would have to steam for days to get to Japan, and they could be discovered and tracked by Japanese submarines. At the time, the Japanese Imperial Navy was far more powerful and more proficient than the U.S. Navy. Its warships were much better at night fighting. It had better fighter planes and better trained pilots. Your seeing the U.S. Pacific fleet in Hawaii as a credible threat to Japan is pure fantasy. The Japanese attacked the fleet in order to remove any potential impediment to their having a totally free hand in the Pacific (as they harbored expansionist designs), not because they felt threatened. And you are too intelligent and too well-informed not to know this. I wonder what your hidden agenda is? Perhaps to make me, and others, take the bait? Well, I guess you've won the game and I'm the fool!

 
Old 12-11-2010, 11:07 AM
 
Location: Victoria TX
42,618 posts, read 86,571,713 times
Reputation: 36637
Escort, we had just months earlier, pulled our Pacific Fleet out of west coast ports, and concentrated virtually our entire "defense" in one location thousands of miles offshore. It would have been worse than foolish to leave California unprotected except for the Pearl Harbor fleet, if our objective was defensive. If the Japanese had penetrated beyond Pearl (which for a few days was a fact), there would have been nothing to stop them on our undefended west coast.

In retrospect, it appears that Japan had no designs on the US mainland, nor did the US suspect that they did. Which leaves few alternative suppositions but to regard our force in Hawaii as offensive with a goal of Pacific domination. Considering that we didn't even bother to put our fleet itself on defensive alert.

The simple fact remained that we considered the Pacific Ocean to be a place in which WE were free to exercise our will, but the Japanese were not. And that is the posture that is difficult to objectively justify. Japan might have very well left Pacific islands alone, were it not for the perceived need to use them to defend themselves from impending American attack of the Japanese main. The Pacific had no value to the Japanese, except as a front line to its own internal and sovereign defense against aggressors---one of whom was conspicuous.

It is true that the Japanese view of human rights was not the same as ours. But that does not mean we could self-appoint ourself to redress that by simply shifting murder onto other peoples. And we were fine ones to complain after what we did to our Indians and more recently to the Philippinos, and our own gruesome territorial expansion at the expense of whomever we found in the way.

Last edited by jtur88; 12-11-2010 at 11:25 AM..
 
Old 12-14-2010, 03:16 AM
 
Location: Turn right at the stop sign
4,407 posts, read 3,964,626 times
Reputation: 4803
Quote:
Originally Posted by M3 Mitch
And that's what I wonder about - why did Germany declare war on the US? A friend said if one reads "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" it would be clear, but I have not managed to round up the time to tackle that thick tome. Eventually I will.

If Hitler had only avoided 2 major mistakes - declaring war on the USSR, and then on the US - both of which were apparently his own "unforced errors" - it would have been a different war.

Of course all these counter-factual speculations are, well, not grounded in any facts since they have no facts available to ground to.
On December 11, 1941, Hitler gave an eighty-eight minute speech before the Reichstag which, in part, set out the reasoning behind his decision to declare war on the United States. The case he put forward was that in spite of all declarations of being a neutral in the conflict, the United States, or more specifically President Roosevelt, was taking actions which were hardly in line with how a neutral country should behave in a time of war.

Some of the things he highlighted were the employment of U.S naval vessels to protect convoys heading to Britain, even when the convoys were in international waters and thus “fair game” for German U-boats; American navy ships transmitting co-ordinates of U-boats to British navy ships to help the British locate and destroy the U-boats; the seizure in March 1941 of all German and Italian ships docked in U.S. ports and the imprisonment of their crews; sales of arms and munitions to countries at war with the Axis and the transfer of U.S. destroyers to Britain (both of which were violations of the Hague Convention of 1907); and the order to all U.S. ships to fire on any Axis flagged ship they encountered. But another point he mentioned and which is frequently overlooked by those who read it now, was the following: “…President Roosevelt’s plan to attack Germany and Italy with military force in Europe by 1943 at the latest…”.

What Hitler was referring to was an article titled “FDR’s War Plans!” which appeared in the December 4, 1941 issue of the Chicago Tribune. The Tribune had printed, in full, the details of a secret contingency plan dubbed “Rainbow Five” that dealt with exactly how the U.S. should go about prosecuting a war against Nazi Germany. “Rainbow Five”, which was completed in mid-1941, had been prepared by Albert Wedemeyer, who was then a major in the War Plans Division of the War Department. Wedemeyer had been chosen to write “Rainbow Five” primarily because of his extensive knowledge of the German military. In 1936, the U.S. Army had sent Wedemeyer to the German War College in Berlin, where he spent a total of two years. While there, he became acquainted with many of the individuals now in positions of prominence in the Wehrmacht, and even struck up a friendship with General Ludwig Beck who at the time was Chief of the General Staff of the OKH.

With “Rainbow Five”, Wedemeyer set out to develop a plan which would allow the U.S. “to eliminate totalitarianism from Europe and, in the process, to be an ally of Great Britain; further, to deny the Japanese undisputed control of the western Pacific”. What Wedemeyer discovered during his formulation of “Rainbow Five” was just how inadequately prepared the United States was to fight a war at the time. All the information he was able to gather led him to conclude that the earliest the U.S. could move against Germany would be in 1943. This was troubling to him due to the fact most war planners in the U.S. believed Russian resistance to Germany could cease at any time. It was estimated that after the defeat of the Soviet Union, Germany would likely spend at least two years rebuilding her military to the point where she could successfully invade Great Britain, which would in turn leave the U.S. as the “last man standing” against Germany. With this in mind, Wedemeyer proposed the creation of ten million man army, half of which would be sent as an expeditionary force to invade Europe and destroy Nazi Germany.

The full text of the Tribune article was transmitted to Berlin on December 5th and created quite a stir. German war planners had never envisioned or even prepared for the possibility of war with the United States. If anything, Hitler had cautioned against doing anything that might conceivably prod America into entering the conflict. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was not only a surprise to Hitler, but exactly the opposite of what he wanted. His desire all along was for the Japanese to attack both the British and Russians in the Far East but not the United States. But since no coordinated war strategy was ever developed or agreed upon by Germany and Japan, Hitler could only sit back and watch what the Japanese did.

In the meantime, “Rainbow Five” was being dissected by the German military, most notably Admiral Erich Raeder. And the one thing Raeder kept coming back to was the revelation that the U.S. could not launch a major offensive operation against Germany before 1943. He urged Hitler to re-think the current war strategy and focus back on the defeat of Britain as a top priority. Raeder went on to argue that the United States had never really been neutral, but instead was just a “nonbelligerent” ally of Britain and now Russia. To his mind, restraining U-boat action against American ships to avoid war no longer made any sense. With the U.S. now preoccupied with Japan, Raeder insisted it was the most opportune time to act. General Keitel and Marshal Goering soon added their endorsement to what Raeder proposed. Hitler was still not completely swayed, but a December 9th speech by President Roosevelt finally convinced him that Raeder was right. In the speech Roosevelt stated “Germany and Italy consider themselves at war with the United States without even bothering about a formal declaration”. Of course, this was not true. Yet the very fact Roosevelt said it convinced Hitler that Roosevelt truly wanted war with Germany and his speech was in effect a declaration of war on Germany. Thus, to Hitler’s mind, his declaration of war on the U.S. on December 11th was simply a formal response to Roosevelt’s war declaration two days before.

At this point “Rainbow Five” began to have an impact, albeit a brief one, on German war planning. On the 14th of December, the OKW presented Hitler with a proposal that they believed would basically “short circuit” the ability of the Allies to retake Europe. It called for offensive operations in Russia to cease, and for German forces to hold in the most favorable defensive positions available to them. Once that was done, attention would shift back to the West. Sweden would be occupied, as would Vichy France, and Spain and Portugal would be “invited” to join the Axis. They next advocated the construction of heavy fortifications along the entire Atlantic coast. Lastly, the OKW plan set as the highest priority “the clearing of British and Allied forces out of the Mediterranean and the Axis occupation of the whole of the northern coast of Africa and the Suez Canal”. Admiral Raeder and Marshal Goering wholeheartedly endorsed the OKW proposal stating that 1942 would present the Axis with “their last opportunity to seize and hold control of the whole Mediterranean area and of the Near and Middle East” and that such a chance “will probably never come again”.

Somewhat surprisingly, Hitler agreed to the entirety of the OKW plan, and on December 16th, General Halder issued “Directive 39” which ended the offensive in the East. Unfortunately, this turn of events didn’t last long. Hitler returned to his headquarters in East Prussia and became enraged when he learned Directive 39 was in the process of being implemented. He told Halder that “a general withdrawal was out of the question” and that no switch to a defensive posture would be permitted until Moscow, Leningrad, and the Don River basin were under German control. On December 19th, still angered over Directive 39, Hitler removed Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch as Commander in Chief of the Wehrmacht and assumed the position himself.

One can only wonder how differently the war would have gone for both the Germans and the Allies had Hitler allowed the OKW’s new strategy to be fully realized. In any event, despite the fact the details of “Rainbow Five” had been revealed, the “Europe First” strategy put forth by Major Wedemeyer was never dropped or altered, which in the end, turned out to be a wise move.
 
Old 12-14-2010, 11:56 AM
 
8,353 posts, read 7,297,424 times
Reputation: 8610
Quote:
Originally Posted by jtur88 View Post
Escort, we had just months earlier, pulled our Pacific Fleet out of west coast ports, and concentrated virtually our entire "defense" in one location thousands of miles offshore. It would have been worse than foolish to leave California unprotected except for the Pearl Harbor fleet, if our objective was defensive. If the Japanese had penetrated beyond Pearl (which for a few days was a fact), there would have been nothing to stop them on our undefended west coast.

In retrospect, it appears that Japan had no designs on the US mainland, nor did the US suspect that they did. Which leaves few alternative suppositions but to regard our force in Hawaii as offensive with a goal of Pacific domination. Considering that we didn't even bother to put our fleet itself on defensive alert.

The simple fact remained that we considered the Pacific Ocean to be a place in which WE were free to exercise our will, but the Japanese were not. And that is the posture that is difficult to objectively justify. Japan might have very well left Pacific islands alone, were it not for the perceived need to use them to defend themselves from impending American attack of the Japanese main. The Pacific had no value to the Japanese, except as a front line to its own internal and sovereign defense against aggressors---one of whom was conspicuous.
Actually, any notion that the United States fleet at Pearl Harbor was a gathered for an offensive attack on Japan is contradicted by the historical record.

The United States had been supplying 80% of Japan's oil. The oil embargo left the Japanese military with two choices: either give up its conquest of China or secure an oil supply sufficient to its war aims. Even though the Dutch government offered to supply Japan from its oil fields in the Dutch East Indies, Japan decided that it needed to seize these oil fields in order to secure the resource. The problem, as the Japanese military saw it, was that the United States had the ability to use its position in the Phillipines to interdict oil shipments from the East Indies to Japan.

The United States defense plan for the Phillipines was to send its Pacific Fleet to defend it from invasion. The fleet was assembled at Pearl Harbor specifically because it shortened the distance to the Phillipines by 3000 miles. The Japanese knew of the U.S. defense plans involving the Pacific Fleet and attacked the United State Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor specifically to prevent a successful defense of the Phillipines.

Additionally, both the Doolittle Raid in April 1942 (which was more valuable for its morale boost than its military objective) and the logistics required for Operation Downfall (the planned 1945 invasion of the Japanese home islands) ably demonstrate that the fleet gathered at Pearl Harbor posed no actual offensive threat to the Japanese home islands.

Any theory that the Japanese were simply defending themselves at Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, is nonsense - the attack was part of a broader strategy by the Japanese military to secure a new resource of oil in order to complete their conquest of China.
 
Old 12-14-2010, 12:08 PM
 
14,780 posts, read 43,469,826 times
Reputation: 14621
Quote:
Originally Posted by jtur88 View Post
Escort, we had just months earlier, pulled our Pacific Fleet out of west coast ports, and concentrated virtually our entire "defense" in one location thousands of miles offshore. It would have been worse than foolish to leave California unprotected except for the Pearl Harbor fleet, if our objective was defensive. If the Japanese had penetrated beyond Pearl (which for a few days was a fact), there would have been nothing to stop them on our undefended west coast.

In retrospect, it appears that Japan had no designs on the US mainland, nor did the US suspect that they did. Which leaves few alternative suppositions but to regard our force in Hawaii as offensive with a goal of Pacific domination. Considering that we didn't even bother to put our fleet itself on defensive alert.

The simple fact remained that we considered the Pacific Ocean to be a place in which WE were free to exercise our will, but the Japanese were not. And that is the posture that is difficult to objectively justify. Japan might have very well left Pacific islands alone, were it not for the perceived need to use them to defend themselves from impending American attack of the Japanese main. The Pacific had no value to the Japanese, except as a front line to its own internal and sovereign defense against aggressors---one of whom was conspicuous.

It is true that the Japanese view of human rights was not the same as ours. But that does not mean we could self-appoint ourself to redress that by simply shifting murder onto other peoples. And we were fine ones to complain after what we did to our Indians and more recently to the Philippinos, and our own gruesome territorial expansion at the expense of whomever we found in the way.

While it can be debated that the Japanese had as much "right" to take what they wanted in the Pacific as anyone else, the fact remains that the "borders" were quite well established since before 1900. Whether the United States was right or wrong to seize the Phillipines from Spain or turn a blind eye to the overthrow of the Hawaiians is immaterial as those territories were now part of the United States. Same goes for French Indochina, Dutch East Indies and the various British possessions. Japan had no "right" to take these territories outside of war.

The issue with your statement though is that you said there was nothing of value in the Pacific, it was actually quite the opposite. Japan needed raw materials, particularly rubber and oil which were available in vast quantities in French Indochina and the Dutch East Indies and were not natively available in Japan or even Manchuria. The U.S. embargo really brought the fact home to Japan over how vulnerable they really were in terms of needed raw material. The problem here was that the Phillipines sat between these territories and the Japanese mainland. The Japanese knew it was impossible to seize these territories and exploit them without coming into direct confrontation with the U.S.

The U.S. positioning the fleet in Hawaii was more or less a gentle reminder to the Japanese that the United States was not going to sit back and let them annex the territories they wanted in the Pacific without a fight. The Japanese knew that the U.S. Pacific Fleet and the bases in the Phillipines were the biggest impediment to them seizing the resources they wanted, so they attacked. The remaining scattered islands (Mariannas, Solomons, etc.) were attacked to begin building a buffer zone between the resource rich territories they needed and hamper operations. So, while the vast amount of "territory" seized was a buffer, there were very legitimate objectives and resources Japan wanted in the Pacific.

You seem to make the statement that Japan was just as justified as everyone else in seizing territory. The difference is that the Japanese decided they needed to seize "western" territory and that was the last straw. The U.S. could really have cared less about Japan raping and pillaging China. They drew the line at the seizure of French Indochina and would have most likely gone to war over the Dutch East Indies if Japan had not preemptively struck.
 
Old 12-14-2010, 12:08 PM
 
Location: Bradenton, Florida
27,232 posts, read 46,500,101 times
Reputation: 11081
The Japanese had plans to attack Pearl Harbor for years. In fact, it was an exam question at the Japanese Naval Academy.

However, considering that we basically STOLE their money, they were justified in attacking us, even though that's what FDR wanted them to do, to galvanize Americans into getting into World War II.
 
Old 12-14-2010, 01:19 PM
 
Location: Bradenton, Florida
27,232 posts, read 46,500,101 times
Reputation: 11081
I didn't say that. What I said is that I wasn't aware it was a Nazi slogan, that I had never heard that.

The fact that the Japanese had had the plans for years was something I got from my naval history classes.
 
Old 12-14-2010, 02:38 PM
 
Location: SE Arizona - FINALLY! :D
20,460 posts, read 26,213,725 times
Reputation: 7621
Quote:
Originally Posted by TKramar View Post
The Japanese had plans to attack Pearl Harbor for years. In fact, it was an exam question at the Japanese Naval Academy.

However, considering that we basically STOLE their money, they were justified in attacking us, even though that's what FDR wanted them to do, to galvanize Americans into getting into World War II.
We didn't STEAL their money. We FROZE it in place. When & if they gave back what THEY siezed (ie the territory of French Indochina) they could have gotten their money BACK.

Ken
 
Old 12-14-2010, 03:47 PM
 
Location: SE Arizona - FINALLY! :D
20,460 posts, read 26,213,725 times
Reputation: 7621
Quote:
Originally Posted by TKramar View Post
If I prevent you from accessing your funds, I've effectively stolen the money. It does not matter that I do not use it to my benefit, it's still stolen.

If I take the keys to your car, and toss them in the river, you could still have me charged with stealing your car, since I denied YOU access to it.
Not if you took those keys because I was DRUNK.

The Japanese could EASILY get their property back, all they had to do was return WHAT THEY had siezed. You break the rules you suffer the consequences. I have no sympathy for international crooks or thugs (& the Japanese - like the NAZI's - were BOTH). They both got what they deserved in WWII (& even beforehand in the case of the Japanese (with the siezure of their assets)). These were ruthless & PURE EVIL governments.

Ken

Last edited by LordBalfor; 12-14-2010 at 04:07 PM..
 
Old 12-15-2010, 02:01 AM
 
Location: Bradenton, Florida
27,232 posts, read 46,500,101 times
Reputation: 11081
Quote:
Originally Posted by LordBalfor View Post
Not if you took those keys because I was DRUNK.

The Japanese could EASILY get their property back, all they had to do was return WHAT THEY had siezed. You break the rules you suffer the consequences. I have no sympathy for international crooks or thugs (& the Japanese - like the NAZI's - were BOTH). They both got what they deserved in WWII (& even beforehand in the case of the Japanese (with the siezure of their assets)). These were ruthless & PURE EVIL governments.

Ken
What gives us the authority to make such rules, even today? We're no one special, we don't have a right to tell other nations what to do, especially where it does not involve us.
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