Japanese Invasion of America?

@MrMalachiCrunch:

I think you summed up the ‘Food Shortage’ situation.  I would substitute ‘not best possible choice’ with ‘insanely evil choice’.  I would further add that the ‘choice’ was made before the food shortage occurred.   To argue that the food shortage was primarily the reason for the attempted genocide of the Jews I think is misguided.  Perhaps the argument is to determine what percentage the food shortage contributed to the ‘choice’ of implementing the genocide, let the unknown percentage be represented by the variable ‘X’.

Now, one could in an academic setting debate the value say 0 <x<20% say.=“”  i=“” would=“” think=“” it=“” a=“” stretch=“” to=“” conclude=“” the=“” ceiling=“” value=“” of=“” x=“” were=“” any=“” greater=“” than=“” 20%=“” as=“” hints=“” hitler’s=“” genocidal=“” intent=“” evident=“” long=“” before=“” food=“” shortage=“” manifested=“” itself.=“”  so,=“” we=“” are=“” debating=“” whether=“” choice=“” hitler=“” made=“” was=“” insanely=“” evil=“100%-X.”  <br=“”>I feel dirty even spending this much of my time contemplating this and articulating my discomfort.  Of all the interesting topics to discuss…this is what you WANT to talk about?  This doesn’t make my top 5000 topics I care to discuss.</x<20%>

I realize this may not be the world’s most pleasant conversational topic. Perhaps I was wrong to have brought it up in this thread. Sorry about that!

That said, I’ll provide a response to what you’ve written above. If something about my response bothers you or seems out of line, please let me know.

If I understand your position correctly, you feel that Hitler should not be let off the hook for whichever mass murders he would have committed had there not been a food blockade. That position seems reasonable enough.

When looking at any subset of the mass deaths which occurred in Nazi Germany, it’s reasonable to ask, “Would these deaths have occurred had Germany been able to feed everyone within its borders?” In some cases that’s an easy question to answer. For example, Hitler ordered that Soviet POWs receive adequate food rations. He had a very straightforward reason for issuing that order: those POWs had been put to work in German factories to make weapons. However, the man ordered to provide food to the Soviet POWs was given an impossible task: Germany did not have the food with which to feed these men. As a result, millions of Soviet POWs starved or died from hunger-induced causes.

The Nazi political movement was characterized by three main motivations. 1) A love for Germany, Germans, and other Nordic or Germanic peoples. 2) Indifference or hostility toward Slavs and most other non-Germans. 3) Hatred toward the Jews.

To elaborate a little on point 2), one can consider Germany’s plans for postwar Poland. Between 30 - 50 million Poles were to be forcibly relocated eastward to make room for German expansion. If Germany was still in the midst of famine conditions, then it would have been willing to accept the deaths of many of those Poles along the way, in order to lessen the burden on its food supply. The other side of that coin is that mass deaths of Poles in the postwar era were not planned unless Germany was still subjected to famine conditions.

Clearly, Hitler was more comfortable killing Jews than he was killing Gentile Poles. His food policy towards Poland makes that point abundantly clear. Polish Jews received the lowest food priority, with the Nazi objective being to reduce Jewish caloric consumption to zero. Unskilled Polish workers had the next-lowest food priority, unskilled Ukrainian workers the next-highest, skilled Polish workers a higher priority, and the occupying German forces the highest priority of all.

Considering the Nazi hostility towards Jews, it is certainly reasonable to ask whether the Nazis would have attempted to exterminate the Jews even if there had been no food blockade. The Nazis’ pre-war policy toward the Jews was based on emigration, not extermination.

The 1936 Nuremberg Laws stripped the 500,000 German Jews of their citizenship, making them stateless refugees. Jewish migration was impeded by Nazi restrictions on the transfer of finances abroad (departing Jews had to abandon their property), but the Jewish Agency was able to negotiate an agreement allowing Jews resident in Germany to buy German goods for export to Palestine thus circumventing the restrictions.

The large numbers of Jews entering Palestine led to the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine.

The above-described Nazi policy of encouraging Jewish emigration to Palestine was also explored in Adam Tooze’s book The Wages of Destruction.

War can make people harder and crueler than they otherwise would have been. The act of killing a man–even in a just cause–can make a man less inhibited about killing other men. Additionally, desperation can also harden a man. A man who is surrounded with wealth, love, family, and security is less likely to start a fight than he might have been if he was living alone, in an alley, without a clear plan to avoid starvation or freezing to death in the winter.

Especially toward the end of WWII, the Nazis were increasingly desperate men. Also, both the Axis and the Allies had been hardened by war. Might these things have been enough to turn Nazis’ hostility towards Jews into a full-blown plan for extermination, even in the absence of a food blockade or famine conditions? This is a possibility. But I have not seen evidence to suggest that it is more than just a possibility.

One measure of morality is to examine motivations. Generically speaking, actions motivated by love will tend to be more moral than actions motivated by a desire to get even or exact a petty revenge. In particular, the desire to avenge wrongs or slights against oneself is a far less ennobling motive than the desire to do things for other people out of love.

I’d argue that during the early years of the Nazi regime, their emphasis was largely on the love they had for Germany and the German people. (The best of the three above-described motives.) Wages for German workers were increased, the workweek was reduced to 40 hours for industrial laborers, work safety conditions were improved, German workers were given long vacations, and subsidized cruises were made available for them to travel to distant lands. Clean air and clean water standards were enacted. Within the German military, it was said that men and officers should receive 7 - 8 hours of sleep each night, that bullying should be discouraged or eliminated, and a spirit of camaraderie and acceptance encouraged. That same spirit pervaded most of the rest of Germany. I have seen mainstream historians state that, had Hitler left office in 1937, he would have gone down as a great statesman.

By 1944, much of this had changed. Consider Germany’s “Vengeance Weapons,” such as the V2 rocket. The V2 had almost no military value whatsoever. And yet, I’ve seen it claimed that in 1944, Germany could have doubled its tank production had the industrial capacity devoted to V2 construction gone to tanks instead. The ostensible reason for the V2 program was to “improve morale” by convincing the German public that its advanced new weapons would win the war if Germany could hold out long enough. I suspect the real reason was different: that deep down inside, some part of Hitler believed that anything other than ultimate defeat was impossible. The Vengeance Weapons may have been intended to punish those Hitler felt were responsible for that defeat.

If the above is correct, it means Hitler had lost sight of the primary responsibility of any political leader: to act with love toward the people and the nation he has the responsibility of serving.

I cannot help but think of something I saw on the History Channel. An American soldier described his encounter with a German soldier captured shortly after the D-Day attack. “I pointed a gun at the man’s crotch,” the American said, “and demanded that he tell me where the land mines had been hidden. ‘Not there,’ the German responded. ‘Here,’ he said, and pointed at his own head.” One reason why that soldier, and German soldiers generally, fought so hard, and endured so much, was because they believed they were fighting for a government that loved them, and against governments which hated them.

@MrMalachiCrunch:

Now, back to this fascinating topic….

I would think the culture of the Japanese military vis-a-vis technology being an aid would have to be modified.  Your point about valour overcoming technology is bang on.  Today, Japanese scientist produce a great deal of papers and patents, they do have a culture of innovation, though no nation seems to beat the US on willingness to embrace innovation.  I think with a combination of these factors and an emphasis on the US home front and public opinion Japan would be well poised to dominate its sphere of influence.  Post war Japan was a huge asset against the USSR, indeed, the US President Nixon [embraced] communist China against the USSR.  I could see if Germany fell eventually to the allies, a ‘neutral’ Imperial Japan would be an ally against the USSR once the US and Japan came to terms.

You are absolutely correct. Japan had (and has) a significant potential for innovation and technological advancement. But it wasn’t until later in WWII that Japanese power holders embraced (rather than stifled) this innovation.

Had Imperial Japan avoided both a war against the U.S. and an alliance with Germany, it could (as you’ve pointed out) have emerged as a major player in the postwar era. Had the main theme of that postwar era been a competition between the U.S. and the Soviet Union for global dominance, it’s possible each side would have seen Japan as a potential ally against the other. It wouldn’t surprise me if, on a personal level, Japanese leaders preferred Western democracy to Soviet communism. Even so, they might have decided to ally with whichever superpower offered the better deal. Or, they could have refrained from taking either the U.S.'s or the U.S.S.R.'s side. The thought process here would be, Neither of the two superpowers are going to want to upset us too much, lest we be driven into the arms of the other. As long as this continues to be the case, we have free rein to do whatever we want. Within reason, of course.

The main problem I see with this strategy is that once China became unified, it would want its territory back. All of it, including Manchuria. After China militarized and industrialized itself, Japan would not be strong enough to resist these demands alone. (China’s population base is much larger.) This situation could force Japan to side with whichever superpower offered to help Japan keep its Chinese territory.

To avoid being forced into that kind of alliance out of weakness, Japanese leaders might have attempted to remain stronger than China even over the long run. One possible strategy for achieving this would have been the following. 1) Mass deportations of people out of Manchuria and other parts of China, followed by Japanese colonization of those areas. 2) Interference in the Chinese civil war, intended to weaken whichever side seemed strongest, and therefore most likely to unify China. 3) Massive industrialization of Japan proper and of Japan’s core overseas territories. 4) embracing the culture of innovation and technological advancement you mentioned earlier.

It’s also worth noting that Japan would be significantly stronger in the postwar era with the British and Dutch territory it had gained in 1941 - '42 than it would have been without that territory. However, it’s possible the diplomatic consequences of holding onto that territory–or even of acquiring it in the first place–would have outweighed the gains.

@CWO:

A similar situation existed in the Confederacy in the early stages of the U.S. Civil War, where it was believed that the material advantages of the North (in terms of industrial capacity, natural resources and sheer population numbers) could be overcome by (if I recall the quote correctly) “the gallantry and fighting spirit of the Southern Gentleman.”  The contrary (and ultimately correct) view was expressed by a certain Northerner to a friend he had in the Confederacy: “No nation of agriculturalists has ever defeated a nation of industrialists.  You are bound to fail.”

That’s an excellent example. I looked up the Civil War and found that the North experienced twice as many combat deaths as the South. That ratio would seem to partially justify Southern leaders’ faith in their strategy. However, the overall ratio of military deaths was 1.4 to 1. The reason for this is that so many soldiers on both sides died from disease, exposure, and other causes.

Later in the war, the North increasingly benefited from activities which did not necessarily involve a clash between the main Northern and Southern armies. The increasingly effective naval blockade is a good example of this, as are some of the coastal raids the North performed later in the war. The Southern economic collapse which resulted from the naval blockade is still another example. Later in the war, Grant capitalized on the Northern advantage in manpower by sending several secondary forces to invade the South, while the main Southern forces were occupied by their Northern counterparts.