The Off Topic Topic

[garbon]

A worthy sacrifice! I want anime with DASH and ELAN where the protagonist dies in defense of the empire suppressing Chinese revolts in the hinterland.

Great--Big Eyes Small Mouth Bedford Forrest.  That's just fucking super.

Forrest gets tentacled raped. Might be worth a view.

Or a mew.

[Lettow77]

 When- fall of 1941? Or a more plausible choice for Japan, the late spring of '42.

You don't think it's plausible crucial Siberian reserves could've been held back to deal with Japan?

Soundly beaten in 1939, yes- at that point the IJA should've received more development. Maybe unfreeze tank development out of the year 1935 and stop funding the IJN so much.

[katmai]

Is there anyway we can send lettow and Tim on a one way trip to mars?

[Tonitrus]

  I don't know. Why were the Japanese so intent on uniting Karafuto?
Portions of Siberia had value for timber & food, and it is another destination for Japanese colonists, which they anticipated to be a future problem at the time.

Also, with the Soviets out of the far east, they'd have a harder time providing any assistance to China- assuming they survived Barbarossa.

A world with the Soviets defeated is one with a much better strategic situation for the Japanese. 

The real fly in the ointment, as you pointed out earlier, is that the IJN has nothing to do and won't go for it.

Timber wasn't really what the Japanese needed.  The resources that they needed simply weren't in Mongolia, or Siberia.

When are you talking about this attack?  They were soundly beaten in 1939, and you talk about Barbarossa as if the Japanese would have some effect on it.

The initial defeat of the IJA was a pretty half-assed affair.  If they put half the effort into a campaign against Russia in Spring '42, as they did against SE Asia/Philippines, I think they would have been pretty successful.  But as you said, the resources they were after were at least probably 20-years away from availability in Russia, and their need for them was much more urgent than that.

It's a moot point anyway.  FDR would have gotten the U.S. involved in WW2 by the end of 1942 anyway, and without Pearl Harbor, would be in a much better position against Japan. 

[Neil]

When- fall of 1941? Or a more plausible choice for Japan, the late spring of '42.

You don't think it's plausible crucial Siberian reserves could've been held back to deal with Japan?

Soundly beaten in 1939, yes- at that point the IJA should've received more development. Maybe unfreeze tank development out of the year 1935 and stop funding the IJN so much.

It's not like a Japanese decision to make dramatic improvements to the army would bear fruit by late 1941, at least in the field of armour.  Development cycles were long for those sorts of big-ticket items, and the Japanese ability to change course was somewhat limited.  The carriers were essentially built, and Yamato and Musashi were half built.  The big, expensive cruisers were built and paid for, and the fact that the cost of the big ships was already sunk made the smaller cruisers and destroyers something of a necessity.

I think that attacking into Siberia in the colder months of fall or winter was never going to happen under and circumstances.  A late April or early May attack might be possible, but by that point Barbarossa has already failed.

[Pat]

Depose the Mongolian puppet government with a Mongolian puppet gov't backed by Japan that seeks to bring all mongols under its borders and has a nationalist sentiment more palpable to Mongols than the red dictatorship they languish under;

Ungern-Sternberg, reincarnation of Genghis Khan... RISEN FROM THE DEAD!

[Neil]

It's a moot point anyway.  FDR would have gotten the U.S. involved in WW2 by the end of 1942 anyway, and without Pearl Harbor, would be in a much better position against Japan.

Really?  Without the propaganda value of Pearl Harbour, even if the US enters the war without provocation (and that would be no easy feat) surely there would be enormous division in the US.

But in terms of military advantage, was Pearl Harbour really important?  How much military utility would the US have gotten out of those old, slow, obsolete dreadnoughts that were the main victims of the attack?

[DGuller]

It's a moot point anyway.  FDR would have gotten the U.S. involved in WW2 by the end of 1942 anyway, and without Pearl Harbor, would be in a much better position against Japan.

Really?  Without the propaganda value of Pearl Harbour, even if the US enters the war without provocation (and that would be no easy feat) surely there would be enormous division in the US.

But in terms of military advantage, was Pearl Harbour really important?  How much military utility would the US have gotten out of those old, slow, obsolete dreadnoughts that were the main victims of the attack?

Uhm, what?  Is Neil saying something bad about dreadnoughts?  Am I seeing things?

[jimmy olsen]

It would have better for the Japanese if they had discovered the Manchurian oil fields and tapped them in the early '30s.

[Habbaku]

It would have better for the Japanese if they had discovered the Manchurian oil fields and tapped them in the early '30s.

So, Episode 5?

[Tonitrus]

Really?  Without the propaganda value of Pearl Harbour, even if the US enters the war without provocation (and that would be no easy feat) surely there would be enormous division in the US.

But in terms of military advantage, was Pearl Harbour really important?  How much military utility would the US have gotten out of those old, slow, obsolete dreadnoughts that were the main victims of the attack?

Probably not zero provocation...it's pretty cheap to conjure up a "Lusitania-II" type incident (and could well have happened anyway).  The US was all but in the war(at least from FDR's view), and chomping at the bit by December '41.  And I tend to think idea that America would be paralyzed by division over entering the war is vastly overblown.  Like Patton said...Americans love a fight (well, back then anyway).

The battleship factor is probably not important, but with Japan bogged down in far east Russia, the US in the Philippines probably survive for quite a bit longer (though granted the IJN, with nothing much else to do, would blockade it in short order), likewise the Brits.  The US's biggest hindrance would be ramping up war production to go on the offensive, it'd probably be a slower start without a Pearl-level provocation.  And Germany would still be first. 

[jimmy olsen]

It would have better for the Japanese if they had discovered the Manchurian oil fields and tapped them in the early '30s.

So, Episode 5?

That was two pages ago.

Still, I remain confused why anyone would edit that into an old photo like that.

[Syt]

It would have better for the Japanese if they had discovered the Manchurian oil fields and tapped them in the early '30s.

So, Episode 5?

That was two pages ago.

Still, I remain confused why anyone would edit that into an old photo like that.

Empire Strikes Back featured "Episode V" from release on. Only Star Wars had retroactively added "Episode IV - A New Hope" into the rolling credits.

Kindly turn in your nerd card when you leave this thread. Thank you.

[jimmy olsen]

It would have better for the Japanese if they had discovered the Manchurian oil fields and tapped them in the early '30s.

So, Episode 5?

That was two pages ago.

Still, I remain confused why anyone would edit that into an old photo like that.

Empire Strikes Back featured "Episode V" from release on. Only Star Wars had retroactively added "Episode IV - A New Hope" into the rolling credits.

Kindly turn in your nerd card when you leave this thread. Thank you.

Really? Oh, well, not like I was old enough to see it in theater and remember that.

[Habbaku]

It would have better for the Japanese if they had discovered the Manchurian oil fields and tapped them in the early '30s.

So, Episode 5?

That was two pages ago.

Still, I remain confused why anyone would edit that into an old photo like that.

Empire Strikes Back featured "Episode V" from release on. Only Star Wars had retroactively added "Episode IV - A New Hope" into the rolling credits.

Kindly turn in your nerd card when you leave this thread. Thank you.

Really? Oh, well, not like I was old enough to see it in theater and remember that.

Please just die.