Could the axis during ww2 have better leaders than they did in actual history? IF so how?

[melanie]

America and the UK and their Wall Street and their Madison Avenue and their Fleet Street gave Japan a big hard shove in the direction of militarism and depravity by cutting off immigration to reduce surplus population, closing off trade markets, using old fashioned "gunboat diplomacy" to help nations "resist" Japanese firms whose only crime was that they were more competitive than British and American ones...

Look, we are well rid of Imperial Japan, but we must never forget whose hands are not so clean, either.

[miletus12]

Mar 4, 2022 13:11:01 GMT melanie said:

America and the UK and their Wall Street and their Madison Avenue and their Fleet Street gave Japan a big hard shove in the direction of militarism and depravity by cutting off immigration to reduce surplus population, closing off trade markets, using old fashioned "gunboat diplomacy" to help nations "resist" Japanese firms whose only crime was that they were more competitive than British and American ones...

Look, we are well rid of Imperial Japan, but we must never forget whose hands are not so clean, either.

The Americans (Immigration Act of 1927 and Tariff Wall) and the British (Empire Exclusion Policy) went hammer and tongs against each other. They did not go to war against each other. Further, the Americans screwed the British over just as hard in the naval treaties as they hammered the Japanese. Once the traitor, Herbert Yardley, betrayed how the Americans broke into British and Japanese encrypted radio and cable traffic, the news was out about how it was done and there were very hostile relations among the three nations. For a time it looked like conflict just might be possible. But it did not happen. The Anglo-American war did not come. The three nations (Japan included.) negotiated their differences out, instead, into a modus vivendi similar to the Gentlemen's Agreement. The excuse that the Japanese were later in the 1930s goaded into war will not stand up. They had many options, again, short of ruinous war to redress their grievances. They did not use them.     

[simon darkshade]

Quite. The closing off of markets to Japan was part of the reaction to the Slump, rather than a grand plan against the Mikado. Similarly, I’d be quite interested in which nations are forced to resist Japanese trade at the barrel of a gun.

[mostlyharmless]

Mar 4, 2022 2:00:36 GMT miletus12 said:

...
In the end I think that the only thing noteworthy about Sankichi was that he was "post retirement" instrumental in "The Black Hand", a Japanese terrorist and criminal organization that operated assassination teams inside the United States. He managed to escape hanging after the war, which has always surprised me. He was on MacArthur's 50 most wanted list.               

I must admit to have been baffled by this as Takahashi wasn’t Serbian until I remembered that the Amur river was the Black Dragon and that there was a Black Dragon Society dedicated to keeping the Russians north of the Amur. They even sent an agent called Takahashi to America but he was a Major Takahashi Satokata en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satokata_Takahashi. It seemed sort of plausible because Takahashi Sankichi was a fan of aikido and martial arts are sometimes associated with spies and assassins. The only story that I could remember (dimly) was that an admiral’s daughter (whose?) had trained with them and that someone tried to assault her. I remember feeling very slightly sorry for the would be rapist as I suspect that after he had been beaten up by his chosen victim he probably found the authorities of 1930s Japan rather unsympathetic.

[miletus12]

Mar 4, 2022 23:53:52 GMT mostlyharmless said:

I must admit to have been baffled by this as Takahashi wasn’t Serbian until I remembered that the Amur river was the Black Dragon and that there was a Black Dragon SocietY dedicated to keeping the Russians north of the Amur. They even sent an agent called Takahashi to America but he was a Major Takahashi Satokata en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satokata_Takahashi. It seemed sort of plausible because Takahashi Sankichi was a fan of aikido and martial arts are sometimes associated with spies and assassins. The only story that I could remember (dimly) was that an admiral’s daughter (whose?) had trained with them and that someone tried to assault her. I remember feeling very slightly sorry for the would be rapist as I suspect that after he had been beaten up by his chosen victim he probably found the authorities of 1930s Japan rather unsympathetic.

The Gen'yōsha (Dark Black Ocean) was the antecedent of the Kokuryūkai. I did mistake the Black Hand for the Black Dragon River. The Kokuryūkai (Black Dragon) was active in supporting the Filipino resistance to the United States, as early as 1902, which is when the Americans became familiar with the organization. They were not just interested in China and Russia. One finds them active soon in Hawaii and the American west coast. Whether or not Sankichi's association with the Black Dragons went beyond being a political asset, like akin to Motojiro Akashi, or not is unclear, but MacArthur's intelligence section thought he was a member.

My actual assessment of Sankichi may be a bit unclear. He was a Kanji mouthpiece, not an original thinker by any means, such as one would find in Admiral Moffett.

In objective truth, his "supposed championship" of aircraft carriers was technologically premature as the aircraft and operational principles for ship to shore and anti-ship work were not developed or even possible until around 1937 when the Japanese began to use their aircraft carriers to close air support the Kwantung army. At that, it turns out that the Japanese navy did not ever develop reconnaissance and navigation principles for aircraft carrier operations too well, which are absolutely vital for extended range naval air combat.

[lordroel]

Mar 4, 2022 13:11:01 GMT melanie said:

America and the UK and their Wall Street and their Madison Avenue and their Fleet Street gave Japan a big hard shove in the direction of militarism and depravity by cutting off immigration to reduce surplus population, closing off trade markets, using old fashioned "gunboat diplomacy" to help nations "resist" Japanese firms whose only crime was that they were more competitive than British and American ones...

Look, we are well rid of Imperial Japan, but we must never forget whose hands are not so clean, either.

Going to give you a change to explain what you have said here before i going to judge on you, i hope it is good because i want to know why you are saying this.

[melanie]

Doug Hoff on soc.history.what-if said that back in the nineties. Hoff was effectively the equal of Alison Brooks or David Tenner or Mike Davis who wrote "For All Time".

[melanie]

I did not know any better. I am sorry. It was an honest mistake.

[lordroel]

Mar 5, 2022 12:26:31 GMT melanie said:

I did not know any better. I am sorry. It was an honest mistake.

Okay i will leave it with this, will not take any actions for now.

[mostlyharmless]

The rejection of the Racial Equality Proposal en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_Equality_Proposal, the forced end of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and the Immigration Act of 1924 may have suggested to some Japanese that they were not loved by the Anglosphere.

The issue of tariffs is more complicated with most of the impact after Japanese Government had been partially or wholly captured by militarists and Manchuria had been seized. It was certainly significant.

For example, there is a contrast between Algeria, which was controlled from Paris, and Morocco, which had some local control over tariffs. There were very few Japanese exports to Algeria but whilst imports from Japan to Morocco were listed with other countries in 1930, by 1932 Japan was fourth highest and by 1934 was second only to France.

The situation with India, one of Japan’s biggest markets, was complicated. Japan was also the main customer for India’s raw cotton. Japan managed to use the threat of a boycott of Indian cotton to keep tariffs low but there were fraught negotiations. In general there was a conflict between the local colonial administrations, who did not want unpopular price increases, and metropolitan governments. Thus tariffs were imposed on Ceylon by orders in council over local protests.

[miletus12]

Mar 5, 2022 17:56:56 GMT mostlyharmless said:

The rejection of the Racial Equality Proposal en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_Equality_Proposal, the forced end of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and the Immigration Act of 1924 may have suggested to some Japanese that they were not loved by the Anglosphere.

a. The first one we can blame on Woodrow Wilson. And to be CLEAR about that one, he, as much aimed it at Italy as he aimed it toward Japan. He was anti-Catholic, anti-olive-skinned Mediterranean persons and whatever else you can name him, as he was a racist walking disgrace in general as much as he was specifically anti-African American. For him it was a question of social Darwinism as American national policy formalized in treaty form. The US Senate rejected that viewpoint along with the rest of the Versailles Treaty. 

b. The second one was a matter of US geostrategic interest. Admiral Eberle, no fan of the Royal Navy or the IJN, argued that he could beat either one of them, but not both of them in combination. Hughes listened and so it was done.

[American hist]

We have derailed the topic ultimately; please get back on track.

Look, I hate protectionism anti-immigrant nativism and felt America had many missed opportunities, but this all doesn't have much, if anything, do to ww2 wartime leadership. Woodrow Wilson like him or hate him, but president Wilson vetoed the the test acts, prohibition, but Congress did override those vetoes www.senate.gov/reference/Legislation/Vetoes/Presidents/WilsonW.pdf

[lordroel]

Mar 6, 2022 5:18:18 GMT American hist said:

We have derailed the topic ultimately; please get back on track.

As the OP has said, lets get back on track.

[mostlyharmless]

OK! How about Nagata Tetsuzan en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetsuzan_Nagata as leader of Japan. He would probably have been their leader if he hadn’t been assassinated in 1935 as he was the driving force of his faction, probably called the Total War faction when he was alive as it only became the Control Faction after the Imperial Way had tried their 1936 coupe and that was the sort of thing they would “control”. I should pre-empt Miletus by saying he was a supporter of Unit 731, perhaps his only area of agreement with Araki.

[American hist]

Could the axis have had better cooperation with one another, particularly their Asian allies the Japanese? I would like to see if Himmler or a really competent axis leader in an alternative history does not do the vast majority of the mistakes by Adolf Hitler and it would be nice to replace Hitler early one.

When was it clear that Adolph Hitler was too incompetent to be a leader one of his worst early mistakes in ww2 was not destroying the allies at Dunkirk by allowing the brits and french to rest. I think the Germans should not have betrayed Russia and had they did not have to give up Romania and inland the alliance with the USSR would be beneficial for Germany and Japan.

what would have been some of the greatest axis mistakes that could have been prevented under a person who isn't Adolph Hitler who leading Germany?


I would like to see a very big axis empire added under a very competent nazie german dictator Spain, Portugal and in some point, south American nations could be added as axis allies.

I am glad the allies won ww2 but this is a very interesting concept that I hope people aren't burnt out yet