From: mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at (Markus Stumptner)
Newsgroups: alt.war
Subject: Re: What if there had been no Pearl Harbor?
Date: 9 Oct 92 10:54:29 GMT
Organization: DB and ES Subdivision, TU Vienna

From article <1992Oct8.182009.22060@news.columbia.edu>, by dan@cubmol.bio.columbia.edu (Daniel Zabetakis):
> In article <6007@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at> mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at (Markus Stumptner) writes:
>>
>>So, here are the questions: Would the Japanese have had any chance of
>>getting the US to agree to negotiations if

>    First, I don't think _negotiations_ were ever part of Japanese
> strategy.

They were, and had been all the time that the Japanese were involved
in China (which, after all was one of the main causes of the war, if
not THE main cause).  They decided on war once they saw their
ambitions in China would not be tolerated by the US (after Roosevelt
decided on the oil embargo).  They did not want a prolonged war
against the US because they knew they would lose, and they were
assuming that US morale could be brought low enough to get them to the
negotiations table again, but this time from the position of strength
that the Japanese had had in the 1920s, when the US did not have a
firm stance or military involvement in China and was fairly powerless
to prevent the Japanese from expanding their influence.

> The were trying to establish the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity
> Sphere.

...which would not have been a goal in itself, except for the
Indonesian oil fields, which they needed to overcome the US embargo.
(They would probably have tried later, but China was their primary
objective).

>    The real ojective was to reduce the US presence in the area. 

There even was a plan to attack Dutch and British alone, but they
decided that the US would enter the war sooner or later, and it was
better to hit them sooner.

>    Regardless of Yamamoto's pessimisn, putting yourself back to that time
> should make you feel that the attack was a great success. Who could have
> known that the US would build 65+ carriers in the next 3 years?

I am *not* arguing from the military point of view, but from the
political.  The question is, was the decision to fight 

>    I don't see the importance of timing in the attack. Always attack
> with suprise if you can. I don't think there would have been any less
> shock and horror in the American public if the attack had came later.

I have the impression that the most important effect was not shock or
horror, but outrage.  After all, the "day of infamy" does not refer to
the US military having been caught with its pants down, but to the
Japanese.

The Japanese counted on what would later happen in Vietnam - that if
the war would go on with no real gains for the US, public pressure
would rise to end it even if short of victory.  But this did not
happen.

>    No effect. Even if Midway had been a total Japanese victory. Midway
> was not a real important objective. In fact there is a theory that 
> t was only attacked because the Japanese military was embarassed by 
> Doolittle's raid and concluded that it came from Midway.

No.  The Japanese knew that Doolittle's was a carrier raid and Midway
was not a port.  It is true that the raid influenced the decision to
destroy US carrier strength once and for all, because they knew it was
a carrier raid.
 
All the sources I know pretty well agree on the fact that the reason
for Midway was exactly that: the wish to draw the US carriers into a
climactic battle.  Midway was a convenient location, because it would
have made a good forward base and an attack on it would draw the US
carriers out. 
-- 
Markus Stumptner                                mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at
University of Technology Vienna                 vexpert!mst@relay.eu.net
Paniglg. 16, A-1040 Vienna, Austria             ...mcsun!vexpert!mst