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Originally Posted by Torplexed
True. With the Japanese re-visualizing history is kinda like re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. That endless war in China also didn't help matters either. Their best option has probably not to go to war at all....and certainly not to start one with a galvanizing sneak attack.  |
Yep, their culture forced them into a war that they were incapable of winning (China) and then dragged them into a suicidal sideshow (the Pacific War) to support it.
Even if the US had accepted the status quo in the Pacific post Pearl Harbour (utterly unthinkable), the USSR was still going to crush Japan in 1945 to regain lost territories.
Culturally impossible, but the Japs would have best profited from declaring for the allies in 1939/40 and sending most of their fleet to the Med and a Div or two in support roles, they could have then 'secured' the DEI for the Dutch and used the resources to push for a win in China (they would have to try to stop the extremely atrocity prone IJA from committing its worst excesses), I'm not saying they'd have won - but they would have had indirect allied assistance and would have secured a lot of immediately usable resources and couldn't have lost as badly as they did.