By Michael W. Myers
Concerning the Allies' victory within the Pacific in WWII, it is going nearly with no query that Japan's defeat used to be inevitable within the face of overwhelming American army may and financial energy. however the consequence, Michael W. Myers contends, was once really something yet inevitable. This publication is Myers's thorough and deeply proficient rationalization of ways contingent the "foregone conclusion" of the battle within the Pacific fairly was once.
However disproportionate their respective assets, either Japan and the Allied forces faced major hindrances to final victory. One the 2 aspects shared, Myers exhibits, used to be the inability of a unmarried person with the information, imaginative and prescient, and authority to formulate and enforce powerful procedure. either exercised management through committee, and Myers cogently explains how this contributed to the contingent nature of the clash. A striking workout in logical tools of strategic considering, his e-book analyzes decisive campaigns within the Pacific conflict, studying the industrial and strategic demanding situations that either side confronted and needed to triumph over to accomplish victory. Japan, for example, had ambitions going into the struggle: to extend the limits of what they termed the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" and to finish their lengthy and challenging battle in China. those pursuits, as Myers indicates us, had unexpected and devastating logistical and strategic results. however the usa confronted comparable problems--as good as different hurdles particular to a country now not but on complete warfare footing.
Overturning traditional historiography, The Pacific conflict and Contingent Victory clarifies the right kind courting among freedom and determinism in historic considering. A compelling retelling of the Pacific warfare that will simply were, the e-book bargains old classes in considering modern American international coverage and American exceptionalism--most saliently in regards to the risks of the presumption of yankee ascendancy.
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Additional info for The Pacific War and Contingent Victory: Why Japanese Defeat Was Not Inevitable (Modern War Studies)
Sample text
The Japanese did not know whether the Allies would attack from New Guinea westward into the Netherlands East Indies, northwest into the Philippines, or directly north into Palau. They lacked the troops, aircraft, and ships to defend from all three directions. The Battle of Midway may also be seen in the context of the Japanese strategic principles formulated as the basis for Stage Two operations. Although a part of eastern operations, Midway’s primary purpose was to bring the American fleet to bear in order to destroy it and achieve Japanese mastery of the seas.
Japan might have conceived better strategic plans for both Stage One and Stage Two of its Pacific War. It might have prosecuted each stage more effectively with the plans that it did have. In either case, the recognition of contingency is enough to challenge the thesis of inevitable defeat. Yet even given a war of attrition, it was still within Japan’s grasp to attain a better result than the historical one. All things being equal, attrition favors the greater power. But seldom are all things equal.
Rather, the idea germinated and matured in the minds of offi- 28 chapter one cers who entertained doubts about the conventional wisdom of interceptive operations, about the battleship as an ultimate weapon. 24 The officers Stephan refers to were all men under Yamamoto’s command. They include Admiral Ugaki Matome, Yamamoto’s chief of staff for the Combined Fleet; Captain Kuroshima Kameto, vice chief; Captain Miwa Yoshitake, operations officer; Commander Fujii Shigeru, an intelligence officer; and Commander Watanabe Yasuji, a logistics expert.
