David,
Is this the Keegan book you are referring to: The Second World War, published
by Viking, 1989?
I can’t recall whether I read that book but I can’t find it in my library –
which unfortunately doesn’t mean that it isn’t there. I don’t know how much
space Keegan gives to Midway, but The Shattered Sword, devoted just to the
battle of Midway, is about as long as the one by Keegan uses to cover the
entire Second World War. Time passes. Toll is taking three volumes to do what
Keegan did in one. I don’t know if Keegan had much access to Japanese records
and writings. In The Shattered Sword, published in 2005 it seems that Parshall
and Tully are breaking new ground: providing significant Japanese records about
Midway, in English, for the first time.
But I do like Keegan. He argued that Vietnam was a righteous war – that it was
right for us to fight it. It was popular in his day to say the opposite, but
the military strategy devised by Acheson comprising the Truman doctrine
resolved that we would oppose Communism in whatever nation the USSR was
advancing it, and since we had more resources than the USSR, it was believed,
we would eventually run them out of theirs. We would defeat the USSR by
outspending them.
It was bold of Keegan to take that view (if that was his view as well). My own
view at the time was that we should have dealt directly with Ho Chi Minh when
he was giving us an olive branch before that war. We didn’t understand at the
time that all communists and communist countries were not under the control of
the USSR. Ho Chi Minh did go to Russia at one time, but he also showed up at a
number of international political events. He was open to dealing with us at
the time. IMHO.
If I was a dumb 17-year-old at the time the Vietnam War started (as I was when
the Korean war started) I probably would have still enlisted in the Marine
Corps. In my case the Korean war was winding down before I got to Korea.
That wouldn’t have been the case in Vietnam. L
Lawrence
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On ;
Behalf Of david ritchie
Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2020 11:06 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: On underestimating America
On Feb 20, 2020, at 7:52 PM, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
David,
I read your note a second time and see that I did not address your (Keegan's)
emphasis on chance. Maybe Parshall & Tully's dealing as much from the
Japanese leadership diminishes the idea of chance playing a very important
roll. The hubris of Japanese leadership, the fact that they at the Battle of
Midway had gone "all in" whereas the Americans were back home churning out
another battle fleet much better than the one facing the Japanese at Midway
(something the Americans could and did do many times over, but the Japanese
fleet at Midway was all there was. They never again had a battle fleet that
could match the ones the Americans were turning out in abundance. They never
even tried to match them again.).
If all the listings of chance had gone for the Japanese instead of the
Americans they may have delayed the final defeat of the Japanese, but not by
much.
When a Japanese carrier was taken back to Japan for repair, it was most
likely out for the entire war. When an American carrier was taken back to
Pearl Harbor for repair, that repair would take place so quickly it could
sometimes be sent back to the same battle it had limped away from.
Carriers were no good without planes, and the Americans shot almost all the
Japanese planes down. If I remember correctly, one last attempt by the
Japanese to damage an American carrier at Midway occurred when all they could
put in the air were 13 planes.
I have been reading someplace that the mindset of the Japanese and Germans
was similar. Neither had an adequate battle plan. The idea of the Germans
imagining they could conquer the Red Army by chasing it over the Urals in
winter on horseback can seem Quixotic if we don't focus on all the people
dying. We excuse the Japanese from folly because Yamamoto understood that
American industrial resources would eventually wear the Japanese down, but he
nevertheless underestimated the Americans to a fatal degree.
Yamamoto made his name because of his "success" at pearl harbor, but he
didn't manage to damage a single carrier, and his plan was to sink them all.
That isn't success. Also, this attack at Pearl Harbor that had the Japanese
cheering back home, had the effect of pissing the Americans off so that they
transformed themselves on that day from a nation that was predominately
isolationist to nation that was in a brief period to become the most powerful
in the world. If Yamamoto had left Pearl Harbor alone, it is unlikely that
America would have gone to war against Japan. America was counting on its
embargoes, and it is true they were hampering Japans ability to conquer the
Chinese. So instead of finding another way, or even giving the idea of
conquering China, Yamamoto took the Japanese into a war he, we are told, he
knew the Japanese couldn't win.
Yamamoto's poor battle plan at Midway virtually condemned the Japanese to
defeat.
Yes, I recall reading in the past that if in both the Japanese and German
portions of World War II things gone just a little more their way, that they
could have won that war, but in the stuff I've been reading recently, that
was never going to happen. Neither the Japanese nor the Germans had the
manpower nor the resources to win.
