From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On ;
Behalf Of david ritchie
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2020 7:23 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: On underestimating America
I’m about 10% through Weinberg’s A World At Arms. He discusses, as everyone
seems to, how leaders in Germany and Japan underestimated the military
potential of America.
David wrote:
Keegan is clear that Yamamoto, having spent time in the U.S. did not
underestimate that potential at all. I’ve now finished “The Price of
Admiralty,” which title apparently comes from Kipling, “the price of admiralty
[domination of the seas] is blood.”
Lawrence responded:
Yes, I had read that same thing, but that statement seems to apply to America’s
industrial capability. In a long war American industrial capability would
overwhelm that of the Japanese. But Yamamoto had a low opinion of American’s
actual fighting capabilities. Yamamoto made some bad, even fatal, decisions in
that regard. I read a couple of books recently on Midway that place the
Japanese failure in that battle directly on Yamamoto’s head. He thought the
Americans unwilling to fight and that they needed to be tricked in order to do
so. He chose what he considered a good place from which to pounce. The
Americans utterly surprised him by being there before him, in much better
position, very willing to fight, and able to do a much better job of it than
the Japanese. Yamamoto and the rest of the Japanese admiralty should have
committed suicide after that battle, but instead lied about what happened at
Midway, saying it was a great victory for them, in order to keep Japanese
fighting spirits as high as possible.
Keegan’s version of Midway has a different emphasis. He thinks it’s caused in
part by the Doolittle raid. You might enjoy that part of his book, “The Price
of Admiralty.” I started “A World At Arms” last night. Not very engaging and
his opening statments about Japan seem to discount their economic predicament.
With limited access to oil, they were in a bind. I imagine he returns to the
issue later.
Lawrence:
Yes, the Doolittle raid influenced Japanese strategy. They wanted to keep the
American bombers as far from Japan as possible. That was in Yamamoto’s mind as
well. He did sincerely want to defeat the Americans at Midway. It was
important to defeat the American Aircraft carriers and he thought he could
destroy them all if he could only get the Americans to come out and fight.
That is the part where he was utterly befuddled. The Americans were as anxious
to fight as the Japanese, had a better battle plan, got to Midway before
Yamamoto’s forces and destroyed all but one of the Japanese carriers. Japan’s
navy after the battle of Midway was never again a serious threat to America’s.
Ian Toll is 2/3 through his three volume Pacific War Trilogy. I read the first
volume and am only about half way through the second because I would stop
whenever Toll would come to a new battle and read some more authoritative and
detailed volume if there was one. In the case of Midway I stopped and read
Shattered Sword, The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway by Jonathan Parshall
and Anthony Tully. The “untold” is reference to greater access to Japanese
memoirs and records.
Admiral Ugaki, in his personal diary . . . conceded that the main cause for the
defeat might have been ‘that we had become conceited because of past success’
and thereby failed to anticipate the steps that might need to be taken if an
‘enemy air force should appear on [Nagumo’s] flank.’ . . . the Imperial Navy’s
hubris before the battle is a theme that has resonated with historians down to
the present day . . .” [the “present day being 2005 when Parshall & Tully’s
book was published.]
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
