The whole thing was a mess on both sides. Repeated **** ups from everyone. Even the shooting was something of a fluke. He wasn't even aiming at the wife, for a start.
My son's studying WWI at school - so I profess to be quite au fait with this. What is now Croatia, Bosnia, etc was part of the Austria-Hungarian empire in 1914. Serbia was not, but had increased in power/size as a result of the Balkan Wars (1912/13). Der Austrians saw Serbia as a threat, because of the Slav population in its southern regions. It wanted an excuse to attack Serbia. When a Serb student assassinated FF, it found it. Its attack on Serbia prompted Russia, who was keen to court interests in Serbia, to mobilise troops to defend them. At that time, Russia was part of the Triple Entente of powers with Britain and France. They were essentially in conflict with the Triple Alliance of Austria- Hungary, Germany and Italy. When Russia got involved, Germany came to A-H's aid and declared war on them. France then mobilised troops against Germany. When Germany responded by sending troops through Belgium, Britain demanded that they retreat. When they refused, Britain declared war. And the rest is history..........
The attack on Pearl Harbor was another tragedy of errors. According to one book I read, IIRC, The Japanese were in the habit of using voice code in telephone conversations with their mission in Washington which had the level of sophistication that 16 year olds use when they're talking about something they don't want their parents to grasp. At one point the voice code was to refer to the decision to declare war as the impending birth of a child. On hearing the baby might come any hour now, the response was "What sex will it be?" The Japanese planned to send a long letter to the US declaring war at the end. The idea was that they could deliver it before the attack started, so they could technically have not have abandoned diplomatic protocol regarding declarations of war. The Japanese diplomatic mission in Washington happened to have a going away party on December 6th, in which the head of mission got quite drunk. The Japanese sent the message by code, marked top secret. The only person who had the security clearance to read the message and type it was the head of mission. In addition to being badly hung over, he also couldn't type very well at all. After a couple of abandoned attempts, he delivered the message late and filled with errors. The Americans had broken the (serious) Japanese code, so they already knew the contents of the letter. It didn't occur to them to send out a general alert warning of a possible attack. Even when a navy spotter reported planes heading towards Hawaii, he was told he was seeing things. Admiral Yamamoto, the architect of the brilliantly planned attack, had argued in vain against attacking the United States. "Even if everything goes as well as it can," he said "and we take San Francisco, all we will have done is wake a sleeping giant, which will crush us."
The destruction of the USA Pacific aircraft carrier fleet. Which fortunately were not in dock on the days considered for the attack.
Right. It was pure luck the carrier fleet was away. The Japanese destroyed only battleships, which had been crucial in the first world war, but were to prove of secondary value at best in WWII. But Yamamoto, for one, thought an island had no chance against a continent in any case, and he was right. The army, who effectively controlled policy, were determined to fight the US for reasons which seem to fall under the category of "the madness of crowds." They attacked Pearl Harbor at the very moment Hitler was trying to take Moscow. Japan's almost miraculously bad decision to bring the second armed continent into the war against the Axis rather than helping to finish off the first decided the war.
An interesting "alternative universe" scenario is that Japan did not become part of the Axis nations. In which case I assume the USA would have defeated Japan far faster, and Germany may have used more of the resources against the Soviets that were tied up with the Allies in Africa .
A short term goal, but taking on a huge military force like America when they were stretched with China, Burma etc was utter madness.
The Japanese were kind of pushed into though werent they ? Trade embargoes and all that. Japan are genuinely the greatest nation on earth though, let alone asia. I see thr fact that they don't rule half of asia is an accident of history.
Agree with that comment but they didn't fight in Burma until 1941), but they had been fighting in China since 1937 (and some now think that the Sino-Japanese war date should be set back to 1931 when Japan invaded Manchuria). In fact some have argued that the start date of WW2 should be 1937 rather than 1939, as the 1939 date is Euro-centric. It was probably insane to attack the US but as with all history, we are looking at it with the perspective of knowing what had happened. At the time the outcome may not have appeared so clear-cut, and the US trade embargo was strangling the Japanese economy that relied almost totally on raw material imports. In the event the US had quite a bit of luck at the start of the war, which would not have altered the final outcome but might have delayed things somewhat, which was at Pearl Harbor* the US carriers were not in port at the time, making the attack more counter productive (when combined with the lack of declaration of war as mentioned earlier), the Japanese then didn't launch a third attack on the port which left a lot of vital installations intact because they were being cautious as they didn't know where the US carriers were. Then in 1942 at Midway they lost four of the six carriers that attacked Pearl Harbor (losses they could not sustain) partly through bad luck as the US air strike luckily happened across the Japanese carriers while they were rearming and refueling aircraft on deck, which made a lot more mess than otherwise would have occurred when the bombs hit. * Here is the Pearl Harbor joke to tell your American friends. > How many states in the US? > 50 > No it's 51. > It's not 51 it's 50 (of course, all American's know it's 50 so you can spin this bit out to wind them up more, until they finally say...) > So what is the 51st state? > Pearl Harbor. > Pearl Harbor isn't a state. > It was after the Japanese bombed it. I apologise for the spelling of Harbor, but that's it's name so I guess you have to accept it. Also if you want to be technical, during the Second World War, Hawaii and Alaska weren't states, so there were 48 back then. Interestingly, in 1943 the Japanese invaded two of the Aleutian Islands which are part of Alaska, so they actually invaded America during the war (sort of).
It's not the only time in WWII where Japan were undone by an amazing bit of fortune: the Battle of Midway swung in the US's favour mainly because at the moment where the American planes made contact with the Japanese fleet, the Japanese planes had returned to their carriers to refuel which meant the carriers were sitting ducks. Five minutes either way and the result could have been very different.
There was a log-jam on the carriers due to re-arming too (Midway was bombed, the USA carrier fleet would have to be attacked with bombs and torpedoes) . Also AFAIK there was a shambles where a Japanese reconnaissance plane took forever to launch. By the time it was airborne, sighted USA carriers, and reported back, the USA attack was moments away from the Japan fleet.
It was luck the third and last wave of US bombers arrived when they did, just as you say. It was also luck that they found the carrier group at all. They were about to turn back when one noticed a wake from a Japanese submarine, and decided to follow it. But it was terrible judgment from the Japanese commander to bring all his planes down for refueling and rearming at once, rather than leave some in the air, as was I understand standard procedure. Had he not made that decision, the chances of Zeros shooting down all the old and slow US bombers were good, as they'd done it twice before that day. So if it weren't for awful decisions by commanders, the US might have won the battle of Pearl Harbor, and the Japanese in all likelihood would have won a huge victory at the battle of Midway. The story of the decisive first half year of the Pacific war was dominated by dumb luck and bad judgment.
The Japanese of that time were bastards.Heaven help you if you were captured because Japs treated you like trash.Torture and murder went hand in hand whether you were prisoner or native. Any British that survived were very,very lucky.Maybe.....because many survivors had caught all sorts of things. One thing that got me was......many British wives taking American lovers/boyfriends while their husbands were fighting abroad.Many never to return.
It's (not your comment Smithy, I mean the attitude at the time), a great example of the perils of genuine bigotry. The British (inc Australians) in Singapore and Malaysia, were taught that the Japanese were an inferior race, incapable of challenging British territory. That came back to haunt them. And likewise, I suspect that Japanese - who I have seen as some of the nicest people on this earth, yet who turned into monsters during the war - were probably driven into blooslust by some misguided prejudices, as much as they were by their incredible national pride that they maintain today. We humans are capable of being led astray in the most horrible ways.
Yes.I agree,Robspur. This worries me about Trump.Does he want to turn the USA into a police state where an opponent cannot contradict him without him going nutty?.....and putting them behind bars? Scary!
I don't know why anyone's surprised by this. He was clear in his admiration of Putin before the election. He talked about suppressing the media, killing innocent people and torture as positives. Why is it a shock that he's starting to implement those policies?
It's a problem with nations. What's to keep a national leader from making himself popular at home by creating a bunker mentality, in which those abroad or perceived to be foreign are the enemy? ...strength of character, I suppose. And how's that working out for us?
Tbh I think the problem is the media whipping people into a frenzy, and people thinking it's their business to interfere in american politics, because theyve seen it on the telly. What right to UK citizens have to protest about the immigration policies of the American government ? I'd say they should have next to none. Where are the street protests against all the countries who permanantly ban the entry of citizens of another country, eg Israel (not that im supporting israel in per se) ? Where are all these kind and thouhtful folk then ? And what happened to all the american patriots who were so happy when america went off randomly bombing Iraq in refenge for 9/11 ? Who's to say that this isn't a somewhat more sensible and appropriate defence strategy than that one was ?
This is the Putin who's done so much to move the war in Syria towards and end game, bring peace to almost all of Syria's major cities, and secure the lasting truce that the Americans failed to do countless times is it ?
