On December 7, 1941 (U.S. time), the Japanese Navy launched a surprise attack on the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, and from the tactical effect, the battle was very beautiful: the Japanese Naval Aviation sank and severely damaged 8 U.S. battleships, 3 cruisers, 3 destroyers, destroyed 188 fighters, more than 3,000 U.S. casualties, the Pacific Fleet was temporarily paralyzed, while the Japanese lost only 29 aircraft and 5 pocket submarines (armored), a total of 65 soldiers were killed or missing, and one submarine crew was captured.
But this is tactical, strategically, now we know that this japanese approach can be said to be one of the most stupid moves in World War II, the Japanese sneak attack directly led to the participation of the United States, the world's first industrial power at that time, when the Us state apparatus began to turn to a state of war in an all-round way, its strong industrial capacity and financial resources were simply not able to resist the Japanese!
So? After the United States eased up, Japan was gradually defeated, and finally it was hung up and fought, and it was defeated in World War II...
Later generations will usually evaluate the actions of the Japanese in one sentence:
Japan lost the bet!
Yes, Japan was indeed a crazy gambler during World War II, and eventually lost its family, but since it was a "gamble", it shows that there is also a possibility of gambling "winning".
So, what did the Japanese try to win back by sneaking up on Pearl Harbor? In other words, what exactly did the Japanese try to achieve by making such a risky move as a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor?
To analyze this problem, we must first look at what was going on in Japan at that time.
From the 1930s onwards, militaristic Japan stepped up its aggression against China, northeast China was controlled, north China and Mongolia were infiltrated, and finally intolerable, in 1937, China and Japan finally broke out a full-scale war...
But the stubborn resistance of China surprised Japan, the war was fought for several years, Japan's original plan of "March to destroy China" completely fell into vain, itself was in the mire, by 1940, Japan had to spend more than 4 million US dollars a day in China, and the Japanese on the Chinese battlefield were more than 1.5 million, and the number of dead and wounded reached hundreds of thousands!
Japan originally wanted to fight this war in accordance with the sino-Japanese war, the most Russo-Japanese war: to win a blow and grab huge benefits. However, China's all-out resistance left Japan a little confused – the Japanese found that they seriously despised China's potential.
Map of the situation before the July 7 Incident (Original Map of Japan)
This outcome quickly intensified in Japan, and according to Hideki Tojo himself, 100 million people lived a hard life.
At such a heavy price, what about the gains from the war? Under the stubborn resistance of the Chinese military and people, the benefits of the Japanese in the occupied areas of China are very limited, and the relative expenses are completely a drop in the bucket!
In this way, Japan will fall into a strategic dilemma: If this situation is allowed to happen, Japan's national strength will be overdrawn sooner or later, and at that point, the Us and British powers, which have long regarded Japan as a "restless element" in East Asia, will certainly take advantage of the fire and looting, and Japan's operations in East Asia for more than 70 years will be adrift and then be suppressed forever; and what if we stop from China? The mood of domestic excitement cannot be accounted for at all, and the Japanese government will collapse. So Japan tried everything to lure China, but China did not pay any attention to it...
The Communist Party of China's anti-Japanese base areas, which were everywhere in the occupied areas, seriously affected the control of the Japanese army invading China over the occupied areas
How to open this deadlock? The Japanese had only one way to go:
Grab new territory! So where is the most suitable - nature is the resource-rich, and closely related to Japan's Southeast Asia!
Don't ask why Japan was unable to open the predicament through domestic and foreign affairs, when Japan was militaristic and warlords controlled the national power, there was no room for compromise.
But Southeast Asia was already the territory of Europe and the United States at that time: the Philippines was the United States, Indonesia was the Netherlands, the Indochina Peninsula was French, Burma and Malay were British, and if the Japanese wanted to move this place, they were bound to start a direct conflict with the European and American powers...
In fact, even before the Pearl Harbor incident, Japan had already started the idea of Southeast Asia: in July 1940, Japan claimed that in order to cut off the Chongqing Nationalist government's foreign military aid from the Indochina Peninsula (the route of aiding Chiang Kai-shek), it occupied French Indochina when France surrendered to Germany in order to seize more strategic materials.
But this is a matter of moving the whole body, france was powerless to resist at that time is not false, but the Japanese action, the British occupying Burma immediately alarmed, Europe and the United States united to resist Japanese expansion.
On July 24, 1941, President Roosevelt of the United States demanded that Japan withdraw its troops from the Indochina Peninsula and China, and then on the 26th ordered a ban on the export of a number of strategic resources to Japan (of which oil and steel were the most important to Japan), and froze Japanese assets in the United States, and soon followed suit by the British and Dutch colonial governments.
This policy is known in Japan as the ABCD Encirclement Network (based on the English abbreviations of the United States, Britain, China and the Netherlands).
Once the trade with the United States is cut off, this is equivalent to the last economic bloodline of Japan has also been cut off, and the Japanese can only stand up and take risks.
Does anyone in Japan know what this "desperate" means? Of course! This is the Japanese naval commander Isoroku Yamamoto, who has gone to the United States several times to study or study or serve, and has a very deep understanding of the economic and military potential of the United States.
Isoroku Yamamoto was a ghost talent, and he had already predicted it before:
Even if the attack on Pearl Harbor hit the U.S. Pacific Fleet hard, it would only be able to maintain its advantage for a year to a year and a half. Will Japan be ready to resist full-scale U.S. retaliation this year and a half? The odds are slim!
However, the war was fought in 1941, and the possibility was negligible than sitting still, so Yamamoto Fifty-Six changed his previous attitude and did his best to plan and organize the war policy against the United States, and Yamamoto Fifty-Six, or the entire Japanese nation, has always had a mentality since the Meiji era - the gambler mentality! Unlike ordinary strategic decision-makers who want to lose first, the Japanese don't care what will happen if they lose, they think about winning first!
How far does Yamamoto want to win?
The Japanese are not fools, and after fighting Pearl Harbor, they are not forced to run, in fact, Yamamoto's strategy is:
The use of surprise attacks sought to completely annihilate or severely damage the US Pacific Fleet in one fell swoop in the early stages of the war, and establish Japan's military superiority. And then what? On the one hand, the continuous active offensive against the United States (military occupation of Pearl Harbor, and even attacking the western mainland of the United States to attack the us war potential) made it unable to accumulate enough strength to confront Japan; on the other hand, due to the temporary paralysis of the United States' power in the Pacific region, Japan became the only hegemon in the region (the Soviet Union was deeply trapped in the Soviet-German battlefield and unable to deal with Japan), taking advantage of the opportunity to seize the rich land in Southeast Asia, defeating China and controlling all of China! Then digest with full force.
Now There is a drama in Japan: once Japan has effectively controlled Southeast Asia, China and other encroached lands, then if the United States slows down again, it will not face Japan as an island country, but the geopolitical power of the entire East Asian region, although the degree of development in East Asia at that time is not high, it is impossible to defeat the United States, but it is still possible to resist the United States, and with the passage of time, once Japan digests the region successfully, then Japan will replace China and become the hegemon of the Asia-Pacific region, so as to become the world's first power!
However, the odds of winning this gamble are very low, first of all, it is easy to sneak attack Pearl Harbor, it is difficult to continue to attack the United States; secondly, it is not so simple to conquer China, and sure enough, Japan has failed strategically, although the "southern operation" was successful, Japan conquered the whole of Southeast Asia, but China has always been stubbornly resisting, and the Japanese army has suffered a crushing defeat in the third Battle of Changsha; and the continued offensive against the United States is a total defeat, the Allies successfully in the Battle of the Coral Sea, preventing the Japanese Navy from continuing to advance, and even, Doolittle symbolically bombed Tokyo!
At this point in the war, Japan actually had no chance of winning.
It can be said that it is China's stubborn resistance that makes Japan mired in a quagmire, unable to integrate East Asia, and eventually fell into a strategic dilemma, and US President Roosevelt knows everything about this, he commented:
If China succumbs to isolation, you know what that means? This meant that the Japanese would not only free up a million to one and a half million troops from China, but would also arm another five to eight million Chinese. These armies of yellows would pounce like locusts, no, like lions, to Caucasian Australia, to India and Russia, to egypt, and then to the Germans in the Middle East. What else could Americans expect to do then? Oh, God just knew.
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This is a very pertinent evaluation.