Could Japan have won WW2 without interservice rivalry?
Upvote:1
The inter service rivalry in the Japanese military did exist, but examples of how that degraded fighting ability are not that prominent.
The IJN made a notable effort to reinforce the IJA on Guadalcanal, and lost a lot of ships, and especially lost a lot of trained naval aviators that they couldn't quickly replace. During the battles around Guadalcanal, most notably the Battle of Santa Cruz, Japan lost over 1/5 of their carrier pilots - such training requiring about a year. These were losses they couldn't replace.
Japan never intended to defeat the US. Remember Admiral Yamamoto's quote: "You can't invade America. There will be a rifle behind every blade of grass."
The intent was to disable the US navy, and reinforce their positions around their sources of oil and raw materials, so that any US naval attack would be made over a great distance and at great disadvantage.
Japan appeared to be hoping to recreate the decisive battle of Tsushima in their war with Russia, that led to Russia's withdrawal from that conflict, after the Baltic Fleet had endured a lengthy voyage.
After a similar defeat of the US navy, Japan expected a negotiated peace, with them in possession of the oil and raw materials they wanted.
Could Japan have won or prolonged the war, absent inter service rivalries? No, Japan didn't have the resources. At most, it could have prolonged the war enough to see use of more nuclear bombs.
The playing up of inter service rivalries in post war history may well be an attempt to further degrade an opponent as foolish rather than capable, much like the post war narrative that Hitler ordering that the ME262 jet fighter carry bombs kept Germany from having more of them.
The truth on the ME262 is: They didn't make more, because Germany couldn't get enough of the rare metals to make jet engines in sufficient quantity.
Upvote:4
No and probably no.
The industrial potential of Japan and the US was so disparate that Japan couldn't have won. Better coordination might have gained them a few months, which might have stretched things into 1946. Or not. Look at these numbers for aircraft production, for instance.
A much better strategic decisionmaking culture might have caused them not to attack the United States. There would still be the question where they would have gotten oil and steel. But that gets into the scope of bad alternate history novels.
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