An old man thinking about his political future in San Jacinto

 

Ian Kershaw (who wrote a highly acclaimed biography of Hitler) is quoted in Wikipedia as saying that defining Fascism is like nailing jelly to the wall, and yet modern critics of modern Republican politicians apply that term with aplomb.  It has in effect become a modern curse-word, plucked out of history, without serious modern meaning.  The safest definition involves leaving it in its historical setting and applying it to the political practices of Hitler and Mussolini, and time has rolled them both up and placed them in the historical waste basket.   Hitler with his remarkable intelligence and political power had nevertheless received little formal education.  His desire to conquer Europe would have been understandable by many of the powerful monarch of the middle-ages, but no practical modern politician would seek such a goal.  We see the weakness of something similar in Putin's desire to restore the Russian empire.  The leaders of various of the former national entities that had broken away from the USSR after its collapse have for the most part no desire to abandon their own political interests and allow Putin to incorporate them back into a moribund Russia.

The invention of the printing press altered or undercut all the old ways.   Wars had historically been fought over matters of religion.  One had to adhere to the religion of one's monarch or potentially be declared a heretic and executed.  But once copies of the Bible were printed by Gutenberg, any intellectual who was interested could read the language and have an opinion that might well be counter to the official teachings of Rome, and as time went on, Protestant intellectuals countered the teachings of both Calvin and Luther as well.  So fragmented has Christian doctrine become that the declaring of a single teaching has become so impracticable that it has been determined to be against the law in the West.  A Western state can no longer establish an official religion. 

Politics is sort of moving in the same direction as religion.  But whereas it is possible for an individual to declare that he or she is an atheist, it is not possible for an individual to declare that he does not believe in politics -- or is it?  Well, it sort of seems so.  At various times small groups opt out of society in some form as (sort of) happened during the Vietnam War when people were urged to make love and not war.  The actual political forces that made actual decisions (both Democrat and Republican) made war anyway.  But again, Gutenberg's press (in its modern iteration in the Internet and rapid world communication) is making war less convenient, and in the midst of turmoil that in earlier times (as happened in fairly recent times when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor) there was the opera Nixon in China.  Forget about the precise motivations which shifted and still shift about regarding that opera.  Its words, and in this case also its music altered (or was a symbol of the alteration) of the relationship between the U.S. and China, and even today when it seems the two nations are at serious odds with each other (and China no longer officially appreciates that opera) war between the two, given their economic involvement with each other, seems almost untenable.   Will China invade Taiwan?  Perhaps it wants to, but it is almost certainly trying to figure out a way to do it without going to war against America, and most likely America's current allies, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia and perhaps a few more in Southeast Asia.

Francis Fukuyama perhaps over-enthusiastically after the collapse of the Soviet Union, saw Liberal Democracy as having a clear path to becoming the dominate economy practiced by the rest of the world.  Fukuyama has been written off as being wrong since wars continue, but he didn't say wars would stop.  The opponents of Liberal Democracy are autocrats that are examples of Fukuyama's Last Man, leaders Thomas Carlyle would have recognized with more approval than most in the West now do -- people whose ambitions override the practicality of becoming a Liberal Democracy.  Putin, for example, isn't willing to abandon the glory that the Russian Empire once achieved.  Will a resurgent Russian Empire gather up many of the elements lost after the 1989 collapse of Communism?  We will see.  Russia may well impoverish itself in its war with Ukraine, and even if it wins some part of Ukraine at the end, it may be a Pyrrhic victory.  Other parts of the former USSR are gearing up to resist Putin, and NATO a previously paper tiger, is taking Russia's ambitions seriously and even if Russia takes back most of the Russian speaking part of the Ukraine as Samuel P. Huntington assumed in his Clash of Civilizations, they probably won't get most of those who speak Ukrainian. 

Back in China, the war with Chiang Kai-Shek is still sharp in the memory of many Chinese still alive today.  When Chiang moved his army to Formosa, Mao's forces weren't able to do anything to dislodge him.  Can Mao's political descendants now accomplish the task?  Not without something like suicidal results, results something like Putin is risking in his Quixotic quest to restore a Russia Empire. 

Meanwhile here in the U.S., can we afford to oppose all the autocrats that defy Fukuyama's prediction that Liberal Democracy is sure to win out over all the other superseded forms of government in the world?   Samuel Huntington, if he were alive today might be surprised at many of our modern choices.  I don't think he would have approved of our siding with Ukraine militarily.  He thought the Russian speaking part of Ukraine might logically become part of Russia, but the Ukrainian-speaking part would probably ally itself to the West.  Whatever happened, Huntington didn't, in my opinion, envision our going to war in opposition to Russia over Ukraine.  He saw Russia as being the Core nation in the Slavic world, and believed we should not interfere with Russia's choices, just as Russia shouldn't interfere with the core nation in the West, namely the U.S. in matters within the Western enclave of nations.   And, he would have said the same thing about our commitment to Taiwan, because China is the core nation in the Asian enclave of nations.

I am still fond of Samuel P. Huntington.  He wrote about the ongoing clashes of civilization, and now, living in the later results of such clashes, I wonder if we can afford to clash as much as some politicians would like.  Oh, I'm sure we can do it by printing more money to pay for our military expenditures (if China continues to like such an investment).   However, back here in San Jacinto, I recently turned 90 and my doctors seem to think I'm going to live several years longer, so I'm wondering if my retirement package, which seemed more than adequate in 1999 when after 39 years in aerospace I retired, will last as long as I do.  Should I look forward to making it to 100 as my doctors are encouraging me to anticipate, or should I take stock of our commitment as world policeman and decide I can't afford it?

On the Marianas Turkey Shoot

Had it been up to Admiral Mitscher, commander of Task Force 58, there never would have been a Turkey Shoot.  He was itching to send his planes after the Japanese fleet which was just out of range in an unknown direction.   He asked permission of Admiral Spruance to go after the Japanese carriers (the Japanese had in the time since Midway added three carriers, bringing their total [I think] to four. 

Admiral Spruance refused Mitscher permission.  The American fleet’s primary task was to provide support for the landing forces on Saipan.  The Japanese were dug in such that bombing and shell-fire couldn’t dislodge them.  That the task was difficult could in part be seen by the Army force being unable to keep up.  The Marines on either side of the Army advanced much more quickly leaving the American forces in a deep U shape which put the Marines at risk.  General Howling Mad Smith complained to Spruance and got him to give the order that the Army General (also named Smith) be replaced.  Much interagency acrimony was to ensue, but the General Smith’s replacement got the job done.   Saipan was bloody and difficult.  Spruance promised not to leave the landing forces unsupported as the Navy had done earlier at Guadalcanal. 

Mitscher hated not being able to go after the Japanese forces, but he followed orders and waited for the Japanese to land the first blow.  The nature of the Japanese was to exaggerate their successes and lie about their failures; so the Japanese Admiralty believed its pilots were more successful than they were and that far fewer of them had been shot down.  They believed they were sending a large competent fleet of planes toward the Americans at Saipan.  The Japanese planes with their inferior pilots that were supposed to be sent in irresistible waves to bomb the American carriers failed except in three cases to hit a carrier with a bomb.  They were either shot down by American pilots (one shot down 6 Japanese aircraft and another 7) or were hit by flak once they got near the American carriers.  Of the three Japanese pilots who managed to hit a carrier, the damage was minor and didn’t inhibit the carrier’s operation.  No carrier or any other ship of Task Force 58 was sunk.  Had the Japanese admiralty known the condition of their fleet, the true nature and quantity of their aircraft, and such matters as not having nearby land-based aircraft ready to assist in the attacks on the American carriers, they wouldn’t have ordered the attack.

It wasn’t Mitscher’s first choice to wait for the Japanese to strike the first blow, and Spruance probably thought Mitscher’s Task Force 58 would suffer more than it did; so the “turkey shoot” surprised everyone on both sides.

Reading about war in the Pacific Islands

In the past I was used to highlighting passages on the pages of hard copies in case I wanted to refer back to them.  Kindle offers something like that.  I can highlight Kindle passages, but I have never mastered successfully referring back to them.  Recently I have purchased hard copies as well.  Thus, I read the Kindle edition of Shattered Sword, but I had the hard copy available to make checking references easier.  I did not however highlight the hard copy; so in a recent discussion I had to rely upon my (faulty) memory instead of turning to hard-copy (or Kindle) highlighted passages. 

I am doing the same thing with Ian Toll’s The Conquering Tide, War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944.  I set it aside to work on Weinberg, but I got as far as the war on Saipan.  So I set Toll aside, sent for and read Saipan, The Battle that Doomed Japan in World II by James H. Hallas, 2019.  Hallas book was published later than Toll’s volume II (published 2015) but I was looking for the best history, not necessarily a history Toll referenced – except in the case of the Shattered Sword which Toll praised.  After a lot of trial and error I found the reference not at the beginning of Toll’s volume II but at the end of his Volume I, Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942:  “Taken together, Operations AL and MI represented the commitment of almost the entirety of the Imperial Japanese Navy, write Jon Parshall and Tony Tully in Shattered Sword (2005), their groundbreaking study of the Japanese experience at Midway; ‘all of its carriers, all of its battleships, all but four of its heavy cruisers, and the bulk of its lesser combatants.  Twenty-eight admirals would lead those forces into battle, and they would log more miles and consume more fuel in this single operation than was normally used in an entire year.”

Toll goes on to write [whether or not based upon Parshall and Tully I don’t remember], “The Midway operation was not a product of sound military planning.  It was a farrago of compromises struck to quell internal dissent and to balance the demands of rivals in the Combined Fleet and the naval General Staff.  Not surprisingly, it was shot through with contradictions, flaws, and unnecessary risks.  It exposed a fatal hubris and an unwarranted contempt for the enemy.  The plan spread Japanese forces too thinly over a huge expanse of the North Pacific, and relied on dubious conjectures about how the Americans would react.  It asked too much of a few elite aviators who had been flying and fighting almost without respite since December 7.  Though the Japanese were loath to admit it, the most experienced of their carrier aircrews were bone-weary, while the newcomers lacked the training and seasoning to equal the skill of the veterans.  In his subsequent report on the battle, Admiral Nagumo would observe that there had been ‘considerable turnover in personnel. . . .   Inexperienced flyers barely got to the point where they could make daytime landings on carriers.  It was found that even some of the more seasoned flyers had lost some of their skill.’”

On Japan not being able to produce good pilots later in the war

Years ago I read Samurai by Saburo Sakai.  Also the matter is covered in Toll and some others.  Japanese pilot training methods were exhaustive and time consuming.  Only a relatively small percentage of those who tried out were able to complete the training.  The Japanese pilots we encountered at the beginning were the best in the world.  But as they were killed off or wounded and could no longer fly, the Japanese had to change their methods.  There wasn’t time to train new pilots as thoroughly as they trained them in the past.  I can’t recall whether it was Sakai or one of the other Japanese aces who survived the war that said all of the pilots who washed out during his training were better than the pilots being turned out with abbreviated training toward the end of the war. 

As to planes being destroyed on carriers versus being shot down in combat – this occurred on both sides.  Launching planes from a carrier was time consuming, and if the enemy’s planes showed up before you got yours into the air then you had to stop launching and concentrate on saving your boat.  Lots of planes were destroyed on decks or down below if enemy planes were successful.  But at some point, almost all Japanese pilots being produced were inferior to American pilots.  Also, American planes at some point were superior to the Japanese.  The Japanese hadn’t time to produce a new design.  They tinkered with the Zero, but couldn’t make it as good as the later American planes.

Keegan vs Parshall and Tully on Midway

In regard to Keegan's The Second World War, published by Viking, 1989 being compared to others on the subject of Midway:

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, is 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.  

Japanese Hubris in WWII

In regard to Keegan's emphasis on chance.  It seems that Parshall & Tully's dealing so much from the standpoint of 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 up the idea of conquering China, Yamamoto took the Japanese into a war he, we are told, knew the Japanese couldn't win. 

Yamamoto's poor battle plan at Midway condemned the Japanese to early 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, I don't believe that was ever going to happen.  Neither the Japanese nor the Germans had the manpower nor the resources to win.