What if Japan attacked the Dutch East Indies in 1936?

[raharris1973]

What if Japan had attacked the Dutch East Indies in 1936, based on lobbying from the Navy to gain the valuable archipelago located at the strategic maritime crossroads of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, offering Japan a position outflanking Singapore and Manila Bay, and providing already extensively developed fuel resources to fuel Japan's Navy, Army, and economy under Japanese, rather than foreign control, and coincidentally, offering Naval Admiral, Captains and other officers a chance for glory and promotion?

Considered as a one-on-one struggle, as of 1936, Japan should be completely confident in its ability to win a near term victory over the Dutch in the East Indies, conquer the territory, and hold it against a Dutch counter-attack, given the distance any Dutch relief force would have to travel.

The archipelago's distance from Japan's land-based airbases would be a serious operational and logistic problem to overcome, and least for the most valuable, populous, and productive western and central islands of the East Indies, although IJN carriers could project limit airpower against most parts of the islands from the beginning. Engaging against enemy land-based air power in the defense with only carrier-based air would be risky and hazardous however.

An operational solution could be found, without stepping on the territory of other powers, like Britain, the USA, or France, by rapid successive sequential operations starting in the easternmost of the Dutch East Indies, where land-based Japanese aircraft (likely naval rather than army, but still land-based) could provide powerful support from bases in the Japanese Micronesian Mandated islands to back up combined Special Naval Landing Forces supported also by carrier-based aircraft and battleship bombardment, to rapidly capture Dutch airfields for Japanese use.

The Japanese, bringing along engineering troops, could follow up each successive island group seizure with rapid repairs of Dutch airfields, forward transport of land-based air, and attack on the next Dutch-owned objectives, in support of the Combined Fleet and landing forces.

A rapid pace of maneuver would be essential to keep defeating the Dutch in detail and prevent defensive consolidation, and reduce time for other powers to consider possible intervention in the bilateral conflict.

Once all the principal islands were secured and the major Dutch forces in the region defeated, their continued occupation would be a fait accompli, and peace treaty and war termination with Netherlands would be a diplomatic formality in all likelihood. The Netherlands, despite being an economic and financial power, were not a vast manufacturing, military, nor territorial power, nor highly populous and thus in a position to undertake a long-distance reconquest of the East Indies.

After establishing occupation, Japan could repair damaged facilities, reorient the oil and food exports to the Japanese imperial market, and theoretically emerge stronger and self-sufficient, having a naval/maritime complement to the Army's Manchukuo project.

Well, that's sounds great, so why didn't Japan do it? What could go wrong?

• Wasn't Japan bogged down in a war with China in 1936?
• 
  
• As it turns out, if it was a war, it was not a very hot one at this time. Japan enjoyed control over the Manchukuo and Inner Mongolian (Mengjiang) puppet states north of the Great Wall of China, and had compelled China to keep large parts of Beijing's province of Hopei demilitarized under the He-Umezu truce agreement. For most of 1936 until the Xi'an incident of December, Chiang remained preoccupied with preparing an encirclement and annihilation campaign against the Communists who had survived the Long March in Shaanxi province and ignored calls to push back against Japan. Chiang did not start pushing back against Japan until July 1937, and the Japanese were not getting political signals he might be heading in that direction, until after he paused anti-Communist operations during/after the December 1936 Xi'an incident and increased resistance and unity talk.
• 
  
• What about intervention of other powers, like the USA or Britain, the Philippines, Malaya and Borneo are in between the Dutch East Indies and Japan you know?
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• The Japanese could quite plausibly calculate by this time, middle or late 1936, that none of these powers would intervene directly or effectively in a Dutch East Indies war, no matter what they said. Such a calculation could quite plausibly be correct. It would give us a pair of equally interesting scenarios if the Japanese calculation turned out to be correct, OR, if it turned out to be incorrect, and another power intervened in the war.
• 
  
• Why should Japan have confidence in non-intervention by outsiders? 1) Outside powers and the League of Nations had not militarily intervened, nor economically sanctioned Japan over the Manchurian invasion of 1931-33, and the adjunct short-term Shanghai invasion, despite diplomatic condemnation. 2) More recently outside powers had not intervened militarily, or sanctioned effectively or persistently, against Italy's invasion of Abyssinia, and ultimately its annexation from 1935-to April 1936, despite condemning it. They tried some sanctions but did not persist. Relevant to Japan's situation, Abyssinia was adjacent to British and French colonies, but still they permitted Italy to expand next to them and to use Suez. This might be explained away by economic or racial factors. Cynically, Abyssinia was poor and hardly exported anything, so maybe it wasn't worth a struggle to London and Paris, but the East Indies produced valuable petroleum and hardwood and limited rubber, rice and coffee exports of greater commercial value. Or perhaps white leaders in London, Paris, Washington could tolerate white Italians conquering black Africans, but not tolerate Asians ousting white Dutch rulers to take control over a large Asian people and Asian land. But other events of the 1930s suggested that weak will in the west and aversion to conflict was about a more general preference than just racial bias: 3) In 1934 (or 1935?) Britain had signed the Anglo-German Naval Treaty, showing a lack of determination to hold its full degree of naval superiority over Germany, even in the North Sea close to home, and 4) In 1936, France (and Britain) failed to resist the German remilitarization of the Rhineland, right upon her border, closer than the metropolitan Netherlands is to France, making any concept of Paris or London extending deterrence out to a distant Dutch *colony* less credible and more of a stretch. 5) All West European powers showed preoccupation from July 1936 onward, with the Spanish Civil War, which was turning out to be a protracted struggle, not a quick coup d'etat. Germany and Italy were intervening directly in support of the Spanish Nationalist rebels. The British were pulling the French into the unsuccessful Non-Intervention Committee and policy, to try to contain the conflict, and not actively countering Italo-German influence or encouraging France to do so (in fact discouraging it). As another bonus from a Japanese point of view, the Spanish Civil War was drawing heavy attention from the Soviet Union and allied ideological movements, leading to deployment of Soviet advisors, weapons and international volunteers, which diverted Soviet attention from northeast Asia and the Manchukuo-Korea frontier.
• 
  
• This accounts well for the alternate preoccupations and likely hesitations of European powers to intervene in the Indies. What about the USA? From a Japanese vantage point, the Roosevelt Administration's first term had been almost exclusively focused on domestic policy, not passing anything like a two-ocean Navy bill, with any naval construction advertised more as a jobs program than a security program. FDR was preoccupied with his reelection. If anything, his foreign policy as shown in the Americas, was one of retrenchment from intervention in neighbors' political affairs. With respect to the Far East, the Americans formally set a timetable for the independence of the Philippines in 1945, through the Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1935. Despite some posturing of the US Navy at the tail end of the Hoover Administration during the Shanghai affair, and the failure of any Naval talks in the mid-30s, the relative quiet that had settled on the China-Manchuria front since 1933 had not added any particularly urgent stressors to US-Japanese relations by 1936. America was somewhat economically recovered from its depths of 1933, but hardly looking outward, except for trade opportunities, which it sought with Japan as much as with China and European colonies like the DEI.
• And in case, should any of these powers, America, Britain, France, the USSR, turn against Japan in the medium term or long-term, the Dutch East Indies would be a great strategic asset for Japan to possess from the beginning of any serious conflict escalation, rather than not to have.
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• Didn't the Japanese Army, not Navy, run everything in 1930s Japan?
• 
  
• It's more complicated than that. Army officers and societies organized and roamed free making up their own foreign policy as they went along (like the Manchuria incident of 1931, and earlier and later incidents), assassinating politicians and generals they felt insufficiently supportive, and attempting coups d'etat, from the 1928-1936 timeframe. But so did some Navy officer groups and societies. In February 1936 a spiritualist Army faction attempted a coup and made some headway, but was suppressed by an angry court, Army senior command, and Naval forces. The plotters, unlike in previous cases were sternly dealt with, being either executed or forced to commit suicide. The result was sort of a compromise, since the Army coup was stopped, but only with the help of other parts of the Army, with ideas not 100% dissimilar from the plotters. Initiative coups and assassinations of politicians and generals pretty much ceased at this point from military personnel. But people always worried they could happen if top leaders adopted policy broadly unpopular with the Army or Navy. The Army and Navy generally had different priorities, but both got increased funding and their share of personnel and equipment budgets, and policy influence, in the spoils system.
• 
  
• When considering Japanese military factions and their different priorities, and the Japanese Navy and Army and their different priorities and positions, it is important to remember that differences =/= diametrical opposition and differences =/=mutual hatred. Neither service was a monolith, and both Army and Navy contained "Go North" and "Go South" advocates and it is easy to provide quotes from both.
• 
  
• Edward Drea, writing on this era has noted that one of Emperor Hirohito's recurring critiques and lines of questioning toward the Army regarding its course of action in Manchuria and China was whether Japan was overreaching and investing in an unbalanced commitment to the Army in the mainland, and not taking enough care to keep Japan's Navy and Air forces and maritime position adequately strong to deal with possible threats to Japan's interests from the USA or Britain.
• 
  
• So, I could imagine it being plausible that a strong, enterprising Navy-centric group, joined by some Army officers and Civilian officials with similar ideas and economic justifications, could build a powerful case for domination of the Dutch East Indies in the mid-1930s.

 

[raharris1973]

If Japan did launched this fight in, for example, December 1936, and completed its invasion occupation of the DEI in about 10 weeks or three months, which seems a generous amount of time for Dutch resistance if Japan is focused on this one objective, Britain's Australian Dominion would be the most freaked out. The Empire is already in shock from the abdication crisis, but bold "yellow peril" showing up just to the north makes this look trivial by comparison.

Australia, with its Papua New Guinea Mandate, the Malaya and Borneo colonies, and the Dominion of India would want reassurances from Britain. The Singapore base would be outflanked. The Americans would similarly be disturbed and find the Philippines with Manila Bay, Subic Bay and Clark Airfield surrounded in a Japanese-controlled arc running north, east and south of the islands from Taiwan/Formosa to the Mandates to the East Indies.

In the event of European war or crisis, India, and Australia and New Zealand especially, would have enough home defense worries to make it unlikely they could spare any troops to support the British Empire outside of their home Indo-Pacific region. Australia and New Zealand would probably seek closer diplomatic ties to the USA for their own security, and many in the US Roosevelt Administration, State Department and Navy would like the idea, considering the extra exposure and vulnerability of the Philippines and America's other scattered Pacific possessions, but America's extant defense posture as of 1936 is very weak and the idea of commitments outside the hemisphere is very controversial.

France would be highly concerned for its Indochina colony, but would be able to spare little for it, already struggling to rearm to deal with the growing German threat in Europe, Italian naval competition in the Mediterranean, and trying to prevent spillover from the Spanish Civil War drawing France into war or internal conflict.

The Japanese military and Kempeitai (secret police) and bureaucrats and zaibatsu will have plenty to do in the occupation of the DEI and its restoration to full production. To the degree Tokyo and senior Army staff are turning the dial on pressure with the frontier with China in early 1937, they may not press it as much as historical because of other available adventures and tasks in the Indies. However, the escalation to full-scale war in China in OTL July 1937 was multi-sided. It was not driven only, or even primarily, by Tokyo based Army commanders trying to alter the previous status quo, but by initiatives and overreactions by local Japanese commanders, and by this point, just as important, a Chinese Nationalist side that was determined to demonstrate it was not going to take it lying down anymore. So, any lack of outbreak of Sino-Japanese war in July 1937 would probably be no more than a delay, not total prevention.

The Japanese presence in the DEI would almost certainly stimulate earlier than historical British and American naval building oriented toward Indo-Pacific defense. For Britain, it is likely to make her lean harder into appeasement, if that is somehow possible.

When the probable Sino-Japanese War breaks out, the additional pre-existing Japanese occupation of the East Indies could cut two opposing ways for British and American policy. On the one hand, since the Japanese "cat" is among their colonial "pigeons" more boldly and dangerously placed, the priority on building up defenses of Australia, Malaya, the Philippines, and Japan's obvious ability to lash out may mean London and Washington are more hesitant to aid China and have less to spare. Equally or more likely, they may see supporting the Chinese resistance as a greater imperative than OTL, and do more of it, earlier. In any case, I would expect Soviet support for China to be similar to OTL.

--------

 

[Wendell]

There is not a good reason for Japan not to do this in 1936. At that point, other powers are grumbling about Japan but still readily selling Tokyo oil, steel, and rubber. Strategically, the need is not yet there for Japan to branch out so far, especially with neither the Philippines nor mainland Southeast Asia as springboards, and it's not clear at that point that the supply situation will seriously change.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

The United States sold oil to Japan until 1940, so the latter would not invade SEA until WWII started (arguably, it did in 1937)

 

[raharris1973]

Please note, there was no particularly good reason to invade Manchuria either, except to show off, and see what you could get away with.

Expansive interest in Southeast Asia, and concepts of Southeast Asia as containing essential economic resources for Japan went back future to the New Order in Asia concept (1936) and Nanshin-ron concept going back to the late 19th century.

Nanshin-ron - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So, while a fully articulated plan for all Southeast Asia seizure was not worked out and pursued until WWII in Europe began, the importance of the region to Japan was recognized at one level. Japanese Naval war planning since 1907 had fixated on the United States (and some may have been done since 1899 or so) and from an early point, it dwelt on landing operations in the Philippines and Guam, to seize as bait for the US fleet. Geographically, the Philippines are not far from the Dutch East Indies. Included in the in the Japanese Navy (IJN)'s calculation of the US as the most likely and most dangerous eventual foe, a logical assumption would be that while peacetime trade with the USA in everything, including fuels, is just fine, in wartime with America, no American fuels or metals would be available. - rendering all the peacetime oil import statistics irrelevant, except for pre-war stockpile building.

I have not seen the direct data on it, but at some point after Britain terminated the Anglo-Japanese alliance in 1922, the Japanese Navy started doing contingency planning against Britain and its main regional bases like Singapore. [Britain certainly started contingency planning, and infrastructure building, to counter Japan by the 1930s] Japan probably had at least rudimentary anti-British, anti-Singapore plans on the shelf by the time of the Shanghai incident of 1932 and the Lytton Commission report that year.

Geographically, it is not much of a stretch from having Philippines or Singapore related plans to developing a new, East Indies focused plan.

 

[Wendell]

Geographically, it is not much of a stretch from having Philippines or Singapore related plans to developing a new, East Indies focused plan.

This is true, but taking the Dutch East Indies without either is practically an impossibility for the attacking Japanese.

As for Manchuria, that offered considerable strategic value and abutted Japanese-ruled Korea as well as Port Arthur.

 

[raharris1973]

This is true, but taking the Dutch East Indies without either is practically an impossibility for the attacking Japanese.

Nonsense, the thing about island objectives is that is even easier to pick and choose to seize them a la carte, taking some, and not others in between, than it is to do with land targets [especially when they are under separate sovereignties and you have local naval superiority], yet for some reason people are obsessed with the insular Southeast Asian islands and Western Pacific islands being an inseparable, sequential "set" that have to rigidly be taken stepwise north to south.

They need not be. In the age of New Imperialism, colonial powers seized widely separated archipelagoes scattered far from each other, and interspersed with other great powers' holdings, across the globe, and it was not a deal-breaking obstacle. To be fair, most of the time, it was against weak natives, not directly against other European/American powers with comparable industrial technology and weapons. But the potential was always *there* for comparable powers to interfere with these takeovers. They just usually did not judge it worth it. Or if they objected, they postured and made a compromise short of war. Britain could have vetoed any other countries island expansion in the Age of New Imperialism, but did not exercise its veto in all cases against all other powers because it was not worth the costs and hassle to Britain. And powers with more modern than indigenous weapons could steal overseas territory from other countries with modern, even if not quite as modern weapons. Italy stole the Dodecanese and Libya from the Ottomans in 1911 and 1912. Now that was relatively close. But the USA seized the Philippines and Guam from Spain, over half a world away, without seizing any bases between, except Hawaii. In early eras of naval competition, the British, French, Spanish, Dutch all stole and stole back islands in close proximity to each other under each other's noses. Island geographies don't need to be a single power monochrome of monopoly control, they can have a checkerboard pattern of diverse control.

Without the Philippines *or* Singapore-Malaya, Japan can project a significant force to one part of the DEI, the east, and from there, to the rest. It lately demonstrated that amount of expeditionary capability in Manchuria and Shanghai earlier in the 1930s. Japan also demonstrated expeditionary warfare capability at a much lower technology level than 1942, with its siege of Qingdao from September-November 1914. And Japan's Navy demonstrated its logistic capability to simultaneously seize widely separated, by thousands of miles, enemy island objectives, in the space of a single month, throughout the Pacific, under the relatively low technology conditions of October 1914, with a limited number of radios and reconnaissance aircraft. Japan's starting points towards German Micronesia from the Bonins in 1914 is pretty comparable to its starting point in the Palaus group within the Mandate to the eastern part of the Dutch East Indies (containing New Guinea, the Moluccas, Halmahera, and Keran*), and while Japan's 1936-37 forces won't have 1942 levels of aircraft, radio, or other tech, they'll be much more lavishly tech'ed up than the Japanese forces of 1914.

To be fair to the Dutch, the main advantage they will have in defense is that they present larger targets with more depth, requiring large invasion forces, and possessing larger garrisons and police forces than German Micronesia had in 1914. But size would be a double-edged thing for the Dutch. Bigger islands mean more potential landing zones to guard. There may be more defenders and more local labor to set to defensive works, but only the Dutch and Eurasians and probably Chinese are truly reliable supporters of the Dutch defense. Most natives will be pretty indifferent.

Without intervention by an outside stronger power - and by that I mean shooting engagement by third party naval and air forces, not just supplies and equipment for the Dutch, I think Japanese victory, Dutch defeat is assured.

Direct Royal Navy engagement in the struggle, especially if timely, now that would be a game changer. But that is a political decision for London, Canberra, Simla, etc.

*from there the next target set is the Celebes Sulawesi, Timor and the adjacent string of islands, and eastern Dutch Borneo/Kalimantan. The final set of island targets are western Dutch Borneo Kalimantan, Java, Sumatra, and their smaller surrounding islands. Japan's 1942 invasion did not use separate forces for each of these sub-groups it made repeated use of a smaller number of the same combat units seizing objectives and moving on.

 

[Wendell]

Nonsense, the thing about island objectives is that is even easier to pick and choose to seize them a la carte, taking some, and not others in between, than it is to do with land targets [especially when they are under separate sovereignties and you have local naval superiority], yet for some reason people are obsessed with the insular Southeast Asian islands and Western Pacific islands being an inseparable, sequential "set" that have to rigidly be taken stepwise north to south.

They need not be. In the age of New Imperialism, colonial powers seized widely separated archipelagoes scattered far from each other, and interspersed with other great powers' holdings, across the globe, and it was not a deal-breaking obstacle. To be fair, most of the time, it was against weak natives, not directly against other European/American powers with comparable industrial technology and weapons. But the potential was always *there* for comparable powers to interfere with these takeovers. They just usually did not judge it worth it. Or if they objected, they postured and made a compromise short of war. Britain could have vetoed any other countries island expansion in the Age of New Imperialism, but did not exercise its veto in all cases against all other powers because it was not worth the costs and hassle to Britain. And powers with more modern than indigenous weapons could steal overseas territory from other countries with modern, even if not quite as modern weapons. Italy stole the Dodecanese and Libya from the Ottomans in 1911 and 1912. Now that was relatively close. But the USA seized the Philippines and Guam from Spain, over half a world away, without seizing any bases between, except Hawaii. In early eras of naval competition, the British, French, Spanish, Dutch all stole and stole back islands in close proximity to each other under each other's noses. Island geographies don't need to be a single power monochrome of monopoly control, they can have a checkerboard pattern of diverse control.

Without the Philippines *or* Singapore-Malaya, Japan can project a significant force to one part of the DEI, the east, and from there, to the rest. It lately demonstrated that amount of expeditionary capability in Manchuria and Shanghai earlier in the 1930s. Japan also demonstrated expeditionary warfare capability at a much lower technology level than 1942, with its siege of Qingdao from September-November 1914. And Japan's Navy demonstrated its logistic capability to simultaneously seize widely separated, by thousands of miles, enemy island objectives, in the space of a single month, throughout the Pacific, under the relatively low technology conditions of October 1914, with a limited number of radios and reconnaissance aircraft. Japan's starting points towards German Micronesia from the Bonins in 1914 is pretty comparable to its starting point in the Palaus group within the Mandate to the eastern part of the Dutch East Indies (containing New Guinea, the Moluccas, Halmahera, and Keran*), and while Japan's 1936-37 forces won't have 1942 levels of aircraft, radio, or other tech, they'll be much more lavishly tech'ed up than the Japanese forces of 1914.

To be fair to the Dutch, the main advantage they will have in defense is that they present larger targets with more depth, requiring large invasion forces, and possessing larger garrisons and police forces than German Micronesia had in 1914. But size would be a double-edged thing for the Dutch. Bigger islands mean more potential landing zones to guard. There may be more defenders and more local labor to set to defensive works, but only the Dutch and Eurasians and probably Chinese are truly reliable supporters of the Dutch defense. Most natives will be pretty indifferent.

Without intervention by an outside stronger power - and by that I mean shooting engagement by third party naval and air forces, not just supplies and equipment for the Dutch, I think Japanese victory, Dutch defeat is assured.

Direct Royal Navy engagement in the struggle, especially if timely, now that would be a game changer. But that is a political decision for London, Canberra, Simla, etc.

*from there the next target set is the Celebes Sulawesi, Timor and the adjacent string of islands, and eastern Dutch Borneo/Kalimantan. The final set of island targets are western Dutch Borneo Kalimantan, Java, Sumatra, and their smaller surrounding islands. Japan's 1942 invasion did not use separate forces for each of these sub-groups it made repeated use of a smaller number of the same combat units seizing objectives and moving on.

Apt points, but The Dutch East Indies are not Samoa, or even Taiwan for that matter. New Imperialism island seizures were most effective when there was not a previous imperial power present or when one's claim or hold was at best dubious. There's a reason why it's rare for colonies of any size and/or depth to change hands by outright conquest.

With respect to the Philippines and Guam, there were no plausible forward bases other than Hawaii or some other power's turf to grab them from the direction of the United States. It would be different if the Dutch or British were trying to take Manila and Hagatna from Spain, as they had islands in proximity to function as springboards. From the United States, there was really only Hawaii as the islands in what would later be the TTPI were either too small for serious naval basing or also Spanish. I would also add that the Pacific theater was more of a sideshow as the war was waged over Cuba on which the U.S. had focused to one extent or another since the Ostend Manifesto decades earlier, and the Caribbean more broadly was in the American sphere of interest at least since the Adams Onis Treaty. It's very different to postulate the Japanese essentially on a whim deciding to take on a massive archipelago with no forward basing and almost certain opposition from another power. British intervention should be seen as a certainty barring distraction elsewhere.

 

[Death's Companion]

I feel the French or British (and the Americans) would have a lot to say about this.

 

[raharris1973]

It's very different to postulate the Japanese essentially on a whim deciding to take on a massive archipelago with no forward basing and almost certain opposition from another power.

I don't know what it is you don't understand about the Mandates being forward basing.

Do you think the Mandated islands Japan owned from WWI through the entire interwar era, especially the Palau islands in their southwestern portion, did not exist, or somehow could not stage air or naval forces for operations further afield?

Are you saying the lines illustrated on these maps from the OTL WWII Japanese "centrifugal offensive" in Southeast Asia and the western Pacific are lying, deceptive, misleading?

File:Second world war asia 1937-1942 map en6.png - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Map of WWII: The Dutch East Indies Dec 1941 - April 1942

https://i0.wp.com/amti2016.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/3.jpg

With reference to the third map in particular, the Japanese force that took Davao from the American/Filipino forces after Dec. 8, 1941 came from Palau, and it subsequently attacked many parts of the DEI. It actually could have gone direct from Palau looking at the distances.

The Palau (Pelelieu, Koror, Anguar) an island group the Japanese had owned since 1914. Forces from here also assaulted Legazpi in southeastern Luzon. Both the Davao and Legazpi operations (and early operations from the Carolines in OTL against Australian owned Bismarcks and New Guinea) were conducted at ranges easily reaching several eastern islands of the Dutch East Indies.

 

[raharris1973]

But I also accept that third party intervention is a real possibility, and a quite interesting one.

The idea of all the other powers standing aside while Japan lifts the East Indies from the Netherlands may turn out to be fatal miscalculation for Japan. Under pressure from imperial interests and Australia, which perhaps threatens to declare itself an independent republic and seek American protection, Britain under the Baldwin Government declares war on Japan - possibly after Japan disregards an ultimatum to halt and reverse its invasion of the Dutch East Indies, well that will make for an interesting medium-sized war at the tail end of 1936 and early 1937.

Britain would get itself on a war footing and dispatch fleet units to Singapore, and reinforcements of men, ships and aircraft to Australia and the Pacific. Britain's early exertions in war production, mobilization, and deployment would have growing pains, and more men would be immediately be called to the colors of RN, RAF and Army ranks to fill them out to handle needs of the Far East war and ongoing sores like ongoing Arab Revolt in Palestine. Besides continuing its crackdown there, Britain might accelerate its move to the Arab-appeasing policies of 1939 White Paper to substantially restrict and put a 10 year limit on Jewish immigration and land purchases, foreclosing prospects of a Jewish majority there, to make things more quiet.

With prompt action, and the Japanese making their approach through the Dutch East Indies from an east to west axis mainly, the British may be at risk of losing Sarawak and Sabah and Brunei in Borneo, maybe - but not Malaya and Singapore, which the Japanese are unlikely to be able to approach in strength with a combination of land-based AirPower and landing forces in anything like a timely fashion before defenses are prepared and reinforcements arrive. With British assistance, the Dutch should certainly fend off any Japanese attempts to land at Sumatra, and the Dutch and British together could well entirely repulse, or stall, any Japanese invasions of Java. Depending on the tactics and circumstances and locations of battle - proximity to each side's air bases, night fighting versus day fighting, commander skill, luck - each side can suffer some high profile naval losses.

The Americans in all likelihood would not rouse themselves to the defense or direct combat assistance of the British, Australians or Dutch, but they would wish for their victory, and before long suspend exports of raw materials and war material to Japan. The Canadians and probably South Africans through would declare war on the Japanese and send forces to help out their Imperial partners.

The French would not see the Pacific and Far East as their priority, Europe would remain so. They would not "like" participating in a Far East war or devote major national efforts to it. However, by the same token since they want and feel they *need* Britain's strategic backing in European affairs, they would probably not turn down any direct requests for military assistance or use of French facilities in the Far East in Indochina, New Caledonia, Polynesia, by the British Empire, even if this caused a Japanese declaration of war. Even if this incurred damage to the French Empire in the region, earning reciprocal British obligation to France's security in Europe, and not alienating Britain from such ties, would probably be worth it to Paris. So there is a decent chance France would find itself at war with Japan if Britain does. France also would not mind *the Netherlands* owing it favors possibly redeemable in Europe as well.

Overall Japan would be contained early in this war, with a slow rollback, that, without participation of a power like the USSR, is not guaranteed to get Japan out of Manchuria and Korea. Without participation of America, it is not guaranteed to see Japan totally defeated and occupied, merely pushed back from its conquests, some of the China Seas, and Micronesia, after a prolonged submarine campaign.


---Another aspect of any Japanese-Dutch War turning into an Anglo-Japanese War is that it could lead right back to renewed combat in Chinese waters and on Chinese land, with Japan seizing Hong Kong and attacking British forces in the concession areas of China's ports like Shanghai and Tianjin. Chiang might stay neutral if it is appearing to him the British are not offering any revision to treaty port status and seem to be losing, and the Japanese are not spilling over much while they focus on the British, but if the British are offering some reform in the system, and more importantly money and weapons for the long-haul he thinks he can use to reclaim Manchuria, Chiang would become interested in anti-Japanese co-belligerency alongside Britain. Britain would like to make use of the Chinese territory for access to land close enough to bomb the Japanese home islands and inlets in which to hide submarines. It can be a bum costly deal for China though, with the strong Japanese forces in Manchuria and Korea lashing out extensively across northern and eastern China in retaliation for China siding with Britain. But, with this type of coalition forming, Stalin in the USSR may think it a good time to avenge the Tsarist defeat of 1905 and attack Manchuria, Korea, and Sakhalin from the north to demonstrate the new capabilities Socialist Russia has. Lots of possibilities for a different world unfolding here. If the grandest possible anti-Japanese coalition emerges in 1937, the experience of working together there might carry over to a cooperative policy in Europe in Spain by 1938, and in joint support to back Czechoslovakia's territorial integrity that year.

 

[Wendell]

I don't know what it is you don't understand about the Mandates being forward basing.

Do you think the Mandated islands Japan owned from WWI through the entire interwar era, especially the Palau islands in their southwestern portion, did not exist, or somehow could not stage air or naval forces for operations further afield?

Are you saying the lines illustrated on these maps from the OTL WWII Japanese "centrifugal offensive" in Southeast Asia and the western Pacific are lying, deceptive, misleading?

File:Second world war asia 1937-1942 map en6.png - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Map of WWII: The Dutch East Indies Dec 1941 - April 1942

https://i0.wp.com/amti2016.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/3.jpg

With reference to the third map in particular, the Japanese force that took Davao from the American/Filipino forces after Dec. 8, 1941 came from Palau, and it subsequently attacked many parts of the DEI. It actually could have gone direct from Palau looking at the distances.

The Palau (Pelelieu, Koror, Anguar) an island group the Japanese had owned since 1914. Forces from here also assaulted Legazpi in southeastern Luzon. Both the Davao and Legazpi operations (and early operations from the Carolines in OTL against Australian owned Bismarcks and New Guinea) were conducted at ranges easily reaching several eastern islands of the Dutch East Indies.

Look, Palau and Saipan to the Philippines maybe makes sense. Palau to New Guinea makes sense. But the moment the Japanese set foot in New Guinea, Australia will be waiting. Maybe you can do Palau to the islands northeast of Sulawesi, and then onto Manado, but the Japanese cannot afford to have the Americans at their backs via the Philippines and the British in what's now Sabah coming over to back up the Dutch. The moment the Japanese hit the Philippines, it's game over for Tokyo if the Dutch East Indies are assaulted at the same time.

EDIT: Also, the Durch and the British her very much tied down in Europe in 1941/1942. This is not the case in 1937.

 

[raharris1973]

Look, Palau and Saipan to the Philippines maybe makes sense. Palau to New Guinea makes sense. But the moment the Japanese set foot in New Guinea, Australia will be waiting. Maybe you can do Palau to the islands northeast of Sulawesi, and then onto Manado, but the Japanese cannot afford to have the Americans at their backs via the Philippines and the British in what's now Sabah coming over to back up the Dutch. The moment the Japanese hit the Philippines, it's game over for Tokyo if the Dutch East Indies are assaulted at the same time.

EDIT: Also, the Durch and the British her very much tied down in Europe in 1941/1942. This is not the case in 1937.

Do you have anything to present on Anglo-Dutch or American-Dutch mutual defense treaties existing in 1936 or 1937? Or is your concept that British Borneo, Australian Papua New Guinea, and the American Philippines Commonwealth cast an automatic protective force field on adjacent Dutch territories more of an intuition and inference?

Many powers, even great power, even Britain itself, have stood aside rather than fight, even when an aggressive but weaker power has grabbed territory adjacent to its own. And aggressors have grabbed territory of a relatively weak neighbor, despite a more formidable power being right on the other side of that power.

As of 1936, the most relevant example to all parties involved, the Japanese, Dutch, British, Americans, and French, would be the example of the Italian conquest of Abyssinia from 1935-36. The Italian invasion, very unpopular with the British public and outrageous to it, depended on using a British controlled international waterway for its main and most convenient resupply route, the Suez Canal. Italian naval ships and troop-laden ships passed through the Canal and right by sensitive British territorial protectorates and bases in Alexandria, Egypt, Port Said, Port Sudan, Aden, on their way to Italian pre-owned ports in Eritrea and Somaliland to reinforce the Abyssinia campaign. Britain could not be absolutely sure Italy would not suddenly descend on any of these. Italy couldn't be absolutely sure Britain wouldn't suddenly close the canal and blockade the backs of Italian forces in East Africa and Abyssinia, trapping them all and leading them to another Adua-like humiliation, without invading and occupying Egypt and Sudan for territorial contiguity. But Italy was fairly comfortable accepting this risk. And Britain felt no instant fight or flight reflex. Even though Italian acquisition of Abyssinia, admittedly no economic prize, expanded the border of Italian holdings in East Africa, and thus the Italian ground threat, to a border length of a 1,000 or 2,000 miles which huge, previously unexposed sections of British East Africa/Kenya, British Somaliland, and Sudan. The Italian move similarly surrounded the rear of French Djibouti, which the Italians had mounted claims to in propaganda in the past. Italy did it, right under the noses of Paris and London, and Tokyo saw this.

Another recent example was the German reoccupation of the Rhineland. Not quite as similar a situation, but still comparable. The Germans ostentatiously remilitarized and marched troops into the Rhineland in March 1936, a territory that was to remain demilitarized not only by the Treaty of Versailles, but by the non-coerced Pact of Locarno. But none of the neighboring powers abutting the Rhineland, France, Belgium, nor Netherlands, took forceful action of any kind. Tokyo saw this.

Japan in 1931-33 occupied all of Manchuria, including its central and northern portions, that shoved right into the Soviet Union's Far Eastern "armpit" mere scores of miles of the Soviet Union's vital main Trans-Siberian Railway line. And in northern Manchuria, it occupied the zone and tracks of the Soviet owned Chinese Eastern railway that ran across the region like a shortcut from Chita to Vladivostok, and the USSR had defended with extreme violence, as recently as the summer of 1929. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union maintained sovereign ground, naval and air bases in northern Sakhalin island and the Maritime province and Vladivostok, fortified and and sitting astride Sea of Japan shipping lanes, capable at any time of disrupting ground lines of communications between Japanese troops in Manchuria, Korea, and Japan, and capable of disrupting raw materials transport across the Sea of Japan from the ports of northeastern Korea. Yet somehow, even despite border clashes and probes throughout the years, Japan and the Soviet Union shared a thousands miles long jigsaw interlocking border from 1931 onward, only going to full-scale war in the 14th year, 1945. Japan also ran a short occupation of Shanghai in early 1932, bombarding and occupying Chinese districts of the city directly abutting international (British & American protected) and French Concession areas. It did not cause any of those powers to go to war. They did posture naval forces and they expressed diplomatic concern, and there was a diplomatic compromise settlement, but their Chinese opponents had to backdown as much as the Japanese in the short-run. The important thing is getting close to British, American, French nerves didn't make them spastically launch a war. Tokyo knew all this.

......And there had been other examples earlier on - During the Spanish American War, the Americans attacked, invaded, and occupied the Spanish Philippines and Guam, basically out of the blue and with no context or pretext other than a war had started - all the context and pretext between Spain and America was over Cuba, a world away. This suddenly placed America sensitively close to Britain's Borneo colony (it indirectly inherited the Sulu Sultanate's claim to Sabah actually), and to the Hong Kong Crown Colony, and close to France's Indochina. But neither power opposed the sudden, random American acquisition in the region. Nor did Britain oppose Germany's much more peaceful, but random purchase of Spain's Micronesian colonies later that year, or Germany's more violent seizure of Qingdao port in China's waters in 1897, not far from British concession ports in Shanghai and Tianjin. Britain didn't freak out about German acquisition and conquest of the Bismarck Archipelago northeast Papua New Guinea in the 1880s to go to war over it, even though the Dutch, and their own Australian New South Wales Colony were also very much interested in, and active on that island.

Post-1936 and 1937 experience also showed Japanese forces conducting operations throughout China, that were adjacent to western concession areas, where bitter fighting spilled over and affected westerners, but not enough to cause a fatal breach or war between Japan and any of them before 1941. This was the case despite stressors like the Panay incident (with America, Dec 1937), and even the blockade of Britain's Tianjin concession (summer 1939), and despite the campaign that conquered Guangzhou/Canton putting Japanese forces right at the doorstep of Britain's Hong Kong Crown Colony, which incidentally, was a British gun-running transhippment point on behalf of the Nationalist Chinese all the way until December 8th, 1941.

Japan and other powers were capable of managing geographic proximity, on land and sea, without all-out war breaking out between them, for lengthy periods, when that made the most sense to both. By the time Japan did its Strike South in OTL Dec. 7-8 1941, it did not make sense, to Japan, to geographically discriminate the various parts of Southeast Asia and West Pacific - but that had to do with all the accumulated circumstances - risks and opportunities, of that time and place, it didn't have to obtain in all times, places, circumstances.

 

[Wendell]

Do you have anything to present on Anglo-Dutch or American-Dutch mutual defense treaties existing in 1936 or 1937? Or is your concept that British Borneo, Australian Papua New Guinea, and the American Philippines Commonwealth cast an automatic protective force field on adjacent Dutch territories more of an intuition and inference?

Many powers, even great power, even Britain itself, have stood aside rather than fight, even when an aggressive but weaker power has grabbed territory adjacent to its own. And aggressors have grabbed territory of a relatively weak neighbor, despite a more formidable power being right on the other side of that power.

As of 1936, the most relevant example to all parties involved, the Japanese, Dutch, British, Americans, and French, would be the example of the Italian conquest of Abyssinia from 1935-36. The Italian invasion, very unpopular with the British public and outrageous to it, depended on using a British controlled international waterway for its main and most convenient resupply route, the Suez Canal. Italian naval ships and troop-laden ships passed through the Canal and right by sensitive British territorial protectorates and bases in Alexandria, Egypt, Port Said, Port Sudan, Aden, on their way to Italian pre-owned ports in Eritrea and Somaliland to reinforce the Abyssinia campaign. Britain could not be absolutely sure Italy would not suddenly descend on any of these. Italy couldn't be absolutely sure Britain wouldn't suddenly close the canal and blockade the backs of Italian forces in East Africa and Abyssinia, trapping them all and leading them to another Adua-like humiliation, without invading and occupying Egypt and Sudan for territorial contiguity. But Italy was fairly comfortable accepting this risk. And Britain felt no instant fight or flight reflex. Even though Italian acquisition of Abyssinia, admittedly no economic prize, expanded the border of Italian holdings in East Africa, and thus the Italian ground threat, to a border length of a 1,000 or 2,000 miles which huge, previously unexposed sections of British East Africa/Kenya, British Somaliland, and Sudan. The Italian move similarly surrounded the rear of French Djibouti, which the Italians had mounted claims to in propaganda in the past. Italy did it, right under the noses of Paris and London, and Tokyo saw this.

Another recent example was the German reoccupation of the Rhineland. Not quite as similar a situation, but still comparable. The Germans ostentatiously remilitarized and marched troops into the Rhineland in March 1936, a territory that was to remain demilitarized not only by the Treaty of Versailles, but by the non-coerced Pact of Locarno. But none of the neighboring powers abutting the Rhineland, France, Belgium, nor Netherlands, took forceful action of any kind. Tokyo saw this.

Japan in 1931-33 occupied all of Manchuria, including its central and northern portions, that shoved right into the Soviet Union's Far Eastern "armpit" mere scores of miles of the Soviet Union's vital main Trans-Siberian Railway line. And in northern Manchuria, it occupied the zone and tracks of the Soviet owned Chinese Eastern railway that ran across the region like a shortcut from Chita to Vladivostok, and the USSR had defended with extreme violence, as recently as the summer of 1929. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union maintained sovereign ground, naval and air bases in northern Sakhalin island and the Maritime province and Vladivostok, fortified and and sitting astride Sea of Japan shipping lanes, capable at any time of disrupting ground lines of communications between Japanese troops in Manchuria, Korea, and Japan, and capable of disrupting raw materials transport across the Sea of Japan from the ports of northeastern Korea. Yet somehow, even despite border clashes and probes throughout the years, Japan and the Soviet Union shared a thousands miles long jigsaw interlocking border from 1931 onward, only going to full-scale war in the 14th year, 1945. Japan also ran a short occupation of Shanghai in early 1932, bombarding and occupying Chinese districts of the city directly abutting international (British & American protected) and French Concession areas. It did not cause any of those powers to go to war. They did posture naval forces and they expressed diplomatic concern, and there was a diplomatic compromise settlement, but their Chinese opponents had to backdown as much as the Japanese in the short-run. The important thing is getting close to British, American, French nerves didn't make them spastically launch a war. Tokyo knew all this.

......And there had been other examples earlier on - During the Spanish American War, the Americans attacked, invaded, and occupied the Spanish Philippines and Guam, basically out of the blue and with no context or pretext other than a war had started - all the context and pretext between Spain and America was over Cuba, a world away. This suddenly placed America sensitively close to Britain's Borneo colony (it indirectly inherited the Sulu Sultanate's claim to Sabah actually), and to the Hong Kong Crown Colony, and close to France's Indochina. But neither power opposed the sudden, random American acquisition in the region. Nor did Britain oppose Germany's much more peaceful, but random purchase of Spain's Micronesian colonies later that year, or Germany's more violent seizure of Qingdao port in China's waters in 1897, not far from British concession ports in Shanghai and Tianjin. Britain didn't freak out about German acquisition and conquest of the Bismarck Archipelago northeast Papua New Guinea in the 1880s to go to war over it, even though the Dutch, and their own Australian New South Wales Colony were also very much interested in, and active on that island.

Post-1936 and 1937 experience also showed Japanese forces conducting operations throughout China, that were adjacent to western concession areas, where bitter fighting spilled over and affected westerners, but not enough to cause a fatal breach or war between Japan and any of them before 1941. This was the case despite stressors like the Panay incident (with America, Dec 1937), and even the blockade of Britain's Tianjin concession (summer 1939), and despite the campaign that conquered Guangzhou/Canton putting Japanese forces right at the doorstep of Britain's Hong Kong Crown Colony, which incidentally, was a British gun-running transhippment point on behalf of the Nationalist Chinese all the way until December 8th, 1941.

Japan and other powers were capable of managing geographic proximity, on land and sea, without all-out war breaking out between them, for lengthy periods, when that made the most sense to both. By the time Japan did its Strike South in OTL Dec. 7-8 1941, it did not make sense, to Japan, to geographically discriminate the various parts of Southeast Asia and West Pacific - but that had to do with all the accumulated circumstances - risks and opportunities, of that time and place, it didn't have to obtain in all times, places, circumstances.

It's an intuition and inference. You yourself have said that Japan posed a problem for the colonizers of Asian lands. Given the problems Japan faced just a few years earlier with Western reaction to Manchukuo and the way the great powers intervened to retard Japanese gains in the 1905 war with Russia, it's also an educated guess. I'd add further that Americans doubted Japan's capacity to carry out Pearl Harbor. If the Dutch and the British are anywhere near as racist, the shock alone would provoke an armed response.

To your point about China, it mattered considerably less to the Great Powers than their own possessions because to them, it was one inferior nation fighting another. China really started to matter when the western powers' spheres of influence in the Middle Kingdom (and well outside of Manchuria) were threatened. China was not part of their club but another parcel to be conquered like Africa albeit much more slowly. Fighting Japan over its adventurism in China without a more direct provocation like the Panay Incident, is about as likely to elicit an armed response from the Great Powers as Ethiopia's conquest of the Ogaden, that is to say none at all. And, on that note, the same great powers were willing to allow one member of the League of Nations seize control of another simply for not being white. It's really under these conditions that you think a Japanese attack in 1937 on the Dutch East Indies won't provoke the intervention of other powers still unconcerned about Hitler? The declarations of war all but write themselves.

It's reaching to suggest that it was of strategic value for Japan to simultaneously add to its list of enemies three great powers within days when already bogged down in China. Japan hit Pearl Harbor because they needed the Philippines to get to the East Indies. Pearl was supposed to have been a knock-out blow precisely because Japan would not win a war against the United States over the Philippines, and with Europe at war, the major naval obstacle for Tokyo was Washington. Europe not at war with readily available Dutch, British, and French forces, let alone the Americans, is another issue entirely. Paraguay fighting Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay(!) at once makes more sense.

 

[ChrisNuttall]

To the best of my knowledge, there were no treaties between the European powers for defence of their Far East possessions in the event of a Japanese attack. I may well have missed something, but the concept of Japan being a major threat was relatively new (she was a British ally only a few short years ago) and there were a great many political issues between Europeans that would have made such treaties very difficult to formulate - the Japanese, certainly, would have reacted badly to any such treaties, as they would have seen them aimed accounting Japanese expansion

That aside, I don’t believe the Japanese would have been wise to seize the Dutch East Indies any time before 1940. They would be opening up long and very exposed supply lines, while at the same time advertising their hostile intentions to all and sundry. As others have noted, the British would reinforce Singapore and the rest of their territories as quickly as possible (as would the Americans and French), and in 1937 the balance of power between the UK and Imperial Japan was not as poor as it would be in 1941. I’m sure the Japanese would consider trying to take resources they need, but doing it is a stand-alone mission would backfire and launching an all-out war in 1937 would be disastrous.

Another possibility, the Japanese seize the islands in 1940. Again, the logistics would be absolute beeping nightmare, but the British and French would have other problems at this point and there would be no guarantee of the Americans providing anything beyond moral support if Japan enters the war. The Japanese might follow Scott Palter’s idea and say “look, Winston, if you let us take the Dutch East Indies (to protect them from the Nazis, of course) we’ll join the war on your side and provide military support; if you refuse, you’ll have a world war on your hands at the worst possible moment.”

On one hand, this would still be a logistic headache for the Japanese; on the other, it would be much better than OTL.

Chris

 

[HJ Tulp]

As others have noted, the British would reinforce Singapore and the rest of their territories as quickly as possible

If the British let Japan seize Sumatra, they could just as well evacuate Singapore, as it has become untenable at that point.

Another possibility, the Japanese seize the islands in 1940. Again, the logistics would be absolute beeping nightmare, but the British and French would have other problems at this point and there would be no guarantee of the Americans providing anything beyond moral support if Japan enters the war.

I'm convinced that Japan lost a fantastic opportunity by not seizing the DEI in August-December 1940. The British were not going to intervene, the Americans were not going to intervene, and the Dutch were not going to be able to mount a sufficient defense. It might mean that the trade-embargo would happened earlier, but with the DEI Japan is more able to withstand it. The population of the DEI was also much more palatable to the Japanese than the Vietnamese.

 

[Thande]

I'm convinced that Japan lost a fantastic opportunity by not seizing the DEI in August-December 1940.

There are probably a fair few dissertations in examining this question. I have to assume the Japanese significantly misread how difficult it would be for FDR (or any US president) to persuade Congress (and the people) to act over an invasion of the DEI.

 

[HJ Tulp]

There are probably a fair few dissertations in examining this question. I have to assume the Japanese significantly misread how difficult it would be for FDR (or any US president) to persuade Congress (and the people) to act over an invasion of the DEI.

AFAICT, the Japanese considered the Dutch and Britons to be fully allied, and war against Britain would mean war against the US would be guaranteed at some point. In reality, the British government had given up any dreams of a defense of the DEI against the Japanese and categorically refused to guarentee its territorial integrity. Because of this the DEI government - which acted pretty independently from the Dutch government-in-exile- adopted a pretty much neutral stance towards Great Britain.

 

[Thande]

AFAICT, the Japanese considered the Dutch and Britons to be fully allied, and war against Britain would mean war against the US would be guaranteed at some point. In reality, the British government had given up any dreams of a defense of the DEI against the Japanese and categorically refused to guarentee its territorial integrity. Because of this the DEI government - which acted pretty independently from the Dutch government-in-exile- adopted a pretty much neutral stance towards Great Britain.

Both the Japanese and Germans seem to have had this attitude that "oh, the US joining the war is inevitable so it might as well be on our terms" which is certainly not how it was seen by the UK (or concerned Americans) who were trying to get the US to join the war.

 

[ChrisNuttall]

There are probably a fair few dissertations in examining this question. I have to assume the Japanese significantly misread how difficult it would be for FDR (or any US president) to persuade Congress (and the people) to act over an invasion of the DEI.

Dale Cozort did a pretty good assessment of the POD in his Space Bats and Butterflies 3 - basically, Japan would be going out on a limb if it took the DEI alone and it could end very badly for them.

That said, in hindsight, it might be better than OTL.



Chris