1. Strike for the heart.
2. Know your enemy.
“Strike for the Heart”
The rule “Strike for the heart” is only a corollary of the first principle of warfare, the concentration of Force. This was what Japan’s military leaders overlooked.
From the moment they correctly decided that the war in Europe was their big chance to take East Asia, a hard choice confronted them: should they first move north against the Soviet Union by invading Siberia; or south, to scoop up the weakly held treasures of the European colonies? The move south was the more tempting, of course. But in warfare one must not be misled by mere easy loot or the line of least resistance.
The stakes of the war comprised nothing less than political redistribution of the word’s landmasses. It was a radical global conflict, the first true World War. The lineup was classical: the rich against the poor, gold against iron. Germany was the only first-class power on the ascendant side, the side that was seeking to draw a new world map, and her attack on the Soviet Union was her great bid. Once master of Russia, Germany would have been invincible. It followed that the Japanese should have moved to help Germany crush the Soviet Union. With Germany triumphant, Japan could have taken and held anything in East Asia she wanted. But with Germany beaten, Japan had small hope of keeping even the vastest gains.
Had Japan invaded Siberia in 1941, the German drive to Moscow would have succeeded. The Russian counterattacks in December would not have been mounted. The Bolshevik regime would either have fallen or made a second peace of Brest-Litovsk. For what saved Moscow in December was only Stalin’s desperate denuding of the Siberian front for reserves to throw into the battle, tipping the scales at the last second by a hair.
Moreover, if Napoleon’s maxim holds that the moral is to the physical in warfare as three to one, the mere fact of a Japanese assault on Siberia in the autumn might have brought on a Russian collapse. In mid-October panic gripped the Bolsheviks to the highest levels of government, with whole departments fleeing Moscow in disgraceful tumult, and the frightened dictator issuing shrill orders for a levee en mass to save the city. There is even an unconfirmed story that Stalin himself secretly fled, secretly returned when the panic subsided, and had everybody shot who knew of his disgraceful act. Russian rulers operate inside a Byzantine maze, and there is no way of checking this episode.
In any case, this was surely the psychological moment of World War II, the one-in-a-thousand-years opportunity for the Japanese nation. Its irresolute leaders, poorly trained in military thinking and subject to the strange Oriental character mixture of excessive rashness, caution, and emotion, let the moment slip through their fingers to all eternity. History, like a woman, must be firmly taken when she is ready. Otherwise she scorns the fumbler, never forgives him, and never offers him another chance.
“Know Your Enemy”
The first mistake, then, was to go south instead of north, and to snatch booty instead of striking at the heart. But the Axis might still have won the war, despite this dispersion of effort, had Japan not compounded the blunder with a second one that verged on true insanity.
Granted the southward strategy, the obvious course was to move into the East Indies with maximum speed and force, consolidate rapidly, and prepare to defeat any American countermove. The Americans might not have moved at all. Tremendous opposition existed in the United States to sending American boys to die for the pukka sahibs in Asia. Roosevelt might have just sputtered harsh words, as he had after all of Adolf Hitler’s triumphs. Roosevelt never moved one visible step beyond the range of public opinion. This was the master key to the nature of the enemy. Japan was oblivious to it, because of the distortions of Oriental thinking.
Even if Roosevelt had sent his Navy, defying half his public, against the entrenched Japanese in East Asia, this felt would have fought its showdown battle at the end of a long supply line, in enemy waters, within range of Japan’s land-based air force. It would have been another Battle of Tsushima Strait, with air power added. This humiliating slaughter in an unpopular cause might have brought on the impeachment of the none too popular Machiavellian in the White House.
But even this was not the worst aspect of the Japanese blunder.
America had the largest and most advanced plant on earth. This mercenary nation, devoted to the almighty dollar and blessed with wonderful mineral resources stolen from the Indians, had reared an immense plant capacity for making toys and trifles. But it was a capacity readily convertible to munitions manufacture on the most fantastic imaginable scale. The whole hope of Axis victory in World War II lay in keeping America divided and soft until the time came to deal with her as an isolated unit without allies.
This prospect was in sight. Half of America would have rejoiced at a German victory over the Soviet Union. The Lend-Lease program was bogged down in red tape and inertia the day before the Pearl Harbor attack, reflecting the discord and confusion in the people.
For this, great credit goes to Adolf Hitler. He was a narrow-minded man, appallingly ignorant of the United States. But his almost female intuition warned him that he must give his blood enemy, Roosevelt, no chance to unite the Americans against him. That is why the Fuhrer swallowed all the President’s scurrilous public abuse and compelled the U-boat arm to endure appalling provocation.
This wise strategy of the Fuhrer was blown to smithereens by Pearl Harbor. Overnight a hundred thirty million quarrelsome, uncertain, divided Americans became one angry mass thirsting for battle. Roosevelt rammed through Congress gigantic war plans and expenditures which a few days earlier would have been utterly inconceivable. The Congress, which in August had extended a mild draft law by a single vote after weeks of debate, now unanimously passed fierce declarations of war, and all Roosevelt’s long-plotted stupendous war program, in a matter of hours.
This was the chief result of Pearl Harbor, for the fleet was soon repaired and expanded. In one week Germany passed from the strategic offensive, with world empire in her grasp, to the strategic defensive, with no long-range prospect but to be crushed unless our enemies did something just as stupid and self-destructive.
Nonexistent “Axis”
If one asks, “How did Germany permit such a catastrophe to occur?” the answer is that we were not consulted. We found out that Pearl Harbor was the target when the Americans did — when the torpedoes and bombs exploded.
The “Axis” of Germany, Japan, and Italy never existed as a military reality. It was a ferocious-looking rubber balloon blown up by propaganda. Its purpose was bluff. The three nations went their own ways throughout the war, and usually did not even inform their partners in advance about attacks, invasions, and strategic decision.
Thus, when Hitler attacked Poland, Mussolini suddenly declined to fight and did not jump in until France was toppling. The Italian dictator invaded Greece without notifying Hitler. Hitler did not inform Il Duce of the attack on Russia until just before the event. But for this he had good reason. Our intelligence had advised us that anything Mussolini knew went straight to the British via the Italian royal family.
Not once did real staff talks take place among the “Axis” armed forces. England and America were having such conference a year before Pearl Harbor! They followed a combined strategy throughout in close cooperation with the Bolsheviks. Now they can reflect at leisure on the wisdom of helping Stalin destroy us, and loosing the Slav flood to the Elbe. But Allied operations were a model of combined strategy, while “Axis” strategy was a nullity. It was every man for himself, and unhappy Germany was tied to second-rate partners who made rash wild plunges that ruined her.
