WI American-occupied Japan & liberated Greater East Asia ISOT from Dec 25, 1945 to Oct 25, 1942
Jun 23, 2023 2:40:38 GMT
stevep and gillan1220 like this
Post by raharris1973 on Jun 23, 2023 2:40:38 GMT
What if American-occupied Japan & liberated Greater East Asia were ISOT from their world on Dec 25, 1945 to the world of Oct 25, 1942?
This scenario might sound familiar, and give you "deja vu all over again" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deja_Vu_All_Over_Again#:~:text=%22Déjà%20vu%20all%20over%20again,déjà%20vu%20all%20over%20again.%22
Certainly the people living in East Asia and the central and western Pacific who hear of the rest of the world replaying the events of 1942, will have that deja vu feeling.
But I admit you too might feel that way because the premise is really similar to a recent thread I did, alternate-timelines.com/thread/4944/american-occupied-japan-okinawa-isot.
What can I say? I like the general idea, but wanted to start over because I think the original got a bit off the intended track. My original was too complex, creating too much of a checkerboard across Asia and the Pacific of post Japanese surrender territories, and mid-war territories. That caused discussion to focus too much on Pacific clean-up and the 'will they? won't they?' questions about surrender of downtime Japanese, and insufficient focus on the impact of the clear, definitive end of the Pacific War, and its requirements, on how the Allied powers would then conduct the war in the ETO with their (nearly) full might.
Therefore, to review what happens differently in this scenario: The equivalent territory (land and sea and atmospheric- from Inner Mongolia & Manchuria to Tarawa, and from the Andaman Islands and Attu and Kiska in the Aleutians) from December 25th, 1945, ISOT'ed back to over-write the same footprint on the globe on October 25th, 1942. 3 years, or to be precise, 38 months, earlier. It is only a few short months after VJ Day, but definitely after surrender has been communicated to and accepted by all major Japanese commands, and significant repatriations have begun. There may be defiant hold out bands numbering in the scores or low hundreds, but nothing strategically significant. There are tens to hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers in Asia and the Pacific outside Japan, but generally under Allied or local group control/employ as prisoners/laborers awaiting repatriation, or mercenaries/technicians/guards under employment by erstwhile enemies, not independent operators.
The Allies have collectively liberated/reoccupied/conquered all the former Japanese Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (GEACPS). They have even in many cases, started drawing down or rotating out some of their occupying forces in the region.
But, the ISOT has left all of them operating in the PTO's former GEACPS, Australian, French, Dutch, Chinese, British, Soviet, American - cut off from contemporary, December 1945 homeland-based support and logistics. For support links over the Yellow River into western China, down to Australia, into India, down to Australia, across the Amur into the USSR, or east of the international date line in the Pacific or just an island over in the Aleutians, the 1945 Allies now have to rely on the less 'tuned up' or occupied metropolitan homelands of 1942 that are pretty busy (with the exception of China) with the high-tempo struggle with Germany and Battle of the Atlantic.
The Pacific war is definitively over, but it is at least a, barely, recognizable contemporary world. With the lack of 1945 metro production capabilities, especially for nukes and the most sophisticated tech, the world is not into a self-sustained atomic and jet age just yet. But the former GEACPS and the forces in it are militarily and economically relevant and compatible in many ways with the late 1942 world.
Occupied Japan especially, with its 72 million people and 430,000 American occupying troops, has desperate food import needs, as do certain other parts of Asia-Pacific.
Throughout the entire ISOT'ed former 1945 GEACPS area, I am estimating:
600-900k USA troops (ballpark) at December 1945 tech level, 430k of them in Japan Home Islands occupation, the rest throughout the PTO including South Korea, North China Marines, Okinawa, Iwo Jima, PI, and all other islands. Up to 1/3 to 1/2 may be withdrawn by early 1943 for operations in ETO or assistance/training activity, equipment handover to downtime forces. Proportionately, given the more recent build-up of US forces, this is quite a force boost to American forces. China Marines, Korea and Japan occupiers are the least flexible on withdrawal, troops in PI and other Pacific Islands have most flexibility, along with aircraft and Navy.
500-700k USSR troops (ballpark) December 1945 tech level Soviet forces remaining in Manchuria, North Korea, and Japanese northern territories. Possibly by this point after active fighting the force could be drawn down to the 250k-300k level. At least two-thirds of it, especially if the higher number, could likely be pulled out and thrown into the the winter 1942-43 (Stalingrad and Army Group South) campaign. At either size, with its equipment and tactical acumen, it should pack an outsize punch against the Germans and lesser Axis armies.
200-400k British Empire troops (incl. Australians) in Burma, Thailand, southern Indochina, Malaya, Singapore, DEI, Papua New Guinea, Solomons, Bismarcks, Gilberts. 1/4-1/3 redeployable to Med and ETO for ops and/or training equipment handover. A boost for downtime British Empire. Nontrivial, but not huge.
French troops in Indochina - Low tens of thousands, certainly under 100k, most recently released from prison camps or returned from China, plus some recently inserted command teams, Sainteny, possibly Leclerc, Admiral D'Argenlieu. Liberation of the homeland a *much* higher priority for De Gaulle, but want to retain regional foothold. Not too many men to spare. But, Free French cannot afford a true escalation to colonial war or counterinsurgency.
Dutch in DEI - in almost an identical situation to the French, only probably fewer troops, more like 80k, with less recent experience in the country.
Chinese forces - much more sizeable, over a million for each faction, KMT and CCP, but hardly interested in anything outside China, and immediately neighboring countries (Taiwan reclamation, northern Indochina occupation, Japan occupation zone under discussion). Wildcard possibility: Significant #s, several 100k, Communist troops could be recruited, encouraged, 'ordered', or volunteer, to serve internationally on Soviet front in Europe as combat augmentees. Additional 100k plus could support Soviet homefront labor effort. Northeast China and North Korea and Japan northern territories industry, agriculture, and transportation networks can be geared to Soviet wartime needs. ChiNats can send token force to ETO. Viet Minh can send token forces to ETO, via Soviet front and Med front to southern France, attached to Free French.
So non-trivial, but probably not instantly overwhelming, impact of redeployed uptime 1945 forces and equipment (and knowledge) to the 1942 ETO. Proportionately, the effects of being able to redirect 'time-indigenous' 1942 resources all in to ETO should be greater.
From the perspective of downtime Washington and the USA, a little over ten months after US participation in WWII has begun, it is about a week before the 1942 midterms, and the surrender of Japan is political good news for FDR, even if it is only supernaturally falling into his lap. It is also two and a half weeks before the Operation Torch landings and in the same rough timeframe of the El Alamein and Stalingrad battles.
The combination of an Asia-Pacific realm from December meeting the rest of the world from October, although it knocks the uptime (1945) section of the world off-season by delaying winter, and subsequent spring, two months, provides maximum opportunity for downtime Allied powers to redirect wartime strategy to a European Axis first and European Axis only warfighting strategy, and allows them to transfer not only the entirety of developing 1941 combat power to the ETO fight, but also some potent, 3 years more modern, forces from 1945 to the ETO fight. However, since the Far East OrBat is from December 1945, these potent modernized USSR, USA, and UK forces are significantly smaller in size than they would have been than if ISOT'ed from back from October 1945, because of drawdowns and demobilizations in the intervening two months.
This also makes it less likely there are any atomic cores sitting around in uptime Tinian or Okinawa or other ISOT uptime Micronesian or western Pacific islands or afloat on US naval vessels. I will assume there are none. And the December 1942 USA has no atomic bombs and is incapable of producing any in any timeframe measured in less than years.
In liberated China, the Marshall Mission has begun, and implemented a CCP-KMT truce, at least south of the Great Wall, and while CCP and KMT troops jockey for position in northeast China/Manchuria, the 1945 Soviets are preventing internecine fighting in specific cities and railways they still occupy.
This scenario will have duplicate people like in the previous iteration of the similar, Occupied Japan ISOT. For example, two George Marshalls (likely), two MacArthurs, possibly two Mao's, two Chiangs, likely two Vasilevsky, Meretskov, Chistianov, Purkayev, Terenti Shtykov (Soviet Far East commanders and political officers). Double versions of some CCP and KMT and KMT-aligned warlord commanders, units and soldiers and politicians and returning refugees.
Out of the people serving in the Allied forces of all kinds in the now conquered, occupied, or liberated formerly Japanese held lands, most will have younger, 1942 duplicates of themselves based back in their home countries or other theaters or possibly in an occupied homeland.
Other people will have one or both versions of themselves overwritten and zapped out of existence. For example, liberated Allied PoWs and civilian internees who had already been repatriated to their uptime homelands or put in transit in that direction in the uptime 1945 world. Also, Japanese PoWs and internees in their 1945 incarnation held in captivity in the territory of the 1945 USSR, North America, Australia, western China or India, who all get overwritten by the 1942 version of those territories.
Overall, I think there is less duplicating and vanishing than in my previous iteration of the scenario.
So, how do the December 1942-January 1943 Allied powers now go about defeating the European Axis powers? How quickly can they accomplish this task? How will they augment their own forces with futuristic 1945 forces, and what differences will those augmenting forces or their equipment and tactics and advice make in battlefield outcomes?
This scenario might sound familiar, and give you "deja vu all over again" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deja_Vu_All_Over_Again#:~:text=%22Déjà%20vu%20all%20over%20again,déjà%20vu%20all%20over%20again.%22
Certainly the people living in East Asia and the central and western Pacific who hear of the rest of the world replaying the events of 1942, will have that deja vu feeling.
But I admit you too might feel that way because the premise is really similar to a recent thread I did, alternate-timelines.com/thread/4944/american-occupied-japan-okinawa-isot.
What can I say? I like the general idea, but wanted to start over because I think the original got a bit off the intended track. My original was too complex, creating too much of a checkerboard across Asia and the Pacific of post Japanese surrender territories, and mid-war territories. That caused discussion to focus too much on Pacific clean-up and the 'will they? won't they?' questions about surrender of downtime Japanese, and insufficient focus on the impact of the clear, definitive end of the Pacific War, and its requirements, on how the Allied powers would then conduct the war in the ETO with their (nearly) full might.
Therefore, to review what happens differently in this scenario: The equivalent territory (land and sea and atmospheric- from Inner Mongolia & Manchuria to Tarawa, and from the Andaman Islands and Attu and Kiska in the Aleutians) from December 25th, 1945, ISOT'ed back to over-write the same footprint on the globe on October 25th, 1942. 3 years, or to be precise, 38 months, earlier. It is only a few short months after VJ Day, but definitely after surrender has been communicated to and accepted by all major Japanese commands, and significant repatriations have begun. There may be defiant hold out bands numbering in the scores or low hundreds, but nothing strategically significant. There are tens to hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers in Asia and the Pacific outside Japan, but generally under Allied or local group control/employ as prisoners/laborers awaiting repatriation, or mercenaries/technicians/guards under employment by erstwhile enemies, not independent operators.
The Allies have collectively liberated/reoccupied/conquered all the former Japanese Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (GEACPS). They have even in many cases, started drawing down or rotating out some of their occupying forces in the region.
But, the ISOT has left all of them operating in the PTO's former GEACPS, Australian, French, Dutch, Chinese, British, Soviet, American - cut off from contemporary, December 1945 homeland-based support and logistics. For support links over the Yellow River into western China, down to Australia, into India, down to Australia, across the Amur into the USSR, or east of the international date line in the Pacific or just an island over in the Aleutians, the 1945 Allies now have to rely on the less 'tuned up' or occupied metropolitan homelands of 1942 that are pretty busy (with the exception of China) with the high-tempo struggle with Germany and Battle of the Atlantic.
The Pacific war is definitively over, but it is at least a, barely, recognizable contemporary world. With the lack of 1945 metro production capabilities, especially for nukes and the most sophisticated tech, the world is not into a self-sustained atomic and jet age just yet. But the former GEACPS and the forces in it are militarily and economically relevant and compatible in many ways with the late 1942 world.
Occupied Japan especially, with its 72 million people and 430,000 American occupying troops, has desperate food import needs, as do certain other parts of Asia-Pacific.
Throughout the entire ISOT'ed former 1945 GEACPS area, I am estimating:
600-900k USA troops (ballpark) at December 1945 tech level, 430k of them in Japan Home Islands occupation, the rest throughout the PTO including South Korea, North China Marines, Okinawa, Iwo Jima, PI, and all other islands. Up to 1/3 to 1/2 may be withdrawn by early 1943 for operations in ETO or assistance/training activity, equipment handover to downtime forces. Proportionately, given the more recent build-up of US forces, this is quite a force boost to American forces. China Marines, Korea and Japan occupiers are the least flexible on withdrawal, troops in PI and other Pacific Islands have most flexibility, along with aircraft and Navy.
500-700k USSR troops (ballpark) December 1945 tech level Soviet forces remaining in Manchuria, North Korea, and Japanese northern territories. Possibly by this point after active fighting the force could be drawn down to the 250k-300k level. At least two-thirds of it, especially if the higher number, could likely be pulled out and thrown into the the winter 1942-43 (Stalingrad and Army Group South) campaign. At either size, with its equipment and tactical acumen, it should pack an outsize punch against the Germans and lesser Axis armies.
200-400k British Empire troops (incl. Australians) in Burma, Thailand, southern Indochina, Malaya, Singapore, DEI, Papua New Guinea, Solomons, Bismarcks, Gilberts. 1/4-1/3 redeployable to Med and ETO for ops and/or training equipment handover. A boost for downtime British Empire. Nontrivial, but not huge.
French troops in Indochina - Low tens of thousands, certainly under 100k, most recently released from prison camps or returned from China, plus some recently inserted command teams, Sainteny, possibly Leclerc, Admiral D'Argenlieu. Liberation of the homeland a *much* higher priority for De Gaulle, but want to retain regional foothold. Not too many men to spare. But, Free French cannot afford a true escalation to colonial war or counterinsurgency.
Dutch in DEI - in almost an identical situation to the French, only probably fewer troops, more like 80k, with less recent experience in the country.
Chinese forces - much more sizeable, over a million for each faction, KMT and CCP, but hardly interested in anything outside China, and immediately neighboring countries (Taiwan reclamation, northern Indochina occupation, Japan occupation zone under discussion). Wildcard possibility: Significant #s, several 100k, Communist troops could be recruited, encouraged, 'ordered', or volunteer, to serve internationally on Soviet front in Europe as combat augmentees. Additional 100k plus could support Soviet homefront labor effort. Northeast China and North Korea and Japan northern territories industry, agriculture, and transportation networks can be geared to Soviet wartime needs. ChiNats can send token force to ETO. Viet Minh can send token forces to ETO, via Soviet front and Med front to southern France, attached to Free French.
So non-trivial, but probably not instantly overwhelming, impact of redeployed uptime 1945 forces and equipment (and knowledge) to the 1942 ETO. Proportionately, the effects of being able to redirect 'time-indigenous' 1942 resources all in to ETO should be greater.
From the perspective of downtime Washington and the USA, a little over ten months after US participation in WWII has begun, it is about a week before the 1942 midterms, and the surrender of Japan is political good news for FDR, even if it is only supernaturally falling into his lap. It is also two and a half weeks before the Operation Torch landings and in the same rough timeframe of the El Alamein and Stalingrad battles.
The combination of an Asia-Pacific realm from December meeting the rest of the world from October, although it knocks the uptime (1945) section of the world off-season by delaying winter, and subsequent spring, two months, provides maximum opportunity for downtime Allied powers to redirect wartime strategy to a European Axis first and European Axis only warfighting strategy, and allows them to transfer not only the entirety of developing 1941 combat power to the ETO fight, but also some potent, 3 years more modern, forces from 1945 to the ETO fight. However, since the Far East OrBat is from December 1945, these potent modernized USSR, USA, and UK forces are significantly smaller in size than they would have been than if ISOT'ed from back from October 1945, because of drawdowns and demobilizations in the intervening two months.
This also makes it less likely there are any atomic cores sitting around in uptime Tinian or Okinawa or other ISOT uptime Micronesian or western Pacific islands or afloat on US naval vessels. I will assume there are none. And the December 1942 USA has no atomic bombs and is incapable of producing any in any timeframe measured in less than years.
In liberated China, the Marshall Mission has begun, and implemented a CCP-KMT truce, at least south of the Great Wall, and while CCP and KMT troops jockey for position in northeast China/Manchuria, the 1945 Soviets are preventing internecine fighting in specific cities and railways they still occupy.
This scenario will have duplicate people like in the previous iteration of the similar, Occupied Japan ISOT. For example, two George Marshalls (likely), two MacArthurs, possibly two Mao's, two Chiangs, likely two Vasilevsky, Meretskov, Chistianov, Purkayev, Terenti Shtykov (Soviet Far East commanders and political officers). Double versions of some CCP and KMT and KMT-aligned warlord commanders, units and soldiers and politicians and returning refugees.
Out of the people serving in the Allied forces of all kinds in the now conquered, occupied, or liberated formerly Japanese held lands, most will have younger, 1942 duplicates of themselves based back in their home countries or other theaters or possibly in an occupied homeland.
Other people will have one or both versions of themselves overwritten and zapped out of existence. For example, liberated Allied PoWs and civilian internees who had already been repatriated to their uptime homelands or put in transit in that direction in the uptime 1945 world. Also, Japanese PoWs and internees in their 1945 incarnation held in captivity in the territory of the 1945 USSR, North America, Australia, western China or India, who all get overwritten by the 1942 version of those territories.
Overall, I think there is less duplicating and vanishing than in my previous iteration of the scenario.
So, how do the December 1942-January 1943 Allied powers now go about defeating the European Axis powers? How quickly can they accomplish this task? How will they augment their own forces with futuristic 1945 forces, and what differences will those augmenting forces or their equipment and tactics and advice make in battlefield outcomes?
, to decide who the Democrat candidate will be. Also while the Republicans may change their candidate they are unlikely to come anywhere near close to winning I think.