Hubbard, Elbert:
Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists - John Fiske - edizione con copertina flessibile
1992, ISBN: 71cf15c407dcc894363af065b4c09fc9
Simon & Schuster. Very Good. Paperback. 1992. 432 pages. <br>From the author of The Atlantic Campaign comes a h istoric account of the greatest naval conflict: the Pacific campa… Altro …
Simon & Schuster. Very Good. Paperback. 1992. 432 pages. <br>From the author of The Atlantic Campaign comes a h istoric account of the greatest naval conflict: the Pacific campa ign of World War II. Dan van der Vat's naval histories have bee n acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic as definitive, extraord inary, and vivid and harrowing.Now he turns to the greatest naval conflict in history: the Pacific campaign of World War II. Drawi ng on neglected archives of firsthand accounts from both sides, v an der Vat interweaves eyewitness testimony with sharp, analytica l narration to provide a penetrating reappraisal of the strategic and political background of both the Japanese and American force s, as well as a major reassessment of the role of intelligence on both sides. A comprehensive evaluation of all aspects of the war in the Pacific, The Pacific Campaign promises to be the standard work on the U.S.-Japanese war for years to come. Editorial Revi ews Review The Philadelphia Inquirer Fast-paced, meticulously re serarched...has all the elements of a spy thriller. The New York Times Book Review Belongs on the bookshelf of every American who contemplates the meaning of the greatest sea war in history. St ephen E. Ambrose author of Eisenhower A vivid account of the grea test naval battles ever fought and a thoughtful analysis of why w ar came...marked by fresh insights and new material. The Chicago Tribune An unsparing indictment of Japan's culpability in bringi ng about the Second World War....It blows away the rubbish....Van Der Vat writes with clarity and understanding. About the Author Dan van der Vat is the author of The Atlantic Campaign, The Ship That Changed the World, Gentlemen of War, and The Grand Scuttle. He lives in London, England. Excerpt. ® Reprinted by permission . All rights reserved. Chapter One THE VIEW FROM THE EAST Japan 's southward advance, even though it was in the opposite directio n from all its previous expansion, derived directly from its mili tary adventures, political scheming and economic ambitions on the Asian mainland. This is not to say that the move south was immut able fate, either for Japan or for its victims: the Japanese were and are as responsible for their own actions and choices as ever yone else, regardless of foreign provocations and errors. Neverth eless, the short but brutish and nasty story of Japanese imperial expansion has features only too familiar to the students of past empires, whether the ancient Roman or the modern Russian. A powe r on the make begins to expand by absorbing its immediate neighbo r (in Japan's case, Korea in 1910); to protect its acquisition, i t conquers its neighbor's neighbor (Manchuria), sets up a buffer state (Manchukuo), creates another buffer (northern China), and u ses that as a base to move against its next victim (China), and p ossibly its most deadly rival (the Soviet Union). We see imperial ism imitating scientific principles such as Newton's first law of motion whereby movement continues unless halted (imperial inerti a); the abhorrence of nature for a vacuum is parodied by imperial ist opportunism, which drew Japan first into China, then down upo n the Asiatic empires of the European powers involved in the war with Hitler's Germany. It is not customary to refer, in the cont ext of the Second World War, to Tojo's Japan, or even Hirohito's; nor do we equate the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, forme d in 1940 to absorb all Japanese political parties, with the Nati onal Socialist party, the only legal one in Hitler's Germany, eve n though the former was in some respects a conscious imitation of the latter. The truth is that the Japan which took on the world at war and lost was run by a military junta of no fixed compositi on -- a shifting, authoritarian oligarchy rather than a totalitar ian dictatorship. It came to the fore in Manchuria in 1928, when the Kwantung Army, as the Japanese garrison was called, killed a n intractable local warlord by causing an explosion on the Japane se-controlled South Manchurian Railway (SMR). The junta won the s upport of most Japanese admirals in 1930, after the perceived hum iliation of Japan at the London Naval Conference, about which mor e later. Japan was easily humiliated: rejection of any of its dem ands was enough. Aggravated by Japan's severe suffering in the Sl ump, which helped to undermine moderate, civilian influence in go vernment, the rising junta's Kwantung branch staged another explo sion on the SMR at Mukden in September 1931 as an excuse for conq uering the rest of Manchuria in a few months. This euphemisticall y named Manchuria Incident led to the establishment of the puppet state of Manchukuo under the Emperor Pu-yi, scion of the deposed Manchu dynasty, which had ruled China until 1911. Encouraged by this cheap success and undeterred by international condemnation, which merely provoked Japan to flounce out of the tottering Leagu e of Nations in 1933, the junta ran off the rails altogether in 1 937. At the Marco Polo Bridge outside Peking, the Japanese China Garrison Force, in place since the international suppression of t he xenophobic Boxer Rebellion of 1900, engineered a clash with a Chinese Army patrol. This was then used as an excuse to attack no rthern China -- all without consulting civilian or military super iors in Tokyo. The latter managed, however, to do what was expect ed of them: they sent reinforcements. The ensuing war, unwinnable for either side, spread across China; to the Japanese it always remained simply the China Incident. It is not unreasonable to see in the manufactured clash of July 7, 1937, so similar to Hitler' s ploy against Poland two years later, the true start of the Seco nd World War, because these two participants fought each other co ntinuously from then until 1945. In its bid to become the USA of the western Pacific (a strictly economic ambition), Japan classe d itself as a have-not nation with a legitimate grievance. What i t really had not, like Germany and Italy among the larger powers, was territorial acquisitions to exploit -- the only contemporary yardstick of greatness, even more important than a big navy. The rest of the world soon came to see Japan as an acquisitive aggre ssor, inordinately ambitious and completely ruthless. Japan came late -- indeed, last -- to old-style colonialism, but chose to le arn nothing from its predecessors in this pursuit. Like them, it cared little for the feelings of the colonized; unlike them, it w as never deterred by the views of the other powers, which it eith er ignored or used as grounds for more aggression while it built up its own empire. In this outlook it was very similar to Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II, and even more under Hitler: unable or u nwilling to distinguish between its needs and its wants, Japan he lped itself to what it fancied and was quite often genuinely perp lexed by the hostile reaction. Like Germany, where almost everyon e who could walk and talk hated the Treaty of Versailles, Japan h ad an almighty bone to pick with the rest of the world. Most Japa nese people regarded anyone who questioned their country's ambiti on as hostile and did not try to understand any other party's poi nt of view. Where the rest of the world went wrong was in foolish ly underestimating the unique capacity for self-sacrifice with wh ich ordinary Japanese supported their country's aim to be a first -rate power. There was much less disagreement among the Japanese (or in Germany) on the end than on the means of achieving the fu lfillment of their country's just demands. Hitler came to power o n the back of the German national sense of grievance, and was as conscious as the Japanese military of the lessons of 1918. Like t he Japanese, he thought his country was overcrowded and needed mo re territory, a rationalization of imperial ambition throughout t he ages. The Nazis, like the Italian fascists, were a mass moveme nt that rose to power from the grass roots under a populist leade r, whereas the Japanese junta manipulated a complaisant emperor t o impose its will from the top. But each Axis regime drew the sam e conclusion from Germany's defeat in 1918: the next war would be long, and therefore autarky, economic self-sufficiency, was the key to national security, military success and world domination. That was the only way to avoid a repetition of the blockade by se a and land which defeated Germany in 1918. So, while Hitler sche med to acquire Lebensraum and Mussolini concentrated on empire-bu ilding in northeastern Africa, the Japanese were busy inventing t he New Order in East Asia (1938) and the Greater East Asia Co-Pro sperity Sphere (1940), both designed to subordinate the region to the perpetual benefit and glory of a self-sustaining, greater Ja pan. Tokyo had some success at first in presenting this as a crus ade against Euro-American domination of Asia. It won over many in digenous nationalists in British, French and Dutch colonies -- at least until the Japanese Army arrived and lent new vigor to the old military customs of rape and pillage. The Germans made exactl y the same error in the Soviet Union: each army behaved as the ma ster race in arms; each used the stratagem of surprise attack wit hout declaration of war, and then Blitzkrieg tactics, to get its way. But whereas Hitler dominated his generals and admirals the J apanese general staffs dominated Japan. The consequences for thei r victims were remarkably similar. There was, for example, not mu ch to choose, except in such matters as climate and language, for the doubly unfortunate Dutch between life in the Netherlands und er Nazi rule and in the East Indies under the Japanese. Small wo nder that Reich and Empire were to become allies regardless of re ciprocal racial disdain. The first concrete sign of things to com e was Japan's decision to sign the Anti-Comintern Pact with Germa ny in November 1936 (the Comintern -- Communist International -- was the Soviet mechanism for controlling foreign communist partie s). A secret provision required each signatory not to help the So viet Union if the other went to war against it; the published tex t was a vague commitment to oppose communism and all its works wh erever they might be found. The future Axis partners had identifi ed their overwhelming common interest: the Soviet Union, principa l potential enemy of each. For Japan this was just one of many f ateful decisions that led to its disastrous war with the United S tates. The Slump became a time for taking tough measures at home -- and taking sides abroad. The Pacific Campaign cannot be proper ly understood unless it is seen in the context of Japan's prewar domestic and foreign policies and the links between the two, as s ummarized below. Foreigners had (and have) great difficulty in u nderstanding how Japan worked as a state and who was really in ch arge. The Japanese had gone so far as to imitate the West in havi ng a symbolic head of state and an executive, a legislature, a ju diciary, an army, and a navy all formally answerable to him. The fact that the Army and the Navy were, as centers of power in the state, at least equal to the civilian organs of government rather than subject to their authority was not outside Western experien ce. In making this ultimately disastrous arrangement in the const itutional changes of 1889, the Japanese were only copying the Pru ssians who dominated Europe as the world's strongest military pow er for more than half a century, until 1918, on just such a basis (the Japanese chose to copy the British in establishing a House of Lords and a battle fleet and imitated the French in such areas as law and education). The independence of the military dated fr om the creation, in 1878, of general staffs for Army and Navy dir ectly under the emperor and outside the control of the Diet (parl iament) or even the Cabinet. The paradox was that the emperor, un like the Kaiser, did not feel free to intervene in government. He exercised his influence through his personal advisers or in priv ate meetings with those, such as key ministers and chiefs of staf f, who had the right of access to the throne. Thus his divine sta tus was protected by noninvolvement in day-to-day policy with all its disputes, errors, and corruption; by the same token, those w ith real power could hide behind the façade of imperial rule when ever convenient, an excellent incentive for irresponsibility on a ll sides. This gave very broad latitude indeed to leaders whose actions were rendered immune from challenge by the simple device of being declared as done in the name of the emperor. A general c ould tell Hirohito, with the customary groveling and outward resp ect, what he was planning; the emperor had no power to stop him, so the general could then inform the Cabinet of what he was about to do, overriding any objections by laying claim to imperial san ction. From the turn of the century, the ministers responsible fo r the Army and the Navy had to be officers from the relevant serv ice. After 1936 they had to be on the active list, to prevent the appointment of men from the retired list as a means of getting r ound the wishes of the serving generals and admirals. This gave t he general staffs not only the decisive say (or veto) on individu al appointments to these posts but also the power to prevent the formation of a new government, simply by refusing to supply servi ng officers to fill them. If they did not like a prime-ministeria l nominee, they would decline to provide a general (as the Army d id in 1940, for example) or an admiral as Army or Navy minister - - even if the would-be premier had found favor with palace advise rs and been recommended by them to the emperor. The three key men in each service -- minister, chief of staff, and inspector-gener al of education and training -- were thus free to pick their own successors without consulting any outsider, whether emperor, prim e minister or the rival service. The two armed forces were not r equired to inform the Cabinet of their strength and dispositions, in peace or even in wartime. Thus the claims by such as ex-Prime Minister Tojo and ex-Foreign Minister Togo at the Tokyo war-crim es trial that they were not told in advance of the Pearl Harbor p lan (or of the great American victory at Midway for weeks after t he event) are not as ludicrous as they seemed when they were firs t made. With this kind of contemptuous conduct as the norm in the highest ranks, it is hardly surprising that the Japanese forces were more Prussian than the Prussians, not to say medieval, in th eir approach to discipline. Brutality was institutionalized to a degree probably unparalleled, Simon & Schuster, 1992, 3, East Aurora, NY: The Roycrofters, 1905 Book. Very Good. Soft cover. First Edition. Minor edgewear. Vol. XVI, No. 6, December 1905 issue of this periodical, being on the "home" of John Fiske (1842 - 1901), an American philosopher and historian, who did extensive study on Darwin's theory of evolution. Frontis illustration of Fiske shows age-marks around the edges.., The Roycrofters, 1905, 3<
