WW II Historical Thread, Discussion, Pics, Videos

[chuck731]

Decisive Battle was American naval theorist Alfred Mahan's idea. It was adopted by nearly every naval powers.

No, it wasn't. Mahan was merely the one who popularized it amongst arm chair naval enthusiasts.

 

[chuck731]

I think gekokujo was only partly due to the nationalist and racial theories fashionable around the world at the time. It reminds me of the Confucian concept of earnestness, in which loyal subordinates are expect to give honest and frank counsels to their superior even if the superior doesn't want to here it even at the cost of death and disgrace. In a military atmosphere, combined with the facist idea of the man of action, this traditional Confucian ideal seems to have take to an extreme.
In fighter ace Saburo Sakai's autobiography, he observed that American soldiers worked better as a team, while the Japanese are too individualist.

Individual judgement and initiative to disobey orders for the larger good is essential for any efficient military organization.

But the particular form of gekokujo seen in action at Kwangtung army was not the indication of an efficient organization. Rather it reflects an organization with severe deficiencies in the fundamental indoctrination of its men, a failure to inculcate in its men an good appreciation for the limits of their own judgement and ability, a deference to professional judgement outside one' own area of study, and encourages them to prefer the subjective with the empirical, and mistake amateur enthusiasm with vision, expertise and insight.

The particular problems with the gekokujo seen with Kwangtung army, I think, do seem to arise from the same sort of mentality that breeds hot headed nationalism deriving from a subjective sense of superiority.

 

[shen]

Individual judgement and initiative to disobey orders for the larger good is essential for any efficient military organization.

But the particular form of gekokujo seen in action at Kwangtung army was not the indication of an efficient organization. Rather it reflects an organization with severe deficiencies in the fundamental indoctrination of its men, a failure to inculcate in its men an good appreciation for the limits of their own judgement and ability, a deference to professional judgement outside one' own area of study, and encourages them to prefer the subjective with the empirical, and mistake amateur enthusiasm with vision, expertise and insight.

The particular problems with the gekokujo seen with Kwangtung army, I think, do seem to arise from the same sort of mentality that breeds hot headed nationalism deriving from a subjective sense of superiority.

It seems my gut feeling is correct.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Gekokujo is rooted in the Confucian tradition.
This kind of observation is of course something that can't be expected of Westerners without root in or have made a comprehensive study of Eastern cultures.
When I read Sakai's observation about Americans, it struck me that Americans have the exact same stereotype of Japanese. That's why we should pay attention when someone challenges our preconceived notions.

 

[chuck731]

It seems my gut feeling is correct.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Gekokujo is rooted in the Confucian tradition.
This kind of observation is of course something that can't be expected of Westerners without root in or have made a comprehensive study of Eastern cultures.
When I read Sakai's observation about Americans, it struck me that Americans have the exact same stereotype of Japanese. That's why we should pay attention when someone challenges our preconceived notions.

If you think we as westerners without roots in eastern culture ought therefore to not knock the gekokujo that we don't understand even if it led directly to Kwangtung army's direct aggression against china in 1930, 1937, 1938 and 1939, then let me know.

 

[shen]

If you think we as westerners without roots in eastern culture ought therefore to not knock the gekokujo that we don't understand even if it let directly to Kwangtung army's direct aggression against china in 1930, 1937, 1938 and 1939, then let me know.

I've not made any statement about the correctness of gekokujo. You yourself wrote that certain degree of individual initiative and willingness to disobey order is necessary. The Japanese army took that to an extreme.
Gekokujo was not that cause of Japanese aggression against China. Japan was following the racial and colonialist attitude followed by almost every countries in the world in the 19th and early 20th century.

 

[chuck731]

I've not made any statement about the correctness of gekokujo. You yourself wrote that certain degree of individual initiative and willingness to disobey order is necessary. The Japanese army took that to an extreme.
Gekokujo was not that cause of Japanese aggression against China. Japan was following the racial and colonialist attitude followed by almost every countries in the world in the 19th and early 20th century.

Racism need not lead to invasions. Racism does not automatically lead to the perception that invasion is the right thing to do either morally or pragmatically. The proximal cause of Mukden, occupation of Manchuria, Marco Polo bridge, and nomonhan incidents was gekokujo of the Kwangtung army against the wishes and orders of imperial general staff and Japanese civilian government.

Gekokujo also menifest itself in the form of multiple assassinations of senior Japanese army officers as well as civilian officials opposed to the imperial way fraction of Japanese army dominated right wing politics. It contributed to the eventual fall of Japanese civilian government and it's replacement by army dominated military fraction whose policies made the disastrous war all but certain.

There is individual initiative that contributes to the effectiveness of the organization, and ought to be lauded. The form of gekokujo seen in the Kwangtung army, on the other hand, is a disgrace to any army.

 

[shen]

I wrote "racial and colonialist"...let's add social Darwinism to the list

Chuck, let's not let our personal quarrels distract this thread too much. Our views may differ, but we are actually quite similar in personality. You are obviously an intelligent and articulate person. Both of us seems to have some kind of emotional imperative to... showoff shall we call it. and of course that inevitably leads to overreach at times. peace, i'm going to have another beer.

 

[chuck731]

I wrote "racial and colonialist"...let's add social Darwinism to the list

Chuck, let's not let our personal quarrels distract this thread too much. Our views may differ, but we are actually quite similar in personality. You are obviously an intelligent and articulate person. Both of us seems to have some kind of emotional imperative to... showoff shall we call it. and of course that inevitably leads to overreach at times. peace, i'm going to have another beer.

Okay, a beer. Cheers.

 

[lightspeed]

It is startling how much influence nationalism gave the Japanese army, how highly racial and national pride made the Japanese army regard itself, and yet how blind it was to the latest developments in military thinking around the world, and how quite thoroughly second rate the Japanese army really proved itself to be when it ran into tough opponents.

the Western World including the United States held the Japanese Army in high regards then. it's just that the Japanese wasted their best troops in the first few years of the China war. their remaining best units stayed in China throughout the eight years war to the end of WW2. the Japanese troops that went to Southeast Asia and achieved initial victories and later defeats against the United States and Britain, were essentially their second rate force.

 

[delft]

For a preview of the war in the Pacific you can read The Ramparts We Watch by Major G.F.Eliot of 1938 with much on the design of battleships ( they don't need a high speed as they will not want to run away ) and the use of heavy bombers ( B-17 ) against the enemy fleet.