I can buy that.  The damn story drags like a mule with a heavy load, but man is there ever time for two page loving depictions of consultations of the damned I Ching.  

But I still find myself frustrated by the utter failure of logistics represented. Why, you'd think Luxembourg hasn't conquered all of Russia simply because they are to damn polite, and not because, well, population actually matters.

Gamers, being obsessed with mechanistic representations of pocket universes, often have a blind spot for fiction based primarily on allegory or morality play.

In other news, "red allotropic iron" is not a real thing.

Quote from: Spike;906891I can buy that.  The damn story drags like a mule with a heavy load, but man is there ever time for two page loving depictions of consultations of the damned I Ching.  

But I still find myself frustrated by the utter failure of logistics represented. Why, you'd think Luxembourg hasn't conquered all of Russia simply because they are to damn polite, and not because, well, population actually matters.

Well, in the novel that doesn't matter really, because part of the point in the novel is that the world of the novel isn't reality.

In the series, that's a more valid point. Unless they end up taking the series in directions far too bold for me to expect them to take.

As a different spin on the question: what if the US opted to use atomic weapons on Germany?

Quote from: Nexus;962321As a different spin on the question: what if the US opted to use atomic weapons on Germany?

We didn't have them that early in the war not usable any way.

Downfall goes ahead; American soldiers and marines meet peasants charging with bamboo spears as ordered.  Things go about as you'd expect, but someone eventually calls a surrender before Japan is literally depopulated.  [This far I'm on solid ground, everything that follows is wild speculation.]

Japan gets occupied and rebuilt despite that (we did it for Germany), but with more deaths and hard feelings on our side, and far more deaths and loss of infrastructure on their side than the atomic bombs caused, Japan is not so much an ally during the coming cold war as an outpost and resource sink.

Russia moves on/towards Japan, but for reasons articulated above doesn't get much.  Say they do get some northern islands though, that puts us in a second West/East Germany situation, and is a further step towards Japan being a drain rather than a bulwark for the US.

Without nukes being used in Japan we don't acquire the revulsion we did in the real timeline; we don't know what we don't know, and the American death toll in ground fighting makes it look more attractive, not less.  Nukes get used a little later after all.  Could be the Soviets somewhere, but let's say it's McArthur in Korea getting what he wants.  Things can go a couple ways from here, but say the Russians don't back the North all the way to a general nuclear exchange, it's quite possible that's enough to tip the Korean war our way.  Except for the part about the nukes, that's on balance a good thing.  The domino strategy actually works, and communism (with it's attendant starvation and purges) doesn't get as far in Asia as it did.  Vietnam goes differently, the Cambodian killing fields are far enough out the butterfly effect wipes them out.

To recap, now we have a situation where south-east Asia is more firmly in the American camp, but the north Pacific is more in play after Russia's try for Japan, and that second front in Japan weakens our focus on Europe and Germany.  I think that changes Europe somewhat.  Russia plays harder for it, or a diluted American presence comes across as weaker locally, despite victories in Asia.  More middle European countries go Soviet.  With a stronger iron curtain, the Berlin wall doesn't fall on schedule, nor does communism in Russia.  There's still a cold war going in the present day.

Quote from: Omega;904481One thought.

There is also the possibility that any stalling on the US and/or USSR  front would have allowed Japan to advance one of their horror weapons enough to use. Or used more competently.

Example: The Submersible Aircraft Carriers were sent to seed the US with plagues. But failed for various reasons. Imagine had they succeeded and the US was swept with some virulent disease.

I forgot about that.  Yeah, things get bloody after that.

Quote from: Bren;904868Patton's views not withstanding, selling the American people on continuing the war for years so we could turn right around and fight our Soviet ally would have been a very hard sell - 1945 was not 1950.

Patton getting his way is one of my favorite counter-factuals, but you're right, politically it was not happening.

The nukres gave the Japanese leadership psychological 'permission' to surrender (& there was still an attempted coup) - that plus the offer to let the Emperor stay, was enough for them. I can imagine some similar kind of break point + offer having a similar effect later on. Otherwise it would have been Okinawa times a hundred. Possible break points might include USA establishing a beachhead & taking some major city, or possibly a Soviet invasion likewise. But Stalin did not seem very keen on taking lots of casualties invading mainland Japan, and Soviet naval power was limited. My guess would be the likeliest result would not be that far off US military projections, with millions of Japanese dead and at least hundreds of thousands of US.

Gore Vidal claims otherwise but I haven't read widely enough to say.

Yeah, it would have been a massacre. Of course, atomic weapons had a serious scarring effect on the Japanese psyche in many ways, but I think the devastation that a prolonged invasion of Japanese soil would have caused likely would have been much, much more devastating. It's hard to say just how, though. Would Japan have gone through its adoration of all things American like it did in the regular timeline? Would it have become industrial and futurist like it did in real life? Or would it have become deeply conservative? Or much more extremist?

Quote from: RPGPundit;962761Yeah, it would have been a massacre. Of course, atomic weapons had a serious scarring effect on the Japanese psyche in many ways, but I think the devastation that a prolonged invasion of Japanese soil would have caused likely would have been much, much more devastating. It's hard to say just how, though. Would Japan have gone through its adoration of all things American like it did in the regular timeline? Would it have become industrial and futurist like it did in real life? Or would it have become deeply conservative? Or much more extremist?

Could postwar Japanese society have been broken down and rebuilt the way the US did to Germany? That effort was helped by the US having a deep understanding of German society and the OSS having the Frankfurt School Jewish exiles in their employ. But even IRL Japan was flipped from militarist to anti-militarist, it just wasn't inflicted with the sense of race guilt the Germans received. East-Asian cultures are more 'Shame' cultures compared to the very Guilt-culture orientation of NW European societies, so maybe with Japan it went as far as it could. But I could imagine Japan being inflicted with a sense of culture-shame for her atrocities in China & SE Asia that IRL is absent.

Maybe. But I doubt it.  To really confront Japanese atrocities and accept culpability for them would be essentially a kind of cultural suicide. Japan would need to radically reinvent itself even more than it did after the war, become so totally different, that I don't think it would be possible.

Quote from: RPGPundit;963251Maybe. But I doubt it.  To really confront Japanese atrocities and accept culpability for them would be essentially a kind of cultural suicide. Japan would need to radically reinvent itself even more than it did after the war, become so totally different, that I don't think it would be possible.

That's my gut feeling too, yes.

Usually that total a crushing defeat and that great a humiliation doesn't do anything good for a society.  Odds are the Japanese would not have been very nice after that.

Quote from: RPGPundit;963825Usually that total a crushing defeat and that great a humiliation doesn't do anything good for a society.  Odds are the Japanese would not have been very nice after that.

There were strong feelings right up to (and through) the radio announcement by Emperor Hirohito (the first time most Japanese had ever heard the Emperor's voice). There were attempts to steal the recording while on its way to the radio station by militarists who didn't want to accept surrender.

As much as a full on invasion would have changed things, executing Hirohito would have been equally profound in its impact. I imagine if the invasion had been that bloody, the US would have considered doing this.

Quote from: Lynn;963840There were strong feelings right up to (and through) the radio announcement by Emperor Hirohito (the first time most Japanese had ever heard the Emperor's voice). There were attempts to steal the recording while on its way to the radio station by militarists who didn't want to accept surrender.

As much as a full on invasion would have changed things, executing Hirohito would have been equally profound in its impact. I imagine if the invasion had been that bloody, the US would have considered doing this.

Yes. It was keeping the emperor that let the Japanese feel they were able to accept the defeat and move on to become America-philes and modernize, and to move on from their militarist past.