The Rif War

One of the lesser known 20th century wars gets an Alternate History

Review: Sky People

A Polish Zero?

The Poles develop a fast, maneuverable fighter comparable to the Japanese Zero in the late 1930s.  

Point Of Divergence is an amateur press magazine and also a forum for discussing AH and AH-related ideas.  Here is my comment section.

What actually happened: Guam was an American possession in the years between the World Wars, but as part of the Washington Naval Treaty the US was forbidden to fortify it.  After Japan withdrew from the treaty, an isolationist Congress continued to be hostile toward fortifying Guam.  Guam was deep among a group of Japanese-held islands (the Marianas group), and garrisoned only by a few hundred US troops with no heavy weapons, supported by a few hundred local militia.  As a result, Guam fell to the Japanese easily in the first few days after Pearl Harbor.  The US later took Guam back in mid-1944 as part of the island-hopping campaign across the Central Pacific.
    Guam was potentially important to the US.  It was a stepping-stone on the air route across the Pacific to the Philippines and potentially a way to breach the chain of Japanese island bases that would make US access to the Philippines difficult in time of war.  It was also a base for PanAm's passenger carrying seaplanes.
    So why wasn’t Guam fortified during the lead-up to US involvement in the war?  As noted earlier, there was opposition in Congressional isolationists opposed fortifying Guam because they correctly feared that a build up in Guam would increase the chances of war between the US and Japan. Another part of the problem was that Guam was too far inside Japanese-held territory to be held without a major commitment of US power, and in 1941 there was simply not enough US power to go around. 
    The Roosevelt administration was very much afraid that the US and Britain would soon face the combined strength of all three Axis powers, plus the Soviet Union in the first half of 1941, and that prospect was very frightening.  The US became aware that Germany was gearing up to attack the Soviet Union quite some time before the attack took place, and the Roosevelt administration concluded that in all likelihood that attack gave Britain and the US a window of opportunity of two or three months before the Soviet Union fell and the Germans turned their attentions back to the West.  They expected the Germans to advance through Spain and French North Africa to Northwest Africa in the fall of 1941, eventually establishing bases at Dakar and possibly in the Azores.  From there the Germans could threaten the bulge of Brazil and expand their anti-shipping campaign to the South Atlantic.
    During the few months when German air power was tied up in the Soviet Union, the Roosevelt Administration wanted to strengthen the US and British position in the Atlantic.  The Pacific was very definitely a lower priority, and the Roosevelt Administration shifted quite a bit of US naval power from the Pacific to the Atlantic, including newer battleships and carriers.  The US toyed with the idea of actually grabbing the Azores from Portugal before the Germans got a chance to, but didn’t follow through on that.  Eventually the US put several thousand well-trained and well-equipped Marines on Iceland to relieve part of the British garrison there, and became more aggressive in its naval activity in the Atlantic.  That was useful, but not particularly decisive, and if the Soviet Union had folded on schedule the Allies would not have been in much better shape than they were when the German attack on the Soviet Union started—probably a little worse off.
    The problem was that while the German attack on the Soviet Union tied up German power it freed up Japanese power.  Before the German attack, the Japanese had to worry about Soviet moves on the disputed border between the Soviet Union and Japanese-held Manchuria.  A Japanese move south to attack British, French, and Dutch possessions could well put the Japanese into a two-front war, with the Soviets taking advantage of local Japanese weakness to push into Manchuria.  That became unlikely after the Germans attacked the Soviet Union, and the Japanese felt free to push south.  That forced the British to shore up their defenses in the Far East, more than making up for the troops freed from garrisoning Iceland.

What might have happened: Let’s say that the Roosevelt administration realizes that Japan was likely to move south when the Germans attacked the Soviet Union.  He actually did have that information historically from intercepted Japanese messages, though not as early as this scenario would probably require him to have it.  Roosevelt decides that deterring the Japanese is more important than freeing up a few thousand British troops in Iceland.  As a result, the US gears up to respond to any Japanese move into the southern part of French Indochina.  Harbor facilities in Guam are quietly but urgently improved, and airstrips are started.
    When Japan moves into southern Indochina, the US is geared up and responds by putting the bulk of the marines that historically went to Iceland to Guam, escorted by a formidable US naval force.  As airfields are finished, planes are flown in off of aircraft carriers, and the US attempts to quickly transform Guam into a powerful base.  The idea is that by the time the Japanese consolidate their position in Indochina, the US will have a firm grip on Guam, and be rapidly turning it into a way of dominating a large section of the Pacific.
    The Japanese have counted on the US fleet having to fight its way through successive chains of Japanese-held islands—the Marshalls and the Marianas--in order to project power to the Far East.  A powerful US base on Guam does a lot to neutralize the Japanese-held islands.  It’s also a horrendous gamble.  The Japanese already have powerful forces in the area.  If they react quickly they may be able to move before the US marines can establish themselves firmly on Guam.  Even if the Marines are able to dig in, the Japanese in nearby islands will still outnumber them by an extremely large margin, probably more than ten to one.  The marines would have to be only the first installment of a much contingent of US troops.
    On the other hand, the Japanese are geared up for their move into Indochina and by no means united yet on whether or not it’s necessary to fight the US.  They don’t have all of the carriers that they used at Pearl Harbor in service yet, and are not geared up for war with Britain and the US.  Also, a large part of the Japanese merchant fleet are in waters that would become very unfriendly if they went to war with the US.  With the Japanese already short of merchant shipping they would be ill-advised to attack before most of those ships made it back to Japanese-controlled waters, and that would take a month or two—longer if the US played games to delay Japanese ships at the Panama Canal.
    Let’s say that the US has the marines in Hawaii when the Japanese make their move into southern Indochina, presumably at about the same time (July 2, 1941) that they made their move there historically.  The troops are underway within about a week, and are off-loaded by July 26, when Roosevelt cuts off trade with Japan and freezes Japanese assets in the US.  At that point the Japanese would probably take a couple of weeks to decide on a course of action.  The merchant shipping issue would postpone any Japanese attack until at least late August or early September at the very earliest, with late September or early October more likely.  The US would need to work frantically to build up an infrastructure for the troops and planes.  They would also need to quickly build up forces in Wake and Midway to cut down the distance between Guam and other US bases. 
    The upside of this for Roosevelt would be that by fortifying Guam he takes the initiative away from Japan.  With the US building up in Guam, the Japanese  no longer really has a choice of leaving the US alone and attacking only the Dutch and British possessions in the Far East.  They have to either attack the US or see their strategy for war with the US destroyed without a fight.  The downside for the US is that there is a very good chance that the marines will end up killed or captured if Japan does go to war, and they are one of very few well-trained and well-equipped forces that the US has in June/July 1941.  Putting them in Guam also commits the US to supplying them in the middle of a lot of Japanese-held islands.  If Japan does go to war with the US, getting supplies to Guam will be very difficult.  On the other hand, the Japanese will not have an easy time rooting several thousand well trained and well-equipped marines out of a rugged island.  The firepower of a fully-equipped US force would make effective Japanese offensive action very difficult, as the Japanese found out in Guadalcanal.  In the long-term the Japanese can't afford the  kind of battle of attrition it would take to conquer Guam, but the US can.
    Also, historically the Japanese were well aware that the US was getting sucked into the battle against the U-boats in the Atlantic.  They counted on the US sending most of its forces into that battle, and concentrating on defeating Germany.  A move into Guam, backed by the bulk of the US fleet, would give them reason to question whether or not that would actually happen.  It would also be a move that the Japanese would have understood and respected—a surprise move that put brave men in a position where they challenged a much larger adversary.  It would tell Japanese leaders in unmistakable terms that the US was willing to fight.
    Overall, would this be a good idea?  Probably not.  It could end up with the US fighting and losing a battle with the Japanese at a time and place where the Japanese had a lot of advantages.  On the other hand, historically the US put a lot of men and equipment into the Philippines in the last half of 1941, and loss of those men was pretty much inevitable if Japan was able to control the Central Pacific and took the Dutch East Indies, both of which were pretty likely with Guam in their hands.  If the US put an equivalent amount of power  into Guam, they would at least have a shot at winning there.
    If Japan and the US fought over Guam, they would both be at the end of long supply lines that would suck in scarce shipping.  The Japanese would not have enough shipping to supply their troops with enough to keep them fighting in the long run without giving up something else.  The US would have the shipping to keep their troops supplied, but those ships wouldn't be available somewhere else, and they would have to get to Guam, which would be nightmarishly difficult.
    Would the Japanese have still fought the US in this scenario?  Would they have gone after Pearl Harbor in this scenario?  Preparation for that attack would have pushed the date of the Japanese move to about where it was historically, because the Japanese simply weren't ready for that kind of attack much before December 7, 1941.  The Japanese would have to decide whether to give the US more time to build up in Guam in exchange for the chance at knocking out the bulk of the US Pacific fleet.  The Japanese would also build up their forces in the islands near Guam, and those forces would have to come from somewhere.  Where would the Japanese make themselves weaker, and would the consequences of doing that be?  As always your comments are very welcome.

revised version Posted on Feb 3, 2012.

More Stuff For POD Members Only

What you see here is a truncated on-line version of a larger zine that I contribute to POD, the alternate history APA.  POD members get to look forward to more fun stuff.