both were reluctant to take needless risks. These were two formidable navies. It is worth
remembering that despite the combat at the Coral Sea and Midway, the two battle fleets
had yet to meet. The age of carrier air power had arrived, or at least was arriving, but
many admirals, especially in Japan, still expected a great naval battle to be concluded by
the gun power of the battle line. With Germany in deep trouble in the Soviet Union – as
it demonstrated by its own formidable negative example just what Clausewitz had meant
by ‘the culminating point of victory’, and why one should not exceed it – Japan could
identify only one theory of victory. The Imperial Japanese Navy, the guardian of the new
empire, had to inflict defeat in battle upon the US Navy. If the latter could be beaten, all
might yet be well. The theory had some merit, but the American enemy was sufficiently
high in quality and was expanding so rapidly in quantity by 1943 that the Imperial Navy’s
hopes of inflicting a Tsushima (the battle on 27 May 1905 where Vice-Admiral
Heihachiro Togo annihilated Russia’s Baltic Fleet) on the Americans could be fulfilled
only if the latter committed fatal operational errors.
The pull of the Pacific
Long prior to Pearl Harbor, the United States had agreed with Britain on the strategic
principle of ‘Germany First’. As the most dangerous enemy, Germany had to be defeated
first. Once that was achieved, strategically, the subsequent fall of Japan could be only
a matter of time. If the principle were reversed, the defeat of Japan would mean little
for the prospects of defeating Germany. But strategic history is fond of abusing
sound intentions and robust plans with inconvenient and unexpected contingencies.
Surprises happen. And the flow of events led Americans to want to fight the Japanese,
not the Germans. Primarily this was the result of Japan’s ‘day of infamy’ with the Pearl
Harbor attack on 7 December 1941. But it was a sentiment notably amplified by subse-
quent knowledge of Japanese brutality towards, and murder of, American POWs in the
Philippines. The iconic event in the public consciousness was the so-called ‘Bataan death
march’, when the American and Filipino survivors of the defence of the Bataan penin-
sula were force-marched deep inland. Under appalling conditions, 600 out of 12,000
Americans died during the trek, as did up to 7,000 of 60,000 Filipinos.
Throughout the war, from December 1941, US policy was subject to the pull of the
Pacific. That pull was exerted by the military and strategic logic of events in that part of
the world, and, of scarcely less importance, by the force of American public opinion.
The Pacific pull was useful as a source of pressure on America’s British ally. Roosevelt
could threaten to put America’s contribution to the European war on hold, while a
near-maximum effort was exerted in the Pacific against Japan. This was not what the
President favoured, but the pressure on him to devote ever more resources to the war
against Japan was real enough, and the British knew it. The Pacific War did have a major
strategic consequence for the conduct of the Anglo-American war in Europe, though not
as major as it might have been. When it came to inter-Allied strategic argument, the
British were a formidable adversary: they waged war by committee and their staffwork
was in a class of its own. But the pull of the Pacific could not help but have the strategic
consequence of putting the United States under pressure to win quickly in Europe, and
the American Joint Chiefs of Staff were always in favour of adopting the most direct path
to Berlin. This was helpful as a partial corrective to Britain’s preference for what some
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