ORIGINAL: treespider
I knew this game has a pro-Allied bias! Now if we can only get rid of the corrupt Corsair bonus...
Real life had a pro-Allied bias. What many people really don't realize (and a large number of Germans and Japanese leaders missed this too) is that the US was the dominant industrial power on the planet before 1920. In 1939, 50% of the manufactured goods in the world were made in the US.
North America is rich in almost all natural resources. During WW II, the largest, in production, oil fields were in the US. Most of England's oil came from Texas. California also had very large oil production. The US Navy owned the leases on a large part of the Midway-Sunset oil field in the San Juaquin Valley. Only in the last 10 years have they sold them off.
The only natural resource the US needed that was cut off by the war was natural rubber. American chemists figured out how to make artificial rubber from petroleum, so that never became a critical problem.
The US population was better trained in some basic skills than anybody else. When Germany started gearing up for war, they started a crash program to teach young men vehicle mechanics and how to drive. Two skills most American males already knew. When the US needed a military truck, they bought commercial truck designs and militarized them. Everybody else had to design military trucks from scratch.
The US didn't have anywhere near its current population, but it was still one of the most populous countries. Japan and Germany mobilized all the men by employing slave labor in their factories. The US did it by mobilizing women to work in factories (along side men unfit for service or too old). With an all volunteer work force mobilized by patriotism, the quality of factory output was better than the Axis could produce.
In this day of American goods = junk and Asian goods = great, it's hard to remember that the opposite was true in the 1930s and 40s. American factories produced some of the best products in the world, even before the war. Japanese quality was better than many people thought in 1941, but it wasn't universally great.
The basic Japanese infantry rifle was the heaviest and longest rifle used by any army. It was terribly balanced and even large men found it very tiring to hold in a firing position for any length of time. The standard issue Japanese side arm is considered by collectors today to be the worst infantry weapon of the war. The pistol had a nasty habit of firing when you holstered it. That is if it didn't jam. US souvenier collectors on the battlefield would throw them away because they were so poor.
As for the US getting extra troops when the Japanese invade early and the Japanese getting none. In 1945, the Japanese militia organizations were the culmination of months of work planning and organizing. Militias rarely spring up spontaneously. If the Allies had invaded early in the war, there probably would have been some disorganized resistance, but Japan's population was unarmed. It wouldn't have ammounted to much without the government providing arms. The government didn't have any spares sitting around. The 1945 militias were armed with weapons that were acquired or manufactured for that purpose.
In the US, the extra units the US gets for a Japanese invasion represents the fast mobilization of National Guard units and regular army units that already existed. In 1941, the standing army was already quite large. They were short of equipment, but as someone else pointed out, much of the shortages were due to the lend lease program.
I believe the manual says that any US LCU that show up early show up with their TOE at half strength (I don't have time to look it up right now, but I recall they don't show up at full strength). That would represnt the shortage of arms. Even at less than full strength, these units thrown into the breach would have almost certainly been able to defeat a Japanese invasion anywhere on the North American mainland. The Japanese would have been running a very long supply line vs. troops fighting on their home turf.
The US has not had a foreign army on its soil since the War of 1812. Look at the reaction to Pearl Harbor and 9/11. A foreign invasion would have been met with even more ferocity.
The game has limitations and non-historical things here and there, some favor the Allies, some the Japanese. The bad news is that the US really was the juggernaut the game reflects. The only thing the Japanese had going for them in the long run was the tenacity of their troops on defense. In the end, they lost every battle after mid-1942 though.
Playing the Japanese in WitP is an exercise in playing a good defense. The goal is to grab as much territory as possible before the Allies can get going, then dig in and hold it as long as possible. You win by slowing down the Allied advance. You can't stop it. After mid-42, don't even think about an offensive anywhere except possibly China.
Bill
