Sarah Paine: commitment

Transcript context

…a few days. The Russians give up at Port Arthur and the 3rd Army is up and heading into Manchuria where it'll be there for the Battle of Mukden, which is a huge battle. It's got what, 500,000 troops? Even so, Russia can muster 125,000 more troops than Japan can. Japan in this battle is just taking anybody, young boys, old people. Whoever they can put into that army, they're putting into it. You could argue that they're well beyond their culminating point of attack, but for incompetent Russian strategy. If the Russians had run one more battle against the Japanese, the Japanese supply lines would have collapsed. It's unclear how far down the Liaodong Peninsula they would have had to retreat. strategy. If the Russians had run one more battle against the Japanese, the Japanese supply lines would have collapsed. It's unclear how far down the Liaodong Peninsula they would have had to retreat. So this is when Japan's war termination plan goes into effect. The Japanese realized from the very beginning that they had a high-risk, high-reward strategy. In contrast to World War II, they had a really carefully prepared exit strategy. When Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi is convening the cabinet and they're going to make the decision to fire the first shots in this war, he is already lining up a Harvard grad, Viscount Kaneko, who was an acquaintance of the President Theodore Roosevelt of the United States. What they want is to have Viscount Kaneko work on getting Roosevelt ready to do mediation at the end of this war. The negotiations are going to be held in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, negotiated by another Harvard alumnus, Baron Komura, who's going to do all of that. Meanwhile, Ito sends his son-in-law, who's a Diet member but also a graduate of Cambridge University, off to Britain to keep the Anglo-Japanese Alliance solid. So the Japanese are very aware that you have to have a way out of this thing. So it's in the Battle of Mukden that Field Marshal Yamagata decides it's time to call the American card at this moment. He said, “Look, the enemy is never going to request peace unless we have invaded Moscow or St. Petersburg” something he knows to be impossible. He said, “Look, the enemy still has powerful forces in its home country. We have already exhausted ours. Second, while the enemy still does not run out of officers, we have lost a great number since the opening of the war and cannot easily replace them.” At this moment, the Russian army was three times the size of the Japanese army. That army in theater was increasingly comprised of crack soldiers, not the colonial kind of soldiers they'd started out with. So here's Field Marshal Yamagata. In the first Sino-Japanese War, the government in Tokyo was afraid he was going to march on Beijing and do regime change. They pulled him out of the theater and gave him a sinecure to make sure he didn't do that this time. This time, he's a wiser man. He goes, “We must now be prudent.” Here are other members of this brilliant Meiji generation. The Chief of Staff of the Manchurian army said, “Look, if you start a fire, you’ve got to put it out.” And here is Field Marshal Ōyama, who is the commander of Manchurian forces. Before he sets out to take command, he tells the navy minister, “I will care for fighting in Manchuria, but I'm counting you as the man to tell me when to quit. ” So the navy's going to be the fire department, apparently. To tell you what the navy was up to, they took Elliott Island to turn it into a cruiser base. That's how they're running the blockade operations on Port Arthur, keeping the Russian fleet in until they can eventually sink it there. In addition, the Imperial Japanese Navy is busy laying mines. A lot of ships go down to mines. This is an interesting story. Nicholas II, tsar of Russia, doesn't like it that his fleet is just sitting in port, not doing anything. anese Navy is busy laying mines. A lot of ships go down to mines. This is an interesting story. Nicholas II, tsar of Russia, doesn't like it that his fleet is just sitting in port, not doing anything. So he sends Admiral Makarov out there to assume command. I've had the misfortune to read Makarov's major literary contribution, which is all about naval strategy. He's a real hero in Russia. But then I read his book. It's unbelievable. He said, “If you face a big ship, what do you do? A more powerful ship, you attack. If it's a smaller ship, what do you do? You attack.” It's one size fits all. I mean, how unanalytical. Here's what happens to him. He comes into the theater and within the month, another spoiler alert, he's dead. How did that happen? He followed his strategy. That's how it happened. What he does, he arrives, everyone's really excited because he's getting the guys out and thinking they're going to be doing things. But on April 12, the evening before he dies, there are a bunch of Japanese ships laying mines out at the harbor's entrance. He mistakes them for Russian ships and tells his people not to fire on them. Oops. The next morning, when he sorties with the whole fleet to take the offensive… Well, they didn't sweep the harbor entrance for mines. His ship hits a mine and he goes down with a ship. Alright, that is a tactical error and he's a dead man because of it. However, there's a much more important strategic error that follows. Two weeks later, Nicholas II decides to send his Baltic Fleet, named for the Baltic where it is, all the way around to come and relieve the siege at Port Arthur in order to avenge all of this thing. Okay, what's the problem with that plan? Well, that's the problem with that plan, right? It's a long way to go. There is no air conditioning for the sailors. They come from northern climes. By the time they arrive, they're mutinous. Their ships are covered with barnacles, which means they don't move very fast. Meanwhile, once Port Arthur has fallen, the Japanese immediately refit their navy so they were good to go. So the way this blunder plays out… Well, if you think about Britain, Britain will do these worldwide adventures, but they had a complete basing system across the globe so that their ships had coaling stations, they could refit, put more water on, give people some R&R time, relaxation and things. Also the British were very careful to fight on their own terms as ever possible. You don't want to fight on the enemy's terms. Well guess what, you're going to be fighting right next to Japan with barnacle ships and mutinous crews. That's not going to go well for you. The Japanese know because…Port Arthur falls while this expedition is taking place. So then the purpose of the expedition is no longer there. They should have taken a U-turn and gone home. But no, no, no, they're going to keep on going. There is only one other possible location for them which is a far inferior base up in Vladivostok. The Japanese know there are three ways to get to Vladivostok.…

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