What was Japan like pre marshall plan?
Was it comparable to the west in terms of wealth and standard of living in the years leading up to the Second World War?
>>346715
>in terms of wealth
Japan was an advanced industrial imperialist power.
>standard of living
The japanese proletariat was bitterly oppressed.
>>346715
All things considered, prewar Imperial Japan was more like Imperial Russia in a lot of ways.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_Japan#20th_century
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_Empire_of_Japan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_of_Japan_(economic_and_financial_data)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_production_in_Shōwa_Japan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_in_Japan#Japanese_Mineral_Production_.281916.E2.80.931933.29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Imperial_Japan
>>346715
>pre marshall plan?
Marshall plan was never applied to Japan. It was never the policy of the occupational authority the rebuild the Japanese economy.
>Was it comparable to the west in terms of wealth and standard of living
Yes, and no.
This part is true
>>346759
However, the countryside had been largely left behind, and this guy is also correct
>>346751
Especially among the Korean, Ryukyun and Taiwanese laborers.
It was a gilded age, where the middle and upper classes enjoyed a first world living and everyone else lived at least a century behind.
The contradictions were one of the things that drove Japan towards war.
>>346774
>Especially among the Korean, Ryukyun and Taiwanese laborers.
Yeah well they weren't ethnic Yamato master race so their suffering is justified.
At least that's what Japanese society thinks.
Also the Taiwanese labourers were ethnically Han Chinese. Taiwanese aboriginals stayed away from working in industrial manual labour.
>>346774
>It was never the policy of the occupational authority the rebuild the Japanese economy.
It was Mac's policy to put class A war criminals in charge of society and allow the Zaibatsus to rebuild themselves through mass proletarian suffering. Korea was just icing on the cake of Japanese reindustrialisation.
>>346792
>Yeah well they weren't ethnic Yamato master race so their suffering is justified.
>At least that's what Japanese society thinks.
It wasn't exactly pleasant being a Japanese prole.
Even in the Glorious Yamato Master Race Army, enlisted men were treated like beasts, and frequently subject to corporal punishment.
>>346823
>enlisted men were treated like beasts, and frequently subject to corporal punishment.
Pretty sure that was standard in armies and navies across the world
>>346807
Mac just liked war criminals. The point was, unlike Europe where there was real effort and plan to rebuild the economy, America was quite happy to let Japan turn into an impoverished shithole. Even MacArthur was frequently beseached to try and create some way out of the economic chaos. The closest they did was importing foodstuff when there was fear of mass starvation. But even he was perfectly fine with an agricultural Japan.
>>346832
Definitely not the American, or German armies.
>>346839
I feel like the Wehrmacht and the rest of germans during WWI & WWII are portrayed as savages because.. lets just say hollywood tells them to do so. Isn't this largely false as their military was similar to that of the Americans rather than the Reds? What about the Brits and other Dominions?
>>346876
Hollywood does exaggerate things but the German military has been really anal about discipline and order since the Prussian military reformations.
>>346862
Basically, because we needed shit in Korea yesterday. There was never, on the otherhand, anything like the Morgenthau Plan considered either.
But what we now know as the standard, Mouse-That-Roared plan of bomb a country, follow that up with foreign aid, hadn't become conventional wisdom in the U.S. establishment yet.
In fact, Japan spent the entire occupation era paying way, way more to the U.S. to support the occupation authority then it got out of the limited, strictly foodstuffs aid at the time.
Something like a third to a half of the national budget was spent on supporting the Americans.
Most of Japan was already industrialized, save for few country sides, which still today stay the same.
If you're asking pre-Marshall, right after the war, then most of the largest cities were destroyed in the fire bombing.
>>346862
>So why was Japan allowed to industrialise through Korea?
Cold War?
Red Scare?
Domino theory?
I don't agree with America's foreign policy but come on, they have a reason for it. Although it is a dumb and shitty reason.
>>346774
>However, the countryside had been largely left behind
That was true for pretty much every country at the time. It's not like Appalachians were living at the same standard as Bostonians.
>>346876
I left those out because I honestly don't know enough to talk about them.
Now, keep in mind the Wehrmacht totally were up to their balls in blood, and the Nuremberg Trials were prescient and vindicated in treating the Generalstab as a criminal conspiracy.
But they at least didn't treat their own soldiers like shit. There was no getting hotboxed for insufficient performance (not even breaches of discipline. Just "you did not succeed at what you were expected to do".)
The physical demands on the average infantryman was also insane. The Average Japanese infantryman was expected to do more than a German Elite.
>>346888
Actually, that thing of 'discipline' and 'order' worked because the Prussian and then German Military had a wide attitude of 'learn to improvise' and trusting their soldiers.
Compare standard infantry squads of the Germans and Americans.
The Americans were broken up IIRC into a reconaisance team, a fire team, and an assault team (and I think another team I'm forgetting), all with VERY SPECIFIC roles who all acted and moved under the direction of the officer or NCO in charge. All three teams were only supposed to move or shoot, under the direction of one man, who was supposed to run back and forth between the teams.
Compared to this the German infantry was broken up into "Guy with the machine gun" and "Guys without the machine gun". Guys without the machine gun basically doing whatever and letting the machine gun do whatever was necessary.
It's an incredibly relaxed system compared to say, the American or Chinese system
>>346900
The difference wasn't nearly as stark.
Appalachians in the 1940s still likely had at least SEEN an automobile, and likely used some level of mechanization in farming or mining.
>>346938
I don't have a source on hand, but IIRC one in four American households at the time owned a car.
One in 109 owned one in Japan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Hd9sz4PSdA
WE WUZ TENNOS N SHEET
About Japan, well a good analogy would be, as mentioned, the Gilded Age west.
As for the German Army, they actually were comparatively egalitarian with their troops even compared to the USA. The Waffen-SS even more so. Formalities weren't expected between the enlisted men and junior officers, almost all of whom were drawn from prior enlisted.
>>346823
This. Brutalization was pervasive in the IJA enlisted ranks, and iirc some cite it as a reason why Nanking happened.
>>346931
All three teams were only supposed to move or shoot, under the direction of one man, who was supposed to run back and forth between the teams.
You're a tard. The purpose of the NCO class is to bridge the gap between officers and enlisted. They need people to be able to do the job of the two people above him. NCOs can replace downed officers and junior enlisted can replace NCOs.
>>347074
I didn't say they couldn't be replaced (the practicallity of that is still questionable), but that one man was still supposed to retain control over all three teams at the same time, until he got shot.
He was supposed to scout out with the reconnaissance team, then direct fire for the fire team, then go lead the assault team.
>>347102
How is the practicality questionable? Nowadays, things have been so generalized that you have individual enlisted in charge of thousands in special but long-term circumstances.
Anyway, I am a different fellow. German parachute operations failed while American one were successful. American units could disband and reorganize fluidly, whereas you ultra-flexible Germans would wind up milling all over the place because the bridge ten meters away was not their target, it was the bridge ten kilometers away. Hence, massive German casualties for little return in investment.
Same with the French invasion. Germans are a people of poor creativity, so all the Americans had to do was kill a German unit, wait a while, then set up the exact same situation for another German unit. This means a regular German soldier could not practically replace or augment his officers' decision-making pipeline. On the other hand, an American could practically adapt and preempt. This is sometimes explained in the context of how a military implements "fragmentary orders." A layman way of putting it is an American private can call for artillery support, but a German equivalent, even if trained to do so, cannot because the command and communications infrastructure fundamentally prohibits it, or at least makes it practically impossible to adapt to the same situation happening ad-nauseum.
Interestingly, the Japanese, during the island campaigns, eventually functioned like American units as casualties were sustained. Someone else will need to get the source on this.
Generally, as the "elite" in a Prussian-style army die, either the nation's culture can or cannot generate an "NCO" system. The Aztec seemed to be unable to adapt (I'm not sure), but the Inca eventually generated fragmentary units, where an order is less an explicit command and more a philosophy and a cluster of finely-grained and mutable commands, incl. communication. (Source on Inca: old Spanish records from mid-late-1500s.)
>>346715
The only one i know is that back then, eating rice was a luxury and commoners eat stuff like sweet potatoes and other grains. Which is why a lot of poor commoners enroll in the navy cause they promised them rice all day everyday.
Until they discover that that's what they got. Rice and nothing else. No vegies, no meat. nothing.
It was not just Japan that was literal third world garbage at the time. Germany was closer to a developed country today like Turkey or Russia than the UK and US. Both Axis powers were backward, shitholes full of a poor agricultural underclass.
Third world shit
>>348410
Based Adam Tooze. Literally the only accurate work on the economy of the Third Reich.
