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Japan 1941

Countdown to Infamy

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Japan 1941

Written by: Eri Hotta
Narrated by: Laural Merlington
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When Japan attacked the United States in 1941, argues Eri Hotta, its leaders, in large part, understood they were entering a conflict they were bound to lose. Availing herself of rarely consulted material, Hotta poses essential questions overlooked by historians in the seventy years since: Why did these men - military men, civilian politicians, diplomats, the emperor - put their country and its citizens in harm's way? Why did they make a decision that was doomed from the start?

Introducing us to the doubters, bluffers, and schemers who led their nation into this conflagration, Hotta brilliantly shows us a Japan never before glimpsed - eager to avoid war but fraught with tensions with the West, blinded by traditional notions of pride and honor, nearly escaping disaster before it finally proved inevitable.

©2013 Eri Hotta (P)2013 Tantor Asia Military Political Science Politics & Government Wars & Conflicts War Imperial Japan Imperialism Russia China Self-Determination Soviet Union Socialism
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This is not the only example in history where wishful thinking, avoidance of responsibility, and indifference to human lives dragged the world into a catastrophic war. This is not parallel to Hitler's long-planned and well-considered search for territorial expansion. It's just a huge mistake that everyone involved knew well in advance.

What Japan and German did have in common is the assumption that the US would not be pulled into the war, but if it did, the war would be lost. In Japan's case, the naval superiority of the US was known to be decisive from the beginning. In Hitler's case, everyone knew that US economic power would crush the axis in the long run.

50 million people died as the ghastly machine of war ground on to a pre-ordained final answer.

"We are all misled into war."

A War That Should Never Have Happened

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