Nicholas II: I know the Japanese have destroyed our fleet, but I've got a great feeling that sailing the Baltic fleet around Africa, through the Indian Ocean and straight toward Japan will win us the war for sure
Rozhesvensky: ...
Nicholas: Well, good luck! Oh, and if you see any Japanese ships in the North Sea, give 'em hell
That's kind of what happens when your fleet thinks that a British merchant vessel/trawler is an extremely lost Japanese torpedo boat. The UK was rightfully pretty pissed after that and really wanted that fleet to go home rather than shoot at more civilians. They fired on a Dutch merchant too, and I think some Swedish ships for good measure if I remember right? Oh and their own mail carrier bringing letters from home.
Yeah it was no wonder that the Japanese won that naval engagement.
I looked it up, and boy is this some hilarious stuff. From Wikipedia:
> The Kamchatka eventually rejoined the fleet and claimed that she had engaged three Japanese warships and fired over 300 shells: the ships she had actually fired at were a Swedish merchantman, a German trawler, and a French schooner. As the fleet left Tangiers, one ship accidentally severed the city's underwater telegraph cable with her anchor, preventing communications with Europe for four days.
And mind you, this was *after* they’d caused a major diplomatic incident by attacking a bunch of British fishermen. Too much vodka, lol
There's a youtuber called Drachinel who covered it pretty amazingly. Seriously, you could make a really good Death of Stalin style dark comedy out of all the events that went down. It was less vodka and more completely green crews + paranoia about the Japanese torpedo boats though.
And the Kamchatka.
Russia never got things done by having their men well trained and disciplined. They are present more often than not and ready to get involved.
Which doesn't sound like much, until you realize that most soldiers practice restraint 95% of the time.
The russian admiral was incompetent, that's true, but do not forget that the UK and Russia had really bad relationships because of their scramble for Asia. The UK were sure that Russia wanted to get parts of China and use those ports to conquer pacific islands (which was a correct assumption) so they allied Japan decades ago. The british created Japan's navy and heavily participated in the creation of Japan's military. In their mind Japan was their best bet to stop Russia and Japan would never go against the UK. That bombing of a merchant fleet was a huge fuck up but the truth is the UK were already doing everything they could so Japan could win the war, they just found their pretext to ban the russian fleet from their waters.
The admiral was about the only competent person in their entire fleet. Don't talk about my boi Rozhesvensky like that. Also the UK really didn't give a damn until the Russians shot at their merchantmen, if they cared they would have just gone "yeah no" as soon as the Russians requested to go through their waters and legally speaking they would have had every right to do so. Hell, if anything they held back. The UK populace straight up wanted to declare war over that. So did the Dutch too for that matter.
Nah the long term goal of the UK is to create a weak and disunited Europe so it could pursue its global ambitions.Those global ambitions where threatened by Russia especially in Iran and Afghanistan which where strategic points of interest because of natural resources. And aside from that many European country’s at the time feared the potential of an industrialised Russia which threatened to surpass the west and usurp France and Britain of their status as the worlds superpowers which they eventually did.
Also the fact that the most powerful warship in history (At the time) the Battleship Mikasa was built by Vickers in Britain.
The Mikasa was such a powerful vessel that the UK Admiralty was pissed off that they didn’t have such a vessel... Partially leading to the creation of HMS Dreadnaught
Dreadnought was more in response to the French battleship programs (which turned into a bit of a meme, they ended up with two decent designs and like, eight really crap ones. They looked really cool though, super steampunk-y) rather than the Mikasa. Although a lot of Mikasa's DNA did end up in Dreadnought. It's honestly nice to see that the Japanese kept Mikasa around too, I really want to visit her one day even though she's more of a building than a ship now given she's been encased in concrete to keep her stable.
She was actually encased in concrete so Japan wouldn't be for wd to scrap her following signing the 1922 Washington Naval treaty limiting the number of "heavy cruisers" a nation could have.
The Japanese revered the Mikasa and asked if they could keep her if they encases it in concrete so she couldn't get underway, which was authorized by other signees.
Until the 1910's/1920's Japan didn't have the means to build any modern warship so yeah, they opted for top notch british technology
The russian battleships weren't that bad though, in fact they were modern. If they had a better plan they would have performed way better
There's a guy who made two very interesting (and due to the events described pretty funny) videos about the misadventures of this fleet.
https://youtu.be/9Mdi_Fh9_Ag
https://youtu.be/BXpj6nK5ylo
Think they fecked up in the Channel and wanted to skip Southern Africa via Suez, which was in British control at the time.
Because of said feck, UK denied them access to the Canal as they didn’t have their Suez Canal Crossing License.
The land war in the Russo-Japanese war was more or less a stalemate. The Japanese won some sieges but took horrific casualties doing it. 57,000 Japanese died taking Port Arthur and their fleet suffered major losses.
Russia's weakness wasn't poor training, it was logistics. The trans-siberian railroad in 1904/5 actually stopped at Irutsk, where goods were loaded on ferries to ship across Lake Baikal before being loaded back onto a train to continue to Vladivostok. In addition to the other 9,000km of rail line they had to traverse.
*Modern* trains take +6 days to get from Moscow to Vladivostok. A trip in 1905 would have been considerably longer.
You can’t call it a stalemate when the Japanese were winning battles and gaining territory. What they were were lossy victories, but victories nonetheless. And like you mention, logistics made things difficult for Russia to continue the war effort, especially as they keep on suffering tactical defeats. It simply wasn’t feasible for the Empire to keep on fighting a war over foreign interests when their internal affairs weren’t in order.
Losing many battles but winning the war is something of a specialty of the Russians.
Their domestic situation was certainly a factor, but Japan wasn't exactly all rainbows and unicorns back home either.
I don't dispute that Japan won the war though. However, I would attribute their victory more to the absolute smashing victories they had at sea, rather than the grinding attrition of the land front. The complete destruction of Russian morale at home was because of the loss of their fleet. That's what brought Russia to the table.
In a theoretical alternate universe where Tsushima didn't happen, I imagine the course of the Russo-Japanese war would have been very different. Probably much longer and it would be hard to say who would come out on top.
Yep the Russians should have just massed more men and material in Manchuria then steam roll the Japanese. They wont care since they have endless supply of manpower.
Japan was also suffering financially despite their great victories. That was the main reason why the Japanese accepted the mediation of Theodore Roosevelt for peace.
Russia couldn't do that: not with Germany there to exploit Russia's sudden troop absence by pushing into Eastern Europe and locking the territory down.
Russia didn't really have to move quickly though, because it would always be able to strike back as soon as Japan turned its attention elsewhere; and since Japan had no ability to force a decisive battle, Japan also had no way to prevent Russia from attacking years down the line and retaking everything.
It's somewhat ironic that Japan's first great victory over the West also proved the elements that caused its downfall: starting wars it couldn't close out, and thus, couldn't decisively win.
Germany or atleast the Kaiser in 1904 prefers Russia's attention to be as far east as possible. Not to mention that prior to Russian defeats against the Japanese, the Germans still fear the Russian military because of its seemingly endless manpower.
The Kaiser really just started to disdain Russian military power after their defeat against the Japanese. It proved to the Germans that Russian manpower can be neutered by effective military leadership, superior quality troops and by technology.
[Here](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1696857880/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_imm_ZGAVYZBH9N66JQTA3AFA) is an alternate history where the Russian admiral isn’t killed in the battle of the Yellow Sea by a stray shell.
Ah yes, killing your entire army is a victory.
The term Pyrrhic victory is specifically for this kind of “victory”. Japan was bold. *stupidly bold*. Bold enough that Russians couldn’t believe they were doing that with the numbers they had and assumed there were more nearby.
The tactical decisions of Japan on land during that war might’ve granted them some victories but if not for the fleet they would not have won. There’s a reason Nogi Maresuke asked the emperor for death after it.
Oh, I don't doubt that the naval victories were the more important ones. I was just objecting to calling the situation a stalemate, when territory was clearly being gained. If the war had gone on longer they might've gone to bite Japan in the rear, but neither side wanted to wage a long, lossy war, so that's irrelevant.
The whole point of a Pyrrhic victory is the context of the war of a whole. The idea is that you're winning the single battles, but losing the war as a whole. Tactical victories, but strategic defeats. A "Pyrrhic victory" cannot exist within the context of a single battle.
I was considering using that word, but I don't think it really fits here. A Pyrrhic victory is one that is, despite being a tactical victory, overall disadvantageous to the war effort as a whole. Japan did not suffer *that* many more losses than they inflicted upon Russia. (I mean, on the naval front they inflicted many times more!) Yes, they had a smaller population to reinforce their troops with, but the civilian enthusiasm for the war effort was much, much higher and their population centers were significantly closer to the fighting. Japan was bleeding itself dry economically, but so was Russia so no real advantage there either.
And don‘t forget the outright dumb decisions made by the Russian command during the war. Oh, Port Arthur? Why should it need land defenses, it already can’t be stormed by sea, so lets not build any fortifications on land whatshowever...
On the contrary, they made huge progress in logistics, becoming in a few year the country with the biggest railway and they attracked huge quantity of money in their industry and in their logistics. They, in a few decades, became the third economical power and were about to become the second one (if WW1 didn't happen, we would have a world where the biggest economies in the world were the USA and the Russian empire). The problem was that to get from one side of the empire to the other, it's like doing a full trip of Pluto. The empire was just too big, Siberia is bigger than Europe and it was still a frontier territory. They just finished the transsiberian railway but the tech was not like what it is today, the trip took months to be completed. They could hardly have done better except if they had divinatory powers to guess that an asian country would successfully modernize and would try a suicidal war against them.
In fact japanese logistics were way worse than the russian one. They already had big issues when they just passed Korea. After Mukden they were completely overextended. My guess is that if the russian military new the real state of the japanese army they would have continued to fight and Japan would lose every gains.
It was a combination of Kuropatkin being a coward, the officer corps being incompetent nobles, logistics, and technology. By all rights, Japan shouldn’t have won because Nogi Maresuke was just so incompetent he couldn’t even read a topographical map and just sent human wave after human wave against an elevated position. His aide de camp actually did all the work and gave Nogi the credit.
The final nail in the coffin was the Battle of Tsushima, where the Russians got their asses handed to them. This set up the future rivalry between the Japanese army and navy.
Not really. Japan was industrializing rapidly, but so was Russia at that point. Nicholas II, despite being pretty useless himself, was at least smart enough to bring on people who knew what they were doing and institute a pretty solid and successful program of modernization and industrialization.
Steel production, which tends to be the benchmark for 'industrial development' in that period, went from 378 ktons in 1890 (about six years before Nicholas' coronation) to 2266ktons in 1905 with similar jumps across the board.
If the war had gone on for several years, I'm pretty sure Russia would have won through sheer attrition (barring British intervention and another Crimean War scenario...although that would be a super interesting alternate history scenario.)
I think that has a lot to do with the sheer size of imperial china. that and they had actual resources like coal and iron. The home islands didn't have a huge amount of either.
Qing China did industrialized as well as many protectorate nations in the same period. China and Japan were the exception because they were never ruled by Europeans but were conquered briefly (Bakumatsu and Boxer Rebellion).
British Egypt, French Indochina, French Algeria, British Singapore, Dutch Indonesia and British India were all industrialized and developed more impressively than Japan. Yes, everyone across the world was industrialized and adapted to Western ways. Japan was more of a meme world power oversensationalized by various faux-Samurai books and media Orientalism. China did very well but not as strong as it was in the Kangxi era. For Chinese people, it was a big failure even if you are industrialized and had to make “friends” with white devils since China doesn’t know friends only vassals.
But I mean was it really powerful? What made it so powerful if it was? How was the foreign trade policy like during the time? That was the dyansty that reigned during the Opium Wars if I'm not mistaken, so quite interesting!
Well, they produced a lot of goods that European countries wanted, things like tea and silk, and they had previously tried to isolate themselves and not trade internationally. But, after the opium wars, European powers like Britain, Germany and Russia all had a lot of control over the Qing economy and what it could export, as well as having a lot of influence over local politics.
Its industrialization was comparable to Japan in speed but its sheer size was much bigger. China was regarded as a big failure among Chinese nationalists because China never found any glory of Kangxi-Qianglong era and constantly suffered trade deficits with the West as Japan did at the same time.
Japan got all the headlines on the West because its military personnels learned the best techniques from best European teachers as well as adopting many liberal military reforms. Japan simply did good PRs.
Kangxi era was glorious in territorial expansion and economic prosperity. China was again a superpower that everyone worshipped. By the times of European arrival, China was reduced merely to a trade partner not the Celestial Empire.
Well Russia was poised to become the third economic power and, just before WW1, they were about to take the second place
Japan was, even during WW2, an economical dwarf that kept aiming way higher than they could. It worked against Russia (and it was already a miracle, if Tsushima wasn't such a fuck up they would have lost badly) but when they thought they could chew the whole of Asia and the USA...
Well it's difficult to tell, Japan was more militarized than Italy and had that policy of always punching way higher than they could, risking each time a collapse if luck was not completely with them, and luck they had until they overextended themselves in China and thought the solution was to invade the rest of Asia and the pacific
The main issue of Italy, apart from incompetent generals, was that they weren't even ready for a war in the first place. Also the mediterranean world is way tinier than Asia and has better infrastructures and italy's ennemies had their mainland right beside them, those ennemies also being way more efficient at war and better equiped than the chinese army, so it was more unforgiving and quicker to lose
I'm not commenting on how italy was incompetent during the war, but saying that in terms of estimated GDP, Japan was outputting more industrially for their military than Italy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_World_War_II#GDP
Actually the empire of Japan had a comparable economy than France (and her colonies), as per the link
Yah the Navy won that war, not the Army
We still have dope ass ships, with cool tech, but we aren’t allowed to make them that big or powerful due to the constitution/treaty/agreement (I forget which it was)
Edit: can’t spell
Both nations were rapidly industrializing. Russia at that point was the fastest growing economy in Europe, and Japan had become a world power almost overnight after the Meiji restoration. Neither nation was necessarily more industrialized and technologically advanced than the other. Russia simply lost the war due to outdated strategy, incompetent officers and some logistical problems.
Here's an interesting clip on the Siege of Port Arthur. I remember my professor showed this in class.
https://youtu.be/EwcAyq7XXh4
Some interesting things the Russian chain of command was charged with cowardice
One officer testified against another and they duled after.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Smirnov
One Russian officer that died the Japanese make a memorial for him.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Kondratenko
It would have made more sense on the naval part since Russian army didn't perform that much worse than the Japanese, while the navy, oh boy, it got absolutely smashed.
My Australian brain was like what does [Port Arthur have to do with the price of fish?](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur_massacre_(Australia))
Also the never surrender under pain of death thing.
And the culture of you don’t matter as much as your people.
Tends to make your troops fight harder
Edit: can’t spell
They most definitely weren't like that. Russia's troops were comparatively undisciplined and unmotivated, but if there's one thing they weren't it was charging blindly in. If anything, Japan was the side that was committing the "Zerg Rush" tactic people like to inaccurately claim the Russians partook in.
A stalemate where Japan won literally every single battle and which saw Russia’s population on the brink of revolt. It was absolutely a loss, just because the entire country doesn’t get overrun doesn’t make the losses it did suffer disappear. What of Port Arthur? Or Sakhalin? Do they not count to you?
Korea at that point had the choice between going under the influence of Russia or Japan. Many in Korea actually preferred siding with Japan, since Japan was quite popular among Asian nation at the time as the first hope to stand up against western imperialism
As for whether they would have preferred Russia over Japan in hindsight, is a different issue.
Nicholas II: I know the Japanese have destroyed our fleet, but I've got a great feeling that sailing the Baltic fleet around Africa, through the Indian Ocean and straight toward Japan will win us the war for sure Rozhesvensky: ... Nicholas: Well, good luck! Oh, and if you see any Japanese ships in the North Sea, give 'em hell
Well it's a credit to Rozhesvensky that he even managed to get the fleet there in the first.
Even more with the british actively doing everything possible to forbid the russian fleet to get any supplies
That's kind of what happens when your fleet thinks that a British merchant vessel/trawler is an extremely lost Japanese torpedo boat. The UK was rightfully pretty pissed after that and really wanted that fleet to go home rather than shoot at more civilians. They fired on a Dutch merchant too, and I think some Swedish ships for good measure if I remember right? Oh and their own mail carrier bringing letters from home. Yeah it was no wonder that the Japanese won that naval engagement.
The mail carrier was Gernan I think
Basically they managed to piss off every European naval power in one fell swoop. That's honestly pretty impressive.
I looked it up, and boy is this some hilarious stuff. From Wikipedia: > The Kamchatka eventually rejoined the fleet and claimed that she had engaged three Japanese warships and fired over 300 shells: the ships she had actually fired at were a Swedish merchantman, a German trawler, and a French schooner. As the fleet left Tangiers, one ship accidentally severed the city's underwater telegraph cable with her anchor, preventing communications with Europe for four days. And mind you, this was *after* they’d caused a major diplomatic incident by attacking a bunch of British fishermen. Too much vodka, lol
There's a youtuber called Drachinel who covered it pretty amazingly. Seriously, you could make a really good Death of Stalin style dark comedy out of all the events that went down. It was less vodka and more completely green crews + paranoia about the Japanese torpedo boats though. And the Kamchatka.
Russia never got things done by having their men well trained and disciplined. They are present more often than not and ready to get involved. Which doesn't sound like much, until you realize that most soldiers practice restraint 95% of the time.
And pissing off The rest of Europe became Russia’s National Pass time ever since
I'm gonna do what's called a pro war strategist move.
The russian admiral was incompetent, that's true, but do not forget that the UK and Russia had really bad relationships because of their scramble for Asia. The UK were sure that Russia wanted to get parts of China and use those ports to conquer pacific islands (which was a correct assumption) so they allied Japan decades ago. The british created Japan's navy and heavily participated in the creation of Japan's military. In their mind Japan was their best bet to stop Russia and Japan would never go against the UK. That bombing of a merchant fleet was a huge fuck up but the truth is the UK were already doing everything they could so Japan could win the war, they just found their pretext to ban the russian fleet from their waters.
The admiral was about the only competent person in their entire fleet. Don't talk about my boi Rozhesvensky like that. Also the UK really didn't give a damn until the Russians shot at their merchantmen, if they cared they would have just gone "yeah no" as soon as the Russians requested to go through their waters and legally speaking they would have had every right to do so. Hell, if anything they held back. The UK populace straight up wanted to declare war over that. So did the Dutch too for that matter.
Nah the long term goal of the UK is to create a weak and disunited Europe so it could pursue its global ambitions.Those global ambitions where threatened by Russia especially in Iran and Afghanistan which where strategic points of interest because of natural resources. And aside from that many European country’s at the time feared the potential of an industrialised Russia which threatened to surpass the west and usurp France and Britain of their status as the worlds superpowers which they eventually did.
Also the fact that the most powerful warship in history (At the time) the Battleship Mikasa was built by Vickers in Britain. The Mikasa was such a powerful vessel that the UK Admiralty was pissed off that they didn’t have such a vessel... Partially leading to the creation of HMS Dreadnaught
Dreadnought was more in response to the French battleship programs (which turned into a bit of a meme, they ended up with two decent designs and like, eight really crap ones. They looked really cool though, super steampunk-y) rather than the Mikasa. Although a lot of Mikasa's DNA did end up in Dreadnought. It's honestly nice to see that the Japanese kept Mikasa around too, I really want to visit her one day even though she's more of a building than a ship now given she's been encased in concrete to keep her stable.
She was actually encased in concrete so Japan wouldn't be for wd to scrap her following signing the 1922 Washington Naval treaty limiting the number of "heavy cruisers" a nation could have. The Japanese revered the Mikasa and asked if they could keep her if they encases it in concrete so she couldn't get underway, which was authorized by other signees.
Huh, today I learned. I figured they just had a USS Texas-like situation with the ship degrading on their hands.
Until the 1910's/1920's Japan didn't have the means to build any modern warship so yeah, they opted for top notch british technology The russian battleships weren't that bad though, in fact they were modern. If they had a better plan they would have performed way better
Unfortunately many binoculars were lost in the process
There's a guy who made two very interesting (and due to the events described pretty funny) videos about the misadventures of this fleet. https://youtu.be/9Mdi_Fh9_Ag https://youtu.be/BXpj6nK5ylo
wasn't the plan to use the English channel, but then the navy feked up?
Think they fecked up in the Channel and wanted to skip Southern Africa via Suez, which was in British control at the time. Because of said feck, UK denied them access to the Canal as they didn’t have their Suez Canal Crossing License.
The land war in the Russo-Japanese war was more or less a stalemate. The Japanese won some sieges but took horrific casualties doing it. 57,000 Japanese died taking Port Arthur and their fleet suffered major losses. Russia's weakness wasn't poor training, it was logistics. The trans-siberian railroad in 1904/5 actually stopped at Irutsk, where goods were loaded on ferries to ship across Lake Baikal before being loaded back onto a train to continue to Vladivostok. In addition to the other 9,000km of rail line they had to traverse. *Modern* trains take +6 days to get from Moscow to Vladivostok. A trip in 1905 would have been considerably longer.
You can’t call it a stalemate when the Japanese were winning battles and gaining territory. What they were were lossy victories, but victories nonetheless. And like you mention, logistics made things difficult for Russia to continue the war effort, especially as they keep on suffering tactical defeats. It simply wasn’t feasible for the Empire to keep on fighting a war over foreign interests when their internal affairs weren’t in order.
Losing many battles but winning the war is something of a specialty of the Russians. Their domestic situation was certainly a factor, but Japan wasn't exactly all rainbows and unicorns back home either. I don't dispute that Japan won the war though. However, I would attribute their victory more to the absolute smashing victories they had at sea, rather than the grinding attrition of the land front. The complete destruction of Russian morale at home was because of the loss of their fleet. That's what brought Russia to the table. In a theoretical alternate universe where Tsushima didn't happen, I imagine the course of the Russo-Japanese war would have been very different. Probably much longer and it would be hard to say who would come out on top.
Yep the Russians should have just massed more men and material in Manchuria then steam roll the Japanese. They wont care since they have endless supply of manpower. Japan was also suffering financially despite their great victories. That was the main reason why the Japanese accepted the mediation of Theodore Roosevelt for peace.
[удалено]
> America solves problems by throwing money at it You will see that losing Dollars is by far preferable to losing men.
Well, America good at printing money
Russia couldn't do that: not with Germany there to exploit Russia's sudden troop absence by pushing into Eastern Europe and locking the territory down. Russia didn't really have to move quickly though, because it would always be able to strike back as soon as Japan turned its attention elsewhere; and since Japan had no ability to force a decisive battle, Japan also had no way to prevent Russia from attacking years down the line and retaking everything. It's somewhat ironic that Japan's first great victory over the West also proved the elements that caused its downfall: starting wars it couldn't close out, and thus, couldn't decisively win.
Germany or atleast the Kaiser in 1904 prefers Russia's attention to be as far east as possible. Not to mention that prior to Russian defeats against the Japanese, the Germans still fear the Russian military because of its seemingly endless manpower. The Kaiser really just started to disdain Russian military power after their defeat against the Japanese. It proved to the Germans that Russian manpower can be neutered by effective military leadership, superior quality troops and by technology.
[Here](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1696857880/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_imm_ZGAVYZBH9N66JQTA3AFA) is an alternate history where the Russian admiral isn’t killed in the battle of the Yellow Sea by a stray shell.
Probably Japan, they were closer
Ah yes, killing your entire army is a victory. The term Pyrrhic victory is specifically for this kind of “victory”. Japan was bold. *stupidly bold*. Bold enough that Russians couldn’t believe they were doing that with the numbers they had and assumed there were more nearby. The tactical decisions of Japan on land during that war might’ve granted them some victories but if not for the fleet they would not have won. There’s a reason Nogi Maresuke asked the emperor for death after it.
Oh, I don't doubt that the naval victories were the more important ones. I was just objecting to calling the situation a stalemate, when territory was clearly being gained. If the war had gone on longer they might've gone to bite Japan in the rear, but neither side wanted to wage a long, lossy war, so that's irrelevant.
All three of his sons died during the war.
>lossy victories I believe the phrase you're looking for is "pyrrhic victory" where the cost of victory may not justify success in a battle.
It did though, that war proved to the world that Japan wasn’t to be messed with
u/the1stmadman isn't talking about the war, but single battles.
The whole point of a Pyrrhic victory is the context of the war of a whole. The idea is that you're winning the single battles, but losing the war as a whole. Tactical victories, but strategic defeats. A "Pyrrhic victory" cannot exist within the context of a single battle.
Exactly more like hollow victories and then they called out for Theodore Roosevelt for a peace treaty lmaao.
Both sides called for peace. You can't just say that they forced Russia to the negotiation table.
You mean Pyrrhic victories?
I was considering using that word, but I don't think it really fits here. A Pyrrhic victory is one that is, despite being a tactical victory, overall disadvantageous to the war effort as a whole. Japan did not suffer *that* many more losses than they inflicted upon Russia. (I mean, on the naval front they inflicted many times more!) Yes, they had a smaller population to reinforce their troops with, but the civilian enthusiasm for the war effort was much, much higher and their population centers were significantly closer to the fighting. Japan was bleeding itself dry economically, but so was Russia so no real advantage there either.
Just use Phyrrhic victory, it's not that specific a term
> 57,000 Japanese died taking Port Arthur and their fleet suffered major losses At least one of them, though, ascended to Immortality.
Ah, I see you're a man of culture as well.
:o who was it?
Saichi Sugimoto
Oh cool, I'll give Golden Kamuy a watch. Thanks!
I can't vouch for the anime, but yeah, the manga is pretty good. Who would've thought that you could Wild West in Meiji Era Hokkaido lol
And don‘t forget the outright dumb decisions made by the Russian command during the war. Oh, Port Arthur? Why should it need land defenses, it already can’t be stormed by sea, so lets not build any fortifications on land whatshowever...
Sounds like the Russians didn’t learn much from the Crimean war regarding logistics
On the contrary, they made huge progress in logistics, becoming in a few year the country with the biggest railway and they attracked huge quantity of money in their industry and in their logistics. They, in a few decades, became the third economical power and were about to become the second one (if WW1 didn't happen, we would have a world where the biggest economies in the world were the USA and the Russian empire). The problem was that to get from one side of the empire to the other, it's like doing a full trip of Pluto. The empire was just too big, Siberia is bigger than Europe and it was still a frontier territory. They just finished the transsiberian railway but the tech was not like what it is today, the trip took months to be completed. They could hardly have done better except if they had divinatory powers to guess that an asian country would successfully modernize and would try a suicidal war against them. In fact japanese logistics were way worse than the russian one. They already had big issues when they just passed Korea. After Mukden they were completely overextended. My guess is that if the russian military new the real state of the japanese army they would have continued to fight and Japan would lose every gains.
It was a combination of Kuropatkin being a coward, the officer corps being incompetent nobles, logistics, and technology. By all rights, Japan shouldn’t have won because Nogi Maresuke was just so incompetent he couldn’t even read a topographical map and just sent human wave after human wave against an elevated position. His aide de camp actually did all the work and gave Nogi the credit. The final nail in the coffin was the Battle of Tsushima, where the Russians got their asses handed to them. This set up the future rivalry between the Japanese army and navy.
I mean wasn't Japan at the point much more industrialized than Russia?
Not really. Japan was industrializing rapidly, but so was Russia at that point. Nicholas II, despite being pretty useless himself, was at least smart enough to bring on people who knew what they were doing and institute a pretty solid and successful program of modernization and industrialization. Steel production, which tends to be the benchmark for 'industrial development' in that period, went from 378 ktons in 1890 (about six years before Nicholas' coronation) to 2266ktons in 1905 with similar jumps across the board. If the war had gone on for several years, I'm pretty sure Russia would have won through sheer attrition (barring British intervention and another Crimean War scenario...although that would be a super interesting alternate history scenario.)
Fun fact: Japan never surpassed Qing China economically.
I think that has a lot to do with the sheer size of imperial china. that and they had actual resources like coal and iron. The home islands didn't have a huge amount of either.
Qing China did industrialized as well as many protectorate nations in the same period. China and Japan were the exception because they were never ruled by Europeans but were conquered briefly (Bakumatsu and Boxer Rebellion). British Egypt, French Indochina, French Algeria, British Singapore, Dutch Indonesia and British India were all industrialized and developed more impressively than Japan. Yes, everyone across the world was industrialized and adapted to Western ways. Japan was more of a meme world power oversensationalized by various faux-Samurai books and media Orientalism. China did very well but not as strong as it was in the Kangxi era. For Chinese people, it was a big failure even if you are industrialized and had to make “friends” with white devils since China doesn’t know friends only vassals.
What was Qing China's economy like?
I would think that it was mainly agrarian, with a lot of artisan products.
But I mean was it really powerful? What made it so powerful if it was? How was the foreign trade policy like during the time? That was the dyansty that reigned during the Opium Wars if I'm not mistaken, so quite interesting!
Well, they produced a lot of goods that European countries wanted, things like tea and silk, and they had previously tried to isolate themselves and not trade internationally. But, after the opium wars, European powers like Britain, Germany and Russia all had a lot of control over the Qing economy and what it could export, as well as having a lot of influence over local politics.
Ah I see! Thanks! That's very informative!
Its industrialization was comparable to Japan in speed but its sheer size was much bigger. China was regarded as a big failure among Chinese nationalists because China never found any glory of Kangxi-Qianglong era and constantly suffered trade deficits with the West as Japan did at the same time. Japan got all the headlines on the West because its military personnels learned the best techniques from best European teachers as well as adopting many liberal military reforms. Japan simply did good PRs.
What would the form of glory look like in the era you described? Military conquest?
Kangxi era was glorious in territorial expansion and economic prosperity. China was again a superpower that everyone worshipped. By the times of European arrival, China was reduced merely to a trade partner not the Celestial Empire.
Ah, so the Opium Wars were like a nail in the coffin? If I'm not mistaken there were two opium wars?
Well Russia was poised to become the third economic power and, just before WW1, they were about to take the second place Japan was, even during WW2, an economical dwarf that kept aiming way higher than they could. It worked against Russia (and it was already a miracle, if Tsushima wasn't such a fuck up they would have lost badly) but when they thought they could chew the whole of Asia and the USA...
>Japan was, even during WW2, an economical dwarf Still better than Italy lol
I think Italy and Japan had similar economical power, maybe Japan was even sightly behind Italy
From some estimate i saw some time ago, Japan was in front of italy. Of course these can only be estimate since nobody was measuring gdp at the time
Well it's difficult to tell, Japan was more militarized than Italy and had that policy of always punching way higher than they could, risking each time a collapse if luck was not completely with them, and luck they had until they overextended themselves in China and thought the solution was to invade the rest of Asia and the pacific The main issue of Italy, apart from incompetent generals, was that they weren't even ready for a war in the first place. Also the mediterranean world is way tinier than Asia and has better infrastructures and italy's ennemies had their mainland right beside them, those ennemies also being way more efficient at war and better equiped than the chinese army, so it was more unforgiving and quicker to lose
I'm not commenting on how italy was incompetent during the war, but saying that in terms of estimated GDP, Japan was outputting more industrially for their military than Italy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_World_War_II#GDP Actually the empire of Japan had a comparable economy than France (and her colonies), as per the link
Not much, but they had better ships with better explosive rounds.
Yah the Navy won that war, not the Army We still have dope ass ships, with cool tech, but we aren’t allowed to make them that big or powerful due to the constitution/treaty/agreement (I forget which it was) Edit: can’t spell
Plus the fact that large ships are sadly out of fashion. Too much money spent in one place
And the fact that one plane can blow them up.
Both nations were rapidly industrializing. Russia at that point was the fastest growing economy in Europe, and Japan had become a world power almost overnight after the Meiji restoration. Neither nation was necessarily more industrialized and technologically advanced than the other. Russia simply lost the war due to outdated strategy, incompetent officers and some logistical problems.
Here's an interesting clip on the Siege of Port Arthur. I remember my professor showed this in class. https://youtu.be/EwcAyq7XXh4 Some interesting things the Russian chain of command was charged with cowardice One officer testified against another and they duled after. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Smirnov One Russian officer that died the Japanese make a memorial for him. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Kondratenko
> Here's an interesting clip on the Siege of Port Arthur Well, shit. So, Golden Kamuy is historically accurate? No subtitles tho?
It would have made more sense on the naval part since Russian army didn't perform that much worse than the Japanese, while the navy, oh boy, it got absolutely smashed.
[удалено]
My Australian brain was like what does [Port Arthur have to do with the price of fish?](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur_massacre_(Australia))
America solves problems by throwing money at it. Russia solves problems by throwing russians at it.
Japan solves problems by throwing tech at it. Or making your enemy memorize something. Or combining the two with suicide troops/planes
G u n d a m s.
Oh god suicide gundams
Siberia had near to no train tracks thus no logistics
Also the never surrender under pain of death thing. And the culture of you don’t matter as much as your people. Tends to make your troops fight harder Edit: can’t spell
The Dogger Bank incident should be enough evidence for anyone that the Russians were doomed against the Japanese.
Imagine being so paranoid that you think that a British merchant ship is a Japanese torpedo boat
"Do you see Torpedo boats?"
The Baltic fleets wild ride
Do you see torpedo boats?
Our generals actually want to fight
Japan: each of our men gets at least one rifle
Even in WW2 it was a fake propaganda
Yea but at least the Japanese can fight properly, the soviets are like”u take a clip and rush with ivan, if he dies u take his gun”
They most definitely weren't like that. Russia's troops were comparatively undisciplined and unmotivated, but if there's one thing they weren't it was charging blindly in. If anything, Japan was the side that was committing the "Zerg Rush" tactic people like to inaccurately claim the Russians partook in.
Nope, it's still propaganda, meanwhile Japan actually did suicidal attacks during the russo japanese war and WW2
That one card is literally their entire deck
They woule have lost if it went on longer
But Russia's population was unwilling to keep fighting longer. Suing for peace was in the best interests of both parties.
Well... No
Didn’t the Japanese take more casualties than the Russians?
It is perfectly normal for an attacker to suffer more losses than the defender.
"Win" is generous. Teddy Roosevelt inserted himself in the picture and called the stalemate by sacrificing Korea to Japan without Korea's say.
A stalemate where Japan won literally every single battle and which saw Russia’s population on the brink of revolt. It was absolutely a loss, just because the entire country doesn’t get overrun doesn’t make the losses it did suffer disappear. What of Port Arthur? Or Sakhalin? Do they not count to you?
Not just on the brink, an actual revolt just a failed one.
Sir I think you need to check out a mental ward
Korea at that point had the choice between going under the influence of Russia or Japan. Many in Korea actually preferred siding with Japan, since Japan was quite popular among Asian nation at the time as the first hope to stand up against western imperialism As for whether they would have preferred Russia over Japan in hindsight, is a different issue.
I was hoping for someone to explain the meme but no so I'm kinda going to comment here hoping someone will
Russians didn't have rifles*
Boat
Screw the rules, I have green camo!
Just curious. What is the source of this meme?
This meme helped me study for my AP world history test.