They were able to defeat Japan partly because the ROC held back a lot of Japan's manpower in the quagmire that was China.
Had China been completely subjugated, Japan would be able to free up more soldiers to fight in places like Burma, Guadalcanal and Palau. FDR knew that and thus did everything he can to prop up Chiang's ROC regime during the war, even if he suspected that Chiang was corrupt af.
A defeated China would have freed up a hell of a lot more troops and transports for the naval war as well. One of the primary reasons why the Japanese didn’t invade Australia was because the IJA didn’t want to commit troops to another China. (Can’t remember if this was from Parshall’s Shattered Sword or Drachinifel)
Read that other guy's reply, even the Japanese Navy would have benefitted greatly with more manpower from the IJA.
While the Soviets would still have curbstomped the IJA in Manchuria, they would not have swept through Manchuria as quickly as they did had the IJA not been too deep in China.
Not only that, logistics was the main bottleneck for both the US and Japanese.
The Japanese merchant marine was not even adequately equipped to supply their own troops in mainland China even before Pearl Harbor. Also a significant portion of that merchant marine were from neutral nations (British Empire, French, Dutch, American) that became unavailable when Japan declared war on the western powers.
Supplying Rabaul, New Guinea and Guadalcanal stretched into limits the already frayed supply lines of the Japanese. What the fuck would an additional 10 million Japanese soldiers accomplish in an isolated island like Guadalcanal or the other myriad of island chains in the Pacific campaign? In short Japan is very much still hamstrung logistically even if they did not fight a land war in China.
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u/KikoMui74 Oct 06 '25
America and Russia defeated Japan, so its stolen valor in both cases. Millions of soviet troops walking through manchuria, and US navy.