Reddit mentions of The Thought War: Japanese Imperial Propaganda

> Without the Pacific Campaign Asia (and probably Australasia) would have been taken by the Japanese Empire.

That's kind of a ridiculous assertion to make. By the late 30's Japan was faltering in central China. Sure there was the big push in the early 40's that gave them lots of territory, but there was no way they could keep up that momentum over so many fronts. Japan could never have conquered all of Asia/Russia, much less Australia as well. Japan was/is a relatively small country.

EDIT: I'm getting downvoted because I think the idea of Japan conquering all of fucking ASIA and AUSTRALIA is absurd? Wow reddit. You all do realize Japan was fighting in China and Korea for 10 years prior to US entrance into the war? And by 1941 the advance of Japan was already stopped in China for the most part. Any sort of victory would have been very, very costly.

> By 1941, Japan had occupied much of north and coastal China, but the KMT central government and military had successfully retreated to the western interior to continue their resistance, while the Chinese communists remained in control of base areas in Shaanxi. Furthermore, in the occupied areas Japanese control was limited to just railroads and major cities ("points and lines"), but they did not have a major military or administrative presence in the vast Chinese countryside, which was a hotbed of Chinese partisan activities. This stalemate situation made a decisive victory seem impossible to the Japanese. (Source)

Not to mention the Chinese Communists had some superb propaganda strategies that were quite affective in combating the Japanese. The US actually sent a research party to learn from them, since America's propaganda of "We are way more powerful so you should just give up" wasn't working. Read this book if you are interested in the topic.

Just no, there is no way Japan could conquer so much. Nopenopenope. If they conquered all of Asia and Australia, that would make the Japanese Empire the largest in human history. That's pretty impressive from a country with a population in 1940 of about 70,000,000 when the world population at the time was 2.3 billion.