Daihon'ei

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Tennō Hirohito with the General Staff in Daihon'ei on April 29, 1943

The Daihon'ei ( Japanese 大本 営 , dt. About "large headquarters "), referred to in English as Imperial General Headquarters , was the joint high command in war and exceptional cases for the army (army) and navy in Japan during the Empire .

history

construction

Its establishment was established in 1893, and it was first convened in June 1894 in Hiroshima for the First Sino-Japanese War . Disbanded after the end of the war in 1896, it was re-established in the Russo-Japanese War from 1904 to 1905 and finally again in 1937 after the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War , which later escalated into the Pacific War . The Daihon'ei was nominally subordinate to the Tennō , who, according to the constitution, was in command of the army and navy. After the end of the Pacific War, it was disbanded in September 1945.

Planned alternative system

In the course of the worsening course of the war, construction of the Matsushiro Daihon'ei began in Matsushiro (now part of Nagano ) as an underground guidance system in order to relocate the military and political leadership there in the event of a US invasion.

doctrine

Supremacy of the army

A joint general staff, which represented the interests of the land army as well as those of the navy and which were subordinate to the corresponding staffs for both branches of the armed forces, initially preferred the army troops. The order of the army was the entire national defense, whereas the order of the imperial navy was only the maritime defense. The Army Chief of Staff was thus also formally the commander of all naval forces, came from the imperial family and had the rank of general, whereas the commander-in-chief of the navy was only a rear admiral in the initial phase of Daihon'ei . It was the army that had exclusive access to the Tenno and was able to influence the allocation of resources and strategic planning.

Rise of the Navy

The reason given by the army representatives that the decisive battles for the fate of Japan would be fought ashore and that therefore all military activities would have to be under its control met with fierce resistance from the navy representatives. They wanted two separate general staffs with the same competencies because, in their opinion, the army did not have sufficient understanding of complex naval operations.

Japan had adopted the idea of ​​the supremacy of the land army from Prussia , whose geographical and geostrategic location as a land power could not be compared with that of Japan. The Navy argued that an attacker could do existential damage to the Japanese islands by cutting off trade and supplies if he were to control the surrounding seas, even without ground troops.

agreement

A compromise was finally forced in 1893 on the instructions of the Tenno. The chief of the naval general staff now also had access to the emperor, but his official area of ​​responsibility was limited to coastal defense. This gave the navy its own representative on the throne, but in the event of war the command of the navy remained with an army representative.

In 1899 and 1903, when the regulations for the Daihon'ei were re-discussed and the Russo-Japanese War began to emerge, the naval representatives enforced full equality between their armed forces.

See also

literature

  • David C. Evans: Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941 , 2003, US Naval Institute Press, ISBN 0870211927 (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David C. Evans: Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941 , p. 22
  2. ^ David C. Evans: Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941 , p. 23
  3. ^ David C. Evans: Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941 , pp. 49 and 50