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I‘d say it’s extremely easy to argue, given that Japan started the second Sino-Japanese war (and started committing atrocities, like the Nanjing massacre) two years before Nazi Germany invaded Poland, and Germany had pretty warm relations with the Chinese at the time; while the Anti-Comintern Pact predates the start of war in Asia, it took until 1938 for Hitler to end the alliance with China (and align Germany with Japan) and recognise Japanese holdings, and 1940 for the Tripartite Pact.
My understanding of the historical consensus on this is that the Pacific theatre and the European theatre largely didn’t affect each other that much; neither Germany nor Japan were exactly dependents on the other, and if one fell, the other would still struggle as per history. In fact, if anything, Hitler was rather hoping for a Japanese invasion of the USSR that didn‘t materialise in the end (but also never told the Japanese that he would invade the USSR - Axis coordination was pretty shit, and trust was pretty low).
(It is true that Japan benefitted from technology transfers during the war, but it‘s difficult to argue that Japan couldn’t have done what she did without German backing when, in history, she was literally doing that without German backing for years.)
You should read a few more books about the Pacific campaign.
It was indeed insanity that Japan thought they could defeat the US, which is why very few Japanese thought they could. Even Admiral Yamamoto knew going to war was a terrible idea, which was why he took such a gamble with Pearl Harbor. The general thinking among the Japanese Imperial staff was that if they struck hard enough early on, they could convince America that the fight wasn't worth it. (Yamamoto himself didn't really believe this, it was just their only shot.) Of course their terrible decision-making was driven in part by a core of fanatics who really believed the Japanese "bushido spirit" would prevail against the weak Americans, and the peculiarities of Japanese decision-making gave these fanatics undue influence in what followed.
The European front didn't really factor into their thinking. There was no point where they were calculating "With Germany behind us, we can win." They were going to go to war with the US with or without Germany. The Japanese certainly did not think of Germany as the "senior partner" in their alliance.
It is a little more complicated than that. That's why I recommend you read more than one book.
For the most part, the Japanese were not stupid or delusional. In 1941, they were still trying to find a way out of war with the US, because basically every sensible person in the government and the military knew that they could not win, certainly not a prolonged war.
The problems they faced were twofold: (1) a commitment to building a colonial empire; (2) fanatics in the lower ranks.
(1) was basically the only way they could have avoided a war. Japan wanted a colonial empire, and the US and Europe didn't want them to have one. The US had imposed an oil embargo on Japan for their invasion of French Indo-China. From that moment on, Japan was on a timer. They were going to run out of resources and any capacity to make war within two years. Their choices were to give up on their imperial ambitions, or go to war. Of course you could argue that imperialism is bad and they should have accepted that they didn't get to become a superpower. That would have been the purely rational decision. But asking a nation that spent the past few generations rapidly playing catch-up to the West, who thought they had earned their seat at the table, to just accept their status as a second-class nation, forever, was a non-starter. So they went to war and made the best plans they could, their theory being that if they took out the US fleet in Hawaii and the British in the Dutch East Indies (whom they did expect to have their hands full with Germany) they could establish such a dominant position in the Pacific that the US, looking at the cost in money and lives to push them out, would decide they didn't really care that much about French Indo-China and Manchuria.
It wasn't a crazy theory. Before Pearl Harbor, the American public really didn't have any appetite for getting into another war and certainly would have balked at sending American men overseas to fight for China. Japan did underestimate how quickly the US could recover and start churning out ships and planes and men, and they definitely overestimated their own abilities, but mostly they underestimated just how pissed off America would be by the attack on Pearl Harbor.
With regards to (2), the Japanese government was in many ways kind of a mess in the 30s and 40s. Assassinations were common. Junior officers sometimes assassinated senior officers they considered not zealous enough. That plus the traditional Japanese way of decision-making, which was by seeking consensus, rather than having one person or group make unilateral decisions, meant that they found themselves in the awkward position where basically everyone knew that going to war with the US was a bad idea, but no one dared to be the one who'd speak up and say "This is a bad idea." We know from extensive interviews after the war that many of the high command and cabinet officials who went along with the decision were all hoping someone else would object.
(Keep in mind, the Emperor himself did not traditionally make decisions; he simply approved of decisions that were presented to him. Hirohito actually broke tradition several times by asking questions and even suggesting that he wasn't convinced.)
So, you had kind of a tragic farce where Japan, because of pride and national interests and tradition, boxed itself into a course of action no one really wanted.
Now, there were a few fanatics, and as the war went on, there was more of that "copium" in which they issued flat-out deranged and counterfactual battle reports while insisting that the Japanese fighting spirit would more than make up for the fact that the Americans were pouring more ships, troops, and planes into the theater every day than Japan had left, and Japanese soldiers were running out of everything from food to ammo to oil. But that was later in the war, after they were committed and it was basically win or die.
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That would make sense for the conquest of European colonies in Southeast Asia etc., but as above, the second Sino-Japanese war is part of the pacific theatre, tied down the majority of Japan’s army, was started before any German involvement, and saw some 20 million deaths. That single point I think torpedoes the idea that hitler was responsible for all deaths in ww2, and really undersells Japanese agency in this matter.
Sure, though some historians who favour a bigger number on the Great Leap Forward famine would probably want to quibble on whether Mao or Hitler had the higher death toll. Something like 18-60 million (GLF) vs ~40 million (European theatre)? But arguably it's not quite the same class of killing?
For my part, I think the famine number is probably lower than 40 million, so Hitler does win here if we count all European WW2 deaths as his fault. In any case, not really too relevant to your point at this stage.
I do agree, Hitler really was monstrous and well deserves his boogeyman status.
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