Reddit reviews Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook

I feel like whoever planned this whole thing forgot to read this: https://www.amazon.com/Coup-d%C3%89tat-Practical-Edward-Luttwak/dp/0674175476/ref=pd_sim_14_1?ie=UTF8&dpID=41G1JK096QL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR102%2C160_&psc=1&refRID=VBDP569W3F17FHXJK1CE

Proof that as a mod, you just can't win. ;P

Bonus literature, since I feel like helping people unseat me today.

Let us now turn to Japan, 1945. On August 14th, the eve of the infamous surrender broadcast, a young major began to implement his last ditch effort to forestall defeat.

Prior to what is now known as the Kyujo Incident, the prospect of surrender was hotly debated among the ministers. The Minister of the Army, Korechika Anami, was the loudest opponent. "We will sleep in the fields and eat grass before we surrender!" he said. He was backed by the Navy minister, and others in the government. Even the two atomic blasts did not deter him. He was convinced that Japan would lose its independence if they accepted the Potsdam Declaration. He believed that fighting the enemy when they invaded would force more favorable surrender terms. Only after the two unprecedented Imperial interventions did Anami agree to relent. However, the ministers were wary that Anami was intending to launch a coup d'etat. With the entire Imperial Army beneath him and the officers largely sympathetic to his cause, it seemed well within the realm of possibility.

Que the entry of Major Kenji Hatanaka. At 22 years old, Hatanaka was an idealistic militant. He had the uptmost faith that his sacred Japan was unbeatable. Under the pretext that the Imperial decree was illegally influenced by treasonous ministers, he began to plan his seizure of the State. With him was Colonel Ida, and several other mid ranking officers of the Army.

For a coup to be a success, conspirators needs to identify the vital controls of the government. They also needs to identify local security forces that could intervene against them. This divides the targets into two categories, political and military. In Japan, the major political power would have been the key ministers, including the Foreign Minister and the Prime Minister. It also would have included the Emperor himself. Though historically isolated from politics, two interventions from him during the final week of the war broke that precedent, bringing him into the political world.

The other target were two major security forces in the area. The Eastern District Army was responsible for the defense of Tokyo and the rest of the region. The Imperial Guard was naturally in defense of the Imperial Palace and the Emperor. These organizations were headed by General Tanaka and General Mori, respectively. Both groups were under the command of Minister/General Anami.

As a military man, Hatanaka did not take much of the political power into account during his planning phase. He assumed most of that power was in the hands of the Emperor, the military being the more important aspect of the insurrection. Perhaps he was right, Prime Minister Suzuki was nothing like the decisive Hideki 'Razor' Tojo. Suzuki was indecisive by all accounts, and easily swayed. And as luck would have it for the insurgent major, Suzuki would spend the duration of the coup fleeing inept, yet persistent, assassins as part of an unrelated incident.

Thus, his plan turned to the military aspect. He would need the local forces to help him take control of the city and install the military. Biting off a bit more than he could chew, he went straight to single most powerful man in the nation, Anami. When asked to participate in the coup, Anami gave no decisive answer. Reasons for this are debated, but it's possible that it was a calculated response to forestall and doom the coup. Regardless, Hatanaka took his participation as a possibility, and proceeded to court the General of the Imperial Guard, General Mori.

On the night of the coup, Hatanaka's co-conspirator, Colonel Ida, proposed the idea to Mori. Mori was taken a back, but ultimately refused to participate. Ida then told Hatanaka, and asked for his help in convincing him. Instead of arguing with the General, Hatanaka shot him dead and had his aide beheaded. Using the General's "hanko," an official id stamp, he forged orders for the Imperial Guards to take both the Imperial Palace and the local radio station, NHK. Unaware that the orders were forged, and their commander assassinated, the officers of the Imperial Guard began implementing Strategic Order 584.

Hatanaka had it in his head that upon seizing the palace, the Minister of the Army would be inspired and convinced to help. What he didn't know was that Anami was slowly dying from self inflicted wounds in the traditional fashion of 'seppuku.' His help would never come, and the Eastern District Army (EDA) was regardless under the direct command of General Tanaka. Tanaka received word from the palace. He was both notified by the besieged, who were able to find one line of communication that wasn't cut by the conspirators, and by the conspirators themselves. They proudly announced their actions and asked the EDA to help. Tanaka organized a force and began to make his way to the palace.

Meanwhile, Hatanaka and his men were furiously searching for the prerecorded surrender document. The Imperial Aide, Tokugawa, cleverly hid it among the staff's folded bed sheets. Such treatment of an Imperial decree would have been blasphemous in other conditions, and Hatanaka assumed it was with other hidden treasures of the Emperor. Even after getting beaten by the insurrectionists, Tokugawa still refused to give the location. Hatanaka considered his priorities, and delegated the search to the guardsmen. He then made his way to the radio station to make his own statements to the world.

General Tanaka arrived early in the morning, August 15th. The guards recognized the General and let him by. He then approached the officers of the guards and told them the truth. Their commander had been assassinated, Hatanaka was a rebel. They immediately began to return to their normal posts, and abandoned the palace to it's normal garrison. When searching for Hatanaka, the General was terrified to hear that the enraged major had made his way to the radio station, to call upon the armed forces and the citizenry to resist the surrender and resist the Americans. Panicked, he ordered the phone lines restored.

Hatanaka had indeed made it to the radio station. Armed with the same 8mm Nambu that he used to slay Mori, Hatanaka threatened the radio staff. At gunpoint, the NHK workers refused to give him air time. They cited orders from the EDA, and said that without orders from either Anami or Tanaka, they could not broadcast anything while an air raid siren was playing in the city. They even went as far as to disable the station, denying Hatanaka any chance at airtime. According to witnesses, Hatanaka did not demand so much as beg. Apparently, the major was begging to understand that his coup was a failure. Then the phone rang. General Tanaka had restored the phone lines and had called to speak to the Major. He ordered the young man to stand down. Hatanaka, in tears, begged for just a few minutes to explain himself over the radio. The request was denied, and Hatanaka fled.

The black-eyed Tokugawa fetched the surrender recording, and with the help of the EDA, brought it to the radio station for the scheduled noon broadcast. In these final hours of the Empire, there were rumors circulating of a young man begging civilians to join him in a military coup. The rumors were ignored, and Hatanaka was found dead with self inflicted gunshot wound in the forehead. He had returned to the scene of the crime, the Imperial Palace, to do so.

Had Hatanaka mad some minor tactical changes, including isolating Tanaka and bringing some radio technicians with him, he may well have been able to send a message to the world and to the Imperial Armed Forces of Japan. The results of such a broadcast are speculative. At best, his plea would have been ineffective. At worst, the sympathetic officers of the armed forces may have helped him. There was certainly no shortage of such people. The surrender may not have been broadcast as planned, and the American response could have been horrifying. More atomic blasts, and even a subsequent invasion was in the works. Operation Downfall, as it was called, planned for seven atomic bombs and a bigger landing force than Normandy. Luck would have it for the world, that the very militancy that drove Hatanaka to launch is coup, led to a failure in tactics.


TLDR: What night.

Additional: It wasn't the only coup attempt that night. As mentioned earlier, PM Suzuki was on the run from machine gun toting assassins. They were not very good assassins, however. He escaped after they strafed and burned down his house. Another incident was brewing at an air base. However, the General there had forseen this and as a preliminary action, ordered all hands to ignore the commands of the potential insurrectionists.

Never happen, mate. One civilian protester turns up, her son's in the Regiment, and the CO orders the boys to shoot her. Guess which way the rifles are going to be pointing.

[Luttwak] (https://www.amazon.com/Coup-d%C3%89tat-Practical-Edward-Luttwak/dp/0674175476) is your man on the subject. But the ADF, being a volunteer force, is a Citizens' DF. No way will they fire on their own people. Even the Turks wouldn't do it when their hard-fought democracy was under threat from an increasingly anti-democratic government.

There are also the practical components to consider: geographical dispersion of loci of power, transport hubs, media outlets (social media has made coups a right bastard because coups rely on the ability to control the flow of information), no one in 1BDE would join in because it would embarrass them in front of the Yanks, the only military force near Canberra is the Fed Guard and a single PL-sized 'Company' of Chocks at Queanbeyan, and most of them are on courses at any one time.

Just too hard, mate. But read Luttwak, he's been given Executive Producer credits in most coups since the 60s.

Yes, I'm very certain

This is a coup, almost by-the-book I would say.

[The book Coup D'eat says than no coup or revolution will succeeed without support from a regional superpower.] (https://www.amazon.com/Coup-d%C3%89tat-Practical-Edward-Luttwak/dp/0674175476) and it seems to sum up this weekends events.

the only example which bucks the trend I can think of is the Iranian revolution.

Start here

Never, never, never.

Regulating the media is, literally, the first step towards fascism.

Every dictator who has ever lived has made control of the media his first goal. Don't let the people hear any voice but yours. George Orwell knew it, Philip K Dick knew it, Ray Bradbury even judged the temperature at which it would occur.

The Master himself only mentions it casually as it's such a well-known trope in geopolitics. It's a given, a basic, first-order tactic. And here is the ABC, our national broadcaster demanding that our democracy, for which hundreds of thousands have fought and died, immediately accept their dominion over the distribution of information.

I've been a long supporter of the ABC as a reliable news source, but, today, I am finally giving way to the Liberal claim of ABC bias. Anyone who advocates for censorship of the press is my enemy.