Earliest point in WWII where Axis nations knew they were doomed, vs. being actually doomed

Factual Questions
21

The thing is Japan didn’t really win a total victory in the Russo-Japanese War. They just won all of the battles. But even winning battles costs resources and manpower. And Japan was running out while Russia still had reserves. This is why Japan was willing to enter into peace negotiations.

But a lot of people in Japan didn’t see this reality. They saw that Japan had been winning a string of victories but then accepted a compromise peace treaty. The popular feeling was that Japan had been double crossed by the western powers (especially the United States which had mediated the negotiations).

22

Germany lost when it attacked Russia. At that point, absent a breakdown by Stalin or a putsch , Germany had lost.

As we agree, Japan lost when it hit Pearl harbor.

Now, I found a interesting turning point.

Zhukov was recalled to Moscow to be part of the NKVD purge. He ran into a old mentor of his, a fat, old totally incompetent Soviet marshal, who just happened to be a buddy of Stalins*. He rescued Zhukov and sent him back to the East to defend against Japanese aggression. At that point in time, the Imperial Army was divided between a Northern Strategy and a Southern one (into China from Kwantung, which is what they ended up doing, which was a disaster).

Now Zhukov was a military genius, likely the only one left after the purges. He risked it all in a brilliant attack Battle of Khalkhyn Gol . This beat the Japanese completely, so they abandoned the Northern Strategy.

Now, lets do a hypothetical. Zhukov doesnt meet that Marshal. He is purged. Some lesser commander is in the East, and gets whupped by the Japanese. The Imperial army continues going North. The doctrine of Nanshin-ron, promoted by the Navy, which took its focus southward, eventually leading to its war with the United States and the Western Allies, never happens. The Embargos never happen.

Meanwhile, in 1941 Germany invades the USSR. Russia now has the war on two fronts, and no Marshal Zhukov to command.

I think this means Russia falls.

Meanwhile, altho America does send aid to GB, it never enters the war.

23

In summer 1942 the war was going very well for Germany in Russia, and only stalemated in late summer and fall.

November 1942 was a big turning point month in WWII, ‘Uranus’ counteroffensive by the Soviets which eventually destroyed the German 6th Army around Stalingrad and the (victory by the British in) the Second Battle of El Alamein (which started in October) and the ‘Torch’ landings in Morocco/Algeria presaging Axis loss of North Africa. Although the first was the more ominous. And in the Pacific, failure of the final large attempt by the Japanese to retake Guadalcanal in the same month was as major an event as Midway if not more.

In terms of facts on the ground that’s when it began to look quite bad from Axis POV. One might have foreseen from the German POV that declaring war on the Soviet Union in the first place was a fatal error, and more so adding the US to list of opponents in December 1941. And as is also discussed here and always the Japanese might have foreseen that attacking the US would not work even if other military options looked even riskier.

It’s not really clear though Japan had any feasible plan for a successful WWII. Germany did: make some kind of truce with Britain in summer 1940, consolidate the Continent, don’t attack the Soviets. Japan attacking Britain and Netherlands oil-rich possessions but leaving US forces to build up in the Philippines astride the sea lanes from those places back to Japan is still a questionable strategy. It only looks good in comparison to assumed certain failure by also attacking the US. It’s also easy to see Japan’s reluctance to accede to all US/UK demands for its policies in China/Indochina in order to lift the oil embargo. Not that Japan’s policies can be justified, but the necessary climb down by mid 1941 was a daunting prospect.

24

We know in hindsight that was the case, but it might not have been absolutely inevitable at the time. Russia had a massive manpower advantage over Germany, but the same was true in WWII, when they lost due to collapse of the government.

If Germany had done a bit better, if the Soviets had done worse, if Stalin hadn’t managed to relocate much of the industrial production to the east, if the US hadn’t entered the war, if the Soviet government had collapsed, perhaps Germany could have reached the Urals as planned. Germany could never have occupied all of Russia, but perhaps it could have achieved a stalemate and not lost. But once Operation Barbarossa failed, they were in fact doomed.

25

Actually, 4 aircraft carriers.

26

And then after the US declared war on Japan, Germany lost when Hitler responded by declaring war on the US.

27

Ok. that is workable too.

28

What an odd notion any more, to actually “declare war.”

So, riddle me this: with all their Aryan superiority bullshit, how was it that the Nazis could accept the Japanese as allies?

29

Speaking of a two-front war, did Germany gain anything meaningful by trying to conquer France? Unlike Russia, France wasn’t a place with lots of oil, *Lebensraum *and grain to offer.

30

I thought the reason that Pearl Harbor was a sneak attack was because it took so long for the Japanese embassy to decode the telegram telling them to go to the White House and end the current negotiations between the United States and Japan, which would effectively be a declaration of war. This was supposed to happen about half an hour before the attack started.

Cite from the NYT archive:

Pertinent information for non-subscribers.

31

France and Britain declared war on Germany after Germany attacked Poland, since they had made commitments to Polish independence. By invading France they obtained a much more defensible eastern flank along the Atlantic.

32

Hitler simply declared the Japanese were “Honorary Aryans.”

Nazi racial ideology was never all that coherent anyway, so sometimes Japanese in Germany were treated very badly, but when it was politically expedient to do so, the Japanese were suddenly the Aryans of the East and the Master-Race of the Orient.

33

I saw a C-Span feature on the book* 1941: The Year Germany Lost the War*, and the author said that by 1942 many people in Germany knew that they would lose. He quoted a German who said something like “If you declare war against the whole world then who do you think will win?”

This is from the Google Books page: 1941: The Year Germany Lost the War: The Year Germany Lost the War - Andrew Nagorski - Google Books
Bestselling historian Andrew Nagorski takes a fresh look at the decisive year 1941, when Hitler’s miscalculations and policy of terror propelled Churchill, FDR, and Stalin into a powerful new alliance that defeated Nazi Germany.

In early 1941, Hitler’s armies ruled most of Europe. Churchill’s Britain was an isolated holdout against the Nazi tide, but German bombers were attacking its cities and German U-boats were attacking its ships. Stalin was observing the terms of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, and Roosevelt was vowing to keep the United States out of the war. Hitler was confident that his aim of total victory was within reach.

By the end of 1941, all that changed. Hitler had repeatedly gambled on escalation and lost: by invading the Soviet Union and committing a series of disastrous military blunders; by making mass murder and terror his weapons of choice, and by rushing to declare war on the United States after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. Britain emerged with two powerful new allies—Russia and the United States. By then, Germany was doomed to defeat.

And the C-Span video

34

It still would have been a sneak attack, since that was only a final ultimatum and a end to negotiations, not a war declaration.

35

An interesting alternate history would be Hitler declining to declare war on the US, or even declaring war against Japan in response to Pearl Harbor (being shocked (shocked!) that his ally would commit a sneak attack). This would make the Europe-first strategy of the US more difficult politically for Roosevelt, possibly delaying US material support to the Soviets. Still wouldn’t have saved Hitler, but might have led to a conditional surrender, instead of unconditional.

36

Hitler had an odd idea of how geopolitics “should” work. He figured that if Germany dominated Europe (east to the Urals), Japan dominated east Asia, the US dominated the Western hemisphere, and Britain retained its colonies around the world, everybody (everybody he thought worth considering the feelings of) would be happy until the US, by its innate weakness, fell to the remaining three powers some time later. When Japan attacked the US, he figured the US would fall early and he might get some gravy by being in on that war too, I guess.

37

I think it was Yalta where the big 3 cemented their determination to push for unconditional surrender.

There’s the story that they were discussing what to do with Germany after the war. Stalin said they should just execute to top 50,000 Germans. Roosevelt thought he was joking, said 49,000 should be enough. Churchill knew damn well Stalin was serious.

I would think the turning point in the east was Stalingrad, but it was just one more slippery slope down into the depths. It’s debatable that even if the Germans won that hard fought battle they’d have the resources to carry on. The Russians basically took out much of the German army. If it had been the other way around - Germans clean up the Soviet army without a massive loss of their own - maybe. But the logistics of the situation made the result inevitable.

For the Japanese, the battle of Midway - If the Japanese had managed to win a forward base with minimal loss of ships, they’d possibly have been in a position to scare the USA - but (a) they didn’t and (b) they lost a lot and © the Americans were madder than a hornet’s nest. It would have been an interesting strategy to see what would have happened with gradualism - take the Dutch and French colonies, take on the Brits with Hong Kong, then work their way down to Australia, one at a time, finish one before the next. Would the USA have felt threatened enough to break the isolationist tendencies and attack if the Japanese had slowly gobbled up the French South Sea islands? Of course, the problem with that strategy is having the resources to fortify a lot of small islands. More likely pick one or two big ones (Tahiti?) and make that their base in the lanes from Hawaii to Australia or the Philippines. And then, yes, the USA would be more heavily fortifying the Philippines.

38

Actually, Japan did invade French Indochina before Pearl Harbor, although they left the French Vichy regime in charge of civilian matters until 1945. After the fall of France, New Caledonia and French Polynesia quickly declared for the Free French rather than the Vichy regime so they could not have been occupied by Japan without resistance. Likewise the British took over the New Hebrides, a British/French condominium.

39

But Japan planned (and did) also invade the US-held Philippines. Whether or not that would have been a “…eh, not worth it” moment or the same sting as Pearl Harbour (only with lots of pristine ships to back the counterattack up), we’ll never know. But FDR was anti-Japan before the war even started, between hamstringing their war effort via trade embargo and supporting the Chinese with arms deals and the Flying Tigers (who were totally absolutely independent volunteers you guys) so I think he’d have seized the opportunity of a casus belli regardless of how unimportant the Philippines were in the grand scheme of things.

40

Also revanchism over the WW1 treaty. And I assume you meant western flank :).

Taking France over & installing a friendly puppet government also gave German troops a secure base in North Africa, which was French territory at the time, but I’m not sure whether Hitler saw that as a main reason to attack, or just a side benefit.