# Lets discuss the consequences of slight alterations in the course of WW2 **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 28, 2010, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-discuss-the-consequences-of-slight-alterations-in-the-course-of-ww2/548364 "2010-07-28T21:06:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-discuss-the-consequences-of-slight-alterations-in-the-course-of-ww2/548364/41 "2010-07-30T05:50:55Z")
[QUOTE=Not Really All That Bright] A more likely scenario is Hitler being less anti-Semitic [/QUOTE] \*\*\*What? \*_In what alternate universe is this “more likely” than, you know, anything? More likely that what… astrology? His raison d’etre_ was anti-semitism. A Hitler who wasn’t anti-semitic wasn’t Hitler, and you’re off into an alternate reality in which there are no limits and consequently no interest. ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-discuss-the-consequences-of-slight-alterations-in-the-course-of-ww2/548364/42 "2010-07-30T05:55:23Z")
> [@Attack from the 3rd dimension](#): > > The other big "if’ about Barbarossa to me is: “What if Hitler had kept faith with the USSR?” He could have fortified the front with USSR, and maintained a state of high readiness, much like the US and West Germany did against the USSR and GDR. At the same time he could have put way more resource into Sealion and potentially successfully invaded Britain. Would have been tough to launch D-Day from Newfoundland. “Kept faith” meaning never attacked? I guess you’ve never read **Mein Kampf**. Hitler’s life purpose after WWI was to attack and destroy the communist USSR, the rest of WWII was a sidelight necessary to accommodate this aim. Again, this is a scenario where Hitler wasn’t Hitler. ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-discuss-the-consequences-of-slight-alterations-in-the-course-of-ww2/548364/43 "2010-07-30T06:06:11Z")
> [@Kilmore](#): > > What if the Japanese forces focused their attacks on American shipping rather than US Naval units, and attacked the American supply lines to eastern Russia that ran just to the north of their islands? This posits that the Japanese weren’t the Japanese, but some other culture altogether. The Japanese naval culture was to destroy the enemy navy, and then the enemy merchant marine would be irrelevant. In part this stemmed from the 1905 Port Arthur victories, so the Japanese Navy’s entire culture was built around the decisive victory over the enemy navy. The other part was Japanese military honour (ie the emanations from the Samurai culture) which said that the only honourable victory was over the enemy’s military. There are recorded occasions when the admiral of a Japanese fleet stood on the bow of the foremost naval unit in order to enter battle first; glory and honour was to be won by the greatest eagerness to enter battle on the Emperor’s behalf rather than to actually, you know, win. One of the great problems with the Japanese military efforts in WWII is that support services were entirely lacking in honour and so the lowest, most useless, people were allocated to them. If you had any personal honour you wanted to be in the front line and nothing - **nothing** - else mattered. > [@](#): > > Obviously this would have pissed Russia off, but if they would have started after Pearl Harbor, would this have made a difference at Stalingrad? No. How? ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-discuss-the-consequences-of-slight-alterations-in-the-course-of-ww2/548364/44 "2010-07-30T06:15:32Z")
> [@Hirka\_T\_Bawa](#): > > I think one minor change that would have had major changes in the war would be if the Americans and British didn’t break the codes Japan and Germany used throughout the war. In what circumstance would the UK and USA have received the information they did and failed to break the codes? Given that they had the resources to do so, both intellectual and physical, it was always going to happen. Both those Axis countries’ senses of superiority didn’t allow them to conceive that inferior races could do this. It wasn’t that there weren’t signs that their enemies had broken their codes, it’s that they didn’t allow themselves to believe that could have occurred. The issue wasn’t that the codes were broken - that happened all the time - it was that they continued to use them despite having had every cause to believe they were no longer secure. The very assurance of their superiority was the seeds of their downfall. Another case of a “minor change” that really implies a major change which in turn means that historical circumstances would have been entirely different. ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-discuss-the-consequences-of-slight-alterations-in-the-course-of-ww2/548364/45 "2010-07-30T06:38:49Z")
Sealion had, in essence, zero chance of success. The RN had committed itself to destruction in the English Channel to stop an invasion, and that’s it folks - show’s over. The RN at this point is still stronger than every other major nation’s navy PUT TOGETHER. The German navy has _just now_ been eviscerated in Norway by a few tiny fragments of the RN, and hardly has anything left in terms of a real high seas fleet. They had to abandon the invasion of Iceland - fucking _Iceland_ - due to lack of ships. If Germany tries this it abnegates whatever slim chance it had of conquering Russia - Hitler’s actual goal. Sealion was never ever an actual viable operation, it was a bogeyman that Hitler hoped would cow the British into accommodation with (what they viewed as) the _real politik_. Had Churchill not happened to come out of the crisis of the Battle of France as PM, things may well have been different (my reference is \*\*Five Days in London \*\*by John Lukacs). But Hitler was never ever going to proceed with it (the British would either make peace or continue with all-out warfare), so any alt-hist scenarios that include it may as well be put to bed. Hitler’s entire purpose was to destroy the USSR and thus communism. Everything else - **everything** - was a sidelight. And once he goes to war with the USSR he is dead, as there are essentially no real world scenarios in which the Germans win that campaign. ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-discuss-the-consequences-of-slight-alterations-in-the-course-of-ww2/548364/46 "2010-07-30T06:47:52Z")
> [@villa](#): > > > [@Lumpy](#): > > > > Reportedly, Churchill had been _ **one day** _ away from seeking a negotiated truce with Germany, when the Luftwaffe stopped attacking R.A.F airfields and shifted to anti-morale bombings of London, on Hitler’s orders. > > Can you point me towards something on this. I haven’t heard it before and would be interested in reading more to see what the evidence is. Trust me, it is absolute bollocks. Churchill was not going to seek accommodation with the Nazis under any circumstances whatsoever. Remember “fight them on the beaches” etc? He’d been warning of their danger for a decade, if he hadn’t given in due to losing, you know, FRANCE, he was hardly going to give in because the RAF was mildly more inconvenienced than it historically was. The RAF crisis was always overstated. For the record the plan was to withdraw the RAF to the northern and western airfields where it was out of range of the ME109 (and consequently out of effective bombing range) to preserve it to interdict any invasion. It is now clear that no airforce of that period can prevent another equivalent airforce from intervening in the battlefield of its choice - cause it losses, yes, but not prevent it. Between the virtually intact RAF and the intact RN, there is simply NO chance that the Germans can land a viable force in England, and keep it reinforced and supplied. None. ---
**Author:** ![Otara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a88e4f/32.png) [@Otara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otara)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-discuss-the-consequences-of-slight-alterations-in-the-course-of-ww2/548364/47 "2010-07-30T07:18:58Z")
My understanding is that while the planes were fine, their radar was quite vulnerable? Ie if the germans had realised its significance and connection to ground control, the RAF fighter effectiveness would have been greatly reduced and bombing effectiveness much greater. Otara ---
**Author:** ![Superhal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Superhal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superhal)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 9:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-discuss-the-consequences-of-slight-alterations-in-the-course-of-ww2/548364/48 "2010-07-30T09:06:44Z")
Imho, I don’t see how it could have ended any differently than it did. Even if Germany had taken the British isles, they could not have lasted against the Allies and (just like in real life) crushed between the Western and Eastern fronts. Without the A-bomb, Japan would have eventually fallen as well. The Pacific War decimated their army, navy and air force. While a land attack would have been costly, bombings could have been virtually uninterrupted. Conventional bombs just would have taken longer. While the death tally or the wins/losses tally could have been different, I don’t see how the outcome could have been. As a side note, I did a few minutes of Wiki research, trying to see if any of the underlying causes of WW2 could have been avoided. It seems that it was pretty much inevitable, and I only went as far back as Napoleon. Hitler’s early life was fascinating. In the spirit of this thread, I was looking for little events in his life, and virtually his entire early life was made up of little events that could have gone one way or the other. Then, I realized that because of the treaty after WW1, WW2 was inevitable with or without Hitler, and started working backwards. Quite possibly, the single event that could have possibly changed the outcome of the war was Hitler getting the A-bomb first, but that was by no means a “small event.” ---
**Author:** ![Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 9:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-discuss-the-consequences-of-slight-alterations-in-the-course-of-ww2/548364/49 "2010-07-30T09:13:50Z")
> [@Askance](#): > > “Kept faith” meaning never attacked? I guess you’ve never read **Mein Kampf**. Hitler’s life purpose after WWI was to attack and destroy the communist USSR, the rest of WWII was a sidelight necessary to accommodate this aim. Again, this is a scenario where Hitler wasn’t Hitler. No, just not attack on a second front till he’s finished on the first front. It turns out 2 front wars are tough. ---
**Author:** ![New\_Deal\_Democrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/9d8465/32.png) [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/New_Deal_Democrat)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-discuss-the-consequences-of-slight-alterations-in-the-course-of-ww2/548364/50 "2010-07-30T09:26:06Z")
> [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](#): > > Coming out of the ‘are we unfair to Hitler thread’, I’ve been thinking about WW2 even more than usual. The standard time travel trope is to bump of Hitler during WW1 or thereabouts and thereby avoid WW2, at least as we know it. So here’s my thought - Post your proposed slight alteration in the course of WW2 - some decision or plan that goes a different way - and your best guess as to what the outcome would be, and we’ll kick the idea around. Sound good? > > I’ll kick off with: > > Alteration: Hitler doesn’t declare war on the US after Pearl Harbor. Instead, he repudiates the Japanese alliance. > > Upshot: The US is initially drawn into the Pacific War much more aggressively than the European war. Hitler continually attempts to preserve peace with the US, while fighting the British and USSR. US beats Japan after a bloody island-to-island fight without the bomb (cause they went after Japan sooner and harder). Eventually Hitler draws in the US - he just can’t help himself - or else Germany goes down after 2 more years of war with USSR and Britain. Without American contributions to the war in Europe, I think the Soviet Union would have been conquered. The conquest of the USSR would have given Germany control of Russian oil fields, and made it a far more formidable enemy. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 9:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-discuss-the-consequences-of-slight-alterations-in-the-course-of-ww2/548364/51 "2010-07-30T09:38:49Z")
The outcome of the war was never in real dispute. America had become an industrial powerhouse, and by 1945 it still had a good economy, far more production, and had the ability to raise a much larger army if it needed to. The only really interesting scenarios have to do with the aftermath of the war. The shape of the post WWII world could have been very different. For example, had the Soviet Union been a bit stronger, it might have taken much more of Germany. Had The Bomb taken a little longer to develop, the Soviets might have gained a lot more far eastern territory. Had the Americans been forced to invade mainland Japan, that country would look very different today. And so on. ---
**Author:** ![figure9](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f0a364/32.png) [@figure9](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/figure9)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-discuss-the-consequences-of-slight-alterations-in-the-course-of-ww2/548364/52 "2010-07-30T11:52:28Z")
> [@](#): > > My understanding is that while the planes were fine, their radar was quite vulnerable? From my reading I don’t think the radar was that vulnerable. The Germans tried to take it out but a radar mast is a hard target to hit. Also any radar stations that were hit got replaced fast. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-discuss-the-consequences-of-slight-alterations-in-the-course-of-ww2/548364/53 "2010-07-30T11:54:07Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Had the Americans been forced to invade mainland Japan, that country would look very different today. And so on. Japan would indeed look very different if it were not composed entirely of islands. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![jinty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/dbc845/32.png) [@jinty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jinty)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-discuss-the-consequences-of-slight-alterations-in-the-course-of-ww2/548364/54 "2010-07-30T12:17:32Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > (we WOULD have sold them to the French as well, but being French they turn up their collective noses, since it Wasn’t Made In France). > -XT Bullshit. The Armee de l’Air bought [Havocs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_A-20_Havoc) and [Warhawks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtiss_P-40_Warhawk#French_Air_Force) before the fall of France in 1940, the [2e DB](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2e_Division_Blind%C3%A9e) and the rest of the [French 1st Army](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Army_%28France%29) were happy to use Shermans, etc in the 1944-5 campaign. But let’s not let the facts get in the way of a good sneer, eh? ---
**Author:** ![jinty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/dbc845/32.png) [@jinty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jinty)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-discuss-the-consequences-of-slight-alterations-in-the-course-of-ww2/548364/55 "2010-07-30T12:24:30Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > America decides to invest in developing it’s air and tank forces in the early 30’s, instead of once again cutting it’s military budget for everything except the Navy.-XT On a more interesting note, rearming early wasn’t necessarily advantageous, as Lumpy said. Italy did exactly this, and ended up with some seriously shitty tanks that hampered their armoured divisions all through the desert war. The Christie suspension was great, but you would have been very likely to have ended up with thousands of [M2s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_Medium_Tank) rather than M24s or M26s. ---
**Author:** ![Otara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a88e4f/32.png) [@Otara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otara)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-discuss-the-consequences-of-slight-alterations-in-the-course-of-ww2/548364/56 "2010-07-30T12:27:09Z")
“From my reading I don’t think the radar was that vulnerable. The Germans tried to take it out but a radar mast is a hard target to hit. Also any radar stations that were hit got replaced fast.” Sort of. > **[Chain Home](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_Home)** > > Chain Home, or CH for short, was the codename for the ring of coastal early warning radar stations built by the Royal Air Force (RAF) before and during the Second World War to detect and track aircraft. Initially known as RDF, and given the official name Air Ministry Experimental Station Type 1 (AMES Type 1) in 1940, the radar units were also known as Chain Home for most of their life. Chain Home was the first early warning radar network in the world and the first military radar system to reac... “Because the towers were untoppled and the signals soon restored, the Luftwaffe concluded the stations were too difficult to damage by bombing and so left them alone for the rest of the war. Had the Luftwaffe realised just how essential the radar stations were to British air defences, it is likely that they would have gone all out to destroy them.” Otara ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-discuss-the-consequences-of-slight-alterations-in-the-course-of-ww2/548364/57 "2010-07-30T14:19:49Z")
Here’s a small change with perhaps major consequences. As happened historically, young King Michael of Yugoslavia, who is anti-Nazi, asserts his adulthood, deposing pro-Axis regent Prince Paul. In real life, Hitler’s reaction was to divert a large portion of the Barbarossa-bound forces south to invade and conquer Yugoslavia, delaying Barbarossa for six weeks and tying down a large group of forces fighting Serb and Croat Resistance for the remainder of the war. In my hypothetical, Hitler instead dispatches Scorzeny and his team to assassinate Michael, and perhaps a few of the pro-Ally Yugoslav politicians. Ex-Regent Prince Paul takes the throne as King Paul, reappoints his pro-Axis government, and Barbarossa kicks off on the original planned date. Germany has six more weeks of good weather to invade, Russia has six less weeks to prepare (and they were caught off guard in real life anyway, even though they’d begun preparations on a don’t-trust-Hitler basis). What the different results of the invasion may have been, I’m not military buff enough to evaluate. But I got the distinct impression that Barbarossa was a “near miss” – that it came close to strategic success, in terms of cutting out the Soviets as a major player in the war, even if they continued to fight on after losing Moscow, Stalingrad, (Leningrad?), and the Caucasus oil fields. ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-discuss-the-consequences-of-slight-alterations-in-the-course-of-ww2/548364/58 "2010-07-30T16:10:33Z")
The only “what-if” that might have significantly changed the outcome was a quick defeat of the USSR in 1940. If a few more things had gone Germany’s way (and if Hitler had stayed out of the military strategy) it was possible. I’m not sure how Germany could have managed the control of a defeated USSR, I doubt a “Vichy” type government would have worked. Maybe breaking up the USSR and getting non-aggression pacts from the new countries. In this scenario the outlook after Pearl Harbor looks bleak. Germany can sit back and just attempt to hold Western Europe. Without the drain of the Eastern Front they can probably defend against the bombers. In the end, though, the nuclear bomb wins the war for the Allies, so any alternative history has to have the Allies not acquiring it. > [@Askance](#): > > > [@Hirka\_T\_Bawa](#): > > > > I think one minor change that would have had major changes in the war would be if the Americans and British didn’t break the codes Japan and Germany used throughout the war. > > In what circumstance would the UK and USA have received the information they did and failed to break the codes? Given that they had the resources to do so, both intellectual and physical, it was always going to happen. The cracking of Enigma (the most famous and probably most important broken code) was a very near thing. If the radio operators had strictly followed the operating guidelines then it probably doesn’t get cracked. If Germany had a little less faith in it’s security they would have taken (fairly easy) steps to stop the Allies (for example, the German Navy added an additional wheel and stopped Ultra in its tracks until the Royal Navy could capture a new Enigma machine). Looking back there were so many things set against a German victory: the nuclear bomb, Russia’s massiveness (in area and manpower), the US’s industrial strength and relative immunity from German attack, and the British Navy. Too many things stacked against them. ---
**Author:** ![MOIDALIZE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@MOIDALIZE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MOIDALIZE)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2010, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-discuss-the-consequences-of-slight-alterations-in-the-course-of-ww2/548364/59 "2010-07-30T16:40:13Z")
> [@Askance](#): > > Hitler’s entire purpose was to destroy the USSR and thus communism. Everything else - **everything** - was a sidelight. And once he goes to war with the USSR he is dead, as there are essentially no real world scenarios in which the Germans win that campaign. I don’t agree. I think if they fight the war in the east 10 times, the Germans win 3 or 4 times. There are numerous “what-ifs” with regards to the Eastern Front: -What if Barbarossa had kicked off 6 weeks earlier? -What if Hitler had not meddled and the Germans made a concentrated push on Moscow? -What if 4th Panzer Group had not been recalled from Army Group North? -What if the Finns had launched an offensive against Leningrad from the north and east? -What if Richard Sorge had been unable to discern Japan’s unwillingness to attack in Siberia, thus delaying transfer of Soviet divisions from the Far East Front to Moscow? -What if the soldiers of Army Group Center had received proper winter clothing? -What if the Germans had been “nicer” to the occupied peoples of Eastern Europe? -What if the Germans had captured Leningrad in 1942, freeing up Army Group North to threaten Moscow from the northwest? -What if the 6th Army had cut-off but largely bypassed Stalingrad, pushing to Astrakhan and cutting off the Caucuses? -What if 6th Army had been allowed to break out from the Stalingrad kessel? -What if the Germans had begun Operation Citadel in May, before the Soviets had time to prepare their defenses? What if the Germans had chosen not to attack at all in 1943? ---
**Author:** ![Kilmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/a6a055/32.png) [@Kilmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kilmore)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2010, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-discuss-the-consequences-of-slight-alterations-in-the-course-of-ww2/548364/60 "2010-07-31T03:49:15Z")
> [@Askance](#): > > > [@Kilmore](#): > > > > What if the Japanese forces focused their attacks on American shipping rather than US Naval units, and attacked the American supply lines to eastern Russia that ran just to the north of their islands? > > This posits that the Japanese weren’t the Japanese, but some other culture altogether. The Japanese naval culture was to destroy the enemy navy, and then the enemy merchant marine would be irrelevant. In part this stemmed from the 1905 Port Arthur victories, so the Japanese Navy’s entire culture was built around the decisive victory over the enemy navy. The other part was Japanese military honour (ie the emanations from the Samurai culture) which said that the only honourable victory was over the enemy’s military. There are recorded occasions when the admiral of a Japanese fleet stood on the bow of the foremost naval unit in order to enter battle first; glory and honour was to be won by the greatest eagerness to enter battle on the Emperor’s behalf rather than to actually, you know, win. > One of the great problems with the Japanese military efforts in WWII is that support services were entirely lacking in honour and so the lowest, most useless, people were allocated to them. If you had any personal honour you wanted to be in the front line and nothing - **nothing** - else mattered. > > > [@](#): > > > > Obviously this would have pissed Russia off, but if they would have started after Pearl Harbor, would this have made a difference at Stalingrad? > > No. How? I completely agree with you about the Japanese. Everything happens for a reason. But it because happened like that, we can discuss “what would happen?” Instead of “How did that happen?” Seeing that the US shipped supplies to Russia via Vladivostok, it looks like the supply line threaded straight through Japanese waters, and if they wanted to it wouldn’t have been too much bother for them to squash it. If they _had_ decided to use their large numbers of bombers and submarines to attack the supply line they would have either have plugged off a vital lifeline to Russia, or if the US decided to fight over it they would have all kinds of glorious battle home delivered to them. I understand that US supplies kept the Russians alive during 42, but then again I’m an American and I might be getting biased information. And I also read that it was Russia’s far east reinforcements that gave them the boost they needed at Stalingrad. If Japan became involved with Russia in the east, they wouldn’t be available. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-discuss-the-consequences-of-slight-alterations-in-the-course-of-ww2/548364.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-discuss-the-consequences-of-slight-alterations-in-the-course-of-ww2/548364.md?page=4)