# Lets Do Another "What If the USA Stayed Neutral in WW2" **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 3, 2022, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-do-another-what-if-the-usa-stayed-neutral-in-ww2/969000 "2022-08-03T04:21:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2022, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-do-another-what-if-the-usa-stayed-neutral-in-ww2/969000/101 "2022-09-28T01:08:03Z")
> [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > Nobody’s mistaking it for reality but it’s closer to reality than a hypothetical in which the USA stays neutral for the entirety of the war. If only this were the case. Sadly, as you can see, there’s one person here who is not only mistaking _Axis & Allies_ for reality, but they also consider complete US neutrality during WW2 to be a plausible reality. Worse, they’ve been promoting this pet theory here for more than half a decade, all the while being unable to present the slightest shred of evidence for it when asked for it. In any event, thanks for the run down on how games of Axis & Allies usually go. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2022, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-do-another-what-if-the-usa-stayed-neutral-in-ww2/969000/102 "2022-09-28T02:16:06Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > Sadly, as you can see, there’s one person here who is not only mistaking _Axis & Allies_ for reality… Not True. “In no way shape or from have I ever given the idea that Japan and Germany 'gang up”. Axis and Allies _has to be balanced,_ so that the Allied player doesn’t simply win every game." > [@Dissonance](#): > > …but they also consider complete US neutrality during WW2 to be a plausible reality. Not True. In fact I said that sooner or later the USA would get into the war. But the Hypothetical is that the USA stay Neutral, so I am polite enough to respect the OPs hypothesis (even tho very unlikely) and come up with what could occur. > [@Dissonance](#): > > Worse, they’ve been promoting this pet theory here for more than half a decade, all the while being unable to present the slightest shred of evidence for it when asked for it. Also not true. I have stated just the opposite. True, I agree with _FDR himself- the sitting president,_ when he said the USA would not declare war simply is Japan attacked British or Dutch colonies. That doesn’t mean America would never get into the war. Quite the opposite. Sooner or later, Axis aggression and American replies would end up getting America into WW2, But this Hypothetical says otherwise, and unlike others, I respect the hypothetical. ---
**Author:** ![Pavelb1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/439d5e/32.png) [@Pavelb1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pavelb1)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2022, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-do-another-what-if-the-usa-stayed-neutral-in-ww2/969000/103 "2022-09-28T03:17:02Z")
My friend usually plays Germany. He also usually loses cause…“Hitler needz hiz Aircraft Carrier!!” ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2022, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-do-another-what-if-the-usa-stayed-neutral-in-ww2/969000/104 "2022-09-28T10:46:32Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > Even given a fantastical best case where Japan is able to take the DEI and Commonwealth possessions and the US sits back twiddling its thumbs, **the Japanese navy was a non-factor in the war in China** , and at best it releases 10 of those 51 divisions to add to the 27 that were in China in 1940. Even that isn’t realistically going to happen, because as long as the Commonwealth wants to keep fighting, there’s nothing Japan can do to knock them out of the war. My bolding Adding further to this excellent analysis, the problem with alt-history scenarios such as the one proposed here in the OP is that basic military doctrine still needs to be observed, and there are no guaranties to Japan that the US would remain neutral forever. It’s not realistic to assume that Japan would know they are suddenly in an alternative universe where neutrality is guarantied by some future OP. A fortified Philippines would be able to sever the Japanese sea lanes of communication between it and the territories it seized in Southeast Asia. As we can see in Ukraine, losing logistics isn’t a good idea. With the massive US Navy buildup under the Two-Ocean Act underway, the Japanese had to continue to devote a majority of its limited steel production to warships, and would not be able to build many more merchant ships, tanks or trucks. In the late 30s as Japan started it’s ventures into China, the IJA needed the IJN to sign off on the budget requests for their war. The IJN agreed to increase the IJA’s share of the budget, in exchange for precious steel allocations needed for its monster battleships. In real history, that came back to bite them in the ass in 1941 when the dysfunctional bureaucracies stumbled into war. The Imperial Navy had a better sense of the danger of getting entangled with the States and some of the top leadership preferred to find diplomatic solutions to things, only to be mocked by their counterparts in the IJA, who asked by they had needed so much steel if they weren’t willing to fight. As you have posted, Japan needed over 6 million tons of merchant shipping, and when war broke out, they actually had less than needed. Not only did the services requisition ships, Japan had been receiving overseas goods carried by foreign flagged ships. While they made up some of the shortage by capturing merchant ships in various ports, it wasn’t enough. Like the States, Japan started off the war without enough tankers and needed to build more. Because of Japanese inefficiencies, although they processed some of the oil in the DEI, they shipped crude to Japan, and then the refined oil back, requiring more tankers. Unlike any other major combatants in the war, Japan alone depended on merchant shipping for internal transportation, including the all important food and coal. Rice was also imported, as was sugar and other foodstuff. The further Japan pushed its empire, the worse the logistics became, with each mile taken requiring twice that for the ships. As you said, India and Australia were just too far away. (While the IJN only played a minor part in the war against China, their participation did lead to [design considerations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_A6M_Zero#Design_and_development) for the Zero with an emphasis on range because they needed to strike targets deep into China.) > [@](#): > > Based on the experiences of the A5M in China, the IJN sent out updated requirements in October calling for a speed of 270 kn (310 mph; 500 km/h) at 4,000 m (13,000 ft) and a climb to 3,000 m (9,800 ft) in 9.5 minutes. With [drop tanks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drop_tanks), it wanted an endurance of two hours at normal power, or six to eight hours at economical cruising speed. They achieved these requirements by sacrificing any excess weight, such as armor and self-sealing fuel tanks. This is another example of the interconnectedness of Japan’s experiences in China. > [@Babale](#): > > Let’s give Japan a completely fantastical “best case scenario” where they are able to seize colonial holdings in the Pacific because Europe is too busy to care and America goes full isolationist - even with all those extra resources, does Japan have the manpower or industrial capacity to pacify China, EVER? Unfortunately, the OP is not particularly well thought out, and the parties wouldn’t act that way, but let’s just take it. @Dissonance’s analysis is really spot one. As implied in his response, the IJA just didn’t have enough manpower to pacify China. Ever. They could take the major cities, especially on the coast and along major transportation lines, but the KMT could just retreat further and further inside. Looking at Ukraine, as an example, Russia just didn’t have enough soldiers on the ground when they attacked. Even worse for Japan, rural China was pretty much self sufficient and could still resist even if the industrial cities were overrun. The KMT army got help from the Allies in real history, but even without outside help, they would have carried on. With Chiang Kai-shek willing to [flood its own territories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_Yellow_River_flood) to hinder the Japanese, there really wasn’t anything the IJA could do to win. > [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > That’s the problem with counterfactuals. They often boil down to “what if somebody did something out of character and possibly illogical and never went back to character”. People can easily get the impression that I hate alt-hist, but actually I just really dislike sloppy arguments. Did you ever participate in any of the crazy threads that @mr.kobayashi (? is that right?) used to come up with? He would have impossible scenarios such as what would happen if a modern carrier were sent back in time. The good thing about those is that everyone knows it’s impossible so there isn’t a debate if that could have happened or not. Other interesting alt-histories are things which are feasible. It’s been a while, but there was the question of what would have happened if the Japanese navy had won at Midway. A different outcome is not outside the realm of possibility so there were a lot of interesting discussions. Within that thread, hypotheses could be separated into plausible or implausible because it’s specific enough that they can be guessed at. In this case, realism is important. The problem is that some people mix up these two types and try to make an impossible scenario seem realistic. It’s like asking physics questions in FQ with impossible scenarios such as what would happen if fire were cold. The problem is that if the fundamental principles of physics were changed that much, then we can’t guess the answers. At least @gnarator admits that his answers are ignoring reality, because it’s more fun that way. Which is fine, but once reality has been tossed out the window, then the answers are whatever you want them to be. > [@Pavelb1](#): > > My friend usually plays Germany. He also usually loses cause…“Hitler needz hiz Aircraft Carrier!!” Hey! I like that! ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2022, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-do-another-what-if-the-usa-stayed-neutral-in-ww2/969000/105 "2022-09-28T16:22:28Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > Without lend-lease the war would certainly have dragged on longer and may have led to something of an incredibly bloody protracted stalemate in the East, but Germany was very unlikely to actually defeat the USSR even without lend-lease being a factor. If the war in Europe had been **substantially** protracted, there is an extremely high likelihood the first nuclear weapon would have been detonated in Germany. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2022, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-do-another-what-if-the-usa-stayed-neutral-in-ww2/969000/106 "2022-09-28T21:53:00Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > People can easily get the impression that I hate alt-hist, but actually I just really dislike sloppy arguments. My feeling as well. I enjoyed those crazy what-if that everyone understood were impossible as well, I remember the what if a _Nimitz_ class carrier went back in time to Pearl Harbor ala _The Final Countdown_ and could it survive the Japanese Pearl Harbor attack force if it didn’t have any of its own aircraft to defend it quite fondly. It’s sloppy arguments and now trying to hide behind ‘don’t fight the hypothetical’ to try to ignore the impossibility of an argument and the inability to back up the hypothetical with any evidence that are ridiculous and harmful to actual debate. The name of this forum is Great Debates after all. The idea that it is an accepted rule in this forum that fighting the hypothetical is considered rude behavior is another quite bizarre idea not based in any reality that I’m aware of. If I were to start a thread asking “what if the Germans had dragons in 1939” I wouldn’t expect anyone to take it seriously and certainly wouldn’t take offense at others pointing out that the very idea belongs in the realms of fantasy, much less insist that it be treated as factually possible because that’s what the OP says. I certainly wouldn’t claim special knowledge on the issue of dragons and what is strategy possible with them based on my hundreds of hours of playtime in the _Total War: Warhammer_ franchise. > [@TokyoBayer](#): > > As you have posted, Japan needed over 6 million tons of merchant shipping, and when war broke out, they actually had less than needed. Not only did the services requisition ships, Japan had been receiving overseas goods carried by foreign flagged ships. While they made up some of the shortage by capturing merchant ships in various ports, it wasn’t enough. > > Unlike any other major combatants in the war, Japan alone depended on merchant shipping for internal transportation, including the all important food and coal. Rice was also imported, as was sugar and other foodstuff. A plausible what-if that only requires minimal changes in the moving parts but would have had a dramatic effect on the war is what if the US Navy’s Bureau of Ordnance hadn’t been so incompetent in the pre-war and early years of the war. For those unaware, US torpedoes were plagued by severe problems, and to make matters worse every time a major defect had been discovered and finally acknowledged by the Bureau of Ordnance, it would turn out that the identified defect had been covering up an even more serious defect. The Bureau of Ordnance took years to accept that there were problems with US torpedoes, particularly the Mark 14 submarine torpedo, choosing to blame submarine commanders as being incompetent rather than acknowledging the faults in the torpedo. As it turned out, they had never even conducted live fire test of the torpedo on the grounds that they were too expensive to do as they cost $10,000 a piece. It took until mid-late '43 before most of the serious issues with the Mark 14 had been resolved and they became somewhat reasonably reliable. Had US torpedoes been effective from the start of the war, there’s no reason that the dramatic collapse of the Japanese merchant fleet in 1944-45 couldn’t have happened two years sooner, and all of the problems - including facing starvation due to lack of rice reserves - couldn’t have crippled them that much sooner. There wouldn’t have been quite as many US boats available two years earlier, but that would be offset to some extent or another by the fact that Japanese ASW techniques were very poor in the earlier years; even convoying wasn’t done very often. It would also have had an effect on US surface and air dropped torpedoes as well, which suffered the same problems. The problems with US surface torpedoes early in the war was embarrassingly put on display when the crippled US aircraft carrier _Hornet_ was ordered to be scuttled at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, from Richard Frank’s [_Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle_](https://www.amazon.com/Guadalcanal-Definitive-Account-Landmark-Battle/dp/0140165614): > Accordingly, Murray detailed [the destroyer] _Mustin_ to scuttle the _Hornet_ while the rest of the task force began a high-speed retirement at 1810. _Mustin_ carefully fired eight torpedoes at _Hornet_ that provided another sad example of the quality of these weapons; two ran erratically, one prematured, and five hit, but only three exploded. _Mustin_ advised Kinkaid of _Hornet’s_ refusal to sink, and the Admiral detached _Anderson_ to help bury _Hornet_. Between 1915 and 1930, _Anderson_ scored six hits with eight torpedoes, but _Hornet_ still remained afloat. Firing hundreds of 5-inch shells into _Hornet_ in a race to sink her before Japanese ships showed up - which had been given orders to try to capture and tow _Hornet_ if possible, something Admiral King quickly found out about when cryptanalysts decoded the order from Combined Fleet, the two US destroyers faced the embarrassment of being driven off by approaching Japanese destroyers. Luckily _Hornet_ had been reduced to a blazing wreck unable to be captured, but it was left to a pair of Japanese destroyers each firing two Long Lance torpedoes to finally send _Hornet_ to the bottom. ---
**Author:** ![nicky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/f0a364/32.png) [@nicky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nicky)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2022, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-do-another-what-if-the-usa-stayed-neutral-in-ww2/969000/107 "2022-11-28T18:49:22Z")
The problem with this counterfactual is that faced with a really neutral USA the other actors would think an act differently as well. Britain might despair. Japan could grab european colonies and do what it liked in China. If the Axis play their hand better they can win and then the endgame is Z bombers nuking New York. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2022, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-do-another-what-if-the-usa-stayed-neutral-in-ww2/969000/108 "2022-11-30T15:27:45Z")
> [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > It’s generally agreed the physics aren’t mind-bendingly difficult. > > One of the most difficult things, by contrast, would have been the industrial and technical capacity, i.e. more on the engineering side of things. Even now, one of the signs we look for are importation/production of equipment for the centrifuges. Getting the infrastructure set up for atomic weapons development is an expensive and challenging proposition, especially for a nation at war and/or at risk of invasion. Specifically, the real hurdle is getting enough of the right fissile material. One way is separating U235 from natural uranium, and the other is creating plutonium in nuclear reactors and then chemically separating it from the spent nuclear fuel. Both are highly demanding today, and even more so in the 1940s. The vast majority of the effort in the Manhattan Project surrounded the industrial processes to obtain fissile material, not the actual bomb design itself. In fact, the Little Boy design _was never tested_ because they understood the physics well enough to know that it would go off. They weren’t quite so sure about the implosion design, hence the Trinity test in July 1945, a month or so before it was used in combat at Nagasaki. And after Nagasaki, the US had shot their bolt for the time being. All that effort and time until that point had sufficed to produce enough uranium and plutonium for _ **three** _ nuclear bombs. They expected to produce enough to make about three a month at full capacity between Oak Ridge and Hanford, both of which are absolutely massive installations. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2022, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-do-another-what-if-the-usa-stayed-neutral-in-ww2/969000/109 "2022-12-01T05:20:15Z")
> [@nicky](#): > > The problem with this counterfactual is that faced with a really neutral USA the other actors would think an act differently as well. Britain might despair. Japan could grab european colonies and do what it liked in China. If the Axis play their hand better they can win and then the endgame is Z bombers nuking New York. We’ve actually addressed a number of these points in the thread and I’ve pointed out issues why Japan was struggling in China. Do you have any thoughts about the points we’ve raised? > [@bump](#): > > And after Nagasaki, the US had shot their bolt for the time being. All that effort and time until that point had sufficed to produce enough uranium and plutonium for _ **three** _ nuclear bombs. Are you saying they only had enough for Trinity, Hiroshima and Nagasaki? If so, I believe you are misremembering. There was a third bomb which was going to be ready by about August 17th or 18th, but the Japanese surrendered before it could be used. After Nagasaki, Truman had put a hold on future use of atom bombs, which was opposed by military leaders and it seems he had decided, or was leading towards allowing the third bomb as the Japanese had not initially surrendered. ---
**Author:** ![nicky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/f0a364/32.png) [@nicky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nicky)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2022, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-do-another-what-if-the-usa-stayed-neutral-in-ww2/969000/110 "2022-12-01T11:20:41Z")
> [@gnarator](#): > > I think an interesting (and more likely) debate is what would have happened if Germany and Italy did not declare war on the US in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. What would have happened in the European Theater? But that’s a highjack… But its NOT a highjack. Germany declared war! You can’t speculate what a neutral USA might heve done without changing what Hitler did. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2022, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-do-another-what-if-the-usa-stayed-neutral-in-ww2/969000/111 "2022-12-01T15:54:30Z")
By the time of Nagasaki, that’s all they had. They were getting fissile material at a pace to produce the next one a week or so later, and about 3 a month thereafter. The big complexity and bottleneck was the rate that they could get fissile material for the bombs, not the actual manufacturing of the bombs themselves. To give an idea, something like 63% of the total cost of the Manhattan Project went into Oak Ridge (Uranium separation), and another 21% went into Hanford (Plutonium). Only 3.9% of the total cost of the Manhattan Project went to Los Alamos, and 3.7% went into “Research and Development”. The total cost of the Manhattan Project was something like 1% of the entire Federal budget during its lifetime. 84% of the cost of the project went into obtaining fissile material, and they were on a pace to have produced four bombs total by August 19th. This is the sort of thing that say… Germany probably couldn’t have pulled off even had they seriously wanted to. The only thing comparable is the Apollo program, which was ~2% of the Federal budget at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Capn\_Carl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/838e76/32.png) [@Capn\_Carl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capn_Carl)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2022, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-do-another-what-if-the-usa-stayed-neutral-in-ww2/969000/112 "2022-12-01T16:07:11Z")
I read somewhere that the B-29 program was also very expensive, but I don’t know if it compared to those programs. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2022, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-do-another-what-if-the-usa-stayed-neutral-in-ww2/969000/113 "2022-12-01T16:26:12Z")
You’re right- it was more expensive overall, which I didn’t realize. That includes the production costs, which is nearly 4000 bombers, so I’m not sure whether the costs are exactly comparable, since the development costs were only about 900 million of that 3 billion total, and the rest was mass production. ---
**Author:** ![gnarator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gnarator/32/8266_2.png) [@gnarator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnarator)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2022, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-do-another-what-if-the-usa-stayed-neutral-in-ww2/969000/114 "2022-12-01T17:10:26Z")
There was another thread where we kicked it around. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2022, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-do-another-what-if-the-usa-stayed-neutral-in-ww2/969000/115 "2022-12-03T03:48:24Z")
> [@bump](#): > > By the time of Nagasaki, that’s all they had. They were getting fissile material at a pace to produce the next one a week or so later, and about 3 a month thereafter. The big complexity and bottleneck was the rate that they could get fissile material for the bombs, not the actual manufacturing of the bombs themselves. OK, so it’s a question of semantics. I wouldn’t have characterized that as “having shot their bolt for the time being” because for me that would suggest a much longer delay than one week, but it’s like asking for a definite number of “a few.” I agree with your larger point, that it’s unlikely that Germany could develop atomic bombs, and they certainly couldn’t do that and simultaneously develop and manufacture super bombers. Of all the combatants, only the US could afford either of the programs, and obviously no one else could do both. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-do-another-what-if-the-usa-stayed-neutral-in-ww2/969000.md?page=5)