Um…well, yeah. What’s your point? More specifically, what has this got to do with what I wrote?
Japan and German were allies. Germany declared war on the US (at the insistence of Japan, while Germany hoped, in vain, that this would get Hitler what he wanted, which was Japan to declare war on Russia).
So, back to what I said. ‘We had choices after Pearl Harbor as well. For instance, we COULD have chosen to focus primarily on the Japanese and perhaps just send naval units against Germany (subs and such to beef up the convoy system)…possibly send over some air force units to the UK to act as fighters and bombers. After all, Japan had directly attacked us, so it wouldn’t have been all that unreasonable a decision for the US to focus on our primary enemy and leave the other allies to fend for themselves, with just token support.’
The US had a choice after Pearl Harbor. We could have put our primary efforts into fighting Japan (who had attacked us directly after all), or we could put Japan on a back burner, so to speak, fighting them with secondary forces and pretty much by our selves (well, not exactly but trying to keep this short) while we concentrated on taking out Germany as our primary focus.
What, exactly, do you find wrong in my statement? BEsides the slurred words due to heavly drinkage? I’m sure you can figure out what I’m saying so…what’s the problem?
They call it ‘history’ over here. WTF is your issue? You obviously have one, but you’d done nothing really to explain what it is. Assuming you are half as drunk as I am atm, take a deep breath, focus your mind, have a toke of this joint, and then try to explain your problem and why you think the US didn’t have a choice in where to go to war first.
Before Barbarossa you need to reinforce the UK otherwise the Axis brings the war to you, after Barbarossa you need to reinforce the UK and supply the Soviets – so they can also do the fighting for you.
Did you not get that this was alternative history? I agree with what you are saying there (minus the edge of ‘do the fighting for us’, which is silly when one takes to time to see why the US was late getting into the war from our own perspective)…in fact, that’s pretty much what we did. However, there are different assumptions and different scenarios floating about now.
Remember that at the time, Britain had control of Canada, South Africa, and India.
Assuming no help from the USA, IMHO the western front of the European war grinds to a stalemate until the Brits develop the Atom bomb. At which point the concern becomes stopping Russian domination. Against the Japanese, they get stopped in India - somewhere like Imphal. Then it’s a containing war until nukes become available.
To avoid mass starvation in Britain, there would be considerable emigration to Canada and South Africa.
With due respect, I believe this is totally wrong.
It might be that SOME Japanese thought this. It might also be that some Britons did, too. It is certainly true than many Japanese leaders thought the Americans would fight back like tigers and that attacking them was insane. There’s always ethnic biases (some Allied leaders believed Japanese pilots could not fly at night due to the shape of their eyes) but Japan was not actually a nation of seventy million retards.
The real Japan launched its 1941 attacks is that it was, in effect, chasing its own bets. Japan was so heavily involved in its war in China that the continued existence of the military junta depending on the legitimacy of having started that war in the first place. Domination of China had also become important for propping up the Japanese economy after the Depression. Continuing, and winning, the war were utterly necessary; they were too invested in it NOT to win. It was a classic political situation.
To continue the war in China, resources were needed, and the Allies controlled the resources and were actively cutting them off. Japan has, for all practical purposes, no natural resources important to industry. The oil embargo would have shut their military down. Japan - its imperialist leaders, in any event - were faced with the impeding decision to either lose/withdraw from the war in China, and mainland ambitions in general, or go to war to get the resources needed to win the war. They chose the latter, and that path led inexorably through the Phillippines, Borneo, et al. It was after the realization they needed those resources that Japan rationalized their attack on the Allies, which essentially amounted to “hit 'em hard, hit 'em fast, and then dig in.”
Again I have to point out the Soviets, like the Japanese, were not idiots. Do you think the USA would never have had a rocket program without German rocket scientists? I’m sure Dr. Von Braun helped and everything but there are some pretty smart people in the USA, too. Efforts of this sort are largely a product of having the resources to do them. The Soviets certainly did not need German engineers to build good tanks.
This was in no way an issue. Neither Germany nor Japan had even the vaguest pipedream of conquering this hemisphere. No way to do it in any case. Our civilians were safe behind our ocean barriers, just as we always were.
Without active support from outside, guerilla forces are fairly helpless to stop an implacable occupying force. The Germans showed that they would wipe out entire villages a retaliation for Underground activity. Without British support (supplies, asylum, intelligence) the French Underground would has ceased as an organized force by late 1943. Partisan activity in Russia could have continued for years, but the French would have turned on the Underground in a heartbeat if the Germans kept up a 100 for 1 retaliation program.
Kursk- the decisive battle (Aug 1943), was won by the USSR because of two things:
the Allies told them about the upcoming Nazi attack by means of Ultra code-breaking, which allowed a defense in enormous depth, able to stop the panzers.
The Allies invade Sicily in July,1943. Note that the Italian front kept a lot of the German forces tied down. The first “second front” was in Nov 1942, Operation Torch, oddly about the time the USSR was winning at Stalingrad.
You may not think that a Second front was necessary, but Stalin thought so.
The 8th Air Force started hitting hard in Aug 1943, which also effected Kursk.
Right, Lend-Lease wiki “A total of $50.1 billion (equivalent to $759 billion at 2008 prices) worth of supplies were shipped: $31.4 billion to Britain, $11.3 billion to the Soviet Union, $3.2 billion to France and $1.6 billion to China.”
Perhaps the USSR could have done without that 11B. :dubious:But Britain,as you noted, would have been forced to sue for peace, and then Stalin would have had his ass kicked.
Some experts claim that the Arctic convoys allowed the USSR to hang on in Stalingrad, which was a close thing, in any case.
With the same respect, you don’t seem to think it’s totally wrong, only partially so by your follow on statements. I concede that I was painting with a broad brush, but it seems clear to me that the decision making bodies in both Germany AND Japan DID feel that the US didn’t have the will politically for long drawn out fights that would be costly in terms of both treasure and blood. If you have any sources that run contrary to that then I’d be more than happy to look them over, but nothing I’ve ever read suggests that this wasn’t a widely acknowledged ‘truth’ about America and Americans…and not just by Japan and Germany.
I believe that the Japanese thinking on the attack on Pearl Harbor was to cripple the US’s short term ability to counter their moves in the Pacific Rim areas, and their medium and long term goals/thinking was to make it too costly (again, that the US wouldn’t be willing to pay the price) for the US to try and take back what Japan had gained. I am obviously glossing over a lot here, but, again, if you have cites that show a contrary view by the decision makers in Japan I’d be more than happy to look them over. I’m no WWII expert, just someone who has wiled away the odd hour reading WWII history, playing WWII oriented games and watching the History Channel. My view on WWII is a very History Channel-ish one, admittedly.
The US had a rocket program prior to WWII. I am not aware of a similar Soviet initiative. However, the point is, that even though we had a prior program, we didn’t actually develop rocket technology as a viable weapons system until after we acquired our own crop of German rocket engineers. This isn’t to say we couldn’t have EVENTUALLY developed such a program…but getting those German specialists jump started our own program immensely. The same goes for the Soviets, but more so.
It’s also untrue that the Soviets didn’t need outside help to develop their admittedly excellent tanks. In fact, much of their basic design they acquired from the US. In addition, prior to the war the Soviets actually DID work with the Germans (in secret) to further develop both their tank technology and doctrine.
I’m not saying that the Soviets, all alone, couldn’t have (eventually) developed rockets or jet powered aircraft…but they certainly couldn’t have developed them as quickly or easily as they DID (in our universe) without infusions of tech from the Brits (in the case of the jet engine), tech examples, experience and personnel (from the Germans), and capital and materials (and stolen data, thinking of the Atomic bomb) from the US. And I don’t see how they could have done any of these things while they were fighting for their life all alone against an unengaged Germany…which was my point last night (I think…I WAS rather drunk, so not sure).
There is a wonderful novel called “The Plot to Destroy America” by Philip Roth, which hypothesizes this very premise; in 1940, Charles Lindbergh wins the US Presidency over incumbent FDR, and decides not to engage the Nazis in war.
The perspective of the book is on the American home front (and domestic anti-Semitism specifically) rather than the war, but it is nonetheless a great read for anyone interested in re-visioning this period of history.
In the book, President Lindbergh chooses to sign an “understanding” with the Germans and their Japanese allies. The Japanese do not attack Pearl Harbor and America does not enter WWII.
Well, since all of Ultra still hasn’t been declassified, there’s still controversy, but:
wiki "*
The locations of all previous German attacks had caught the Red Army by surprise, but in this case, Kursk seemed the obvious target. Moscow received warning of the German plans through the Lucy spy ring in Switzerland. *
Then :
"*His required conditions for working for Rado were very odd—he was never to be forced to disclose his sources, and the Soviets were to make no attempt to discover them. Moscow Centre was initially quite suspicious, but eventually came to rely on his ring’s information. The Swiss eventually tracked down the transmitters and put the Lucy ring out of business before the end of the War. Alexander Foote, later author of the controversial Handbook for Spies, was one of Rado’s (and Roessler’s) radio operators and one of those arrested.
An additional controversial aspect of the Lucy ring story is the allegation that it was, at its heart, a British Secret Service operation intended to get Ultra information to the Soviets in a convincing way untraceable to British codebreaking operations against the Germans. Stalin had shown considerable suspicion of any information from the Americans or British about German plans to invade Russia in 1941, so an Allied effort to find a way to get helpful information to the Soviets in a form that would not be dismissed is, at least, not implausible."
*
Google “Lucy spy ring ultra” and you’ll see a lot of the discussion on this. Myself, I am quite sure, due to the timing.
The Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia) had oil but the Dutch government joined the American embargo. Japan figured that if it occupied the East Indies then a Dutch embargo would no longer matter. Japan would control the oil wells and would be immune to any foreign embargo.
Professor John Keegan wrote, “Wartime Russia lived and fought on American aid.” The US supplied enough food alone to feed every Soviet soldier for the entire duration of the war. Kruschev later said the Sovs would have been unable to advance to Berlin without American transport (rails, rolling stock, and trucks).
American tank and artillery shipments were much less important; the Soviet stuff was usually militarily superior and better adapted to the cold. But American shipments of supplies, infrastructure, and basic logistic equipment were gigantic help to a country that was, frankly, reeling after the loss of millions of men, enormous quantities of material, significant factory production, and its most productive resource-bearing regions in their entirety.
Not to mention the psychological bolstering of having allies almost certain to bring long-term success if one can just hold out.
Stalin’s willful blindness to Hitler’s coming attack, despite repeated warnings, shows that (at first) he was basically psychologically unable to deal with what was coming – BEFORE the gigantic disaster Barbarossa inflicted on his front lines. Stalin turned out to be resilient and determined…but how much of that willingness to fight it out is due to having major players as allies? Remember, he meekly ordered resource-bearing trains to cross into German-held territory even in the hours before Barbarossa because he was afraid to give Hitler any excuse to claim the treaty had been violated.
That version of Stalin might have folded before Stalingrad was decided.
Regarding Italy tying down significant German forces – I don’t believe that claim, although I’ve heard it before. Italy was supremely defensible – exactly the place you’d hope your enemies would get bogged down, so you could hold them off with small commitments and free up the rest of your troops for the main event at Kursk. Run the war over a hundred times, and each time the Germans are going to be praying the Western allies land at the toe of Italy and grind their way up the mountainous spine instead of, oh, almost anything else.
Sorry mate, Finland had a pact with Germany because no one else was going to help them with the Russians. Get your facts straight. Finland was not Fascist. Tahts like saying the USA was communist for supporting Russian interests.
Oh and the Germans would never have won the the total war, they wanted all of Europe and would not have had the good sense to stop when they could have. It was a war of attrition and Germany was fast running out of sons to send and ammo to use.
The Russians would have ended up controlling a bit more of Eastern Europe and the Japanese a lot of Asia.
Western Europe would have been sent into a state of anarchy for a while, but would have settled down.
The USA would have become less of a force than it is today without the trading partners they built in Japan and Germany, maybe not such a bad thing.
WWII was won by Lend-lease from the USA to it’s allies.
Hitler made so many foolish things, it’s plausable to say the Allies couldn’t have won it without him
Hitler could never have defeated the UK alone, much less the Soviets. Of course Britian couldn’t finish off Hitler either.
The Soviets were already retreating behind the Urals and could’ve held out decades from behind there.
Assuming the US stays out of the war, you would’ve had a stalemate. Assuming Hitler was as ill as he appeared to be in a few more years he’d have died and the gernerals assuming power would’ve come to some agreement with the Britian and the Soviets.
Japan’s war aim all along was to sieze as much as it could, then allow the Allies to be tired of Germany and negotiate to keep what it siezed or at least as much as possible.
Hitler entered the war with rationing and a weary population. You don’t win a war by startig it with rationing. Also you had a population that only fell behind him after the quick victories. A simple change in France or Norway could’ve brought Hitler down quickly
Heavy drinking will do that too you. Yes, you are right…no idea what I was thinking.
It depends on ones assumptions, as I said. I don’t think it’s nearly as cut and dried as some in this thread seem to think the question is.
Could you explain what your baseline assumptions are, and how this would have happened?
No doubt the world would be full of beauty and light if only the US had stayed isolationist and allowed the happy people of Europe to get on with getting on…
