WW2 Question

During World War 2, did Nazi Germany ever send any of their forces to fight in the Pacific, and did the Japanese ever send any of their forces to fight in the Atlantic and in Europe itself?

As I understand it from my Samoan friends, Germany lost all claims to lands in the Pacific after WWI. :smack:

My understanding is that the only military assistance the two nations gave each other was to exchange information about weapons they were developing.

I know that German submarines operated in the Indian ocean, and to a lesser extent the Pacific. They exchanged small quantities of vital strategic materials. Bismuth rings a bell, for some reason.

I think this question would have a better chance of being answered in GQ.

On a semi-related note, when the Americans were considering using a native language for secure radio communications, several were rejected because German anthropologists had studied them in the U.S. between the wars and it was possible that some Germans were sufficiently fluent to teach the Japanese how to interpret these signals. The Navajo had not been studied, though, and were recruited for the task.

To Japan :slight_smile:

Well there is the story about the U-boat that was supposed to go from Germany to Japn with a load of uranium oxide at the end of the war, but instead surrernderd to the the US in New Hamshire?

http://www.childrenofthemanhattanproject.org/HISTORY/H-07c.htm

There were U boats operating in the Indian ocean. The Sea Wolves dramatised an Allied operation in Goa against a German radio ship.