What if Japan had not attacked Pearl Harbor but instead..?

Question

joined Germany in Operation Barbarrosa? And Thus Hitler didn't declare war on America? And Japan stopped at China instead going all the way down to south east asia?

Your thoughts?

Answer 1

I've answered a similar question...Japan DID try to mix it up with Russia prior to Barbarossa and had their heads handed to them by a mechanized Russian army led by a guy named Georgii Zhukov at Khalgin GOL in Manchuria, 1939.
(also known as the battle of Nomonhan).

Answer 2

Good old alterna-history. The evidence is in that the Japanese were zhit-scared of conflict with the Soviets, having been taught a serious lesson at the Battle of Khalkin-Gol (sp?), and the Japanese secured a treaty with the Soviets- which both parties were extremely happy about- and the eastern Soviet Union did not have the resources that were the entire Japanese reason for going to war...

...and thus your scenario is extremely unlikely, it is a better than most 'what if?'.

The British were well pleased when Hitler attacked the Soviets- having suffered an unbroken succession of military disasters, they were pleased to have an ally. I don't know how much pressure the Japanese could have put on the Soviets, given their lack of mechanisation and the geography involved, but it could have been enough to allow the Germans to capture Moscow, disrupt Communist Party control over the USSR, and perhaps 'win'.

But Britain would still have dragged the US into the war, and the Japanese would still have had to move south in search of raw materials. The US was only going to get stronger over time... if they'd joined the war in, say, late 1942, the Japanese would not have had the run of success they did.

Your scenario still suggests the Japanese would be willing to forego their dreams of Empire, because they would not have been able to sustain themselves on the territories to their north.

Answer 3

America would've inevitably entered the war. Listen, my friend: America isn't that negative as you might blieve her to be. If you watched Casablanca and other films that were pictured prior to America's entry to the war, you'd understood what America was intending. Remember the Lend Lease Act? It was in 1940, and the USA was supplying Britain with 50 destroyers. The USA was already taking very positive steps towards entering the war. You have to understand that America does what her interests dictate he to do.

This reminds me of Britain declaring war on Germany in 1914 just because Germany had violated Belgium's neutrality! The fact was that Britain feared Germany (Prussia) since 1870 or probably earlier.

Statesmen are very shrewd. One of their limey ways is to deceive the historian in order to shaow that they were acting normally and on short-termed bases. This is far from true.

Answer 4

America would have helped Germany clandestinely to achieve it's goal, and have a good slice of it.

America is instrumentally targeting to colonize asian countries for the raw materials wherever Japan had kept it's hopeful eyes. This is the culmination of the attack on Pearl Harbour by the Japanese .

Answer 5

You have some excellent answers as to why the Japanese didn't attack the Soviets and open a new front.

I'd only add, the decision not to attack was probably one of the key decisions in terms of the outcome of WW II. Had they done so, the outcome might well have been a lot different.

Or, had they pulled the Kwantung army out of Manchuria and used them somewhere else it would certainly have changed things.

Answer 6

Soviet union was eventually going to win anyway. And Japan had the same problem, they couldn't secure China. The problem is in, total manpower numbers, and logistics and supply. The Soviet Union and China where too vast to supply with the available assets of the day. It would have prolonged the war another couple of years, but the United States was going to eventually be involved, and the outcome would have been the same.

Answer 7

Eventually, the United States would have been forced into the war; in particular, when U.S. merchant ships were being attacked. The United States already had one foot in the war by sending massive amounts of military equipment, supplies and aid to England, Russia, etc.
Lacking an attack on Pearl Harbor, that would have only delayed the United States' entry into World War II.
The outcome of the war would have been the same, but it would have taken longer to conclude.

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Answer 8

Zhukhov had just beaten their brains out and he was still sitting there waiting to do it again. Even when he was transferred west, there were still more than enough troops to check the Japanese. The "southern strategy" of the Japanese was forced precisely because their "northern strategy" had been stopped by the Soviets, and Japanese oil reserves had dwindled to the point at which they would have run out by Feb. or Mar. '42 without the Dutch oil fields to the south.

Answer 9

The Soviet Union would have declared war on Japan and all my electronics would say "Made in the Soviet Territory Japan"

Answer 10

Then the Nazi's would have won their war. America might have even supported them.