Japan attacks Russia instead of the US

Tipsy McSwagger

Would the nazis have conquered Russia if Japan had aided them?

Capt'n Midnight

what was the name of that ship intercepted in the Indian Ocean that tipped the balance in the decision to go North / South ?


No.

The Russians gave the Japanese a bloody nose in Mongolia in '37 or thereabouts. What saved Moscow in '41 was the reinforcements from Siberia, which shows the Russians were ready. Unlike the Colonies the Russians had decent armour, had a simply supply chain with the trans-Siberian railway.

Also of note is that the Japanese did not attack US convoys sending war materials to Vladivostok.

As for Moscow ?
Napoleon captured Moscow for all the good it did him, who's to say it wouldn't have been another Stalingrad or Leningrad ?


A more interest scenario is the US and Japan resolving their differences over troops deployed outside Manchuria and then a little later on launching a joint crusade against communism.

Capt'n Midnight

Oh yeah you have to take into account the performance of the 1 million+ Japanese troops when the Soviets got around to attacking in August 1945. This was the hinterland.

Blitzkrieg like nothing before. Advances of 800Km in 11 days. South Korea exists because Japan surrendered before the Russians could get all the way there.

SafeSurfer

I think if Japan had attacked the USSR instead of the US it would have had a profound effect on the outcome of WW2.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour led Hitler to declare war on the US. Without the Japanese attack, US involvement in the war was not guaranteed. This would mean a war on one front in essence for the third Reich and a war on two fronts for Soviet Russia.

Without the US bombing campaign over Germany German industrial output would have been much greater and the Luftwaffe would have had much greater resources to deploy on the eastern front.

Duggys Housemate

Japan did bog all for Germany. Hard to really see it as much of an Axis, I don't think there was any communication. It was two wars, with the US being involved heavily in both. British Empire on both, but less so.

Anyway, two fronts in the USSR, a co-ordinated attack during barbarossa? Surely that would have crippled Russia.

SafeSurfer

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Oh yeah you have to take into account the performance of the 1 million+ Japanese troops when the Soviets got around to attacking in August 1945. This was the hinterland.

Blitzkrieg like nothing before. Advances of 800Km in 11 days. South Korea exists because Japan surrendered before the Russians could get all the way there.

The Japanese army were in an almost complete state of collapse at the time of the Soviet attack. They were not just under supplied, but largely unsupplied. Many of the Japanese troops were malnourished and they had very limited supplies of ammunition, gasoline etc.

SafeSurfer

Duggys Housemate wrote: »

Japan did bog all for Germany. Hard to really see it as much of an Axis, I don't think there was any communication. It was two wars, with the US being involved heavily in both. British Empire on both, but less so.

Anyway, two fronts in the USSR, a co-ordinated attack during barbarossa? Surely that would have crippled Russia.

The Japanese were probably perturbed by the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact which flew in the face of the anti Comintern pact between Japan and Germany.

Capt'n Midnight

SafeSurfer wrote: »

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour led Hitler to declare war on the US. Without the Japanese attack, US involvement in the war was not guaranteed. This would mean a war on one front in essence for the third Reich and a war on two fronts for Soviet Russia.

Lets not forget that it was a real shooting war in the North Atlantic at that stage, and that a lot of the ships and escorts were US flagged.

Without the US bombing campaign over Germany German industrial output would have been much greater and the Luftwaffe would have had much greater resources to deploy on the eastern front.

Had they continued with stuff like targeting ball bearings then maybe.

as it was didn't German production peak in late 1943 ?
the main loss of production was fuel and raw material shortages an disrupted transport

yes half the Romainian oil refinery was destroyed, but since the refinery only had enough crude oil for about 60% of capacity a little re-routing of pipe work meant that it was able to process all available crude within a few weeks

By the end of the war the shortage was trained pilots
German jet engines only lasted 10-25 hours, this was due to lack of metals for high temperature alloys, but then again German planes only had a life expectancy of 25 hours so maybe they just didn't want to waste valuable resources needlessly

Capt'n Midnight

SafeSurfer wrote: »

The Japanese army were in an almost complete state of collapse at the time of the Soviet attack. They were not just under supplied, but largely unsupplied. Many of the Japanese troops were malnourished and they had very limited supplies of ammunition, gasoline etc.

The Japanese didn't have anything like the T34, couldn't have got near the factories near the Urals.

Siberia is huge, look at the fun and games with the Czech Legion during the Russian Civil War.

It's also possible the Chinese civil war would have ended differently and with US arms...

christmas2012

dont mess with the japanese they are deadly and ya they probably could conquer if they wanted to,even one japanese!!!!!

SafeSurfer

The North African campaign would have had a very different outcome without the intervention of US troops. Its important to remember that Vichy French forces offered stiff resistance to Allied troops during operation Torch. The intervention of the US in the war was decisive in persuading Vichy French forces to, as it were, switch sides. This led to the German occupation of Vichy France and victory in north Africa provided the springboard for the Italian campaign.

Without US intervention a very different outcome could have included the seizure of the Suez canal and threatened the oil fields of the Middle East.

Capt'n Midnight

SafeSurfer wrote: »

The North African campaign would have had a very different outcome without the intervention of US troops. Its important to remember that Vichy French forces offered stiff resistance to Allied troops during operation Torch. The intervention of the US in the war was decisive in persuading Vichy French forces to, as it were, switch sides. This led to the German occupation of Vichy France and victory in north Africa provided the springboard for the Italian campaign.

Without US intervention a very different outcome could have included the seizure of the Suez canal and threatened the oil fields of the Middle East.

In fairness Vichy France had no reason to love the British. Look at what happened to the fleet. The campaigns in other areas of Africa weren't so nice.

The Japanese takeover of Indo-China was also a factor I suspect.

I'd that the failure to take over Malta was a major factor in North Africa along with the fuel shortages of the Italian Navy. But taking Egypt would have been unlikely - perhaps if they had got the Turks back on board, but that would have been unlikely since Libya was taken from them by Italy in 1911 and it's unlikely that Turkey would have been offered any of the oil rich areas that she had just over 20 years earlier.

Jawgap

Tipsy McSwagger wrote: »

Would the nazis have conquered Russia if Japan had aided them?

No - geography and economics were against them and that's even before you get into the whole Nazi ideology and their approach and attitude to the 'Asiatic' races.

The Axis never even came close to sharing resources, information and intelligence the way the Allies did.

As for the 'armaments miracle' - that's largely discredited. There's no doubt that in some areas, weapons production increased dramatically, but this was achieved by limiting production in other areas, by compromising on quality and by promoting qunatity - why build a new fighter when you can keep churning out obsolete Me109Gs?

The Reich had a finite amount of steel that was 'budgeted' to each service - weapons production (which required lots of steel) was often prioritised over ammunition production (which also required lots of steel), until ammunition levels became critical and steel was switched back to that.

In setting these steel budgets, the different ministries often allocated more steel than was actually available and producers under pressure to meet orders compromised on the quality of the metal produced.

In 1943, there was -relatively speaking - loads of low quality steel and this led to a noticeable improvement in production, but when the daylight raids kicked off in the latter part of that year, production slackened off under air bombardment.

Capt'n Midnight

Jawgap wrote: »

No - geography and economics were against them and that's even before you get into the whole Nazi ideology and their approach and attitude to the 'Asiatic' races.

The Axis never even came close to sharing resources, information and intelligence the way the Allies did.

How much information was shared ?
Even little things like impressing upon the Japanese the importance of convoys

Despite all the publicity about enigma the Germans were just as good at breaking Allied codes and knew a lot about Allied technology.

Japan lacked widespread radar, didn't use convoys, and easily broken codes.

Radar was also used in proximity shells.

a few submarine loads / few fast ship loads of cargo
plans were shared, but too late to make a difference

As for the 'armaments miracle' - that's largely discredited. There's no doubt that in some areas, weapons production increased dramatically, but this was achieved by limiting production in other areas, by compromising on quality and by promoting qunatity - why build a new fighter when you can keep churning out obsolete Me109Gs?

the big problem was developing decent kit
far too many prototypes that failed - jets were bumped up because they could run on diesel instead of the scarce petrol
heavy bombers with engines overheating
each V1 took the resources of a fighter to produce , and there was a shortage of potatoes because of the alcohol fuel which has to have knock on effects

at one stage German shells were topped up with 20% salt, because they ran out of explosives



Japan had a few wasteful schemes, the amount of manpower wasted sewing up balloons on the off chance they'd start a forest fire in the US - because that will win the war somehow



Back to codes , on the Eastern front the Russians used the public system of loudspeakers to communicate , so very little radio traffic to eavesdrop on. In Siberia it may have been different, but if the US could break the codes then perhaps the USSR could too ?

SafeSurfer

The sheer scale of Asiatic Russia would have been daunting but Japanese troops pushed as far as Lake Baikal during their intervention in the Russian civil war. The powerful Japanese navy who were masters at seaward invasions would have had little difficulty taking Vladivostok, which would have made supply lines more manageable than the overland route.

McG

maybe. the Siberian troops that turned the tide in '41 were only available as the USSR's spy network indicated to Stalin that the Japanese would attack the US and not the USSR.
If Moscow had fallen, who's to say what would have happened? Maybe Hitler would have tried to come to a diplomatic solution in the western front in return for being allowed to plunder the USSR?

Jawgap

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

How much information was shared ?
Even little things like impressing upon the Japanese the importance of convoys

Despite all the publicity about enigma the Germans were just as good at breaking Allied codes and knew a lot about Allied technology.

Japan lacked widespread radar, didn't use convoys, and easily broken codes.

Radar was also used in proximity shells.

a few submarine loads / few fast ship loads of cargo
plans were shared, but too late to make a difference

the big problem was developing decent kit
far too many prototypes that failed - jets were bumped up because they could run on diesel instead of the scarce petrol
heavy bombers with engines overheating
each V1 took the resources of a fighter to produce , and there was a shortage of potatoes because of the alcohol fuel which has to have knock on effects

at one stage German shells were topped up with 20% salt, because they ran out of explosives

Japan had a few wasteful schemes, the amount of manpower wasted sewing up balloons on the off chance they'd start a forest fire in the US - because that will win the war somehow

Back to codes , on the Eastern front the Russians used the public system of loudspeakers to communicate , so very little radio traffic to eavesdrop on. In Siberia it may have been different, but if the US could break the codes then perhaps the USSR could too ?

Of all the examples of shared tech, I think I'd point to two as being of critical importance - I'm sure there are others, but I'll plump for these two....

Penicillin - the Brits discovered and developed it, shared it with the Yanks who then pioneered its mass production. The Germans knew of penicillin but couldn't produce it in the volumes the Allies could.

The cavity magnetron - again developed by the Brits and mass produced by the Americans, it made centimetric wave radar a reality which allowed for smaller objects to be detected such as submarine periscopes. It also made radar sets smaller meaning they could be incorporated into more aircraft.

A lot of German prototypes didn't fail in as much they were killed by rivals anxious to promote their own designs.

There's another point about artillery shells - a lot of war production in Germany was carried out using forced / slave labour who no doubt had an incentive to mess about if / when they could get away with it.

I saw one study that suggested between 20% and 25% of the shells fired during the Germans 1944 Winter Offensive in Alsace (the Battle of the Bulge) failed to explode on landing. No doubt some of those suffered from poor materials, but the author also suggests that workers in the factories played their part in sabotaging fuzes etc.

Capt'n Midnight

Jawgap wrote: »

Penicillin - the Brits discovered and developed it, shared it with the Yanks who then pioneered its mass production. The Germans knew of penicillin but couldn't produce it in the volumes the Allies could.

very important all right, also as a note open heart surgery was developed too,

The cavity magnetron - again developed by the Brits and mass produced by the Americans, it made centimetric wave radar a reality which allowed for smaller objects to be detected such as submarine periscopes. It also made radar sets smaller meaning they could be incorporated into more aircraft.

Two key points here.
The Germans also had the magnetron but didn't develop it because they couldn't get it on a stable frequency. Neither could the Brits, but they realised you could just retune the receivers.

Capt'n Midnight

http://www.historynet.com/japans-fatally-flawed-air-forces-in-world-war-ii-2.htm

The Japanese had not experienced the logistical challenges that the Western powers had addressed during World War I and later relearned. Japan's politicians, generals and admirals completely misjudged the character and the duration of the war they launched in 1941. Poor aerial logistics planning, lack of foresight, a racist contempt for their enemies, a weak, shallow, narrow industrial base and an inability to appreciate supply requirements or to learn from their failures characterized their aviation effort throughout the entire war.

Jim S

Some good points raised which I would agree with....Japan and Germany were too distant from each other and had little in common which would promote much by way of close co operation.
Trade yes (greatly hampered by the practical difficulties in sailing round the world and back in time of war) but in terms of military support it was one way traffic really - U Boats to Penang and German technology going east.

America would sooner or later have been drawn more than likely via a naval encounter which was fast brewing potential in the Atlantic but relationships with Japan were never more than luke warm certainly never enough to produce a joint attack on Russia , as we know she had her own agenda in SE Asia.

Reekwind

SafeSurfer wrote: »

The sheer scale of Asiatic Russia would have been daunting but Japanese troops pushed as far as Lake Baikal during their intervention in the Russian civil war

No. It's easy to advance when you are facing no opposition. When the Japanese did face the Red Army in a pitched battle in the 1930s they got absolutely spanked at Khalkhin Gol. By all accounts this laid bare the chasm between the mechanised and armoured Soviets and the backwards Japanese army

So this is really not a hypothetical: the Japanese did try to take Siberia before this military rebuff tilted the political balance in Tokyo in favour of a naval competition with the US. A counterfactual that assumes that the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact was not in place in 1941 would have to explain why this Japanese policy shift did not take place