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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   1917 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 5, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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It's always irresponsible and silly, but does anyone have a link to a good counterfactual analysis of the WWII decisions of the Axis powers circa Pearl Harbor?

I'm working my way through The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and I was fascinated by the diplomatic dance between Germany and Japan around the entry of America into the war. Germany wanted Japan to attack the Soviets, while the the Japanese wanted the Germans to declare war on the Americans if Japan did. Ultimately, the Japanese got what they wanted and the Germans didn't, and they both got it good and hard from America (while the Soviets and their clients contributed nothing to their putative allies).

I'm curious to read a well reasoned hypothetical of what would have happened in the alternate cases, if Japan had declared war on Russia as well as or instead of declaring war on the United States. What would the balance of forces have looked like? Would Japanese forces have been capable of inflicting significant damage on Russia, or was nothing particularly useful coming out of the Russian far east anyway?

Or if Hitler had refrained from declaring war on the United States, which he was never obligated by treaty to do (and it isn't like Hitler ever cared about treaties anyway), how would the rest of the war have played out? Would FDR and his internationalist clique ultimately have succeeded in pushing the US into open war with the Nazis anyway? Would that have taken long enough, say until 1943, that it would have altered the outcome of important events on the European Continent?

I think you have to consider what was happening in Japan, I don't think what Hitler did or thought affected this much at all. They lost decisively at Khalkhin Dol in '39, which lead to them focusing on going south instead of into Russia. If they had won or drawn there they might have chosen to go north instead of south.

Or maybe what if they just went into Russia rather getting bogged down in China and subsequently getting into a war with the entire west? If that happened it's harder to see the US cutting them off from oil and the USSR would likely have been fucked. The Chinese communists would likely also have lost the civil war and we might have had a second massive war after ww2 between an aggressive nationalist Japan and an aggressive nationalist China.

It would have been a very different world.

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