I see a lot of grerat discussion of the most basic question. If German didnt attack russia... or references to that. My question has always been. If Japan decalred war with Germany on Russia, I think that its pretty much guarenteed Russia would have fallen within a year and Asia and the middle east oil and Africa would belong to the Axis. Britain would almost vertainly fall after losing those areas. Is Japans decision to not inavde Russia the real turning point? Then perhaps they delay bringing the US into the battle, also giving Japan much needed resources and German much needed oil and material and forced labor. After a serious change in fortune such as that. The fascists in Iraq and Spain would be highly encouraged to join the Axis. Just a thought. Opinions?
I think its a valid point that i've thought of myself at times, if germany had some help from japan making it a two front war for russia they quite possibly could have won. Although I think the japanese had their eyes on resources close to home that the u.s. had control over, and didnt the japanese suffer some heavy loses with some skirmishes against the russians around that time? Also i'm not sure about this but did the japanese and the germans really have that close of a relationship, or was it more of a "were fighting the same enemies." I know they traded some military designs but anything more than that i'm not sure of.
Your point is good as a hypothetical. My opinion has been that the actual turning point in the war was in the BoB. The fact the Brits kept the island defended meant a perfect launching point for two major air forces. After that, the rest is academic. I am of the opinion that Russia and the US would have never have allied. They were too different culturally. We would have never been sure who to trust more Stalin or Hitler. If you went by who murdered the fewest innocents, we would have had to allied with Germany against Russia. If Hitler had left Britain alone and taken on Russia, I believe that he would have beaten Russia because he would not have "just missed destroying them" because of harsh winter weather so I believe that was academic. With Russia captured it would have taken longer to win, but the Allies would still have won. With Britain captured, a war with Germany would be so untenable that the US probably would have to have taken a defensive posture in WWII instead of an offensive posture and probably would have avoided war directly and simply prepared for the eventual. The Germans may have had a more experienced Army but there is a point of diminishing returns where the inexperienced enemy becomes effectively as experienced as you. Had the Allied soldiers at the end of WWII been fighting the experienced Germans at the start of WWII, no one would have ever have said the Germans were better soldiers. The wild card here to your hypothetical is whether the US would have jumped into the war because Japan attacked Russia, not so much because of their passion for Russia but that they would have feared that Britain would certainly stand a better chance of defeat. I believe to Roosevelt that was unthinkable. Japan could have hurt the Royal Navy at least enough to make them less effective in the war. Their carriers would have put the Royal Navy at risk like it did the US Navy especially if allied with the Italian Navy, and the German Navy. Despite the debates we have here, all nations of the Allies knew they needed each other. No matter the size of the armies all of them brought land or guts or innovation to the battle that was crushing to the Axis. Spidge and I were talking about the fact that the Aussies brought penicillin to the Allies, something that saved more lives than we could have wished for as a contribution in soldiers. I was reading how minor wounds were fatal to Germans because of infections killing them even when the wound couldn’t. The British brought radar. I don’t know how many soldiers and workers the British contributed to the war but what is really incalculable was the equipment and men it saved by giving us early warning and detection of the enemy in both the ETO and the PTO. This is why you would say the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
The Soviets and Japanese fought a border war in 1939 and The Soviets won it and the Japanes hade to sign a treaty Read more here http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/drea2/drea2.asp
(Dessert Fox @ Oct 20 2005, 05:35 AM) [post=40260]I see a lot of grerat discussion of the most basic question. If German didnt attack russia... or references to that. </div><div class='quotemain'>My question has always been. If Japan decalred war with Germany on Russia, I think that its pretty much guarenteed Russia would have fallen within a year and Asia and the middle east oil and Africa would belong to the Axis. Britain would almost vertainly fall after losing those areas. [/b] Is Japans decision to not inavde Russia the real turning point? [/b] This is from a previous post on this forum. Japan left the USSR alone after Marshal Zhúkov destroyed a Japanese Corps at Mongolia in 1939.
