What would have happened if Germany didn't declare on US after Pearl Harbor?

[BasilY]

Let me toss in another, more unlikely, scenario:

What if Germany declare war on Japan after Pearl Harbor?

And why not?:
- Japan won't attack USSR any time soon, Even Richard Sorge, the soviet spy knew it from German sources in Japan. In fact, Japan was appeasing the Russians so they can deploy their resources against the US.
- No new front open, not a single German soldier will be diverted to face Japan.
- No lost opportunities, there wasn't much the Germans can take from America (yet).
- There isn't much a potential Japanese victory can give Germany, even in the unlikely event of Japan achieving a favorable settlement with the US (Even Japan did not dream off complete victory over the US)

And most importantly:
- Help Nazi sympathizers in US to make their case.
- It makes it very hard for American public opinion at the time to support a war against Germany, a co-belligerent at the very least.

Sure Japan had an pact with Germany at the time, but so did the Soviet Union a mere few months earlier.

[GoldenRivet]

if Germany did not declare war on the United States, the US would have declared war on Germany anyway. IMHO

[bookworm_020]

Even if Germany hadn't declared war on America, there would have been a big increase in the supply of material to England, and with that, the risk of more AMerican ships being sunk by German U-boats.

An intresting idea from BasilY, but I don't think the American government would have taken the bait.

[Graf Paper]

Sooner or later, we'd have gotten around to smashing those weasels. Roosevelt was determined not to leave the British hanging and he was already beginning to sway Congress into declaring war on Germany before Pearl Harbor. So this hypothetical scenario would only alter one fact...Berlin might have become the third city in history to be destroyed by an atomic bomb.

Assuming Hitler conquered Britain (although I truly don't see how it could have been done without terrible losses on both sides) casualties on the American side would have been much higher if they had to liberate Britian and create yet another front in retaking Europe. I think this would have tempted the President to use the new "super-weapon" to shorten the conflict, similar to the reasoning used for nuking Japan.

Who really knows? Questions like these can make for fun discussion but it was inevitable that the Axis would lose the war. They were too outnumbered by the Allies and could never hope to match the Americans in resources and production of war materials.

[downunder]

One flash and your ash.

[predavolk]

Roosevelt was highly sympathetic to the British, and American arms were flowing to the British for cheap, and American volunteers were going over to fight in ever increasing numbers. A declaration of war was imminent.

If the US hadn't gotten involved against Germany, little would have changed. People dramatically overestimate the importance of the US in the fight against Germany. Sure, their industry was important. But the Western front was mostly British and Canadians (3 of 5 Normandy beaches). And the Western front was, as someone rightly pointed out, a mere side-show to the epic struggle against the USSR. Hitler was doomed when he failed to knock out the Soviets in the first round of 1941. Despite Stalin's whining and complaining, US and British aid was most certainly not required for the Soviets to demolish the Germans. Their factories were ridiculously out of German reach, their manpower was colossal, and they were about to unleash the most important weapon of the war- the T-34. Bombing the Reich helped speed things up a little, as did invading from the West. But the Soviets were already crushing the Germans handily before the Allies invaded.

I'm often amazed, at least briefly, about how pro-American most accounts of WW2 are. Absolutely, the US was the chief architect of victory in the Pacific. But their contributions to the war against Germany were about as important as the contributions of Britain and her allies against Japan. Japan was doomed when it attacked the US, Germany was doomed when it attacked the Soviet Union and failed to knock out Stalin in year 1. The inevitable battles of attrition that followed massively favored the US and the USSR.

Britain (and Canada, the forgotten 6th power) were important in first denting the image of Germany as undefeatable, but Hitler could have signed a peace agreement with them (and the US) in 1942 and he still would've lost the war. Badly.

Now if Japan and Germany had turned on the USSR instead- maybe that would've worked. Germany and the US against Japan and the USSR? Unlikely at that point in the war, and it probably would've ended with the US taking out Japan while the USSR took out Germany.

[BasilY]

Originally Posted by bookworm_020

Even if Germany hadn't declared war on America, there would have been a big increase in the supply of material to England, and with that, the risk of more AMerican ships being sunk by German U-boats.

An intresting idea from BasilY, but I don't think the American government would have taken the bait.

What was FDR going to say when asking the Congress to declare war? "Even though Germany is fighting our common enemy the Japanese, we are going to declare war on Germany anyway, and keep helping England and Russia in their war against Germany because she invaded her neighbors and murder her own people..."

Cue Stalin, thinking about Finland, poland, the Baltic States, the purges, and the Gulags.

BTW, in December 1941, There was a pact between Japan and USSR as well. (After Zhukov administered quite a beating on them in a short border war.) What ever reason FDR had to declare war on Germany, can be used to declare war on USSR as well.

[predavolk]

BasilY, the problem with #6 is that the war between Germany and the USSR was practically genocidal. The Germans wanted to extinguish the sub-human vermin while the Soviets responded with a bloodthirst and ruthlessness to match. Both were led by Cult figures who could only be removed by a thorough, bloody coup. After such a coup, Germany would certainly have sued for peace. The USSR on the other hand, especially after 1943/Kursk, had nothing to fear about war and lots to gain from it. They had no incentive, Stalin or not, to stop pushing the Germans out of their country by force and then claiming the extra territory as their victory prize.

Again, the real struggle in WW2 was Germany vs Russia. In terms of number of troops, number of casualties, brutality, duration, land mass, and finally sheer importance. It was what Hitler ultimately wanted (and possibly Stalin too, just at a later time) and it was what ultimately decided WW2. The Pacific was an important side-show, but Japan never had a hope if the rest of the world didn't like its empire (other than Germany, no one did). Its island logistical base was just too weak. And as I've mentioned, other than a possible German rapid victory in 1941 that captured much of the Soviet manufacturing, it was endgame the moment they set foot in Russia. Too much land to conquer (by far), too inflexible a policy (vs. accepting the help of 1,000,000 anti-Stalin Russian soldiers), too many Russians vs. Germans, too much Russian vs. German production, and the T-34. It was a fait acomplit.