What if...Hitler had not declared war on the USA?

[bigfatron]

Following on from the 'most influential Allied war effort' thread, can I pose these questions:

In December 1941 the USA was attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor. Hitler immediately declared war on the USA. In the event that Hitler had not declared war, but had stuck to a neutral line...
- would the USA have declared war on Germany, and if so why?
- what would the impact have been on lend-lease and other programmes supporting the UK war effort?
- what would the impact have been on the war in the European theatre?

 

[LouLong]

The US would probably have done it anyway because :

- Japan and Germany were somehow allies
- the US (president especially) wanted badly to declare war against Germany but the public opinion was mostly against war so the Japan blow on the US face (or backyard, geographically speaking) was a good reason to declare war on Germany as well

 

[Adler17]

There were de facto fightings between both nations in the Atlantic. There was a US airman on the PBY Catalina that spotted the Bismarck and the US destroyer made escort duties for the British. The USS Reuben James was sunk by a Ubaot accidentally. The German Kaleun (Kapitönleutnant~ Commander) thought it was a British destroyer. No, the US would have declared war on Germany. It would have been more interesting if the Japanese attacke Russia instead of the US.

Adler

 

[Knight-Dragon]

The Japanese had tried attacking the Soviet Union prior (in 1939?).

They were badly beaten by Soviet armored forces under Zhukov in Mongolia IIRC. They never tried again.

 

[LesCanadiens]

I think it was Soviet air supremacy (don't laugh!) that beat the Japanese. At the time, the Soviet I-16 was one of the very few (if not the only) fighter in the world to feature retractable landing gear, and the Japanese planes consisted mostly of biplanes which had their fuel tanks mounted on the wings (no internal tanks whatsoever!). The soviets could fly higher, faster, longer, and in all better than the Japanese.

In a departure from their favoured tactics, the Soviets waged a psychological campaign against the Japanese by sending small groups of bombers over at 20,000 feet to drop their bombs and race for home before Japanese fighters could rise to intercept. The Japanese attempted to counter by mounting fighter patrols at high altitudes, but the pilots carried insufficient oxygen, and many pilots fell prey to hypoxia.

At the other end of the scale, the I-16 fighters tried their wings as low-level ground attackers, flying at treetop height to strafe Japanese positions. In one raid, 50 I-16s swept in on a Japanese air base, shot down the commanding officer as he was taking off on a reconnaissance mission and burned five other aircraft on the ground. Such raids sometimes came in quick succession, five or six within as many hours. The endless alerts soon exhausted Japanese pilots, whose commanders could not afford the luxury of rotation because too many fliers were engaged elsewhere in Manchuria and China. By the end of August the Kwangtung Armywas ready to give up the fight, and on September 16th, the two nations signed an armistice.

The Soviets destroyed about 170 Japanese planes and lost a similar number, but because the Soviets were generally on the offensive, the attrition rates were acceptable.

So there was very little ground action! In fact, Stalin awared 60 returning pilots as Heroes of the Soviet Union.

And it wasn't Mongolia, it was Manchuria.

 

[Ozz]

I think it was Soviet air supremacy (don't laugh!) that beat the Japanese. At the time, the Soviet I-16 was one of the very few (if not the only) fighter in the world to feature retractable landing gear

The tough eastern armies of the USSR were the ones than beat the Nazis too.

1938 wood burning live off the land Soviet tanks didn't hurt eithier

 

[Anubisdk2]

If you look at the declaration of war messages from FDR to congress, you will see the difference in the attitude. In Japan's, we call it the day that will live in infamy (Pearl Harbor). But, if you look at the Germany and Italy one, you will notice it is very ho-hum because everyone knew it was going to happen sooner rather than later. The US was fighting an undeclared submarine war in the Atlantic Ocean against the Germans

 

[privatehudson]

If Hitler hadn't, sooner or later Roosevelt would have. Hitler doing better than he already was doing in Europe and nearby was most definately not in the USA's best interests.

 

[zjl56]

Hitler could have won. If Germany and Japan attacked the USSR they could have won a two front war. Yet the US was bound to be in the war sooner or later

 

[aaminion00]

I think that war would have occured between the two anyways.

As for the "what if Japan invaded the U.S.S.R.?" notion, the consequences are vastly overrated. Yes, Russia would have been in a sticky situation, but what people don't realize is that Japan's tanks were vastly inferior to those of the Soviets and more than likely would have been soundly defeated by them.

 

[zjl56]

Russia may have better weapons but Japan had many troops in Manchuria. The Russians had enough trouble in the West. So it could of probably gone either way.