AH challenge: The German-Japanese War

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to have Germany and Japan fight a war by the present day with a POD no earlier than the Treaty of Portsmouth. No more than one outside power may be involved on either side, so WWI is out.
 
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to have Germany and Japan fight a war by the present day with a POD no earlier than the Treaty of Portsmouth. No more than one outside power may be involved on either side, so WWI is out.

I don't know enough about the history of the region to fill in the details, but here goes:

The Treaty of Portsmouth fails to secure peace. Japan and Russia are fighting again within a year. A Russian fleet seeking relief and repairs after a battle with Japan sails to Jiaozhaou Bay. Because family ties are important to Kaiser Wilhelm II, he had given instructions to aid his Russian cousin's navy if necessary, but to otherwise avoid getting involved in the war. The Japanese navy shells Jiaozhaou, bringing Germany into the war.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Well, Germany and Japan were at war wih one another during WWI. But I assume you mean something a bit bigger.

Suppose that Germany wins WWI in Europe and sends an expeditionary force to get its Pacific territories back. That might be interesting.
 
One rough possibility

Germany is victorious in Europe, and the boys are home by Christmas (1914)
The war was short, and peace terms weren't too harsh overall, though France gets the worst of it. Germany's colonies in the Pacific are taken over by Japan, or most of them, anyway. US-German relations aren't tainted by unrestricted submarine warfare.
Germany is unlikely to be able to project enough power to fight Japan by itself. Japan has the home court advantage, and Germany needs to keep enough forces close to home to defend the country.

Two possible allies for Germany, both difficult to manage, but possible.
1. Russia, since both are smarting from loosing territories to Japan. Take some work to get the nations on the same side, but I suspect that it could be done.
2. The USA. The USA has seen Japan as a potential enemy for some time by 1914. For that matter, if a Yankee--Japanese war breaks out, it might be Germany jumping in. The Anglo-Japanese alliance would not be a factor if Japan attacked the USA...and if Germany jumped in afterwards, Britian would be very foolish to join also. I suspect that both the US and Germany would offer some reassurances concrning British territories in the area.
 
I very much doubt that Japan of 1914 would even consider attacking the US, unless they did something really, really, really casus belli-worthy.
 
I very much doubt that Japan of 1914 would even consider attacking the US, unless they did something really, really, really casus belli-worthy.

I think in the period shortly after WWI the US started talking about making a major fleet base at Manila, directly across Japan's supply lines and the Japanese made clear that this would literally be a casus belli. [About the same time the reverse occurred in that Japanese apparently approached Mexico for a base on its Pacific coast and the Americans took the same response]. As such unlikely but may be possible, although a Germany that had just, quite easily, defeated France and is overwhelmingly dominant in Europe is probably ringing far more alarm bells than Japan so I think a German-US alliance unlikely.

Steve
 
Wasn't German foreign policy fairly Pro-China up until about Hitler? You might have Germany in a CP-victory or no WW1 world respond forcefully to any Manchurian adventures the Japanese may undertake.
 
Wasn't German foreign policy fairly Pro-China up until about Hitler? You might have Germany in a CP-victory or no WW1 world respond forcefully to any Manchurian adventures the Japanese may undertake.

Of course, in a no-WWI scenario the Russians would probably join in on the German side for some payback, but that's within the one-outside-power bounds of the scenario.

(One advantage of a no-WWI scenario is that Germany gets to keep it's Chinese possessions, so if Japan gets drawn into more serious hijinks within China proper, the chances of a collision are non-negligible. Might an "alt-Panay" incident spark a fight?)

Bruce
 
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