Note: This is a retread from the January 2001 issue of my AH Newsletter. I'm putting it here as kind of a backup/archive, but do feel free to jump in with comments/suggestions.
Every so often I like to take a fairly standard what-if and see if I can provide any new insight on it. I actually started out with two scenarios here, but I realized that while neither one of them really made too much sense alone they made perfect sense together. The first scenario had the US airforce in the Philippines striking at the Japanese airbases in Taiwan shortly after they received word of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor rather than dithering for several hours and then having the core of their airforce caught on the ground. That one didn’t work well because it didn’t have that much long-term impact in and of itself. The second scenario had Hitler deciding not to declare war on the US after Pearl Harbor. The problem with that scenario is that as we will see in a bit, Hitler had a lot of very good reasons to declare war on the US at a time when a goodly amount of US naval power was tied up against Japan. I decided to combined the two scenarios, with the US success in the Philippines causing Hitler not to declare war on the US. I’ll develop that more later.
What actually happened: Hitler encouraged the Japanese to move against the United States not as part of some overall Axis grand design, but primarily to shift America’s main focus to the Pacific long enough for the Germans to knock the Soviet Union out of the war and consolidate power in Europe. He declared war on the United States because:
- He didn’t realize how quickly and to what extent the US could mobilize industry and train large armies.
- It gave the German navy a great deal more freedom to go after US shipping.
- Least important, he had essentially promised the Japanese that he would.
What might have happened: Instead of getting caught on the ground, the US airforce launches a heavy raid on Japanese airbases on the Philippines. As in our time-line, the Japanese have not been able to take off yet for their intended raid on the Philippines because of ground fog. The US raid is moderately successful. It destroys 20 to 25 Japanese warplanes on the ground, damages a few more, kills some pilots in their planes, and causes enough damage to the bases to delay any immediate Japanese counter-attack.
US pilots think they’ve done a lot more damage than they have, and their reports are further exaggerated by the Roosevelt administration, which bills their attack as payback for Pearl Harbor. Hitler isn’t so much fooled by the US account of the attack as made more cautious by them. It brings back memories of the pre-war expectations of Italian military performance, mixes with his racism to create enough doubt as to whether or not the “little yellow men” can take on a real Great Power that he decides to await further developments—to see if the Japanese are capable of taking on the US.