If Germany didn't declare war on the U.S.A.?

So say it's the day after The attack on Pear Harbor and for some reason Nazi Germany does not support Japan and does not declare war on the U.S.A.? ( could they talk over the U.K. and then the U.S.S.R.?)
 
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This has been discussed at length before.

To summarize, in the short run bad for Japan, a little better than OTL for Germany. In the long run not much difference, as the US is almost guaranteed to wind up at war with Germany one way or another.
 
A more interesting situation arises if Hitler had not only denounces the Pearl Harbor attack, but then states that Germany is at war with Japan. This would of course be incredibly two-faced, cynical and outrageous, but would instantly put FDR in a major political corner. Hitler had already previously violated the Anti-Comintern Pact he had with Japan, and could always have used racial excuses to justify the the shift to his own nation.

A rational Hitler might have done so. It would have given Germany the extra time needed to weaken the UK, hoping for an eventual overthrow of Churchill. Of course, a rational Hitler wouldn't have attacked the Soviet Union either.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
The United States and Germany were already, for all practical purposes, waging war against each other in the Atlantic. The Germans had already sunk an American destroyer, and American ships had been ordered to attack German submarines on sight. Even if Hitler didn't declare war on the United States, I expect that the next such incident would be more than enough to allow Roosevelt to get a declaration of war against Germany through Congress, especially as Germany was legally Japan's ally anyway.
 
A more interesting situation arises if Hitler had not only denounces the Pearl Harbor attack, but then states that Germany is at war with Japan. This would of course be incredibly two-faced, cynical and outrageous, but would instantly put FDR in a major political corner. Hitler had already previously violated the Anti-Comintern Pact he had with Japan, and could always have used racial excuses to justify the the shift to his own nation.

A rational Hitler might have done so. It would have given Germany the extra time needed to weaken the UK, hoping for an eventual overthrow of Churchill. Of course, a rational Hitler wouldn't have attacked the Soviet Union either.

A declaration of war by Germany on Japan would indeed have made things very interesting. It would also have been extremely unlikely. I will grant "Hitler madness" allows just about anything, but given how gleefully Hitler declared war on the US IOTL you're going to need some serious background building prior to the DoW.
 
A more interesting situation arises if Hitler had not only denounces the Pearl Harbor attack, but then states that Germany is at war with Japan. This would of course be incredibly two-faced, cynical and outrageous, but would instantly put FDR in a major political corner. .

Well, I don't think so, because it would obviously two-faced, cynical and outrageous. In fact, I think it would irritate the American electorate more than if he just kept his yap shut.
 
Well, I don't think so, because it would obviously two-faced, cynical and outrageous. In fact, I think it would irritate the American electorate more than if he just kept his yap shut.

More to the point, it is obviously a popularity ploy, as Germany and Japan

a. Operate in entirely seperate fields (which was why the alliance was acceptable to Hitler in the first place)
b. Have absolutely no way of attacking eachother.

Germany hasn't got control of the Med, he can't send ships to attack Japan, and vice versa.
 
Germany hasn't got control of the Med, he can't send ships to attack Japan, and vice versa.
Of course he can send ships to fight Japan—if the British let him.

Hitler points out the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau,Tirpitz, Schleswig-Holstein, and Schlesien are all perfectly capable of being valuable contributions in the fight against Japan. All Britain has to do is give up the vindictive war Britain declared in September 1939 to preserve the unjust terms of the Treaty of Versailles, a war it has clearly proven that it cannot win. Germany never wanted war with Britain, and in its magnanimity, Germany wants nothing from the British except an end to war. The British can keep everything they had in the status quo ante bellum, even the League of Nations Mandates to Germany's old colonies. Additional guarantees to Britain can be negotiated out in the peace talks. Just sign the costless armistice and let the British and German fleets sail together to the Pacific to defend Australia.

The ideal outcome here for the Germans is that Churchill loses power and a new PM accepts the armistice. If that happens, Germany will be able to import necessary resources for the war (oil, tungsten, etc.) while its factories go unbombed, which significantly improves its chances of defeating the USSR in 1942.

The second-best is to empower American isolationists to force FDR to back down on support for the British (and Soviets), make America fight a "Pacific First" war, and cause massive discontent in Australia with Britain.
 
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