No Japan/USSR neutrality in ww2

what do you think could lead to a lack of a neutrality pact between the Soviet Union and Japan in WW2 ? A better border war in thirty nine for Japan?

If this happened, what do you think the soviets Asian front would look like? Potential support for the communists in China? No pearl harbour? How would this affect the USSR in Europe?
 
I think the best POD is an anti-Communist settlement wherein Japan and KMT China come to terms against the Red menace. You'd need to not have had the Rape of Nanking and you'd need an Asia-focused Stalin who's enough of a threat that they team up to wipe out Mao as the greater threat.

Japan/China would make a strange alliance UNLESS the two divided Asia between them with Japan getting Islands plus Siberia nd China getting SE Asia including subverting India. China would have the short end of the stick unless it could get the resources and Indian Ocean ports to provide an additional set of trade and military power not hemmed in by the Japanese.
 
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I'd go back earlier than '39, I'd say '38 with Lake Khasan would be the better POD. In '39 the Russians know that Germany is a threat far closer to home, but that doesn't seem 'quite' as dire in '38. If Russia escalates it further there's a strong chance that the Japanese do something major that neither side can back down from.
 
Hmm, here I go down the rabbit hole. The 1939 border war is bigger and longer. Perhaps that conflict goes on all the way into 1941 in one way or another. Come the German invasion, Stalin can't pull back forces from the Far East as quickly. In early 1940, would the UK and France quietly support Japan against the USSR?
 
not sure the logic of that scenario? do you mean a USSR with its European borders secured would turn towards Asia so the two foes unite?

Yes, especially if Stalin hedges his bets against a backstab by industrializing Central Asia and seeking Port Arthur as a better warm water port.
 
Molotov-Ribbentrop being an outright alliance could well drive KMT China and Japan together.

not sure the logic of that scenario? do you mean a USSR with its European borders secured would turn towards Asia so the two foes unite?

Yes, especially if Stalin hedges his bets against a backstab by industrializing Central Asia and seeking Port Arthur as a better warm water port.

see two problems there, Stalin was very cautious and so much distrust between China-Japan after Nanking, maybe if Soviets had blundered in earlier you could project Japan gathering (some) Chinese support?

if there was a REAL Commu-Nazi alliance there would be little need for Japan? the Allies might see Japan as (unwelcome) partner against Germany-USSR.
 

raharris1973

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For a later PoD- perhaps Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact negotiations go more slowly by several weeks. They are not quite complete by June 22nd 1941.

While it would not be overdetermined, this could increase the chance that Matsuoka and the Strike North Faction prevail in Japan, or, the Soviet Union, thinking the Japanese were stalling on purpose in collusion with Germany, preemptively strikes the the Far East. [In OTL there was a big sabotage operation against arms depots in Manchuria right after the outbreak of Barbarossa]
 
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