NO pearl harbor.
- Thread starter Borya
- Start date
USA won't stay out.
They were in the war for quiet a while before pearl harbour with their steps against the uboats. They just didn't have the guts to admit it to anyone (including themselves).
Eventually they will get involved.
The point of the oil embargo was to stop Japanese aggression. The US isn't just going to shrug their shoulders at the Japanese violently circumventing it by seizing Indonesian Oilfields.
Not attacking just gives the US the initiative to choose the time and place of the battle.
The only winning move for Japan is not to play
TheSwedishHistorian
Banned
Japan was heading for collision and alienated everyone in Asia. No peatl harbour, limiting their ambitions, and working to create more allies and come to some deal or way to get more trade/oil might, might, might, have worked
There’s a thread that talks significantly about this : https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...n-and-the-netherlands-and-not-the-usa.498705/
Got to admit , this one has been done to death , Nothing really changes overall , all it does is rearrange a few chairs before Japan gets flattened as per OTL ( Japan leaving the Philippines alone even though they sit on the routes oil has to take to get back to Japan and the US is embargoing them is militarily very dubious. Yes you can say that it is because they realise they will lose but then they would realise that attacking the DEI will bring the US into the war anyway ).
As for Germany , as has been stated already the undeclared war in the Atlantic was escalating rather quickly anyway so only a matter of time ( and probably not much of that ) .
As for Germany , as has been stated already the undeclared war in the Atlantic was escalating rather quickly anyway so only a matter of time ( and probably not much of that ) .
IIRC the American public was not too isolationist when it came to Japan. Fear of the “yellow peril” was strong. There were people wary of getting sucked into another war with Germany because WW1 had been so pointless, but Japan was a different adversary, and one that the American military had been preparing for for a generation.
I think the last chance to keep the USA out of the war in Europe would be to negotiate a peace after a failed Operation Dynamo. That would require they be reasonable, which is hard to do while still keeping the Nazis in power. If the war between Britain and Nazi Germany continues, the Battle of the Atlantic will draw the USA into the war in Europe eventually.
Although "yellow peril" racism was certainly part of anti-Japanese sentiment, there was more to it than that. The average American also harbored "yellow peril" racism against the Chinese, but the American public was appalled by Japanese war crimes in China.
Indochina was controlled by the French State, while only its concessions in China and India were controlled by Free France.
As said before in many other threads: a lot depends on the timing. If the attack on the European imperialist powers happens on 7th of December than a US intervention is pretty guarenteed. If it's much earlier, say December 1940 than it is a very different situation. Especially if the Japanese only attack the DEI.
Especially if they occupy Free French-controlled territories.
That was explained here:
Garrison
Donor
The US Navy was already in an undeclared war in the Atlantic and had taken casualties whilst continually expanding its zone of operations, a declaration of war was inevitable.
Problem is how does/why Japan attack earlier , they either just don't have the resources or they have no need to attack. Before the occupation of Indo-China, there is no need to attack, everyone is selling oil/rubber/tin. Afterwards they have to guard against the US deciding to get involved so you are back to a December 1941 timeframe just on ships/planes being ready for use.
War Plan Orange had gone back a couple of decades, and war with Japan was indeed expected. However, WW2 wasn’t - it was expected to be a one-on-one with Japan fought mostly with ships and carriers, as one might expect a war in the Pacific to be.
I don’t think you keep the Americans and Japanese from going to war with a single POD; one would need either a couple of them or a significant domino effect to make it not happen. For one thing, Japan’s military was really itching for a fight. For another, FDR was really wary of the Axis powers. And there was the little matter of the US military thinking, and rightfully so, that Japan was the next big enemy.
My guess - FDR dies in his second term. The economy takes enough of a hit that the American people are willing to give the GOP another chance. The GOP runs on an isolationist platform behind someone like Robert Taft. Taft cools things off with Germany and reaches some kind of understanding with Japan.
So Japan, who wants a fight, decides that they and the Germans will tag-team the Soviets instead. The Soviets and British go two-on-two with the Japanese and Germans, and the Americans sit back, eat popcorn and fund the Allies in secret.
Frankly the Japanese had no choice once the U.S. had frozen some of their assets and put a halt to the oil shipments. They needed oil and invading European colonial holdings wouldn't have been ignored by the U.S. for long.
One of the things that also often gets forgotten in these threads is the Allies’ arms sales to China. Japan’s war there wasn’t going well even when they managed to shut off the arms supply through Indochina; they lost in the Central Hubei Offensive in November of 1940, and at Changsha, West Hubei, Shanggao, and South Henan in 1941. And was that was with China’s supplies and link to the outside world being limited to what they could truck over the Burma Road. When the Burma Railway gets completed, you are talking about an absolute river of stuff going to the KMT through British territory. That will turn the situation for the Japanese, which was a real headache IOTL, into an aneurysm. At a certain point, they’re going to get really pissed about the flow of arms and will get increasingly desperate to shut it off...
Even on top of that, the U.S. was always going to impose sanctions at some point. What they were doing in China was just too brutal not to. It might wait until 1942 if they don’t move into Indochina, but it will happen.