Plausablity - Pacific War before European WW2

Is there any way that either Hitler have postponed war with Poland until at least1942 or Japan have decided to start a war in 1938 or earleir
 

CalBear

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The Japanese would be hard pressed to start a trans-Pacific war before late 1941. Until then they lacked the decks to make this work. The Japanese would also found it almost impossible to engage the Americans, British, French and Dutch if none of those countries were not otherwise occupied (in both senses of the word).

Hitler could easily have waited six months to a year, although the British and French were rapidly rearming and upgrading their forces at the same time, the pace up upgrade was fairly low.
 
Germany was in no shape to start a war of conquest prior to mid 1939 (and even in the OTL, the ods were slimm when it actually started.) So Germany could not have started war earlier and likely not later as well, given the preparing USSR, who had calculated it would start its own war in late 1942 at its latest, against Germany. So the timeframe for Germany is rougly between the OTL start and early 1941, just as in the OTL, or its would fce certain defeat by the USSR, if starting later, given the Soviet numerical superiority in most fields after late 1942, especially with an intact warindustry running at full speed by then.

Japan too would not likely start its war earlier, as it was not prepared to do that politically, given its demands in China and the not yet seriously felt embargo on fuel and weapons. Starting later was perhaps a possibility, but not much later, but still within the same time Germany was fighting its own war. It depended on wether or not it would still attack the USA the way it did in the OTL, although that was just the sort of action typically done by Japan at all times, when starting a war against a strong opponent.
 
I suppose that invading China doesn't count...? :mad:

That's the Second Sino-Japanese War.

You're going to need a PoD in the very early days of the Third Reich, or before, where Hitler completely changes his policy to one of gradual rearmament and annexations. Otherwise he's facing an economic disaster if he holds of the war much longer than OTL. You also need to find some way for the Japanese to still be embargoed by America and the Europeans so that they need to take resources by force to continue the war in China. You also need to keep the Japanese away from the Soviets, and vice versa.

With all those accomplished I don't see why the Japanese wouldn't hurl themselves into another suicidal attack, however it would be over much quicker than OTL's Pacific War, even without Soviet intervention.
 
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