Sorry, I forgot to add it in.
Well it's not too late, as you discovered.
Moscow was the center of the country's industry and railroads. There's no way they could continue on as a coherent force.
So was Wuhan in China, but lasted on what it had left for 7 years. Granted, China achieved no rollback of the Japanese.
I suspect a Fall of Moscow scenario would just move Stalingrad up a year. End result - the Iron Curtain is considerably farther west than in OTL.
How do you figure?
If it's the same Allies minus the USSR versus Germany and Japan, then I expect the first atomic bombs will go off over Germany.
I would think that would be the intention. On the other hand, the Allies could be in a position to deliver them at will onto Japanese cities before German ones.
There's drawbacks of course, like tipping off the world about atomic possibilities when still far from able to deliver a guaranteed coup de grace.
The POD needed for a Nazi atomic program to succeed by 1942 to crush the Soviets (or 1945 for that matter) is I dunno, next to impossible? A German one, sure—not a Nazi one.
But given the limits of the OP, obviously Germany would fall before Japan—the sunrise in Berlin is going to be a hell of a show circa the 6th of August, 1945.
Nobody is talking about a German atomic program, I think.
I don't think so, Japan will be rendered combat ineffective before the Germans and possibly even starve and break down into chaos before the Germans.
Alot depends on how the pace of the Pacific campaigns. On the one hand, German success in Russia and ability to approach from the Caucasus will cause the British in particular to want to beef up defenses in the Middle East region. The WAllies will be concerned with having forces available to not only make progress against, but also to contain any German breakouts from Europe.
That factor could slow the progress of the Japanese war.
On the other hand, with a realistic examination that the prospects of the Germans breaking out of Europe or the Allies breaking *in* to Europe is dismal in the early-middle 1940s, the WAllies may redeploy ground and air forces beyond the bare minimum needed for containment against Japan, where progress is at least possible to make by late 43 and definitely into '44 or '45.
I suspect the WAllies go this route, and throw more at Japan by 1943, they will make progress. The Americans (and Commonwealth), may still incur more losses and take more time invading more Japanese occupied areas than absolutely necessary, but the Japanese will be unable to truly slow the rate of a determined Allied advance onto their occupied turf. Eventually, as "unemployed" Allies armies finish all the island hopping they need to do to put Japan under siege, they may commit ground and air forces to the mainland via India or the Philippines to batter the Japanese where they can be found and outmaneuvered. Does any of this bring about acknowledged Japanese surrender? Probably not without an invasion or WMD, but the siege could be as tight as OTL's by 1945, and Japanese resistance could become incoherent and lack any power projection after the islands start to starve.
By the way, in quick outline form, how did CalBear's AANW/Festung Europa deal with all these questions, especially the timing and impact of A-Bombs and the defeat of Japan?