Good!
I suggest you re-phase your questions to make them clearer. At the moment they seem somewhat jumbled together as a bit hard to see what you are actually asking.
Fair enough. The
United States focus is on Germany by way of Alaska/Siberia.
My focus is on what happens to the war with the Japanese?
At some point, a decision is made that the US shall follow a "Germany First" strategy. However, in this ATL, that strategy (for whatever reason) is based upon the US forces being sent 'up and over' to the USSR, for deployment to stop the Germans in their tracks....
But also to provide a convenient jumping off point for operations against Japan.
"How would the second world war have been different if Germany First had been by way of Alaska-Siberia [al-sib] LL route?" So, the focus is to get american ground and air forces fighting the Germans ASAP, but also affording the US a very nice setup for offensive operations against the Japanese, should the Japanese start attacking north or Stalin gives permission for offensive strikes from soviet soil. What does the Japanese high command do?
US Ground and air forces are not going to be all that impressive in early 1942, so the big battles there will not be significantly affected in the first half of the year, and only somewhat more so in the latter half. On the other hand, everyone in Germany that remembers the US intervention in WWI will recall thinking thoughts of 'too few, too late', and then how that actually played out. Now they are faced with the inevitable build up of ever increasingly powerful US forces, that all the vaunted U-Boats can do nothing against. Psycologically, they will see themselves getting in it ever deeper and know that the atlantic ocean will not save them. US forces will not have to attempt to storm the 'Atlantic Wall', but will instead be able to build up as needed, untill they are strong enough to start pushing the German army back west along side the Soviet forces.
What can Germany do about this? Deploy additional forces to the Eastern Front, where they are already at their logistical capacity? No. Draw forces away from the African theater? Sure, but to what end, if they cannot even properly supply the forces that are already in theater? Not that Hitler isn't going to order just that, but hey.
Historically, the Al-Can highway was opened, as a poor but doable land route, by the end of 1942. This despite the fact that the Alaskan front was treated as a 'minor' theater of the war. The question asks how will the Al-Can highway differ in this ATL from the original? Will it be first opened as historically, but with continual improvments and eventually extend truck & rail shipping all the way to Nome? Will the Nome area become the largest trashipping point of her day? With Nome becomming a vast bastion of Ground and Air strength, does this proclude any possibility of the IJN entering the Bearing sea? What about attacks upon the Western Aleutians.
If the US decided to win the war by shipping all of it's LL gear to the USSR via the Alaska route the result would be a huge stockpile of LL gear all along that route's chokepoints while other LL customers would be getting defeated on the battlefield. Never lose sight of the fact that LL meant that US Allies could do the fighting on the battlfield. The 10% increase in size that LL allowed Commonwealth forces to grow beyond what Commonwealth industry would allow is an equal number of US units that don't need to be raised.
True enough, but have you ever read "The Thousand-Mile War" by Brian Garfield? I found that book to be most excellent, and the basis for my interest in discussing an ATL where the likes of General Buckner and Colonel Eareckson would play a pivotal role on the grand stage of the war.
There is no way that US Forces - air, ground or naval - are going to the Soviet Union.
Except, perhaps, over Stalin's dead body?
