What if Germany remained aligned with China?

As we know, Germany was closely aligned with China in the 20s and 30s. What if they kept those ties up instead of taking Japan's side in the Sino-Japanese war?
 

Deleted member 1487

In the long run that would be much better for Germany, but by 1940 they'd lose access to the Chinese market due to Japanese success in the war. Effectively then they'd have no ally in the region they could work with and Japan would do it's own thing. Again better for Germany then not to be associated with Japan and can stay neutral when they attack the Allies and run their parallel war so long as Hitler doesn't try and DoW the US to try and get Japan to coordinate with Germany like IOTL. The less contact with Japan the better for Germany, especially if it does distract the US from Europe if Germany declares neutrality. That however is not guaranteed at all.
 
German-Chinese cooperation made sense as long as there was a chance of Chinese-Japanese rapprochement, which as I indicate at http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/msg/6e31de56d17be4f0 seemed a real possibility in the mid-1930's. Once China and Japan were at war, Hitler had to choose between the two--although Germany did for a time try to broker a peace agreement between the two Far Eastern nations--and I do not think that was a close choice. Japan was far more powerful and could exert pressure against the Soviet Union and the United States (as well as the western European colonial powers in Asia) in a way China never could. Also, one has to remember that one reason for the German-Chinese alliance had been Germany's economic interests in China; and once Japan had occupied most of China's largest cities, China could do no longer do much for Germany economically. Finally, as I note at http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/msg/23bdaa655b897aec the rise of Ribbentrop worked against a continuation of German-Chinese friendship:

"For the first few years of the Third Reich, Hitler showed little interest in Far Eastern affairs, and the Foreign Ministry, headed by Neurath, tried to maintain a 'balanced' policy toward China and Japan. (For a short period in the mid-1930s the chief military adviser to Chiang Kai-shek was none other than General Hans von Seeckt, one of the Reichswehr's leading officers during the 1920's.) Ribbentrop was the man who made the most strenuous efforts (even before he became Foreign Minister) to redirect the focus of German Far Eastern policy away from China and toward Japan, with whom he sought a real military alliance, not just the largely propagandistic Anti-Comintern Pact."
 
One of the complications here is China is more important economically than Japan over the long haul. This works against Germany trying to dominate or influence China. All the other major nations were at work there to the same end.

Further aggravating this is Germany lacked capitol for deep & influential investment. For that you were limited to New York & London.
 
Actually German China Cooperation went very well under German Empire and Weimar Republic
until the Nazi came in Power in begin it further accelerated Sino-German cooperation.
but again Hitler spoiled it, in his eyes China was agricultural backwards country under civil war, he focus on Military power that invaded China: Imperial Japan.
Hitler believed, he the great dictator could mediate any disputes between China and Japan into cooperate Treaty
he was so wrong...
 
Further aggravating this is Germany lacked capitol for deep & influential investment. For that you were limited to New York & London.
It's somewhat outside the scope of DominusNovus' original post but I've sometimes wondered what might have been possible if Britain had tried to replace them after Germany's May 1938 recognition of Manchukuo, or possibly started building up links earlier due to Britain deciding to favour China in several situations in the 1930s such as their proposed currency reforms in 1934-35. Past history however could make that complicated.


Hmm. If one threw in an alternate history Britain maintaining the Anglo-Japanese Alliance too?
IIRC from fairly early on after the Great War, or possibly even before then, I forget the dates, the British had already started withholding certain technical naval advances before the Alliance had ended. With Germany defeated, its fleet at the bottom of as Scapa Flow, and their economy constrained, Japan was one of the powers that were viewed as potential competitors/threats in the mid- to long-term future.
 

raharris1973

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One of the complications here is China is more important economically than Japan over the long haul.

It probably has more tungsten and rare earth minerals to sell, but economically, as a market and source of a variety of other goods, the Japanese economy was way more important than the Chinese economy for a couple generations.

I think people really project China's current day importance way too much to to the 1st half of the century and have let Japan's underperformance since the 90s unfairly underrate Japanese economic importance in earlier periods.
 
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