What If / History Question : Axis technological cooperation during World War II ?

Before Barbarossa the Germans and the USSR had an unholy alliance (non-agression pact and both attacked Poland). Issue might be the USSR and Japan had their 'borderincident' at Khalkin Ghol.
Or we can have Khalkin Gol simply not happen so there won't be Russo-Japanese tensions.
 

nbcman

Donor
Oh my bad, I missed it. So we need a POD of an unholy alliance between Germany, Japan, and the USSR for this to happen?
Not really. Germany was able to get the Soviets to transship rubber that the Soviets purchased for them in 1940 & 1941 which they then used for tires to launch Barbarossa.
 

Garrison

Donor
Before Barbarossa the Germans and the USSR had an unholy alliance (non-agression pact and both attacked Poland). Issue might be the USSR and Japan had their 'borderincident' at Khalkin Ghol.
And the Soviets knew it was purely a temporary affair and did their best to extract a price for the resources they supplied to the Germans. The Germans haven't got the tanks to spare to ship to Japan and the Soviets have no incentive to ship them. And if you propose a full alliance between Nazi Germany, the USSR and japan, well then it isn't anything resembling WWII anymore.
 
And the Soviets knew it was purely a temporary affair and did their best to extract a price for the resources they supplied to the Germans. The Germans haven't got the tanks to spare to ship to Japan and the Soviets have no incentive to ship them. And if you propose a full alliance between Nazi Germany, the USSR and japan, well then it isn't anything resembling WWII anymore.
I'm not proposing a full alliance. I don't think the Soviets would object limited military shipments to Japan. And no-one was suggesting shipping 100s of tanks to Japan, but @tonycat77 was suggesting shipping a few czech tanks or PzIII. That won't harm the German wareffort very much.
 

Garrison

Donor
So we've moved from technology sharing to the wholesale shipping of large amounts of equipment from Germany to Japan and completely changing the character of the relationship between Germany, Japan and the USSR, to achieve, well what exactly?
 
So we've moved from technology sharing to the wholesale shipping of large amounts of equipment from Germany to Japan and completely changing the character of the relationship between Germany, Japan and the USSR, to achieve, well what exactly?
No, we haven't.
 

Garrison

Donor
Agreed. @Garrison you seem to not be reading very closely. Nobody here suggested shipping military materiel in large bulk.
Well if you are talking a couple of hundred tanks, its a pointless gesture. Wouldn't make any difference to the conduct of the war because it would be a drop in the ocean compared to the tank production of the major combatants. And it wouldn't allow the Japanese to build their own copies, the industrial resources just aren't there to do it, not without a massive cost to other programs.
 
The Japanese and Russians did not have very good relations until arguably the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact on 13 April 1941.

Before then I doubt that Russia would be interested in allowing German tanks to be sent to what was effectively an enemy

Then there is the capacity for Germany to supply any meaningful numbers of AFVs to Japan anyway

In June 1941 (the month they invaded Russia) for example they produced 207 tanks and assault guns of which 88 where the short 50mm Pz III and 29 Pz IV (I think they would have been the short 75mm at this point?)

So I don't think that Germany can send many if any tanks via Russia to Japan with out a tall if tree
 
The biggest success with technology-sharing in WW2 I'm aware of was between the UK and Britain, particularly in the matter of radar. Germany could have relatively easily sold blueprints for radars to Japan and Italy. In Japan's case I don't know how much that could achieve- they suffered a lot from production problems for the electronic equipment that they already had; but the Italians might benefit a lot in the early Mediterranean campaigns. Not only could early warning radar for naval bases (especially Taranto) and naval gunfire targeting radar have helped the Italians immensely, but understanding what Royal Navy radar was likely capable of could have helped them avoid costly errors battling the British.

(Interestingly, the Japanese might have actually suffered if they had better understood the night fighting capabilities that USN radars had; early in the war the Japanese won several night engagements because American captains were reluctant to use radars as a general early warning capability for fear of giving away their position- Japanese captains afraid that any USN ship could outmatch them at night might have avoided coming to grips in such situations.)
 

Garrison

Donor
The biggest success with technology-sharing in WW2 I'm aware of was between the UK and Britain, particularly in the matter of radar. Germany could have relatively easily sold blueprints for radars to Japan and Italy. In Japan's case I don't know how much that could achieve- they suffered a lot from production problems for the electronic equipment that they already had; but the Italians might benefit a lot in the early Mediterranean campaigns. Not only could early warning radar for naval bases (especially Taranto) and naval gunfire targeting radar have helped the Italians immensely, but understanding what Royal Navy radar was likely capable of could have helped them avoid costly errors battling the British.

(Interestingly, the Japanese might have actually suffered if they had better understood the night fighting capabilities that USN radars had; early in the war the Japanese won several night engagements because American captains were reluctant to use radars as a general early warning capability for fear of giving away their position- Japanese captains afraid that any USN ship could outmatch them at night might have avoided coming to grips in such situations.)
Japanese radar was terrible and didn't improve significantly during the war. Even worse the USAAF was already preparing to use the same jamming techniques that had already worked so effectively against the German systems in Europe. Even if the Japanese had been able to produce better German derived systems it might not have done them a lot of good in practice. But it is the sort of thing that could reasonably have been shared. The Japanese did build a jet inspired by the Me 262, though apparently it wasn't a result of blueprint sharing but a Japanese attaché seeing the Me 262 being demonstrated:
Though the Shūsui was a straight copy of the Me 163:
 
Well if you are talking a couple of hundred tanks, its a pointless gesture. Wouldn't make any difference to the conduct of the war because it would be a drop in the ocean compared to the tank production of the major combatants. And it wouldn't allow the Japanese to build their own copies, the industrial resources just aren't there to do it, not without a massive cost to other programs.
You're just making it clearer that you're not reading closely. The proposals were not about sending hundreds of tanks. They were about sending maybe a couple tanks, and blueprints to go with them in order to share ideas. Nothing materially intensive, but certainly useful to trade ideas.
 

marathag

Banned
And the Soviets knew it was purely a temporary affair and did their best to extract a price for the resources they supplied to the Germans.
Yet Stalin would hear nothing of the obvious signs that the Nazis were getting ready to attack the USSR, for months, right up till the Panzers rolled across the new Molotov Line in Former Poland.
 
I think the most realistic transfers of german "stuff" to the japanese are things that you can either cram into a submarine or ship via plane before operation barbarossa starts, so by necessity they would have to be either rather small or something that one would not need to many examples of, so I totally agree with mostly sending blueprints and examples of smaller technological items.
The big areas the germans have over the japanese in technologies I would consider "shippable" are radars as other posters already pointed out, inline- and jet aircraft engines (especially ones with better performance at altitude), certain small arms (SMGs come to mind) and man portable anti-tank weapons (or basically anything involving rocket engines). Larger items like tanks quickly run into problems with the japanese infrastructure and the nature of the war in the pacific: How much use is a Panther or Tiger going to be on some small pacific island and how do you get it there assuming the Japanese even manage to build a reliable example.
The later part is actualy the biggest hurdle overall: Japanese manufacturing techniques and the way their industry was organized already had pretty significant problems with mass producing certain things (especially electronics components) and even more so as the war progressed. In aircraft for example the Japanese were perfectly capable of developing extremly good designs (look at the Ki-84 or J7M) but could not get reliable enough engines manufactured (not so much designed) and had to make do with awfull fuel quality.
So maybe the best way for Germany to help Japan (and Italy for that matter, as they had some of the same problems) would be industrial assistance as early as possible, but Im not sure how feasible that actually is and doubt if the short timeframes allow for any meaningfull change.
 

Garrison

Donor
Yet Stalin would hear nothing of the obvious signs that the Nazis were getting ready to attack the USSR, for months, right up till the Panzers rolled across the new Molotov Line in Former Poland.
Because he was sure the Germans wouldn't start a two front war while the still had to fight the British and he repeatedly tried to squeeze the Germans for more industrial equipment and territorial concessions. The M-R Pact was supposed to keep the Germans focused on the west while the USSR built up its forces, Stalin didn't foresee France falling in six weeks either.
 
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