WI: smarter Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact; can the Axis *guarantee* a win?

Cook

Banned
And of course he's well within his constitutional powers as President to declare war :cool:
He'd have asked Congress for a declaration of war and, in November 1941, they'd have granted it. The United States had already been fighting an undeclared war in the Atlantic against the Germans for six months; isolationism was no longer the dominant political ideology.
- Britain can't be forced out of the war directly, and neither can it be starved out (Royal Navy too powerful, Britain self-sufficient in food, and the USA would never allow it)
That would have been surprising news to the British in September 1940 who were willing to hand over a string of bases throughout the world to the Americans in exchange for 50 obsolete World War One destroyers. Such was their desperate shortage of ships to escort the convoys that the Royal Navy resorted to using Corvettes in escort duties in the North Atlantic in winter, conditions in which they struggled to remain afloat in, let alone protect merchant shipping. You need read Churchill’s account of the war; it was the Battle of the Atlantic that came closest to defeating Britain and he freely admits that Britain was nearly starved into submission. Given that when Norway was invaded virtually the entire Norwegian merchant fleet, one of the biggest in the world, was able to sail to English ports and served throughout the rest of the war, the outcome was far from certain and depended heavily on individual actions and decisions.
Here is US analysis of Japan intentions in October 1941. Notice how it misses the Japans true plans almost completely.
Interesting:
d. Attack Burma and the Burma Road via Thailand. e. Take or isolate the Philippine Islands and Hongkong and attack Singapore. f. Contain or isolate the Philippine Islands and Hongkong and seize the Netherlands East Indies.
The analysis correctly identified these as possibilities, the mistake was in the determining that the Japanese would be ‘reasonable’.
 
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Cook

Banned
See the previous, you have heard of the "Arsenal of Democracy" and all that, build factories that build tanks and aircraft that were given to the UK so they could keep fighting?
Sold, not given, sold to the UK. For gold; all deliveries of arms and equipment prior to 30 September 1941 were payed for in full with gold except for the 50 obsolete destroyers exchanged for US bases in British possessions. So the entire period of Lend-Lease to Britain prior to America entering the war was 68 days.
 
Sold, not given, sold to the UK. For gold; all deliveries of arms and equipment prior to 30 September 1941 were payed for in full with gold except for the 50 obsolete destroyers exchanged for US bases in British possessions. So the entire period of Lend-Lease to Britain prior to America entering the war was 68 days.

Ooop, I knew that, meant to type sold, but somehow given came out my fingers :eek:.

My point was still the same - that the Americans didn't do nothing, they were preparing and by the middle/end of 1941 were ready for war and would have joined with a fairly minor additional provocation. What they got was Pearl Harbor...

Tom.
 
Sold, not given, sold to the UK. For gold; all deliveries of arms and equipment prior to 30 September 1941 were payed for in full with gold except for the 50 obsolete destroyers exchanged for US bases in British possessions. So the entire period of Lend-Lease to Britain prior to America entering the war was 68 days.

Again, I think there's a huge amount of revisionism surrounding America's support for Britain before it got into the war, and the likeliness of it getting into the war short of being directly attacked (Japan) or having war declared on it (Germany/Japan). Essentially, the US could only do what the President could directly order it to do on his own, which wasn't a whole lot (and depended moreover on FDR staying alive).

If the Axis were even half-way careful about it, and as reluctant to provoke the US as they should have been, they could have easily kept it out of the war. Any plausible Axis victory timeline needs to forget about war with the US entirely.

see: benaffleck_wins_battleofbritain.jpg
 
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