Suggested by the 75th Anniversary of VJ day Dec 1, 1941. The Emperor intercedes directly with the military to accept the American offer fo broker peace in China. While nothing comes of it, other Japanese attacks on the British and Dutch substitute for the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec 7 and these are successful in obtaining Oil for the Japanese war effort. America does not enter the war on Dec 7. What happens then?
I dont know. Know one knows. Americans were seen as not wanting to get involved until after the attack at Pearl Harbor. I am guessing we would have gotten involved eventually due to Hitlers aggression and when Britain was on the edge of defeat.
The entire Japanese oil refining industry was vested in some 1,000 technicians, some 800 of whom died when an American submarine sank the ship the Japanese had rather stupidly put almost all of them on and sending them to the recently seized Dutch fields. I seriously doubt so few men could have operated those fields well enough to supply the Japanese needs once their three year reserves were exhausted, and assuming they could recover the sabotaged wells and pipelines and refineries. I don't see much change, since we were committed allies of Great Britain and France, and the attacks on them would have brought us into the war. As Axis allies Germany's attack and declaration of war would have sufficed as well. Nobody has ever respected American neutrality, which is why the isolationists have always been full of baloney; even Jefferson had to face that reality as Vice President and President. Hitler put pressure on the Japanese to attack the U.S., it was not Yamamoto's idea. Hitler intended to attack the U.S. and needed a second front to tie down the U.S., failing to grasp that we could easily handle not only the Pacific front but two more fronts in Europe as well as keeping massive Soviet armies in the field and well supplied.
FDR still would have pushed for it because he needed the war for the economy. Hitler abandoned any plans for a US invasion pretty much right away. All he really wanted was Europe and resources from Russia.
Well, yeah, since he couldn't even take England, the U.S. was definitely out, but he didn't think of that before declaring war on us. He could however try and discourage the Lend-Lease convoys. These were a British effort at first, and would have continued as long as we kept giving Churchill economic credits to keep shipping Stalin supplies and keeping him in the war. It was timely English aid arriving just in the nick of time that kept Moscow from falling; just looking at the Soviet OBs and its pitiful worn out remaining assets shows that when the thaws came they were toast without the British aid, especially the armor units.
Stalin launches counter attack in January 1941, war in europe proceeds for longer but ultimately ends in USSR victory but all of western Europe under soviet control. Stage is set for was between communism and capitalism with the UK as US only base in Europe.
Hitler could have possibly won, or held out a lot longer, if he had used the forces he sent to crush the Anglo/Greek uprising to go ahead and invade Turkey and then Syria and Iran, cutting off all weather Lend-Lease routes through the ME and seizing oil reserves as well. That made a lot more sense than the Stalingrad dumbassery, plus he would have squeezed British Egypt and shut down the Canal Zone shipping routes from Britain's largest colonial supply of resources and manpower, India. Allied landings in North Africa couldn't have done anything to stop him after that, and the Soviets would have been long gone by then, forced to sue for terms.
