How close were the Nazis to winning?

They never planned to get Hawaii, they knew that would not have happened. By 1941 the Philippines were already on the road to becoming an independent nation, while Hawaii was on the road to becoming a state. The US would not have given it up, and Japan knew that.

Japan really underestimated the US, which is sad because if the political leaders had listened to military leaders like Isoroku Yamamoto and Baron Takeichi Nishi, that war might have well been averted. I think they understood the US better then anybody in the "Imperial Rule Assistance Association".

And the US and Soviet Union understood Japan much better then Hitler did.

 

And when was Adolf Hitler in command of the Japanese? You do realize that Germany is on the opposite side of the world right? One of the biggest problems with being allied to Japan was the lack of communication between them. Hitler and the Germans were as surprised as the allies when pearl harbor was attacked. The Germans had no forward knowledge of such a move. Thus if you look at the timeline you realize that Germany declares war a few days later. It is clearly a response to Germany's pact with Japan. Japan had already been at war with the russians in Manchuria before the Germans ever stepped into Poland. Hitler assumed that the Manchurian front was going to open back up. Germany was already indirectly at war with the US. The US was seizing German assets, providing military support to German enemies, and attacking German shipping. Hitler had hoped if he opened up a 2 front war with America that Japan would open a 2 front war with the soviet union.

And you are also wrong about that as well. Germany was dealing with the problem of russian reserves by december 41. The Germans could not replace their losses as quickly as the soviets. The majority of russian servicemen were coming from the Far East. In fact the units that stopped the German advance to Moscow were the same units that fought the Japanese in 37. Opening a second front on the enemy is always good in any military action. Even Hitler knew this.

 

Of course Germany did not know, why should they? How much do you think the Soviets knew about D-Day?

In the entire scope of the war, the war between Japan and the US was not much of a surprise at all. Everybody knew it was coming, we were even shifting large numbers of troops, aircraft and ships in preparation to the coming war.

So to begin with, you are starting from a false assumption. Pearl Harbor was indeed a surprise, but the war was not. And Hitler knew that a war was coming between Japan and the US, just like the US knew. Do not confuse a single attack with the entire war.

And no, Japan and the Soviet Union was not at war in Manchuria. On 13 April 1941 the two nations signed a Neutrality Pact (almost 9 months before Pearl Harbor), and this held for almost 4 years until the Soviets broke it on 5 April 1945.

Oh, and the battle that caused the Soviets and Japanese to negotiate an end to their conflict? That was the Nomonhan Incident, where Japan got horribly spanked by a much inferior Soviet force. Mostly this is because one thing that Japan never really researched was tanks. The Soviets had only 2/3 the manpower of the Japanese, he had a 4 to 1 advantage in tanks (even the outdated BT series were superior to anything the Japanese had).

The result of this is intended offensive (which was going to drive all the way to Lake Baikal) in fact cost Japan territory. In other words, they lost, horribly. And they were not going to make the same mistake again (especially since in the years to follow Soviet armor got even better, while Japanese armor did not change at all).

And it is not quite how you make it sound, with the Soviets sending the Far East Army to fight against Germany. They sent anybody they could to fight, a great many from the Far East were actually prisoners (some even Japanese POWs). Essentially formed into Penal Battalions, they were given the oldest equipment and weapons (if they had weapons at all) and essentially sent against the Germans as bullet catchers.

And no, I am not just making this up.

[video=youtube;YN5mJK8Zb1k]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN5mJK8Zb1k[/video]

The movie is based upon the life of Yang Kyoungjong. A Korean conscripted into the Japanese Army, he was captured by the Soviets then conscripted into fighting against Germany. Captured yet again by the Germans, he was once again conscripted to fight against the Allies landing on Normandy.

 

What part of he hoped the Japanese would re-open the front in Manchuria dont you get? Anyways it doesnt matter. If you only want to go by political reasons then just read Hitlers speech to the reichstag http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v08/v08p389_Hitler.html

 

Hitler also believed that the British would sue for peace and that he would conquer the Soviets, neither of those happened either.

What part of "seriously considered" do you not grasp? Nothing in the treaty obligated Germany to declare war against the US, no more then it required Japan to declare war against the Soviets. In fact, the Japanese were fighting the Soviets even before Hitler was, and he only attacked them after Japan sued for peace.

If Hitler did not attack the Soviets to help Japan, then why would Japan be expected to attack the Soviets to help Germany?

Only crazy people think that way, and nobody ever accused Hitler of being over endowed with sanity.

 

Judging by how hard the colonial powers fought to hang on to their colonial empires none of them knew it was all collapsing either...the Japanese thought they had a right to a piece of the imperialistic pie as well but the existing imperial powers had no intention of sharing...

 

maybe later on that was true but initially Hitler never expected Britain and France to declare war over Poland that was miscalculation, a two front war was never in his plans...the Germans were completely unprepared for a war against the west, the western blitzkrieg never began until 9 months after the declaration of war by Britain and France...

 

Japan was not part of the Tripartite until 1940. And the last part. well maybe that answers a good portion of it for you. Hitler believed alot of things that turned out to be some fantasy. It doesnt mean that Germany had over estimated the USA though. It meant that Germany was already indirectly at war and you have Hitler making the decisions. It didnt matter if Germany didnt declare war on the US. It wouldnt have changed anything.

 

Didnt help that he had Ribbentrop re-assuring him that France and UK wouldnt do anything after the soviet non aggression pact. I blame Ribbentrop as much as Hitler for that error. Of course that wasnt that big of a deal because Germany quickly smashed Poland eliminating the 2 front war. Choosing to ignore the UK and re-open a 2 front war with the Soviet Union had to be the absolute worst decision of the war.

 

Very true. It's odd that the Japanese lost anyhow. I've not read that much about the war in the Pacific. Everything seemed to be aliened pretty much perfect from the Japanese perspective. Britain was busy fighting the Germans, France already was conquered by the ally and they could just occupy French colonies without really fighting, so the only major power left was the USA. If you take away the fleet and the Philippines the USA were no threat. So if you think about it, quite an ideal situation to get Europeans out of South-East Asia.

I read someplace that the USA cracked the Japanese code, and therefore were able to prepare for Midway. But I cannot imagine that this was enough to win a war.

I don't know if people know, but Japan and Russia are at war right now. They never signed a peace agreement after WW2, because Russia declared war on Japan just a few days after the Americans dropped the nuclear bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. And then shortly after the Japanese surrendered to the US, but not to Russia. So since WW2 Russia and Japan are still at war.

 

Actually, Japan started the war in a very bad position.

It was relying for years upon one of the nations it was at war with for a lot of their natural resources. It also had been at war for over a decade and badly overextended before the war even began. They did get nominal control over Indochina, but there was already a simmering civil war there, which only exploded into open revolt once Japan tried to take over.

And the US forces in the Philippines were not threat in December 1941. The US had already moved the 4th Marine Regiment from China to the Philippines, and members of the National Guard were already being mobilized by the beginning of the war (2 of the Regiments captured at Bataan were the 200th and 515th Coastal Artillery Regiments, both of the New Mexico National Guard).

And the USS Enterprise was returning after transporting aircraft to Wake Island, the USS Lexington was returning from transporting aircraft to Midway Island on 7 December 1941. The US was definitely preparing for war, the only real question was where the hammer would fall.

The Philippines was more then expected, Hawaii was the surprise.

Indeed they did, this was known as MAGIC. However, the biggest problem with getting intelligence that high is that you dare not react to it to much. Because if you get lucky to many times, then the enemy will suspect that you have penetrated their communications and change codes or systems so it will not happen again.

Of all the information gathered from MAGIC, the 2 biggest operations were undoubtedly the Battle of Midway, and Operation Vengeance (the shooting down of Admiral Yamamoto).

But this went a long ways towards winning the war, because it put the US "inside the Japanese command loop". And that is a position that can't be overstated goes a long ways towards winning any war.

No, they are not at war. Ye gads, do I really have to explain this?

On 2 September 1945, Japan fully and unconditionally surrendered to the Allied Powers. This surrender was given by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, as well as the Army Chief of Staff.

And it was given to the Supreme Commander Allied Powers.

And to top it all off, it was then signed and recognized by Lieutenant General Kuzma Derevyanko, the Official Representative of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

So technically, you are correct. Japan did not surrender to Russia, since there was no Russia to surrender to, only the USSR. And the USSR did indeed officially recognize that surrender.

Nice try though, nice try. The surrender was not to the US, but the "Allied Powers", as proscribed by the Potsdam Declaration.

 

I believe that is true, the japanese had no idea their transmissions were being intercepted and decoded...Admiral Yamamoto Commander-in-chief for the combined fleet was assassinated by american fighter planes waiting to ambush his air transport, they knew when and where his transport would be found...I've read also that Yamamoto predicted failure to win at Midway would mean ultimate defeat for Japan because if they lost their carrier fleet at Midway they would no longer have offensive capability or long range defense and Japanese industry was incapable of replacing those lost carriers...the losing the war was inevitable without their carrier fleet to keep american forces at bay...

I thought that as well until I read mushrooms post so I looked into it and he's right, they agreed to end the war officially in 1956...

 

ya that's probably the key point of WW2, not planning for of the possibility of Britain entering the war and having a contingency plan in place for dealing with that scenario, no adequate invasion fleet...had they eliminated Britain first the germans may very well have defeated the Soviets...

 

Agreed the impact of the UK's air force and navy on Germany through-out the war is over-looked but it did alot to strangle the German war effort over time.

 

Hitler hated the Soviet Union,,hated them. I believe to him they were his main goal, there was no way he was going to post pone attacking them. I agree it was stupid,,,but then again.....

 

Sometimes you will see myself or others use the phrase "AF is short on water" when talking about the Battle of Midway, and that is exactly what we are talking about.

Basically the US had the commander of the garrison at Midway send a radio message saying that their water purification system had broken down. They had broken the code that the Japanese used, but not the sub-code which was used to designate locations. It was suspected that AF was the code for Midway, but they were not sure.

And the Japanese confirmed it when an intercepted message was decoded, and it informed the invasion fleet that their destination was short of water and they would need to bring their own purification plant.

But the order of battle had to be done in a way that the Japanese thought it was a luck encounter. Otherwise they might suspect that their codes were broken.

And the same is true with Operation Vengeance. When the US announced that Admiral Yamamoto had been killed, they gave credit to informing the pilots of his aircraft to the Australian Coast-watchers in the Solomons.

The truth was not known on either of these until after 1978, when MAGIC was finally declassified.

 

If the Nazi's would have given more support to the Iraqies against the British Colonists in Iraq they may have gained a source of oil and they never would have had to invade Russia in the first place while at the same time taking a major source of oil away from the Allies, but the Nazi's racialist views were probably what prevented the Nazi's from giving more support to the Iraqies.

 

similarly when the german codes were broken there were times the allies chose not to respond to every german action so as not to reveal they had deciphered the codes...

 

Naah. The germans never would have been able to transport such oil from Iraq and I dont remember how much oil was actually tapped in Iraq back then either.

 

According to various other historians(and according to Hitler himself), Stalin positioned himself for a move against Europe as early as 1941.

[video=youtube;0fRETQ52RrQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fRETQ52RrQ[/video]

If so, what should Hitler have done? Watched the Soviet Machine continue to push forward? Or to take the unilateral decision? Of course, had he defeated Britain perhaps he would have been more prepared and he should have expected a Soviet betrayal(after all, he wrote how he wanted to destroy Russia and Communism in Mein Kampf)

Also consider how much Hitler wrote and spoke against a Second Front. The evidence of his beliefs and what occurred suggests that he had no plans to invade Soviet.

In reality, the war changed when the West sided with Stalin, thus giving Stalin this opportunity to push forward in Europe. It was also a mistake on our part, at the very least if we saw Soviet and Nazi as a threat, we should have stayed neutral while forcing the two sides to annihilate each other.

Britain's participation doomed her as an Empire, and our participation led the way for Zionism, Radical Islam and the economic straits of the 21st century.

Had we not forced the break up of the Soviet Union(and it's still one of the larger continents in the world), it's clear the Soviets won a clear victory over us all with their planning.

The best decision BTW would have been to be an AXIS power and crush Stalin directly, and to put Britain under our foot. Our goals would've been accomplished without the need for the religious fanatics of the Middle East. We were already allies with Imperial Japan(until Pearl Harbor), by being an AXIS member we could have protected the Pacific(speaking of which, did we do any nuclear damage to the ocean when we nuked them? It just came to mind now, we talk about Fukushima. What about what happened in 1945?).

But at the very least IMO, we should have stayed neutral. Staying neutral would have solved all of our problems, the world menaces would have taken each other off the map and we wouldn't have had to raise terrorists.

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It's said that another crucial factor was that Hitler barred the German Army from using Chemical Weapons in warfare. Having been a victim of gas himself in the First World War(if there is such a thing as a 'god' or 'destiny', Hitler himself might be proof. How is it of all the dudes that were basically in the trenches, running from bombs and guns, he survived? The odds had to be astronomically slim lol). Perhaps if they had used CW, would that have changed the war in some retrospect? Some historians think so.

 

Always love it when an American Nazi apologist resurrects a dead thread.

Wrong order bubba. Stalin is the one who joined the West, not the other way around. The West had already been fighting Hitler for years, and the Soviets stayed neutral. They only joined the already formed alliance once they themselves were attacked.

If Hitler had authorized chemical weapons, Europe would still likely be a wasteland. In WWI it was an option because the lines were largely static, and barely moved over years. WWII was a fast moving war, with the Allies going from Normandy to Berlin in a single year. Chemical weapons would have seen many times more casualties, especially among the civilian population.

And at the end of the war, Germany would not have been split into 4 sectors, but literally destroyed. More then likely broken into it's German Confederation components (Prussia, Saxony, Hesse, Liechtenstein, Hanover, etc). And I doubt that even 60 years later "Germany" would ever exist again. Just as the name of a failed conglomeration that had led the world to war twice (kind of like there is no chance of Yugoslavia ever returning).

 

Not an apologist, just someone who wants to see history from a neutral perspective and not one of the victors. I see what NS Germany looked like from an economic and social perspective, and I cannot simply say to myself "Worst country/leader in the world, the end." That to me is grossly oversimplifying. Which may be great for war propaganda, terrible for actual facts.

The Soviets invaded Poland along with Germany as part of the deal with the Nazis. The Western States? After bemoaning Germany's intrusion into Poland, did absolutely nothing against the Soviets(similarly, after the war, Poland was left to suffer as well).

So please spare me that the West/Soviets weren't chum buddies, and that it wasn't a mistake. It was a crucial mistake that has led to the current geographical reality of today.

WWI is incredibly debatable, as the American Founders warned of entangling alliances. Britain is "just" as responsible for the outbreak as Germany. Austria was seen as independent of Germany, so if one wants to blame Austria for its conditions to the Serbs(who should be seen as responsible for overseeing their own terrorists, etc).

Let's skip the numerous players in that mess and simply say the Treaty of Versailles was as arrogant as it was idiotically stupid.

Had the Treaty assigned blame to no one, or had the world accepted collective responsibility, there likely isn't a Hitler to begin with.

 

No....frankly Britain was not in anyway responsible for the outbreak of the war. Germany chose to invade France and Belgium- no one forced Germany to make that fateful decision.

Absolutely was arrogant and stupid.

Or- if Germany had been treated like Japan and Germany were treated after World War 2, there wouldn't have been a Hitler either.

 

the first war wasn't Germany's fault, the politics of the day were to fault, Russia, France,GB,Austria,Turkey, all were to blame...

WW1 and WW2 were totally different scenarios, the outcome of WW1 and the resulting Treaty was largely the cause of WW2....

 

agree 100%