[WWII Discussion] What would happen if Japan never bombed Pearl Harbor?

King Gumball · Feb 7, 2011

Jack O'Neill said:
Close, but you only get part of a cigar.

Japan had been at war with China since 1937, and Japan was never quite able to completely conquer China. The United States had been aware of Japan's actions in China for some time; the United States eventually placed a trade embargo on Japan and began providing covert aid to the Chinese military. Most importantly, the war in China proved to be a significant drain on Japan's war machine, which was exacerbated by the trade embargoes imposed on it by the Americans, British, and Dutch; this was a significant part of why Japan chose to go to war with those countries, so it could seize resource-rich territories such as the Philippines, Malaya, and the Netherlands East Indies and secure the raw materials there for its own use.

Also, there were no American troops in the Europe/North Africa theatre proper until Operation Torch in November 1942. American forces had already been fighting in the South Pacific alongside their Australian and New Zealand comrades for months prior to that.

In addition, why would you assume that in the absence of the Pearl Harbor attack, an American military response in the Pacific would have to wait until the Japanese started bombing Darwin in February 1942? The invasion of the Philippines on 8 December 1941 would have provoked an American response far sooner.

I was told/read that USA only started to realize that China was at war with Japan a few years later @-@ Like after they invaded Manchuria and attacked other areas of China or something like that. Australia was fighting in Europe before they fought in Asia so I thought the same would have been for usa.

That was like a general statement, like either way usa would have helped XP

Ninja Caterpie · Feb 7, 2011

Yuoaman said:
The Allies still would have won, sorry. The United States' army certainly helped, but it was really the Russians who steamrolled the Nazis. The war might have only lasted another couple of years due to there being less soldiers available to fight in the Pacific, but things in Europe would have played out similarly.

I agree with the most part, but the bolded is debatable. Without the US army and the military prowess of Eisenhower, Operation Overlord and the Normandy landings may not have taken place with as much success, or at all, so France would have to be bailed out mostly by the Russians.

I think Australia would've been able to hold out fine against the Japanese in the Pacific until our British buds decided to join us once the European war was over.

mondays suck · Feb 7, 2011

I think if America wouldn't have abandoned its isolationism like Japan forced them to do, things would kind of suck.
First, let's talk about Europe. Without America, Russia would have defeat the Nazis on their own (I'm not exactly sure how much influence England had or would have had, but I think they probably would maybe have succeeded in liberating France or parts of it though), which would have resulted in not only half of Germany changing from one repressive system into another, but all of it. Austria too, maybe even more of Europe. Russia would not just have deconstructed the remains of the eastern economy, but of the whole, making the 50's extreme economic boom impossible.
Or, to put it short: Stalin would have been more powerful than he ever was, which would not exactly have been a good thing.

And in Asia... Well, I don't know exactly much about that part of the war, so I can only make very vague speculations.... I think Japan would have continued conquering continental east Asia, maybe even have attacked Russia on their weak side and cut them off from Siberia's important resources (not sure how or if they would have beaten the "Russian Steamroller" though), maybe would have collapsed from revolts (China is populous enough to cause troubles there), maybe would have found a stronger opponent (probably Russia, which would, again, have lead to a more powerful Stalin) and lost the war eventually. They would not have been nuked (or would they... I'm not exactly sure how close Stalin was to that technology at that point, but he would not have hesitated to push the button, I'm quite sure about that), but they also might still be a monarchy today.

Tl;dr: Stalin probably gets far too powerful, and eventually ends up in control of almost all of Eurasia.

Livewire · Feb 7, 2011

Yuoaman said:
The Allies still would have won, sorry. The United States' army certainly helped, but it was really the Russians who steamrolled the Nazis. The war might have only lasted another couple of years due to there being less soldiers available to fight in the Pacific, but things in Europe would have played out similarly.

True. Even as American soldiers were beginning to enter the war, signs of weakness and decay had already begun to show in the Axis war machine, as Italy would soon be defeated. (after they did quite the number on Mussolini) and the German army was in full retreat after the disastrous defeat at Stalingrad, and and after that the German's eastern front all but collapsed around them, and the Russians basically overran German positions on their way to Berlin.

donavannj · Feb 7, 2011

If Pearl Harbor never happened, I think the US would have eventually gotten involved, especially if Japan were careless enough to attack a few American territories whilst sweeping throughout East Asia and Oceania. Keep in mind that Pearl Harbor was an attempt by Japan to severely cripple the US by destroying all of the US's aircraft carriers in its Pacific Fleet, and due to a storm over the Pacific, a few US carriers were held up on their way to Pearl Harbor and weren't there like the Japanese were expecting, which sped up the speed of the US response substantially. There would likely have been an attempt at a similar tactic at some other point in time by the Japanese, as they saw it as an inevitability that the US would get involved because many American corporations had invested deeply in the rubber from Southeast Asia.

Griffinbane · Feb 7, 2011

Actually, here in Philly at least, we never touched on Australia's involvement in the war. All anyone who paid attention in school around here knew was that Australia was fighting on the Western European side (UK, France, etc.). =/

Esper · Feb 8, 2011

Jack O'Neill said:
The Potsdam Declaration plainly stated that Japan's only options were unconditional surrender or "prompt and utter destruction" at the hands of the Allies;

Well, broadly speaking they had three options: bomb, invade, or accept surrender. I took the question more as "what could have happened to cause the US not to drop the bomb?" If they had ruled out the bomb as an option (on humanitarian grounds, or something) then maybe they would have ruled out an invasion as well. Maybe they only thought an invasion was feasible with the threat of the bomb to back it up. Who knows.

Jack O'Neill · Feb 10, 2011

Scarf said:
Well, broadly speaking they had three options: bomb, invade, or accept surrender. I took the question more as "what could have happened to cause the US not to drop the bomb?" If they had ruled out the bomb as an option (on humanitarian grounds, or something) then maybe they would have ruled out an invasion as well. Maybe they only thought an invasion was feasible with the threat of the bomb to back it up. Who knows.

Even if atomic weapons were ruled out as a viable option (most likely on technical grounds, but certainly not on humanitarian grounds), the United States and the United Kingdom would have still gone ahead with their planned invasion of Japan. Hell, invasion was their initial plan before they found out that the atomic bomb was a viable option (planning for Operation Downfall began in spring 1945, while the Trinity test wasn't until 16 July 1945), and they still kept invasion as their backup plan in case they couldn't obtain working nukes in time (X-day for the first phase of Downfall was 1 November 1945) or if nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki failed to force Japan to surrender. Even without the additional threat of nuclear weapons to back them up, America and Britain's invasion threats were certainly credible enough to cause Japan to adjust its defensive plans, concentrating the vast majority of its forces in Kyushu in order to block the most likely avenue of Allied attack.

The short version: Only technical difficulties would have prevented the United States from using nukes. If the United States couldn't use nukes, then it and the United Kingdom would invade. Japan still considered invasion a credible enough threat that it adjusted its defenses accordingly. Your chronology is backwards, and your general view of history is just plain naïve. There are books that can help you reach enlightenment, though; Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire by Richard B. Frank is a good one to start on.

Lambda · Feb 22, 2011

Germany and the axis would have more time to do what they wish and most likely really hurt the soviet union and britian. However the U.S would most likely have gotton involved later.

twocows · Feb 22, 2011

Germany would have finished its nuclear weapons program, which was already in the works. It probably would have obtained hegemony by that point.

Livewire · Feb 22, 2011

twocows said:
Germany would have finished its nuclear weapons program, which was already in the works. It probably would have obtained hegemony by that point.

I had heard in some of my studies that Germany literally was on the cusp of a functioning bomb by early spring of '45. Had they been able to hold out on the front a few more months, they could have very well had a nuclear weapon.

Jack O'Neill · Feb 23, 2011

twocows said:
Germany would have finished its nuclear weapons program, which was already in the works. It probably would have obtained hegemony by that point.

Oh, please, not this myth again.

For starters, thanks to anti-Semitic persecution and the politicization of science and education under the Nazi regime, the overwhelming majority of Germany's most brilliant scientists had been driven out and forced to settle in the United States. Werner Heisenberg, the only German physicist of any real note to remain in Germany prior to and during World War II, was an utter incompetent who was completely unsuited for the kinds of hands-on work that the German nuclear weapons program demanded. Perhaps his most significant blunder was failing to check graphite samples for boron and cadmium contamination and thus erroneously reporting that graphite was unsuitable as a neutron moderator, which caused the Nazis to use heavy water for their reactors; however, the only reliable source for heavy water in Nazi-occupied Europe was a single factory in Norway that was later destroyed by Norwegian guerrillas.

Other resources needed to produce nukes were either hard to come by or difficult to produce for the Nazis. The Germans could get some uranium from mines in occupied Czechoslovakia, but most of the world's uranium production at the time was in the Belgian Congo, which was firmly under Allied control for the duration of the war. While the Americans were capable of producing their own research tools such as particle accelerators, the Germans had to make do with a single particle accelerator that had been looted from the French. As mentioned before, there was the whole "impure graphite and single factory producing heavy water" issue that left the Germans unable to maintain even a single reactor. In any case, the majority of Germany's existing industrial capacity was devoted entirely to conventional weapons; if anything, actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program would have hastened Germany's defeat, as the industrial capacity devoted to nukes would have been better used for making more rifles, tanks, and airplanes. The strategic bombing of Germany's industrial centers by the British and later the Americans certainly didn't help matters either.

The Nazis didn't even see a pressing need to have nukes early on in the war, given their initial victories. By the time they recognized the need for nukes, it was far too late to devote the necessary resources to the effort. The fact that Heisenberg and his colleagues were utter incompetents certainly didn't help matters. Hell, the single program eventually ended splitting up into nine different programs where the directors pretty much did their own things.

Even if by some act of God the Nazis managed to get a nuclear weapon, how were they going to deliver it? For a sense of perspective, Little Boy (the nuke dropped on Hiroshima) was 8,900 lbs, while Fat Man (the nuke dropped on Nagasaki) was 10,200 lbs. No German bombers were large enough to carry nukes (the Luftwaffe's largest bomber, the Heinkel He 177, paled in comparison to anything the RAF or USAAF fielded), Germany lacked air superiority even if it did have large enough bombers to deliver nukes, the V-1 was far too small to be a suitable delivery vehicle, and even the V-2's warhead was rated at only 2,200 lbs.

The tl;dr version: Nazi Germany couldn't have made nukes no matter how hard it tried. Even if it could, it had no way of actually dropping them on a target.

~Darkness~ · Feb 23, 2011

If Pearl Harbor never happened I'd say that it would have taken longer for the U.S. to join the allies. I'm not sure how involved the U.S. was before Pearl Harbor but I think it would have delayed the invasion more than it already was

twocows · Feb 24, 2011

Jack O'Neill said:
Oh, please, not this myth again.

For starters, thanks to anti-Semitic persecution and the politicization of science and education under the Nazi regime, the overwhelming majority of Germany's most brilliant scientists had been driven out and forced to settle in the United States. Werner Heisenberg, the only German physicist of any real note to remain in Germany prior to and during World War II, was an utter incompetent who was completely unsuited for the kinds of hands-on work that the German nuclear weapons program demanded. Perhaps his most significant blunder was failing to check graphite samples for boron and cadmium contamination and thus erroneously reporting that graphite was unsuitable as a neutron moderator, which caused the Nazis to use heavy water for their reactors; however, the only reliable source for heavy water in Nazi-occupied Europe was a single factory in Norway that was later destroyed by Norwegian guerrillas.

Other resources needed to produce nukes were either hard to come by or difficult to produce for the Nazis. The Germans could get some uranium from mines in occupied Czechoslovakia, but most of the world's uranium production at the time was in the Belgian Congo, which was firmly under Allied control for the duration of the war. While the Americans were capable of producing their own research tools such as particle accelerators, the Germans had to make do with a single particle accelerator that had been looted from the French. As mentioned before, there was the whole "impure graphite and single factory producing heavy water" issue that left the Germans unable to maintain even a single reactor. In any case, the majority of Germany's existing industrial capacity was devoted entirely to conventional weapons; if anything, actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program would have hastened Germany's defeat, as the industrial capacity devoted to nukes would have been better used for making more rifles, tanks, and airplanes. The strategic bombing of Germany's industrial centers by the British and later the Americans certainly didn't help matters either.

The Nazis didn't even see a pressing need to have nukes early on in the war, given their initial victories. By the time they recognized the need for nukes, it was far too late to devote the necessary resources to the effort. The fact that Heisenberg and his colleagues were utter incompetents certainly didn't help matters. Hell, the single program eventually ended splitting up into nine different programs where the directors pretty much did their own things.

Even if by some act of God the Nazis managed to get a nuclear weapon, how were they going to deliver it? For a sense of perspective, Little Boy (the nuke dropped on Hiroshima) was 8,900 lbs, while Fat Man (the nuke dropped on Nagasaki) was 10,200 lbs. No German bombers were large enough to carry nukes (the Luftwaffe's largest bomber, the Heinkel He 177, paled in comparison to anything the RAF or USAAF fielded), Germany lacked air superiority even if it did have large enough bombers to deliver nukes, the V-1 was far too small to be a suitable delivery vehicle, and even the V-2's warhead was rated at only 2,200 lbs.

The tl;dr version: Nazi Germany couldn't have made nukes no matter how hard it tried. Even if it could, it had no way of actually dropping them on a target.

Oh, don't be silly. You really think they couldn't have figured out how to work around these issues if the US hadn't gotten involved? Give them a few years, they'd have had a nuclear weapon. Without US pressure on the western front, they could have diverted a lot more of their forces to holding out against the Soviet advance and likely would have been in a deadlock with them for quite some time, during which either they or the Soviets would have developed a nuclear weapon. Possibly both.

インフェルノの津波 · Feb 24, 2011

If that never happened, eh?

Well I could write a mega-post like Mr. O'Neil, but I'll just say that America would've got involved anyway. Because, Japan would find another way to kick our ass, and chaos ensues. Remember why they attacked us in the first place.

twocows · Feb 24, 2011

インフェルノの津波 said:
If that never happened, eh?

Well I could write a mega-post like Mr. O'Neil, but I'll just say that America would've got involved anyway. Because, Japan would find another way to kick our ass, and chaos ensues. Remember why they attacked us in the first place.

They attacked us because we were withholding oil, which was the backbone of their war effort.

I think the premise was more "what if they had decided not to attack us" rather than "what if they decided not to attack us at Pearl Harbor."

Jack O'Neill · Feb 25, 2011

twocows said:
Oh, don't be silly. You really think they couldn't have figured out how to work around these issues if the US hadn't gotten involved? Give them a few years, they'd have had a nuclear weapon. Without US pressure on the western front, they could have diverted a lot more of their forces to holding out against the Soviet advance and likely would have been in a deadlock with them for quite some time, during which either they or the Soviets would have developed a nuclear weapon. Possibly both.

It bears repeating that in the state it was in, Germany had no chance of developing a nuclear weapon. Heisenberg's incompetence is a matter of historical record, as is the Nazi Party's tendency to place political considerations ahead of practical ones. If the German leadership REALLY wanted nuclear weapons that badly, they shouldn't have antagonized the Jewish academic community.

If the Germans were stupid enough to throw all their resources at nukes, they would have lost to the Russians much quicker than they did in reality. For a sense of perspective, at the height of the Manhattan Project, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory consumed roughly 1/6 of all electricity produced by the United States' power grid; American electrical production in 1943-1944 was 200 billion kw/h, while German electrical production for that same period was a mere 47.4 billion kw/h in 1943 and 49 billion kw/h in 1944. Simple math can tell you that Oak Ridge by itself ate up at least 33 billion or so kw/h per year; if the Germans committed as much effort as the Americans did to developing nukes, that's 67-70% of their electricity gone, electricity that would be better spent powering the factories that make the tanks needed to hold the Russians at bay and the airplanes needed to drive off British bombers.

As for other resources the Germans would have needed to make nukes, answer these questions. Where were the Germans going to get uranium if the primary source for it was firmly in Allied hands for the entirety of the war? How would they keep their facilities running if the British kept bombing them at night? Where were they going to get heavy water for their reactors if the only factory making it was sabotaged by Norwegian guerrillas? Hell, how were they going to make reactors in the first place if they lacked the theoretical background needed to make them? How were they going to obtain the theoretical background needed to make any kind of nuclear technology if they dismissed modern physics as "Jewish science" and drove away their most talented scientists?

Now, it certainly would have been possible for the Germans to run a nuclear program on a much smaller scale than the Manhattan Project when taking into account their reduced industrial capacity relative to that of the United States. However, their production of nuclear materials would have been severely diminished when working at that small a scale, to the point where their ability to produce even a single bomb by 1945 would be extremely suspect at best.

The name of the game is resource allocation. There are no magic workarounds for lacking sufficient resources. Rearrange what resources the Germans already had to equally match American production, and the Nazis commit economic suicide and subsequently wind up getting bombed back to the Stone Age by the British and trampled into the dirt by the Russians. Scale down to work with what the Germans already had, and it's too little and too slow to even remotely come close to American production.

Not only do you grossly overestimate German competence and industrial capability, you grossly underestimate the sheer power of the Soviet Union. You seem to forget that the Russians' primary strengths during World War II lay in manpower and industrial capacity; if nothing else, they could have simply overcome the Germans by sheer mass. Compared to the Soviet Union, German manpower and industrial capacity were distinctly lacking; they simply could not replenish their losses as quickly as the Russians could. Why do you think the Wehrmacht never really recovered after its defeats at Stalingrad and Kursk?

Zet · Feb 25, 2011

If Pearl Habour didn't happen the nazis would have had the scientific minds who made the nuclear bombs and would have taken over the world.

Livewire · Feb 25, 2011

Zet said:
If Pearl Habour didn't happen the nazis would have had the scientific minds who made the nuclear bombs and would have taken over the world.

As far as I know, Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer were in America long before Pearl Harbor. But America did actually recruit some Nazi Physicists and scientists after the war to help develop our nuclear and end eventually the space program further, such as Arthur Randolf and Wernher von Braun. Von Braun was even in the SS at one time.

twocows · Feb 25, 2011

Jack O'Neill said:
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, do you?

Not the way you seem to think you do. The subject isn't interesting enough for me to spend hours typing up long posts and citing statistics. I'm not a history major, it's a trivial interest at best. However, I will say that while the Soviets may have had force of numbers, they worked best in a defensive position (letting the Germans come to them while slowing their advance was the correct move) and their scientific output was no better than the Nazis (many of the best scientific minds were silenced due to Stalin's paranoia, and many others were intimidated into halting their research). The quality of what the Soviets output was also poor at best.

And really, for all we know, the two powers may have negotiated a cease fire at some point. This is all hypothetical, which isn't something anyone can predict with a great deal of certainty, and it's certainly not something worth arguing so vehemently about.

[WWII Discussion] What would happen if Japan never bombed Pearl Harbor?

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King Gumball

Haven't been here for ages...

Ninja Caterpie

AAAAAAAAAAAAA

mondays suck

Livewire

donavannj

Griffinbane

I hate Smeargle.

Esper

Jack O'Neill

Banned

Lambda

Boss of Team Plasma

twocows

The not-so-black cat of ill omen

Livewire

Jack O'Neill

Banned

~Darkness~

NJ All Day

twocows

The not-so-black cat of ill omen

インフェルノの津波

Seriously?

twocows

The not-so-black cat of ill omen

Jack O'Neill

Banned

Zet

Livewire

twocows

The not-so-black cat of ill omen