h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Over the weekend my girlfriend and I were discussing WWII, a mutual interest we share, when Pearl Harbour came up. The question was posed, did Adolph Hitler know about Japan’s planned attack and if so did he have anything to say on the matter.

The feeling was that considering Germany and Japan were supposed to be allies, Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour was ill timed and Germany's subsequent declaration of War against America was stupid. But that is with hindsight.

What if Hitler had said to the Japanese, hold back on America for a while. Enter the war on our side and attack Russia from the East. Help us defeat the Soviets and we will guarantee your oil supplies from the Caucasus region, which was the main reason for Japan attacking America. This would have made the defeat of the Soviets more likely. Once the Soviets were defeated, Britain would have almost certainly crumbled leaving Germany free to take over the Middle Eastern Oil fields. That would have left Germany and Japan free to attack America from both East and West.

Would this have been a viable policy and at what stage would America have seen what was coming and declared war on Japan and Germany of its own accord? Or would America have left Japan get on with it feeling that the Soviets out of the way was a desirable option?

Donald

Germany's decleration of war against the United States wasn't as stupid as it may seem. The US was not a major military power at the time, whilst Germany and Japan had enormous military strength. Japan's attack was rash but inevitable. The United States had decided to join the race for colonial empires at the end of the 19th century by declaring war on the crumbling Spanish empire. Spanish possessions in the pacific passed to the US and so Japan, having pushed Britain and France out of much of east Asia and having expanded across the Pacific, was certain to bump into the United States.

However, if Hitler had managed to persuade the Japanese high command to pursue his strategy against the USSR (Germany and Japan were allies but they had different goals and largely different interests) then the scenario you suggest might have occurred. I have no idea what (apart from a direct attack) would have pulled the US out of it's strongly-isolationist policies but I doubt Germany and/or Japan would have initiated an attack on the US mainland. Hitler was only interested in usurping France and Britain's global-power and empires, creating 'liebenstraum' for the German race and destroying Communism. He had no real designs on the United States (or French or British territory, either, he merely wanted to end their dominance of Europe and the World). Japan might have pushed against the US presence in the pacific (as it did in the end, in 1941) but it may have turned it's interest back east towards China and any resistance in East Asia (which they intended to dominate). Certainly, both Empires would have either colonised or secured close-relations with the oil-producing nations of the middle-east (as European powers did at the time).