Capabilities of the Western Allies to keep fighting without the USSR

[tyrodtom]

I see nowhere in that reply any hint of a promise to attack Russia later. It's just standard diplomatic jargon for "we know you'd like our help, but we can do nothing. And we know Russia will be a problem in the future."



By March of 43, both Germany and Japan was on the slippery slope to defeat, and anyone with accurate, current, information in those countries knew it.

[Jenisch]

Anyway, it would be likely the Japanese would join with Hitler if they conquered the Pacific colonies with the Americans remaining passive. Chiang would be suffocated without Indochina to be supplied, and the Japanese would have rich resources and tremendous firepower to employ against him. There's little of what the Japanese would probably do after this. To go further: take the Lend-Lease off the Soviets and make it face more 4 million men and thousands of planes from a Japanese invasion in the Far East, together with the IJN hunting Soviet merchant vessels worldwide. Let's see if the Japanese would have "much less strategic importance" like the guy I was discussing says. Even the so called "secondary" fronts could decisively alter the balance of a global conflic if you disparage them.

[stona]

I see nowhere in that reply any hint of a promise to attack Russia later. It's just standard diplomatic jargon for "we know you'd like our help, but we can do nothing. And we know Russia will be a problem in the future."

By March of 43, both Germany and Japan was on the slippery slope to defeat, and anyone with accurate, current, information in those countries knew it.

I agree.
Having said that Germany's declaration of war on the USA makes for interesting reading. Both the actual declaration and Hitler's racist and anti semetic rant in the Reichstag on the same day make interesting reading. I suspect that the Germans did expect Japan to declare war on the USSR to honour the tri-partite agreement of 1940 which features prominently in Germany (and Italy's) declarations of war on the USA,however unrealistic that might seem today.

Examples from the Reichstag speech.

"At one time, Europe was confined to the Greek isles, which had been reached by Nordic tribes, and where the flame first burned that slowly but steadily enlightened humanity. And when these Greeks fought against the invasion of the Persian conquerors, they did not just defend their own small homeland, which was Greece, but [also] that concept that is now Europe. And then [the spirit of] Europe shifted from Hellas to Rome. Roman thought and Roman statecraft combined with Greek spirit and Greek culture. An empire was created, the importance and creative power of which has never been matched, much less surpassed, even to this day. And when the Roman legions defended Italy in three terrible wars against the attack of Carthage from Africa, and finally battled to victory, in this case as well Rome fought not just for herself, but [also] for the Greco-Roman world that then encompassed Europe.

The next invasion against the home soil of this new culture of humanity came from the wide expanses of the East. A horrific storm of cultureless hordes from the center of Asia poured deep into the heart of the European continent, burning, ravaging and murdering as a true scourge of God. On the Catalaunian fields , Roman and Germanic men fought together for the first time [in 451] in a decisive battle of tremendous importance for a culture that had begun with the Greeks, passed on to the Romans, and then encompassed the Germanic peoples."

Complete racist gibberish!

On Roosevelt and the Jews.

"The circle of Jews around Roosevelt encouraged him in this. With Old Testament vindictiveness they regarded the United States as the instrument that they and he could use to prepare a second Purim [slaughter of enemies] against the nations of Europe, which were increasingly anti-Jewish. So it was that the Jews, in all of their satanic baseness, gathered around this man, and he relied on them."

"That he calls me a gangster is particularly meaningless, since this term did not originate in Europe, where such characters are uncommon, but in America. And aside from that, I simply cannot feel insulted by Mr. Roosevelt because I regard him, like his predecessor Woodrow Wilson, as mentally unsound [geisteskrank]."

There's nothing to be said about this sort of nonsense. It would be like an evolutionary scientist arguing with a creationist,a complete waste of time.

Cheers
Steve

[Jenisch]

I wanted to mean that Japan would take the European colonies, not attack the USA and likely attack the USSR if wasn't for Roosevelt's hard line.

[tyrodtom]

So in your estimate, there would have been no Pacific war if the US had just let the Japanese take all they wanted, where ever, they wanted it.
At some point this would have interfered with the survival of australia and New Zealand, and something would have to be done.

One thing history teaches us is it's usually better to stop aggression in it's early stages, than wait until it's reached a lot of it's goals, and then take it on.

[stona]

Yes,and US interests in the Pacific were always going to be compromised by Japan's putative and growing East Asian Empire. The Japanese were obviously well aware of this.
Australia has all the resources which Japan does not. Never mind New Zealand (with apologies to any reading Kiwis ) what about India?
Cheers
Steve

[Jenisch]

So in your estimate, there would have been no Pacific war if the US had just let the Japanese take all they wanted, where ever, they wanted it.
At some point this would have interfered with the survival of australia and New Zealand, and something would have to be done.

One thing history teaches us is it's usually better to stop aggression in it's early stages, than wait until it's reached a lot of it's goals, and then take it on.

Certainly. I was making Stona's point: "The assistance was from West to East for a substantial period,not the other way around,another point often overlooked." The West containing Japan was another example of it's "assistance" to the Soviets. Factors such as this that turn claims the Soviet Union was above the other Allies in WWII BS.