America should not have engaged in either World War -

[Marco Fucko]

In World War I we were pulled in due to the sinking of the Lusitania, which carried American passengers but also arms and ammunition. Officially, it was carrying 750+ tons of small arms ammunition as well as ~1200 artillery shells. If we and Britain (it was a British ship but was leaving from New York and headed to Liverpool) had simply segregated passenger ships from government arms transportation, that incident wouldn't have happened and America wouldn't need to get involved in WWI.

In WWII we cut off interaction with Japan at various stages due to their expansionism and helped the Chinese and British territories with monetary loans and weapons. This also included cutting off scrap metal, of which we were responsible for ~75% traded to Japan, and after Tojo rejected pulling out of China we also embargoed our oil shipments to them which were similarly majority in Japan's income of that resource. This pushed Japan to move to cut off peace talks and pull Pearl Harbor.

In short if the US didn't feel some weird need to help the retarded Anglos we would have literally no link to either world war and I think we should not have helped the soon-to-be former empire with their own retarded messes, thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

 

[Franjevina]

Keep it simple :

Spoiler

It's the jews

 

[Lemmingwise]

You can count on Christian US to nuke almost all Christians in Japan. I think the number of christians has only recently recovered to the same level as prior to the nuke on little Rome.

 

[The best and greatest]

The writing on the wall for an American-Japanese war goes back as far as the Russian-Japanese war and it's conclusion. Not only did that war set the precedent for how the Japanese Empire would deal with western interlopers going forward, but would also cement lasting animosity between them and the US with the peace deal the US brokered which the Japanese felt was overly lenient. It was clear to the Japanese that a war with the competing western empires they sought to supplant with their East-Asian Co-prosperity Sphere was inevitable.

Likewise that the Japanese were a rising competitor in the Pacific was not something that escaped the US's notice which is why they did everything they could to defeat them in a series of actions that escalate from economic embargoes and supporting their wartime enemies materially, eventually into large-scale naval actions across the pacific and atomic weapons being deployed onto the Japanese mainland. There isn't a single plausible timeline for WW2 I can think of where Japan and America don't end up in armed conflict with each other. They were star-crossed rivals from the start.

 

[Marco Fucko]

Other than the bombing of Pearl Harbor and Moose Harbor ...
or Hat-ler declaring war on the US
or the US being in the middle of a serious economic meltdown before 1941

If Hitler couldn't even make it to Britain (granted both sides thought a land invasion would happen and were preparing for that) what makes you think Germany would make it across the Atlantic and be able to set up any kind of successful land invasion?

The Great Depression lasted until 1939, and one of the many reasons it was so exacerbated was due to breakdown in international trade. Why do you think we were selling so much scrap metal and oil to Japan in the first place, let alone the variety of other fixes and upswings coming out of 40 and 41.

 

[HeyYou]

American involvement at the very least guaranteed that the USSR wouldn't be able to fuck around uncontested in Europe and Asia. Japan openly attacked us, whether we fucked them over beforehand or not (and they deserved it) has no bearing on the matter.

 

[The Sauce Boss]

The simple fact of the matter is that our involvement solved more than it broke. The USSR likely would have been able to expand its sphere of influence all the way into France without American intervention, and Japan likely would have been able to walk away from the war with at least some military hegemony over the Southeast Asian region. China likely wouldn't have changed much, but putting a less militant government in place in Japan did more to stabilize the region than most give it credit for.

 

[HeyYou]

and Japan likely would have been able to walk away from the war with at least some military hegemony over the Southeast Asian region.

The USSR would have steamrolled them, and was already planning to do that before we nuked that shit and ended it. We joke about Americanized Japan but imagine a USSR Japan.

 

[Franjevina]

Japan ... whether we fucked them over beforehand or not (and they deserved it) has no bearing on the matter.

So if i hit someone with axe to the head it will be of no matter whether it was self-defense or i wanted to take that person wallet right ?

 

[The Sauce Boss]

The USSR would have steamrolled them, and was already planning to do that before we nuked that shit and ended it. We joke about Americanized Japan but imagine a USSR Japan.

Thank you, forgot about Manchuria.

Honestly, I don't know what would really come of a communist Japan? At that point in history, Japan wasn't at all in any position to be an industrial contributor at any level comparable to any of the future Warsaw Pact states.

 

[HeyYou]

So if i hit someone with axe to the head it will be of no matter whether it was self-defense or i wanted to take that person wallet right ?

If you think economic warfare/sanctions (in response to Japan openly attacking Australia, remember) are actually comparable to attacking and killing people, I guess you could make that comparison.

Honestly, I don't know what would really come of a communist Japan?

Look at the autism and ineptitude surrounding the Japanese Red Army and you'll have your answer.

 

[Clop]

War bad m'kay

 

[OB 946]

If we were dragged in by the Lusitania why did we not declare war until 3 years later?

You're retarded and have no grasp on history.

 

[Judge Holden]

Honestly I have sperged at length about how crucial the need for oil and foreign resources were in making Germany and Japan act the way they did in the run up to WW2 and during WW2 as I believe both states' absolute existential desperation for these things were behind pretty much all the seemingly dumbass decisions they made, either in seeking them out or in reacting to the lack of them, so I think the more interesting question is how world history would have gone had Hitler's diplomatic team been canny enough to prevent war with britain and the resulting Royal Navy blockade that prevented them getting the oil they needed to carry out Barbarossa the way they wanted.

Assuming Ribbentrop was quietly taken out behind the proverbial woodshed and replaced with someone less autistically obsessed with annoying foreign nations and screwing up Hitler's plans while feeding him bad information on how said foreign nations "really" felt before he could do any damage, this may well have been possible, given how strong anti-war sentiments were in the west and how fear of the USSR united pretty much everyone.

Hell maybe having an actual diplomat giving him a halfway accurate picture of how nations like the UK and USA were feeling would have made Hitler act with more tact and subtlety in his pre-war actions, given how most of his more provocative gestures came about atleast partially as a result of the horseshit Ribbentrop was feeding him about the world outside germany.

Assuming that he and his foreign ministry are successful in running a PR campaign of "self determination for Germans" and "protecting Europe from the soviet menace" with a hefty helping of "Versailles was totally unfair guiz " then Germany could probably wind up getting control of the areas it wanted, albeit a few years later, from Austria to the Rhineland to Danzig and the polish corridor, with Poland being far more likely to give concessions to prevent a war since they would not be able to count on British/French assistance* and given their own issues with the USSR they might even have wound up aligning with Germany in order to defend themselves from the east.

Oh yeah, and given how Ribbentrop was a fanatical pusher of the alliance with Japan despite Germany's existing links with China in trade and military, we can assume that Germany doesnt jump aboard the unproductive alliance with Japan and instead maintains its fairly lucrative and strategic friendship with Nationalist China.

So basically now the board is set with Nazi Germany cementing its control of central europe, likely at the head of some mutual defence pact with Poland and other nations like Hungary and Romania, Britain and France adopting neutral/isolationist positions, the US pretty much doing the same as it was IRL, Japan getting really fucking angry it didnt have the oil it needed to wholely subjugate China but maybe a little more aware of how alone it is in the world right now...

....and the USSR suddenly feeling extremely worried as Stalin realises Germany is going to be looking for a pretext to start "Operation: I cant believe its not Barbarossa" a few years down the line, and will almost certainly not be suffering from any blockade or bombing or foreign intervention when it does so.

Honestly with such a setup, and the fact that even without being cut off from world trade Nazi Germany was an economic timebomb that its leadership knew would explode a couple years down the line at best unless they got a vast amount of assets really fuckin fast, let alone the whole "I literally have been fapping about lebensraum for 20 goddamn years now" thing Hitler had going, its pretty much certain that Germany would find the excuse it wanted and start the war in the early-mid 1940s, probably much the same as how Barbarossa actually started IRL with the buildup of troops accross the border and the initial slamming bulldozer charge into the east.

However this time Germany would not be operating as the oil starved "mein logistics chain is literally fucking horses and mein troop carriers are literally fucking legs because we cant afford the petrol" pile of desperation it was IRL but would likely have all the oil and resources it needed for a sustained mechanised combat, have wasted none of its strength or resources subduing europe or being bombed by the RAF, would not be redirecting vast quantities of resources to the U-Boat programme since the UK wouldnt be an issue, and most importantly would not be entirely reliant upon the drive to the Caucuses in order to capture the food/oil reserves there**.

Basically imagine operation Barbarossa with substantially more men since none would be bound up either in other fronts or in logistics chains for said fronts, all the oil it needed to fuel its massed tank formations for as long as needed, nobody bombing their factories, nobody blockading them from food and trade, and most importantly the strategic depth to make mistakes and fuck things up but still have the opportunity to recover and regain fighting strategic strength.

Against this the USSR has a few more years to prepare and martial its resources and manpower....under the leadership of Joseph Stalin. Who IRL kept repeatedly fucking things up by directly managing the war for a year after Barbarossa, until his strategic fuckups got too dire and he was convinced to step back and allow his general staff the opportunity to salvage the situation. An opportunity that may well not exist given how Germany's initial thrust into the USSR will be a hell of a lot stronger, and they wont be recieving any of the logistical lend lease aid that was so crucial IRL during the period of moving factories east en masse.

Basically it all comes down to whether a greatly more prepared and accordingly militarised USSR can resist a literal Super-Barbarossa by a far better resourced and mechanised and a significantly more patient and less desperate Nazi Germany? Can the Third Reich kick in the front door down hard enough during the opening phase of the war to truly bring the whole rotting structure down?

Furthermore just how different is the Pacific War going to be with China still getting German aid with modernisation and Japan not being able to count on western nations being distracted by europe given they still have their existential problems with oil and resources?

Will the "INVADE WESTERN COLONIES! THEY TOTALLY DONT HAVE THE SPINE TO RESPOND!" team in the Imperial government be a little more quiet and allow the "FORGET KHALKHIN GOL, THE SOVIETS AINT EVEN GONNA EXIST IN A FEW YEARS SO WE SHOULD MARCH ON SIBERIA!" clique to dust off the old Kantokuen plans and take advantage of the coming shitstorm?

* Admittedly they didnt get it IRL but Poland didnt know that at the time
** Granted they would still likely make a major push there in order to starve the Soviets of these resources, but it would not have been such an insanely important priority to prevent total failure of everything.

 

[Wilhelm Bittrich]

The writing on the wall for an American-Japanese war goes back as far as the Russian-Japanese war and it's conclusion. Not only did that war set the precedent for how the Japanese Empire would deal with western interlopers going forward, but would also cement lasting animosity between them and the US with the peace deal the US brokered which the Japanese felt was overly lenient. It was clear to the Japanese that a war with the competing western empires they sought to supplant with their East-Asian Co-prosperity Sphere was inevitable.

Likewise that the Japanese were a rising competitor in the Pacific was not something that escaped the US's notice which is why they did everything they could to defeat them in a series of actions that escalate from economic embargoes and supporting their wartime enemies materially, eventually into large-scale naval actions across the pacific and atomic weapons being deployed onto the Japanese mainland. There isn't a single plausible timeline for WW2 I can think of where Japan and America don't end up in armed conflict with each other. They were star-crossed rivals from the start.

It goes even more back than the Russo-Japanese War, it goes back to the first Sino-Japanese War in 1897. The US took side for China in that war with financial support and when in 1899 the US acquired the Philippines, which gave the USA a huge unsinkable naval base expanding the operational range of the US Navy by about 500%, at that moment War between Japan and the USA was inevitable.
It is highly likely that if the Empire of Japan wouldn't have joined the allied side in WW1 the war between Japan and the USA would already have happenend in 1914.

As we declared war on the USA at 11th December 1941 it is a common misconception that we did so because we have been allied with the Japanese back then, but there were three reasons explicitly stated in the German Declaration of War: USS Reuben James incident, USS Greer incident and the USS Kearny incident.
As there was already an undeclared war going on in the Atlantic between the US Navy and The Kriegsmarine sadly this was inevitable.

 

[Judge Holden]

As we declared war on the USA at 11th December 1941 it is a common misconception that we did so because we have been allied with the Japanese back then, but there were three reasons explicitly stated in the German Declaration of War: USS Reuben James incident, USS Greer incident and the USS Kearny incident.
As there was already an undeclared war going on in the Atlantic between the US Navy and The Kriegsmarine sadly this was inevitable.

IIRC it was also Hitler trying to butter the Japanese up so that they wouldn't have second thoughts on the war, and maybe even follow through with invasion of the Soviet far east, though this could be an overestimation of his motivations

 

[Mediocre]

what makes you think Germany would make it across the Atlantic and be able to set up any kind of successful land invasion?

Here's a pretty cool documentary about Hermann Göring who wanted to create a bomber that could reach New York & back but didn't get used since it was made in 1944 and still in a testing phase.

It was basically a giant flying wing, even today people are still trying to figure it out since it was so advanced for its time. But yeah, even if the Germans bombed the hell out of New York a land invasion is a whole different story.

 

[Wilhelm Bittrich]

IIRC it was also Hitler trying to butter the Japanese up so that they wouldn't have second thoughts on the war, and maybe even follow through with invasion of the Soviet far east, though this could be an overestimation of his motivations

Truth is if the Japanese would have invaded thru the soviet back door it would have bound the 50 division which Stalin could throw to his western front (our Eastern Front).
But at the end of the day it just would have prolonged the war.

Sidenote:
I want to be brutally frank here, both wars are claimed to have been won by the allies. You know what fuck it! These allies haven't won a flower pot until the USA with all their might crushed our party, even the soviets in WW2 could not have survived with the millions of tons of equipment, food and what else the USA provided them during Lend-Lease.
The allies won WW2, bullshit I say, it was the USA with their industrial power, their financial power, their commitment down to the smallest citizen and the huge masses of equipment this nation could produce. The allies, my ass.

 

[Judge Holden]

Here's a pretty cool documentary about Hermann Göring who wanted to create a bomber that could reach New York & back but didn't get used since it was made in 1944 and still in a testing phase.

It was basically a giant flying wing, even today people are still trying to figure it out since it was so advanced for its time. But yeah, even if the Germans bombed the hell out of New York a land invasion is a whole different story.

TBH the value of such a plane would not have been in any direct damage done by bombing given the low yield, but in forcing US resources and logistics to form an effective counter to it.....which the US had in abundance so its not exactly the best use of resources and expertise even before you consider how much oil would be pissed away if this became a reality

I want to be brutally frank here, both wars are claimed to have been won by the allies. You know what fuck it! These allies haven't won a flower pot until the USA with all their might crushed our party, even the soviets in WW2 could not have survived with the millions of tons of equipment, food and what else the USA provided them during Lend-Lease.
The allies won WW2, bullshit I say, it was the USA with their industrial power, their financial power, their commitment down to the smallest citizen and the huge masses of equipment this nation could produce. The allies, my ass.

*chuckles in Royal Navy blockade and guffaws in Soviet Deep Operation strategy*

 

[Wilhelm Bittrich]

*chuckles in Royal Navy blockade and guffaws in Soviet Deep Operation strategy*

Albeit the RN blockade was highly effevtive in WW2 it was rendered uneffective in ww2 the mokment we overran France.
The Soviet Deep Operation stratetgy effective as it was, was only possible becasue of the millions of gallons of fuel, the millions of tonnes of food and the thousands and thousands of tonnes of equipment the USA provided them. The soviet Stalinorgel (the Katyusha rockets) were solely built on Studebaker trucks by late 1943.

"The US provided: 427,284 trucks, 13,303 combat vehicles, 35,170 motorcycles, 2,328 ordnance service vehicles, 2,670,371 tons of petroleum products (gasoline and oil) or 57.8 percent of the High-octane aviation fuel, 4,478,116 tons of foodstuffs (canned meats, sugar, flour, salt, etc.), 1,911 steam locomotives, 66 Diesel locomotives, 9,920 flat cars, 1,000 dump cars, 120 tank cars, and 35 heavy machinery cars. Provided ordnance goods (ammunition, artillery shells, mines, assorted explosives) amounted to 53 percent of total soviet domestic consumption.
One item typical of many was a tire plant that was lifted bodily from the Ford Company's River Rouge Plant and transferred to the USSR. The 1947 money value of the supplies and services amounted to about eleven billion dollars.
The UK delivered::
3,000+ Hurricanes aircraft, 4,000+ other aircraft, 27 naval vessels, 5,218 tanks (including 1,380 Valentines from Canada),5,000+ anti-tank guns, 4,020 ambulances and trucks
323 machinery trucks (mobile vehicle workshops equipped with generators and all the welding and power tools required to perform heavy servicing)
1,212 Universal Carriers and Loyd Carriers (with another 1,348 from Canada), 1,721 motorcycles, £1,15bn worth of aircraft engines, 1,474 radar sets,4,338 radio sets,600 naval radar and sonar sets, 15 million pairs of boots."

That's what made the soviet strategy possible.

Quoted from:
Deane, John R. 1947. The Strange Alliance, The Story of Our Efforts at Wartime Co-operation with Russia. The Viking Press.
Hill, Alexander (2007). "British Lend Lease Aid and the Soviet War Effort, June 1941 – June 1942". The Journal of Military History. 71 (3): 773–808