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Wow; lots of stuff to discuss here.

Yes, “henkster’s law” states that alternate histories regarding World War 2 are not valid if it involves the Germans not being the Germans and Hitler not being Hitler. Having stated the law, let’s take a look at some of the facts:

Axis Mediterranean strategy:

There was a political aspect to Axis Mediterranean strategy, and that involved the role of Mussolini and Italy. In 1940 at the time of the Battle of Britain, it wasn’t yet completely clear just how weak Italy was. For reasons of national pride, the Duce wanted the Med, Africa and the Middle East as an Italian Theater of operations. So the Germans either chose to stay out or were frozen out by the Duce. Axis success in the Med was never going to happen with Italy carrying the burden alone, but in order to significantly increase the German presence, you had to overcome the political obstacle I mentioned above. The irony of the situation was that without the Italians taking an ass-kicking, that obstacle would always be there. So, the corollary of “henkster’s law” is that a successful Axis strategy in the Med in 1940 involved the Italians not being the Italians and the Duce not being the Duce. By the time the Italians accepted the fact that German help was needed, the Germans were committed to Operation Barbarossa. The Germans didn’t have the forces to spare for what they saw as an African sideshow.

That gets us to Operation Barbarossa. The failure of Barbarossa was predicated upon the following things:

1) The German general staff sold Hitler on the idea that the USSR could be defeated in one summer campaign season;

2) The German strategy to defeat the USSR was to destroy the Red Army west of the Dnieper River, and then march unopposed on Moscow;

3) The strategy failed because of the efforts of one guy who gets very little credit: Marshal Boris M. Shaposhnikov, Chief of the Red Army General Staff. He was the guy who developed the Red Army mobilization machinery before the war. When war came, this machinery was in place to continuously create new divisions and armies to replace the ones the Germans destroyed. So while the Germans did destroy the existing Red Army on the Western axis in front of the Dnieper, and eventually the Southwestern axis at Kiev, the Red Army was continuously regenerating itself to oppose the Germans.

4) The German goals for the one summer campaign season were logistically impossible, and the staff officers of the German Army should have realized this.

In order to defeat the USSR, the Germans had to be prepared for a two-year campaign, with pauses in offensive operations during the mud seasons to rest, refit, and resupply their forces. They needed to crank up their war industry for a full-war footing. They needed to better exploit French industrial capacity. Instead, they tried to take on the USSR while still having a large consumer economy and failed to mobilize their economic resources. By the time Albert Speer accomplished this in 1944, it was too late.

But that would involve the Germans not being the Germans and Hitler not being Hitler. Hitler did not believe the Germans would support a long war of attrition. Irony again: what Hitler wanted to avoid caused him to pursue a strategy that guaranteed it would be what he got.

As for Japanese intervention in the Far East against the USSR in 1941, that involved Japan not being Japan. While the Japanese did make plans for a “Northern Strategy,” it was never a viable one. Japan’s war aims were 100% economic. She needed oil. Coal, iron, and other raw materials she got from Manchuria. But her Achilles Heel was oil. She needed it and she needed it NOW. Sure, there’s a lot of oil in Siberia. The problem is that most of it is in Western Siberia, several time zones away from the Kwantung Army in Manchuria. There are probably oil resources in Eastern Siberia, too, but in 1941, NONE of those resources have been developed. There are no active wells, no pipelines, no refineries, nothing. And the technology to exploit them is fairly primitive; it would cost a great deal in money and time to bring those resources into the Japanese Empire. And time was a luxury the Japanese didn’t have.

Japan had no choice other than the seizure of the oil resources in the NEI. They were already developed, and it was easy to ship the oil to Japan by tanker. And they knew that this move would bring war with the United States. They knew war with the United States was going to be a colossal undertaking, although they underestimated just how colossal it would be. But they knew enough to know that the “Southern Operation” would take every naval, air and shipping asset and their entire industrial base. There was no reason or ability to also go north into Siberia.

Finally, a footnote. The USSR stopped the Wehrmacht at the gates of Moscow with what they had on hand. Lend-Lease didn’t have an impact until 1943. Until then, the Soviets pretty much kept the Germans at bay with what they had on hand.