“If Japan had invaded Siberia at the same time the panzers were driving on Moscow, the USSR would have fallen and world history would be a lot different.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3100881/posts?page=55#55
Opinions and comments, please.
The Germans who had a decent grasp of logistics had a tough time of it in the western 1/3rd of the old USSR. Very few roads and railroads in part doomed the German effort. (German strategy, which changed frequently, did not help either).
Take a look at the map and even if the Japanese could have jumped off from the middle of Mongolia the logistics would have been nothing short of a nightmare. I would imagine that the road/railroad network in the east would have been even less impressive than what was available in the west of the USSR
Also remember that Stalin controlled most of the news, so unless by some miracle the Japanese were able to effect some sort of major victory. I IMO all the Japanese would end up with would be a chunk of land at the end of a very long supply line.
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
The Russians seized the initiative that first winter with a combination of the influx of lend lease aid and very capable and cold weather equipped Siberian troops. Those troops were freed up from duty in the east because Russia had just signed a secret non-aggression pact. I think it is very arguable that Germany would have had a chance on the eastern front if those troops had not arrived. There is also the argument that if Britain had not fought and slowed Italy in Greece then Germany would have launched their invasion of Russia earlier and perhaps taken out Moscow before winter set in.
Hitler wasted time and resources taking Kiev when he should have put everything into the Moscow push. An assault by Japan would have been a very ill-advised distraction for the Japanese, and probably wouldn't have made as much difference to the overall result as the news that Stalin had had to flee Moscow for his life one step ahead of Guderian's panzers.
Also, Hitler made no effort to turn the "liberated" Ukrainians and Belorussians into strong allies against Stalin, which he could easily have done. With well-armed new puppet states in place and a fallen capital, the Russians would probably have had to retreat beyond the Urals and sue for peace.
Remember, the Russians had whipped the Nips a few years earlier in some significant border battles. If the Nips had moved north in December 1941, rather than east, they probably could have secured everything from Lake Baikal east, including the Pacific ports, and probably pushed as far as Irkutsk, just west of the Lake. And they’d have ended up with a city at each end of their stretch of the Trans-Siberian, and nomadic tribesmen, with not much else. It would have been great for the Krauts, but makes much less sense than the Dutch islands.
The bigger question is whether they could have picked off the Dutch and the British without directly attacking the US at the Philippines and the other US Islands. That would have been their best bet.