[dfwgator]

And as far as Japan helping Hitler against the Soviets? Yeah, right!

[jboot]

There was never any chance of that happening. The German envoy had been putting pressure to attack the USSR on the Japanese for months prior to Dec 7th, 1941. The Japanese just ignored it. Which is why it is so incomprehensible that Hitler declared war on the USA as a result of the Pearl Harbor raid.

FDR would have been in quite a pickle if Hitler had sent condolences to the USA and broken his alliance with Japan instead. (After all, he was getting exactly zero benefit from the alliance.) The American war plan was Germany First, period. There was no real plan B. A concillatory gesture from Hitler on Dec 7th would at the least have cost the Western Allies months of delay and thrown war preparations into chaos.