“A far graver danger was added to these problems. The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril. …I was even more anxious about this battle than I had been about the glorious air fight called the Battle of Britain.”
(Winston Churchill, from his wartime memoir Their Finest Hour)
“It's not the size of the dog in the fight that counts. It's the size of the fight in the dog.”
Common proverb.
Abstract
The purpose of this article is to examine the impact on world history had Germany won the Battles of Britain and the North Atlantic in 1940, and Japan had thrown its full naval might at Pearl Harbor and the American West Coast on December 7, 1941.
That Germany could have won the Battles of Britain and the North Atlantic is frighteningly plausible. That Japan hit America with such timidity and restraint is almost shocking.
World history as it actually happened is all too often viewed as something inevitable, immutable, and fixed. This article will show a version of the Twentieth Century that varies from actual history on only three militarily achievable points.
Introduction
This article considers the oft-posed speculation of what might have happened if Hitler, Tojo and Emperor Hirohito had done two or three things differently—and correctly—shortly before and in the early parts of World War 2. That is, to show that the history that did happen was by no means the history that had to happen. World War 2 could very realistically—and all too easily—have played out radically different from actual history.
The following counterfactual history will posit only those things within the actual knowledge and authority of these Axis leaders and their top commanders, and only those things known to have been within the industrial/military capacity of Germany and Japan in the mid-1930s through the early 1940s.
In Europe and the North Atlantic
I start by asserting that there was no historically required reason why Hitler and his Naval High Command could not have placed a proper emphasis on the submarine service during the mid-to-late 1930s. Everyone in Germany, Hitler and the admirals included, knew the tremendous effectiveness and importance of U-boats (Unterseeboot) from their experience in World War 1. However, as Nazi U-boat fleet commander Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz pointed out in his book Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days, the submarine service was so neglected during these pre-war years that even though Germany was nominally respecting the tonnage restrictions laid down in the 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement, the German Naval High Command was not even utilizing all the tonnage allowed under that Agreement for submarines. That is, the Nazis were cheating themselves out of U-boats!
Compounding the problem was that there was no effort or intent by the German Naval High Command to establish the naval shipyard capacity, effect the engineering redesign of the Type VII submarine for modular fabrication and assembly line construction techniques (that were easily within the engineering and manufacturing capabilities of Germany at that time), and secure the industrial contracts for a full-blown U-boat mass production program during this time of peace and easy opportunity.
Such a program would have been entirely within the normal authority of the admirals of the German Naval High Command with or without the formal approval (or even knowledge) of Adolf Hitler, and would hardly have been noticed against the much larger backdrop of the tremendous buildup of the entire German military along with the extensive civil construction programs going on at that time (read Albert Speer's book Inside the Third Reich for further detail).
In historical reality, German submarines (like battleships) were basically custom built in the shipyards and only 703 Type VII U-boats were constructed during the entire war. With a proper U-boat mass production program in place by September 1939, the Nazis could easily have had several hundred fully operational Type VII North Atlantic-grade U-boats by the end of 1941.
Besides initiating the U-boat mass production program, the easiest and most obvious thing that could have been done during this period of peace was to simply replace all of the existing submarines with brand new North Atlantic-grade Type VII U-boats while utilizing every last ton allowed under the 1935 Naval Agreement (and more, if you consider the possibility that the Nazis might actually cheat on the terms of a treaty). Less obvious, but easily within the authority and capabilities of the German Naval High Command, would have been a U-boat crew mass training program to have pre-trained crews ready to man new submarines as they slid out of the shipyards. This would not have violated the Naval Agreement and would have put the U-boat service on an excellent footing for war.
Assuming that declared war with Great Britain in September 1939 would have voided the Naval Agreement and its tonnage restrictions, the pre-established industrial/shipyard base for mass producing Type VII U-boats could quickly have been put into full effect before the end of 1939, with pre-trained crews ready to bring the new submarines into nearly immediate combat service.
In historical reality, when war started in September 1939 there was no U-boat mass production program, no large-scale crew training program, and just fifty-six submarines available to the whole German Navy—only forty-six of which were operational at the time, and only twenty-two that were suitable for North Atlantic duty (again, read Dönitz). As regards the U-boat fleet, the German Naval High Command was caught totally flat-footed by the outbreak of formal war.
So I begin this World War 2 counterfactual history around 1936 with Hitler and his Naval High Command initiating the U-boat mass production and crew training programs, while renewing and maximizing the existing fleet of subs optimized for North Atlantic service. With only this single, easy, and relatively minor historical modification, everything else in the 1930s happens exactly as it happened in Germany and Japan until the Nazis invaded Poland in September 1939, when Britain and France immediately declared war on Germany, and World War 2 in Europe formally began. Early on, however, this minimally modified history has Germany armed with a fully formed, modernized North Atlantic-ready U-boat fleet with more submarines quickly coming out of the shipyards, manned with pre-trained crews.
In addition to the possible early U-boat sinkings or damaging of major British Navy capital ships in 1939 (Ark Royal, Rodney, etc.) mentioned by Adm. Dönitz in his book, along with wreaking havoc on British supply shipping and Royal Navy operations in the North Atlantic, Mediterranean Sea (possibly preventing Operation Judgement and the neutralization of the Italian Navy at Taranto in November 1940), and the South Atlantic (in conjunction with the German cruiser Admiral Graf Spee which, in historical reality, effectively operated alone until its scuttling on December 13, 1939), the modernized and expanded Nazi U-boat fleet could have virtually annihilated the British fleet sent to counter-invade Norway in April 1940 (Which, in historical reality, suffered only trivial U-boat related losses. Again, read Dönitz along with Churchill in his book The Gathering Storm).
Following on the heels of the devastating Nazi U-boat victory in the waters off Norway would have been the one-two punch of actual, functional U-boat wolfpacks successfully choking off a truly significant percentage of shipping supplies to Great Britain (Prime Minister Winston Churchill's greatest fear during the war) while the Luftwaffe rained destruction from above during the Battle of Britain starting in July of 1940.
As suggested by many military historians, had Hitler and Göring simply stayed true to their original battle plan of the Luftwaffe destroying military/industrial/supply targets, they almost certainly would have eventually grounded the RAF (by simple combat attrition of irreplaceable fighter and bomber aircraft, along with dwindling fuel, munitions, and spare parts supplies), finished the destruction of all industrial/military assets through aerial bombardment, and brought England down to a state of prostrate emaciated impotence.
From mid-to-late 1940 on into early 1941, with swarms of U-boat wolfpacks surrounding the British Isles and the Luftwaffe in full control of the skies, Germany could have destroyed or driven out the Royal Navy and then taken possession of one or two British ports most important to Nazi naval operations (especially Scapa Flow) along with a couple of key airfields to easily extend their reach over the entirety of Britain and far out into the North Atlantic. A full-blown “Operation Sea Lion” ground invasion of Great Britain would have been unnecesary. They could have left all the rest of Britain to starve into submission, with His Majesty's Crown Government almost certainly evacuated to Canada.
Cutting a neutrality deal with the Irish would have put them peacefully out of the picture, and quite possibly the same with the Scots. For all practical purposes the Battle of the North Atlantic would be over and Nazi victory in Western Europe would have been complete. German and Italian victory in the Mediterranean Sea, North Africa and the Middle East would eventually have followed.
What about Operation Barbarossa and war with the Soviet Union? As pertains to this World War 2 counterfactual history I simply let it play forward as it happened. Hitler would have realized that Barbarossa could not have started until spring of 1941 at the very earliest even with total victory over the British. It would simply have been too late in the year of 1940 for Hitler to have even toyed with such an idea. But with the British conquered or neutralized he could have continued building up the German military over the winter of 1940 so as to be able to put his full force and resources behind the attack in the spring of 1941 as it happened with no danger of the Three Front War that ultimately developed in historical reality.
I only suggest as counterfactual possibility that Hitler might have correctly dealt with Yugoslavia and Greece in 1940, or put off those problems until a later date, or even handed these problems off to Mussolini rather than waste precious time in the spring of 1941 before the start of Barbarossa thereby giving his forces maximum time and resource to take all important objectives in Russia, properly establish supply lines, and be in a position to dig in for the early winter of historical reality so as to survive reasonably intact until the spring of 1942 and then continue the offensive.
Regardless these fine points, this would have left all the western, northern, and southern parts of the Reich firmly in German and Italian hands well into 1942 and beyond, with naval shipyards safely finishing work on Bismarck and Tirpitz while cranking out U-boats by the dozens—turning into hundreds—by the end of 1941. With Britain, the RAF, and the Royal Navy neutralized in 1940, and therefore no Battle of the North Atlantic nor bombing raids on German targets, the Bismarck would have been spared the destruction suffered in historical reality on May 27, 1941, and U-boat losses would have been minimized while their numbers increased dramatically.
In the Pacific
“It's not the size of the dog in the fight…”
Meanwhile, back in Japan, we find the Empire expanded to the full extent of historical reality by mid-1941. Tojo, the Emperor and their military advisors, however, would now be at a Decision Point: do they keep America at arm's length and concentrate exclusively on consolidating their gains in the Western Pacific and Asia, or risk attacking America to take it out of the picture on a long-term or permanent basis? Had they chosen the former, the long-term results could have been a consolidated Empire with America fussing and fuming on the sidelines but otherwise taking little or no direct military action—at least not immediately.
Likewise, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy would have continued their consolidation and fortification of the totally conquered Western Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East on into 1942. Japan might at some future time have chosen to attack America, but that attack would most likely have been from a position of even greater resource and power, although with the increasing risk that America might launch its own preemptive surprise naval attack on Japan—a reverse Day of Infamy. The second choice of Japan attacking America without warning at Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941 will now be assumed.
I maintain that the decision to attack was not fundamentally bad. The strategic blunder by Tojo, Hirohito, and their military advisors was a cultural blunder of the Mind in that they badly misread the character of America thereby thinking that a single devastating blow at Pearl Harbor would have either bought them enough unobstructed time from a shocked, traumatized, and politically paralyzed America in order to consolidate and secure Japanese gains in the Orient before any effective American military response (against which, by that time, the Japanese would have been totally prepared), or caused America to cut a deal of military/economic neutrality in Japanese affairs regarding The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in exchange for an end to hostilities.
In the aftermath of the actual attack on Pearl Harbor, those Japanese leaders were probably just as shocked, stunned, and discombobulated by America's immediate declaration of war and rapid military mobilization as Hitler was shocked and stunned by the totally unexpected immediate declarations of war by Britain and France after the Nazi invasion of Poland two and a quarter years earlier. The “Sleeping Dragon” of pre-war America was now wide awake—wings unfurling and breathing fire.
“…It's the size of the fight in the dog.”
However, Japan's cultural misreading of America was not a historical requirement or inevitability. This counterfactual history therefore has Tojo, Hirohito, the army generals, and naval admirals all correctly reading the situation and realizing that a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would result in a quick declaration of war and swift military mobilization by an outraged, united, and fully committed America. That is, the clear and sober realization in their collective Japanese Mind that an attack on Pearl Harbor would start an immediate all-out death fight with the largest industrial powerhouse on the planet——America.
They would have correctly concluded that Pearl Harbor, though very important, was not a war-winning critical installation, but mainly a naval forward operating, supply, and repair base. Therefore, an attack on Pearl Harbor would have had to have been just the first stroke in a much larger—and immediate—offensive against the truly war-winning strategic naval/shipyard/port assets on the American West Coast to cripple America's supply, shipbuilding, and naval might at its source. That is, to chop off the Dragon's head on ‘day one’ of the War so as to achieve Adm. Yamamoto's personal goal of securing de facto military victory over America during the first week of conflict.
To that end they would have quietly pulled the landing craft carrier ship Shinshu Maru and any other suitable Japanese troop, equipment and supply transport ships out of the Western Pacific to add a full amphibious ground invasion force to the Pearl Harbor assault group, plus a larger contingent of destroyers (strangely, only nine were included in the original assault group out of more than a hundred destroyers available in the IJN), along with the six first-line aircraft carriers, two battleships (out of ten), three cruisers (out of thirty-eight), and at least eight ocean-going submarines (out of sixty-three long range subs) plus the five midget subs actually used in the real Pearl Harbor attack.
Coincident with the departure of the Pearl Harbor assault/invasion force, most of the remaining Japanese long range submarines would have been sent east into the Pacific along with refueling tankers so as to have ‘topped off their tanks’ at the midway point and then gone to position themselves off of every important American West Coast naval base and shipyard port along with a contingent assigned to cover the Panama Canal in order to prevent reinforcement of the U.S. Pacific Fleet from the American East Coast, and then lie in wait for the order to attack. In reality, only two Japanese subs were sent to cover our entire West Coast that day.
Following on the heels of the long range submarines, the Japanese would have sent every last remaining seaworthy aircraft carrier, battleship, cruiser, destroyer and minelayer, organized into four separate battle groups, to position themselves out in the Pacific for coordinated nighttime strikes on the Bremerton Washington Naval Shipyard, the San Francisco Bay military bases, ports and shipyards, the Ports of Los Angeles/Long Beach, and the San Diego Naval Station/Camp Pendleton on command.
Only a minimal Home Island defense force of their oldest cruisers, destroyers and short-range submarines would have been held back to keep up a façade of naval power. The Japanese would have gambled that the utterly secret nature of their whole operation would have prevented any enemies in the Western Pacific from organizing a meaningful attack on Japan during the relatively short period of time involved before the bulk of their forces returned to Japan. The Main Battle Plan for the whole operation would have been very simple: Attack all targets with unrelenting and ruthless ferocity. Come home victorious——or don't come home.
Banzai!!
The immediate objectives would have been to hit Battleship Row in Pearl Harbor and the Oahu air bases on the morning of December 7, 1941 as actually done so as to defang the U.S. Navy and gain mastery of the skies over Oahu. Coincident with the departure of the first wave of planes headed to Pearl Harbor at 6:20 a.m., at least one of the battleships and cruisers would have charged at full speed towards Oahu, with the ground-invasion troop transport and supply ships following in their wake as fast as they could behind a shield of destroyers.
The ‘Big Guns’, clearing the way, would have covered the 230-mile trip to Oahu and arrived at Pearl Harbor sometime in the afternoon of December 7, and could have begun bombardments of the harbor and airfields along with a supporting air raid from the Japanese carriers in order to finish off all of the ships in Pearl Harbor and the drydocks, and to suppress any remaining American air response.
An on-site command decision would have had to been made as to whether the troop transport ships would invade during the last light of December 7, risk a nighttime invasion under the light of a waning gibbous moon, or wait until first light on the morning of December 8. Whichever way, their objectives would have been to take the Harbor, dry docks, munitions and fuel stocks, and key airfields—Hickam, at the very least.
If the invasion was successful, all the rest of Oahu and the Hawaiian Islands could have been ignored as unimportant and left to starve into submission, with Pearl Harbor now the Japanese forward operating base. Midway Island could later have been taken at Japan's leisure or left to starve, with a different island built up as a Japanese ‘midway’ support base.
If the invasion and taking of Pearl Harbor failed on December 7/8, the destruction of the supply dumps and dry dock facilities (the aborted “Third Wave” bomber attack in the original Pearl Harbor battle plan) could have been accomplished by no later than midafternoon on December 8 as the final act of the mission before withdrawing; most easily through naval bombardment by the close-in battleship(s) and cruiser(s). Then, the main body of the task force would have abandoned the flaming wreckage of Oahu and headed northeast at full speed on their three-and-a-half-day trip to reinforce the San Diego and San Francisco assault groups, with submarines and destroyers guarding the rear.
As the Fortunes of War might have played out, this movement could actually have drawn U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier Task Force 12 (formed around USS Lexington (CV-2), at sea around 460 miles southeast of Midway Island that morning) and carrier Task Force 8 (formed around USS Enterprise (CV-6), returning to Pearl Harbor from Wake Island, and stalled by severe storm damage about 200 miles west of Oahu) into a Japanese submarine trap.
Indeed, had the Japanese included a larger contingent of destroyers along with the original Pearl Harbor assault force, or had included a larger number of submarines for that day, an expanding picket line around the Japanese assault force might very well have detected Task Force 8 fairly early on December 7, which could then have been pounced on by the full might of six first-line Japanese aircraft carriers. At the very least, our aircraft carrier Enterprise could have been sent to the bottom. Bagging the escorts would have been icing on the cake, with the scraps cleaned up by the destroyers and subs.
Upon hearing “Tora Tora Tora” broadcast from the Pearl Harbor strike fleet around 8 a.m. on the morning of December 7, the dozens of pre-positioned Japanese submarines stationed on our West Coast would have begun immediate torpedo attacks on all American ships in order to shut down access to our West Coast ports and naval bases (quite possibly nailing the carrier Saratoga (CV-3) that was nearing San Diego on the afternoon of December 7 after a Bremerton shipyard overhaul), and to clear the corridor from Midway to Oahu, with special emphasis on finding and sinking our aircraft carriers still at sea. Bagging any capital escort vessels would have been a big plus.
A large contingent of Japanese destroyers would have been posted around Hawaii to screen against American submarines and provide picket intelligence against any possible American counterattack, the remainder providing close-in anti-submarine protection for the carriers and gunnery support for the harbor invasion force.
“Tora Tora Tora” would have triggered all four of the carefully pre-positioned Japanese reserve battle groups out in the Pacific to charge east at full speed, timed in order to arrive at the American West Coast under cover of darkness so as to begin mine laying and naval artillery bombardments of their West Coast targets on the night of December 7 or in the predawn hours of December 8. Aerial attacks on the strategic San Diego and San Francisco Bay area targets by the four remaining carriers in the Japanese arsenal would have begun at first light on the 8th, with the surface forces pulling out of range of any American defensive artillery fire during the day—only to return the following nights to continue the shelling.
A word on attacking the Bremerton Naval Shipyard near Seattle, Washington would be appropriate at this point. Unlike all the other strategic targets to be hit on America's West Coast starting on the night of December 7/8, that were easily within range of naval artillery from the sea, Bremerton's inland location would have put it beyond the reach of naval gunfire from the coast. Since the Bremerton shipyard was basically a defenseless static target, not a strategically active naval base like Pearl Harbor or San Diego, the Japanese would have had two options to destroy Bremerton. First would be to simply wait until all the other strategic targets were destroyed, then send a carrier task force north to do ‘mop up’ work on Bremerton and then head home to Japan. If the Japanese wanted to attack Bremerton on the night of December 7/8 for maximum shock effect, they certainly had the naval force to do that.
I do not believe that the Japanese would have wanted to expend the use of one of their four remaining aircraft carriers for the purpose of hitting Bremerton; that carrier being much more needed for the San Francisco or San Diego attacks until the first-line carriers arrived around three and a half days later after the Pearl Harbor operation. From the suicidally fanatical point of view of the Imperial Japanese Navy, the easiest and most obvious plan to destroy Bremerton on the night of December 7/8 would have been to take their oldest seaworthy and functional battleship, with maybe one or two of their oldest cruisers, all manned with skeleton crews of volunteer Samurai warriors, and sent them on a Kamikaze mission into Puget Sound. Including a couple of oceangoing tugboats and minelayers for this party would have been nice.
As best as possible, sail into Puget Sound along with the flooding tide under the darkling silver light of a waning gibbous moon, use the tugboats to help navigate the narrows to get within artillery range of Bremerton—even at the risk of grounding the ships—launch a spotter plane for fire control and then blaze away. After giving Bremerton a thorough shellacking, if they could get turned around and sail out with the ebbing tide, then great! After firing a few salvos on the Port of Seattle as a parting gift, they could make good their getaway out of Puget Sound while leaving naval mines in their wake, and then head south to join the festivities down at San Francisco. If any ship got totally grounded, then light off its munitions and powder magazines and go out with a bang. Glory to the Emperor! Banzai!! The destruction of the Bremerton Naval Shipyard (plus the battleship Colorado, drydocked there that night for overhaul), along with the general terror induced by such a brazen penetration into American territory, would have been well worth any sacrifice of warriors and ship(s).
Tightening the Noose
Two things would now be happening very close together. The initial attack on Pearl Harbor and the West Coast would have resulted in America declaring war on Japan the very next day. Soon thereafter Hitler and Mussolini would have declared war on America, as happened in actual history on December 11. Bear in mind that Hitler and Mussolini were actually not under compelling treaty obligation to aid Japan in a fight that Japan itself started and could very properly have ‘stood back’ from that fight thereby keeping America out of Europe—at least for the moment.
However, in this particular counterfactual history the Nazis would have had a very large fleet of U-boats available for immediate use. As William L. Shirer pointed out in his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (along with Adm. Dönitz in his book), in actual history the size of the German U-boat fleet even in late 1941 was still so stunted from low construction rates, shipyard repairs and North Atlantic battle losses, that Adm. Dönitz had only enough submarines to attack the entire East Coast of the United States with just six U-boats. In historical reality, Nazi U-boat action did not get fully underway off the American East Coast until early 1942.
In this counterfactual history the Germans could easily and immediately have put sixty or a hundred U-boats directly off our entire East Coast from Newfoundland to the Bahamas, with wolfpacks infesting the rest of a Nazi-controlled North Atlantic. Also remember that Great Britain was neutralized or occupied back in mid-to-late 1940, with the RAF Bomber Command grounded and the Royal Navy either destroyed or driven out. By December 1941 the battleship Bismarck (and possibly Tirpitz) would have been fully functional, with suitable escort and support vessels at the ready. One or both could have set sail along with the U-boat armada as fully formed battle groups into totally friendly North Atlantic waters with no fear of British interference. Also, if the Regia Marina was spared the destruction of an Operation Judgement in 1940, the Italian Navy also could have been moving west across the Atlantic out of a totally Axis-secured Mediterranean Sea.
Indeed, had the Japanese coordinated their operation with Der Fuehrer and Il Duce in advance, the full force of the Kriegsmarine (and perhaps the Italian Navy) could have been secretly moving west across the Atlantic in early December 1941 even as Japanese forces were silently heading east across the Pacific, and the German/Italian declarations of war could have been coincident with the Japanese declaration on December 7, 1941.
A gutsy move by the Nazis would have been a simultaneous surprise attack by both battleship groups on East Coast targets on the night of December 7 or the predawn hours of December 8. One battleship group making a leisurely swing through the NY/NJ Bight for an all-guns barrage on New York City and Bayonne, NJ area targets, the other pulling a slow loop into the Chesapeake Bay with the battleship main batteries shelling the Norfolk Naval Station (possibly bagging the carriers Yorktown (CV-5) and Hornet (CV-8), at port there that night), the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, and the Newport News yard (possibly nailing the carriers Essex, Yorktown (CV-10), and Intrepid; all under construction), with the escort cruisers' main guns hitting the defensive shore batteries and any other targets of opportunity for maximum effect. A quick naval artillery attack on His Majesty's Dockyard in Bermuda by the Italian Navy would have added to the terror of the night.
Laying naval mines at the harbor entrances as they left and then hightailing it into the darkness of the open Atlantic to elude American aircraft counterattacks in the morning, any pursuit of the Nazi assault groups by American/British surface forces would have been through thick minefields, and then right into the jaws of hungry U-boat wolfpacks guarding the rear. As with Japanese submarines in the Pacific, only the Fortunes of War would decide if Nazi U-boats could have found and nailed the aircraft carriers Ranger (CV-4, returning to Norfolk from the Caribbean that day) and Wasp (CV-7, at port in Bermuda and therefore possibly exposed to Italian naval gunfire in addition to the U-boat threat).
I now take a brief pause from the main counterfactual to consider a speculative amusement. Many times over the years I have read articles that pitted the German battleship Bismarck against the USS Iowa in a fantasy death fight. Of course the Iowa always wins, being the newer, bigger, and clearly superior vessel. However, on this very special December night described above, the Bismarck could have actually “sunk” the Iowa——in its construction berth at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. But I digress…
The Germans have delivered terror and destruction on our East Coast, and the U-boats/battleship groups have shut down all shipping and Allied naval operations in the Atlantic. Western Europe and North Africa would have been totally secure from invasion, and Hitler would have had his Fortress Europe. Meanwhile, back at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese on-site commander would have been evaluating the effects of the attack. As above, if the ground invasion failed then the Japanese would have quickly finished the total destruction of Pearl Harbor and Oahu air bases by no later than the midafternoon of December 8, and then sailed away at full speed on their three-and-a-half-day trip to reinforce the West Coast assault groups.
On the other hand, assuming that the ground invasion was successful, then absolutely as soon as the ground situation on Oahu stabilized in the evening of December 7 or morning/early afternoon of December 8, the Japanese commander would have cut loose three or four of his six carriers and maybe one of the battleships and cruisers to head northeast at full speed to reinforce the San Diego and San Francisco assault groups, the remainder securing Oahu for Japanese use.
Submarines could very well have shut down the major ports and naval bases on the West Coast thereby leaving them as sitting ducks for attack by Japanese carriers, battleships, cruisers and minelayers. Only the Fortunes of War would decide if Japanese destroyers and submarines could have found and nailed our aircraft carriers still at sea. Even if they were spared immediate destruction, those carriers and any escort vessels would have been hunted animals on the run for their lives with virtually nowhere to go but the open ocean, food and fuel supplies dwindling day by day. Tick-tock, tick-tock…
After a week of continuous naval shelling, aerial bombardment, torpedo attacks and mine laying, the American East Coast is now totally shut down and neutralized by the Germans while Adm. Yamamoto would have seen the fulfillment of his personal goal with our West Coast shipyards, ports and military bases reduced to smoking ruins. Pearl Harbor/Hickam Airfield would either have been utterly destroyed or held firmly in Japan's grip, with maybe one, two, or even three of our Pacific Fleet aircraft carriers and their escorts sent to Davy Jones's Locker. With the American East Coast under direct Nazi attack, and the Panama Canal secured by Japanese submarines, there would be no reinforcement of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Sorry, Col. Doolittle, but your ride got sunk at Norfolk by the Nazis.
At this point the Japanese could safely have begun rotating the bulk of their forces back to Japan for refit and defense of the Home Islands while maintaining just enough presence on our West Coast to keep America's nose pressed firmly to the ground. The continued expansion and securing of the Empire could have resumed by the end of 1941, with maybe a plan to attack the eastern portion of Russia in the spring of 1942 so as to turn Operation Barbarossa into a two-front war in support of their Tripartite partner in Hitler's continuing death fight with Stalin and the Soviet Union. After all, the Japanese had a really big bone to pick with Russia over prior grievances. At this point, would the Axis have won the war?
Maybe.
All would depend on the iron will of Joseph Stalin in the U.S.S.R. to continue his lonely unaided fight against the Nazis (and maybe the Japanese), plus the fortitude and leadership of F.D.R., Churchill, and King George VI along with the resolve of America and Canada as a whole. Also, the Western Allies would not have stood alone. There would still have been the remaining British Commonwealth nations on our side even if Britain herself was neutralized. Almost certainly the British government and those surviving elements of His Imperial Majesty's Royal Navy and RAF along with every possible ground force would have evacuated to Canada and America in 1940, adding to Allied military force.
Neither the Germans nor the Japanese would have been able to invade America proper. Both would have been at the farthest end of their military reach. This would leave the vast majority of American and Canadian industry free to produce war materiel. Efforts to rebuild the military installations, ports and shipyard facilities on both coasts would immediately have begun, and the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean would have been available for American naval buildup because the increased distance and clear waters of these areas would have made U-boat and Nazi surface battle-force operations either too dangerous or out of reach.
So, to conclude this World War 2 counterfactual history I have Japan going ‘all-in’ with its attack, invasion, and occupation—or utter destruction—of Pearl Harbor, with sustained attacks on American West Coast naval, port, and shipyard assets. It would be ‘do or die’ for the Empire—no turning back and nothing held in reserve. Banzai!! I also leave America taking a direct pounding on both coasts, but still in a very real fighting position. However, this history also leaves Hitler and Mussolini in full control of the North Atlantic, Western and Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean Sea, North Africa, and the Middle East on into 1943. Hitler might have had a death fight going on with the Soviets, but that battle would be waged to the East.
Even an eventual ground victory by the Soviets in Western Europe would have left Nazi naval assets as the last to fall to Stalin, with the Kriegsmarine totally blocking the Soviet Navy from the North Atlantic while shutting down the American East Coast so as to prevent any Allied supplies or reinforcements from getting to the Soviet Union. The entire North Atlantic would have been Hitler's to the very end, with maybe a Nazi last stand on Britain itself. And that's making the huge assumption of a final Soviet victory over the Nazis in Western Europe.
Remember, in historical reality the Nazis tenaciously fought a three-front war against multiple enemies all the way into May 1945 before ultimate defeat at the Führerbunker. This counterfactual history barely makes it out of 1942, and Hitler would have been fighting only a single, isolated, unreinforced foe attacking from the East. The whole rest of the Reich would have been totally safe and secure thereby giving the Nazis and Fascists a tremendous ‘home court’ advantage in this fight.
The Japanese would also have been at the farthest reach of their punch. Maintaining pressure on our West Coast naval/shipyard/port assets would have stretched all the Japanese military and supply resources to the breaking point. Even so, by early 1942 the Axis would have backed America into a very tight corner. Almost certainly there would be (could be) no Doolittle Raid or Battle of Midway in a Japanese-dominated Pacific lacking U.S. Navy aircraft carriers, nor a suicidal Operation Torch Allied invasion attempt of North Africa across three thousand miles of a Nazi and Fascist controlled Atlantic in November 1942 to open up the Third Front of the war in Europe as it actually happened. America fighting its way out of this situation would have been a far more costly, dangerous, and difficult effort than in historical reality.
In actual history, America easily pushed out from totally undamaged and barely threatened East and West Coast ports and bases along with the still usable Pearl Harbor and Midway Island in the Pacific, plus the British Isles with its RAF Bomber Command and Royal Navy directly off the west coast of Europe to continue the Battle of the North Atlantic along with bombing raids on German targets, and to act as the staging ground for Allied forces to enable the Three Front War of actual history.
In this counterfactual history, America would have had to fight its way out of heavily damaged East and West Coast ports and bases into submarine and mine infested waters, with the unknown perils of Japanese aircraft carriers and German/Italian/Japanese battleship groups lurking in the distance, with the Far Ends of the oceans held firmly in enemy hands. What then? Who knows. But without a doubt, history would have played out radically different from actual reality.
Speculative Counterfactuals
Thus ends the formal part of the World War 2 counterfactual history. I am very confident in its validity and historical achievability. I now proceed to more speculative suggestions; speculative, but still within the realm of reasonable possibility. These begin during the period of late 1938 in a laboratory at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Nazi Germany. Two radiochemists, Drs. Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman, were conducting experiments with the objective of forming more massive isotopes of Uranium through neutron bombardment of pure Uranium test targets. They were dumbfounded when they detected traces of elements about half the atomic weight of Uranium in those targets.
Unable to account for the strange results, they were at a Decision Point: either confer with physicists within the Nazi scientific community or confer with outside expertise. They chose the latter——and unwittingly changed the course of history. In historical reality they conferred with a former colleague, the physicist Lise Meitner, a Jew who had fled Nazi Germany and was residing in Sweden. She, along with her physicist nephew Otto Frisch, determined what was actually happening with nuclear fission. However, rather than report their findings back to Hahn and Strassman, they went to press by publishing their results in January 1939, issue number 143 of the international science journal Nature. The race for the A-bomb was now an international race.
But reasonably, ‘what if’ Hahn and Strassman had done the easy and obvious thing of simply walking down the hall or picking up the phone to confer with immediately available Nazi scientific colleagues within the Institute? There was absolutely nothing preventing them from doing so. Almost certainly those colleagues would have figured out what was happening with Uranium fission, and also realized the tremendous possibility of a superweapon. A tight lid of secrecy would have been clamped on this discovery, with only the highest and most important players in the Nazi regime informed of the news. Plans could immediately have been formed in early 1939 to weaponize the discovery; the project given the highest priority by Hitler himself.
The importance of this would have ultimately depended on Hitler and his Naval High Command putting a proper emphasis on the submarine service so as to have had a large and growing number of U-boats available from the start of war in September 1939. Also, the correct play by Hitler and Göring during the Battle of Britain in 1940 to stick with the original battle plan so as to continue choking off shipping supplies with unrelenting U-boat wolfpack attacks and then grounding the RAF by bombing military installations, airfields, factories, fuel and supply depots thereby gaining mastery of the skies over England and neutralizing Great Britain in Germany's favor.
This would have secured Germany military victory in Western Europe, ended The Battle of the North Atlantic, and left the Nazi Uranprojekt A-bomb development program totally secret, safe, and unmolested. There would be no Operation Gunnerside commando raid on the heavy water facility in Norway nor Allied air attacks on the Peenemünde rocket research and manufacturing facility. The greatest danger to those facilities would have been the occasional bird droppings.
Continuing, with Britain's RAF Bomber Command neutralized in 1940 thereby leaving clear and friendly skies over the whole western Reich, German aircraft research, development and production would have been in high gear. Although counterfactual, it is entirely reasonable to suggest that even Hitler could have looked at his own planning maps and clearly recognized the tremendous distances—not to mention a major mountain range—involved with actually waging Operation Barbarossa to ultimate victory. It could very well have occurred to him, Göring, and top-ranking Luftwaffe officers during the planning phases of Barbarossa in 1940 that long-range heavy bombers would be needed to strike deep into Soviet territory. Their strategic blindness on this point was not a historical requirement.
Even a fantastic success with Barbarossa in 1941 would have left German ground forces west of the Ural Mountains. Once Stalin recovered his senses after the start of Barbarossa and realized his dire situation, he would have used ‘scorched earth’ tactics and pulled back towards the shield of the Ural Mountains—as he did in historical reality. This left a very large portion of Stalin's population, military, natural resources, and industrial facilities beyond the reach of Nazi air power as it actually existed in 1941 and 1942.
Beginning the design and mass production of long-range heavy bombers in 1940 (perhaps simply copying the British Lancaster), and the eventual development and mass production of truly perfected guided missiles from an unmolested Peenemünde, would have extended the reach of Nazi air power all the way into, and east of, the Urals. Now, by itself this would not have won the war for Germany on the Eastern Front but would have significantly hindered Stalin and his military response to Barbarossa in 1942 and beyond.
I now return to the question of German capital ships. With Britain neutralized and the Royal Navy almost certainly either destroyed or evacuated to Canada and the United States in 1940, the whole of Western Europe and the North Atlantic would have been Hitler's front yard. Nazi naval shipyards could have continued unhindered with work on Bismarck and Tirpitz. But what about at least one functional aircraft carrier? There was no fundamental reason why German naval engineers could not have solved all problems in the design and construction of such a ship.
Even if armed only with Stuka dive bombers, the addition of one or two Nazi aircraft carriers to the battleship strike groups would have added much greater ‘punch’ to the attacks suggested on New York City and the Chesapeake Bay area naval targets, especially an air attack on the Yorktown Naval Weapons/Munitions Station which would have been beyond the range of the battleship main batteries. This would have required the perfection of nighttime carrier air-ops, but the Germans were used to attacking by night. The benefits of terror and destruction would have far exceeded the difficulties, dangers, and costs.
With a likely multiyear head start on any possible Manhattan Project, Nazi development of the A-bomb would also have progressed secret and unhindered. Assuming that German progress with the Uranprojekt would have been similar to the American progress with the Manhattan Project, its achievement could have been as soon as early-to-mid 1942. The Nazis would have had to figure out how to deliver this massive device to American and/or Soviet targets at that time. Three possibilities come easily to mind: heavy bombers, dirigibles, and long-range guided missiles. Jet engine technology was still in its infancy at the start of Barbarossa, but as the British Lancaster and American B-29 showed, you don't need jet engines for a fully functional long-range heavy bomber capable of delivering an A-bomb.
A Hindenburg-class airship would have had the range and load carry capacity for an A-bomb, but its slow speed would have made it unusable against the Soviets. On the other hand, America had East Coast targets attackable by the dirigible. Such an attack would have required the scientists at Peenemünde to design radar signal homing missiles delivered by sub, ship, or plane in order to blind American air defenses against the nighttime approach of nuclear armed dirigibles coming in from the Atlantic.
One bomb dropped by parachute on the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the other dropped on the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard or the Newport News yard, both with time delay detonators to allow the dirigibles suitable distance before the blasts. The wide destruction from the explosions (extending from Brooklyn all the way into the lower east side of Manhattan Island) and resulting radioactive fallout would have utterly neutralized both areas, thereby dealing critical blows to American naval construction and repair capabilities. The general terror induced by these attacks might very well have brought America to the peace table in Hitler's favor in 1942, just as Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought the Japanese to their knees in surrender in 1945.
Delivery to Soviet targets would have required the Nazi equivalent of a B-29/Lancaster heavy bomber (with or without jet engines) and/or heavy lift ICBM-sized guided missiles from Peenemünde. Doable? Yes, with proper priority. Whatever the results of Operation Barbarossa, the need for either or both delivery methods would have become obvious to the Nazis for conventional as well as nuclear weapons in the protracted death fight with Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union.
Of course, this assumes that Stalin would not have ‘thrown in the towel’ after the nuclear attacks on America and cut a deal with Hitler to simply give up any claims to territory west of the Urals so as to end the War with some portion of the Soviet Union left intact east of the Urals. Japan opening up a second front in eastern Siberia in the spring of 1942 might have hastened Stalin to the peace table even if nukes didn't seal the deal.
Thus ends the speculative counterfactuals. I really have nothing additional to suggest for the Japanese. This author does not believe that successfully completing the destruction of the supply dumps and dry dock facilities during the actual Pearl Harbor attack (the aborted Third Wave bomber mission) would have changed the ultimate outcome of the war in the Pacific. The almost shocking timidity and restraint of the Japanese in December 1941 meant that fully completing Adm. Yamamoto's actual Pearl Harbor battle plan would have been a grievous blow to America, but not a decisive blow.
Having totally misjudged the character, leadership, and resolve of America (which, as I have shown above, was not a historical requirement), the Japanese simply had no meaningful battle plan for strategic ‘follow through’ after the Pearl Harbor attack as it actually happened in historical reality. They simply hit Oahu a couple of times and then sailed away! Therefore, they really had only three possibilities beyond the eventual (I dare say, inevitable) crushing defeat of actually history: consolidate Empire but don't attack America, or consolidate Empire and then attack America, or attack on schedule as suggested above.
Banzai!!
The ultimate end effects of this World War 2 counterfactual history would have been Axis Triumphant! resulting in an ever-expanding Japanese Empire and a Nazi racial extermination program brought to a horrible Final Solution. The history of the Twentieth Century would have been radically changed to the present day.
“If you can read this sticker, thank a teacher. If it's written in English, thank a WW2 veteran.”
Bumper sticker.
This article, of necessity, was actually quite brief. I had to make my case as swiftly and directly as possible. Those readers with in-depth knowledge of World War 2 history will not be satified with that brevity. In this addendum I will address what I feel are the most important points.
I close with this final observation: the Allies did not win World War 2. The Axis lost it.
Copyright 2024 by Brian Bloedel, the author of this article. All rights reserved.