What if: Japan/Italy China/Russia alignment reversal

[bintananth]

Hmm ...

The Germany/USSR/China Axis would have four of the five (or five if the USN is included) largest navies in the world arrayed against them so they aren't importing anything which can't be shipped by rail.

Germany's submarine campaign would go *splat* even faster than it did historically because the RN would be more than happy to show the Japanese, French, and Italians "here's how ASW is done". Once the US gets dragged in - and they eventually will get dragged in on the Allied side - you won't see the carrier spam which occured historically because the Axis in this what if don't have any and the "swarm of angry Fletchers" would be optimized for ASW instead of AA.

It would be land war the Axis can not win because there is absolutely no way they can come up with enough ships to even contemplate successfully invading either the British or Japanese isles.

France and/or Italy may fall. The others won't.

 

[ATP]

For rebutting my underestimation of pre-war Soviet industry that number works, but we shouldn't take that as representative of their military at the start of the war because if Russia and Germany were allied and Japan secure in its English and French and possibly Dutch allies as a hedge against the American naval threat I would expect Japan to enter the war nominally in the fall of 1939 and practically in spring of 1940 as part of the response to the invasion of Poland. This is only a couple months after Khalkin Gol so the situation favors Russia in the east if they don't get involved excessively in the west, which I don't think they would try because the logistics don't support would be difficult in spite of Germany having better transportation networks due to things like railroad gauge differences.

That said, in a just couple months Russia can't have digested the lesson of that battle that mobile warfare can work after the deep battle rejectionists won that internal power struggle and killed most of the people that were starting to figure out how to tank. It may be a race as to who figures out how to tank first. Note that if Japan is declaring war on Russia in 1939 and expects British and French support if the Americans try to attack them the effort that went into the Yamato class would presumably have gone into the army. Or possibly the IJN's new "inland marines" depending on how the IJN/IJA power plays out TTL. They're also likely getting Italian or British or French advisors to help them figure out how to tank, though the Russians may be getting German advisors.

French had nedium tank Char G prototype with 75mm gun and SAO40 AT gun,Japan could buy prototypes before France fall.