What If Japan Attacked The Soviet Union?

Watch next: "Every Significant Mongol Successor State; How The Mongols Fell in 1857"
#possiblehistory #Japan #soviets #sovietsiberia #ww2
What if, in an alternate WW2, Japan decided to invade Soviet Siberia instead of European controled Territory in Asia? How would the war itself have changed and - perhaps more importantly - how would the world after the war have looked.

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[possiblehistory]

Thank you for watching! If you enjoyed the video consider leaving a like and a comment, even just commenting something like "Hi" helps massively against the algorithm. For more weekly alternate history content consider subscribing!

[jorgeabud]

If Japan was to invade the Soviet Union, I don't see any reason for them to do it in mid 1941-2 winter, it would make much more sense to do it together with Germany

[christiandevey]

The Philippians would likely be one of the first colonies in the region to get independence because they were already scheduled for independence that got delayed by the Japanese attacks

[nicholasheidrich]

6:35 "Even with Japan being aware of the Japanese plans, " I'd be very worried if they weren't aware of their OWN plans.

[Iridescence]

An interesting variation here would be to assume that the isolationists somehow won out in the US and the US just stayed out of the war. Would the USSR and UK alone lose to Japan and Germany working closer together? I could see it ending up as at least a stalemate which would really change how the cold war would look.

[arthurbriand]

Would the European theater really look the same with less land-lease and Soviet divisions stuck in the East? Wouldn't the Allies have gotten farther into Europe before the Russians reached Germany?

[razakeldrukata]

Wht if the japanese avoided both the soviets and americans and instead declared for the allies in exchange for china, despite how bizzare that would be?

[leogazebo]

What if Aliens invade during 1985, would Reagan and Gorbachev went through their informal promise of helping one another? Lol 😂

[Cheerios]

Tysm! You actually show a map and explain what you think is the most likely scenario unlike other alt history channels which talk about random nonsense for 20 minutes and don’t give much useful information that answers the question of what would happen. I subscribed.

[echidnanatsuki]

Can you do a *"What If the 1848 Revolutions were a Success"* next?

[iMost]

"Japan invaded Siberia, 500k of their troops lost their life there. They yet to see 1st russian soldier"

[Mr.Septon]

I don't think Japan at the time gets enough credit for how much potential they had and squandered. Three main things to avoid at all costs, avoid getting the American's involved in anyway, so avoid touching the Philippines and whatever else is needed. Avoid conflict with the Soviet Union (unless it had honestly been a concerted effort by all three Axis members, which obviously was not happening), and the third is avoiding a large scale conflict with China proper. There were places and resources to grab without going the way that they did. Sure, smaller goal, but stay away from China and the Americans. Grabbing the Dutch East Indies alone should have been a sizable goal, especially once Germany struck west, rapidly topping European power after the other. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and when you're also blinded by a false sense of racial superiority, well, you're going to swing for the fence.

If Japan and the Germans had been working together from the beginning, which was never how they operated, then it would have been more useful to have Japan launch such a large scale invasion in the East forcing Stalin to send significant forces East, and then once focus shift East, then having Germany drive into the Soviet Union as hard as they can. Still was a long shot at best. The biggest weakness among the Axis powers, aside from just way overshooting their shot, was that they didn't work together for a much more unified goal. Each working in different directions, took what was already bad numbers and divided them even further.

[ThatOneBowserJrFan]

Good video, also here’s a video idea “what if Germany survived Endsieg?”

[nuralibolataev]

What if Russia fully settled the far east? The Russian population in Siberia is minuscule (only like 37 million) even tho it can easily sustain a much larger demographic.

[BudokaiMan-mrtw]

Actually the Japanese could easily update their tanks to heavy one's to fight in Siberia, Japan was not incapable of producing heavy tanks, because of the Japanese navy wanting to take Indonesia and Indonesia being covered in jungles the Japanese tanks they used in WW2 were built specifically to fight in those tight jungles, but because this is Russia were talking about and because they are going all in on the USSR invasion, it's clear the Japanese army would want to start building heavy tanks.

[rogerroger]

The Japanese government and how it effectively operated leading up to and during WW2 is fascinating. Like, the emperor was essentially a figure head. Then you had military leaders truly running the country. And most military governments would be just that, but Japan went even further and had the 2 factions in this military government between their Navy and Army. They were fighting each other as much as they were waging war. And it's honestly surprising how well they were able to do with that.

[sploofd]

Good video - a few critiques:
1 - The maps could to with some improvements, considering how much of the video is showing it ( Things like sloppily dome borders, anachronistic Aral Sea, little white bits you didn’t fill in, etc(
2 - The idea that the Soviets relied on transferred Siberian divisions is a popular myth ( most of the divisions were just transferred from other parts of the German front)

Otherwise really good stuff, I like the focus on realism and you definitely deserve more subs

[celdur]

You should do more research. The soviets never had less than 1.5 million soldiers in the border with Japan, thousands of plains and tanks too. They were terrified of being attacked by Japan.
Even in the worst time in the west, they never pulled troops back. Moscow was saved by central Asian troops.

[qazdr]

While I don't disagree with anything in particular, I do think the chance of the SU blundering Moscow in 41 or 42 are significantly higher than you imply.

[italiansandvich]

My idea was that if japan were to attack the soviets it would be a much closer date to when Germany started their invasion maybe even at the same time as their would be much more reason for both nations to be in contact with each other in this timeline. The Japanese army wanted this invasion well before they knew the German invasion was approaching so they wouldn't have had the mindset of waiting to see either. I still think that the axis would lose but the suprise factor of a two front war at the same time would definitely cause more damage at least in the opening stages of the war to the soviets