What if japan attacked soviet union

Pacific fleet, and they nearly succeeded. The ensuring war was costly. Years of fighting brought the U. The Japanese were vicious fighters, however, and every victory cost more time, material and lives. The last major battle, the fight for Okinawa, lasted almost three months and took more than , Japanese and American lives. The thought of invading Japan gave Truman and his advisors pause. The war had shown that the Japanese were fighting for the Emperor who convinced them that it was better to die than surrender.

Women and children had been taught how to kill with basic weapons. Japanese kamikaze pilots could turn planes into guided missiles. The cost of invasion, they knew, would be high. Upon becoming president, Truman learned of the Manhattan Project, a secret scientific effort to create an atomic bomb.

Both cities were leveled by the bombs, and shortly after the second bomb fell, Japan surrendered to the United States. The war was finally over. The Japanese attack on the U. Up until that point, Uncle Sam had been following a policy of isolationism , determined to stay neutral with regards to foreign wars. In the end, it took Imperial Japanese aircraft just one morning to convince U.

Congress to vote on a declaration of war, something Winston Churchill had been trying to get them to do for over two years. Read more about: Hitler Was a third wave planned at Pearl Harbor? Whilst Japan had hoped the surprise attack would demoralise American morale, the opposite was the case. But what if Japan had never attacked Pearl Harbor on that fateful day in December ?

How different might the world look today? Here are two possible scenarios…. Before Pearl Harbor, there was widespread public opposition to joining the war.

However, it could be argued that even without that catalytic moment, Japan and America were already on an unavoidable collision course. For decades before the war, Japanese imperial ambitions saw the nation expand its influence politically and militarily to gain access to vital raw materials. This had led the country into a direct conflict with China. Read more about: WW2 Imperial Japan. In response, the U. The emperor has been criticized for not taking a more forceful action to restrain his government, especially in light of his own known preference for peace, but Japanese emperors after the Meiji Restoration had "reigned but not ruled.

The doubts are strengthened in light of the difficulty the emperor had in forcing the military to accept surrender after the atomic bombings. The emperor's decision at that point to bring agreement among his advisers was an extraordinary event in Japanese history. The emperor-based ideology of Japan during World War II was a relatively new creation, dating from the efforts of Meiji oligarchs to unite the nation in response to the Western challenge.

Before the Meiji Restoration, the emperor wielded no political power and was viewed simply as a symbol of the Japanese culture. Westerners of that time knew him only as a shadowy figure somewhat like a pope. The people were not allowed to look at the emperor, or even to speak his name; patriotism had been raised to the unassailable level of sacredness.

It is sometimes difficult to comprehend the extreme sacrifices the Japanese made in the name of the emperor. This can perhaps best be viewed, however, as extreme patriotism — Japanese were taught to give their lives, if necessary, for their emperor.

But this was not entirely different from the Americans who gave their lives in the same war for their country and the "American" way. The kamikaze pilots, who were named for the "divine wind" kami kaze that destroyed the Mongol fleet in the thirteenth century and saved Japan from invasion, might be compared to the young Iranian soldiers fighting in suicide squadrons in the Iran-Iraq war of the s, or even to fanatical Shiites responsible for the truck bombing of the U.

Lebanese embassy in The Japanese were proud of their many accomplishments and resented racial slurs they met with in some Western nations. Their attempt to establish a statement of racial equality in the Covenant of the League of Nations was vetoed by the United States because of opposition in California and Great Britain Australian resistance.

The Japanese greatly resented this. The Japanese military was convinced of the willingness of its people to go to any sacrifice for their nation, and it was contemptuous of the "softness" of the U. The military's overconfidence in its own abilities and underestimation of the will of these other nations were thus rooted in its own misleading ethnic and racial stereotypes.

While Asians, the Japanese saw themselves as less representatives of Asia than Asia's champion. They sought to liberate Asian colonies from the Westerners, whom they disdained. But although the Japanese were initially welcomed in some Asian colonies by the indigenous populations whom they "liberated" from European domination, the arrogance and racial prejudice displayed by the Japanese military governments in these nations created great resentment.

This resentment is still evident in some Southeast Asian nations. The World at War: Discussion Questions. Today Japan and the United States are close allies. But between and , they fought a bitter and bloody war, which many people remember well today. Why did they fight this war?

The answer on the American side is simple: the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. The Americans were angry at the Japanese for their invasions of first Manchuria , then China , and later French Indochina After the Japanese moved into Indochina, President Roosevelt ordered a trade embargo on American scrap steel and oil, on which the Japanese military depended.

But the American people felt that Asia was far away, and a large majority of voters did not want to go to war to stop Japan. The surprise attack on the Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7, changed this, outraging the whole U.

Why did Japan attack the United States? This is a more complicated question. Japan knew the United States was economically and military powerful, but it was not afraid of any American attack on its islands. Japan did worry however, that the Americans might help the Chinese resist the Japanese invasion of their country.

When President Roosevelt stopped U.