re: Japan vs Nazi Germany (hypothetical alternative history)

OK, I said I was going to post my thoughts on a war between Germany & Japan so here goes...

First, let's set the stage, (I'm going to go with the most realistic version here) Germany has forced Britain to sue for peace and has conquered the USSR. The Soviet Union has totally collapsed and Germany has unfettered access to the heartland of Asia. Japan has defeated the US in the Pacific and forced America to basically withdraw to it's western shoreline. Japan rules over a Pacific centered empire with huge holdings in China and Indochina.. And speaking of China, the war there for all intents and purposes has ended with the withdrawal of outside support for both the Nationalist Chinese and their communist rivals. India has been given independence from Britain and now is basically a vassal state of Japan. Australia is isolated and forced to accept at least a non-aggression pact with Japan.

The time frame of a German vs. Japanese war is sometime around 1943 - 1945. I use this window because for everything up to this point to have the slightest chance of happened, WWII would have had to have been won by Germany & Japan no later than mid-1942. After that point there would be a period of consolidation while both sides put their affairs in order in their newly acquired empires.

Now that we have that settled, we're left with where this war would be fought. Looking at a map of Asia, supposing it to be divided in the manner I described, I'd say the most likely flash-points would be (1) Manchuira (2) India or (3) Persia.

For the sake of arguments, lets say the Germans & Japs come to blows over the most likely of reasons, control of the middle eastern oil. So we have Japan vs. Germany in lets call it 1944 and the two sides will fight a war primarily in Persia.

First let's look at the ground forces of both armies. Here we find a huge difference between the two sides. For the Germans, their army (or as they call it the Heer) is built for a mobile combined arms 3 dimensional battlefield where fast moving armored columns are supported by ground attack aircraft and mobile artillery. Japan on the other hand has it's army very much organized and made primarily as a late WWI era force where there are little to no concentrated armored formations and armor is instead spread out to "support" the infantry which is primarily either footborne or at best truck mounted.

let's look at armored vehincels first. By 1944 the Germand main battle tank would be the Panther. (I'll let the picture tell the tale)

What you're looking at is well sloped, thick armor coupled with a devastating high velocity anti-tank gun.

The Jap main tank at the same time. This is the Type 3 Chi-Nu medium tank.

It's armor is thin and not very well sloped. That gun is a low velocity (680 FPS compared to 1120 FPS for the Panther) 75mm gun.

Long story short, German armored forces (which would vastly outnumber Jap armored formations to start with) would arse rape any Jap tanks that were stupid enough to try and stand and fight.

As for infantry, the Jap infantry is well trained and disciplined but they lack battlefield firepower as they are all armed with the sub-par pre-WWI era bolt action Arisaka rifle and the cumbersome Type 92 machine gun spread out thinly at the company level.



And even those formations lucky enough to have a magazine fed Type 96 LMG would still be equipped with a weapon totally outclassed by the German belt fed MG 42.


The German infantry, in addition to being almost totally mechanized, are by 1944 all equipped with at least semi-automatic and in many cases automatic rifles that all support the devastating MG42 which is liberally spread out at the squad level.



The bottom line is that a German infantry company will be able to completely dominate a similar or even larger Jap body when it comes to both maneuver and column of firepower on the battle field. Just as the German armored formations would dominate their Jap counterparts, the same would be true for the infantry.

The final aspect on the ground to look at is artillery, once again a picture is worth a thousand words...

German artillery...

That's a battery of German Hummel 150cm SP howitzers. Fully mobile, highly accurate, able to keep pace wit hte fast moving German armored columns.


That's the Jap Type 38 15cm howitzer. It was the primary Jap artillery piece at the time. As you can see, totally outclassed by it's German counterparts.

So As you can see the German ground forces would totally outclass their Jap adversaries in every conceivable manner. A meeting of these two armies would result in a complete rout of the Jap forces.

That's enough for now, next well look at air power...