US WWII strategy with no European War...

luakel

So Pearl Harbor and all goes as in OTL, but Hitler decides not to attack the US just yet, at least not until Russia is dealt with. And everyone in the US is focused on Japan, FDR doesn't have enough support for war with Germany and decides to not even try for it. What will the US do with all those mechanized forces that fought in Europe in OTL (and the generals that commanded them), and will the shipping used in Torch, Husky, Overlord speed up the island-hopping at all?
 

Fire God

You mean a declaration of war?

I wonder if more troops concentrated on the western Pacific would mean a lesser drive to actually develop an atomic bomb and maybe an invasion of the home islands.

Otherwise, the Soviet drive to the west will be met with lesser resistance.
 

Dean_the_Young

It might proceed something like Harry Turtledove's Pearl harbor series, where while the US public forces FDR to focus on JP, he does all he can to aid the British and Soviets that doesn't short the Pacific Front. Look for massive arms shipments and "volunteers", and perhaps more focus on Africa with less focus on overlord.
 

Dave Howery

how much more could the US do in the Pacific? They already crammed in most of the fleet and Marines into that theater.... I don't think the naval units in the Atlantic could be moved to the Pacific completely, as the destoyers were needed for escort duty (War with Germany or no, it's hard to imagine FDR abandoning the convoys to Britain, and those had to be guarded against U-boats). The one thing I think might be improved is all those amphibious assault craft used in Europe being diverted to the Pacific (were most of those made in the US or in Britain).... this would allow more landing to happen simultaneously in the Pacific... although, again, we'd have to have more fleets to protect them... could the US expand the navy enough to do this?
 

Prinz Richard Eugen

Let's see now. US would not need the tanks and number of divisions needed for Europe. Less aircraft,too - but need for more longer ranges. The shift of resources to naval building would speed the road to Japan. I see the war ending 6-12 months earlier due to these factors. And no time for an atomic bomb. Without Germany as an enemy would we have even spent $2 billion to build such a weapon?
 

General_Paul

Prinz Richard Eugen said:
Let's see now. US would not need the tanks and number of divisions needed for Europe. Less aircraft,too - but need for more longer ranges. The shift of resources to naval building would speed the road to Japan. I see the war ending 6-12 months earlier due to these factors. And no time for an atomic bomb. Without Germany as an enemy would we have even spent $2 billion to build such a weapon?
Click to expand...

Actually, US paranoia about Nazi expansionism was at an all time high when the war started in Dec. '41 for the USA. Even without the Germans to worry about, the American people will still feel some sort of comorodary with the British people, and I would expect that the Manhattan Project would still go forward as OTL, with maybe a bit more cash diverted to them.

Remember, funding for the Manhattan Project was pretty much the leftovers of the funds allocated to the war effort. Whatever wasn't spent in that particular fiscal quarter, was either returned to the US economy via tax returns, funds used to support the war effort in the private sector, and anything else that wasn't going there, was allocated to the Manhattan Project. Then again, alot of those war allocation numbers are kind of hazy, especially for black projects during the war, so I may be wrong.

But at any case, Roosevelt had known of German intents to build a working atomic device since August 1939 with Einstein's letter to him informing him of the possibility to construct an atomic fission weapon and German efforts to do so.

I'd think that without the drain of the European Theatre's vast budget, spending on projects like the B-29, and the Manhattan Project would be stepped up and may be delivered ahead of schedule.
 
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