(01-16-2018 08:41 AM)miko33 Wrote:  Regardless of what Hitler did, the U.S. was going to be dragged into WW2 because of the Japanese. In particular with the Japanese, I'm surprised that they chose to go after the U.S. as opposed to focusing more on Russia and the vast natural resources there. I don't know enough about the petroleum industry in the USSR during the 30s into the 40s, so perhaps the issue was that their energy supply was grossly underdeveloped compared to the U.S. and that was why Japan took the gambit of attacking the U.S. the USSR is right on their doorstep, and the red army was pretty weak when Hitler invaded.

The Wehrmact was defeated by the Russian winter, without every getting to Siberia. Japan would have had to work its way all the way across Siberia before getting to anything that was worthwhile. There's no way they could have maintained the necessary logistics pipeline to support that kind of operation with the infrastructure available to them in Siberia.