@WILD:
There was a lot of back stabbing going on in WWII. Hitler did it to Stalin, Franco backed out on Hitler, England walk out on France(although forced). I don’t see how you could hold any merit for any of the treaties or agreements of the time. They weren’t worth the paper they were written on. If Japan hadn’t bitten off more then they could chew with the US they could have attacked Russia’s back door at any time. I’m still not sure why they nailed Pearl. I guess they thought they could scare us into signing some type of agreement allowing them to do as they pleased in the Pacific as long as they left us alone. The Tripartite Pact also guaranteed that Germany and Italy would join in against the US (another deterrent aimed at keeping the US from declaring war). Boy that backfired, now Roosevelt had the ammo he needed.
When this game starts the US is not at war. Hitler felt he would be parading through Moscow by late fall of 1941, just as he did in Paris in the spring of 1940. If Hitler could have got Japan to attack Russia’s back door around the time of Barbarossa (a double back stabbing on Stalin) Hitler might have got his parade. There were open talks of Japan ending its nonaggression pact with Russia, because of the Tripartite Pact it had prior with Germany. Japan instead decided to go after the Euro colonies in the Pacific and invite the US into the war.
This game starts before all this. You as ruler of Japan can do what ever you want especially the first couple rounds. In the global game if you want to attack Siberia then as Tiger Woods would say “just do it!”
I would think that in the global game a Japanese attack on Russia would not bring the US into the war, just as attacking China won’t.
Think Japan attacked Pearl Harbor more out of a sense of regaining honor, the US had been playing rough with them diplomatically about the Chinese, and had cut off their oil supply they needed to run their war machine. Basically Japan saw no way out once they realized they had no way to obtain oil except for the euro colonies in Borneo and East Indies, which were technically under protection from the Brits and the US. I guess they thought they were knocking out two birds with one stone by sinking the American battleship fleet and going for broke in the Pacific.
Japan attacking Russia, well, either side wasn’t really interested in what Eastern Russia/Manchuria had to offer, though they had several skirmishes. Neither side wanted a worthless war over a bunch of crap land, but Russia and Japan had bad blood since WWI, so its feasible the skirmishes could have been pushed into a war. If, however, the Axis alliance had been a bit more together from the beginning and Germany had let Japan know about its designs on Russia, maybe they would have been in on Barbarossa. And you can do that in this game! Whether it will actually be worthwhile with all the new territories is probably another matter.
Seems like third round, anything goes! Though US prob going to be pretty boring to play until round 3. Guess the games will be a lot longer :( .