Fortunately for the United States, the Japanese strategic plan for World War II was flawed in that the Japanese High Command decided to take on a sleeping giant in order to gain control of the Pacific basin, rather than attack the USSR. There was no way for the Japanese to beat the U.S., even with their alliance and the support of Italy and Germany. On the other hand, if the German grand strategy had been followed and carried out by Germany AND Japan, we could, very possibly, have lost the war, and today be speaking German on the East coast and Japanese on the West coast!
Enigma machineA lot of historic material exists to support various theories about how the Germans and the Japanese could have won World War II. What follows here is my take on this subject, based not only on standard history books, but on information gathered from formerly classified intelligence from U.S., German, and Soviet files, much of it published in excellent books. This treasure trove includes the released German files from Enigma deciphered (photo, left) and other captured materials, the Venona transcripts, the selectively released KGB files, and best and perhaps most authoritative of all â?? The Mitrokhin Archives (i.e., almost the complete files from the archives of the KGB's First Chief Directorate up to 1984). As a result of the information contained in the Mitrokhin Archives, hundreds of Soviet spies and traitors have been uncovered, some even prosecuted for their treachery many years after it occurred.â?¨â?¨ But even though we could read German and Japanese secret messages during World War II via SIGINT, and the German high command was infiltrated by Western (e.g., the Black Orchestra) and Soviet spies (including the Red Orchestra and the funkspiel radio broadcast), the Germans could still have won the war, but the Japanese got greedy and overconfident in their estimate that they could defeat the British and American forces in the Far East and did not cooperate with the German Grand Strategy.
