[mrick]

[ QUOTE ]
Soviets wouldn't have control of Japan, they never would have even fought. Cold War would be Japan + China + Southeast Asia and maybe India vs USSR + Occupied Europe vs US + UK and maybe France/Italy depending on if UK can D-Day by itself.

[/ QUOTE ]Your scenario has more holes than swiss cheese.

-- China and Japan would have NEVER found any kind of common ground. Imperial Japan regarded China as the equivalent of the Nazis' lebensraum to the East (Poland, Russia).

-- India was a British colony and would have remained so long after 1948, if the United States, as victorious Ally, had not insisted on "de-colonisation". (A term actually meaning "The-US-must-replace-Great-Britain".) The scenario of an India gaining independence after the war and then militarily opposing Great Britain is ludicrous.

-- Japan and the Soviet Union were no more "ideological enemies" than the USSR was an ideological enemy of western democracy. Don't you think that, at worst, Stalin would have found common ground with the Japanese to agree for a mutually accommodating peace? The communists have no qualms about tactical agreements with the Devil himself. They did that with Germany in WWI. They did it again with the Nazis in 1939.

-- "UK can D-Day by itself" ??? Are you seriously suggesting that Britain (OK, with the French...) could have successfully carried out the European landing on its own? This is ridiculous.

-- "Cold War would likely be weak US + powerful Japan vs powerful Soviets". This is even more ridiculous! Imperial Japan went to war precisely to oppose American threats to its perceived birthright for hegemony in Eastern Asia and the Pacific. And you're saying that a powerful Japan would somehow ally itself with the United States?? Never in a hundred years. The Soviet Union had no intentions or claims to Eastern Asia and the Pacific. Imperial Japan would have a natural ally in Moscow!