The mistake was, in part, Germany's. They talked Japan into the attack because the US was supplying Great Britain - they weren't counting on the fact that once the US Industrial Machine kicked into high gear that it could easily overwhelm everyone.
Playing devil's advocate, what Germany should have done instead was pressure the Japanese into invading Russia instead - they had bad history as it was. With Russia under attack from two fronts, Moscow would have caved like a house of cards. With Russia divvied up between Japan and Germany, the two countries would have been all-but-impossible to stop.
I'm pretty sure that, afterwards, Germany and Japan would have gone at it (lets face it, the two countries, at the time, were so egotistical that half the world would simply have not been enough). Japan would probably have won, hands-down because the German military forces were just that badly mismanaged.
BTW: I concur with the summarization by fictional character Marko Ramius in The Hunt For Red October: Halsey was a fool. He went haring off on a wild goose chase hoping to catch the Japanese battle ship Yamato and left only a destroyer squadron with an escort carrier to mind the shop. He's lucky it took a while for the Japanese to realize the Tin Cans were just that and to stop using the AP rounds.
Playing devil's advocate, what Germany should have done instead was pressure the Japanese into invading Russia instead - they had bad history as it was. With Russia under attack from two fronts, Moscow would have caved like a house of cards. With Russia divvied up between Japan and Germany, the two countries would have been all-but-impossible to stop.
I'm pretty sure that, afterwards, Germany and Japan would have gone at it (lets face it, the two countries, at the time, were so egotistical that half the world would simply have not been enough). Japan would probably have won, hands-down because the German military forces were just that badly mismanaged.
BTW: I concur with the summarization by fictional character Marko Ramius in The Hunt For Red October: Halsey was a fool. He went haring off on a wild goose chase hoping to catch the Japanese battle ship Yamato and left only a destroyer squadron with an escort carrier to mind the shop. He's lucky it took a while for the Japanese to realize the Tin Cans were just that and to stop using the AP rounds.