[Rapscallion St Croix]

Once upon a time, I wrote a lengthy paper speculating on what would have occurred had Japan not attacked the US. In a nutshell........

The attack on Pearl Harbor accomplished what Churchill had hoped the Atlantic Charter would and drew the United States into the war in Europe. Had the Japanese not attacked, we might have remained neutral and who knows what direction history would have taken. With Russia's involvement, the Germans would probably have been defeated anyway. Post-war Europe without an American occupation presence could have lead to a Soviet expansion that encompassed all of Europe. Had Germany prevailed, an even more dire outcome can be imagined. So, yes, the attack on Dec 7, 1941 recharted the course of world history on a level par with any other human-caused secular event ever recorded.