Could the Axis powers have won the war?

Did the entry of the US make an Axis victory more or less likely? Was there any point in 1942, or later, when the Japanese still might have won the war? What events during the war in the Pacific made the defeat of Japan more likely?

The question 'Could the Axis powers have won the war?' - is difficult to answer. Could the Axis powers have won if they had not committed this or that mistake? What if the Germans had captured Moscow in 1941, or the Japanese had sunk the three US aircraft carriers at Pearl Harbor? Certainly, events would have turned out differently, but it is unlikely that differences like these could have changed the outcome of the war.

In 1942 the Soviet Union still managed to produce 10,000 more aircraft than Germany and Germany had to share her aircraft between three fronts. By 1945, the Russians had five times as many men and tanks and seventeen times as many planes as the Germans. On the Western Front, the British and American forces had 20 tanks and 25 aircraft for every one of the Germans'.

Japan faced similar odds in the Pacific. The United States built 86,000 planes in 1943 and the Japanese just 17,000. In 1944 the US built 44 new aircraft carriers. The Japanese had three times as many troops dealing with the Chinese as she had fighting the Americans. Perhaps, the question should have asked not whether the Axis forces could have won the war, but why they held out as long as they did.

Neil Demarco: The era of the Second World War; Oxford University Press, 1993/2000, page 56