Operation unthinkable launched

Operation unthinkable launch

  • Soviet victory

    Votes: 32 17.8%
  • Western victory

    Votes: 78 43.3%
  • Negotiated peace

    Votes: 70 38.9%

  • Total voters
    180

ThePest179

Banned
ASB as fuck, nobody wanted to do this except Patton and a handful of German war criminals.

Assuming for the sake of the thread however, peace is likely negotiated after mountains of corpses on both sides (mostly Russian).
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
The Western Allies win. Why?

1. The Soviets were scrapping the bottom of the manpower bucket by the middle of 1945.

2. The end of Lend-Lease severely reduces the mobility of Soviet armies, as it was trucks, jeeps, locomotives, and railcars provided by Lend-Lease that allowed the Soviet forces to make such large-scale maneuvers as Operation Bagration.

3. The Americans have atomic bombs.

4. The British have Gurkhas.
 
1. The Soviets were scrapping the bottom of the manpower bucket by the middle of 1945.

Not quite, although they were getting there.

2. The end of Lend-Lease severely reduces the mobility of Soviet armies, as it was trucks, jeeps, locomotives, and railcars provided by Lend-Lease that allowed the Soviet forces to make such large-scale maneuvers as Operation Bagration.
In the longer term yes. The Soviets do have enough stocks and domestic industrial capability to support themselves for at least one campaign season though.

3. The Americans have atomic bombs.
Gotta beat down the Red Air Force down before it's safe enough to use those.

4. The British have Gurkhas.
Okay, I really got nothing for that. Probably the only saving grace for the Russians is it will take time for the Brits to pull them out of Burma and get them to Europe. :p
 
Churchill's fears were exactly that USSR at that point in time was numerical far beyond US/UK forces and had the capability to drive to the Channel.

So, an unprovoked attack on USSR might just unleash the avalanche instead.

Ivan
 
The Western Allies win. Why?

1. The Soviets were scrapping the bottom of the manpower bucket by the middle of 1945.

2. The end of Lend-Lease severely reduces the mobility of Soviet armies, as it was trucks, jeeps, locomotives, and railcars provided by Lend-Lease that allowed the Soviet forces to make such large-scale maneuvers as Operation Bagration.

3. The Americans have atomic bombs.

4. The British have Gurkhas.
On the short term though they are going to overrun continental Europe.
 
On the short term though they are going to overrun continental Europe.

Maybe push them out of Germany, but entirely out of Europe? I highly doubt that. Also, this is 1945 while western troop levels are at their peak in Europe. Pull this off in a couple years and then we'll talk.

EDIT: What does the OP mean by "victory" in either case? I voted for Western Victory, but I may be mistaken if "victory" means an unconditional surrender with American and British troops marching through Red Square, since there is little chance of that ever happening. We'd sooner see Red Square turned into a radioactive waste.
 
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Maybe push them out of Germany, but entirely out of Europe? I highly doubt that. Also, this is 1945 while western troop levels are at their peak in Europe. Pull this off in a couple years and then we'll talk.

EDIT: What does the OP mean by "victory" in either case? I voted for Western Victory, but I may be mistaken if "victory" means an unconditional surrender with American and British troops marching through Red Square, since there is little chance of that ever happening. We'd sooner see Red Square turned into a radioactive waste.
I think pushing the Soviets out of eastern Europe(back into their 1939 borders) totally would have been classified as a victory.
 
Several of the prerequisites taken for granted were in fact impossible to fulfill.

Most problematic were the public opinion. There were a big minority of communists or pro-communists in Italy and France. And a significant part of them were ready to start a civil war in support of Stalin's USSR.
 
The Soviets outnumbered the Allies 10:1 in manpower in Europe. Its not going to be an easy fight for either side as the Soviets were pushing their limits. But if they would go on the defense early they will dlay for enough time to come up with some pretty nifty tactics.

It will be settled by peace, no win for either side. Europe would be more devastated than it already was though, so in reality both parties loose. But that wasn't an option in the poll.
 
The Soviets outnumbered the Allies 10:1 in manpower in Europe. Its not going to be an easy fight for either side as the Soviets were pushing their limits. But if they would go on the defense early they will dlay for enough time to come up with some pretty nifty tactics.

It will be settled by peace, no win for either side. Europe would be more devastated than it already was though, so in reality both parties loose. But that wasn't an option in the poll.
This.The Soviets can push the allies out of the Continent totally in short term and it will be D-day again.
 
Well, most obviously Japan won't surrender and keep Manchuria.

The question is how well-signalled the whole thing is. If the Soviets still transfer massive armies into Siberia there'll be a small chance of surprise allowing a decent front in Europe, but then the WAllies had also been moving troops away after May.

You'd have to ratchet up tension very quickly to prevent that WA drawdown, and if you do that the Soviets are gonna notice.

However, given the chance, the WA can prolly match the Soviet numbers to quite a decent extent. As far as I know the Soviets had about 6 million under arms, to about 5.5 million for the WAllies in 1945. A difference, to be sure, but doesn't seem so insurmountable.

The real tricky thing is making the people enthusiastic, so it would HAVE to look like a Soviet attack... and in general, whoever ends up looking like the bad guy 'loses' (which prolly means losing control over a few puppets, it's gotta look really evil for either side's population to be willing to fight to the Urals/Channel).
 
The Soviets outnumbered the Allies 10:1 in manpower in Europe. Its not going to be an easy fight for either side as the Soviets were pushing their limits. But if they would go on the defense early they will dlay for enough time to come up with some pretty nifty tactics.

It will be settled by peace, no win for either side. Europe would be more devastated than it already was though, so in reality both parties loose. But that wasn't an option in the poll.

Gonna need a source for those figures.
 

Deleted member 1487

This.The Soviets can push the allies out of the Continent totally in short term and it will be D-day again.
With what logistics? They were at the end of their logistic tether in May 1945 and they faced two massive air forces that outnumbered them 2:1 not counting any Germans that are remobilized to fight. Even in 1945 the LW was still capable of inflicting significant damage on the VVS, but not the RAF or USAAF, so in the air war the Soviets are at a massive disadvantage and will find their rail hubs and logistics well smashed by B-17s, -24s, 29s, and -36s, not of course counting the Mosquitos and Lancasters/Lincolns of the RAF. Plus P-47s, Typhoons, and various sundry fighter-bombers. And the Wallies have jets while the Soviets have none. Plus massive naval superiority that would have them, plus any German units that were willing, capable of dominating the Baltic and causing merry hell on the Soviet flanks and in Leningrad.

And the Soviets were fighting Ukrainian and anti-Soviet Belorussian resistance behind the lines, not to mention the Balts, Poles, and various other anti-Soviet groups. Plus let's not forget the barrier of the Rhein and the Maginot Line, recovering French resistance, all the millions of Germans that can be incentivized to fight the Soviets again, plus the Fascist allies of Germany that could be used against communists in Italy and other countries.
 
I think the real question is how the allies would divide up Russia.

Not.

IF, and it's a big if, either side fails absolutely, it will be through internal dissent. Russia, for example, could fall apart - but it won't be divided between the Allies, and if the WAllies succumb to internal dissent the SU will still be unable to dominate the whole world alone. Puppet states stop working when individual puppets are near as powerful as you are.
 

Lateknight

Banned
Not.

IF, and it's a big if, either side fails absolutely, it will be through internal dissent. Russia, for example, could fall apart - but it won't be divided between the Allies, and if the WAllies succumb to internal dissent the SU will still be unable to dominate the whole world alone. Puppet states stop working when individual puppets are near as powerful as you are.

I meant puppet states Like west Germany or south Vietnam on a grand scale.
 
so in the air war the Soviets are at a massive disadvantage and will find their rail hubs and logistics well smashed by B-17s, -24s, 29s, and -36s, not of course counting the Mosquitos and Lancasters/Lincolns of the RAF. Plus P-47s, Typhoons, and various sundry fighter-bombers. And the Wallies have jets while the Soviets have none. Plus massive naval superiority that would have them, plus any German units that were willing, capable of dominating the Baltic and causing merry hell on the Soviet flanks and in Leningrad.

*Ahem*

Mainly an advantage if the war last a long-time. Air-power needs time and room to work, which the WAllies simply don't have in Unthinkable. Beating down the VVS to a point where the WAllies can claim air superiority is a process that will take the WAllies roughly a year... but given the political situation they don't have a year.

It's a rough estimate based on how long it took the WAllies to break the Luftwaffe. Allied air power in Normandy in 1944 pinned the Germans down, but it did so at the end of a long campaign spanning years to pound German industry, cripple their transportation networks, and destroy their air force.

Here, both sides would start with vast air forces. There would have been no long campaign before the land war in which the air forces could slowly soften up the defenses, and whittle away the threat - it would have been an immediate dive into a colossal air battle. By the time WAllies had managed to win this, if it won this, the ground war might well be over.

It's also the best case estimate for the WAllies... worse case is two years.

Oh, the WAllies will be able to get some of their strikes in. So will the VVS. The nature of air parity is that neither side has the advantage, not that both sides are unable to conduct air strikes.

Of course there is the naval advantage, but how are you going to exploit said naval advantage?

As for Germans "Dominating the Baltics and causing merry hell on soviet flanks and in leningrad" yeah, because the people who have been brutalised by the Nazi's would really like the idea of having them back :rolleyes:
 

Deleted member 1487

*Ahem*

Of course there is the naval advantage, but how are you going to exploit said naval advantage?

As for Germans "Dominating the Baltics and causing merry hell on soviet flanks and in leningrad" yeah, because the people who have been brutalised by the Nazi's would really like the idea of having them back :rolleyes:
So? He's got an opinion I disagree with. I didn't say the Germans would work on the Soviet flank, it would be the allies and whatever Germans they opted to use. Still the Baltic people were a hell of a lot more fond of the Germans than the Soviets, considering how many Baltic people fought in the German army or helped them in other capacities and fought on after the war in the forests.

As to 'nuker's point about it taking 1 year to break the LW, the USAAF was at the peak of its skill and power in 1945, a peak that was higher than the period leading up to Normandy and also included technology and equipment that wasn't available to the USAAF in January 1944. Meanwhile the Soviets were still struggling to defeat the LW even in 1944-45 despite a massive numerical inferiority. That was partly due to doctrine, as they were kept closely tied to fronts instead of being able to operate independently, which would be a massive problem for them if they faced Wallied air units. Nuker is just wrong to claim it would take two years, because IOTL the Allies had the massive handicap of having to fly from off the continent to even get to the areas where the LW would have to chose to give battle, but in July 1945 they had bases and supply hubs right in Germany and the nearby Lowlands. They had landed in Norway and Denmark and were far closer to the front line and were thus able to fly multiple sortees a day as a result, unlike the period up to Normandy. But also look at things like Operation Starvation and know that the Wallies had learned a lot from 1942-45 from fighting the LW, so they knew how to do the job more effectively.

They had a better doctrine, better technology, far more well trained pilots, more than twice as many aircraft, plus of course the potential to draw on Germans if needed. Not only that but the VVS is not doctrinally set up to fight an independent air arm, its an army support force, with the PVO set up to defend against bombing of rear areas; the PVO though was not present in Germany in 1945 or even Poland for that matter, they were still in Russia proper. The RAF could operate accurately at night against a totally undefended night air space due to the lack of Soviet night fighters in Central Europe and was far less sophisticated than the Luftwaffe at night defense. USAAF would not face a force capable of dealing with it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinkel_He_177#Operational_history
During operations on the Eastern Front in early 1944, often carried out in daylight at about 6,000 m (19,690 ft) or higher, losses were relatively light. The Soviet Air Force, equipped mainly for low-level interception and ground-attack roles, was able to do little to hinder the high-flying bombers.
US and RAF fighter-bombers and well escorted medium bombers could chew up Soviet armored columns and their supply columns with ease, espeically given how reliant they were at this point on truck borne supply, as their rail lines were still attenuated both due to the rapid advance at the end of the war into a much wider front than the Wallies had to deal with and anti-Soviet partisans and left over German units not yet scooped up in the rear areas. Advancing to the Rhein without any air attacks is going to be impossible for the Soviet in July 1945 due to their logistical issues and huge force supply needs, but when you add in Wallied air attacks which the Soviets were not set up to counter then they will have massive issues just staying in place in Central Europe and the Balkans.

http://www.angelfire.com/ct/ww2europe/stats.html
Aircraft Available In Europe
Date British US Soviet
December 1944 14,500 12,200 15,800
By 1945 there were over 20,000 USAAF aircraft in Europe or North Africa and over 40k on hand in USAAF inventory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Air_Forces#Growth.2C_aircraft


Campaign Allied
France 1940 4480
Britain 1940 31,000
Pre D-Day 1944 98,400
Post D-Day 1944 203,357
Note the massive growth of sortees after a foothold was taken on the continent after D-day vs. prior. With a place in Central Europe in 1945 the Wallies can generate huge sortees from all over Western, Northern, Southern, and Central Europe, land forces in the Baltics or just use aircraft carriers to harass and bomb Soviet units there, hit Leningrad, interdict Soviet units in Northern Norway, etc. They majorly outnumber and out technology the Soviets in the air and in air defense, while having better doctrine, better training, better supply lines, more friendlies in the rear area, a former enemy that is willing to fight the Soviets for their country and available in the millions.
 
The entire allied strategy for the ETO was based on minimising losses.
Assuming the people who waited until there was a close to zero chance of losing before they dared to land in France to risk an operation that could leave them with as many casualties in a month as they had sustained in Europe in the last two years is like expecting Stalin to hold free elections and liberate all political prisoners to celebrate VE Day.

If Churchill really pushed for it Alanbrooke would call two doctors and have him committed to the Chelsea Asylum for the Politically insane.
 
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