Armored vehicles and formations of late World War II ( June 1945 - December 1946)
(Reprint alert: This was in my AH Newsletter in May 1999, so if you saw it there feel free to ignore it or feel old because it's already been ten years)
This essay covers only the period of active hostilities between a loose, alliance of Japan and the Soviet Union on the one hand, and the Western Allies on the other. It is true that Soviet and Japanese remnants fought on for several more years after the fall of the Japanese home islands in late 1946 and even after the Western capture of the Urals industrial areas in July 1948. The fighting after July 1948 was bitter, bloody, and sometimes involved armor, especially in the hands of the western allies. It was, however, primarily a war of small units and guerrilla actions. It also merged almost seamlessly with the wars between the various Soviet successor states.
While both the Soviets and the western allies designed innovative and effective tanks in 1947 and early 1948, the role of the tank changed with the advent of widespread battlefield use of atomic weapons, and the tanks of the atomic era deserve a separate treatment.
[FONT="]The military and political background:[/FONT]
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The question of why Stalin turned on the western allies in June of 1945 will probably never be answered with certainty. Captured Soviet archives give some clues, but one-man nature of Stalin’s rule makes any conclusion very difficult. Was it simply his way of taking advantage of a window of opportunity? Was his motivation fear of how the west would respond to the April 1945 discovery of Soviet spies in the US atomic weapons program? The US government kept that discovery quiet, but it did put a chill in Soviet/US relationships. Did he fear that the US intended to use the imminent success of that program to deny the Soviet Union the fruits of its victory in World War II? Did he feel betrayed and threatened by the fact that many Soviet POWs in allied hands were not being returned as quickly as promised? He did blame the west for the escape of renegade Soviet general Vlasov and many of his top aides through western lines to Switzerland. The escape of Vlasov and western reluctance to turn over Soviet POWs was the result of the general chill in the relationship, not part of a western plot to eventually use those men against Stalin. Did Stalin know that though? Was the Soviet attack simply the act of a man increasingly divorced from reality? All of those motivations are possible but unprovable. All we know for certain is that Stalin ordered the Red Army to head west in June 1945, and it headed west.
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The Soviets advanced into a partial vacuum in terms of military and political power. Germany was defeated, disarmed and occupied. Britain was militarily strong but financially a basket case, dependent on the American Lend-Lease money. France was frantically trying to rebuild its military and economic power. In June 1945, it was still a minor power though. It had a little over a dozen well-equipped divisions. The rest of its army consisted of half a million former resistance fighters—capable of fighting German stragglers but not well armed Soviet troops. Many of those ex-resistance fighters had to be treated as somewhat suspect after the Soviet attack anyway, due to their ties with the French communist party.
American power in Europe reached its zenith around April of 1945. Even before the final surrender of Germany, the US was already focusing more and more of its energies toward the defeat of Japan. Stalin’s surprise attack on the Western Allies in June 1945 drew some American power back into Europe, but the US never participated as whole-heartedly in the campaign to push back the Soviet Union as it had in the campaign against the Nazis. The sudden betrayal reawakened the voices of isolationism in the United States. Many Americans looked back to the end of World War I and concluded that once again the US had been duped into helping one morally equivalent side against another.
The attack also put a considerable number of Americans who admired the Soviet Union either as a social system or as a fighting ally in an awkward position. Many people in England and France suffered from that same ambivalence, but they had a more immediate stake in the outcome. As refugees flowed from Germany with stories of massacres, Western European support for the Soviet Union dwindled to a core of activists—dangerous but not fatal to the western war effort.
(Reprint alert: This was in my AH Newsletter in May 1999, so if you saw it there feel free to ignore it or feel old because it's already been ten years)
This essay covers only the period of active hostilities between a loose, alliance of Japan and the Soviet Union on the one hand, and the Western Allies on the other. It is true that Soviet and Japanese remnants fought on for several more years after the fall of the Japanese home islands in late 1946 and even after the Western capture of the Urals industrial areas in July 1948. The fighting after July 1948 was bitter, bloody, and sometimes involved armor, especially in the hands of the western allies. It was, however, primarily a war of small units and guerrilla actions. It also merged almost seamlessly with the wars between the various Soviet successor states.
While both the Soviets and the western allies designed innovative and effective tanks in 1947 and early 1948, the role of the tank changed with the advent of widespread battlefield use of atomic weapons, and the tanks of the atomic era deserve a separate treatment.
[FONT="]The military and political background:[/FONT]
[FONT="] [/FONT]
The question of why Stalin turned on the western allies in June of 1945 will probably never be answered with certainty. Captured Soviet archives give some clues, but one-man nature of Stalin’s rule makes any conclusion very difficult. Was it simply his way of taking advantage of a window of opportunity? Was his motivation fear of how the west would respond to the April 1945 discovery of Soviet spies in the US atomic weapons program? The US government kept that discovery quiet, but it did put a chill in Soviet/US relationships. Did he fear that the US intended to use the imminent success of that program to deny the Soviet Union the fruits of its victory in World War II? Did he feel betrayed and threatened by the fact that many Soviet POWs in allied hands were not being returned as quickly as promised? He did blame the west for the escape of renegade Soviet general Vlasov and many of his top aides through western lines to Switzerland. The escape of Vlasov and western reluctance to turn over Soviet POWs was the result of the general chill in the relationship, not part of a western plot to eventually use those men against Stalin. Did Stalin know that though? Was the Soviet attack simply the act of a man increasingly divorced from reality? All of those motivations are possible but unprovable. All we know for certain is that Stalin ordered the Red Army to head west in June 1945, and it headed west.
[FONT="] [/FONT]
The Soviets advanced into a partial vacuum in terms of military and political power. Germany was defeated, disarmed and occupied. Britain was militarily strong but financially a basket case, dependent on the American Lend-Lease money. France was frantically trying to rebuild its military and economic power. In June 1945, it was still a minor power though. It had a little over a dozen well-equipped divisions. The rest of its army consisted of half a million former resistance fighters—capable of fighting German stragglers but not well armed Soviet troops. Many of those ex-resistance fighters had to be treated as somewhat suspect after the Soviet attack anyway, due to their ties with the French communist party.
American power in Europe reached its zenith around April of 1945. Even before the final surrender of Germany, the US was already focusing more and more of its energies toward the defeat of Japan. Stalin’s surprise attack on the Western Allies in June 1945 drew some American power back into Europe, but the US never participated as whole-heartedly in the campaign to push back the Soviet Union as it had in the campaign against the Nazis. The sudden betrayal reawakened the voices of isolationism in the United States. Many Americans looked back to the end of World War I and concluded that once again the US had been duped into helping one morally equivalent side against another.
The attack also put a considerable number of Americans who admired the Soviet Union either as a social system or as a fighting ally in an awkward position. Many people in England and France suffered from that same ambivalence, but they had a more immediate stake in the outcome. As refugees flowed from Germany with stories of massacres, Western European support for the Soviet Union dwindled to a core of activists—dangerous but not fatal to the western war effort.