1945 - Germans fight side-by-side with Allies to stem Red Army

[MarkA]

I would suggest the biggest stumbling block to a war between the eastern and western allies would be the troops and civilians of the democracies themselves. The Red Army were heros to the troops of the Western Allies. They held and then beat the German war machine while suffering horrendous casualities and civilian losses. On the homefront too Uncle Joe and the brave Russian people had fought Hitler while the US and Britain could build up enough strength to attack. Now, all of a sudden they were the real enemy?

The governments of the allies had been lying to their people since 1941? The aggression Germany showed against France was justified? That the brutal occupation of the conquered territories was ok? The Battle of Britain was a mistake? Hitler and the Germans were not that bad?

No US President would fundamentally change the overall strategy formulated for the global war effort. Germany first, total surrender and disarmament so that they were not a threat even if unconditional surrender was not raised. Then concentrate on the Pacific which was America's war. It was the Japanese who attacked Pearl Harbour after all.

To successfully attack, defeat and occupy Japan the Red Army was essential. The atomic bomb was a theoretical possibility which was not certain to work. Even the Los Alomos scientists could not guarantee it would work or how effective it would be.

Just about everyone thought the Red Army had earned the right to be the first to occupy Berlin. It was seen as an honour rather than as a strategic issue. Churchill certainly still thought in 1944 that Soviet withdrawl from Poland could be negotiated. If Truman had allowed Soviet input into the general settlement of western Europe including Italy, which did not mean cedeing territory but was purely symbolic, then some accomodation may have been possible.

 

[Paulo the Limey]

”At the same time the German army closes all concentration camps and begins (as much as possible) to nurse the victims back to health. They do this because they know the camps will make a settlement more difficult.”

This is humane it is also completely counter logical and unlikely. The most probable approach to ending the final solution in such a situation would be kill all the current camp residents. Then pull the camps down and bury the evidence not forgetting to kill the work force that does the work (Soviet prisoners?). By all mean play nice with the people left in the Ghettos and labour camps anyone that has not actually witnessed the solution.

I'm curious Tielhard. From previous posts you come across as someone who refuses to see anything but the communist point of view. Even so, I cannot see your reasoning that doing something far more likely to gain favour from the Western Allies at least (trying to help those in the concentration camps) is illogical.

 

[Dave Bender]

The Red Army were heros to the troops of the Western Allies.

I agree. This is the whole crux of my argument that FDR needs to be replaced with someone less pro Soviet. U.S. propaganda, under FDRs direction, created this image for the American public. A different president might well have pictured Stalin as simply a Russian version of Hitler.

 

[MarkA]

The Red Army were heros to the troops of the Western Allies.

I agree. This is the whole crux of my argument that FDR needs to be replaced with someone less pro Soviet. U.S. propaganda, under FDRs direction, created this image for the American public. A different president might well have pictured Stalin as simply a Russian version of Hitler.

Yes but how then would you get US troops fighting the Germans at all if they were all tarred with the same brush? I don't think Truman or any other likely President would harm the war effort and prejudice European liberation by painting the Soviets as bad guys. Even that violently anti-Bolshevik aristocrat Churchill said he would deal with the devil himself to beat Hitler.

By the time American troops are in Europe and fighting the Germans it is too late, in my opinion, to turn the direction of the war on its head. And my argument that the Red Army was seen as essential for victory against Japan still stands.

 

[wkwillis]

If Roosevelt is not in office in 1940, then the US is not invading Europe in 1944 because our base was Britain and Britain is a German ally without Roosevelt to back up Churchill. It was very close whether we gave them any aid at all even with Roosevelt in office.

 

[Raymann]

The Soviets were not viewed as the "heroes" some of you portray, at least not to that extent. I've spoken to many veterens of the war and I'm, like I'm sure many of you are, a grandson of one. Whenever I got around to talking about the Soviets it was more of a 'this...but' conversation. No one forgot they were communists and although the Cold War reenforced that, the general feeling was 'the enemy of my enemy..."

There are two things to remember here. One is that the people running this war were involved in the last one where the communists were seen as betraying the allies against Germany. Two, is that people have a hard time perciving the deaths of that many people, at least in America. One, two deaths we understand; 100,000 we can't. What I'm saying was the impact of Soviet battle deaths were not large on the American mindset.

I propose, that even with Roosevelt in office, the US could still end up at war with Russia although it would take either a severe miscalculation by Stalin or something tapping into his paronia making his decisions less then rational. As it's been pointed out, it does require to be dead, the earlier the better.

Worse case though, say for instance Hitler is taken out in 1944, the July 20th Plot succedes for instance. This is after D-Day and the calls for an unconditional surrender. Italy is gone and soon Poland will be done for. Erwin Rommel takes over or better yet, Gunther von Kluge who spent the war fighting the Soviets. The military then makes a simple statment to the allies, probably the British, we will surrender unconditionally but not to the communists (say they also send this to American military commanders in France, especially Patton). The British want to see what the Americas think so they talk to Eisenhower who talks to Roosevelt who talks to Stalin. By the time 'NO' gets back to France, the entire army knows of the Germans offer and already see how German troops are pulling back independently of the answer.

The Germans assumed the worse case here and acted on it. You can't stop them from surrendering and troops on either side won't fight unless they have to. Patton raises an uproar to the effect that Germany was beaten and we can also keep the communists out of Germany. Churchill also made similar statement (in function, not form) and even pubically stated that he would advance his troops as far as he can; despite Casablanca and Roosevelt wanting the Soviets to have a sector of Germany. Roosevelt needs time to think but the war turns too fluid for him, by november Patton and Montgomery were on the outskirts of Berlin and Bradley was chillin in Vienna. Stalin is pissed but Roosevelt has his hands tied by Churchill, his generals, and the American public who care enough about the communists enough not to let them have Europe since we aren't losing that many troops taking it.

von Kluge meets with Eisenhower on Christmas day and formally surrenders Germany to the Allies. He agree to disarm the military, bring the Kriegsmarine back to port (they stayed in the Baltic), and hand over the Nazi leadership; he also makes it clear that he will surrender to the Soviets but that the troops on the Eastern Front will only lay down their arms when Western allies go to Poland to get them.

By this time Roosevelt is entirely sucked into the position of supporting the advance, saying no simply isn't an option so he accepts the unconsitional surrender he's been calling for. Yalta dosen't happen but Stalin demands that he get his occupation zone but there is no way Roosevelt can hand over all that land that the allies 'conquered' over to the communists, and Churchill won't budge anyway and is spreading his armies out over Central and Eastern Europe to commit the British to this (Germany's allies seen the writing on the wall and did the same).

Stalin also sees this and states he will not stop his army until it reaches Berlin. Due to most all of Germany's troops being in the east, the Red Army is only on the outskirts of Warsaw (01/45)

Patton reaches the German lines and accepts their surrender, but not their weapons. He does put American units near German ones and orders that if any Soviet units come near, they meet either the British or Americans first. Stalin is conflicted, he belives that the Allies have been conspiring with the Nazi's or they are just bluffing and will pull back, either way he advances. Soviet troops have their orders and would rather attack the allies then violate them so soon enough we have a war on our hands.

The allies soon get a taste of what the Germans were going through and soon ask for their unoffical assistance. A major offensive by the Red Army takes Warsaw and kill over 8,000 American troops. The Allies soon begin asking for offical German help.

When its seen the Soviets were setting up a communist government with sham elections in their part of Poland, they demand all of Poland be free. In August, a nuclear bomb is dropped on Hiroshima and another on the Soviet lines outside of Danzig. With Germany compleatly conqured by the allies and with the devistation they have wrecked on Japan, Japan unconditionally surrenders as another bomb isn't needed. Stalin knows more about the atomic program then the allies know however and knows they can't hit him again for a while so he doesn't surrender.

Japan attemps to play a 'germany' and offer to attack the soviets but it was obvious they had nothing to gain and nothing to offer. America takes all of Korea and Marines (who are now very good at this) take Vladivostok and soon most of Primorsky Krai (MacAuthur is running this). Turman is also planning an invasion from Alaska and the Soviets don't have the ability to get an army up there.

Another few months with no movment on the Eastern Front and Americans running rampet in Siberia, Stalin either has to kick the bucket, or keep fighting and get assianated or nuked when America has some more bombs ready.

 

[Raymann]

damn I didn't mean to type so much

 

[The Sandman]

I just don't see us doing that well in Siberia, even under these circumstances. I also believe, however, that Stalin would probably have attempted to avoid war at all costs by this point, due to the fact that the Soviets were still utterly dependent on Lend-Lease for a lot of their logistical details, and due to the fact that the Soviets had run out of manpower. Once the armies they had in Europe were expended, their would be no fresh troops for some time, whereas the US could potententially have mobilized as many new divisions as were necessary. I see any local fighting as being quickly stamped out by Stalin, a few low-level commanders being shot, and an attempt by the Soviets to gain in other areas; for instance, Finland would probably have S.S.R. tacked onto its name in this TL, and the Soviets would probably hold onto their sphere of influence in northern Persia. Other things like that.

 

[Tielhard]

I'm curious Tielhard. From previous posts you come across as someone who refuses to see anything but the communist point of view. Even so, I cannot see your reasoning that doing something far more likely to gain favour from the Western Allies at least (trying to help those in the concentration camps) is illogical.

Bit confused what does the second sentence, which is incidentally incorrect, have to do with your question?

In answer to the question itself, the answer is three fold.

a) Stopping the final solution may make the allies a bit happy BUT they were never that bothered about it in the first place (or to be very charitable were not aware of the true extent of the exercise).
b) Stopping the final solution will be going completely against the dominant social dynamic in Germany. As I say I suspect it would lead to civil war too many people are involved in the camps in some way.
c) Stopping the final solution automatically makes the people stopping it criminals because they obviously had to know about it in order to stop it.

Lastly and to be fair not of itself a reason for discontinuing the final solution is that stopping it is going to play havoc with industrial production.

 

[General_Paul]

Guys guys, we keep forgetting the fundamental stance here. Less than two years after the end of the war, we saw the soviets as our ENEMY AGAIN! 1947 is the accepted date for the start of the cold war, and that is less than two years after the end of the war. If it takes less than two years to deprogram the populous of the USA, England, and the western allies to the real threat of communism as they saw it, then I'm sure that a set of trumped up documents could easily drive the western populous into an uproar. Maybe something along the lines of telling them that the soviets wouldn't stop untill they occuiped all of western europe? Or maybe blame them for the deaths of thousands of dead jews. We all know western journalists, they'd do it...for teh right price.

 

[The Sandman]

Tielhard, I would have to disagree with that last statement. If they've just shut down some of the labor camps, maybe. The death camps, however, added absolutely nothing to Germany's industrial production, and required an extensive use of the German transportation infrastructure to keep them running. Almost until the end of the war, the Germans were giving the shipment of victims for the death camps priority over the shipment of troops and supplies for the war effort when they were allocating the usage of their rail network. Germany would have been in much better shape if that time and effort had gone into something that might have actually helped them win the war.

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

This is not true. The overwhelming mass of evidence is that Japan was far more moved by the Russian attack than by the bombings. The Japanese command, in bunkers in Tokyo, had no means to determine the efficacy of the bombs - the team sent to Hiroshima had not returned before Nagasaki, and there just wasn't time to process the effect of the new weapon befor the Emperor and PM engineered the surrender, but the motive was Soviet Entry, which made anything but unconditional surrender unattainable - the Japanese had approached the Soviets to broker a peace, so their offensive was a shock and the end of their last hope.

I don't know of any credible historians who think Stalin's attack on Manchuria was decisive factor in ending the war. I can suggest that any historian who considers the Manchurian attack decisive and Hiroshima/Nagasaki to be mere 'terror bombings' saw his academic credentials badly tarnished in 1989.

And the Japanese might well stop 20 divisions. In August 1945 Stalin threw 80 divisions against a force which had been weakened of supplies and key equipment for several more months. In either event, is it plausible Stalin would provoke a war with Japan and send much of his army out of reach when a German/Anglo/American alliance may face him?

The actual number of Germans involved in the death camps was well below 100,000. That's the total number over the entire 1933-1945 period. No civil war there. Especially since a good portion of them are gone in the first day or two. And industrial output from the death camps was irrelevant to the overall German production. It was loyal German workers who produced to the bitter end. They are not going on strike and thereby bringing about the very Soviet occupation the more ideological committed would dread.

Dresden? Why bring up a second-rate bombing, certainly less bloody and damaging than Hamburg(an example) and pretending it ranks along the Holocaust or the use of nuclear weapons(if you believe Japan was on the verge of surrender)?

 

[Norman]

I still believe that while the proposed 'alliance' is highly unlikely even with Hitler out of the picture, it is not impossible, particularly if the German governemnt takes immediate steps to seperate itself fromthe policies followed by the Nazis.

Consider the following:

The Western Allies, including their people, know that Stalin is not to be trusted and has eyes to the West. Remember Stalin cooperated with Hitler in the partition of Poland.

Many of the leaders of the Western Allies saw Stalin as the lesser of two evils in Europe. If Hitler is removed, he becomes the greater of one evil.

While there were well documented cases of attrocities, they were not well publicized. If Western journalists were to publicize Soviet attrocites, the peoples of the Western Allies woudl change their mind very quickly. (As has been pointed out, even in a world were the SU and the West stayed allies to the end of the war, within two years they were enemies.)

I believe that the West was and is highly conflicted with respect to its opinion of the WWII Germans. There is no doubt that even on this board there is some admiration for their armies, even while there is a great deal of condemnation for their leaders. This was certainly true in the 50's and was probably true in immediate aftermath of the war.

While France wouldn't agree, there was a feeling that France somehow got what it deserved.

In short, without Hitler and the Nazis, it is possible to construct a reasonable scenario in which the remnants of the German armies find themselves cooperating with the Western Victors.

 

[MerryPrankster]

I like Raymann's big scenario.

 

[Tielhard]

The Western Allies, including their people know that Stalin is not to be trusted and has eyes to the West. Remember Stalin cooperated with Hitler in the partition of Poland.

The bit in bold is not true for either Britain, France, Norway, Italy, the United Provinces or Palestine. Look how many Communist MPs there were immediately after the war.

However, if someone tells me that public opinion in the USA was different to Europe and gives some reasonable arguments to support the view I will not disagree as I have no idea of the general political outlook of that country immediately post WW2. I will note however that there were large elements of the population that supported the Soviet Union including but not limited to; hispanics, working blacks, ex and current IWW, non-Guild Unions, a majority of the intelligensia &c..

Thanks to Abdul Hadi Pasha on the support regarding the Japanese surrender

The underlined bit is simply not true and not supported by the evidence.

 

[Wozza]

The dropping of the atomic bomb is still a live debate. At the risk of falling into the motivation fallacy the political proclivities of many US academics towards condemning/justifying their own country makes the existing analysis very hard to judge.
I am not sure what "the overwhelming mass of evidence means", as far as I know we know very little indeed about Japanese decision making. Also it tells us little about how the US was meant to determine policy without hindsight - how were they to know that a declaration of war by the USSR was "enough."

The argument that it was dropped to impress the soviets rather than frighten the Japanese is of course contradictory - if it could not do the latter it is highly unlikely to have done the former.

I am not sure Stalin wanted to conquer the West, but if it was given to him he would have took it. There is a distinction here.

 

[Earling]

The argument that it was dropped to impress the soviets rather than frighten the Japanese is of course contradictory - if it could not do the latter it is highly unlikely to have done the former.

Thats not really true. Take Britain and Germany 1938. One of the arguements for Chamberlain's appeasement policies was that Britain had lost air parity and thus would be significantly threatened in the case of war from the air. As it turned out Britain was bombed but did it cause them to surrender? The same is later true of Germany who was in turn bombed and in all fairness in far greater strength.

People don't like going to war when the opposition has a weapon which appears uncounterable. This is not the same as saying people immediately surrender once the opposition reveals they have a weapon that is uncounterable.

I personally think the bombs were done to impress the soviets and to try and shock Japan to surrender. This was done in regard to the fact that the US was opposed to a China dominated by the USSR, which by extention would probably go on to dominate most of south-east asia.

 

[Hendryk]

While France wouldn't agree, there was a feeling that France somehow got what it deserved.

A feeling by whom? And why would it have been deserved?

More to the point, it's unlikely France would have gone along with a German alliance against the USSR in 1945 or a fortiori earlier. The Communist party was quite influential and even many non-Communists held the Soviet Union in high esteem; any suggestion that France ought to ally with the Nazis against the USSR would have led to unilateral neutrality at the very best and an actual takeover by the Communists at worst. No matter how dismissive one may be of the French military input, this would have enormously complicated the strategic situation.

 

[Dave Howery]

aren't the Bomb and the Soviet attack against Japan somewhat related? As I understood it, using the bomb against Japan had 2 goals: convincing Japan to surrender without a US invasion, and convincing Japan to surrender before the Soviets could invade. I read somewhere that the US did not want Russia to have an occupation zone in Japan. Considering the record of Japan vs. that of divided Germany, it all turned out for the better...

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

We know quite a bit about the Japanese decision making because the Japanese decision makers all said after the war that the Soviet invasion prompted them to surrender, not the bombings, the scale of which they were not aware of until later.

Besides, city flatened by atom bomb, city flattened by firebombing - the difference is? They had no ability to prevent either.

The dropping of the atomic bomb is still a live debate. At the risk of falling into the motivation fallacy the political proclivities of many US academics towards condemning/justifying their own country makes the existing analysis very hard to judge.
I am not sure what "the overwhelming mass of evidence means", as far as I know we know very little indeed about Japanese decision making. Also it tells us little about how the US was meant to determine policy without hindsight - how were they to know that a declaration of war by the USSR was "enough."

The argument that it was dropped to impress the soviets rather than frighten the Japanese is of course contradictory - if it could not do the latter it is highly unlikely to have done the former.

I am not sure Stalin wanted to conquer the West, but if it was given to him he would have took it. There is a distinction here.