Alternate Postwar World

Shimbo, the plan is obviously unworthy of consideration.

Even though: 1. They were there. 2. They were professional military officers. 3. They and their huge staffs made a thorough study of the situation?

This report was produced by the same British General Staff who were on the brink of defeating Germany, not hand wringing pacifists; if they say it can't be done then I'll take their word for it.

Specifically talking about Patton's idea of carrying on the war in 1945, 2-1- in armour and 4-1 in infantry says you lose, however you look at it. Declare peace, build the Wermacht back up, turn the USA over to a total war footing, and by 1950 maybe you could have a go, but by then it's impossible due to nukes.
 
First, to get a anti-comintern war let the Soviet Union become offensive. True, the French feared Germany more than the Soviets, but that would change imidiately if the Soviets seem to get Germany. So why not instead of introducing a right-wing conservative government in Germany introducing a Soviet Germany that wants to build up a communist union with the Soviets? In this case, the French would readily fight alongside Freikorps until Moscow, and so would the British and most people they liberate along their way.

Second, the Soviet Union would certainly loose a full scale war, even if they get Lend-and-Lease until 1945. The western Allies have a gigantic production advantage, which the Soviet Union never reached - and certainly wouldn't reach if the war goes on. Then, the western Allies can count on troops from every country they liberate. The Germans are defeated, true, but they would voluntarily fight on against the Red menace. So would hundrets of thousands of Poles, Czech, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Romanians, Ukrainians, Balts, RUSSIANS!, Japanese, Chinese, Koreans...
The advantage in numbers would soon be made up.
The Soviets would have a war on all fronts, no supplies from whereever, no nukes, inferior production, sooner or later inferior morale (after all, they lost 20 millions in fighting Germany back, now Germany comes again, but this time under the leadership of the US, Britain, France, Japan...), no nukes...
 
Second, the Soviet Union would certainly loose a full scale war, even if they get Lend-and-Lease until 1945.

Please explain how in 1945 the western allies could attack and prevail over an opponent who had twice as many tanks as they did and four times a much infantry. :confused:

The industrial POTENTIAL of the western allies may well be higher than the USSR's but the ACTUAL forces available in 1945 could not have attacked the Red Army with any hope of success, as the British General Staff recognised.

IMO no liberated people would be joining the anti-communist cause because far from the western allies liberating them, pretty soon the Red Army would be 'liberating' the rest of Western Europe's population.

IMO, to get in a position to successfully attack the Red Army in 1945 will require an earlier PoD. Perhaps Churchill and FDR decide in 1941 that the war really is a 'crusade for democracy' against ALL dictators and make no alliance with Stalin (renounce the alliance in Churchill's case). There is no soviet lend-lease and the Western Allies fight a separate war vs the Germans. Hence, the Eastern Front is much further East on D-Day. The bomb plot against Hitler succeeds, the Nazis are deposed and there is an armistice in the West shortly after D-Day, before the really heavy fighting starts. All the forces on the Western Front travel through Europe and take positions on the Eastern Front. By Spring 1945 they are ready to try and liberate the world from its other Mad Dictator.:)
 
Shimbo, you are endorsing a report whose fatal flaws are obvious to the rest of us. No matter how professional or thorough they allegedly were, if the slightest examination of the facts proves it worthless then it is worthless.

Germany, UK US and France together fielded MORE than the infantry of the USSR in WWII, so the case is closed, without even taking in to account Italy, Japan and many smaller nations.

In AFV production the Soviets entered the war with or produced during the war a total of @105,000 of all types. The British had slightly over 30,000, the US slightly over 100,000, Germany 47,000. more than three to two odds against the Soviets.

Further, potential is a poor choice of words. The reality of US industry alone is that it was superior in quantity and quality to any other nation in the war, and nearly equal to all other nations on both sides with 45% of total production.
 
Shimbo, you are endorsing a report whose fatal flaws are obvious to the rest of us.

Well, our figures obviously differ. I've produced an original source (the British General Staff Report) showing that the Western Allies were outnumbered by the Red Army by 2-1 in AFVs and 4-1 in infantry. Please point me to a source showing that in fact the Western Allies outnumbered the Red Army in 1945.

I haven't even started on the fact that the Russian tanks were streets ahead of the allied ones, let alone the Red Army's ability to take casualties and keep on coming.
 
Shimbo, you are endorsing a report whose fatal flaws are obvious to the rest of us. No matter how professional or thorough they allegedly were, if the slightest examination of the facts proves it worthless then it is worthless.

Germany, UK US and France together fielded MORE than the infantry of the USSR in WWII, so the case is closed, without even taking in to account Italy, Japan and many smaller nations.

In AFV production the Soviets entered the war with or produced during the war a total of @105,000 of all types. The British had slightly over 30,000, the US slightly over 100,000, Germany 47,000. more than three to two odds against the Soviets.

Further, potential is a poor choice of words. The reality of US industry alone is that it was superior in quantity and quality to any other nation in the war, and nearly equal to all other nations on both sides with 45% of total production.

Grimm

I think both of you are on dodgy grounds. You are forgetting, in Shimbo's scenario of a post-WWII attack on the Soviets, how exhausted so much of the west was by this time. With the exception of America just about all the western powers were running out of men. There was still a potentially long war to fight in the Pacific. The French had a large reserve of forces in 1940 but how many would be willing to fight in an aggressive war against the Soviets in 45. Despite their massive losses the Germans could indeed have supplied far more than 100k men. However how many would the allies have trusted and if the allied army fighting its way into Poland and Czechoslovakia have large numbers of men in field grey how many locals will automatically support them? Also for all the advantages in other areas the Soviets still have a clear advantage in armour and far more experience of fighting large modern battles. Don't rely too much on those masses of Americans either. Given the massed industrial production in the US it had limited its ground forces to about 100 divisions. Many of those were demobilised pretty damn quickly after the end of war in Europe, because of popular demand and I think there was reluctance on the part of many of them to be moved to the Pacific front. If you asked them to support an attack on the Soviets, until now paraded as gallant allies I think there would be problems.

Shimbo - Grimm has good points about the vast material resources available to the western allies. Also the problems the Russians would have had with supplies in the event of a war and possible disruption due to revolts behind their lines. The British survey may be an accurate prediction given what they know at the time or slanted because they were told to produce something showing the dangerous of an attack on the Soviet Union. Also while the Red Army still looked massive it had taken such huge losses that how near it was to the bottom of the manpower barrel is very difficult to tell. I think initially the Russians drastically played down their casualties, only talking about ~3 million dead. later, because it gained political advantage the 20M figure came up and others have been suggested. Given what I have read probably the 20m figure is pretty accurate but the Red Army in 45 may have looked far more formidable to the western powers at the time.

I think if the Russians had attacked the west they would have been defeated, although they might have overrun most of western Germany and possibly other areas 1st. If the allies had attacked the Russians its far more difficult and you have the political problems of creating and holding together such a coalition. Not something I would like to try at all.

Steve
 
Well, how about this for a scenario.

After the bombs are dropped and Japan surrenders, The USSR attacks Japan, Korea and Manchuria anyways, and the Red Army refuses to leave any of their territory, saying all of the Communist states are now SSRs. Stalin's troops are soon attacking the Americans, and both Truman and McArthur say this is unacceptable.

Russia at this point is years from an atomic bomb, so Truman and McArthur rally the allies again, and having defeated Germany they now go after the Soviets in retaliation for the attacks on Japan, Korea and China.

Japan would be re-armed, and you can bet everybody who played a role in destroying the Soviets would be in this coalition - Nationalist China, Japan, Korea (at least the US-backed forces, Kim Il Sung would side with Stalin for sure), Australia, Canada, Western Europe (including West Germany), South Africa, India......the Soviets couldn't beat all of that. Numbers would at first be against the Allies, but the Soviets would have a very difficult time keeping up those numbers, whereas the Allies if they could keep the RN and USN in command of the Atlantic and Pacific it wouldn't be hard to keep up the war, plenty of supplies, factories and manpower.

Like I said, it would be really nasty, but Stalin would eventually be forced to give in.
 
Trying to POD a war with the Soviets in 45 is a bit pointless, it would have been politically impossible unless the Russians foolishly attacked the Allies first. Why not push the POD back to the 20s, have the Soviets successfully conquer Poland. Also, have Trotsky succeed Lenin rather then Stalin. If those two things had occurred Europe would have been much more apprehensive of the Soviet Union.
 
Perhaps Churchill and FDR decide in 1941 that the war really is a 'crusade for democracy' against ALL dictators
Had Chamberlain said Britain opposed Nazis as opposed to Germany, it might've been possible to avoid Winston's "kind word for the Devil" & an alliance with his handmaiden. It probably would've shortened the war, too, since it would've encouraged anti-Nazi/Hitler plotters much more. (Of course, it might've been necessary to restrain city burning...'cause, as J. M. Keynes put it, even a bad government trumps a bomber overhead.) Presuming that, how much would Sov L-L going to Britain instead have shortened the war? Just taking account of the reduction in shipping demand for Persia (enormously farther than Britain) & the losses on the Arctic convoys, it's got to be 6mo. Add the possibilities of only bottling up PAA in Tunisia (rather than reducing it) & not invading mainland Italy, shorten by another 6mo/1yr...
 
We seem to be assuming that an anti-communist WW2 leads to the Russians losing. That isn't the only possible result.:) IMO the USSR, lead by General Winter, was uninvadable by any combination of (1940's) armies. A state that can absorb 20 million casualties without collapsing can probably absorb as many as it takes to win.

As far as Patton's idea of carrying on the war with is concerned, IMO a US/British/Empire assault on the Red Army in 1945 would have resulted in only one thing - total military disaster and a communist Europe.

Soviet Union could easily have been defeated had the invaders supported the local populations oppressed by the Soviets. The Nazis in OTL certainly did not do that.
 
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