Challenge: No Need for US Aid

Okay, I'd actually argue any allied victory without the US depends on the Soviet Union doing better against Nazi Germany through their own actions, not just Nazi screw ups. That includes it mobilizing properly before hand, and not having an officer purge, or recovering rather quickly from the latter somehow.
 
The best thing the Soviets could do is stay behind the Stalin line, only put occupation troops and covering foerces into Poland. The Germans would take a week to close up to the Stalin line which removes the element of surprise and avoids the huge encirclements made by the Germans very early on.

The British need to get some heavy equipment back from France, and once the invasion threat is over to defeat Italy in the desert and avoid Greece. Britain also needs to hold Malaya and Sumatra, all of which are in her capacity.
 
If we assume that everything goes as OTL sans US aid, it's probably not happening. The Soviets can eventually push the Germans out of Western Russia but the offensive will stall somewhere around Warsaw at best. This is particularly true if they can't starve the populace to free up manpower for tanks AND logistics.

If we're assuming stuff like "Stalin focuses the Moscow counteroffensive against AGC and breaks it to bits" or the many other ways 1941 could have gone wrong for Germany, well, they can beat Germany and Italy between 1943-1944, but they still have to deal with Japan, and while they'll mop up Manchuria, I don't think the Brits or the Soviets can successfully invade and occupy the Japanese Home Islands (AND force a surrender, let alone Unconditional Surrender) before August 14, 1945, unless they somehow get the bomb, and their strategic bombing and submarine capability is not going to cut Japan off from resources or destroy her homefront to the same extent that the USA could have. And the RN is probably a tie to slightly better than the IJN, and they're going to be fighting on 2 fronts until 1943 at the earliest. Certainly they are not going to outproduce the IJN to the enormous extent the USN did.

If no M-R pact then Germany crashes sometime in 1940 and Japan doesn't even get in the war (this is assuming no embargo btw, so no attack on the DEI which means the Brits might not even go to war with Japan).

If Fall Gelb fails pretty similar situation.

Japan will go down eventually in this scenario, but almost certainly not by August 14.

Don't think it can be done in terms of beating ALL of them.
 
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Okay, what if there's no officer purge and the Soviet Union gets tech from Britain to build strategic bombers. Basically, in this scenario it replaces the United States in the industry role because they were able to beat Nazi Germany without massive casualities and didn't lose a ton of industry.
 
Okay, what if there's no officer purge and the Soviet Union gets tech from Britain to build strategic bombers. Basically, in this scenario it replaces the United States in the industry role because they were able to beat Nazi Germany without massive casualities and didn't lose a ton of industry.
Uh the USSR had about a third of the USA's potential there, not gonna be able to do that, especially if they actually have to fight a land war and take some damage doing so
 
I wouldn't say that too fast. Soviet Union has massive amounts of resources, and if it avoids starvation, can have an extremely large populace to support industrialization to the level needed. Not to the same level perhaps, but not impossible. This would have bizarre butterflies for the Cold War, to say the least.
 
I wouldn't say that too fast. Soviet Union has massive amounts of resources, and if it avoids starvation, can have an extremely large populace to support industrialization to the level needed. Not to the same level perhaps, but not impossible. This would have bizarre butterflies for the Cold War, to say the least.
Rough linky

This is about Imperial Japan, but it gets the point across, three times the war making potential, and the USA never had Nazi's on the borders, you would need one heck of a POD for them to be close and this would Butterfly away WWII most likely
 
Well, okay, then this will be a war not won by sheer industrial might, which can be quite inefficient by the way. More... interesting strategies will have to be applied.

More importantly, the Soviet Union has quite a lot of industrial power. Now, not as much as the US, but considering how quickly it got it, it's still a lot. Too long term for this scenario, but if they as much as territory as they might out of this, expect them to surpass the US in that regard.
 
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