How bad would WAllied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

[Deckhand]

Actually,in this scenario its likely that Britain falls to a renewed Sea Lion around the time Roosevelt dies. This double shock may well cause a attempted nazi coup on the east coast,which gives the wehrmacht a pretty solid foothold there to land on.

This has to be satire.

EDIT: I see that it was

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

"We just killed several dozen million people and made large parts of Europe uninhabitalbe for the next couple hundred years" Im sure this will have the full support of the population.

Why would "large parts of Europe uninhabitalbe for the next couple hundred years" ? The weapons the US built were designed for airburst, they produced negligible quantities of fallout when used that way. Neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki became uninhabitable.

The Trinity test in New Mexico did not make the US southwest uninhabitable, or dump large quantities of radioactive fall out down wind. Neither did the post war surface tests. The cumulative long term damage from the fallout of those tests was unacceptable, but several hundred surface tests in New Mexico & Nevada in the 1940s & 1950s did not make the US uninhabitable.

I pointed this out in a earlier post & suggested at least one reference. Why di you continue to include this canard in your posts?

 

[That Damned Fool]

There's more to naval power than simply building ships, however. Crews need experience on the open sea to even start to reach their full potential. The Baltic is a useful training ground, but the British would always have better crews.

Good point. Crews, and experienced officers and chiefs. Officers who know how to fight their ship, and chiefs who know how to lead their men in combat.

 

[sloreck]

The only place the Germans can build ships is in the shipyards in prewar Germany. Those in the USSR will be trashed/no labor, those in France and Holland could build ships, but ships under construction are quite vulnerable to air attack and the French and Dutch shipyards are easy targets. The issue is also shipyard workers and supervising forced/slave labor. The Germans will never be able to build a surface fleet that could compete with the combined US/UK forces, except for light forces U-boats are what they need to build.

 

[PlasmaTorch]

No offense to anyone here, but this thread has gone off track and devolved into hair splitting and tail chasing... Alot of valid points that were made in page 1-5 have now been forgotten. Some of the more illuminating comments should be reposted here for clemency:

Post #3
Post #14

Post #28
Post #37

Post #47
Post #49
Post #52

Post #65
Post #66
Post #80

Post #92
Post #96

germanies BC weapon capabilities were far behind the allied ones. If they give the allies the pretext to use their own,they will literally be annihilated.

Are you referring to the quantity or quality of the chemical agents used? Because german scientists discovered and mass produced tabun, sarin, and soman nerve gas. Agents which the allys didn't obtain until after the war. They also had a better delivery mechanisms.

I suspect 4 million casualty or so is acceptable to the US btw, that would have being ~3% of US 1939 population. The Union took something like 2.7% of the population as casualty during the civil war so I'm guessing if it starts to shoot significantly above that point there probably would have being a call for peace.

4 million casualties, are you serious? What makes you think the U.S. army could continue to function effectively after even half that number of KIA and WIA? The infantry branch was already a sortof wastebin for them, which was filled with men who were less fit and less educated than those in other branchs. But the situation got even worse in normandy, when the anglo-americans suffered 209,000 casualties and had difficulty finding trained replacements.

"Even more disturbingly, statistics produced in March 1944 showed that while the infantry only made up 6 percent of the army -an extraordinarily low proportion by any measure- they had suffered 54 percent of its total casualties. This proportion rose to far more alarming heights in normandy... Only 37 percent of the replacements arriving to make good for casualties were rifle trained. First army was suffering a desperate shortage of competent infantry officers and NCOs. Wholesale sackings proved necessary in some units." -Overlord: D-Day and the Battle For Normandy 1944, by Max Hastings.

It won't happen: the allies get air superiority over England. I guess you can shoot V2 rockets at London or something but even with sarin gas it doesn't actually do that much damage because they are so inaurcruate

The thing is, rockets don't need much accuracy in order to strike citys. The V-2 had a CEP of 4.5 km, meaning that 50% of them would fall in that radius. Compare that to the Scud-A which had a CEP of 3 km, or the Scud-B that had a CEP of 450 meters. (The V-2 was supposed to be fitted with an updated guidance system in late 1944, that would have reduced its CEP to 2 km) The reason the rockets weren't hitting their targets was due to a deception campaign by the british, which tricked the germans into changing their targeting data.

 

[RousseauX]

4 million casualties, are you serious? What makes you think the U.S. army could continue to function effectively after even half that number of KIA and WIA? The infantry branch was already a sortof wastebin for them, which was filled with men who were less fit and less educated than those in other branchs. But the situation got even worse in normandy, when the anglo-americans suffered 209,000 casualties and had difficulty finding trained replacements.

"Even more disturbingly, statistics produced in March 1944 showed that while the infantry only made up 6 percent of the army -an extraordinarily low proportion by any measure- they had suffered 54 percent of its total casualties. This proportion rose to far more alarming heights in normandy... Only 37 percent of the replacements arriving to make good for casualties were rifle trained. First army was suffering a desperate shortage of competent infantry officers and NCOs. Wholesale sackings proved necessary in some units." -Overlord: D-Day and the Battle For Normandy 1944, by Max Hastings.

The US army in WWII deliberably avoided building a manpower intensive army because it wanted to keep the labor for industries instead: the US in WWII had 130 million people while the USSR had 170 million. In the event of Nazi victory over USSR they would mobilize a much larger percentage of manpower. Maybe they can't take 30 million casualties like the USSR but 4 million is definitely possible.

The thing is, rockets don't need much accuracy in order to strike citys. The V-2 had a CEP of 4.5 km, meaning that 50% of them would fall in that radius. Compare that to the Scud-A which had a CEP of 3 km, or the Scud-B that had a CEP of 450 meters. (The V-2 was supposed to be fitted with an updated guidance system in late 1944, that would have reduced its CEP to 2 km) The reason the rockets weren't hitting their targets was due to a deception campaign by the british, which tricked the germans into changing their targeting data.

ok so once in a while you hit london and kill a few dozen people or something but you can't use them to systematically destroy british factories or infrastructure. They are basically terror weapons but has little military value.

 

[RousseauX]

and oh yeah the us also has far less ethnic issues with manpower than the ussr did, the vast majority of soviet soldiers were slavic (ukrainian, russian, belarussian) because the muslim central asians were considered less reliable. The US doesn't have this problem nearly to the same extent (at no point did the us had to be afraid of african-american soldiers or german/italian-american soldiers defecting like stalin feared chechens defecting)

 

[KACKO]

and oh yeah the us also has far less ethnic issues with manpower than the ussr did, the vast majority of soviet soldiers were slavic (ukrainian, russian, belarussian) because the muslim central asians were considered less reliable. The US doesn't have this problem nearly to the same extent (at no point did the us had to be afraid of african-american soldiers or german/italian-american soldiers defecting like stalin feared chechens defecting)

Soviet Union had over 70% Slavic population. Of course Slavs were majority in Soviet Army.

 

[PlasmaTorch]

The US army in WWII deliberably avoided building a manpower intensive army because it wanted to keep the labor for industries instead: the US in WWII had 130 million people while the USSR had 170 million. In the event of Nazi victory over USSR they would mobilize a much larger percentage of manpower. Maybe they can't take 30 million casualties like the USSR but 4 million is definitely possible.

Thats just it, though. The U.S. needs to raise many more divisions to defeat germany on their own, and this is a problem. The U.S. had enormous competing demands for manpower from its other branches and from industry, and cannot risk raising much more manpower without causing economic dislocations. The more important question is, will the U.S. army remain combat effective after taking anything like 4 million casualties?

According to this report, they had suffered 234,874 dead and 701,385 other casualties by the end of WW2. (Note: That includes many soldiers who were returned to duty) This level of attrition was miniscule compared to what germany or russia endured, and yet, it was enough to significantly impair the effectiveness of combat formations. This was exacerbated by the type of replacement system used by the U.S.. You can read more about this on wikipedia, in the biographies of lesley mcnair and george marshall.

Another problem surfaced with the individual replacement system (IRS), a concept devised by General George C. Marshall and implemented by McNair. Instead of learning from combat veterans in the same unit (via transfer to an existing battalion or regiment temporarily rotated out of the combat zone for retraining), replacements were first trained at a variety of facilities, then sent to replacement depots (repple-depples).[23][24] Shipped without unit organization or strong command, they were passed from one temporary duty station to another, often spending months between leaving their original organizations and assignment to a unit.[25] During this time they became physically soft, their discipline slackened, and their acquired basic infantry or combat skills tended to be forgotten.[26] It was at this point that the individual army replacement was transferred to an active duty unit, frequently a fighting arm such as armor or infantry that was 'on the line' (currently engaged in combat operations).

In addition to this, U.S. commanders frequently encountered replacement soldiers that had received no training on their individual rifle or assigned weapons system at all.[27][28] As the IRS plan began to break down completely in late 1944, other men, including older individuals and those physically incapable of rigorous physical duty were taken from other army specialties (clerk-typist, cook etc.) or training programs and hurriedly given six weeks' infantry training, upon which they were reassigned as combat infantry replacements.[29] In consequence, casualty rates skyrocketed; in many frontline units, replacement soldiers lasted an average just three to four days before being killed or wounded.[30][31] At the same time, veteran soldiers were retained on the line until they were killed, wounded, or became incapacitated by battle fatigue or physical illness.[32]

Originally, Marshall had planned a 265-division Army with a system of unit rotation such as practiced by the British and other Allies.[32] By mid-1943, however, after pressure from government and business leaders to preserve manpower for industry and agriculture, he had abandoned this plan in favor of a 90-division Army using individual replacements sent via a circuitous process from training to divisions in combat.[32] The individual replacement system devised by Marshall and implemented by McNair greatly exacerbated problems with unit cohesion and effective transfer of combat experience to newly trained soldiers and officers.[30][33] In Europe, where there were few pauses in combat with German forces, the individual replacement system had broken down completely by late 1944.[34] Hastily trained replacements or service personnel reassigned as infantry were given six weeks' refresher training and thrown into battle with Army divisions locked in front-line combat.

The new men were often not even proficient in the use of their own rifles or weapons systems, and once in combat, could not receive enough practical instruction from veterans before being killed or wounded, usually within the first three or four days.[30][35][36] Under such conditions, many replacements suffered a crippling loss of morale, while veteran soldiers were kept in line units until they were killed, wounded, or incapacitated by battle fatigue or physical illness. Incidents of soldiers AWOL from combat duty as well as battle fatigue and self-inflicted injury rose rapidly during the last eight months of the war with Germany.[30][33][35] As one historian concluded, "Had the Germans been given a free hand to devise a replacement system..., one that would do the Americans the most harm and the least good, they could not have done a better job."[35][37]

 

[RousseauX]

Thats just it, though. The U.S. needs to raise many more divisions to defeat germany on their own, and this is a problem. The U.S. had enormous competing demands for manpower from its other branches and from industry, and cannot risk raising much more manpower without causing economic dislocations. The more important question is, will the U.S. army remain combat effective after taking anything like 4 million casualties?

yeah there's gonna be economic dislocations but the manufacturing capacity of the US is so high it can take those dislocations and keep humming

According to this report, they had suffered 234,874 dead and 701,385 other casualties by the end of WW2. (Note: That includes many soldiers who were returned to duty) This level of attrition was miniscule compared to what germany or russia endured, and yet, it was enough to significantly impair the effectiveness of combat formations. This was exacerbated by the type of replacement system used by the U.S.. You can read more about this on wikipedia, in the biographies of lesley mcnair and george marshall.

Yes the point is that this was true for the army the US built otl for WWII, there would be more manpower intense army in the scenario we are discussing

 

[RousseauX]

Also remember Germany has like 80 million people not like 1 billion and they aren't actually ubermenches who can do loss-exchange ratio of 3:1 forever you don't need -that- many men to beat Germany

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

Thats just it, though. The U.S. needs to raise many more divisions to defeat germany on their own, and this is a problem. The U.S. had enormous competing demands for manpower from its other branches and from industry, and cannot risk raising much more manpower without causing economic dislocations. The more important question is, will the U.S. army remain combat effective after taking anything like 4 million casualties?

According to this report, they had suffered 234,874 dead and 701,385 other casualties by the end of WW2. (Note: That includes many soldiers who were returned to duty) This level of attrition was miniscule compared to what germany or russia endured, and yet, it was enough to significantly impair the effectiveness of combat formations. This was exacerbated by the type of replacement system used by the U.S.. You can read more about this on wikipedia, in the biographies of lesley mcnair and george marshall.

The Wiki item cited is badly distorted, in part because it is drawn from a ass covering exercise by McNair. I'd recommend for one the Green book on the 'Mobilization of the US Army in WWII' As with most armies the 'training by combat veterans' was to occur within the regiment the replacement assigned to. To execute this requires the formation spend some time away from battle. Through mid 1943 this was the practice for most US Army and Marine units. The campaigns in Tunisia, Sicilly, or the Pacific had extended breaks in combat for the units. Thus the 1st Infantry Division or the 1st Marine Division could asorb the replacements in a more orderly manner & provide them with finishing training. The Germans accomplished the same thing by rotating spent formations to occupation duties, usually in France or Belgium. The infantry replacements of the Germans in 1944 were not much better trained than the US replacement. They also depended on the final training by veteran to occur in the combat unit while it was outside the battle zone.

The training system of the German conscript broke down the same as the US system in the second half of 1944. The pace of operations of both sides from Normandy to Germany in 1944-45 prevented rotation of combat formations out of battle long enough to do effective training for the replacements. The Germans were able to offset this in part in that they had a huge trained reserve hidden away in their home army. Thats where the mass of men came from for filling out the wrecked divisions that retreated to Germany and the new Volks Grenadier units. Once those went into combat they were no more sucesfull in finding quiet time to train the last classes of raw conscripts than the US Army.

 

[mack8]

Interesting paralel betwen the US and german training situation, especially considering the critical factor of very much smaller US casualties compared to german ones in the same timeframe in OTL. If the US casualty count suddenly gets much higher in 1943 an 1944, all else being equal this would have a debilitating effect on the US ground troops isn't it, throwing them into the vicious circle of increasingly poorly trained troops taking increasing losses requiring even more recruits to fill the gaps?

Hm, perhaps it is the US ground forces that have a glass jaw.

 

[David Flin]

In the last 250 years there have been exactly Six wars involving democracies where an existential threat could reasonably be seen. in every case where the situation arose the democracies involved fought to the last.

Two involved Israel, in 1967 and 1973 and ended quickly, long before the question of fighting to the last man could even be considered.

The British were also involved in two, WW I & WW II, in neither case did the British public blink, despite horrific losses and, in the case of WW II, stunning reversals on the battlefield.

The U.S. was, as already noted, involved in the one, the Civil War along with the CSA. Both sides absorbed almost unimaginable losses compared to any previous (or following) conflict and both sides fought to the bitter end.

The sixth was the War of the Pacific involving Chile, Bolivia and Peru. Peru fought on AFTER all of its major cities were occupied and its forces were reduced to small bands of insurgents in the Andes.

Would you count the Boer War?

 

[James Ricker]

Just remember the risestance in the East will be getting regular supply drops from the Wallies.That will tie up even more men.

 

[Greenville]

Depending if the Americans use nuclear weapons to destroy most German cities. Several hundred thousand could easily die before the Germans agree to surrender.

 

[sloreck]

Unit cohesion, from the smallest/squad level upwards is a key feature in unit effectiveness. The individual replacement system was a disaster for the US Army in WWII, and did not work well in Vietnam either. The USA could have had a unit rotation system by having a relatively few more divisions, but chose not too. While 265 would have been excessive the USA could have had and outfitted another 10-12 without any serious effect on production/agriculture. Even just using minority manpower, specifically African-American, more effectively even in support units would have been helpful.

I agree with the idea that CalBear presented, any society, including democratic, will absorb huge losses if it believes surrender/stopping fighting will result in a worse disaster. France threw in the sponge in 1940 in significant part because a large segment of the French population saw the demise of the Third Republic as more acceptable than Nazi occupation which they expected would be temporary. The CSA gave it up rather than fight on as partisans in large part because the leaders (like Lee) as well as the average soldier, did not see reintegration in to the USA as as bad as fighting on in a lost cause and dying or becoming crippled.

What level of casualties the USA would be willing to accept all depends on the actual situation - whether it looked like porogress was being made and how important the public felt destroying Nazi Germany was.

 

[CalBear]

Would you count the Boer War?

Not in my opinion. The Boer were not really a established nation state, although they had tried the end result was always going to be a take-over by a colonizing power. Its the same reason I didn't list the Israeli War of Independence, but only the '67 and October Wars.

 

[John Dusk]

snip

What are your thoughts on the OP?

 

[CalBear]

The glib answer is that I wrote a book on the subject, available on Amazon!




The real answer is that I doubt the WAllies would even try, at least without a REALLY strong additional provocation (a la the AANW St. Patrick's Day attacks or some similar assault). The difficulty is less engaging as you advance across France, although that would be VASTLY more difficult with the increased amount of heavy (i.e. Panzer/Panzer Grenadier) forces that would be available than what happens before.

The WAllies put what added up to seven infantry divisions, along with three airborne divisions ashore on D-Day. That was actually a little thin, based on the book 3:1 superiority required, and it required the largest landing armada ever assembled. Eeven trying the landings in this scenario would require, at the minimum, the order of battle planned for Olympic, more likely Coronet. That means finding additional landing beaches with the vastly increased logistics necessary to support those forces (it is likely that the landing area would have to stretch all the way to the outskirts of Calais, if not Dunkirk), call it 125 miles of frontage (Overlord was ~60 miles). The Heer will have easily triple the mobile formations that were available IOTL, probably more than that since there would be little need for heavy armor in the East, even with an active Partisan movement. In that sort of scenario even the old, utterly obsolete Pz II and Pz-38(t) and Ju-87s would be enough to deal with the partisans, freeing up the SS and Luftwaffe Panzer divisions to be moved to the West and into Italy along with most of the Heer armored forces and the Luftwaffe front line strength.

Adding to the problem is that the WAllies wouldn't be able to even attempt a landing before 1945, probably in April. There is no way that the needed number of landing craft, vehicles, and weapons to mount an assault against the much larger (and heavier) Heer formations could be made available by the end of summer 1944 (by September the weather is far to marginal, and by the end of October the hours of daylight are too low even if the equipment is available to make the attempt). That gives the Reich an extra 9+ months to add to the Atlantic Wall, and the conquest of the USSR, even without any sort of reparations (and there WOULD have been reparations) provides the Reich with masses of both material and slave labor to work on the Wall.

Control of the "European" part of the USSR also provides the Reich with the one thing it lacked, true strategic depth. Move the factories East (can NOT be any more difficult that building massive tunnels to put things underground as IOTL) and the one real equalizer the WAllies have is off the table. Move factories (as was always envisioned) to General Government or to Russia and the Bomber Offensive ends. UK bomber bases to Moscow is at the B-29's max range (the Lancaster can't even get close it taps out near Vilnius, with the Lancaster's replacement, the Lincoln, not quite equaling the B-29). The B-32 can get a bit farther, but then you are dealing with the B-32... God have mercy on you. The CBO is effectively out of the strategic bombing of industrial business (as opposed to killing civilians) until the B-36 arrives. Even the B-29 missions flying past 1,000 miles radius are going to present a massive set of problems since there is no way you can get an escort out that far, the F-82 had a combat radius of around 950 miles, meaning that, at best, a deep penetration mission by B-29s would have had around 900 miles of unescorted flight time (three-four hours depending on speed during that part of the run) when the bombers would be hellishly vulnerable. Perhaps worse than the bomber losses would be the reality that the WAllies would not be able to do what was necessary to defeat the Luftwaffe IOTL, use the bombers as the anvil that the fighter jocks could hammer the Luftwaffe to bits against.

The B-29 was also far from invulnerable to interception. During the Korean War some 34 aircraft were lost flying against the relatively rudimentary ADZ of the DPRK. Even during WW II IJA pilots flying Ki-61 and Ki-84 had some success, and that was with minimal radar support and low octane gasoline.