How far could Stalin push it?

Jonjo

Banned
How far could Stalin push into Europe beyond OTL without triggering off WW3, we know he was more cunning and planning than Hitler and didn't ride on risks as much as Hitler did.

What is the absolute maximum extent in your opinion could Stalin push USSR border after WW2 or give extra land to his Eastern Bloc? Most obvious example is the DDR gets more of Germany but what about the rest.
 

d32123

Banned
He could plausibly get half of Austria and Greece but that's about it as far as I understand.
 
Have the Allied landings in France fail. The Red Army keeps going, and at the very minimum you have the red flag flying to the Pyrenees - probably at least to the Portuguese border and quite possibly all the way to the Atlantic, once Stalin has puppets bordering Spain from which to support the Spanish communists. Have the communists win the Greek Civil War and have Stalin reassert control over Yugoslavia instead of letting it go.
 

katchen

Banned
I more or less agree, according to this scenario. However, I suspect that the result of a failed D-Day would simply have been more Allied troops for Operation Dragoon, the invasion of the French riviera by the 6th Army Group under General Devers. This invasion probably would have been delayed until September or October 1944 and probably would not have been the blitzkrieg it was OTL. But it would likely have left the Allies with a rump non-Communist French zone centered around Langdoc and Provence.

The Red Army likely would have occupied Northern Italy and taken germany with an assault onthrough CZAechslovakia into bavaria, coming into Berlin from the South. Yes, I can see the Russians atacking Spain, since the Spanish sent troops against the USSR as allies of the Nazis in 1942. However, I can also see the Allies declaring war on Franco's Spain and occupying some or most of it to keep the entrance of the Mediteraeean in Allie dhands. And the Allies would overthrow Salazar and occupy Portugal for that reason as well.

In short, we would see a pattern of divided states in Europe with huge flows of refugees from the start. The Allie swould have Norway, possibly with Finnmark and Tromso lost to the USSR. Sweden as neutral would stay outside the Soviet ambit. The Allies might be able to liberate Dennmark by sea before the Red Army could get there. If not, Dennmark would be a divided country with Danish refugees from a Danish People's Republic resettled in Iceland, Greenland and the Faeroe Islands.
Germany would be intact and Communist. For Belgium and the Netherlands, we might see a pattern of refugees creating emigre governments in colonies that would trump decolonization agendas.

This would surely be the case with France, where a rump non-commuhnist government in Provence and Langedoc would not be able to absorb all the refugees from the People's Republic to the North. Algeria would be where most of the refugees would be resettled, and Tunisia and Morocco would likely become part of France as well, with the Muslim inhabitants no longer in the majority but becoming French citizens. Italy would be a divided country and Libya would be part of non-Communist Libya. Greece would be divided between a non-communist Insular Greece with a capital at Heraklion and a Commuhist Greece with a capital at Athens. Spain would be divided, I'm not sure where and keep Spanish Morocco and Spanish Sahara.
 
So Stalin could take all of Europe in your opinion?

Pretty much yes.

As in this map:

(Andorra and Monaco are both French Communist puppets.)

Red Europe 1950.png
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Have the Allied landings in France fail. The Red Army keeps going, and at the very minimum you have the red flag flying to the Pyrenees

The Pyrenees? Doubtful? Maybe the Rhine. The Germans, having repulsed the Normandy invasion, would obviously shift forces eastward to reinforce against Operation Bagration. This would allow the invasion of southern France to proceed and the follow-up forces previously allocated to Overlord would instead by deployed there.
 
If the Red Army takes Budapest off the march in November 1944 it isn't. Delayed until February trying to encircle and besiege the city. Stalin wanted to secure the Balkans before advancing on Berlin, and thus delayed offensive in Poland until January. If the road to Vienna is clear months earlier, with German reserves gravitating towards Hungary, the Vistula-Poznan (To become the Vistula-Oder) offensive can go ahead in December. By early January the Red Army will be approaching Berlin and Vienna, with the remaining German forces effectively crushed.
 
I doubt the scenario with Soviets reaching the Pyrenees without any French or western allied action. Remember that German army viewed Soviet occupation as way more greater danger than American and British one. Once Soviet forces come close to Berlin, Germans will be moving anything they can to the eastern front, so that even token allied force will be able to take over France. Or perhaps the French, seeing approaching Russians will rise and evict remaining German forces themselves just like Yugoslavia did.

Even if Soviets went so far, its not assured they can maintain control over all their conquests for long. France and whole Germany are too strong and too far from soviet borders to be pushed into role of Soviet puppets the way Eastern Europe was. Could we see a multipolar communist bloc then? And could such structure survive?
 
Last edited:
I'd say that Austria, Albania, Greece, and Yugoslavia (and maybe the rest of Germany) are about the maximum they can occupy before the Red Army's supply lines start growing too long to support.
 

katchen

Banned
That's why the attack through Northern Italy is so important. Kesselring only had half a million troops at his disposal. Then through the Riviera if the Allies haven't landed in the South of France, to arrive at the Pyrenees and Spain and drive into Iberia with another thrust going North through the Rhone Valley to Paris and the Low Countries. Or if Stalin thinks he can pull it off, send Spetsnaz into Switzerland to secure the Simplon, St. Gothard and Loctsberg and Jura Tunnels plus strategic stretches of roadway and then run troops into Germany and Northern France via Switzerland, occupying the place and looting the Swiss banks.That would leave a lot of red faces in the US including the Dulles Brothers, when Tass starts publicizing who has money in those accounts, how much and where that money likely came from. Of course even in the best case scenario for Stalin, we would still be likely to end up with some divided countries in Europe.
 

katchen

Banned
And oh, yes, Stalin might have been able to push things a lot further in the Middle East. Particularly if he had gotten an agreement from Hitler regarding control of Iran and Afghanistan and Sinkiang, he might have been able to march into those places and set up governments there--as well as Iraq, when it's government was overthrown and possibly Syria. Then it would be a matter of opportunism to wait until Israel was declared and to start helping establish it. The Middle East to the Suez Canal is not too far from the Caucasus for the USSR's timelines.
 
After several posts in the same vein, could someone please explain to me why Stalin suddenly in late 1944 or early 1945 decided that he was not fighting the Nazis to crush and occupy as much of Germany as he could, and taking over much of the Eastern Europe in the process (as convenient) but in fact was conducting an all-out assault on Europe and trying to take over also many of his theoretical allies (France) or non-combatants (Switzerland) all of a sudden, in other words going to war against the Western Allies and several other countries besides at the drop of a hat and while his armies have been bled white, their chains of logistics are already being pushed to the limits and parts of the Soviet Union,even, are experiencing near or true famine (not to say anything of the recently conquered territories)?

I mean should we be talking about how far Stalin could push it realistically, taking into account such things as political expediency, the true capabilities of the Red Army in 1945 and the general shape of the USSR and its military-industrial organization, food situation etc.?

At some point, even the USSR can't take it anymore and will break under the weight of the war. I think Stalin knew quite well that was not very far in 1945.

And the OP did specify "without triggering off WWIII".
 
Last edited:
By late '44 all the agreements were in place. If D-Day fails really badly (how would it?) there may be some renegotiations. That's about it.
 
Onward! Onward to Portugal, comrades!

After several posts in the same vein, could someone please explain to me why Stalin suddenly in late 1944 or early 1945 decided that he was not fighting the Nazis to crush and occupy as much of Germany as he could, and taking over much of the Eastern Europe in the process (as convenient) but in fact was conducting an all-out assault on Europe and trying to take over also many of his theoretical allies (France) or non-combatants (Switzerland) all of a sudden, in other words going to war against the Western Allies and several other countries besides at the drop of a hat and while his armies have been bled white, their chains of logistics are already being pushed to the limits and parts of the Soviet Union,even, are experiencing near or true famine (not to say anything of the recently conquered territories)?

I mean should we be talking about how far Stalin could push it realistically, taking into account such things as political expediency, the true capabilities of the Red Army in 1945 and the general shape of the USSR and its military-industrial organization, food situation etc.?

At some point, even the USSR can't take it anymore and will break under the weight of the war. I think Stalin knew quite well that was not very far in 1945.

And the OP did specify "without triggering off WWIII".

This. Pretty much, essentially this.

Too many times I see these scenarios drawn up with the Soviets sweeping across Europe with ASB logistics. With no accounting for the reality that the Soviets used a different rail gauge (which cut down on the advancement of working rail lines by 80%), and the principle rail lines running through the Balkans ran from the NW to the SE, not the NE to the SW. Running down postwar superhighways that haven't been built, dropping airborne divisions that would only exist as a few battalions until well after the war.

FYI? The Swiss Army was BIG in 1944-45, and fully mobilized in the strongest most fortified terrain in the world. Lotsa luck, Ivan Ivanovich. At the time, the Soviets only had a small number of dedicated mountain divisions, and they were mostly serving as defensive troops in the Caucasus and the Turkish border.

If the Heer transports the bulk of their panzer divisions in the west to the east, the Soviets will face at least one major blunted offensive. Even if only one. If they don't, Valkyrie succeeds. (1) Whether the bomb kills Hitler or not. Because leaving the Eastern door open while damming up the west after a failed D-Day is the strategy of the Battle of the Bulge x10.

1) Frankly, even Hitler couldn't justify a strategic redeployment back east, as the whole idea of sending those panzers to France was about defeating the coming invasion, and THEN using the panzers to defeat the Soviets.

Anybody who thinks the Soviets can reach and conquer France and Spain has been reading too much John Birmingham.:p

OTL a Soviet general (Popov?) suggested at a dinner that they keep going and conquer Western Europe. Stalin immediately slammed his fist on the table and growled angrily: "And who will feed them?":mad:

"Empty stomachs make for angry hearts"-Vladimir Lenin
 
By late '44 all the agreements were in place. If D-Day fails really badly (how would it?) there may be some renegotiations. That's about it.

The German generals in France would be offering very enticing terms to the WAllies if D-Day fails badly. It could have failed only with bad timing (landing the day before the massive storm in 1944) and a few other lucky breaks for the Germans. The German commanders in France knew the war was over in 1944, hell they knew the war was over after Kursk. Normandy was a battle over terms and if they could get any from the Western Allies.

Much like Japan the concept we have is that the Japanese wanted to fight to the bitter end regardless and the nukes stopped them. No, they wanted to turn operation Downfall into a bloody mess for the Americans in which case the U.S. decides to offer terms for a conditional surrender. The combo of the Soviets joining the war which would have meant the invasion might be a two sided one from the north of Japan and the south of Japan as well as the nukes ended all hope of that.

Back to Normandy if it fails badly in 1944 lets just say there will be massive political repercussions in November. If FDR refuses what I expect will be very generous peace terms by the German commanders in France for the easy occupation of France, Norway, Italy and the Low countries then one might see the Dewey win in November based on an Obama like electoral campaign that FDR took his eye off the ball by focusing on Germany and I will focus on the people who attacked us (Japan).

What happens if its early 1945 and you have a President Dewey who campaigned on focusing on Japan in the WH? Well that depends on what he decides to do with Europe. If he continues Lend Lease to the Soviet Union and refuses terms with Germany then you would see the Soviets gobble up central Europe and at most the Western Allies would control if France and Italy by the end of the war in Europe. That is what is the maximum I believe Stalin could get in WW2.

Though Dewey could very well screw over Stalin by agreeing to separate peace terms in Europe and thus occupying France, Norway, and the Low Countries on the cheap in exchange for an end to the war in Europe and also ending Lend Lease to the Soviet Union. In which case the war with Germany and the Soviet Union grinds on until they are both exhausted and bled white.
 
Last edited:
Top