How long would it have taken the British Empire and the Soviets to defeat the Nazis alone?

Deleted member 1487

No, the Avro Tudor, which was a civilian spinoff of the Lincoln. Note I'm not saying the Tudor can be used for delivering a nuke as-is. It can't, what with being a passenger liner. I'm saying that from the Lancaster the British had already developed, in 1945, a 4-engined aircraft with a higher ceiling (the usual complaint about a nuclear Lanc) and bigger payload.
Aka the Lincoln.
 

Medved

Banned
If the US gives LL indefinetly, the war ends in late 1946 with the Soviets occupying pretty much all territory previously occupied by the Germans. With the exception of Italy, the Med islands and perhaps Greece. The war would not drag on until 1947.
If the US cancels LL in April/May 45 the war ends in 1945 or early 1946 with a compromise for all sides. The war will not drag on until 1947. In either scenario there would be no British Nuclear bombardment of Germany (assuming its not ASB to have one in 1947 in the first place).
 
Carl you often talk about 'war gaming' scenarios and I find the idea fascinating

Would you be up for creating a thread on how you do this - ie what system you use etc

I was using Larry Bonds Harpoon system for modern naval warfare back in the 80s but have never really dabbled with a land campaign system before

Cheers

For this threads situation the only game on my shelf is Third Reich. Have looked at a few others, but not yet have my own copy or are familiar enough.

Initially I'd just tun thru the first four calendar quarters, 1942, several times. See if a anything weird shows up.
 
Regarding a British Tube-alloys project; where would they locate their Trinity site? Australia? Would the Canadians allow a test on their soil, especially with the uncertainty of the bombs power/secondary effects?

Ric350
 
Regarding a British Tube-alloys project; where would they locate their Trinity site? Australia? Would the Canadians allow a test on their soil, especially with the uncertainty of the bombs power/secondary effects?

The British tested their anthrax weapon, which could potentially lay waste to animal and human life in the British Isles and beyond, on an islet a couple of miles off the Scottish coast. I suspect they'd be willing and able to find a place for their N test. Just to remain in the vicinity, but at a somewhat safe distance, and causing no stress to Dominions, there's the St. Kilda uninhabited islets. The British could build some replica structures just to gauge the effects on buildings, if desired. It would be a natural disaster, but no worse than the one related with Vegetarian. St. Kilda is farther away from the nearest settlement than Trinity is from Bingham.
 
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Deleted member 1487

Regarding a British Tube-alloys project; where would they locate their Trinity site? Australia? Would the Canadians allow a test on their soil, especially with the uncertainty of the bombs power/secondary effects?

Ric350
Probably Canada in the arctic, close to the facilities in North America.
 
IMHO the question is not how long the USA would continue LL but what level would it be at compared to OTL? The quantity as well as mix of LL especially to the USSR is the key to the eastern front. How much aviation gasoline? How many locomotives, rolling stock, rails and other RR infrastructure? How much food, how many uniforms, how much leather both "raw" and in the form of boots? How many trucks and jeeps? What about other raw materials and logistic items/infrastructure items. Some of these can be replaced in part by Soviet industry, but only at the cost of not building as many T-34's or artillery tubes or whatever. Some, like food, leather, raw materials, and aviation gasoline cannot be replaced by the Soviets - period. What it comes down to the extent LL is decreased over OTL, and with the USA neutral even if pro-Allies, you cannot convince me the USA will be giving away anything near the volume/value of OTL.

Not mentioned is the issue of shipping. A huge number of merchant ships including tankers were built by the USA after 12/7/41. These are not cheap, nor is building the new yards (like Kaiser did). Again who pays, the UK and USSR don't have the cash. Absent US built (and flagged) ships carrying the LL goods the flow will be markedly reduced. While no war between the USA and Japan means shipping from the USA to Vladivostok can be ramped up compared to OTL, except the port capacity of Vladivostok is one limiting factor, and the ability of the Trans-Siberian RR to transport goods to where they are needed was pretty much maxed out OTL so you may have large stockpiles in Vladivostok awaiting transport west.

The bulk of the engineering forces, equipment, and RR gear that expanded the Persian infrastructure (ports, roads, and RRs) that allowed for a good deal of LL to flow to the USSR was US. Again, absent the US in the war I simply do not see the USA expending this amount of money and effort so this is yet something else that falls on the limited resources of the UK and the various "free" forces. Also, again how many bottoms does it take to bring the stuff to Persia en route to the USSR.

Before you get in to how many US soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen are actually fighting the Germans and how that manpower affects the overall balance, look at the overall logistic contributions. All the stuff and the people to move and repair the stuff outside of CONUS. Any diminution of this is a further strain in manpower for both the UK and USSR, and results in shortfalls of all sorts of things that mean readjusting "internal" production priorities and/or doing without. (1) Again, not sure how you can visualize the USA doing all of this absent actually being in the fight. (2)

(1) One problem the USSR has in particular is that while they have a lot of manpower, much of this manpower would need a great deal of preparation to perform repair and maintenance tasks substituting for such things done by the USA.
(2) In WWI the USA was supply a fair amount the the Entente prior to April, 1917 but there are two key points. First this was being paid for by secured loans, not the unsecured loans of after the DoW - LL is essentially an unsecured loan. Secondly, the volume of US production shipped to the Entente went up significantly after the DoW, food shipments requiring rationing in the USA are one example. In WWII you did not get rationing in the USA until after PH when food for the military and to the Allies grew significantly, and things like shipping to import coffee beans was now limited.
 
Regarding a British Tube-alloys project; where would they locate their Trinity site? Australia? Would the Canadians allow a test on their soil, especially with the uncertainty of the bombs power/secondary effects?

Ric350

If they build a gun type Uranium device they probably wont do a full test. The Yanks did not. Hiroshima was the test. The TRINITY test was of the very complex Plutonimum device. They had no guarantees it would work as hoped.
 
much of this manpower would need a great deal of preparation to perform repair and maintenance tasks substituting for such things done by the USA.

What? The US performed extremely little of the repair and maintenance tasks upon material once it was transferred into the Soviets hands. That was conducted by the Soviets themselves. The Soviets even proved to have the industrial-technical skills to reverse-engineer much of the material and produce it themselves, which they were doing in quantity by the time the war ended. This smells of the sort of "dumb Soviet untermenschen unable to technically compete with the superior western technical skills" thinking that led to things like the Germans not believing the Soviets could develop armor equal or superior to their own prior to Barbarossa or the US believing the Soviets could never develop an atomic bomb (and to attribute it entirely to espionage when the issue of Soviet spies was unveiled, when in reality espionage was merely a helpful accelerant rather then any kind of absolute necessity). Dropping lend-lease from the Soviets would certainly have a lot of negative consequences for the Soviets, possibly even enough for them to be stalemated or lose the war, but the loss of the technical skillsets to perform repair and maintenance on equipment won't be one of them.
 
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As to air superiority, the British could manage to make a mission safe over German skies at night, I'd guess. They might send a couple of 500-bomber raids to two other targets, and escort the Silve]rplate Lanc with a box of a hundred Mosquito night-fighter intruders, for instance.

That seems like a tremdously big risk to lose your bomb en route.
 
That seems like a tremdously big risk to lose your bomb en route.

Forget the night attack. The Germans seldom wasted interceptors on photo and weather reconissance planes. The US did not bother with escorts for either atomic raid. tho the Japanese had on paper 1,400+ interceptors operational at the time. The Japanese sounded a air raid warning in both cases, but did not make a serious attempt to intercept either. The US sortied multiple air reconissance missions over Japan daily, and the three Allies did the same over Germany. Up to two dozen on a peak day. Weather recon was a daily occurance at several locations, and air photography was demanded by both the air and ground forces at many locations each day.
 

Deleted member 1487

Stalin was unhappy with the losses, but “losses Stalin is unhappy with” is not the same as “unsustainable losses”. The claim that Soviet commanders lied about their losses is made without any basis and represents little more then conspiracy theory level denial of the historical data. I might as well claim the Germans lied about their losses to avoid upsetting Hitler, as there’s just as much evidence for it. That Soviet official histories after the war exaggerated their accomplishments does not change what Soviet internal reports during the war reported.
Unsustainable losses can mean different things. The losses were unsustainable in that it required weeks after to rebuild from the strategic reserves the effected tank units before they could fight again and they were about down to their last reserves in the salient that would be able to impact the situation on the southern flank.

Also I'm not claiming the Soviets lied outright about their losses, but hid the extent of them from STAVKA through creative accounting means to avoid Stalin's wrath. One book that noted the discrepancies in reports between what was reported to STAVKA and what was noted in unit records is linked below.

The Soviets internal reporting could lie like no tomorrow about what they killed, in a manner that went beyond the usual over claiming, but when it came to what they lost they were brutally frank.
Having seen some translated reports it was rather shocking the extent to what they claimed. As to their own losses it depends at what level we're talking. There were plenty of ways to hide losses when compiling higher level reports, but lower level stuff is accurate based on what I've seen. Historians have pointed out this discrepancy that appears in the original reports:
https://www.amazon.com/Kursk-1943-G...rsk+1943&qid=1563561180&s=digital-text&sr=1-1

The Soviets are hardly alone in that, an American historian working with Patton's 3rd Army files found that the various lower unit reports did not match the army level reports, which indicated Patton and/or his staff inflated enemy losses when reporting to higher authorities.

That the Soviet forces were still mustering up and deploying for their attack when the Germans withdrew does not change that those forces were there the attack. Suffice to say, the Germans still grinding themselves away at Soviet AT defenses they had become fully enmeshed in after Prokhorovka is not going to leave them in a better position to repel it. At least they got a few weeks worth of rest IOTL...
The last reserves were being plugged into the line at different points than that of the 5th GTA, but these were smaller than the forces that had already been trashed in previous days. Orders to the 5th GTA to keep attacking were unable to be carried out as there were no more reserves left to them and they were stuck just helping hold the line around Prokhorovka; I'm referring to the situation on the 16th, after the efforts to crush Totenkopf had been defeated and after Hitler's order to cancel the operation had been made, and with extra time for Manstein to keep going. There was another operation from July 14th-15th, which was Operation Roland, and forced the Soviets to abandon a bunch of their AT guns to avoid being encircled; historically that was the end of the operation, because the SS Panzer corps had to fall back, as they were to be redeployed to Italy and the rest of the corps to the Mius front.

IOTL the withdrawn units were in constant transit or combat from the pull back on, they effectively got no rest, while the Soviet survivors of Citadel did.

Except your quote doesn’t challenge that idea at all? It says that the Soviets didn’t launch a major attack between the 12th and the 15th. But that isn’t evidence the Soviets couldn’t attack. After all, if that were true then 4th Kharkov flat out wouldn’t have happened. But it did happen. Not only did it happen, but the sequence of offensives continued for far longer then Citadel did and saw Soviet forces take vastly heavier losses, yet did not exhaust Soviet reserves. From a strategic perspective, Soviet forces were facing major combat operations pretty much continuously from July 1943 all the way until March 1944 during which Soviet forces largely maintained, and even in a number of cases increased, their strength. This wouldn’t have been possible had the reserves they were deploying on July 15th been the last they had as you claimed.
They couldn't attack because they were trying barely holding on. Operation Roland ran from the 14th to 15th and during that the SS Panzer corps and III Panzer corps linked up, punching off the Belenikhino salient, forcing a rapid withdrawal of Soviet forces, which while they got out they had to abandon most of their AT equipment in the process.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Roland

The Belgorod offensive came weeks later after Citadel was over and forces had withdrawn, while Soviet forces were rebuilt from the STAVKA reserves. You're right that the Soviet strategic reserve wasn't depleted, but the on hand reserves of the Voronezh Front and forces able to be committed to the attack or defense were already committed as of the time the Germans pulled back on the 17th. You're conflating strategic with operational reserves and the impact that would have had on the Citadel operation, the former not mattering to the operation, just the ability to rebuild forces shattered during Citadel in the weeks between those forces exiting combat and starting the Belgorod-Kharkov operation.

No, you simply claim their closing on the front but that’s not what your maps show. They show the 27th Army still approaching and rather well positioned to deploy on the Germans left flank while the 53rd Army was still far enough back that it could conceivably be deployed anywhere along the line. It also does not change that the German forces by July 15th were literally collapsing from exhaustion, having exhausted the supplies of meth that kept them going since (and even during) Prokhorovka. They needed the subsequent time off even more badly then the Soviets did and continuing the offensive would mean they would be even weaker while the Soviets would only be gaining even more strength. Without any prospect of a breakthrough, Manstein would have no room to maneuver like he did at 4th Kharkov and would have been little more then a punching bag. If he was at the top of his game, the most he could hope to achieve is getting his forces out reasonably intact.
The text on the pages around the map makes it abundantly clear where they were being committed, it was directly to their immediate front, not a wider flank, they were trying to stop the Panzer corps west of the SS corps and the SS corps, which had just linked up linked up with III PC in Operation Roland, depriving a large part of Soviet forces their heavy equipment including AT weapons when they fled to avoid being pocketed. I'm at work now, so don't have access to the book to quote it directly, but remember clearly that particular argument about this issue.

What do you even mean by 'left flank'? 27th Army was deployed to stop the XXXXVIII PC. The 53rd army was deploying to help the smashed 5th GTA, which was in trouble after Operation Roland and the link up of the III and SS PC. What are you even basing the exhaustion claim on? Yes, Soviet reserves were fresh, but they hadn't done well in combat with 1 PC let alone two linked up with the rest of the Soviet forces on line having been deprived of their AT weapons in the retreat out of the pocket forming on the 13th-14th.

The Grossdeutschland Division was the most high profile example and the one that delayed the 11th Guards breakthrough at the critical moment long enough for 9th Army to withdraw additional panzer formations to guard the retreat.

"By late-July Soviet forces were introducing major new forces to combat and threatened, imultaneously, to collapse German defense around Bolkhov and lunge southward toward the key rail line at Karachev. Seizure of Karachev would sever all German communications with Orel. On 26 July the three tank corps of General Badanov's 496-tank 4th Tank ARmy struck west of Bolkhov and Bragramian committed the 2d Guards Cavalry Corps and a corps of the 11th Guard Army in a thrust on Karachev. Although the German XXIII and XXXXI Panzer Corps stubbornly resisted, the immense pressure forced the Germans to abandon Bolkhov and to withdraw to new defense lines northwest of Orel and less than ten kilomaters from the vital Briansk-Orel rail line. Only the timely arrival of the Panzer Grenadier Grossdeutschland contained the southward drive of Bagramians 11th Guards Army and 2nd Guards Cavalry Corps. A frustrated Begramian threw division after division against German forces defending Karachev as Model shifted his bedraggled panzer divisions westward from the Bolkhov sector to contain Soviet forces short of the critical rail line." -The Battle of Kursk, Glantz & House, Pg 240
Are we talking about what would happen IOTL or ITTL without the US in the war? Context would matter a whole lot and discussing a what if about OTL with the US in the war doesn't make sense in the context of this thread's scenario.

If in this thread's scenario (assuming the Eastern Front still leads to Kursk) there wasn't a Sicilian Front it's not like they couldn't have transferred other divisions, as IOTL 1st Panzer division was fresh and in Greece to counter a potential Allied invasion; the Brits alone won't warrant a Panzer division in Greece and by then the North African front might well still be ongoing without US help.

If about OTL then yes that would be an issue, but perhaps if those divisions were stuck in on the south flank of Kursk they would send a different armored division to help instead of GD. How did one depleted Panzer Division without rest or time to refit then stop the entire Soviet thrust of a Soviet army and cavalry corps by itself?

Sicily was Hitler’s stated reason for calling off Citadel, but it was neither the only reason nor even the most pressing.
What date are you talking about? Because Hitler called off Citadel on the 13th as a result of Sicily Landings and Soviet offensive against Orel, but only applied it to the northern face of the offensive, allowing it to continue with Manstein for a few extra days before the SS PC was broken up and shipped out. So while yes it was cancelled for two reasons, Sicily for the Southern flank, the Soviet Orel offensive for the North, it wasn't a clean cancellation of the entire thing at once and arguably could have continued in the South as the SS PC wasn't ultimately needed for Italy, while the Sicily Landings freed up 1st Panzer Division from Greece to be used elsewhere (it was held their to counter a potential landing in Greece and it showed up in the East eventually and could have left sooner than IOTL if needed).
 

Deleted member 1487

Forget the night attack. The Germans seldom wasted interceptors on photo and weather reconissance planes. The US did not bother with escorts for either atomic raid. tho the Japanese had on paper 1,400+ interceptors operational at the time. The Japanese sounded a air raid warning in both cases, but did not make a serious attempt to intercept either. The US sortied multiple air reconissance missions over Japan daily, and the three Allies did the same over Germany. Up to two dozen on a peak day. Weather recon was a daily occurance at several locations, and air photography was demanded by both the air and ground forces at many locations each day.
Does that hold true if the USAAF isn't in the war and the RAF is going it alone? The British will be missing half of the OTL aircraft attacking the Luftwaffe and the Luftwaffe wouldn't be effectively dead as of the end of Big Week in early 1944. With fewer opponents and more resources (due to lack of USAAF bombing, fighter attacks, and more effective ability to stop BC due to being able to concentrate resources on it) by 1945 they may well be able and willing to intercept and kill any aircraft over Germany, especially without the USAAF being there to force the RAF to start bombing oil resources.
 

Medved

Banned
German sources claim 8100 Soviet afv's destroyed during July/August of 1943 - Soviet sources claim 6100 for the same time period. That's between 25 and 33% of the entire 1943 afv's production in just 16.5% of the entire year. I call that pretty severe losses.
 
Are we talking about what would happen IOTL or ITTL without the US in the war?

OTL. This is kinda all I'm gonna reply to at the moment since I realized we're verging on taking the thread VERY off-topic at the moment (more so then usual). I am gonna draft a reply for the rest of these, probably in a word document somewhere, but I think I'll save it for a thread more immediately pertinent to Kursk.
 

Deleted member 1487

OTL. This is kinda all I'm gonna reply to at the moment since I realized we're verging on taking the thread VERY off-topic at the moment (more so then usual). I am gonna draft a reply for the rest of these, probably in a word document somewhere, but I think I'll save it for a thread more immediately pertinent to Kursk.
Or if you want you can PM me too
 
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