How would a British and Soviet only war against Germany go

If the gloves come off because of Britain starting up operation vegetarian, what was the size and nature of the German, Soviet and British chemical and biological weapon stockpiles?
 

Deleted member 1487

If the gloves come off because of Britain starting up operation vegetarian, what was the size and nature of the German, Soviet and British chemical and biological weapon stockpiles?
Germany had 70,000 tons of a very persistent mustard gas:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_mustard#Disposal
Most of the sulfur mustard agent found in Germany after World War II was dumped into the Baltic Sea. Between 1966 and 2002, fishermen have found about 700 chemical weapons in the region of Bornholm, most of which contain sulfur mustard. One of the more frequently dumped weapons was the "Sprühbüchse 37" (SprüBü37, Spray Can 37, 1937 being the year of its fielding with the German Army). These weapons contain sulfur mustard mixed with a thickener, which gives it a tar-like viscosity. When the content of the SprüBü37 comes in contact with water, only the sulfur mustard in the outer layers of the lumps of viscous mustard hydrolyzes, leaving behind amber-colored residues that still contain most of the active sulfur mustard. On mechanically breaking these lumps, e.g., with the drag board of a fishing net or by the human hand, the enclosed sulfur mustard is still as active as it had been at the time the weapon was dumped. These lumps, when washed ashore, can be mistaken for amber, which can lead to severe health problems.

Plus of course there was Tabun:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabun_(nerve_agent)#History

The SS had their own secret Bioweapons program:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/the-nazise28099-biowarfare-program-at-dachau/

Also the Germans apparently had an exchange program with the Japanese Unit 731:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_...1_and_the_Japanese_biological_warfare_program

So they could retaliate in kind if the Brits decided to try their plan. Also the US is probably not going to like it if Britain uses bioweapons in Europe. Also the Brits weren't ready to drop anything until 1944.
 

Empra

Banned
However as I recall, Tooze's Wages of Destruction effectively implies that Germany had lost the war at the start because its economy was weak.
In 1943 Germany produced more than in 1942 despite holding less territory. In 1944 Germany produced more than in 1943 despite holding less territory. There were problems with the German economy (mainly the lack of resources) however the main reason Germany lost was because it fought just to many enemies at once. Remove the Allied powerhouse USA from the equation and the chances of a German victory skyrocket, while the chances for a half-victory through stalemate become allmost 100%.

Also Edgerton in Britain's War Machine touches on the possibility of USSR/British Empire being able to defeat Germany without active USA participation....
In 1940 Britain had a population of 48.3 million people. US LL supplied 4 million tons of food in the 1941-1943 period - enough to feed around 3.3 million Britons every year. The average received calories for the UK were 2750 calories/day, which for most was just enough to hold their weight. So without LL food 45 million Britons have to reduce their daily calorie intake by 190 calories in order to feed the 3.3 million which were fed by LL in OTL. If you take 380 calories less than your body requires, you loose around 0.1 kilograms of body mass. Now lets run through the numbers:

Every Briton gets 190 calories less than OTL every day = a yearly calory deficit of 69 350 = a yearly weight loss of around 18 kilograms. Meaning a 190 cm tall factory worker who weights 90 kilograms on January 1st 1942 is reduced to just 72 kilograms by 1st January 1943 and to 54 kilograms/dead by 1st January 1944.... A daily calory decrease of just 100 calories/day would still result in the weight loss of around 20 kilograms within two years.

So the British are starving and dying from the lack of food from late 1941 onwards. They have no Allies except a Soviet Union who is worse of then them. They have no prospect of setting foot on the European continent ever again. And god knows how they would survive the years 1942/1943 without the 20 million+ tons of shipping space built by the Americans. Yet the British never ever compromise? The fat pig Churchill drinks buckets of chapagne and eats the finest cuisine, while ordinary Britons starve to death; but he is never removed from office? And we havent even TOUCHED the effects on British industry. You cant really produce aircraft and tanks when you lack iron ore, aluminium, copper ect. You cant afford to launch 1000 Bomber raids every few days when you have 1/3 less fuel avaliable than you had OTL. You cant afford the shipping space to transport 100 000 men to French North Africa when you need every ship you have to import every scrap of food and ore and fuel from the Dominions.

As for the Soviets, imagine what I wrote about Britain x2 and combine it with a massive land war fought against 3 million enemy soldiers; on your territory...
 
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Empra

Banned
No; see Widdowson and McCance

Yes; see Stettinius Jr: "Between the fall of France and the passing of the Lend-Lease act, the average British adult lost around 10 pounds of weight due to the rapidly shrinking diet." From: Edward R. Stettinius Jr, Lend-Lease: Weapon for Victory (The Macmillian Company 1944), page 97


During food rationing due to World War II, British biologists ate laboratory rat, creamed... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laboratory_rat
 
I love how the Soviets and British apparently can't mobilize nearly as much as the rackshamble Nazi economy. Britain alone produced as much steel as Germany. And a 2500 Calorie diet isn't going to starve literally anyone to death. That's 700 above my maintenance level and I am 5'8".

The problem is the bottleneck of shipping. But luckily this thread isn't about if Lend-Lease didn't happen, it's about if America didn't join the war. And if America didn't join the war, it would actually ramp up LL. The Soviets would be in Paris and the Brits in Milan by summer 1946. America would be pumping out Liberty ships and giving them to the British for free. They would be sending track for the British and Indians to build through Persia. They would be sending tens of thousands of trucks and thousands of tons of machinery for building war machines. Hell they would send more steel to Britain and the USSR than Germany could produce entirely.
 

Deleted member 1487

I love how the Soviets and British apparently can't mobilize nearly as much as the rackshamble Nazi economy. Britain alone produced as much steel as Germany. And a 2500 Calorie diet isn't going to starve literally anyone to death. That's 700 above my maintenance level and I am 5'8".

The problem is the bottleneck of shipping. But luckily this thread isn't about if Lend-Lease didn't happen, it's about if America didn't join the war. And if America didn't join the war, it would actually ramp up LL. The Soviets would be in Paris and the Brits in Milan by summer 1946. America would be pumping out Liberty ships and giving them to the British for free. They would be sending track for the British and Indians to build through Persia. They would be sending tens of thousands of trucks and thousands of tons of machinery for building war machines. Hell they would send more steel to Britain and the USSR than Germany could produce entirely.
I'd like to see where you're getting that stat about British steel production; from what I've seeing they produced much less than Germany. If anything they imported US steel. Higher numbers for Britain probably include imperial production.
 
I'd like to see where you're getting that stat about British steel production; from what I've seeing they produced much less than Germany. If anything they imported US steel. Higher numbers for Britain probably include imperial production.


I couldn't find specific numbers for the 30s or 40s for some reason. My numbers were from 1929, which is admittedly outdated, but only a couple million tons behind the German 1939 numbers, which were much higher than German 1929 numbers. The UK imported steel from the US because it had such a huge manufacturing industry their own domestic steel production couldn't keep up. The UK's GDP during WWII, although smaller than Germany's, was not significantly smaller, especially considering they weren't losing a major part of it in the fields of the USSR. It was a peer economy to Germany by itself, much like the Soviet Union was. Germany has the advantage of interior lines and the exploitation of Poland, the Low Countries, and France, but even then it couldn't match UK airplane production or pilot training by itself.
 

Empra

Banned
Britain alone produced as much steel as Germany.
China produces 10x more steel than the US; therefore China is 10x stronger than the US?

And a 2500 Calorie diet isn't going to starve literally anyone to death. That's 700 above my maintenance level and I am 5'8".
Correction: 1800 calories is the maintenance level for you if you sit on your ass all day doing an office job. With just moderate activity you would require 2600 calories to maintain weight. However the millions of soldiers in training, factory workers, farmers, nurses, ship crews, construction workers, repair crews ect ect need in excess of 3000 some even in excess of 4000 calories to maintain weight and health.
https://www.calculator.net/calorie-calculator.html

But luckily this thread isn't about if Lend-Lease didn't happen, it's about if America didn't join the war.
Actually we are dealing with both scenarios here.

And if America didn't join the war, it would actually ramp up LL.
Debatable

The Soviets would be in Paris and the Brits in Milan by summer 1946.
Debatable. Even with LL the British still have sever manpower shortages limiting the size of their army, without the US air force helping them they still could loose the air war in 1944. As for the Soviets, they would be facing much stronger German formations/better defensive positions than OTL, and Roosevelt still dies in April 1945 and Truman would cancel LL right away. So even WITH LL the Germans might manage to pull of a stalemate depending on how far the Soviets stand from Berlin when Roosevelt dies.

America would be pumping out Liberty ships and giving them to the British for free.
Debatable, also British manpower shortages, also what about the lack of escort? The US can give Britain 10 000 Liberty ships for free, if they arent escorted they will all be sunk within a few years.

They would be sending track for the British and Indians to build through Persia.
OTL American personell did the most work in Persia; tracks without a workforce to install them dont mean much.

They would be sending tens of thousands of trucks and thousands of tons of machinery for building war machines. Hell they would send more steel to Britain and the USSR than Germany could produce entirely.
Germany produced something around 250 million metric tons of steel during the war, the UK/USSR received around 15 million tons from the US. So how exactly are the Americans going to deliver 16-17x more steel than OTL?
 
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Deleted member 1487

I couldn't find specific numbers for the 30s or 40s for some reason. My numbers were from 1929, which is admittedly outdated, but only a couple million tons behind the German 1939 numbers, which were much higher than German 1929 numbers. The UK imported steel from the US because it had such a huge manufacturing industry their own domestic steel production couldn't keep up. The UK's GDP during WWII, although smaller than Germany's, was not significantly smaller, especially considering they weren't losing a major part of it in the fields of the USSR. It was a peer economy to Germany by itself, much like the Soviet Union was. Germany has the advantage of interior lines and the exploitation of Poland, the Low Countries, and France, but even then it couldn't match UK airplane production or pilot training by itself.
So you just made things up. Germany in 1929 was beset by the Great Depression and withdrawal of US loans, the tariffs erected against her in the 1920s, and were still recovering from the economic disaster of the early to mid-1920s while France ran the Saarland and Poland had taken Upper Silesia. Germany of 1941 controlled all their 1914 territory plus Austria, the Sudetenland, and Luxembourg among other areas, so experienced a VASTLY higher output than they were capable of in 1929. During WW2 they were well behind what Germany was turning out. UK steel imports were a function of being unable to produce more due to the huge problems within their own steel industry, which drove them out of production post-WW2. The UK's GDP during WW2 was highly dependent on US and Imperial imports and without that would have collapsed given how resource poor the British Isles were in terms of the demands of modern industry. UK production and pilot training was massively boosted by the US and the empire, both of which sent exports to Britain and trained British pilots in the Americas.
 
lets be clear lend lease started before the USA was in the war why would it suddenly stop just because the USA did not declare war? Secondly if there is no USA in the war then there cant be unrestricted submarine warfare, and its extremely unlikely that there is a war in Asia at all. In these circumstances its Germany that's fighting a 2 or 3 theatre war not the allies in these circumstances It does not seem to me that the supposed resource issues are as stacked in Germany's favour as some might think.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
I love how the Soviets and British apparently can't mobilize nearly as much as the rackshamble Nazi economy. Britain alone produced as much steel as Germany. And a 2500 Calorie diet isn't going to starve literally anyone to death. That's 700 above my maintenance level and I am 5'8".

The problem is the bottleneck of shipping. But luckily this thread isn't about if Lend-Lease didn't happen, it's about if America didn't join the war. And if America didn't join the war, it would actually ramp up LL. The Soviets would be in Paris and the Brits in Milan by summer 1946. America would be pumping out Liberty ships and giving them to the British for free. They would be sending track for the British and Indians to build through Persia. They would be sending tens of thousands of trucks and thousands of tons of machinery for building war machines. Hell they would send more steel to Britain and the USSR than Germany could produce entirely.

It may be 700 calories high for a modern officer worker, but not in 1940. Below 2800 calories per day per woman, you start to see excess mortality. The range for men is near 3500.

So what do you see here. More statistical deaths due to hunger, but they are recorded as disease, age, failure to thrive, etc. Then people have to save the calories. How, by not working so hard. Massive loss of labor here.
 

Deleted member 1487

lets be clear lend lease started before the USA was in the war why would it suddenly stop just because the USA did not declare war? Secondly if there is no USA in the war then there cant be unrestricted submarine warfare, and its extremely unlikely that there is a war in Asia at all. In these circumstances its Germany that's fighting a 2 or 3 theatre war not the allies in these circumstances It does not seem to me that the supposed resource issues are as stacked in Germany's favour as some might think.
There was USW within the declared war zone around Britain. With the US 'neutral' it was only within their declared protection zone that were protected totally, while outside the protection and war zone cruiser rules applied. As it was US merchant shipping was being sunk under USW and the US response was to arm merchant shipping, not declare war.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
All of your figures and arguments are very convincing. However as I recall, Tooze's Wages of Destruction effectively implies that Germany had lost the war at the start because its economy was weak. Unfortunately I cannot immediately check this because I am not at home but I would be interested in your view. Also Edgerton in Britain's War Machine touches on the possibility of USSR/British Empire being able to defeat Germany without active USA participation....but it is merely an aside not fully expanded upon.

Germany largely had lost the war when it started the war, if one assume the USA enters on time. And if one assumes the USSR enters the war on time. Remove either of these, and Germany probably has a negotiated draw at a worst case scenario.
 
Not sure why no PH stops the US joining the war. Pretty soon a U-Boat is gonna take a shot at a major US warship, or something similar, and the US is in the war.

You need a MUCH bigger POD than "avoid Pearl Harbor."

Alternatively, I'm not sure how PH is avoided without the Japanese somehow behaving differently in Asia which seems unlikely.

Have them discover either oil fields in Liaohe or Daqing in the Manchurian province in the early-mid 1930s. Japan now focuses on exploiting those fields. They now have more fuel to go further in China.
 
I notice OP has stepped out.

I also notice we're back to the old 'No Lend Lease - UK and USSR are definitely SCREWED', even though the (admittedly light on detail) scenario has a December 1941 POD, during which LL is already active to both the Soviet Union and the UK.

I mean, come on. The chances of the US just stopping all aid, and even denying cash and carry is pretty much nil, yet this seems to be a regular answer here.
Let's put some realism into things.

Germany decided it was a good idea to go to war with the greatest Empire in the world at the time, the biggest country in the world, and the greatest economy. They lost, despite rolling a LOT of double sixes (certainly between 1939 and 1941 - and even afterwards they did pretty well). Taking out the latter of those three doesn't doom the other two to instant starvation, defeat and surrender. Germany is NOT going to win this one, and they're going to be very hard pushed to even get a favourable negotiated peace.

The Soviets have faced and passed their darkest hour (October 1941) and will come back in 1942. Germany doesn't have the power in 1942 to deliver a knock out blow to the Soviets, and this power will only decline over time. The Soviets will recover, maybe not as strong and as fast as OTL, but they will come back. And Stalin isn't really going to accept a negotiated peace unless its the 1941 borders (which Hitler won't accept). And no... saying 'The Soviets will run out of steam' isn't happening either. Germany will run out of steam before the Soviets. Germany losing half of its young men in the east isn't going to go down well at home no matter what you say. In OTL a coup failed. Who knows what will happen in this ATL as the war drags into the mid 1940s with no sign of Soviet defeat.

And the UK isn't going to just surrender either, having dropped to 2,498 calories per day per male. They're going to keep (badly, but getting better) bombing Germany at night. They're going to clear North Africa, and they're going to invade somewhere in mainland Europe (badly - but they'll do it). And Churchill is going to keep on at the US President about the threat to the US of a Nazi dominated Europe. And even in the most rabid 'Robert Taft/Charles Lindbergh' fantasy world US President, they'll listen and offer some support. Because the US really doesn't want the Nazis in charge of Europe.

It won't be pretty, and it won't be a nice post war world; but that post war world won't involve the Nazis.
 

Empra

Banned
"I'm right because I say I'm right," isn't convincing in a debate, so again, can you provide your sources? I'm not a big WW2 buff, so sources are pretty valuable for me.

I allready wrote the numbers, if you want sources they are from several dozen books (mainly Howletts Fighting with Figures) and I wont search through my library; but feel free to demand sources from the people that claim that the Dominions are more than enough to compensate for American absence or that the Soviets win no matter what.

Its funny how (mostly) Americans stretch the great importance of US entry into the war to defeat Germany, yet when confronted with a scenario where the US doesnt do so, they suddenly turn 180 degrees and claim that it wasnt THAT important and that Germany looses regardless.
 
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I notice OP has stepped out.

I also notice we're back to the old 'No Lend Lease - UK and USSR are definitely SCREWED', even though the (admittedly light on detail) scenario has a December 1941 POD, during which LL is already active to both the Soviet Union and the UK.

I mean, come on. The chances of the US just stopping all aid, and even denying cash and carry is pretty much nil, yet this seems to be a regular answer here.
Let's put some realism into things.
I noticed both thing too, and totally agree with you. There's no reason to suspect the LL would be different from OTL. Which means 1942 will go largely as it did in OTL.

I think the first possible major butterfly would be in 1942: no operation Torch, because I don't see the british doing that on their own. Which would likely mean no german invasion of Tunisia, and would probably also mean that the British would get the Germans out of NA roughly on the same schedule as in OTL, although probably a few months later. In OTL having control of the harbors in Tunisia massively improved the German logistics.

Next step would be invasion of Sicily as in OTL. That being a few months later would be a possible next major butterfly: the Germans wouldn't stop Zitadelle as they did. But they will still lose the battle. After that the soviet progress will most likely be slower than OTL, since the Germans won't have to worry as much about an invasion in France they can pour more into the Eastfront. Also no airwar over Europe (or just in the night) means more fighters on the Russian front.

The British will probably invade Sardinia after Sicily. After that maybe Krete or Italy. They will definitely have a harder time and won't make as much progress (which in OTL was already slow). A British invasion in France is not likely IMO. But the Soviets will reach Berlin somewhere in 1946 or 1947. Would Hitler still commit suicide at that point? Or would he retreat to France and fight on?
 

Empra

Banned
The chances of the US just stopping all aid, and even denying cash and carry is pretty much nil, yet this seems to be a regular answer here.Let's put some realism into things.
The chances of the US providing LL for years yet never entering the war is pretty much nil, yet this is considered more realistic than the US stopping to supply the British after they run out of cash... Also see the thread title. It say UK/USSR war only - not UK/USSR war with American support.
 
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