If the WAllies had decided to push the Soviet Union out of Europe immediately following WW2

[Thon Taddeo]

Not everyone liked the Soviets

"The difficulty in understanding the Russian is that we do not take cognizance of the fact that he is not a European, but an Asiatic, and therefore thinks deviously. We can no more understand a Russian than a Chinese or a Japanese, and from what I have seen of them, I have no particular desire to understand them except to ascertain how much lead or iron it takes to kill them. In addition to his other amiable characteristics, the Russian has no regard for human life and they are all out sons-of-bitches, barbarians, and chronic drunks."

General George Patton

That said, neither side wanted War in 1945.

So the real question is, how far could have Truman pushed on the Eastern European nations?

Earlier post have shown how the Soviets were out of manpower, but the UK was out of willpower

Patton was more of a racist shithead than I realized

 

[marathag]

The US can forget repayment for lend-lease as well. They were expecting that but OTL they did get it back. And lend-lease stopped in September 1945 anyway so the USSR wouldn't really be deprived of anything anymore if the Wallies declare war. This includes nuclear materials the USSR used for weapons development(though meant for nuclear energy).

FROM THE WIKI
While repayment of the interest-free loans was required after the end of the war under the act, in practice the U.S. did not expect to be repaid by the USSR after the war. The U.S. received $2M in reverse Lend-Lease from the USSR. This was mostly in the form of landing, servicing, and refueling of transport aircraft; some industrial machinery and rare minerals were sent to the U.S. The U.S. asked for $1.3B at the cessation of hostilities to settle the debt, but was only offered $170M by the USSR. The dispute remained unresolved until 1972, when the U.S. accepted an offer from the USSR to repay $722M linked to grain shipments from the U.S., with the remainder being written off

I wonder if the war would last till the USSR builds its own nuke and strikes back. I'm sure they would prioritize the effort of building one, more than OTL. This of course assuming the Wallies can't fin the USSR nuclear research facilities.

OTL, they built as fast as they could. They just didn't have the industrial capacity the US had, to go from scratch to a bomb in 4 years

The leaks from the Manhattan Project were nice, but the theory in itself do not built the plants. Forex, the USSR didn't have the refrigeration industry in the way the US did, or even Chrome plating.
Chrysler had a little used plating complex, that during the war did the nickel plating for the miles of tubing used to move UF6 hypercorrosive gas around.

And they cut corners.

The Mayak Production Association (Russian: Производственное объединение «Маяк», from Маяк 'lighthouse') is one of the biggest nuclear facilities in the Russian Federation, housing a reprocessing plant. The closest city is Ozyorsk.

The Mayak plant was built between 1945–48, in a great hurry and in total secrecy as part of the Soviet Union's atomic bomb project. Five (today closed) nuclear reactors were built to make, refine, and machine Plutonium for weapons. Later the plant came to specialize in reprocessing spent nuclear fuel from nuclear reactors and plutonium from decommissioned weapons.

In 1957 Mayak was the site of the Kyshtym disaster, one of the worst nuclear accidents in history. During this catastrophe, a poorly maintained storage tank exploded, releasing 50-100 tons of high-level radioactive waste. The resulting radioactive cloud contaminated an expansive territory of more than 750 km2 (290 sq mi) in the eastern Urals with the consequence of sickness and death from radiation poisoning.

The Soviet regime kept this accident secret for about thirty years. The event was eventually rated at 6 on the seven-level INES scale, third in severity only to the disasters at Chernobyl in Ukraine and Fukushima in Japan.[2]

In 1949, they used open loop cooling on their reactors, so the nearby lake became incredibly radioactive

It's hard to see how they could have sped up their program over OTL, and as it was, it took them a year to get enough plutonium for their 2nd bomb test, and really didn't have any fieldable weapons till 1951, before then, each one was assembled like 'Gadget' at the Trinity site.

 

[ObssesedNuker]

Not everyone liked the Soviets

"The difficulty in understanding the Russian is that we do not take cognizance of the fact that he is not a European, but an Asiatic, and therefore thinks deviously. We can no more understand a Russian than a Chinese or a Japanese, and from what I have seen of them, I have no particular desire to understand them except to ascertain how much lead or iron it takes to kill them. In addition to his other amiable characteristics, the Russian has no regard for human life and they are all out sons-of-bitches, barbarians, and chronic drunks."

General George Patton

And Patton was widely viewed as crazy for it, later apologia not withstanding.

So the real question is, how far could have Truman pushed on the Eastern European nations?

About as much as he did OTL.​

Earlier post have shown how the Soviets were out of manpower, but the UK was out of willpower

No they haven't? I've already pointed out they had around a million-and-a-half men in training by the time the war ended, which is more men then the number of German soldiers the WAllies killed during the war. The UK also wasn't the only one out of willpower: the US was even less interested in attacking the USSR, being more interested in getting the war with Japan over with and then going home to enjoy peace. The last thing they wanted to bother with was a war with the USSR, which would take years and see millions of dead Americans...

 

[marathag]

And Patton was viewed as crazy for it, later apologia not withstanding.

Not really crazy as being unhinged (though he had enough quirks that were unknown at the time by most)
That he was simply a bloodthirsty killer, and wanted more of it.

There's a reason he was known as 'Old Blood and Guts'

Even though his 3rd Army had lower casualty rates, despite his aggressive tactics on the ground. He actually pulled off that 'Make the other SOB die for his country' line he had.

 

[wtw]

Patton was more of a racist shithead than I realized

I have heard this before and knew he was dangerous and I am thankful he never lived to run for president

 

[marathag]

I have heard this before and knew he was dangerous and I am thankful he never lived to run for president

Not a chance, he could barely play the political games required as a West Point General, plus he had a terrible speaking voice.

 

[ObssesedNuker]

Not really crazy as being unhinged (though he had enough quirks that were unknown at the time by most)
That he was simply a bloodthirsty killer, and wanted more of it.

There's a reason he was known as 'Old Blood and Guts'

Even though his 3rd Army had lower casualty rates, despite his aggressive tactics on the ground. He actually pulled off that 'Make the other SOB die for his country' line he had.

Yes and no. At times he had lower casualty rates and at other times he was stymied with heavy losses... although the same could be said for any other general. Then again, he was also fighting an enemy that was seriously gimped compared to the 1945 Red Army.

 

[wtw]

Not a chance, he could barely play the political games required as a Wesp Point General, plus he had a terrible speaking voice.

That is comforting to know

 

[VaultJumper]

Don’t how wide spread this was but there were some Soviet soldiers that tried to surrender to the western allies because they thought that was going to be the next war.

 

[Worffan101]

It would be impossible to get the political support. In terms of OOB numbers the WAllies have every advantage, but western Europe would implode and FDR would be ridden out on a rail if they tried to keep fighting. It'd go to shit and there'd be massive devastation.

 

[jamesownz]

How many German POWs do the Wallies get to use? Something like in the final days of the war the Germans make a backroom deal to fully support the war once Hitler is gone for no Soviet occupation

 

[Barry Bull]

Absent LL the Soviets will be severely hampered logistically (both military and civilian) the longer the war goes on. LL food was an essential and starving workers don't produce well. They are in a worse manpower situation than the USA. While the Soviets have a lot of aircraft, and some are quite good (like the Sturmovik), overall the Allies have better and will have jets soon. The Soviets have no long range aviation. While the Soviets do have submarines, their submarine force in 1945 is not the submarine force of the later Cold War. The flow of men and supplies across the Atlantic will be essentially untouched. Of course the USA has the bomb, it can be delivered to Baku by B-29 from bases in iran or Iraq quite easily - boom goes Soviet fuel production. Having said all that pushing the USSR back to the 1939 borders will be a bloody mess, the Allies will have issues with communist insurgents in their rear, and the Soviets will have the same in Eastern Europe.

In the end, IMHO the "numbers" (manpower, production, raw materials, quality (mostly)) favor the Allies. The problem is political - I don't see any way this kicks off from the US/UK standpoint absent some sort of Soviet action/provocation way more than subjugating Eastern Europe. If the Soviets decide to try and push beyond agreed upon demarcation lines, kill Allied forces etc, then "betrayal" will solve the political issue. I simply don't see any way that the USA, and especially the UK and France, can be convinced that the now evil USSR must be pushed back to 1939 borders with the attendant costs in blood and treasure if the west just does it.

Indeed. The Allies' advantage will prevail in a long war, the 1945 Soviet Air Force performed well in Eastern Front conditions, but was ill-equipped to counter strategic and atomic bombing

 

[David T]

How many German POWs do the Wallies get to use? Something like in the final days of the war the Germans make a backroom deal to fully support the war once Hitler is gone for no Soviet occupation

You know that in the 1950's West German re-armament was still sufficiently controversial in France that it helped bring down the EDC? Using German troops in 1945 in a war to drive the Soviets from eastern Europe would have been so unpopular in a Continent which had very recently been occupied by the Wehrmacht that--well, there isn't even much point talking about it. (It would be hard enough to get western Europeans to accept using German troops in a defensive war.)

 

[lionhead]

FROM THE WIKI
While repayment of the interest-free loans was required after the end of the war under the act, in practice the U.S. did not expect to be repaid by the USSR after the war. The U.S. received $2M in reverse Lend-Lease from the USSR. This was mostly in the form of landing, servicing, and refueling of transport aircraft; some industrial machinery and rare minerals were sent to the U.S. The U.S. asked for $1.3B at the cessation of hostilities to settle the debt, but was only offered $170M by the USSR. The dispute remained unresolved until 1972, when the U.S. accepted an offer from the USSR to repay $722M linked to grain shipments from the U.S., with the remainder being written off

i read that, not sure why you would quote that. The US proably wouldn't be hurt not getting payment back though.

OTL, they built as fast as they could. They just didn't have the industrial capacity the US had, to go from scratch to a bomb in 4 years

The leaks from the Manhattan Project were nice, but the theory in itself do not built the plants. Forex, the USSR didn't have the refrigeration industry in the way the US did, or even Chrome plating.
Chrysler had a little used plating complex, that during the war did the nickel plating for the miles of tubing used to move UF6 hypercorrosive gas around.

And they cut corners.

The Mayak Production Association (Russian: Производственное объединение «Маяк», from Маяк 'lighthouse') is one of the biggest nuclear facilities in the Russian Federation, housing a reprocessing plant. The closest city is Ozyorsk.

The Mayak plant was built between 1945–48, in a great hurry and in total secrecy as part of the Soviet Union's atomic bomb project. Five (today closed) nuclear reactors were built to make, refine, and machine Plutonium for weapons. Later the plant came to specialize in reprocessing spent nuclear fuel from nuclear reactors and plutonium from decommissioned weapons.

In 1957 Mayak was the site of the Kyshtym disaster, one of the worst nuclear accidents in history. During this catastrophe, a poorly maintained storage tank exploded, releasing 50-100 tons of high-level radioactive waste. The resulting radioactive cloud contaminated an expansive territory of more than 750 km2 (290 sq mi) in the eastern Urals with the consequence of sickness and death from radiation poisoning.

The Soviet regime kept this accident secret for about thirty years. The event was eventually rated at 6 on the seven-level INES scale, third in severity only to the disasters at Chernobyl in Ukraine and Fukushima in Japan.[2]

In 1949, they used open loop cooling on their reactors, so the nearby lake became incredibly radioactive

It's hard to see how they could have sped up their program over OTL, and as it was, it took them a year to get enough plutonium for their 2nd bomb test, and really didn't have any fieldable weapons till 1951, before then, each one was assembled like 'Gadget' at the Trinity site.

Fair enough. Thought by grabbing territory and knowing what they know they might speed it up somehow, by acquiring more resources or scientists for example. But thats a spy issue.

 

[Deleted member 1487]

Not really crazy as being unhinged (though he had enough quirks that were unknown at the time by most)
That he was simply a bloodthirsty killer, and wanted more of it.

There's a reason he was known as 'Old Blood and Guts'

Even though his 3rd Army had lower casualty rates, despite his aggressive tactics on the ground. He actually pulled off that 'Make the other SOB die for his country' line he had.

Eh, there is evidence he juked the casualty rates he was inflicting on the enemy to down play his own losses. Apparently an amateur historian looked through 3rd Army's regimental records for his own purposes and found that when adding up the casualty reports of what they inflicted on the enemy did not match what 3rd Army was reporting to higher command. Patton certainly benefited as well from joining the fight after the Germans were worn down in Normandy, so he could breakout and pursue against a force unable to offer series resistance. His aggressive behavior in France worked because the enemy was pretty much already beaten when he showed up, but even then he had to lie about how many casualties he was inflicting to look better. His previous 'work' in North Africa and Sicily did not go nearly as well.

 

[David Floyd]

This is an interesting, but silly argument. Here's the reality. Prior to the Allied drawdown of forces, if the Soviets try to go West, they lose big due to logistics and airpower. If the Allies try to go East, they lose due to logistics, domestic politics and outright mutinies.

If you really want to wargame it, and ignore domestic and morale factors in the West, then sure, the Allies win 100 times out of 100 in a long war no matter who attacks and I don't think anyone really disputes that.

But real life doesn't work that way.

 

[History Learner]

That ignores that from 1943 to 1945, 9 million fit males came of age within the pre-war borders of the USSR (of which a significant proportion were admittedly conscripted into the Red Army as it was) and a further 3 million were coming of age annually up through to 1947. As it was, when the war ended the Soviets had around one-and-a-half million men from the 1945 class of conscripts in replacement training from the first of the bi-annual call-ups. The decline in strength of rifle divisions was the result of a conscious decision to divert manpower into reinforcing and creating more artillery and tank units, not from an absolute shortage of men.

Completely and utterly false according to Soviet draft data which I've already provided; 1943 class, for example, was only 900,00 men. Outside of using more prisoners and Central Asians, manpower was tapped out in early 1943 besides several million they could liberate behind the lines but even that was largely used up as they moved West.

That firstly ignores that it took years for those B-24s and B-17s to break Nazi Germany.

No, it took about a year from the late Spring of 1943 to the Fall of 1944. This was also without the advantages the Western Allies had in 1945, namely that medium bombers and fighter bombers are readily available for use against the Soviet logistical net, which proved devastating for the Germans when unleashed upon them in late 1944.

The British planners for Unthinkable, who were intimately familiar with the capabilities and limitations of air power operating against lines of communication having had ample experience with it against the Germans, did not believe they could achieve such a total collapse of Soviet logistics so rapidly.

In May/June of 1945, Post-War reviews of how effective bombing had been had yet to be completed, meaning that contemporary views have much less merit than us using declassified sources from both sides.

Additionally, looking at that map I'm seeing rail lines that would still be available to the USSR in the event Warsaw, Lublin, and Lwow were destroyed. For, the lines going through East Prussia and that one I can see that runs between Lublin and Warsaw. This is, of course, assuming the atomic bombers are not intercepted and shot down.

Ah yes, the Soviets can definitely support multiple fronts using minor supply lines, or a single railway from East Prussia which will be under the utter focus of conventional attacks or nuked in September of 1945; as time progresses the Americans will swarm the Soviets in nuclear devices and bombers, while having air superiority. There is no chance of the West failing to destroy these targets, and I find it impossible they can sustain the same forces they did historically in East Germany in 1945 using less than 25% of the same railways.

Classic case of lying with statistics. Those figures are in comparison to Soviet production during the war, not for usage.

Uh, no and any review of this statement would show that; I'm lying with statistics, but then you acknowledge the Soviets were overwhelmingly dependent on Western production as the original claim dictated?

Overwhelmingly, the Soviets used their domestic pre-war stocks throughout the war, with lend-lease inputs only being enough to cover losses. Locomotives is a good case in point: per The Influence of Railways on Military Operations in the Russo-German War 1941–1945, the Soviets started the war with 24,000 locomotives, lost an estimated 2,000 to the Germans during the course of the war, and through lend-lease received 1,900. An additional 2,000 locomotives, as well as 120,000 railcars, were subsequently captured in the late-stages of the war.

And now they cannot replace losses, which was the point. I also noticed you cited locomotives, but not ability to replace track.

I've always wondered where that 59% figure comes from, since the numbers shipped and consumed don't support it. Between June 1941 and May 1945, the Soviets record expenditures of just under 3 million tons of high-octane aviation fuel and received 1,197,587 tons, which works out to around 40%.

You source doesn't include citations for its claims, likely because if it did it would've been exposed as debunked Soviet claims. Even taking it at face value, a 40% reduction in AV Gas is a MAJOR force reduction hit.

Most discussions on this also ignore the fact that American lend-lease furnished the Soviets with six refinery complexes outfitted with the catalytic cracking processes for the domestic production of high-octane aviation fuel, but those refineries were still there and still producing when lend-lease stopped and would still be providing large quantities of high-octane avgas to the Soviets.

Said production was already counted towards Soviet domestic production, which we've both already established is nowhere near meeting Soviet needs.

This is further ignoring that the capture and retrieval of German and Romanian petro-chemical industries would have furnished the Soviets with further capacity for the production of high-octane avgas, so using the metrics of 1941-1944 for Soviet mid-1945 avgas production is flawed to begin with.

You mean the German and Romanian facilities the Western Allies spent the last year bombing to hell, currently occupy large amounts of, and have bases around Europe well within range of hitting the sources they don't hold?

Your implication that the German counterattacks against Soviet exploitation forces is likewise dubious, since the VVS was unable to do the sort of flexible CAS the WAllies did, instead generally doing stuff like interdiction patrols in set regions. This seems to be taking a correlation for a causation. By and large those German counterattacks were stopped not by the Soviet VVS but by Soviet mechanized forces conducting the exploitation. Fire support for such efforts was largely provided by assault guns and tank destroyers, not by aviation.

Source comes from Creveld's study on the matter, which I've seen both you and Wiking cite. You're welcome to provide an alternative source to contradict it, but just claiming its false does not make it so.

Long on generalization, absent on specifics, and rather contrary to the historical data we do have. The Soviets didn't have trouble producing high-octane fuel for all the masses of new late-model piston engine and jet fights they were flying around in the late-1940s, their rolling stock in 1945 was about the same size as it was pre-war and that had handled the war time needs rather admirably,

Because there is a difference between peacetime fuel needs and cargo transfers via rail nets versus wartime? Unless you're arguing the Soviets use magic of course.

Soviet industry expanded significantly which indicates large production of machine tool spare parts and metal production

Because they were receiving 25% of their machine tools via Lend Lease.

and Soviet technological and managers personnel were enough to design and manufacture all sorts of high technological items from radars to jet engines to atomic bombs. Sounds more like standard Western underestimation of Soviet technical-industrial capabilities (the sort that made them believe the USSR could never build an atomic bomb) then sound analysis.

Just ignore their extensive spy nets acquiring said technology through means such as Klaus Fuchs or the Brits outright sending them engines. I'll also point out you were the one who previously cited this source in question the last time we sparred on this topic; same with regards to Art over on AHF.

Indeed, the very next paragraph, which you quite notably left out, goes on to state that since the USSR was "diverting a substantially higher percentage of its limited resources to war-making capacities, more than offset its poverty and placed itself in a position of conventional military superiority."

Which further drives home my point, in that their economy cannot economically sustain fighting a war without Western aid.

I've already dealt with the Avgas question, but would further note that Soviet aircraft production in 1945 was already on route to outstrip it's 1944 production figures by around 10,000 aircraft. Furthermore, the Soviets in 1945 did have a functioning high-altitude interceptor force, which the Cold War force was built upon. It wasn't built from scratch.

And yet they still got nearly a third of their aircraft from the West which, when compared to loss ratios against the Germans, shows how dangerous this lacking is. As for their HAIF, it was a limited one which had no real experience given the nature of the Eastern Front, and it should be noted it took years to get that Cold War force in place. The West, meanwhile, has P-51s, P-47s, and now P-80s with which to quickly and decisively seize control of the air and escort bombing missions with.

 

[Komnenos002]

The only way I see it being quick-er would be depending on the impact that the atomic weapons would make?



That's 12 million exhausted men with no more material backing or support from the US and the UK.

The Russians fought heartily when they were defending their own home but as we saw in Finland when they were fighting a war of conquest themselves they had a different will.

Sure the Americans and Brits wanted to go home but the Russian didn't too?

I mean, if the Allies invade, the Soviet soldiers will be defending their homes from a second round of aggression.

If they don't fight there isn't a home to go back to.

 

[VaultJumper]

It doesn't really matter who wins or looses timeline every thing will just suck balls for every one. this tl would tear apart at the seams of human civilization that already hanging by thread, at least the western and Asian ones.

 

[marathag]

I mean, if the Allies invade, the Soviet soldiers will be defending their homes from a second round of aggression.

If they don't fight there isn't a home to go back to.

Continuing conflict to free Poland and the Baltics doesn't mean that it's 'On to Moscow!'