Is there any chance that operation unthinkable could have succeded ?

It was seriously considered that immediatly after the fall if Berlin , the Wallies mainly britain thought that it was the best time to take down the soviet union , but for some reason it never happened but what if it happened ? Is there any chance that the Wallies can defeat the ussr ?
 
It was seriously considered that immediatly after the fall if Berlin , the Wallies mainly britain thought that it was the best time to take down the soviet union , but for some reason it never happened but what if it happened ? Is there any chance that the Wallies can defeat the ussr ?

Robert Conroy did a TL where Operation Unthinkable happened, but it was pretty much an Ally-wank.

Any for the Allies to win against the Soviets? Yes. Cut off oil supplies and land lease. Fight a defensive war and beat the Soviets out with air power and the atomic bombs. Make the Soviets extend their already thin supply lines and cut them off.

But even if the Allies did all that, the most they could possibly even take is Germany. The Allies were just too numerically inferior to advance any further.
 
Robert Conroy did a TL where Operation Unthinkable happened, but it was pretty much an Ally-wank.

Any for the Allies to win against the Soviets? Yes. Cut off oil supplies and land lease. Fight a defensive war and beat the Soviets out with air power and the atomic bombs. Make the Soviets extend their already thin supply lines and cut them off.

But even if the Allies did all that, the most they could possibly even take is Germany. The Allies were just too numerically inferior to advance any further.

promise the Poles, Ukrainians and other nationalities their freedom (and actually give it to them) as the Allies advance, and a lot of problems are solved in regards to manpower. It won't be a cakewalk, and it will be a war on the scale of World War II but with atomic weapons and probably chemical and biological weapons too, but the West could beat the Soviet Union in the immediate years after World War II before both sides were armed to the teeth with nuclear tipped missiles.

For one thing, the Americans and Western Europe were in no danger of starving, while the Russians most definitely are in this kind of war.
 
The allies can win, but casualties will be in the millions. The west did not want to lose that many people. For comparison, America had 400000 dead. Nuclear weapons and promises of freedom can win it, but it would be a long hard slog, in which the allies were not interested. Exhausted by war, the populations were not eager to enter into a conflict that was many times worse. It could have worked, but at a high price.
 
Given the Soviet's weren't logistically ready and America was about to have nuclear weapons then yah it could have worked if the public was behind it.

Even without nukes Rommel made a good argument to his family before his was offed that if war comes between that WAllied complete air dominance would tie down their armies in the field, chew up their cities and destroy their industry and oil facilities in time... that in time the WAllies would win in time because the U.S. was producing half the war material on Earth alone not counting the British Empire.

That theory would work if the WAllied public were all in the war and they would only be all in if they believed the Soviets attacked first and Stalin made some big mistakes in 1944 and 1945 say by deciding to go for pure annexations in Eastern Europe over turning nations into puppets.

The problem of course is that most likely an Operation Unthinkable happens without full buy in from the WAllied publics and they scoff at continuing a full war time economy or taking large numbers of extra causalities. Then it becomes Korea on super steroids with much more casualties and Washington afraid to go all in and London kicking out Churchill and making peace.
 
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Maybe if they were willing to throw Indians and the Soviets and see if Churchill truly cared less for the lives of Indians that Stalin cared for the lives of his people (assuming they can prevent a mass uprising in India as a result)? Otherwise the body count probably leads to all Western leaders losing the next election by huge landslides (except maybe the CANZ, they could probably claim they were dragged into it).
 
Robert Conroy did a TL where Operation Unthinkable happened, but it was pretty much an Ally-wank.

Wasn't the book the Wallies retreating nonstop until they could bring the atomic bombs to Europe? iirc the Soviets reached the Rhine before they got nuked.

I remember enjoying it a lot
 
I can see the equivalent of Unthinkable happening if the British went ahead and dropped anthrax on Germany. When the Red Army crosses into Germany, they get sick.
 
It will be a very bloody and dark time if this came about.

Anyone going to try to tell the story?
 
Wasn't the book the Wallies retreating nonstop until they could bring the atomic bombs to Europe? iirc the Soviets reached the Rhine before they got nuked.

I remember enjoying it a lot

Yep the thing is though:

1) The Allies had somehow kept an entire division alive around a thousand miles beyond the front lines (Postdam).

2) The Allies suddenly smashed the Soviets and pushed them back to Poland (how?) after three A-bombs detonate. As much as the A-bombs can break formations, for the Soviets to lose THAT much territory implies that the A-bombs basically killed hundreds of thousands (but it only killed around 50,000-150,000 I think).

3) OSS stories were pretty outrageous in all honesty.
 
Yep the thing is though:

1) The Allies had somehow kept an entire division alive around a thousand miles beyond the front lines (Postdam).

2) The Allies suddenly smashed the Soviets and pushed them back to Poland (how?) after three A-bombs detonate. As much as the A-bombs can break formations, for the Soviets to lose THAT much territory implies that the A-bombs basically killed hundreds of thousands (but it only killed around 50,000-150,000 I think).

3) OSS stories were pretty outrageous in all honesty.

A single division is hardly a force, compared to around 5 milion Soviet troops already in and around Ber5ling in may 1945. It would be a walk over then, with little or no other options for the Allies left in Eastern Germany and a very large Soviet Army eager to revenge opposed to them.

Also note the West hardly had the sufficient amount of troops and equipment in Europe to confront the Red Army, as everything had to be shipped in from oversea. The Soviet Union Red Army might have been ill equipped by the strain of logisitics, but still numerically a far larger force with heavy equipment against which the USA and UK had not alternative yet in the required numbers.

Some might think nuclear weapons were an option too, but that is hardly the case, given the very limmited number of these weapons and the inaccuracy of the deliveringdevice, which also woul;d have to cope with the VVS or Soviet Airdefence over Europe, which at the time already was being equipped with early jets. Unlike the Japanese, the Soviets had the advantage in fighting above a continent, which makes airdefense a little bit easier.
 
Soviet air defence was patchy; no real high altitude fighters or night fighters and their jet engines were worse than German ones. Soviet cities or oil fields within B29 range would have been very vulnerable to atomic bombs.

However as noted above, the real issue is creating a credible pretext for war to get public support.
 
Some might think nuclear weapons were an option too, but that is hardly the case, given the very limmited number of these weapons and the inaccuracy of the deliveringdevice, which also woul;d have to cope with the VVS or Soviet Airdefence over Europe, which at the time already was being equipped with early jets. Unlike the Japanese, the Soviets had the advantage in fighting above a continent, which makes airdefense a little bit easier.

This. Plus the fact that 1945 atomic weapons weren't in the same league as the nuclear weapons we know today. And you'd be using them against a country that was just attacked, again, by imperialist powers who had betrayed it and were bent on its destruction. That's a bit different from an aggressive nation teetering on the edge of defeat. Not to mention the fact that French communists would be wreaking merry havoc on your supply lines.
 
This. Plus the fact that 1945 atomic weapons weren't in the same league as the nuclear weapons we know today. And you'd be using them against a country that was just attacked, again, by imperialist powers who had betrayed it and were bent on its destruction. That's a bit different from an aggressive nation teetering on the edge of defeat. Not to mention the fact that French communists would be wreaking merry havoc on your supply lines.

That is if de Gaulle (and the assmebly he had that was dominated by communists and socialists) don't pull out of the Allies immediately, which is even worse for the allies.
 
What others have said:
if the West betrays and attacks the Soviets, then the civilians won't be behind the war, and the Soviets win. However, the West wasn't that stupid.

If the Soviets betray and attack the West, the West probably wins eventually, at great cost. However, Stalin wasn't that stupid.

To get this to 'work' you need some really tricky conditions. Maybe Stalin has a ?stroke? which massively increases his paranoia or something. How you get THAT neurologically, I don't know. Or, there's gradually increasing tensions and incidents near the end of WWII that leave both sides convinced the other guy betrayed them. That's possible, but really tough to pull off, as neither side wanted war, and both sides knew the incredible cost of continuing, so even provocations would be dealt with and smoothed over. Most likely.
 
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