Don't forget Wally invasion of Italy in 1943. That's what forced Hitler to abandon Kursk.
A decision which ironically benefited the Ostheer, as it allowed the Panzer Corps time to pull back and regain some wind before the Soviet counter-offensive broke. How Kursk turns out IATL (assuming it happens) is interesting. The defeat of the German offensives will likely be similar to OTL, if somewhat harsher on the Soviets. It's in the Soviets own offensives that we'll see the biggest changes.
If the Soviet onslaught is weakening, is Hitler's response going to be to sensibly husband his resources and to bolster defenses on the quiet Western "Front",?
Or is he going to push for massive and costly counter offensives in an attempt to WIN the war against Russia so that he can turn ALL his forces to the West?
If the WAllies have landed in Normandy while the Soviets are still beyond the D'niepr, then yes Hitler will divert a significant proportion (maybe not a majority, but even more significant then OTL) of his forces to try and throw them back into the sea. Their liable to still fail in that, but they'll still represent a more significant block then what was dispatched OTL and pay upon the WAllies additional time and casualties they would rather not take.
The details of how much more difficult the bogged Soviet advance makes the WAllies own war actually is rather unimportant from the WAllied perspective. All the WAllies care about is that it makes it even more difficult. If not supporting the Soviets means even one additional British or American soldier dies, then that is unacceptable to the Western Alliance. They are not totalitarian dictatorships like the Soviets or Germans... they care about their people.
They'll also have to tell this to their own people, which will be fun. Good luck keeping the Anglo-American public supporting the war effort when you are telling them that keeping the Soviets out of Eastern Europe is more important then defeating the Germans and saving Anglo-American lives. Sounds like a sure-fire way to get voted out of office if you ask me.
And all of this is even assuming the Soviets don't collapse which, while the odds are still long, does become more likely without lend-lease.
Meanwhile the tens of thousands of planes sent to SU, will be bombing and strafing everything grey in Western Europe.
Leaving aside that this puts a mythical stock in the capabilities of air power, only a small proportion (less then 1/3rd) of the aircraft sent to the Soviet Union were actually modern models in service with the WAllied air forces and even those were only sent to the Soviet Union once the Western Allies had massive surplus stocks of their own. The rest were obsolete or designs that had seen limited production runs before finally being rejected by the USAAC. And this is pretty much the entire story of lend-lease weaponry: they were either obsolete weapons the US didn't need (the Lees in 1942-43 were sent to the Soviets as they were replaced by Shermans) or excess production after the Anglo-Americans had already produced more then they needed (the first Shermans were sent to the USSR in November 1943, by which point the US had thoroughly equipped their armored forces with them and amassed a decent reserve stockpile).
When it came to the decision between sending supplies to the USSR or using those supplies themselves, the Western Allies sent what they could not use. They did not supply the Soviets at the expense of their own forces. I'm not sure where people got this impression, but it seems to be something that crept in here. What the Soviets got was most the excess production. Adding it to the Western Allies stocks just means a whole bunch more equipment that sits in the warehouses gathering dust. Except for the obsolete stuff, which just gets junked with no opportunity to make any contribution to the war effort.
There is simply no military benefit to the Western Allies in not aiding the Soviet Union and some pretty harsh drawbacks.
Last edited: