Operation Unthinkable - best possible outcome for both sides?

I don't see the Soviets taking all of Germany or puppeting China. They didn't have the logistics to get much further in Europe, especially in the face of Allied airpower.

They don't even have to fight them from the allies, they could perfectly get them in a treaty when the political climate in the US and the UK become unbearable and force them to make peace, with the Soviets demanding this for making peace.
 
What would be the best possible outcome for both the Western Allies and the Soviets if this were launched? And which would be more likely to occur, and under what circumstances?

IIRC, an idea of both offensive and defensive version was exclusively British and inspired by WC who would benefit politically from a major operation starting just before the elections (with all my deep admiration of WC, he was hardly a military genius or outstanding strategist and his ideas during WWI and WWII were not always the good or realistic ones).

The goal of the offensive scenario being "square deal for Poland" (which probably meant enforcing the recently signed Yalta Agreement). Taking into an account a clearly expressed absence of the FDR's interest of spoiling relations with the SU over the "Polish issue", it was so unlikely that the US would go along with such a plan that the British Armed Forces' Joint Planning Staff considered it "fanciful". If anything can be deducted from Ike's "Crusade in Europe", he would be against such an adventure by more than one reason and and idea of using the German troops could cause enormous political scandal.

BTW, even the "Polish issue" at that point was hardly a valid political excuse: Yalta promised that the provisional government should "be pledged to the holding of free and unfettered elections as soon as possible on the basis of universal suffrage and secret ballot." Which meant that the elections would be unsupervised and under control of the pro-Soviet Lublin Government. In the words of Admiral William D. Leahy, the language of Yalta was so vague that the Soviets would be able to "stretch it all the way from Yalta to Washington without ever technically breaking it." In a reality, the letter of Yalta Agreement was hold: the reorganized government did include the non-communists (I wonder how and when government in exile became "democratic": pre-WWII Poland hardly was a Jeffersonian democracy) a Socialist, Edward Osóbka-Morawski, became Prime Minister and Mikołajczyk became one of 2 Deputy Prime Ministers (and Minister for Agriculture). Of course, as Stalin put it, "it does not matter how people are voting; what matters is who is counting the votes". :confused:

As for the defensive version, IMO, the SU was not in a position to start a new major war both due to the economic exhaustion and the need to "digest" the acquisitions in the Eastern Europe so the whole idea was too much on a paranoid side. The American troops had been in a process of withdrawal from Europe but the Soviets desperately needed the manpower at home to start rebuilding their economy (besides a need to send 1.5M to the Far East against Japan; thing much more important to the US than the affairs of Poland or Czechoslovakia).
 
Yes, but the Soviets never had to deal with strategic airpower used competently against their logistics.

Putting aside the fact that the plan was strictly British and was rejected even by the British military planners (and would hardly get any traction with the US circa 1945) the whole issue of the strategic air power is more or less mute. :)

But if if shrug off the implausibility of the whole idiocy, the problem would be in the fact that most of the objects within the range of strategic air power already was bombed to rubble and the strategically important objects within the SU were outside of that range: even reaching the Polish territory was almost impossible without "shuttle" program which required landing and refueling on the Soviet territory.

Ability of the strategic air power to do any precision bombing is a huge question. AFAIK, all attempts to use it for the front line bombing proved that even with a seemingly secure distance of 1 - 2 km between the lines, there were non-zero allied losses so what would be the chance of hitting the railroads? Then goes (in)ability to chose the strategic targets: Speer in his "Inside the 3rd Reich" provided a list of the reasonably easy targets which could easily cripple the German economy but none of which seemingly was on the list.
 
I agree the politics make an attack East impossible.

As to your point of everything of value being bombed to rubble, which is it - Allied strategic air was capable of utterly destroying valuable targets, or it wasn't? I'm confused.

Keep in mind that the B-29 was never employed in the ETO. In this scenario, it certainly would be. I am well aware that strategic bombers weren't really capable of tactical precision strikes and I never said they were.

But put enough bombers over a railroad marshalling yard in Poland, and it'll be devastated.
 

iVC

Donor
What would be the best possible outcome for both the Western Allies and the Soviets if this were launched?

Well, in case of being deliberately attacked, Soviet Union can expect a political turbulence in the Western countries, and quite possible a bunch of mutinies in the Allied army (they've just finished the 7 years struggle and now their governments are ready to fill the trenches with soldiers for another time). This may lead to the couple of bolschevik-style events like it was in the very end of WWI. So, in their wet dreams, Soviets may expect turning the tide while securing the Germany and Italy and supporting the pacifists, anti-war and left-wing uprisings everywhere they can.

Western Allies can expect the contrary. They can expect that their respective governments can hold the mobilized masses into the submission while Soviet wartime economy would unevitable crumble from hyperextension and exhaustion. They can also expect some military successes along with a bit of atomic bombings. So they would be expecting the economical and political collapse of the Soviets and their fledgling semi-occupied satellites. Their expectance would be USSR shrinking back to the year 1936 and possibly experiencing the new Civil War.

And which would be more likely to occur, and under what circumstances?

I can remember quite a heated discussion between the @marathag, @wiking and @ObssesedNuker about this some time ago, but I can't remember which thread it was.
 
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