What hammer? Every time we have this discussion it always leads to the fact that the Soviets had no answer to Allied material superiority.
What material superiority? The Soviets have twice the number of tanks, three-and-a-half times the number of artillery pieces (or, if we're exclusively talking about artillery in excess of 100mm, a just above 1:1 superiority), and four times the amount of combat infantry.
Even in a situation when they are on the defensive they lack the national strength necessary to overcome the Allies and will inevitably be exhausted given the sudden removal of Lend-Lease and 9 million military deaths suffered up to that point.
The national strength and manpower exhaustion only matter in a long war, which this will not be.
Soviet 'breakthrough firepower' (that is, in the event of an organized attempt at a counteroffensive) would have amounted to a lovely target for Allied tactical air and counterbattery fire
Tactical air that would be too busy dodging Soviet fighters* and American artillery would itself be too busy getting shelled too pieces by Soviet concentrations many times their own.
Just ask the Germans and the Japanese.
A great deal of the suppression of German and Japanese artillery was caused by shortages of ammunition rather then enemy fire. In the Ardennes, after the opening barrage on the first day, German guns were allowed only between four and thirty-two rounds each per day. One can get away with less thorough CB fire because there is little point in silencing guns that are already silent.
*And AA: the Soviets thoroughly outfitted their frontline forces with AA guns and the Vistula-Oder offensive saw AA concentrations on the order of 40 guns to the kilometer. Rear-area security area defense was handled mostly via camouflage and deception techniques which proved devastatingly effective against both the Germans and, over 50 years later in Serbia, against NATO.
Unlike the British and Americans, Soviet bombardment doctrine was more First World War era in which large numbers of guns would be massed along the front to fire a prepared pattern over a given area.
This is only true for 1941-42. Soviet artillery in the 1943-45 showed quite a rapid and extensive growth in sophistication. They cooperated closely with the infantry and were able to shift their fire with greater and greater flexibility. On top of that, doctrinally, artillery in the Soviet military was very much a branch of equal (if not higher) standing with armor and infantry and assigned it's own tasking of fighting the Germans in depth. By mid-1944, whole German battalions were being wiped out nearly to a man by Soviet opening bombardments. Quite literally, the first Soviet echelons simply walked over terrain composed of scorched earth and dead Germans. They never quite matched the Americans in tactical terms, but the Soviets superiority at rapidly shifting their artillery pieces on the operational level more then made up for it.
That they had trouble keeping up with the armies once the battles went mobile was hardly a Soviet exclusive problem: all armies found it difficult to get their arty to keep up with armies under such circumstances, even ones with large quantities of SPGs. The same also went for the ammunition trains: Anglo-American forces in September 1944 found themselves forced to use captured German shells on a few occasions because their own stretched supply lines weren't bringing in enough.
Although obviously this is in a much more modern context, it's worth noting that the Georgians, after they achieved picked up American artillery doctrine, dispersed operations, non-firing hide sites for ammunitions replenishment, shoot-and-scoot with SP pieces... and got thrashed by Russian counterbattery fire within two days. Which is especially noteworthy when you consider they had roughly equal numbers of artillery deployed.
In sum, the Soviets were definitely on top of things when it came to artillery by the end of the war and were
the best when it came to using artillery at the operational level. Indeed, by 1945 those few senior U.S. artillery officers who had actually paid any attention to what was happening on the Eastern Front were calling for the creation of Soviet-style "artillery divisions" for their nondivisional artillery.
When the assault troops moved out, this support evaporated.
By which point, it wasn't necessary: enemy defenses had been destroyed and the battle had gone mobile, causing the importance of artillery to drop off enormously. The Germans in 1941-42 and the WAllies after they broke out of Normandy experienced the same thing, they just had flexible enough air support (and enemies anemic enough in the air to guarantee said air support would get through) to pick up the slack.
They have the experience of destroying the German Army in the West at a very favorable exchange rate compared with the Soviets.
In which they were fighting a force far less well-equipped, experienced, and led then the Red Army or even (adjusting for the equipment) the Heer from earlier in the war. And the Soviets achieved very favorable exchange rates in this period too.
According to Overmans the Wehrmacht lost a total of more than 700,000 dead and missing there from D-Day to V-E Day, exclusive of wounded and captured. In the same time frame the Allies lost something under 200,000. This is compared to the 2:1 or better ratio the Germans enjoyed in the East, even toward the end of the war.
Taken as a whole, the casualty ratio from mid-1943 to the end of 1944 was 1.5:1 in the Germans favor. In 1945, the ratio was 2:1 in the Soviets favor. In Operation Bagration, the Soviets inflicted ~300,000 irrecoverable losses upon the Germans in exchange for 180,040 of their own. At 2nd Jassey-Kishinev, the Soviets inflicted yet another ~215,000 irrecoverable German irrecoverable* (and yes, that is
after I factor out Romanian losses) at the cost of 67,130 of their own. The Vistula-Oder irrecoverable losses were 110,000 to ~45,000 German and Soviet, respectively, using the more-generous-to-the-Germans estimate.
*Ballpark figure, as German loss records for Jassy-Kishinev do not actually exist. We do know that the 6th Army (~200,000 men) was literally wiped out to the last man, so there is an absolute minimum of ~200,000, and the 8th Army (~90,000) was shattered. I assumed "shattered" in this case to mean suffering ~75% casualties and then assumed that half were irrecoverable (which is probably optimistic, given the rapidity and thoroughness which the German front was shattered).
Soviet willingness to push through an enemy defense at the cost of huge casualties doesn't equate to a superiority in piercing fixed defenses.
They repeatedly did it much faster then the WAllies did and on a far more consistent basis.
The Allies were more cautious because they knew they could afford to be.
A reality not supported by the actual consistent tactical-operational performance of WAllied forces. Anglo-American forces were consistently slower in pressing the attack, even in instances where pressing the attack would have
reduced their casualties, increased the enemies, and shortened the war (such as at Falaise or the Scheldt guarding Antwerp). Even their attempts at "bold" breakthroughs (Totalize, Market Garden, Metz, and so-on) bogged down into basically trying to claw their way through enemy defenses until something gave, if it gave. Compared to the Soviets, their operational planning for land battles (as opposed to amphibious, air, or naval ones) was absolutely inane and their operational maneuvers timid and clumsy. The only time they managed to achieve a encirclement comparable to the scale of those in the Eastern Front was when the Germans (save for some operationally irrelevant die-hards) practically stopped fighting and let them. Only Patton came close to matching late-war Soviet generals in these terms and even then he ultimately falls short in comparison: his maneuver of turning three divisions at the Ardennes 90 degrees in three days that stunned his AEF colleagues? In the RKKA, he would have been lambasted for taking three times as long as he should have. In the ultimate analysis, the WAllies fought an even more attritional war then the Soviets did and were inferior at maneuver warfare.
And this will be further reinforced by the demoralization of WAllied troops, who are going to be shocked and appalled at being ordered to fight people they regard as valiant allies. They will fight with very little enthusiasm and that lack of enthusiasm will only mount as the catastrophe unfolds.
Even if this rather idealistic situation takes place (given it assumes the Soviets will be ready),
It's practically guaranteed, given the gross Soviet intelligence superiority. The WAllied secrets during WW2 were thoroughly compromised by Soviet espionage.
a short advance followed by a stalemate is as good as a defeat for the RKKA,
It's more of a short WAllied advance, followed by a crushing Soviet counterblow which annihilates it. That would then magnify the outrage of the WAllied public.
That being said, personally I think that an aggressive commander like Patton would have chewed the hell out of the Soviets before the supply situation and consolidation of defenses forced a halt.
Patton would have neatly impaled himself on the massed, camouflaged anti-tank defenses the Soviets would have lined in his path in-depth and which the WAllies would not detect until they stumble into them.
You don't 'obliterate' an enemy who outguns you 10 to 1.
Good thing for the RKKA they aren't outgunned to that level and also enjoy a superiority in terms of that most important of military commodities: experience. As Patton observed: "Wars are fought with weapons but won by men."
