McPherson
Banned
I provided a source reference and if others want to check, they may. I just have lost interest with a Russo-phile who has yet to convince with his own credible evidence. Good day; or if you prefer... signing off... for now.
The Berlin Blockade leads to World War III. Who wins?
- Thread starter Ricardolindo
- Start date
I provided a source reference and if others want to check, they may. I just have lost interest with a Russo-phile who has yet to convince with his own credible evidence. Good day; or if you prefer... signing off... for now.
Ah, so you realized that your source in no way backs up your claim, as evidenced by your inability to provide even something like page numbers, so your running away. It’s gotten to the point you clearly didn’t even bother to read your latest link, which in no way actually supports your assertions about Soviet ground crews. Welp, okay. Bye-bye then.
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McPherson
Banned
You would be wrong. (^^^). Other sources deny your claims. Not just the one you misrepresented and quoted out of context, ON.
QED.
QED.
I thought you were leaving? In any case, once again we have a link to a source which says absolutely nothing about the quality of Soviet ground crew training and organization. Given that, it seems pretty clear your accusation about misrepresentation is nothing more then projection.
McPherson
Banned
Cannot allow an error of rhetoric to give the illusion of your non-truth. ON. Must leave sufficient ancillary evidence behind to show the error that you espouse. The Chinese complained, the Russians were unable, and it was EXACTLY as I said the first evidence and the Chinese wrote it was.
With that said. Now I depart. Have at it. Let's see your rebuttal evidence? Let others decide.
With that said. Now I depart. Have at it. Let's see your rebuttal evidence? Let others decide.
Except your own sources don’t show that the Russians were unable, just unwilling. Again and again, we see the sources statement made that “the Russians were unwilling to do so” and gives political, not physical, reasons for this. At no point do we see the sourced statement “the Russians were unable to do so.” Until you give that, you’ve proven nothing and left no evidence that actually supports your contentions. To point out that there is nothing in the provided evidence that actually supports the claim is enough of a rebuttal because until you’ve provided such evidence, your just blowing hot air.
McPherson
Banned
Oh come on. You have to explain why the Russians failed but alibi for it. I just have to show WHY they failed and I did. It is documented history and all your desperate attempts to twist it is not going to change the facts on the ground. They were beaten because they could not mount the kinds of air operations you claimed they could.
This ain't History Channel dogfights. It is a real air campaign which the Russians lost.
This ain't History Channel dogfights. It is a real air campaign which the Russians lost.
Except you have not. You have merely claimed they failed and claimed this is the reason why. To show that they failed (hell, to show that the Soviets even tried) and that the reason they failed was because of the reason you have claimed would require you to engage in the effort of not just providing sources, but then provide specific quotes from those sources with associated page numbers and then explain how those quotes support your contention. Until you do that, you have shown nothing. Part of the reason for this is because people can go into those sources and show how they might actually contradict your assertion. Like for example, on page 202 of Red Wings Over the Yalu when Zhang observes "that the technical and psychological qualities of the Soviet pilots were an even match for those of their opponents" which is in contradiction to your claim that they were inferior. Further reading of Zhang shows that the Soviets were unwilling to mount the sort of air operations they would in our hypothetical 1948 war for fear of escalation in WW3, but he never claims that they were unable to do so. I've even already provided a quote noting such last page which is infinitely more then what you've provided, but I can go further by observing that Zhang outlines the conditions under which the Soviets would be willing to commit to these sort of air operations:
-Pg 90
That Soviet officials were explicitly threatening large-scale offensive air operations into Korea in the event of a American bombing campaign in Manchuria is indicative of confidence in the capacity to conduct large-scale offensive air operations into Korea. Going further back, one has to merely look at the final operations against the Nazis and then the Japanese in 1944-45 to show that the Soviets had previously demonstrated the capability to mount precisely the sort of operations you claim they can't when unencumbered by political restrictions (the later chapters in Red Phoenix Rising is a good starting primer on this) and then the major air exercises of the 1946-50 period to show that they kept that capability sharp.
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McPherson
Banned
The Russians evidently bluffed and the US knew it. Note the limited capability and commitment? Russian data by the way. Would not want it claimed that I used a biased source.
The 2.874 and 5.763 are from a Kruschev speech; with the first number definitely 1948 not 1946, see for example Estimating Soviet Military Force Levels by Raymond Garthoff
You haven't provided the underlying source for your 1949 number.
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Once again, there is nothing in there which substantiates the claim that the Soviets commitment was limited by physical capability and not by political decision whereas multiple sources provided by you have said the limit was political decision and not physical capability. What's more, your link gives 21,538 sorties during the course of 61 days in November and December 1951, which is 353 sorties-per-day. With 209 aircraft as per your link, that is 1.6 sorties per aircraft. By comparison, the Soviets during the Battle of Berlin flew 91,384 sorties over 22 days for 4,153 sorties a day. With approximately 5,000 aircraft involved, that is 0.8 sorties per aircraft per day. Finally, on D-Day, the Western Allies flew some 14,000 sorties with 9,543 aircraft, which works out to 1.5 (rounding up) sorties per aircraft per day.
Returning to the Korean War, the USAF 1951 Fiscal Year Report gives US combat sorties in November and December of 1950 as 21,989 (Table 8, pg 21-22) with a maximum of 707 aircraft (Table 6, Pg 20). So even before we do the math, we can see that the Soviets are achieving almost as many sorties as the Americans despite having less then 1/3rd the number of aircraft. That's 360 sorties a day, which in turn is 0.5 sorties per aircraft per day.
In sum, the Soviets managed a incredible number of sorties for the limited amount of aircraft in 1951, outstripping their 1945 performance and even matching the Western Allies performance on D-Day, and is indicative of good ground support crew training and organization, which is the opposite of your original claim. They even managed almost as many as sorties as their opposition and more then three times the sortie per aircraft per day rate, despite operating at a numerical disadvantage. So yet again, you manage to provide a source which not only does not support what you are claiming but rather supports the opposite contention.
Again, I quote myself this time with highlights since you are either unable or unwilling to actually read my posts:
I'm not relying on a underlying source which is a political speech. I'm relying on numbers whose underlying sources are Russian/Soviet military publications, including ones meant to educate their own military on the past state of their armies.
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ObssesedNuker, you have a pro-Russian bias which has been seen here before. McPherson's last post was exactly right, sorry. You're wrong.
The appeal to bias is a bit of old hat at this point, McPherson has already managed to fall into that fallacy, but I'm not sure what sort of fallacy it is when someone simply asserts another person's claim is right and their oppositions argument is wrong while comprehensively failing to substantiate the claims nor mount a rebuttal to the actual argument being made. Would that be a variation on circular reasoning or argument from repetition?
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And if you dig down through the layers of sources they will all come back to that single Kruschev speech for Soviet military manpower numbers in 2 specific years. The Soviet military would need political approval to disclose anything secret.
EDIT: To explain more fully what I think you are missing:
- Soviet Union/Russia has no procedure for declassifying historic documents
- Declassification is a political process for advantages at a specific time. There have been very few declassifications re the early Cold War eg Gorbachev and the operational plan showing that the Red Army was deployed defensively; Kruschev's speech
- Some information comes out in other ways eg later Cold War operational plans overlooked in archives in Eastern Europe; war-fighting doctrine because it has to be widely disseminated downwards
- Access to secret material in Russian archives is very restricted, although there was some openness in the '90s
- Soviet Union repeatedly lied about its capabilities, even when it was obvious eg Krasnoyarsk
- Overall there is very little Soviet sourced information on hard facts - numbers, unit strengths, deployments
- Gaps are filled with US estimates, but the information from the 40s and 50s is very inaccurate and sometimes deliberately overstated
Overall, any analysis is only as good as the reliability of the underlying sources. It would help if you could provide more deatails of the sources you use so that others can actually check.
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Well this is a cluster thread.
So who Would win . In 1948 the soviets have more troops on the continent.
That said mobilizing takes time. Any real build up probably wouldn't go unnoticed.
Soviet initial thrust is successful.
Nukes are used on the advance and pick your city to send a message to stop.
Us gears up
France gears up
England gears up
Massive carpet bombing campaigns start.
Soviets are now in an all or nothing mode thinking the west was going to backdown
Soviet losses are mounting while they are gaining ground.
More bombs are dropped
Moscow experiences a leadership change
War is called off
1. Soviets did not have bomb
2. West was ahead in jets and bombers
3. While soviets had tanks ... And men.. They would not be looking to have a protracted war while eastern Europe and the motherland was already still a pile of ruble.
Rail lines are pummeled, any surviving or new depot is bombed.
They make gains but are ultimately stopped by air power and the bomb as large quantities of men and machines are brought to France to stall the Soviet advance in its tracks
Leadership change butterflies away north Korea, reds loose Chinese Civil War eastern Europe is allowed to move towards the west and Soviet style communism is forever out on the Ash heap
Those first few weeks would tough . But its just a matter of time and logistics .
So who Would win . In 1948 the soviets have more troops on the continent.
That said mobilizing takes time. Any real build up probably wouldn't go unnoticed.
Soviet initial thrust is successful.
Nukes are used on the advance and pick your city to send a message to stop.
Us gears up
France gears up
England gears up
Massive carpet bombing campaigns start.
Soviets are now in an all or nothing mode thinking the west was going to backdown
Soviet losses are mounting while they are gaining ground.
More bombs are dropped
Moscow experiences a leadership change
War is called off
1. Soviets did not have bomb
2. West was ahead in jets and bombers
3. While soviets had tanks ... And men.. They would not be looking to have a protracted war while eastern Europe and the motherland was already still a pile of ruble.
Rail lines are pummeled, any surviving or new depot is bombed.
They make gains but are ultimately stopped by air power and the bomb as large quantities of men and machines are brought to France to stall the Soviet advance in its tracks
Leadership change butterflies away north Korea, reds loose Chinese Civil War eastern Europe is allowed to move towards the west and Soviet style communism is forever out on the Ash heap
Those first few weeks would tough . But its just a matter of time and logistics .
Which is both a unsubstantiated claim and a red-herring. As I have already outlined, there is a third listed number for 1949 with three Soviet/Russian sources cited, one of which is a Soviet armed forces journal originally published for internal consumption and not to impress foreign observers. Whether it was declassified or if a copy was obtained via espionage or just by a clever scholar bluffing his way through the Soviet/Russian system for those being issued isn’t very relevant: they are there, they are the product of Russian research by credible and renowned Russian researchers and, in one case, by the Soviet military seeking to educate it’s own officer corps, and thus the information they give is credible. I’ve already provided all the details necessary for anyone to check: the name of the article, the name of the journal it was published in, and even the name of one of it’s underlying sources.
EDIT: Aaand double checking, that 2.9 million figure is 1948 after all. Egg on my face there. My other points, including the 1949 number, still stand though.
I’d like to observe that whether the Red Army was deployed defensively is not what is at debate here, so to continue to appeal to it is a red-herring. Deployments can change after all. What is at debate is whether the Red Army has a preponderance of conventional military power in Europe. The overwhelming evidence is clear that they did: quantitatively they have more armies then the Anglo-Americans have divisions and air regiments then the West has squadrons. Even the 1946 numbers give a clear Soviet superiority, given the forward loading of their ready forces into Europe, not to mention the prospect for extremely rapid reinforcement with you yourself admitting that they’ll have additional forces mobilized and sent forward by 10-days, as compared to the Anglo-Americans whose own planning admitted it would take many months to mobilize and dispatch additional ground forces. Even more importantly, qualitatively their forces skills have been kept sharp through rigorous military exercise and training regimens while the Anglo-Americans have languished in constubalory and administrative duties. These are the bald facts and they all point to the same conclusion: the Soviets swiftly annihilating the sparse western forces and pushing to the Atlantic.
I find it telling that you say this and then proceed to act as if the West gearing up takes practically no time at all (“a tough few weeks”), with fully capable nuclear and conventional bombing forces essentially springing from the aether. This despite both Western military planners and the actual history of the US Cold War military buildup in the 1950s saying it’s gonna take a lot longer.
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By the late 50s/early 60s the non-Soviet militaries of the WP were pretty reliable and could be counted on fro specialized roles and in some cases forward uses in numbers, and at a minimum be expected to perform logistics and internal policing along supply lines. In 1948 Czechoslovakia was recovering from a coup that put the communists in power, and the populations of Poland and Hungary were sullen at best. Except the surviving communists from prewar in Soviet occupied Germany, in 1948 the German population was in no way an asset except at the point of the gun. You had many ethnically cleansed out of territory taken by the USSR or Poland as refugees, and the memories of what the Soviet troops did when they came in to Germany was quite fresh - yes in a karmic way the Germans deserved everything that happened but they would not be seeing it that way. Even back in the USSR you had Baltic and Ukrainian partisans lurking about.
The number of non-Soviet troops and paramilitary police that were in any way reliable is small. Sure you have the secret police organs watching, but you need numbers to patrol roads and rail lines, guard bridges and so forth. Gumming up the works for the logistic lines the Soviets have is ridiculously easy, a loose rail, a jammed switch all cause delays where significant resources are needed to deal with a derailment and you can do that without an ounce of explosives. If you have some explosives, every culvert over a stream becomes a target. Whatever the number of Soviet troops in 1948, a lot of them are going to have to be detailed for line of communications duty either patrolling directly or "supervising" squads of locals. This will start spontaneously, and rather quickly you'll see Poles, Hungarians, etc who are now in the west parachuting in or rowing ashore from submarines to do this sorrt of thing even better. Yes, Soviet agents in the establishment (Cambridge 5 for example) will cause losses (eggs and omelettes however), but damage will be done.
Unless the Soviets can do better than the Germans, and by that I mean everywhere from Gibraltar to North Cape, Italy, and Greece before the US and allies stiffen things, they are going to be in trouble and lose big. First with conventional bombing and soon with nukes logistic hubs will be getting hit, and Soviet cities on the periphery (at first) will sprout mushrooms (Leningrad, Sevastopol, Vladivostok are relatively easy for starts).
The number of non-Soviet troops and paramilitary police that were in any way reliable is small. Sure you have the secret police organs watching, but you need numbers to patrol roads and rail lines, guard bridges and so forth. Gumming up the works for the logistic lines the Soviets have is ridiculously easy, a loose rail, a jammed switch all cause delays where significant resources are needed to deal with a derailment and you can do that without an ounce of explosives. If you have some explosives, every culvert over a stream becomes a target. Whatever the number of Soviet troops in 1948, a lot of them are going to have to be detailed for line of communications duty either patrolling directly or "supervising" squads of locals. This will start spontaneously, and rather quickly you'll see Poles, Hungarians, etc who are now in the west parachuting in or rowing ashore from submarines to do this sorrt of thing even better. Yes, Soviet agents in the establishment (Cambridge 5 for example) will cause losses (eggs and omelettes however), but damage will be done.
Unless the Soviets can do better than the Germans, and by that I mean everywhere from Gibraltar to North Cape, Italy, and Greece before the US and allies stiffen things, they are going to be in trouble and lose big. First with conventional bombing and soon with nukes logistic hubs will be getting hit, and Soviet cities on the periphery (at first) will sprout mushrooms (Leningrad, Sevastopol, Vladivostok are relatively easy for starts).
It takes time to gear up ground assets.
But the west is going to pummel them from the air and they have the atomic bomb.
France has an army . The British have an army . And the US still has occupation forces.
It takes time.. But the west can fly strato fortresses and drop nice bombs.
How. Much of a pounding will it take for the the soviets to say
. Eh . That's a bad choice that we made . Generals are not blind.
The soviets are stopped at the Rhine worst case.. The US will move people fairly rapidly... But yeah it takes time.. Helm it takes time to get a bomb where it needs to be . But the soviets are not going to the Atlantic in a week or two. And that's a fact, their logistics are strained as is.
But the west is going to pummel them from the air and they have the atomic bomb.
France has an army . The British have an army . And the US still has occupation forces.
It takes time.. But the west can fly strato fortresses and drop nice bombs.
How. Much of a pounding will it take for the the soviets to say
. Eh . That's a bad choice that we made . Generals are not blind.
The soviets are stopped at the Rhine worst case.. The US will move people fairly rapidly... But yeah it takes time.. Helm it takes time to get a bomb where it needs to be . But the soviets are not going to the Atlantic in a week or two. And that's a fact, their logistics are strained as is.
You clearly didn't actually bother to read the rest of this thread or understand any of what was said, I recommend you go back and do so. The relevant Soviet ground assets would be in action within days, at the most, whereas Western reinforcements are months out. Western Air Forces are in no position to do any of what you claim and the ground forces in Western Europe are little more then speed bumps for the Red Army as it existed in 1948. There are no American conventional bombers, much less atomic ones, in position to effectively launch attacks (it wasn't until the spring of '49 that any B-29s were deployed to Britain and it wasn't until 1952 that any atomic weapons were forward deployed there) and evidence from both the capabilities of SAC at the time and the Korean War indicates they would be completely ineffective and suffer heavy losses. Certainly, they'd win the war from 1950 on, but the fantasy of the WAllies suddenly magicking up their strength in a matter of weeks or months to halt the Red Army has no basis in reality.
They were available considerably earlier then that.
"By late-1949 and early-1950, Soviet power in Central Europe was further enhanced by the strengthening of the Eastern European satellites. The East German Alert Police, in reality an army, had 50,000 personnel by March 1950, and were being issued Soviet tanks. After the introduction of conscription in 1949, the Polish Army grew to 400,000 troops, and by 1950 the Czechoslovakian army had 140,000 troops. These Czech troops, and to a lesser extent, the other Soviet-bloc armies in Europe, relied on goods from the Skoda arms works, one of the largest military production complexes in the world." -Raymond P. Ojserkis, Beginnings of the Cold War Arms Race, Pg 38-39
The outbreak of a war would probably accelerate the process of standing up Eastern Satellite armies described above by a bit, but even then the Soviets won't be able to call upon satellite troops to secure and police their own supply lines in the first phase of the OP's described war. They will for the second phase, though.
I find this to be a pack of wishful thinking. The "secret police organs" include full on military formations and no, gumming up the works won't at all be easy given the lack of coherency among Eastern European resistance groups at this time. Additionally, in the first few months these countries will be swarming with Soviet military forces in transit to the front, so any sort of uprising in that period would be absolute suicide. The post-war western intelligence agencies were already having locals parachuting or rowing in ashore in the post-war period to try and conduct espionage and sabotage. The result was that, at best, these agents would be caught within weeks having achieved absolutely nothing. The problem with these infiltration operations went beyond merely Soviet agents in place in western emplacements, indeed these operations were often totally botched even before they began, so no damage will be achieved in the initial stage of the war. From the second phase on, as the western intelligence organs shake out their difficulties, they would probably start to have more of an effect but by then the Soviets will be mobilized and have a surfeit of troops to garrison things.
What you mean isn't precisely clear. Greece (which is already in a state of Civil War) would be gone within the first week, the Soviets would be at the Pyrenees and seized control of mainland Italy within three months. If Spain doesn't wind-up neutral (50/50 there), then the Red Army would have the strength to push through the Pyrenee's, although they might stall out inside of Central Spain. Depending on whether the Middle Eastern states declare neutrality and prohibit the use of their bases to western forces or not, subsequent Soviet invasions would overrun Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and much of Jordan, likely only stalling out in the Israel-Palestine region within 6 months. In the Far East, the US didn't even intend to attempt to defend South Korea (even during the Korean War, the plan was to withdraw if a shooting war broke out in Europe) and would merely focus on holding Japan, so the peninsula would be reunified under communist control (at least for the next few years) inside of 2 months. How things turn out in China is rather up in the air, as by this point the Chinese Communists already have achieved the upper hand in the civil war but a shooting war in Europe might change the calculus of either the Americans or the Soviets in aiding Chiang or Mao (respectively). That would itself influence whether the war spreads to or remains absent from Southeast Asia during the second phase in '49.
By comparison, from the decision to reinforce Europe made during December of 1950, following the Chinese intervention in the Korean War, to the arrival of the first actual reinforcement of American ground troops took 7 months. And this is with the Americans prioritizing the reinforcement of Europe over that of Korea because of fear that the Chinese offensive during the winter was both a prelude and distraction to a Soviet offensive in Europe.
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Well. This thread got intense.
I am reminded of that old joke about two Soviet generals meeting up for lunch in Paris, when one asks, "By the way, who won the air war?"
But even with Soviet tanks plunging into the Loire and Po, I also can't see the Americans and the Commonwealth suing for peace. What you'd get instead would be a long and ugly (and highly destructive) war. The one sure set of losers would be continental Europeans, only barely starting to recover from the horrors of the previous world war, now plunged into yet another, thanks to conquest (temporary or not) by yet another genocidal totalitarian dictatorship.
I am reminded of that old joke about two Soviet generals meeting up for lunch in Paris, when one asks, "By the way, who won the air war?"
But even with Soviet tanks plunging into the Loire and Po, I also can't see the Americans and the Commonwealth suing for peace. What you'd get instead would be a long and ugly (and highly destructive) war. The one sure set of losers would be continental Europeans, only barely starting to recover from the horrors of the previous world war, now plunged into yet another, thanks to conquest (temporary or not) by yet another genocidal totalitarian dictatorship.