The Red Horde doesn't stop at Berlin!

Stalin thinking the Allies are weak and thinks now would be a good enough time as any orders his massive armies to attacks the Allie forces after the German surrender in 1945.



So if Stalin order his huge army fronts to push the Americans and British into the sea. How far do you think they would get? Would they push the Allies all the way back to England? Soviet military production not as great as Britain and America but they don't need to ship everything across the Atlantic ocean either.


In 1945 the soviets have some of the best tanks: IS3 and ISU 152 sp guns
In 1945 the soviets have a large air fore but no heavy bombers


American have some Pershing heavy tanks, but would have to fight mostly with the crappy M4 Sherman.
British best tank at the time is the crappy Comet 1 and Cromwell.


The Allies do have their huge heavy bomber fleets. So what do you think the outcome would be? Plus remember the Allies are still fight the Japanese at the time.
 
Nope. The Red Army was exhausted, more or less, and Stalin wasn't totally retarded. The RA could only push in a few years later, by which point nukes where in the picture.
 
Impossible. The USSR drafted 17-year-olds into Army as early as late 1944. Food situation at the home was desperate (by late 1946 some southern regions of Ukraine, as well as Moldova, had isolated cases of cannibalism, and malnutrition was commonplace even in Moscow; without Western food aid, which was delivered promptly enough in OTL, there would be famine on the scale of 1933). Soviet aviation industry depended on American aluminum, cars needed American spare parts, and new Soviet oil refineries at the time were just receiving critical parts of their equipment from the USA as lend-lease.
Even without the USAF bombing Moscow, Soviet economy will be broken by sheer burden of war expenses coupled with continuing terrible manpower shortage. With B-29s added to the picture, economic collapse will be accelerated.
 
Stalin thinking the Allies are weak and thinks now would be a good enough time as any orders his massive armies to attacks the Allie forces after the German surrender in 1945.



So if Stalin order his huge army fronts to push the Americans and British into the sea. How far do you think they would get? Would they push the Allies all the way back to England? Soviet military production not as great as Britain and America but they don't need to ship everything across the Atlantic ocean either.


In 1945 the soviets have some of the best tanks: IS3 and ISU 152 sp guns
In 1945 the soviets have a large air fore but no heavy bombers


American have some Pershing heavy tanks, but would have to fight mostly with the crappy M4 Sherman.
British best tank at the time is the crappy Comet 1 and Cromwell.


The Allies do have their huge heavy bomber fleets. So what do you think the outcome would be? Plus remember the Allies are still fight the Japanese at the time.

(sigh)

Don't you know that the Soviets had had TWENTY-SIX MILLION DEAD by spring 1945, PLUS all those killed by Stalin and in the Gulag in the meantime?
That the Soviet army ran on US trucks, ate US canned meat, walked in US-made boots and was cared for with US medical materials?
No, no, NO WAY. Not in 1945. No way up until 1956: that's the first plausible occasion for an encounter, but I'd safely dismiss any Soviet act of aggression at any time. With hindsight, it's safe to affirm that they were far more frightened by Western might than the West was by theirs.
 

Bearcat

Banned
Basically, what everyone else said.

Also, the Sherman wasn't crappy. It was a trade off: a tank which could be mass-produced to extremes, good enough for most of the war, very mechanically reliable (unlike the Soviet models like the T-34 which looked really cool sitting abandoned by the side of the road after it broke down), and easily amphibious transported.

Leavened with increasing numbers of Perschings, and re-gunned in some numbers with a better gun, it would have held its own against the (largely fictional and exhausted) Red Horde.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
This has been discussed here a number of times. The consensus has always been that Stalin might live to regret it (depending on his location when the weapon detonated), but the Red Army would absolutely regret it.

The Red Army was a very powerful ground force, but it was at the end of a very long supply line (it's 1600 km from Moscow to Berlin) and Ivan was much weaker than the Allies in heavy and medium bombers, The USSR was also far behind in the Jet race, with the Mig-9 being a full year from flight in mid 1945 (and the Su-9 was even further from testing) while the Allies had two fully operation jet fighters in the Meteor and P-80, as well as a operational jet fighter bomber in the Vampire just coming into service.

If you search on the subject I think you will find the threads of interest. We gear heads went into terrific detail in at least one of them. :D
 
the T-34 was:

-cheap to produce in large numbers
-had sloped armor to compensate for its thinness
-was unreliable to a degree

the M-4 sherman was:

-cheap to produce in large numbers
-had weak armor with a high profile
-was ridiculously reliable

really the sherman was a decent match for the t-34 on a tank for tank basis. the Red Airforce might have had decent numbers, but the USAAF and RAF had far more experienced officers with a growing number of jet fighters by 1945, the red airforce had none. The Russians had hundreds of miles of ruined european infrastructure to get to the battle front, the allies had a moderately damaged France and some of Germany to go through, the Allies also had far better logistics in general anyways. Stalin might have been a murderous bastard, but he was a pragmatic one, he knew the score and had no intention of launching such a risky endeavor as taking on the western allies so soon after the fall of the reich.
 
In the Novel -A Damn Fine War -- with this theme. Patton** uses 1000 B-17's waves as mass Artillery, against the Soviet Supply Bases.



**Eisenhower dies -- and Patton Becomes Supreme Allied Commander.
 
All would depend on who controlled the skies. Any groundforce, no matter how big, depends on aircover, or it will get seriously hit constantly.

The Western Allies, UK and USA had this airsuperiority, as they only possessed large numbers of longer ranged aircraft, while the USSR mainly had shortranged battlefieldsupport aircraft. This meant, the Allies (west) could deploy much more force from longer (and saver) distances to combat the Russians. Given the quality of the Britsih and US planes, compared to the more crude Russian ones, the USSR would face a hard time to survive for long on the battlefield. The mass produced US and British built aircraft and other armed units, overpowered the production of the USSR, so in the long term, the USSR would not be able to cope with this for long.

In the field of technology, the Russians as a whole lagged behing the West. Nuclear power was already there in the USA and also avialable for the UK, if wanted, while the Russians still had to develop their first testplatforms, from stolen information, to make things more complicated. Rocketscience and jetengines were much more advanced in the Weat, then in the USSR, so in almost all fields, the USSR were inferior to the West.

The only advantage of the Russians, was their numerical superiority on the ground, concentrated in a relatively small part of the borderzone, between East and West, after the fall of Germany. All units were battlehardened and had a good deal of experience in groundwarfare, as well as urban warfare, something most Western Allied powers lacked. When concentrated in a relatively small area, the USSR could overwhelm its opponents with blunt force in a frontal attack, while the small dimensions of the battlefront were more easily controled by the shortranged VVL airsupport units.
 
I think that the russians would have a full rebellion behind their lines if the went after the West. Sure, the west had communists, but i dont think they would be as big trouble as the noncommunists in eastern europe.

And the minute Stalin went after Western allies the western allies would turn all their POW loose to help them. Thats another million troops. And those who didnt surrender but just went home would go and fight also
 

Susano

Banned
Why do you even argue with that guy? Anybody who uses propaganda terms instead of the historically factual terms like that really shouldnt be taken any serious.
 
Even before Berlin fell, Stalin had warned Zukhov and Koniev that there wouldn't be any more men available and that they had best finish the job.

Despite it being an interesting scenario in a game like Hearts of Iron 2, the Soviets wouldn't stand a chance.

They'd gain some early successes to be sure, but unlike the Soviet Union and even Britain, the US had hardly committed an entire generation to the war as of yet.
 
The Russians had no infantry reserves left in the spring of 1945 Stalin had resorted to opening the Gulag to fill ranks... it would have been a very bad idea
 
The Russians had no infantry reserves left in the spring of 1945 Stalin had resorted to opening the Gulag to fill ranks... it would have been a very bad idea
Well, Gulag was opened in 1942 (political prisoners were mostly excluded from this amnesty of sorts, but common criminals were drafted).
I don't think that the USSR will collapse in 1945 in this scenario simply due to lack of reserves: after all, Western allies' armies in Europe numbered some 5,8 million against Soviets' 7,2 million (data of January, 1945; I assume they didn't changed much between January and May of 1945).
But continuing use of almost all male manpower at the frontlines, coupled with absence of lend-lease, will mean collapse of Soviet economy. And this collapse, in turn, will cause lack of equipment for the Red Army and loss of morale amid its soldiers (because of hunger back home). Anti-Communist rebellions all over the Eastern Europe, now sponsored by the West to full extent of its ability, will endanger already overstretched lines of communication and undermine morale even more (after all, significant part of the Red Army by May, 1945 consisted of Western Ukrainians and Baltic peoples, and major ally of it was Polish army; after start of war with the Western Allies, all these soldiers will become unreliable at best, and mutinous at worst). Add to the picture American and British bombers in the skies over Moscow, Leningrad, major railway junctions, etc.
Final result? Civil war by late 1945, I think, and death for all members of the Politburo unlucky enough to get caught by the Soviet soldiers. New government will exit the war, if the West's conditions will be reasonable (something like 1941 borders), or continue it till bitter end, if the conditions will be similar to unconditional surrender. End will be bitter, nonetheless.
Around August or September, they get nuked. End of story.
Two or even ten nukes (assuming increased production of these devices after May, 1945) will be not enough in themselves to break the Union; but the nukes, conventional bombs, counteroffensive on German front, guerilla warfare in Poland, Ukraine and the Baltics, and economic crisis on terrible scale - all these things put together will be more than enough to kill the USSR as organized state, if the war will be allowed to continue into 1946.
I think, however, that the Soviets (after coup d'etat, most probably) will seek peace before end of 1945, so the nukes will have limited effect on the war, and the USSR will survive it as coherent entity, while very weakened one.
 
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Bearcat

Banned
I think, however, that the Soviets (after coup d'etat, most probably) will seek peace before end of 1945, so the nukes will have limited effect on the war, and the USSR will survive it as coherent entity, while very weakened one.


Yes... with... (wait for it...)

The Olive Drab Horde sitting in liberated eastern Europe. :cool:
 
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