Personally it's more that even after Operation Downfall fails Japan starves until it surrenders US doesn't need to do anything more (not that USAF will stop bombing to win points), unlike the long hard war that Operation Unthinkable will need for victory for the west?
Which would have been more destructive for the Western Allies: Operation Unthinkable or Operation Downfall?
- Thread starter Mr_Fanboy
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Would it be a long hard war though? I feel like after 4 years of fighting the Germans, the Russian people have to be close to the breaking point.
Hard as in at least a year of heavy fighting yes, the Russians may have been close to wanting to break but so were many Germans post 44, note that it will be easy to sell as defending the motherland as they get driven back and after what the Germans did many might believe any invader is the devil and going to kill everybody?
Will US+ allies win yes almost certainly but probably with large casualties ie near doubling US WWII loses is realistic IMO?
Given that WAllied public opinion would have resulted in domestic chaos should Unthinkable even be attempted even before the butchers bill had to be paid or the Soviets initial military strength opening the potential for early military defeat, Unthinkable is obviously the answer. Ismay, the guy in charge of the planning group who drafted Unthinkable, flt out admitted the British army would probably mutiny if they tried it. The WAllied populace were braced for the cost of an invasion to defeat Japan to a war they were hoping would soon conclude, they were not remotely psychologically prepared to embark on a completely new war to fight the Soviets, much less suffer the much greater losses necessary to defeat them.
The Soviets had around a million and a half men in training by the time the war in Europe ended.
There would be, and indeed were, resistance movements. They were largely broken, scattered, and out of contact with their western counterparts, which would make them of limited use in the short-term. Widespread there is not the slightest evidence that the populace had either the will or capability to mount widespread rebellions.
Japan was far closer to starvation then the USSR ever was in 1945. While the loss of lend-lease would indeed lead to some famines, the Soviets would
No nuclear infrastructure was set-up for an atomic bombing of the USSR. The bomb pits and atomic storage and assembly facilities existed only in the US and Tinian Island. Bomb pits wouldn't be built in Britain until 1948, and storage/assembly facilities until the early-1950s.
What? First off, you pick up any decent history of the Soviet Union at the end of WW2 and it will tell you how secure Stalin's position was and that the idea of a military coup was never more a possibility then a fantastic piece of paranoia. For another thing, the Soviet Union would be outraged by the WAllies so blatantly double-crossing them. All of their fears about capitalist perfidy have just been vindicated and the WAllies would join the Nazis as a dire threat. This reeks of the same sort of "they will greet us as liberators" type of wishful thinking that a potentially dangerous opponent won't fight because it would be inconvenient.
It'll be the WAllies facing a enormous problem of popular will that will rapidly compel them to seek peace. The Unthinkable Plan assumed otherwise a priori, but the planners themselves acknowledged the assumption was bogus.
So racist orientalism impels you to believe that the country which historians agree was teetering towards collapse in 1945 will somehow be less of a challenge then the one widely agreed to be an actual military superpower. Right, got it.
The Soviets had around a million and a half men in training by the time the war in Europe ended.
There would be, and indeed were, resistance movements. They were largely broken, scattered, and out of contact with their western counterparts, which would make them of limited use in the short-term. Widespread there is not the slightest evidence that the populace had either the will or capability to mount widespread rebellions.
Japan was far closer to starvation then the USSR ever was in 1945. While the loss of lend-lease would indeed lead to some famines, the Soviets would
No nuclear infrastructure was set-up for an atomic bombing of the USSR. The bomb pits and atomic storage and assembly facilities existed only in the US and Tinian Island. Bomb pits wouldn't be built in Britain until 1948, and storage/assembly facilities until the early-1950s.
What? First off, you pick up any decent history of the Soviet Union at the end of WW2 and it will tell you how secure Stalin's position was and that the idea of a military coup was never more a possibility then a fantastic piece of paranoia. For another thing, the Soviet Union would be outraged by the WAllies so blatantly double-crossing them. All of their fears about capitalist perfidy have just been vindicated and the WAllies would join the Nazis as a dire threat. This reeks of the same sort of "they will greet us as liberators" type of wishful thinking that a potentially dangerous opponent won't fight because it would be inconvenient.
It'll be the WAllies facing a enormous problem of popular will that will rapidly compel them to seek peace. The Unthinkable Plan assumed otherwise a priori, but the planners themselves acknowledged the assumption was bogus.
So racist orientalism impels you to believe that the country which historians agree was teetering towards collapse in 1945 will somehow be less of a challenge then the one widely agreed to be an actual military superpower. Right, got it.
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These may be of some use..
WI: Operation Unthinkable Happens?
Ok, new idea for a realistic C&C: Red Alert 1: Operation Unthinkable happens. What happens to WW2 if it does, regardless of how prepared the Soviets are?
www.alternatehistory.com
Germany defeats the Soviet Union - Most likely course of action by the Wallies?
Through a combination of luck/favorable Pod´s Germany manages to defeat the Soviet Union at the end of 42/early 43. Now what do the Wallies do?
www.alternatehistory.com
Allied victory if Russia falls in WW 2
What are the chances of an allied victory if the USSR falls to nazi Germany? How can they achieve it and hot long it will realistically take
www.alternatehistory.com
1. Regarding manpower, what about the additional French and German manpower the allies would have at their disposal?
2. Regarding Soviet industry and the Urals, didn't the WAllies have have a large airpower advantage, one which could reach beyond the Urals?
I feel like a lot of this would come down to who had better logistics on the ground, though I'm not sure who that is.
McPherson
Banned
About HALF. It does not include several hundred armored trains I noticed, which the Russians stole from the Chinese.
I think that the Cossack Cavalry Corps and the Polish Armed Forces in the West would rather fight
History Learner
Banned
Any war against the Soviets ends in decisive defeat for the Soviets, they simply lack the industrial base or manpower to fight against the Anglo-Americans long term, which Stalin recognized, but even in the immediate term there was no threat of losing to the Soviets. The conventional balance of power in terms of manpower was roughly 1:1, not 2-1 in favor of the Soviets but the Anglo-Americans also brought into play a 2:1 advantage in tanks and a 3:2 advantage in the air.
In April of 1945 JCS adopted ratios based on the experiences sustained in both Europe and the Pacific, with the Pacific one being 1.95 dead and missing and 7.45 total casualties/1,000 men/day. Applying that to DOWNFALL results in 878,453 killed or missing and 2,481,233 wounded, or 3,359,686 in total. Take in note, this was before the absolute bloodbath which was Okinawa, even. According to Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire by Richard Frank, William Shockley's study for Secretary of War Henry Stimson in the Summer of '45 after Okinawa projected 1.7–4 million American casualties, of whom 400,000–800,000 would be fatalities. Equally terrifying is the fact that the "Sinister Ratio" of Willoughby was only in terms of the IJA; it did not account for IJN and IJAAF used for ground combat or civilians pressed into service.
McPherson
Banned
Just as an aside, if Stalin is Stalin, he will probably still screw up his side of Unthinkable. Still, the Russians win. Here's why....
Misreading Svechin: Atrition , Annihilation and Historicism by David R. Stone.
The Russians are just so far ahead in theory and practice of the operational art over the Anglo-Americans in land warfare, that it is ridiculous. Maybe airpower can balance the scales, but even there the Russians are theoretically ahead. They just don't have the equipment to do it in the air.
Misreading Svechin: Atrition , Annihilation and Historicism by David R. Stone.
The Russians are just so far ahead in theory and practice of the operational art over the Anglo-Americans in land warfare, that it is ridiculous. Maybe airpower can balance the scales, but even there the Russians are theoretically ahead. They just don't have the equipment to do it in the air.
Given that Stalin's strategic decision making from mid-'43 onwards was pretty solid, with him leaving operations and tactics entirely to the generals, this is a spurious assertion. As it is, he took pretty solid precautions against Unthinkable (which notably demonstrates that it's assumption of being able to achieve surprise was likewise a facile one) with Soviet forces in Eastern Germany assuming good defense-in-depth positions during June.
All numbers save the air one (and it too, to a limited extent) based on some pretty spurious accounting methodology which we have been over.
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History Learner
Banned
I need only look at the ratio of aircraft and the Martin van Creveld's citation to come to the conclusion the best the Soviets could get is a draw. I'm fully content to say, based on our previous exchange, there would be no decisive breakthrough initially on the part of the Anglo-Americans until the arrival of atomic weapons in theater to destroy the Soviet bridgeheads in Poland.
I see that this is morphing into another debate about whether the Western Allies or Soviets would have come out ahead should War have broken out between the two factions in the middle of 1945, which is not exactly off-topic, but the question here is whether Unthinkable, regardless of how destructive you think that it would have been in and of itself, would have been more or less destructive than Downfall.
Well, the B-29 Super-fortress did have a total range of 9,000 kilometres, so it could feasibly have breached the Urals, but at best, the maximum range from France, for example, to the Urals is 6,000 kilometres, so that is 6,000 kilometres to the Urals and 6,000 kilometres back, so it is a 12,000 kilometre trip. At best, the Allies could not have gotten a chance to hit the Urals until they conquer Poland. A trip from Warsaw to the Urals is 9,012 kilometres there and back in total, so it would make more sense to launch a Superfortress from Warsaw than it would from Paris.
I could see maybe the French willing to get into the scrap, but I highly doubt the Germans (427,000 prisoners in the USA and 402,000 prisoners in the UK by September 1946) would be willing to take up arms again. They would just want to go home. Even if they want to pick up arms again, how are you going to arm them? Are you going to give them American or British kit? German manufacturing was smashed to pieces by Allied bombing between 1940-1945, so they're not going to get their own kit, surely.
History Learner
Banned
They don't have to hit the factories, as they learned in 1944 from bombing the Germans, but instead the inputs and transportation nodes. Hell, to be technical, they don't even have to do a bombing campaign to destroy Russian production. The previous loss of the Ukraine and other occupied areas had already engendered shortages of coal (The Donbass was home to roughly 60% of Soviet output by itself), aluminum (Main Soviet facility was along the Dnieper, about 60-80% of production), iron ore (60% of production), steel (50% of production), electric power (30% of output), manganese ore (30% of production), and nickel (30% of production). Overall output of the machinery and metal goods sector had fallen by 40%. In addition, the USSR was also unable to meet the demand for copper, tin, zinc, lead, aluminum, and nickel with remaining sources; Lend Lease was sufficient to meet all of these demands except for aluminum and nickel. Antimony, tungsten, cobalt, vanadium, molybdenum, tin, and magnesium were also almost entirely lacking.
"We don't want to fight the Russians who have raped our women and are currently ethnically cleansing us East of the Oder. We want to return home and thus get to live under Soviet occupation"
The Germans were organizing themselves on their own IOTL.
That ratio of aircraft doesn't necessarily preclude the Soviets managing to achieve notable successes, as even an outnumbered air force can maneuver it's forces to achieve local air superiority for a given timeframe so long as the numerical gap and/or skill gap isn't too wide, which it isn't in this case. And I already pointed out the problem with the Van Crewald citation, with the lack of any causative link. That said, I don't rule out the possibility of a draw or even the WAllies managing to achieve what they envisioned in the initial Operation Unthinkable*, albeit at a steep price. I just don't view it as a particularly likely outcome, particularly with a political shitstorm exploding back home and the prospect of their armies mutinying out from under them.
*That is, the Danzig-Breslau line. Even though oddly enough this still leaves most of pre-war Poland, all of Czechoslovakia, and all of the Balkans, in Soviet hands.
You mean the rail lines. Soviet railheads by this point would be located well within East Germany. Although the damage done to Hiroshima and Nagasaki's railnets by the atomic bombs were quite limited. Then again, their rail centers were not particularly close to the blast zones. Then again, the data from those drops (mainly the Nagasaki one) shows that a miss on the level of the one at Nagasaki would leave rail centers relatively intact. Not to mention the possibility of the bomber just flat out getting shot down. So... fates of war there, I guess.
Less so is the problem that the WAllies will have to endure months of bloodshed and political chaos while they set-up the bomb sites in Britain, transfer over the 509th, and then bring in the bomb components itself.
I mean, in Central Europe, we're talking about massive battles being raged with gobs of artillery and armor and air power on both sides. In Kyushu, it's a huge mechanized amphibious assault force landing against a admittedly large and well dug in force, but one whose morale by that point would be unknown since they exist within a state threatening to possibly collapse and speeding towards a catastrophic famine. The former is guaranteed to be apocalyptically bloody. The latter could be anywhere from apocalyptically bloody to a total cakewalk.
1945 is not 1949 and even that article states the Schnez-Truppe was too small to amount to a meaningful force. It's actually pretty delusional all said, given that American forces in Europe didn't even have enough tanks to fully outfit their own local forces in 1949, never mind an additional four armored divisions. That said, the big stumbling block in 1945 is really an organizational one. Jonathan Walker in Churchill's Third World War examines how the British planners rather underestimated the difficulties in assembling the German forces they wanted, noting that the German Army following it's surrender was "very fragmented" as a result of the dispersal of PoWs and that the need to rearm, retrain, and refield the forces would consume considerably more time then the planners anticipated. Even with their underestimation, the planners did not expect any of the German formations to be ready by July, much less
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History Learner
Banned
Remind me again why you are against the van Creveld citation; to be honest, in that other thread, it came off as you just dismissing it. Is there any other sources you can cite that go against it? As it were, at a 3:2 advantage, I just don't see anyway the Allies could lose control of the air over their own lines; over the Soviets, sure, but Creveld was talking about in terms of counter-attacks that would necessitate a Soviet counter-punch into Western territory.
Given the East German railways must pass through Poland, those are the targets. U.S. production later in the year is sufficient to ensure their destruction, even if the Soviets manage to shoot down the bombers; imagine a 200 plane B-29 raid escorted by 1,000 fighters. Assuming the Soviets get through, what is the B-29 they need to destroy? Now imagine a concurrent series of raids on all of the railway hubs in Poland.
so you somehow think that the Japanese, bombed and exhausted on their island surrounded by Allied navies would pose more of a problem than the USSR with working industry, giant battle hardened army and half of europe under occupation.. ok
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History Learner
Banned
It's far harder to conduct an amphibious invasion against an opponent that knows your exact plan, has prepared extensively for such an event, and has more troops than you while sitting on their own logistics network than it is to fight an overland battle with superiority in key equipment categories.
Check out this recent thread, for an idea of what I mean.
yeah invading japan would be hard, but you think invading the USSR fully mobolized, would be harder... that seems really dumb