Who would have won in a UK-US alliance vs a Germany-USSR alliance during WW2?

Riain

Banned
Delay it until 1948, as long as Germany does not posses a Nuclear Weapon. It isn't hard. The US had two bombs in 1945, they had a bunch more in 1949. If they use it on Germany or the USSR, one at least, it could scare of one of the nations. Drop it on a few important places around the same time: Berlin, Ruhr Industry, Hamburg/Bremen/Lubeck ports, a some airfields near major cities and you can already cripple the ability of the said nation to respond properly. Especially if the said nation has not nuclear weapons (yet).

If Germany is hit, the USSR will back off, or feel some of the heath until they back off. Considering the USA had 299 nukes in 1950, which would be around 150-200 in 1948 (my guess), it seems more than enough to cripple one of those nations and scare of the other.

But the same works for the other side, to remind you, I said the alliance that has nukes first. If Germany has it first they can and could use it against the UK. The US is a harder situation considering how far it is and how much stronger their navy is compared to the German-Soviet Navies.

How does the war last until 1948 without major fighting, given the lack of a theatre where these side can come to grips with each other? In WW2 the Eastern Front was the 'engine' of the war, it was what kept the war going as the WAllies farted around in Africa and Italy with a fraction of the forces the committed to France in 1944.

Germany and the Soviets aren't going to get nuclear weapons before the WAllies, their R & D wasn't nearly up to scratch in comparison.
 
The US produced 90 named divisions, and enough independent formations to quantify as another 90 divisions, for a total of 180, and had no manpower shortages. -- theres enough 18-25 year olds in the Us to form plenty more divisions if needed (The US had **Double** Germany's Population. If germany could do 260 scraping the bottom of the barrel, the Us could manage 400-420 easily without breaking the industrial side.) If necessary, Britain has colonies she can tap for manpower in Africa and Asia (India alone more than matches the Soviet Union's manpower levels). The possibility of a US/UK alliance raising 500+ divisions is NOT unthinkable.
Ah, the HOI4 enthusiast enters the discussion
 

thaddeus

Donor
Hitler humored Ribbentrop’s schemes for a “Continental Bloc” with the USSR in November and 1940 to oppose the US/UK. The negotiations were a failure because the USSR was far more interested in Romania, Bulgaria, Finland, and Turkey than Iraq and India. If Barbarossa doesn’t happen in 1941, the USSR and Germany are going to have their relationship collapse over renewed Soviet attempts to occupy Finland (Offensive plans started being drawn up in Fall 1940), neutralize Bulgaria, and assert greater influence over Romania.

A longer German-Soviet detente is interesting inasmuch as how it collapses is fun to consider - but I can’t see it surviving 1942.
tried to make this point but was not quite as concise. think there are two major issues driving the German timetable (besides their racial obsessions) oil and the Soviets absence from the war, going from strong to stronger (or weak to strong in the German view)

they possibly could have solved or lessened their oil problem (discoveries, completion of their synthetic programs, and of course no Barbarossa helps )

cannot think of any "hot war" the Soviets could become involved in that would be a major distraction or drain? no machination by the Nazi regime that could prompt the Soviets to drop their caution?
 
Draw. At least in the short/medium term

Neither opponent can really get at the other. By mid 1942 the UK was invulnerable to invasion (it had been close to that from the moment Fighter Command won the BoB, once a division of U.S. troops along with divisional sized Canadian troop formations, with full TOE were in place the "close" vanished). The Combined Reich/Soviet navy present nothing but a serious long term irritation (once Henry Kaiser's yards hit stride the KM/Soviet submarine fleets can sink tonnage as fast as U.S. yards can crank it out). The U.S., of course, has two rather sizable oceans as insulation from attack on the CONUS.

The counterpoint is that the U.S./Commonwealth Alliance (even assuming that pretty much the rest of Western Hemisphere joins in) doesn't have a chance in Hell of getting ashore in France, engaging, and defeating a combined Reich/Soviet force, not before the Continental powers acquire the Bomb (assuming the Soviet penetration of Tube Alloys ---> Manhattan is as successful as IOTL). With the Germans involved in a program that, far from "knowing" will fail to one that they know will succeed (again assuming the Soviets share their Intel, which is far from a certainty), it is possible that the "Continental" program may show results more quickly than the Soviet 1949 first test.

As far as the WAllies simply blowing the pougies out of Germany once the Bomb is available, it isn't that simple. First this idea assumes that the Reich would fold after a couple cities got blasted, this is clearly not a established fact, it requires Hitler to 1) give a damn about the average German and 2) act rationally, neither of these requirements stand close examination based on the actual historic record. Next, it requires the WAllies to have achieved the sort of air superiority that was achieved over Japan, another scenario that never occurred IOTL, even with the Reich in its death throes, the Luftwaffe defended the skies, both with fighters and with radar directed guns up to 12.8cm caliber. The early A-Bomb deliver methods required pretty much zero opposition to unescorted small flight of bombers (in the case of Hiroshima the authorities actually sounded the "All Clear" after and earlier raid warning since it was only three B-29s at high altitude, clearly not a threat. Try that over Berlin and, even at 30,000 feet, there are going to enemy fighter on the way into the target and 12.8cm radar directed guns tossing shells directly into the formation's path. Simply not going to work.

The "good news" as these thing go, is that there is ZERO chance of the Nazis and Soviets doing more than tolerating each other for a few years. The Nazis will still see Communist = Jewish conspiracy and be driven to wipe them out root and branch. The Soviets will still see the Reich as a clear and present danger to the Revolution (which, oddly enough, Stalin still actually believed in) and now THE impediment to bringing all of Europe into the "Socialist" Light of Day (i.e. Soviet dominated communist). Give it until mid-1943 when Berlin and Moscow are no longer engaging in anything noteworthy on the ground and the marriage of convenience is going to turn into the Divorce of the Millennia with the WAllies sort of sitting on the sidelines and trying not get anything on their shoes. Once the Germans and Soviets have started their Götterdänmerung and have pulled sufficient forced into the East in their Battle Royale, then the Wallies could conceivably make a Channel Crossing to clear France and Low Countries, along with actions as far as Norway, and if the Reich is getting it's ass kicked badly enough, Denmark.

Once that happens it's time to pull up a couple chairs and make S'mores until they have beaten each other more or less to death then roll in and administer the coup de grace to both of the bastards.
How much strength do you think this Nazi-Soviet Alliance would be able to project into the Middle East? Is India at all on the cards or do you think they would get stopped cold in Persia?
 
Sounds like something out of 1984...
5316719945a20b70e7295d0b6ec065b3.gif


It all sounds Double Plus Good!
Attention, your attention, please
A newsflash has this moment arrived from the Malabar front
Our forces in South India have won a glorious victory
I am authorized to say that the action we are now reporting
May, well bring the war within measurable distance of its end
Here is the newsflash
 
Ah, the HOI4 enthusiast enters the discussion
ha ha. No, I'm not an HOI player.

In the official 1940 census, US had a population of 132,000,000. Nearky double the 70,700,00 in Germany in 1940, and not that far from the 170,500,000 (1939) of the USSR. The total population of the British Empire in 1939 was 545,000,000. The US has the population to make many more divisions than Germany's 260. In theory, so does the UK, though, as mentioned, it'll be harder to organize colonial armies.

The US was not drafting every 18-25 year old...when they absolutely *could have* and filled out more units than they did without compromising the massive industrial output they had. There would be more of 'Rosie the Riveter' in the factory'-- maybe also more women in the military (filling staff and rear area and logistics roles). Whether they would attempt women in combat roles might be close to ASB, but the Soviets did so, with notable successes like the Night Witches and a few fighter aces. FDR considered doing full army integration as well, which could only help with manpower.

Those US divisions will be far more mobile than the German and Soviet formations , which are still 80% horse drawn (compared with 4.3 soldiers per vehicle in the US army in 1944 - better than the civilian ratio of 4.4 people/vehicle. No other nation was anywhere near close to that level of automobile adption. In1939 (In Britain it was more like 12:1 , in Germany close to 20:1, and well over 100:1 in Russia), and only 19% of the German Army divisions had integral transport enough to move the whole division, as compared to EVERY US division having that.
 
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There's going to be a lot more opposition to that in the USA though, both because the war is on the other side of the world and because someone who opposes the war could get elected.
 
The effects of nuclear weapons are being severely underestimated here. The US was going for a production rate of 20-30 nuclear weapons per month IOTL, more with wartime mass production of easier to produce plutonium weapons. Even if Germany is able to destroy half of the B-29s carrying those weapons at night per month - a kill rate bordering on absurdity - that's 10-15 German cities destroyed or severely damaged per month, minimum. Not to mention that each shot down B-29 still detonates its weapon wherever it falls, which could still be over a town or city.

I think we should recall that, IOTL, having a city destroyed by conventional means ala Hamburg was terrifying to the German leadership. You had complete panic in the ranks:

Hans Kehrl faced this reality, on the first night of Hamburg’s devastation, when he was woken by a telephone call from his close associate Gauleiter Karl Kaufmann, who begged him to accelerate the delivery of several trainloads of quicklime, which would be needed for the rapid disposal of tens of thousands of corpses. 49 After Kehrl rushed to the Ministry and was informed of the dimensions of the disaster, he suffered a temporary collapse. For the first time in years, this obsessive workaholic was forced to return home where he spent hours roaming around his garden in a daze. Not surprisingly, as the news from Hamburg leaked, the Gestapo picked up reports of shock and dismay from across the country. Mussolini’s sudden removal added to the panic. The SD noted that party members were no longer wearing their party badges in public and people were avoiding the Hitler salute wherever possible. 50 Speer found that even party audiences no longer responded to his boasts about the triumphs of the armaments miracle. 51 Amongst senior industrial leaders, the SD reported, there was no longer anyone who believed in the possibility of a German victory. 5

The Luftwaffe had a complete mental breakdown, with its CoS shooting himself out of despair:

On 18 August 1943, Hans Jeschonnek, the Luftwaffe chief of staff, the man most immediately responsible for the conduct of the German air war, shot himself. 57 Erhard Milch completely lost his composure, proclaiming to an audience of Gauleiter, Ministers and senior civil servants: ‘We have lost the war! Definitely lost it.’ Hitler was forced to dispatch Goebbels to administer what they referred to as a ‘shot of cement’.

Even Speer had to admit that if the Hamburg situation was repeated, Germany would lose the war within 3 months.

Speer, of course, was not blind to the seriousness of Germany’s situation. When the Zentrale Planung met on 29 July 1943 Hamburg was still burning and Speer could not avoid drawing drastic conclusions: Only if the enemy air attacks can be stopped will it be possible to think of an increase in production. If, however, the air attacks continue on the same scale as hitherto, they [the Zentrale Planung] would, within twelve weeks, be automatically relieved of a lot of questions that they were now discussing ..

But of course, Hamburg wasn't easily replicable and so Nazi morale held together, combined with a fair amount of coercion. But if you start getting 10, 20, 30 Hamburgs a month, you're going to start seeing serious cracks in the Nazi leadership. Even Himmler started looking for a deal in 1945 once he saw the writing on the wall. If Nazi internal unity collapses and most of the leadership of the Party and military save for Hitler agree that the war needs to end, a coup becomes much more likely. Only Hitler had the mindset that all of Germany needed to commit suicide along with him. That's not even discussing Stalin, Mussolini, etc., who will go running for the door the moment the first atom bombs start dropping.

That's not even discussing the pure economic/military effects. If the Allies stockpile some bombs for a 20-bomb attack in a single night, that's maybe 10-15% of Germany's population killed or injured in a single night of bombing, a substantial portion of its industry, rail infrastructure, etc. destroyed, and millions more reduced to refugees fleeing across the countryside. That's an overnight humanitarian and economic crisis with severe knockoff effects, especially as the Allies continue to produce more bombs for follow-up attacks.
 
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I don't think the US and UK could physically conquer Europe and Russia, they just didn't have the manpower. If we combine the wartime losses of Germany and Russia (killed, wounded, sick, prisoners), we reach numbers on the order of 45 million (and the Soviets didn't even collapse from their casualties). Even if the Allies traded 4 to 1, this is still more than 11 million US-UK losses of whom over 3 million would be dead and missing.

The US had tremendous industrial capacity and a large population, but a lot of that was dissipated in the projection of its forces overseas. As General Marshall's report pointed out, sustaining a massive war on two sides of the globe required an equally enormous commitment to industry and lines of communication, leaving a relatively small allotment remaining for the ground forces. (The US Army Air Force ate up almost a third of Army manpower by the end of the war, too.)

Meanwhile the UK was struggling manpower wise to staff its forces on the European continent after only a few months of combat there.

The Western Allies could probably have beaten Germany alone, or the USSR after the war with Germany, but Germany and the USSR together without having suffered serious losses against each other would probably have been too much from a military standpoint.
Sounds like something out of 1984...
5316719945a20b70e7295d0b6ec065b3.gif


It all sounds Double Plus Good!
Attention, your attention, please
A newsflash has this moment arrived from the Malabar front
Our forces in South India have won a glorious victory
I am authorized to say that the action we are now reporting
May, well bring the war within measurable distance of its end
Here is the newsflash
The character for Eastasia means "death."
 
as plenty of people have said, the Allies are'nt winning a slugging match but nukes will be key

not as in: nuke Berlin, nuke Moscow = win - these targets (along with London & SE England) will be towards the top of the list of 'most heavily defended places on earth'

so you play to your strengths - the US have the ability to build almost anything almost anywhere quickly, and the Empire has the almost anywhere covered with bases everywhere

it becomes a classic British strategy of pick at the edges, only this time you're doing it with nukes - somewhere like Kuwait to Stalingrad is closer than Tinian to the Home Islands

sure you're not going to cut off the head of the beast(s) but how would the Soviets start feeling if A-bombs started crossing off places like Baku, Stalingrad, Murmansk, Vladivostok, etc
 
How far would the Nazis+Soviets be able to get before 1945? Since the Soviets don't have much in the way of a navy I highly doubt Britain could be invaded, but how long could they have kept up the Blitz? If they do that and take all of North Africa + the Middle East maybe they could negotiate a favorable peace treaty before nukes become a factor.
 
as plenty of people have said, the Allies are'nt winning a slugging match but nukes will be key

not as in: nuke Berlin, nuke Moscow = win - these targets (along with London & SE England) will be towards the top of the list of 'most heavily defended places on earth'

so you play to your strengths - the US have the ability to build almost anything almost anywhere quickly, and the Empire has the almost anywhere covered with bases everywhere

it becomes a classic British strategy of pick at the edges, only this time you're doing it with nukes - somewhere like Kuwait to Stalingrad is closer than Tinian to the Home Islands

sure you're not going to cut off the head of the beast(s) but how would the Soviets start feeling if A-bombs started crossing off places like Baku, Stalingrad, Murmansk, Vladivostok, etc

Drop 20 nukes on the Ruhr and the Ruhr ceases to exist as a coherent economic unit - Germany's war effort is more or less over. While it's ASB enough for a Nazi-Soviet alliance to last until 1945, if it does nuclear weapons will be more than sufficient to convince Stalin to jump ship.
 
The Germans and Russians would dominate Europe in the Americans and the British could not invade because they couldn't bring over in supply enough manpower to do it
The Germans and Russians could not invade Great Britain because they did not have the naval assets
It would pretty much be an air war of attrition until Nukes arrived
As for Russian spies they were so successful because no one was looking for them. In this timeline they would be looking for them
 
How exactly would you get a nuke to those places without the bomber being shot down? Both the Luftwaffe and VVS would still be pretty strong and they have as much fuel as they could ever want, and will have thousands of miles and hours of time during which they can shoot down the plane. Remember, nuclear missiles didn't exist yet and wouldn't for over a decade. If they do shoot down a plane carrying a nuke and the nuke isn't completely destroyed, the Soviet+Nazi nuclear programs get a huge boost. If they are able to repair it, it's going to be much easier for them to deliver it to London from Calais than it would be for the Allies to deliver it to Moscow over thousands of miles of hostile territory.
The B-29 and Lancaster designs would be modified for extreme high altitude flight
There is a very good chance they could get through
 
The Western Allies could probably have beaten Germany alone, or the USSR after the war with Germany, but Germany and the USSR together without having suffered serious losses against each other would probably have been too much from a military standpoint.
So it’s likely the WAllies would have made peace with Germany and the USSR in light of the massive casualties and resources required to defeat them?
 
So it’s likely the WAllies would have made peace with Germany and the USSR in light of the massive casualties and resources required to defeat them?
Probably the land war would have been a stalemate with the Allies trying to bomb Germany and Russia from airbases in Britain, North Africa, and the Middle East. The two dictatorships were never able to match them in that department.
 

Riain

Banned
The effects of nuclear weapons are being severely underestimated here. The US was going for a production rate of 20-30 nuclear weapons per month IOTL, more with wartime mass production of easier to produce plutonium weapons.

Do you mean the weapons effects themselves, or the strategic effects of the employment of multiple atomic bombs?

While the US may have wanted to produce 20-30 bombs a month this could not have been realised due to the 'poisoning' of the reactors with fission products known as the Wigner Effect. Two Fat Man were used in Operation Crossroads in July 1946 and the Fat Man was ordered into production at that time but only 9 plutonium cores were available in August 1946 and 53 cores by December 1948. The Wigner effect was so bad by mid 1946 that Groves order that more 6 Little Boy bombs be produced although no EU was supplied before this project reached fruition. The Navy ordered 25 Little Man in 1947 although only enough EU for 10 was supplied and only 6 polonium initiators by 1948.

The Wigner effect was heading towards a solution in early 1947 and in that year a more efficient redox extraction method which extracted both plutonium and uranium began being tested but not used until 1949.

Of course if the German-Soviet war was continuing after September 1945 this timeline of events would likely change; H reactor the 4th at Hanford would likely come on line long before 1949 and Little Man would likely enter 'production' rather than being abandoned and then having to recreated by reverse engineering from mid 1946. This would make better use of the reactor's limited ability to produce polonium initiators by spreading them over Plutonium and Uranium bombs. Nor would demobilisation cause a mass exodus from the Manhattan Project from late 1945, so maybe redox reprocessing is available before 1949.

I doubt the US would be able to deploy many more than 5 or so A-bombs in late 1945, which is hardly going to win the war in a single stroke, nor is waiting until 1946 going to make the situation vastly better.

However
 
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