WI: Israel sides with the Soviets

That certainly didn't help but having to move Jordan's armored units out of cover in full view of hostile air power wasn't any use either.
 
It'd have to take one hell of an anti-Semitic president.

Anybody read "A World of Laughter, A World of Tears," by statichaos, where Walt Disney becomes President? Mapai/Alignment wins a bigger, Redder majority and pals up with the Soviets.
 
Actually the comparison is a very good one. You are also showing some heavy blinders here. The Wehrmacht along with the Imperial German Army and the Prussian army did best with very short wars where quality of personnel was everything. Of course the Wehrmacht of 1944 wasn't the same as 1939-41, how could it? The Wehrmacht of 1944 had been at war and bleed for years and years.

What has the IDF fought in its entire history? Very short wars where the effects of attrition really don't come into play. The closest to that was the 1967-70 but that was very low intensity.

The reason the Wehrmacht was ground into dust is because they were hugely out numbered in terms of manpower and gear. Fighting 2/3 of the worlds industrial might for 4 years really isn't going to end well. Despite this the Wehrmacht ran up a rather one sided body count.

Back to the IDF, if they had to fight high intensity combat for years at a time they would start to run into real problems.

Michael

Ah, no. The real Wehrmacht was brilliant on the tactical level but a bunch of drooling, lice-picking idiots at anything else in a military POV. The Wehrmacht was laughably idiotic and stupid at the intelligence level, as the Soviets and WAllies showed over and over again. At the operational level it could function only if its enemies were stupid. At a strategic level it had no function whatsoever.

Again, comparing the IDF to the Wehrmacht is an insult....to the IDF. They're so far superior to Hitler's mob of rapists, butchers, murderers, criminals, and thieves that it ain't even funny.
 
Whitecrow, my point is that the Israelis won IOTL due to OTL circumstances that are mundane tactical ones, not from some nostrum about Arabs being inherently prone to deception and unwilling to engage in headlong slugging, or Jews thinking five years ahead with their minds while Arabs are too stupid to fight wars. Your argument does not rely on military factors but on pseudo-reality-based arguments of culture and blanket generalities that don't really apply to OTL and certainly won't to any ATL where Israel is a Soviet ally in the era of the Vietnam and Korean Wars.
 
Ah, no. The real Wehrmacht was brilliant on the tactical level but a bunch of drooling, lice-picking idiots at anything else in a military POV. The Wehrmacht was laughably idiotic and stupid at the intelligence level, as the Soviets and WAllies showed over and over again. At the operational level it could function only if its enemies were stupid. At a strategic level it had no function whatsoever.

Again, comparing the IDF to the Wehrmacht is an insult....to the IDF. They're so far superior to Hitler's mob of rapists, butchers, murderers, criminals, and thieves that it ain't even funny.

Yup very heavy blinders are showing, calling the Wehrmacht a bunch of names in terms of their war crimes which I admit there is justification for doesn't negate the armed services military skill. You are using an 'appeal to emotion fallacy' or put another way calling the German army a bunch of nasty names no matter how richly deserved detracts from its military skill.

You want a debate on the nazis send me a pm.

Michael
 
Whitecrow, my point is that the Israelis won IOTL due to OTL circumstances that are mundane tactical ones, not from some nostrum about Arabs being inherently prone to deception and unwilling to engage in headlong slugging, or Jews thinking five years ahead with their minds while Arabs are too stupid to fight wars. Your argument does not rely on military factors but on pseudo-reality-based arguments of culture and blanket generalities that don't really apply to OTL and certainly won't to any ATL where Israel is a Soviet ally in the era of the Vietnam and Korean Wars.

Actually you are rather totally wrong here. The record speaks for itself. The arab armies did suffer from lying up and down the command structure, they did suffer from horriable poor officers un willing to act on their own or break from a plan that is going down in flames. The list goes on.

Again it wasn't that the IDF was a force of bug eyed aliens with ray guns (since SF likes to pounce on of hand comments) its that the arab armies were just that bad in relative terms.

How does replacing the USSR with the USA change anything?
 
Yup very heavy blinders are showing, calling the Wehrmacht a bunch of names in terms of their war crimes which I admit there is justification for doesn't negate the armed services military skill. You are using an 'appeal to emotion fallacy' or put another way calling the German army a bunch of nasty names no matter how richly deserved detracts from its military skill.

You want a debate on the nazis send me a pm.

Michael

I didn't call them names only, I noted the blunt truth that on anything other than tactics they were a bunch of jokers playing with the big boys and so they got curbstomped. That particular truth tends to offend a lot of people on this forum but it's what actually happened. I'm not appealing to emotion, I'm simply noting that the only thing the Wehrmacht did well was fight battles, it was either incompetent or unsuited utterly, totally, and completely for anything else.

The IDF, by comparison, has accomplished much more and has a far more solid grounding in fighting wars, as opposed to battles. So kindly not insult them by comparing them to Hitler's criminals.

Actually you are rather totally wrong here. The record speaks for itself. The arab armies did suffer from lying up and down the command structure, they did suffer from horriable poor officers un willing to act on their own or break from a plan that is going down in flames. The list goes on.

Again it wasn't that the IDF was a force of bug eyed aliens with ray guns (since SF likes to pounce on of hand comments) its that the arab armies were just that bad in relative terms.

How does replacing the USSR with the USA change anything?

Um, I've noted all this repeatedly and noted that the USSR was more willing to accept Cold War reversals than the USA did, while an equivalent to the Soviet-Israeli fighting that characterized the OTL War of Attrition involving Israel v. the USA is going to result in a butchering.....of the IDF.
 

Vladimir

Banned
Israel would still maintain its military edge and come out top dog in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Israel has a tactical and training edge that cannot be beat. Even if the USA tried to train the Arab armies, it still wouldn't be enough. The US had a largely pro-Arab policy in the 50's and 60's. Before 1967, the US would mostly sell the Arabs an equal amount of arms whenever it sold something to Israel. During the Six-Day War, Jordan used US-made artillery and tanks against Israel. Israel's edge is in large part due to its superior training methods, the extreme motivation among its troops, its competent officer corps, and most of all, Arab incompetence. As another poster mentioned, one Egyptian officer burned instruction manuals for the M1 Abrams so that he would be indispensable to the unit. This even though the US provides Egypt with military aid. Israel would still have the tactical and training edge over the Arabs. Keep in mind that Israel crossed the Suez Canal due to the bravery of 750 paratroopers who crossed in rubber dinghies and then disabled the Egyptian SAM umbrella, not from US technology.

Israel would also have the edge in pilot training. During the War of Attrition, the IAF intercepted and beat a Soviet-piloted squadron of fighter jets in Operation Rimon 20 (Soviet pilots meant that the jets were probably not monkey models). The USA did not train Israeli pilots: On the contrary, IAF pilots have beaten their USAF counterparts in war games, and have trained them in various tactics.

Israel is largely reliant on its own defense industries. These industries are world-famous, selling some of the best weapons there are out there. To bolster these industries, Israeli intelligence has no qualms about snatching secrets from Western defense companies and then using them to bolster its own weapons production. When France embargoed Israel, Israeli intelligence stole designs for the Mirage to create the IAI Nesher, and the Mossad even smuggled five gunboats out of Cherbourg harbor that the Israeli government had previously paid for.

Israel's tactical and training edge would likely allow it to win the Six-Day War, but I suspect that the poor performance of its Soviet monkey models would lead the Mossad to be more active in stealing Western technology secrets and the country to be less reliant on Soviet arms, and by the Yom Kippur War, Israel's military equipment might closely resemble that of the West. Israel might even get real-time Soviet intelligence of the impending attack. Rather than the US blocking a preemptive strike, Israel could strike again and deliver another crushing blow to the Arabs.

Throughout all this, I don't think that Israel would be too socialist. Israel is in many aspects a socialist country, but it is not communist. If its leaders were smart, they would be more like India: leaning towards the Soviets, accepting military help, and being a strategic asset in the region, but not signing the Warsaw Pact or stationing the Red Army in its territory. Israel could thus keep its army free of Soviet influence.

The effect on Soviet aliyah would be interesting. If Israel kept its distance, the Soviets wouldn't have been able to coerce it to put an end to the ambitions of Soviet Jewry. In fact, even if Israel were safely tucked into the Soviet shield, I don't think it's leaders would dare turn away Jews from such an oppressive and antisemitic country. The people would never stand for it. Israel might even offer incentives for allowing increased aliyah, such as linking the sale of Western economic secrets stolen by the Mossad to immigration, or allowing the Soviets to set up a naval base in Haifa and be able to directly challenge the US Sixth Fleet in exchange for allowing Soviet Jews to leave.

Israel might benefit politically from such an alignment. The United States tried to block Israel's 1982 Lebanon invasion and forced Israel not to destroy the Egyptian Third Army in 1973, and allowed numerous UN Security Council resolutions critical of Israel to pass, whereas the Soviets were more unconditional in their support, both politically and militarily. the Without US aid, George HW Bush would also have been unable to coerce Israel into the "peace process", and Israel would be free to create realities on the ground and impose its own solution.

The United States might be inclined to accept a foreign policy reversal from Israel during this period. The US supported the Arabs in the 1950s and 1960s, but they migrated into the Soviet camp regardless. The Soviet model was more attractive to the Nasserite socialist regimes, and the Soviets were prepared to fund projects the Americans weren't. Thus, the US would be without any allies in the Middle East, and the Soviets would be able to take over the region. The US might be desperate for an asset in the Middle East and try to reverse Israel's position, offering things like unconditional political support and weapons deliveries to turn it.

A side effect of this relationship would be that the results of Israel's weapons development, both independent and from espionage against Western companies, would probably find its way to the Soviet Union, which would enable the Soviet army to have technological parity with the West. Since it is now equal in terms of weaponry, the West must outnumber them or at least match them in numbers. Expanding and cementing NATO becomes all the more crucial.
 
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Throughout all this, I don't think that Israel would be too socialist. If its leaders were smart, they would be more like India: leaning towards the Soviets, accepting military help, and being a strategic asset in the region, but not signing the Warsaw Pact or stationing the Red Army in its territory. Israel could thus keep its army free of Soviet influence.

A side effect of this relationship would be that the results of Israel's weapons development, both independent and from espionage against Western companies, would probably find its way to the Soviet Union, which would enable the Soviet army to have technological parity with the West. Since it is now equal in terms of weaponry, the West must outnumber them or at least match them in numbers. Expanding and cementing NATO becomes all the more crucial.

This is a really interesting and on-the-ball analysis. I think the political results would be really interesting- ITTL the USSR would be the one juggling it's relationship with Israel between a desire to co-opt Arab Nationalism (in whatever ATL form it takes).

The gear nerd part of me finds this progression really interesting as well. I think some pieces of Soviet kit would be very popular with the IDF- small arms and artillery would be a no-brainer, for example. Additionally, I think the MiG-17/19 combo would be a decent substitute for the role (daytime dogfighter) that the Mirage III historically played.

That being said, a looser Soviet alignment, not as close as the OTL post-1973 US-Israel alliance, would make Israel simultaneously less confident but also more free to act in terms of domestic production. Israel will probably develop it's own MBT in this timeline, although the ATL Merkava will look different. Israeli fighter development? Who knows. The Mig daylight dogfighters will do until the late 1960's, but as AAM's come into their own Soviet made aircraft will no longer cut it. The 1970's will be an interesting time for the ATL-Israeli arsenal.
 
Avoiding reparations from West Germany is probably essential. It was a god send to the Israeli economy, but it also tied the Israeli economy and state, along with the ruling Mapai, to Western Europe.

This won't be that hard to do. Many in Israel did not want German "blood money" anyway, and if Israel is in the Soviet camp from independence onwards, then it becomes useful for propaganda to keep Israel opposed to Germany.
 
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