WOrld War Three: 1952.

The result would have been a Soviet Union with most of its economy and infrastructure reduced to a smoldering ruin, able to hit only NATO and American targets within easy flying distance in Western Europe, the Middle East, and Japan, and even that with only a high failure rate, thanks to western air dominance in those regions, and limited reliability of Soviet bombers and warheads. The Red Army might well reach the Rhine, but it would be a moot point if it did: The country which dispatched it would be in ruins.

The Soviets did have Tu-4s capable of reaching the CONUS on one-way missions. We would survive that, and it's possible we wouldn't be hit at all, but I think it's probable they would manage to get a few bombs through.

Still, as you say, the outcome can't really be in doubt. In the grand scheme of things, the Soviets can't damage the US enough to knock us out of the war, while we can keep cranking out bombs and bombers until whatever's left surrenders.
 
I wasn't saying they were wrong, just that they were totally over-the-top. Although by the time these ads were running, the worst of the horrors in USSR were over - still recent, but over.

Oh, I agree - over the top. Which may explain some of the later swing too far in the other direction. That's the risk with propaganda, especially in an open society.

The Terror and famines had ended by 1952, if that's the date you have in mind, but the gulag was still intact, and full to overflowing. Only after Stalin's death (1953) did Moscow begin downsizing it. And the USSR was still recovering from the destruction of World War II - not really the Soviets' fault - but it was a very, very, very hard place to live, however over the top the Republic Steel propaganda was.

I do take issue, however, with the implication that New Dealers are actually communist pawns. Republic Steel didn't do that, at least as far as I can recall, but there were some that did.

It was polemic, no doubt. There were communist agents in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, but it's not fair to tar run-of-the-mill New Dealers with that brush. They were, at worst, social democrats, which is light years away from Bolshevism, to put it mildly.

Unfortunately, that kind of imputation of extremism is still alive today, on both sides of the political spectrum.
 
Oh, I agree - over the top. Which may explain some of the later swing too far in the other direction. That's the risk with propaganda, especially in an open society.

The Terror and famines had ended by 1952, if that's the date you have in mind, but the gulag was still intact, and full to overflowing. Only after Stalin's death (1953) did Moscow begin downsizing it. And the USSR was still recovering from the destruction of World War II - not really the Soviets' fault - but it was a very, very, very hard place to live, however over the top the Republic Steel propaganda was.

I've got examples of these ads into the late 50s, well after Khruschev's reforms began. Still, even then the USSR was a closed society, so I suppose it's not fair to expect them to instantly change course.

It was polemic, no doubt. There were communist agents in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, but it's not fair to tar run-of-the-mill New Dealers with that brush. They were, at worst, social democrats, which is light years away from Bolshevism, to put it mildly.

Unfortunately, that kind of imputation of extremism is still alive today, on both sides of the political spectrum.

As your average armchair social democrat, I've grown up thinking of the 50s as the Great Keynesian Utopia, so it really surprised me just how much pushback against Keynes and unions and planning and so on there was. Just goes to show how history is always more complicated than the stories we tell ourselves about it.
 
The Soviets did have Tu-4s capable of reaching the CONUS on one-way missions. We would survive that, and it's possible we wouldn't be hit at all, but I think it's probable they would manage to get a few bombs through.

Still, as you say, the outcome can't really be in doubt. In the grand scheme of things, the Soviets can't damage the US enough to knock us out of the war, while we can keep cranking out bombs and bombers until whatever's left surrenders.

That's true. I just wonder how many they'd get off the ground - how many they could get to forward deployed bases close enough to make a one-way trip feasible.

By 1952, LeMay had whipped SAC into shape sufficiently that he could have delivered most of his arsenal within the first few days of the go order. My impression is that Soviet bomber forces weren't at that level of readiness. I could see a few bombs possibly getting through, albeit with little accuracy. A nuclear war with Russia at almost any point until the late 50's would have been a one-sided affair; and in the late 50's, nearly so - though at that point, the Soviets would have been trading a limited ability to devastate key targets in CONUS for complete, as opposed to merely widespread, devastation of the Soviet heartland.
 
I've got examples of these ads into the late 50s, well after Khruschev's reforms began. Still, even then the USSR was a closed society, so I suppose it's not fair to expect them to instantly change course.

As your average armchair social democrat, I've grown up thinking of the 50s as the Great Keynesian Utopia, so it really surprised me just how much pushback against Keynes and unions and planning and so on there was. Just goes to show how history is always more complicated than the stories we tell ourselves about it.

Recall that this was in the wake of Truman's seizure of the steel mills. Big Steel wanted to paint themselves as patriotically as possible, to ensure that any future repeat would carry a high political cost.

The unions worked pretty hard to show that they, too, were as anti-communist as anybody else, thanks to guys like George Meany.
 
That's true. I just wonder how many they'd get off the ground - how many they could get to forward deployed bases close enough to make a one-way trip feasible.

I could believe anywhere between zero and twenty successful strikes, with the most likely range between one and five and anything above ten extremely unlikely but not ASB. It depends on whether the US or the USSR starts the nuclear exchange, Soviet strategic doctrine, just how good our recon actually was in 1952, and how good our air defense turns out to be. (Probably not very - the Pine Tree Line is just beginning to come online, there's no DEW or Mid-Canada Line, there's no Nike missiles... The sources I've read from the time seem to see 30% attrition as the best they could possibly hope for.)

Recall that this was in the wake of Truman's seizure of the steel mills. Big Steel wanted to paint themselves as patriotically as possible, to ensure that any future repeat would carry a high political cost.

The unions worked pretty hard to show that they, too, were as anti-communist as anybody else, thanks to guys like George Meany.

True, true... And thinking about it, you're right that most of this comes from Big Steel, and most of what doesn't comes from other metal industries (nickel, aluminum)... Thank you for pointing that out; it throws a light on this I hadn't considered before.
 
One more point, further back:

It depends. In theory the US has the bombs and the planes to knock out the entire Soviet strategic force on the ground. In practice, I strongly suspect our recon wasn't good enough to actually do that in 1952, especially if the USSR had dispersed and readied their forces beforehand.

In 1952, certainly not. LeMay only began covert overflights through the graces of the RAF, whom he supplied with B-45 medium jet bombers, in March 1952. So SAC would only have the beginnings of good intel picture of Soviet installations in a hypothetical 1952 war.

By 1954-55, however, it would be a different story. LeMay would be doing his own overflights, thanks to Ike's authorization, and lots of them.

So, the question becomes, how many bombs do the Soviets have left, and what do they do with them? Most would likely be ear-marked for western Europe, to destroy ports and SAC staging bases to hinder followup strikes.

Certainly that would be the prudent use of the Soviets' arsenal. Knocking out those targets was not only reasonably feasible, but would actually serve the purposes of a Soviet campaign in Germany. Especially if Stalin's plan was to gradually escalate to cause western leaders to blink first.

Which raises the question of a preemptive Soviet strike:

And, of course, that assumes the US strikes first. If the Soviets go first, some bombs are definitely getting through.

I would agree. The difficulty is that it's hard to imagine the Soviets, under Stalin or not, trying such a thing, given the vast disparity of forces they knew existed. Such a disparity did urge a "use it or lose it mentality," but more powerfully argued against any nuclear war at all, since the USSR would be a radioactive slag heap at the end no matter what.

More importantly, once LeMay is in charge at SAC, the chances of a Soviet preemptive strike are pretty minimal. LeMay was running regular reconnaissance, and the record indicates that he simply would have sent in the bombers at the first sign of Soviet preparations, even without presidential authorization. Indeed, by the mid-50's, he was trying to provoke the Soviets into doing just that. Or as LeMay put it to Robert Sprague in 1957, "If I see that the Russians are amassing their planes for an attack, I'm going to knock the shit out of them before they take off the ground."
 
I could believe anywhere between zero and twenty successful strikes, with the most likely range between one and five and anything above ten extremely unlikely but not ASB.

That seems about right.

As you say, U.S./Canadian air defenses were pretty nonexistent at that point. On the other hand, they didn't need to be more than that, either, given Soviet capabilities at that time.
 
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