Would the USA/UK allow Red Europe?

I thought of something else; the Soviet Union probably gets most/all the German scientists that emigrated to America OTL. First man on the moon is Russian?
 
one strategic issue to consider: if the Soviets are rampaging into eastern Germany, you can bet that the Germans will be calling all the troops they can get their hands on... France, Italy, the Balkans, N. Africa... these places are going to be left with a bare minimum of troops and the western allies will have an easier time recovering them. Frankly, with the Russians storming west and a looming allied invasion from the Med, I wonder if the Italians wouldn't surrender earlier, if only to avoid the vengeful Soviets...
 
one strategic issue to consider: if the Soviets are rampaging into eastern Germany, you can bet that the Germans will be calling all the troops they can get their hands on... France, Italy, the Balkans, N. Africa... these places are going to be left with a bare minimum of troops and the western allies will have an easier time recovering them. Frankly, with the Russians storming west and a looming allied invasion from the Med, I wonder if the Italians wouldn't surrender earlier, if only to avoid the vengeful Soviets...

They'll probably meet popular communist governments in France and northern Italy however...
 
one strategic issue to consider: if the Soviets are rampaging into eastern Germany, you can bet that the Germans will be calling all the troops they can get their hands on... France, Italy, the Balkans, N. Africa... these places are going to be left with a bare minimum of troops and the western allies will have an easier time recovering them. Frankly, with the Russians storming west and a looming allied invasion from the Med, I wonder if the Italians wouldn't surrender earlier, if only to avoid the vengeful Soviets...
But in this scenario, Western Allies means UK+Commonwealth, whose governments signed a peace treaty about a year before the Soviets are breaking into eastern Germany. I doubt Italy would even be invaded by the Allies. France and maybe Norway, but remember they won't have air superiority and even a bare minimum amount of forces will contend with a rather improvised invasion force which doesn't count on American troops to bolster their numbers.
 
Possibly. If the Soviets got Wernher von Braun, the U.S. would possibly have lost the space race. Braun was one of the best pioneers of rocket technology of the day, and did help with NASA's Apollo program....

Not picking on you here, but this is not entirely correct. Both the US and the Soviet Union had very good native aerospace engineers who did not need German expertise (past captured rockets, which almost certainly would have been delivered to the UK/US anyways) to get started. Korolev and Glushko, to take two of the biggest names in the Soviet program, had got their start in the 1920s with amateur rocketry clubs (much like von Braun, actually) for example. The American engineers just tend to be overshadowed by the Germans, but Aerojet and Rocketdyne were reasonably successful without direct German involvement (to take two examples).

In any case, the Russians didn't like the Germans working on their projects directly, and the Germans weren't actually too successful (IOTL). He would not have much influence. Furthermore, the Soviet program's failure was in no way related to their technical expertise or lack thereof (okay, that might be a bit far--technical issues were not the main problems), but instead to the vicious internal politics of the Soviet Union (which will hardly be mitigated in this scenario!) and especially of the space program itself. The Soviet Union still has a good chance of "losing" the space race.

Of course, the space race itself might not happen, but in my estimation it probably will. In fact, it might even be bigger, because it's harder to directly contest the Soviets militarily (with European buildups and the like) without a real toehold in Europe. The OTL brush wars are likely to be more significant, eg. a full-scale invasion of Cuba after Fidel Castro takes over (assuming that happens), since the US "lost" Europe *and* China ITTL (probably). So more support for whoever happens to be "our guy" and possibly more boots on the ground in Africa, Asia, South America, and so on.
 
There won't even need to be an invasion of western Europe by the allies in most scenarios. The Soviets will need to beat the Germans before getting to Western Europe. The Germans will abandon their holdings in the west before they are beaten. Occupied territories will just declare themselves self-liberated as soon as German troops are out.

Especially if Vichy is still around (and if Britain has been knocked out, they probably are) - they'll just reclaim the occupied territories of France and be recognized as the legitimate government pretty fast. Vichy was allowed an army that whilst small would be more than enough to prevent communist partisans from complicating the "liberation" of Northern France.

The Soviets will have to launch a new war in order to turn western Europe red. And they very well might - their main enemy would be the logistics of moving troops, rather than the crack forces they would face. But that is certain to draw in the UK and the US against them - and they would have to rush in order to prevent French armies reforming based on conscripts from liberated territories. The extent of the logistic chain (and the presence of Italy as a thorn on the side) will make rushing hard to impossible.

Getting through peace what they cannot through conquest is a better bet. The communist parties of France/Italy which were already strong OTL, will get a massive boost. There is no large U.S troop presence, the Soviets look like the heroes of Europe, no DeGaulle, a communist Germany right next door - Europe may not necessarily be soviet-aligned, but it will probably be neutral or friendly. And that would make for quite an interesting (and more balanced) Cold War - the US/UK alliance still has an economic edge, but it is much smaller.
 
But in this scenario, Western Allies means UK+Commonwealth, whose governments signed a peace treaty about a year before the Soviets are breaking into eastern Germany. I doubt Italy would even be invaded by the Allies. France and maybe Norway, but remember they won't have air superiority and even a bare minimum amount of forces will contend with a rather improvised invasion force which doesn't count on American troops to bolster their numbers.

I was assuming the US was in the war. If not, then yeah, everything is different...
 
No, they can't. Western Europe is too important to the world economic system to be allowed to fall under Soviet control. That said, if the Soviets do invade and try to go all the way, it will seal their fate. They simply don't have the logistics, especially if they've had to defeat the Germans with no lend-lease.
 
If the UK (and the US?) enters the war again, what would the nature of the conflict be? I supposed it would have a lot to do with how well the Soviets are doing. If Berlin has fallen and Hitler has eaten cyanide, would Nazi forces willingly surrender or even facilitate Allied movements into formerly Nazi territories? Would the Allies be willing to cut deals with Nazis-turned-warlords? It would be interesting to see how an "Unconditional surrender" policy would be sustained under these circumstances, although it would be unlikely that they have one to begin with.

Is there any chance of a Nazi Government in Exile forming? Depending on how Machiavellian the Allies are feeling, it could make for an interesting way to keep anti-Soviet resistance going.

Would the Allies and the Soviets actually go to war over where the lines are drawn? People have speculated about races to liberate Europe OTL sparking war, but if the Allies are invading with more or less the explicit purpose of denying the Soviets as much territory as possible, war seems all the more likely.
 
I would say that no, they really wouldn't, but I'd also note that Red Europe is rather unlikely. Overrunning all of Central Europe, even for a Red Army whose defects are fully handled before the start of the war, is not exactly the simplest task ever conceived, and the Soviets aren't exactly going to have the logistical capacity to go from the 1940 USSR borders to the Atlantic ocean, here. A "Red Europe" will see a Soviet direct-rule empire in the Balkans, possibly in Poland, but the odds of the USSR directly ruling all of Germany, all of France, all of Italy, all of Iberia, all of the low countries, and so on is not exactly the greatest, as that's classical imperial overstretch right there. They might overrun all those countries in a war if everything goes smoothly for them, but they'd find out like Imperial Japan overrunning all of this is one thing, occupying it another.
 
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