Would the Wallies have made peace if Stalin dropped out of WW2?

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Deleted member 1487

Based on a discussion around the Soviets doing worse from late 1941 on, it would seem that there might be a situation by 1943 that the Soviets might really consider making a separate peace to save the Soviet regime from collapsing. If that were to happen due to a food crisis, so that by July 1943 Stalin has exited the war and won't be able to reenter for the foreseeable future, would the Wallies keep fighting to the bitter end or would they not want to pay the price of defeating the Axis on their own and eventually agree to an armistice? This question is specifically on what the Wallies would do if Stalin opted to exit the war, IOTL they expended a lot of effort to keep him happy and fighting, so it seems like they were quite concerned about having to go it alone; of course they consistently overestimated the Germans (not sure about the Japanese, I don't think they did), so perhaps they thought that winning the war would be tougher than it actually would be sans Stalin. If the Wallies would agree to an armistice what sort of terms would that be or would it be a North Korea or Calbear style ceasefire with the war still technically going?
 

BigDestiny

I think that even if the UK had to drop out of the war, it would be like what happened in the Napoleonic wars. Pull back, regroup, and attack again.

It would have to be a very dire situation though. The British really dug in during the Second World War. To give up when the fight is literally right on top of them would be accepting that the British Isles weren't impregnable, and I don't think they'd accept that.
 

riggerrob

WALLY advances would be postponed for years and they would suffer much heavier casualties when they finally liberated Western Europe.

OTL most of the bleeding was along Germany's Eastern Front with something like 200 divisions versus the 26 German divisions defending the Western Front.
 

Deleted member 1487

riggerrob said:
WALLY advances would be postponed for years and they would suffer much heavier casualties when they finally liberated Western Europe.

OTL most of the bleeding was along Germany's Eastern Front with something like 200 divisions versus the 26 German divisions defending the Western Front.
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Right, so the question is were the Wallies willing to do pay that price.
 

CalBear

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The real underlying question is just how far the WAllies felt they could trust Hitler.

They never really trusted the Soviets, but the Soviets also hadn't made a deal, broke it, made another, broke it, and then made a third deal and broke it (Austria, Czechoslovakia, and finally the USSR). Hitler was pretty much the least trustworthy national leader in the 20th Century.

That also leads to the question of just how stable any peace would be? What the WAllies thought about that goes a long way into the decision on what sort of deal gets made.

At a minimum, it would seem likely that the WAllies price would be a Reich withdrawal from the West, France (or at least most of the country, the Alsace/Lorraine is likely gone) possibly with a DMZ on the French side of the Rhine, the Low Countries, and Norway. They might make noise about Denmark and Poland, but the facts on the ground would mean the Reich had too strong a position to achieve that, although the Danes might possible.

Even this would almost certainly bring down the British Government in a heap. The U.S. election in 1944 would probably not feature FDR as a candidate.
 

tenthring

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If the fight goes on against only the Wallies, its going to result in the complete strategic bombing of every inch of Germany. Civilian death toll from economic collapse and hunger would be vast.

It seems hard to see them back down in 1943. For one, they are pretty advanced by 1943 in terms of they've actually fought the Nazi's. Mussolini is deposed and troops are in Italy. Also, I'm assuming this peace with the Soviet union doesn't net them the Soviet resources that the Calbear timeline yielded (which was more of a Soviet surrender).
 

Deleted member 1487

CalBear said:
The real underlying question is just how far the WAllies felt they could trust Hitler.

They never really trusted the Soviets, but the Soviets also hadn't made a deal, broke it, made another, broke it, and then made a third deal and broke it (Austria, Czechoslovakia, and finally the USSR). Hitler was pretty much the least trustworthy national leader in the 20th Century.

That also leads to the question of just how stable any peace would be? What the WAllies thought about that goes a long way into the decision on what sort of deal gets made.

At a minimum, it would seem likely that the WAllies price would be a Reich withdrawal from the West, France (or at least most of the country, the Alsace/Lorraine is likely gone) possibly with a DMZ on the French side of the Rhine, the Low Countries, and Norway. They might make noise about Denmark and Poland, but the facts on the ground would mean the Reich had too strong a position to achieve that, although the Danes might possible.

Even this would almost certainly bring down the British Government in a heap. The U.S. election in 1944 would probably not feature FDR as a candidate.
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The only agreement the world seemed to care about was the Munich Agreement; they cared not a whit for Austria. The West didn't really care about the German attack on the USSR as a violation of their agreement as it was one that both countries used to aggress on others, though the sneak attack was hardly something that made anyone trust Hitler.
I would disagree that the West didn't trust Stalin, FDR certainly seemed to by the end. Churchill though I would agree. Also I don't see the Wallies being able to put forth a demand for the German abandoning occupied Europe short of a successful invasion, because Hitler couldn't agree to it for internal political reasons and just for military security ones. That's giving up all of Germany's strategic depth and recreating a hostile France right on their border in the age of strategic air warfare; the Lowlands and France were an integral part of German air defense and first strike prevention, plus keeping those countries neutralized as enemies/staging areas of invasion. While Britain certainly had strategic interests in keeping Germany away from the Channel for the same reason, they had developed an effective air defense system to stop attacks from the continent, while Germany had not developed one to stop attacks without continental Europe being controlled by them.

So it is a question of whether the Allies could have a cease fire with Western Europe being under the German thumb or whether they would have to have a liberated Western Europe to agree to peace...but if they needed that and Germany wasn't willing to give it, by the time the Allies took it they might as well just fight to the bitter end. So it is a question of paying the full price to liberate Europe or not invading at all and agreeing to a ceasefire. Politically it is hard to see the Wallies agreeing to that after the Blitz and TTL's V-weapon attacks. The one wrinkle here though is that the Wallies might be too skittish to invade in 1944 due to no active Russian Front and wait for 1945 and strategic bombing to take it's toll first. That would mean the V-weapons get online and that might disrupt invasion preparations if they figure out how to make the V-1s accurate enough to bombard the Channel ports.

tenthring said:
If the fight goes on against only the Wallies, its going to result in the complete strategic bombing of every inch of Germany. Civilian death toll from economic collapse and hunger would be vast.

It seems hard to see them back down in 1943. For one, they are pretty advanced by 1943 in terms of they've actually fought the Nazi's. Mussolini is deposed and troops are in Italy. Also, I'm assuming this peace with the Soviet union doesn't net them the Soviet resources that the Calbear timeline yielded (which was more of a Soviet surrender).
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Then we get into the question of Operation Vegetarian:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Vegetarian

Though it is without question that the Wallies would win on a long enough time frame with just conventional weapons, no NCB, it is just a question of whether they are willing to suffer the casualties to collapse Nazi Germany and overrun/occupy them.

Likely any peace with the USSR in 1943 due to a famine situation in the USSR is going to probably mean the Kuban and Ukraine are in German hands by Summer 1943, which means a lot of valuable resources are coming in via the east, plus continued Finnish Nickel supplies, as well as trade with Turkey.
 

CrimsonKing

One factor which could influence both sides towards a ceasefire is the fact that Germany would have considerable amounts of poison gas, which would be useful in attempting to establish a MAD dynamic with Britain (apologies if someone has already made this point).
 

David T

They didn't make peace with Hitler before June 22, 1941 when Stalin was supplying Hitler with grain, oil, etc. Why would they do it after a German-Soviet separate peace which they would no doubt regard as no more likely to last than the 1939 Soviet-German pact? (I think such a separate peace very unlikely anyway, because if Stalin is desperate enough to seek it, Hitler almost certainly won't agree to it--and vice versa.)
 

pattersonautobody

No. They would have went full-bomber harris. Ironically, with the A-Bomb, it would win the war (presuming Germany does not develop any significant countermeasures).

If there is any fear that the Germans could gas/bio weapon Britain with V2s, then I suppose it would be an act of lunacy to bomb Germany. To citizenry is going to continue a war after hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties because their government assures them that they are killing millions of an enemy. They would say GFYselves and demand an end.
 

GlobalHumanism

CrimsonKing said:
One factor which could influence both sides towards a ceasefire is the fact that Germany would have considerable amounts of poison gas, which would be useful in attempting to establish a MAD dynamic with Britain (apologies if someone has already made this point).
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Yeah, we can't ignore Crimsons point.
An atomic bomb on Germany would mean an end game scenario for alot of the major population centers in southern England - especially if the V-1 program is given the development breathing room that 1943 peace with the USSR would give.

And with out that - no way is Hitler giving in. He's already stared down the barrel of a gun with Stalingrad in 1942. Why would he give in if the Wallies threaten him in 1944 or 1945?
 
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pattersonautobody

GlobalHumanism said:
Yeah, we can't ignore Crimsons point.
An atomic bomb on Germany would mean an end game scenario for alot of the major population centers in southern England - especially if the V-1 program is given the development breathing room that 1943 peace with the USSR would give.

And with out that - no way is Hitler giving in. He's already stared down the barrel of a gun with Stalingrad in 1942. Why would he give in if the Wallies threaten him?
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Hitler is like a stupid cartoon character, can't believe someone like that can really rise to power. Kids, don't do drugs.
 

CalBear

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CrimsonKing said:
One factor which could influence both sides towards a ceasefire is the fact that Germany would have considerable amounts of poison gas, which would be useful in attempting to establish a MAD dynamic with Britain (apologies if someone has already made this point).
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Both sides had plenty of CW. The U.S. alone had 30,000 TONS of CW agents, mostly Mustard and Lewisite. There was always a MAD dynamic regard CW (which, BTW, was why it wasn't used).
 

CrimsonKing

CalBear said:
Both sides had plenty of CW. The U.S. alone had 30,000 TONS of CW agents, mostly Mustard and Lewisite. There was always a MAD dynamic regard CW (which, BTW, was why it wasn't used).
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I understand that, I'm just saying that it might make a difference in a situation in which the Wallies are seriously considering both options as opposed to one like OTL with continuous German disintegration on all fronts and clear imminent defeat.
 
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