WW2 Without the USA?

No Lend-Lease is a requirement to keep the USA entirely out of the war. Too, Cash and Carry also has to be avoided. OTL showed the USSR was able to keep Germany from winning the war, and even able to ultimately prevail in an MAD-style attrition sequence of battles, but the logistics factor is the big limitation that will keep Red Europe from happening. Now, if the USA manages the miracle of Lend-Lease without any war with the Germans, then yes, Red Europe is in all likelihood very probable, but in that case the USA's still in the war.

If there is a Lend-Lease, I doubt the US is going to be thrilled if the Soviets use it to set up an occupation of Western Europe. Whether this leads to direct intervention or simply more tensions I can't say. But without actually entering the war the US will not be committing nearly as much into the Manhattan Project, so it's unlikely to have a bomb by the end of the conflict. The result is that the Cold War wouldn't necessarily stay cold for long.
 
Can the Allies win? No. Can the Axis win? No. What you get is the USSR pounding the Nazis into a mutual bloody stalemate and its military power expiring right at the USSR's borders, with the Nazi war machine also annihilated in the same grinding attrition battles. Instead of Bagration, the war ends with the pattern of the Leningrad sector: repeated Soviet offensives marred by poor communications and co-ordination grinding down and hollowing out an overextended and increasingly fragile Wehrmacht, while the UK of course gets slapped silly every time it tries to fight the Nazis, Monty or no Monty.
This had been more-or-less how I'd figured it as well (if Lend-Lease wasn't involved), with the only real escape being a successful assassination of Hitler by a group willing to give up Germany's pride for its continual survival. Oh, and the British will institute Op. Vegetarian, which will doom Germany.

But without actually entering the war the US will not be committing nearly as much into the Manhattan Project, so it's unlikely to have a bomb by the end of the conflict. The result is that the Cold War wouldn't necessarily stay cold for long.
Well since it was the US that got Japan involved, a more insular US won't need a bomb, since they won't go to war with Japan, and the other powers (Britain and France) won't be able to afford a war.
 
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I'm not so sure. With a USA that hasn't just spent 4 years at war WWIII doesn't sound as scary. Unless the USSR is very careful to no upset America they might be convinced to liberate Europe from their new oppressors at some point.
If America stays out of WW2 completely due to continued isolationism, then I can't see them suddenly changing their minds after the red menace has over run the continent and has had a chance to consolidate it's position. Maybe long term the US comes out of the cold and allies with Britain versus communist Europe, but it's likely to end up a similar OTL cold war style showdown - the communists can't really invade Britain without suffering huge losses both in lives and monies, and the west can't invade Europe and hope to push right across the continent to Moscow.
 
If the U.S. doesn't go for Lend Lease and doesn't cut off Japan which could have happened with an isolationist President then the entire war changes.

My guess is that the UK becomes strategically exausted in fighting Japan, Germany and Italy and they kick Churchill out 2-3 years earlier then OTL and make peace with at least Germany and Italy.

That would open up the world market again to Germany and Italy for international trade. The Axis and Soviets would bleed each other white in Europe which would end alot like the Iran/Iraq war I suspect with both sides becoming completely strategically exausted. As for Japan I suspect in the end they and the UK make peace eventually and are forced out of China.

Its hard to tell which regimes would be able to survive an end to the war and for how long.
 
If America stays out of WW2 completely due to continued isolationism, then I can't see them suddenly changing their minds after the red menace has over run the continent and has had a chance to consolidate it's position. Maybe long term the US comes out of the cold and allies with Britain versus communist Europe, but it's likely to end up a similar OTL cold war style showdown - the communists can't really invade Britain without suffering huge losses both in lives and monies, and the west can't invade Europe and hope to push right across the continent to Moscow.

The assumption was that the US had given them sizable amounts of Lend-Lease materials, which they would likely not repay and that they would occupy western Europe and cut off trade with America. America in the scenario might be isolationist, but even an isolationist America won't back down from a war when their trade is threatened.
 
PoD: The soviets aren't as snubbed diplomatically by the west in the 1934-1939 period, MR fails or is never proposed, and the soviets counter-invade an overrun Poland.

Germany falls, Italy may never have entered, and the war ends somewhere between summer 1940 and summer 1941.
 
PoD: The soviets aren't as snubbed diplomatically by the west in the 1934-1939 period, MR fails or is never proposed, and the soviets counter-invade an overrun Poland.

Germany falls, Italy may never have entered, and the war ends somewhere between summer 1940 and summer 1941.

For this to work the Purges need to be delayed by Stalin for some reason. Perhaps he decides to use the SS's role in it to blackmail the High Command and as events take their course decides to postpone the Purge of the Soviet army until after any war with Germany. The USSR thus develops Deep Operations uninterrupted until 1941 or its equivalent and Germany learns a painful lessons about the difference between the military version of the Indy Ploy and plans to fight and win a full-scale war with operational combined-arms war concepts.
 
Can the Allies win? No. Can the Axis win? No. What you get is the USSR pounding the Nazis into a mutual bloody stalemate and its military power expiring right at the USSR's borders, with the Nazi war machine also annihilated in the same grinding attrition battles. Instead of Bagration, the war ends with the pattern of the Leningrad sector: repeated Soviet offensives marred by poor communications and co-ordination grinding down and hollowing out an overextended and increasingly fragile Wehrmacht, while the UK of course gets slapped silly every time it tries to fight the Nazis, Monty or no Monty.

That would require the Nazi's being able to beat Monty on an operational level - something they never proved capable of even in France in 1940 when they had all the advantages. In fact, the only time they beat Monty outright was when Monty broke the mould and tried something different, stopped relying on tried and tested methods and let theory rule the day in MARKET GARDEN, and defeat there was more down to his negligence than anything the Germans did.

Honestly, I do not understand why you seem to go out of your way to say "Soviets rule, Ok" and "Britain's worthless" - exageration perhaps but that's the way it appears to me.

I'll happilly conceed that the Soviets did a hell of a lot more land-based fighting against the Nazi's than any other nation and they broke the back of the Wehrmacht but Britain didn't get "slapped silly" every time it fought the Nazi's in OTL even when it alone was in open opposition to the Nazi's. Britain contributed much more than any other nation to the defeat of the Nazi's at sea and conducted the largest and the most bomber raids over Europe, furthermore in the land based campaigns they fought they had successes and failures with neither side overwhelming the other in terms of victories.

I dont know, maybe its just the way I'm reading it, but you seem to continually be saying that the Soviets did everything and Britain, the Commonwealth and America's contributions to the actual fighting was worthless.
 
That would require the Nazi's being able to beat Monty on an operational level - something they never proved capable of even in France in 1940 when they had all the advantages. In fact, the only time they beat Monty outright was when Monty broke the mould and tried something different, stopped relying on tried and tested methods and let theory rule the day in MARKET GARDEN, and defeat there was more down to his negligence than anything the Germans did.

Honestly, I do not understand why you seem to go out of your way to say "Soviets rule, Ok" and "Britain's worthless" - exageration perhaps but that's the way it appears to me.

I'll happilly conceed that the Soviets did a hell of a lot more land-based fighting against the Nazi's than any other nation and they broke the back of the Wehrmacht but Britain didn't get "slapped silly" every time it fought the Nazi's in OTL even when it alone was in open opposition to the Nazi's. Britain contributed much more than any other nation to the defeat of the Nazi's at sea and conducted the largest and the most bomber raids over Europe, furthermore in the land based campaigns they fought they had successes and failures with neither side overwhelming the other in terms of victories.

I dont know, maybe its just the way I'm reading it, but you seem to continually be saying that the Soviets did everything and Britain, the Commonwealth and America's contributions to the actual fighting was worthless.

I grant that what I say can sound like that, but what I actually think is that without any one member of the Alliance the war doesn't end as per OTL. Note that my argument about the USSR is that instead of Red Europe we have an MAD war that ends back on the 1941 USSR borders. The UK's problems at a basic operational level did exist, and Monty had repeated instances of being halted and blunted that most people would admit were defeats, improvising, and finding ways to actually make his defeats end up working out for the broader imperial coalition. The Monty method done by Not-Monty worked horrifically in Italy where British generalship rivaled the worst excesses of Haig and company. While of course over large sections of the Eastern Front the actual war was trench warfare in all but name. The Soviet Leningrad Front rivaled Eighth Army and Fifth Army for boneheaded battles that make the Western Front generals look like brainiacs, while from the Battle of Moscow-Bagration was a Trench War also, just between Army Group Center and whatever poor, sorry SOBs were thrown into Zhukov's meat grinders at precisely those moments.

The Soviets without US trucks won't have any of the flash they did IOTL, the UK without the USA will have the not-so-minor issue of getting back into Europe somehow without the USA doing a lot of their heavy lifting for them while Monty whined that Not-Monty was doing military things the not-Monty way.

To me the war of OTL was the USSR winning the land war, the Allies winning the air and sea war, and the combination is what made the war work as it did. Remove any of the pieces and the result is a brutal, ugly little nightmare for everyone involved. In the air and sea the Red Air Force and Red Navy had nothing comparable to the Allies, while Allied Air-Sea advantages gave the democracies more freedom of maneuver than was available to the USSR. Too, WWII in general had more of trench warfare about it than is generally recognized. While Italy's the obvious example of that kind of war, the Leningrad Siege and the majority of fighting with Army Group Center and its Soviet counterparts qualify for this as well. Much of the OTL Eastern Front *was* trench war, and the USSR's tendencies to write its failures out of its war histories reflected why this is lesser-known than say, Monte Cassino. The leaders of the Soviet army in those theaters weren't much different from Alexander and Clark. While by the converse the Western Allied leadership pretty much reflected the Popov-Meretskov type of leaders and never brought out the Vatutins and company who were able to do flashy maneuvers against large enemy forces shooting back. Patton, for instance, had his big wheels when nobody shot back at him, and was a martinet of Bragg proportions.

TL;DR: I don't think USSR Good UK Bad, I think Allied Big 3 Good, Allied Big 2/1 Utter Clusterfuck.
 
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It's simply impossible to keep the US out of the war. By 1941 almost 50% of the public supported giving Lend Lease to the Soviet Union equal to or greater than what had been given to Britain, an increase from previous years, and people in the US didn't even like the Soviet Union. War was becoming the popular choice, especially with US involvement being steadily escalated in 1941 and becoming even more so in 1942. Further Japan is inevitably going to go to war with the US (A cornerstone of its strategy once it was clear they simply couldn't continue without acquiring resources), and there's a good chance that even if Germany doesn't side with Japan the US will still within a few months declare war. The latest possible date I could see is late 1942, when the war with Japan was well under way and there would be little opposition to a declaration of war against the other portions of the Axis. The impact on the Soviet Union would be minimal; the US and Great Britain didn't increase Lend Lease to the level of basically running the Soviet economy until mid 1943, well after the Soviet counteroffensive had begun.
 
Allied WW2 victory without USA involvement?

The Soviets march on Berlin, Paris, Madrid, Lisbon, Rome, and Athens.

The British Empire is bankrupted.

Within two decades, Westminster has its own Communist Revolution and queen elizabeth 2 has to flee the UK.

The US will truly have to be good citizens with its Canadian and Latino neighbors.
 
even the most isolationist USA won't let Japan have a free hand in Asia - so US-Japan conflict is inevitable. If you have US-Japan (with UK involved) if could see no US-Germany war at least for some time. In the scenario of US+UK vs Japan, but US not involved in Europe, you'll see LL still go to the UK on the basis of UK being an ally, but little if any going to the USSR when the US has to fight against Japan. As has been pointed out, LL for USSR was a logistic bonanza...trucks, jeeps, radios, raw material, avgas, food, boots, RR equipment & rails, etc, etc. Absent this the USSR has to devote more of its industry to logistic related items and fewer T-34s & so forth. Also feeding the military and essential factory workers will require more men retained in agriculture (and there will be much worse food shortages affecting production & military effectiveness).

IMHO as long as the US stays out of the war in Europe you won't see the UK invade France...they will probably clear N. Africa & maybe Sicily, and if the Germans pull enough east possibly Norway. With a reduced threat in the west, the Reich will be able to put more facing east. Perhaps the USSR gets to the pre-1939 border, but I think things end with a stalemate in the east, and an exhausted UK settling for whatever lines exist when they have to quit.
 
Further to my earlier comments, I must admit to a sweeping assumption :)o) that lend lease would still occur. As other posters has pointed out, would this have occurred at all let alone at the same level as in OTL? I have to agree some posters on here (Apologies for not naming) and say I believe LL would not occur and therefore the Sovs would be virtually hamstrung logistically. However would they have been able to build their own trucks? This would impact on their ability to build tanks and therefore the Germans would be facing fewer numbers but this then goes back to the stalemate already mentioned on here until the Sovs can build up sufficient reserves. In OTL they did this in 1943(?) in the proposed TL, say 1945/6(?).
As a newbie on here have to say great site, and really good to see different points of view, which can be very thought provoking.
 
Further to my earlier comments, I must admit to a sweeping assumption :)o) that lend lease would still occur. As other posters has pointed out, would this have occurred at all let alone at the same level as in OTL? I have to agree some posters on here (Apologies for not naming) and say I believe LL would not occur and therefore the Sovs would be virtually hamstrung logistically. However would they have been able to build their own trucks? This would impact on their ability to build tanks and therefore the Germans would be facing fewer numbers but this then goes back to the stalemate already mentioned on here until the Sovs can build up sufficient reserves. In OTL they did this in 1943(?) in the proposed TL, say 1945/6(?).
As a newbie on here have to say great site, and really good to see different points of view, which can be very thought provoking.
By 1945 Soviet manpower situation was nearly as bad as the German one OTL, despite popular perception the USSR did not have an unlimited manpower pool and by 1945 that was running dry after the disasters of 1941 and 1942, they can't build up that level of reserves if they need to make up for Lend-Lease
 
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