WW3 in 1945

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In any case, the wiki article plays some accounting games to make the WAllies numbers look better then they actually are. The most glaring example is counting every single AFV the WAllies have in Europe, regardless of where it is or what's it doing, while only counting the Soviet AFVs they have assigned to units.

The figures for AFVs are generally analogous. 90-plus percent of the time ETO tank reports were only concerned with operational strength, because that's what mattered for immediate combat capability.
While Zaloga never outright says his numbers exclude tanks under repair or otherwise unavailable to line units, it can be inferred that this is the case because the 21st Army Group's after action report (p. 57) tallied 9,248 at war's end as opposed to Zaloga's 4,241. If you want to nit-pick, possible alternative explanations might include:

1) The British uncharacteristically lumped in TDs and SPGs (absent in Zaloga) under the name "tanks," which, on top of the egregious misnomer makes even less sense in the context of this document since "enemy tanks and SP-guns" are referenced as such a few sentences later.

2) Zaloga horribly underrported the strength of the British armo(u)red force by a factor of 2, making the ratio look even worse for the Soviets.​

Given the second sentence of this post and since neither (1) nor (2) seem particularly likely, the default is that this is an apples to apples comparison of operational categories.

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That said, In my opinion the biggest real problems with this table are the following:

1) Because I don't have any statistics from April/May 1945 the numbers I used for the Soviets (shown below) are from January. While it's possible they may have had more tanks and planes in April, the personnel strength of operational forces decreased to 6,249,517, which suggests an overall weakening of combat power. Without any way to be certain one way or another, I used the earlier numbers.

2) The table excludes Eastern European puppet troops (Poles, Romanians, etc), again, due to a sheer lack of data. In any regard, in this case they would have contributed little more than warm bodies and likely would not have been all that willing to help the Soviets.

SovietStrengthJan1945.jpg
 
Comparing items by category are problematic across the board.

For example, the premier fighter cover aircraft of the two sides were the P-51 and the Yak-3. The Yak-3 was superior in a dog fight, but the combat range was only 200 miles compared to the 500 mile combat range of the P-51. So, US/UK bombers would have fighter escort well into hostile territory while Soviet bombers would not.

Also, the Soviet Union could not make aviation fuel suited to high performance aircraft -- the Yak-3 used aviation fuel supplied by the US via Lend Lease.

Not that the conflict would have happened. All involved were war weary and ready for peace by 1945.
 
Assuming that fighting WWIII in 1945 would have prevented those conflicts, the grizzly calculus would be straightforward.

I fail to see how kicking the USSR out of Poland would have ended the Chinese Civil War, or made Indochina and French colonial Africa garden spots of tolerance and understanding. I'm thinking they would have happened whether the US nuked Minsk and Moscow or not.

I think we could agree on what the Cold War did was as well as creating many local conflicts, for example, Korea is often amplified, increased many existing conflicts. Chinese Civil War is a difficult one to say since it was going on long before WW2, it would have continued without the Cold War although less bloody without the USSR, Mao, if he won, would be less bloody. I expect a quick win by Ho Chi Minh once the French leave so less death there. Indonesia policide was partly a result of racial so if it does happen it will not kill that many people. I doubt that the Middle East states would get anywhere near as bloody without communism that they got during the Cold War. I would as a first level approximation say that the death toll in the Cold War was about double what it should be.

As far as costs, they are easier to estimate. The price of ww2 was about 4 trillion dollars. The Cold War I am unable to get exact figures but the US costs are estimated at $8 trillion dollars, the cost to the USSR, I am not sure but at the end was bankruptcy. Then you can add NATO, the Warsaw Pact, SEATO, the Middle East, etc. I saw in China parts of the underground city. That would have cost a lot. It was estimated by James Dunnigan in his book "How to make war" that one year of a major war, depending on the country cost 3 to 30 years of peace in the Cold War. The cost of the Cold War he estimated as five times more than WW2.


Not that the conflict would have happened. All involved were war weary and ready for peace by 1945.

The French, British and German people did not want war in 1939. The Russians and the USA people neither. I am sure the Chinese people in 1945 were war-weary and ready for peace, it did not happen there either.
 
It is why I tend to regard Unthinkable (the defensive variant to a lesser extent, but still) as more an academic exercise then serious alternate history.
See p22 in the scanned original:
In accordance with your instructions, we have considered our potential ability to exert pressure on Russia by the threat or use of force.
The Unthinkable study was an answer to the question "why have we abandoned the Poles?".
 
I think we could agree on what the Cold War did was as well as creating many local conflicts, for example, Korea is often amplified, increased many existing conflicts.

I do not think it was that straightforward. If that were the case, we would have seen a sharp drop off of conflict in terms of casualties since 1992.

The Second Congo War, which killed over 5 million people, started in 1998. Add in the First Congo War and the Rwanda genocide, both taking place after 1992... the Syrian Civil War...the Yugoslav Civil War and dissolution...the Yemen Civil War... the two Gulf Wars.... the two Chechen wars....Somalia's disintegration...the Libyan Civil War...
 
I do not think it was that straightforward. If that were the case, we would have seen a sharp drop off of conflict in terms of casualties since 1992.

The Second Congo War, which killed over 5 million people, started in 1998. Add in the First Congo War and the Rwanda genocide, both taking place after 1992... the Syrian Civil War...the Yugoslav Civil War and dissolution...the Yemen Civil War... the two Gulf Wars.... the two Chechen wars....Somalia's disintegration...the Libyan Civil War...


Well there is this famous graph here

https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2018/09/Bubble-and-lines-FINAL-03.png
 
Let me point out that Russians were really struggling at that stage to keep their manpower up. Many of their divisions were grossly undermanned. Their supply line through Eastern Europe is not good. I would be surprised if they could keep a bigger army going for long in such a conflict in Central Europe.

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That’s why an idea of Stalin planning a war against the Wallies does not sound realistic even within the most optimistic projections of the Soviet abilities to restore some of the lost industrial capacities: there would be a serious shortage of people needed to compensate the losses at front and to start rebuilding of the industry.

If you don’t mind a little bit of a nitpicking, situation with the understrength divisions was to a certain degree a result of the Soviet approach to the issue: division could be renamed (especially when it became the Guards) but, short of some special situations, it would remain as an entity (no German practice of merging the depleted units) and by a number of reasons it was deemed more convenient to create the new divisions rather than to send reinforcements into the fighting ones (unless they were moved to the rear for that purpose): the numbers looked better ( :) ), it gave a better opportunity to form the whole new armies in the rear, etc. Plus, there was something like a fetish attitude toward the regimental and divisional flags. Their loss was a heavy crime for which all officers would be court martialed so how would this work together with the intentional elimination of the units?
 
Well there is this famous graph here

The famous graph which ends at 2000?

So, it essentially covers all time up to the end of the cold war, takes a breath, then stops.

In particular, it does not include the Second Congo War, the conflict with the highest death count since WWII.
 
UK had its general election 5 July. Results published 26 July - in the middle of the Potsdam conference.

Unthinkable was supposed to kick off 1 July.

If unthinkable had kicked off 1 July, obviously the political landscape of UK would have been decidedly different.

Two options: Labour still forces an election in the middle of a war. That may sound a bit left-field, but was the population in general not tired of war? Looking forward to another one and still with Churchill at the helm may just have tipped the scale

Another outcome could be that elections got cancelled. That could lead to some near-unconstitutional situations.

If unthinkable had kicked off, I cannot see Churchill surviving it.

If UK was war-weary, we also need to look at US participation.

Was the US forces ready in July for another war?

I do not see the same aspect of being war-weary in a US context.

It still leads into one thing: Who would be the commanders?

Monty as land-forces? that is a bit of a stretch
Dempsey?
Eisenhover (I think not)

I still have a horrible thought of MacArthur in command of the German contingent - 200,000 former SS armed with Tigers. MacArthur and Steiner would be a great combination.
 
That’s why an idea of Stalin planning a war against the Wallies does not sound realistic even within the most optimistic projections of the Soviet abilities to restore some of the lost industrial capacities: there would be a serious shortage of people needed to compensate the losses at front and to start rebuilding of the industry.

That a plan existing, would be a certainty, that Stalin intended to do it is another. What I suggest is that Stalin authorized such a study, unlike Churchill Stalin would not be told "hey, this is a silly idea" and we have no notification by anyone of his thoughts so we are left to speculate.


If you don’t mind a little bit of a nitpicking, situation with the understrength divisions was to a certain degree a result of the Soviet approach to the issue: division could be renamed (especially when it became the Guards) but, short of some special situations, it would remain as an entity (no German practice of merging the depleted units) and by a number of reasons it was deemed more convenient to create the new divisions rather than to send reinforcements into the fighting ones (unless they were moved to the rear for that purpose): the numbers looked better ( :) ), it gave a better opportunity to form the whole new armies in the rear, etc. Plus, there was something like a fetish attitude toward the regimental and divisional flags. Their loss was a heavy crime for which all officers would be court martialed so how would this work together with the intentional elimination of the units?

Another reason is time, it takes time to reform a unit, if one believes that the war is soon over, it would be better to leave two undersize units then merge into one.

The famous graph which ends at 2000?

So, it essentially covers all time up to the end of the cold war, takes a breath, then stops.

In particular, it does not include the Second Congo War, the conflict with the highest death count since WWII.


Well, it does include much of it, one problem here is that we are not sure of the losses in this war.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/34958903/ns/world_news-africa/t/review-congo-war-halves-death-toll/
https://www.voanews.com/a/butty-congo-war-death-toll-questioned-21jan10-82223332/152921.html



UK had its general election 5 July. Results published 26 July - in the middle of the Potsdam conference.

Unthinkable was supposed to kick off 1 July.

If unthinkable had kicked off 1 July, obviously the political landscape of UK would have been decidedly different.

This suggests to me that Churchill was only speculating.
 
Well, it does include much of it, one problem here is that we are not sure of the losses in this war.

Unless my eyes are failing me, the graph is missing a 5.5 million person red dot at 1998. It would be comparable to the size of the one the have for the Jewish Holocaust.

The graph does include the Rwandan Genocide and the First Congo War, but since the Second Congo war was about 5 time bigger... I'm thinking the graph needs a 20 year update.

Besides, every conflict between 1946 and 1992 cannot be attributed to rivalry between the US and USSR. I'm pretty sure the partition of British India, which generated quite a body count, had very little to do with the superpowers, and given a 6 pack of beer and a bit more time I could generate a more extensive list.

Nigerian civil war and the Biarfra Holocaust? Mao's various famines and purges? Algeria's kicking out the French? The Iran-Iraq war, funded by Gulf oil money?
 
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That a plan existing, would be a certainty, that Stalin intended to do it is another. What I suggest is that Stalin authorized such a study, unlike Churchill Stalin would not be told "hey, this is a silly idea" and we have no notification by anyone of his thoughts so we are left to speculate.




Another reason is time, it takes time to reform a unit, if one believes that the war is soon over, it would be better to leave two undersize units then merge into one.
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Well, Stalin could order any type of a study by a whole variety of reasons and such a study would be done. Conclusions are a different issue but I’m not sure that even Shaposhnikov whom he respected would dare to call his ideas silly.

As for the divisions, the Soviets kept creating the new ones (and of course from time to time beefing up the existing units), not just keeping the depleted ones. Probably you can trace the practice all the way back to the CW (if not the Napoleonic wars) when the regiments kept getting the new battalions instead of keeping the existing ones at due strength.
 
There is no way the USA is signing on to UNTHINKABLE prior to the conclusion of the war with Japan. US action against the USSR prior to that would require the Soviets to attack the west or do something so outrageous (not sure what) that it was equivalent to an attack. After August, 1945 with Japan quitting it is at least theoretically possible, however there would be zero support from the Us public to do this with the human and financial costs it would cause.
 
Would they even consider it World War 3 or an extension of World War 2?

Hmmm, considering it would involve rearranging the alliances yet again (first Nazi-USSR-Italian pact against the West, the West-Italian-USSR pact against the Nazis...then a West-Italian-Nazi pact against the USSR...)

Haven't we always been at war with EastAsia?
 
I think it should be remembered that no one had any clue would the US would really do after the end of the war. Sure, Roosevelt made all sorts of grand plans, but so did Wilson in WWI. On top of that, Roosevelt was dead. It would not have been unreasonable for people to suspect that the US would simply abandon Europe again. If the Soviets had any schemes in relation to Western Europe, it would not have been to stick it to the US, but to prevent Europe from sinking into the same chaos that produced Hitler in the first place.
 
I'm not even sure if this was a plan for WW3, depending on the time that Stalin considered these invasions into places like Norway & France (Whether it was before or after D-Day), they could've just been plans to invade Nazi-occupied Norway & France, not some great plan to keep pushing west once Germany was defeated.
 
I don't think Stalin could have been interested in any more warfare in Europe. Looking at, I think that if anything, Stalin would have waited to see how the communists in France and Italy would do.

The alliance governments were bound to fail at some time and maybe, just maybe, he had hoped that France (at least) would have ended up with a communist government. Italy was also on the way towards that in 1945/6.

The formation of a communist provisional government in France could have happened. If that was to have been a fact in late '44 and beginning of '45, it would have undermined a lot of efforts in terms of USSR relations.

After all, the communists n France had the upper hand in terms of the resistance movements. The road to government was very short.

Italy would have been different as well. Would communist Italy have supported Yugoslavian designs on Austria (Styrian, etc)?

A totally different scenario would have been:

'44: Liberation of France, but managed by the communist resistance. De Gaulle is totally side lined
'44: elections: Massive support for communists. Majority government for once - communist
September '44: Free French disbanded
….

March '45: France stopping transit of US/UK forces
May '45: France given a bigger slice of Germany on the behest of USSR

Plenty of holes and impossible thing to have happened in this.
 
Well, Stalin could order any type of a study by a whole variety of reasons and such a study would be done. Conclusions are a different issue but I’m not sure that even Shaposhnikov whom he respected would dare to call his ideas silly..

I would say the following, knowing Stalin paranoia, plus the fact that Russia had been attacked by its ally NAZI Germany, plus that the socialism that the USSR leadership accepted felt that the West were hostile to the USSR (which is not exactly wrong), plus the way the military works with their scenario planning such a plan would be made. It would be treated seriously but that does not mean the USSR or Stalin wanted to go to war.

I don't think Stalin could have been interested in any more warfare in Europe.

There is no way the USA is signing on to UNTHINKABLE prior to the conclusion of the war with Japan. US action against the USSR prior to that would require the Soviets to attack the west or do something so outrageous (not sure what) that it was equivalent to an attack. After August, 1945 with Japan quitting it is at least theoretically possible, however there would be zero support from the Us public to do this with the human and financial costs it would cause.

It depends on how it played out, the American people before Pearl Harbour were not keen to get involved in WW2 either.


Would they even consider it World War 3 or an extension of World War 2?

Well a few years earlier Russia and NAZI were allies, Russia was in this period an ally of Japan and I am sure that if such an attack did take place there would be many who would be telling the truth of the similarities between Stalin and Hitler. Also no peace has been signed by anyone ending the war and once evidence of the Russ,ian Labor camps became common knowledge, I am sure it would be seen as WW2.

Hmmm, considering it would involve rearranging the alliances yet again (first Nazi-USSR-Italian pact against the West, the West-Italian-USSR pact against the Nazis...then a West-Italian-Nazi pact against the USSR...)

Yes several in WW2 had switched sides, it was not cast in stone this alliance.

I'm not even sure if this was a plan for WW3, depending on the time that Stalin considered these invasions into places like Norway & France (Whether it was before or after D-Day), they could've just been plans to invade Nazi-occupied Norway & France, not some great plan to keep pushing west once Germany was defeated.

No, see the original post in this discussion.
 
I would say the following, knowing Stalin paranoia, plus the fact that Russia had been attacked by its ally NAZI Germany, plus that the socialism that the USSR leadership accepted felt that the West were hostile to the USSR (which is not exactly wrong), plus the way the military works with their scenario planning such a plan would be made. It would be treated seriously but that does not mean the USSR or Stalin wanted to go to war.

Treated seriously means that the request would not be shrugged off as silly. It does not mean that result of the study would be necessarily “let’s go to war”. The General Staff would study pros and contras and come with the recommendations. Whatever these recommendations are, Stalin would be under no obligations to accept them.
 
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