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Could the Western Allies Win Without the USSR?

Discussion in 'What If - European Theater - Western Front & Atlan' started by Guaporense, Nov 11, 2009.

  1. Jenisch

    Jenisch Member

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    It was.

    Correct.

    Right again.

    That's correct again. But the first thing is that FACTUALLY the Nazis would hardly be able to defeat the Soviets with the West in the war. This validates the vital importance the Western participation in the war had, and therefore it cannot be said the Western Allies were not necessary by the Soviets like some say today, despite their "secondary participation".
     
  2. Jenisch

    Jenisch Member

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    I always see this questioning, but I don't see sense in it. The Nazis would ALWAYS invade the Soviet Union, and by doing this they would enter in a a hole which even if they managed to get out, they would be too much week to defeat the West because it would take time for defeat the Soviets and start to extract significant resources from the occupied zones. For example, it was already proved that even if Baku was lost, the Lend-Lease oil supplies could keep the Soviet war machine going. And the Soviet scorched earth policy would probably meant they would set fire in the oil fields if treated to capture, and render them useless for years. And in 1941, the Barbarossa would certainly fail. The Nazis were not strong to capture Moscow, let alone pass by Zhukov's new troops coming.

    I think the efforts from both the Soviets and Western Allies were vital, Hitler was not someone one could trust, case for the West considerate peace with it, and the Soviets simply didn't have choice as fight him for survival. So, there was not any "favour" between the Soviets and Anglo-Americans, there was simply necessity for them fight to fight a common enemy because their interests, as relations between countries always are. A marriage without love like Tamino wrote.
     
  3. Sloniksp

    Sloniksp Ставка

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    Jenisch my friend I am not arguing the above. What im pointing out is that in this scenerio, "Could the Western Allies win without the USSR?" Germany is not at war with the SU. If what you claim is true (and I agree) that Germany would ALWAYS invade the SU then the allies would not be fighting Germany with out the USSR, therefore; this entire thread becomes mute.

    If the allies ARE fighting Germany without the SU, then the question I posted becomes very relevant...
     
  4. LJAd

    LJAd Well-Known Member

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    Britain and France(and later Britain only) were fighting against Germany without the support of the SU,till june 1941.And,on 21 june 1941,the German position was not good .
     
  5. Sloniksp

    Sloniksp Ставка

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    Wasnt bad either. Germany could not invade GB and vise versa...
     
  6. Triple C

    Triple C Ace

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    If the Soviet Union remains on the sideline, it would release portions of US manpower dedicated to war industries that supplied the USSR. George Marshal wanted 200 divisions, not the 99 that the US Army actually got. Conversely the Germans would have not lost the cream of their soldiers in Russia. The Western Allies would face a grimmer struggle.
     
  7. TiredOldSoldier

    TiredOldSoldier Ace

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    The issue is would those 200 divisons be enough, while US and Soviet divisions are not comparable in size and capability, they fielded more than twice that number. And with all respect for the "90 days wonders" that sort of increase stretches the supply of trained professional soldiers well beyond the rasonable limits, the western allies are going to suffer badly from not having a peace time conscription trained reserve pool. France of course had it but there is nothing in this thread that makes us assume it woulkd do better than historically and so it's manpower pool is inaccessible to the allies by 1941 though De Gaule & co could probably collect 3 or four corps worth of troops from units stationed overseas.
     
  8. Jenisch

    Jenisch Member

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    It actually is. I will post again info about this.

    Wages of Destruction, Adam Tooze, page 450:

    But, though the continental bloc could certainly satisfy both 'ideologi-cal' and 'pragmatic' criteria, the advocates of a long-term alliance withthe Soviet Union were never in a majority in Berlin and this too was asmuch for pragmatic as for ideological reasons. In the long term a genuinealliance would have involved an unacceptable degree of German depen-dence on the Soviets. As General Haider noted in his diary in December1940: 'Every weakness in the position of the Axis brings a push by theRussians. They cannot prescribe the rules for transactions, but theyutilize every opportunity to weaken the Axis position.' In a Eurasiancontinental bloc, it would be the central power, the Soviet Union, notJapan or Germany, that would ultimately occupy the dominant position.The Third Reich had no intention of slipping into the kind of humblingdependence that Britain now occupied in relation to the United States,mortgaging its assets and selling its secrets, simply to sustain the wareffort. That this was the direction in which Germany might be headedwas evident already in the spring of 1940. Just prior to the Germanoffensive in the West, Moscow demanded as part payment for its rawmaterial deliveries the construction of two chemicals plants in the SovietUnion, one for coal hydrogenation (synthetic fuel), the other to embodyIG Farben's revolutionary Buna process (synthetic rubber).

    The Soviet Union was to have full access to both the blueprints and the complexinstrumentation necessary to monitor the high-pressure reactions. Notsurprisingly, IG Farben balked and with the support of the German mili-tary the deal was blocked. But the fact that the Soviets could even makesuch demands indicates the seriousness of the German dilemma. Thehugely increased volume of trade needed to sustain Germany's block-aded Grossraum was bound to give the Soviet Union ever-increasingleverage.By the autumn of 1940, Germany's dependence on deliveries of rawmaterials, fuel and food from the Soviet Union was creating a positivelyschizophrenic situation. In trade negotiations, German machine tools 42.2

    were one of the means of settlement prized most highly by the Soviets.Such exports, however, were in direct conflict with the preparations of Germany's own armed forces for the invasion of the Soviet Union.Astonishingly, rather than interrupting the Soviet deliveries to prioritizethe Luftwaffe, Goering in early October 1940 ordered that, at least until11 May 1941, deliveries to the Soviet Union, and thus to the Red Army,should have equal priority with the demands of the Wehrmacht.

    Evenin the immediate prelude to operation Barbarossa, Germany could notafford to do without Soviet deliveries of oil, grain and alloy metals.The willingness to engage in such bizarre compromises reflected theincreasing concern in Berlin over the precarious situation of Germany'sraw material supplies.

    As the military-economic office of the Wehr-macht concluded at the end of October 1940: 'Current favourable rawmaterial situation (improved by stocks captured in enemy territory) will,in case of prolonged war and after consumption of existing stocks,re-emerge as bottleneck. From summer 1941 this is to be expected incase of fuel oil as well as industrial fats and oils.

    I understand. Well, perhaps they would not want. But as you can see, in this scenario Nazi Germany practically becomes a puppet state of the Soviet Union, depending on it's resources. We can discuss this scenario, but I beat the Füher would become hysterical if aware that 72 years after he died people would considerate this possibility. :D
     
  9. Jenisch

    Jenisch Member

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    That's true. But you see, big contingents would meant big logistic trouble for both sides. An invasion of Europe would only proceed after the German logistic lines were badly beaten by air, like historically. What effects this would bring in hundreads of thousands more German soldiers?
     
  10. lwd

    lwd Ace

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    Only if it were likely that the Germans could inflict casualties on the order of what you suggest. I suspect that the western allies would have taken more time and spent resources rather than men. Especially sense Germany hardly had any excess of the former.
     
  11. Jenisch

    Jenisch Member

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    Yeah.

    Some people compare the casualities of the Soviets with the W. Allies to say the former would never succeed if alone. This is simply wrong. For example, 50% of the Soviet casualities occured during Barbarossa. The realities of the W. Allies and Soviets were very different. Another thing is the Russians advanced in a much longer front. A decisive front opened in France would be in Germany, specially in the Ruhr area, much quicker than the Eastern Front would. The fighting over a long distance and consequentely time was a preponderant factor in the Soviet casualities.
     
  12. Jenisch

    Jenisch Member

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    [video=youtube;WriE2b9CXQY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WriE2b9CXQY[/video]

    Wages of Destruction, page 403:

    Alarmed by Germany's bid to overturnthe balance of power in Europe, the Roosevelt administration, backedby a bi-partisan majority in Congress, took urgent steps to transformthe United States into the pre-eminent military superpower that itremains today. The sequence of events was rapid. On 16 May 1940,three days after Kleist's Panzer Group A had broken through on river Maas, President Roosevelt put before Congress the proposal toconstruct the world's largest military-industrial complex, a manufactur-ing base capable of supplying the United States with no less than 50,000aircraft per year. Roosevelt picked this number out of the air and itwas unclear how it would be put into practice. But he made his point.The Luftwaffe and the RAF, even in their wildest moments, had neverconceived of aircraft production on this scale. 'Fifty thousand per year'was less a planning target than a statement of American industrialsupremacy. Only a few weeks later, Congress approved the Two OceansNavy Expansion Act, which laid the foundations for the vast carrier-fleets with which the United States still projects force into every cornerof the globe. There followed over the summer the unprecedented intro-duction of a peacetime draft, designed to raise a trained force of 1.4 million men. By 1941, America, a nation still at peace, was produc-ing almost as much weaponry as either Germany or Britain and wasdoing so whilst at the same time enjoying the first sustained increase incivilian consumption since the late 1920s. What was ominous from the German point of view was that thisenormous accumulation of force was ultimately directed across theAtlantic, in support of Britain and its war against Hitler. Britain'swillingness to go on resisting Germany depended critically on theassumption that the United States would provide it with massive materialaid. At first, of course, Britain would have to pay. Britain, unlike Ger-many, was not bankrupt. In 1939 it was still a large internationalcreditor with foreign assets estimated at c. $5 billion (15-20 billionReichsmarks), enough to match an entire year of German armamentsoutput with purchases from abroad. But to defeat Germany, Britainwould clearly need far more. The premise of British strategy wastherefore, as Churchill put it to Roosevelt, that Britain would pay for asmuch as it could, but that 'when we can pay no more you will give usthe stuff all the same'. Perhaps not surprisingly, Roosevelt did not replyto this bold statement of British dependence. The tortured politics of World War I war debts were still fresh in the memory. Britain was tobe driven to the point of financial exhaustion before Congress openedthe floodgates of lend-lease in the spring of 1941. London, therefore,had every reason to be nervous. But Churchill's gamble was clearlybased on a fundamentally correct strategic assessment. Roosevelt hadhad his heart set on a major American contribution to the air effort.

    I doubt the LW would prevail.
     
  13. TiredOldSoldier

    TiredOldSoldier Ace

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    Not sure resorces against manpower will work, but then not an admirer of Tooze, he thinks of war like an accountant, possibly an even worse way of looking at it than the "manager like" Vietnam era mindset.
    As Napoleon used to say morale carries it over material 2:1 and a material based attrition strategy is not likely to get the better of the likes of Hitler and Goebels. I think nobody is suggesting the western allies will suffer the 20+ million deaths the Soviet Union did but Roosvelt's continued support when the body bag figure approches the million mark, and overcomming the German army is going to cost something like that no matter how many more tanks or planes the allies have, is no sure thing especially if the DoW comes from the US side.
    As for the air war don't really kwow if without the A bomb the allied air forces can win an attrition war without the losses the LW suffered in the USSR. The defensive advantages are huge, a Fw 190 costs a fraction of a B 17, requires only one pilot and that pilot has a good chance of bailing out over friendly territory and fighting again, add in the Flak and the attacker/defender cost ratio is well over 5:1. What's worse barring the A bomb all other 1940 era developments, jets, radar directed AA, large caliber air armament, proximity fuses, air to air rockets etc. favour the defender more than the attacker.
     
  14. Jenisch

    Jenisch Member

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    Delet this post moderation, doubled.
     
  15. Jenisch

    Jenisch Member

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    4.06 times as many aircraft were lost in combat in the West than were lost in the East, a ratio reasonably close to Groehler's 3.41 for all "losses". The most chilling statistic for the JG 26 pilots appears in the sortie data. An airplane flying a combat mission in the West was 7.66 times more likely to be destroyed than one on a similar mission in the East. It is clear that the burden of sacrifice was borne by the Luftwaffe aircrew on the Western Front and over the Reich, not on the Eastern Front.

    http://don-caldwell.we.bs/jg26/thtrlosses.htm

    You are just forgotting the escort fighters. The Americans, unlike the Germans in 1940, could provide effective escort to their bombers. And while the Germans would have oil from the Soviet Union, the LW training system was inadequated and not able to compete with the American. The Americans also started to desacelerate their wartime production by 1944. In this scenario, they would expand it if necessary. Nazi Germany couldn't make magic, it was not immune to anything that would affect a similar country like Britain. In terms of aeronautics, it was not much different from Britain, let alone the US.

    After the Barbarossa started, the Luftwaffe became a priority in resources, since the air war was just question of time, and even so it failed. Yes, there would be more planes avaliable without a war in Russia, but is unfair not considerate a change in strategy from the Allies. The US could enter in the defensive in the Pacific to focus in Europe, this was not done because historically because it wasn't necessary. Not the case of this scenario.

    I would like that, if possible, someone provide the numbers of how much Germany would need to pay for Stalin to acquire so much resources for sustain occupied Europe and the war effort. The Soviet position in this scenario BTW, it's one of the most unrealistic things. Stalin would become so strong, that you know people, I think it would be more the case of the Allies give up more because him, than because Germany. However I would not considerate unrealistic say that Stalin could try make a deal with the Allies, so he would attack Japan and let the Allies have a free hand against Germany, and then he would, when all "preparations be ready", enter in the war against Germany. Perhaps the Soviets would go from the position of those who most suffered in the war, from those who most profited with it.

    Perhaps some evidences from this; Wages of Destruction page 396:

    In July 1940, in a desperate bid to unhitch the Soviet Union from its pact with Germany, Churchill sent Stafford Cripps, his new ambassador in Moscow, to a meeting with the Soviet dictator. To Cripps, Stalin explained with chilling clarity the logic that had motivated his agreement with Hitler eleven months earlier. The Soviet aim had been to upset the balance of power in Europe and in this the Hitler-Stalin pact had succeeded brilliantly. When Cripps replied that the Soviet alliance withHitler had in fact destroyed any kind of balance in Europe and that the entire Continent was now threatened by German hegemony, Stalin snapped back: 'I am not so naive as to believe the German assurances that they have no desire for hegemony, but what I am convinced of is the physical impossibility of such hegemony, since Germany lacks the necessary seapower.'

    As we can see, Stalin didn't wanted German hegemony in Europe. I beat Stalin would let the Germans and the Western Allies fight each other, while using the Red Army as a gun pointed in Hitler's head to extort the Germans: "Füher, give me this technology and we will give give you raw materials, give me that one and we will give you oil", etc. He would measure the resources sent to Germany in order to let the things "competitive". Then, when Stalin felt he already extracted enough, he would enter in the war, probably when both sides be already worned-out, and take as much of territory for the USSR as he could. This scenario of course, don't have any benefit to Germans, but it is what is proposed isn't? ;P
     
  16. TiredOldSoldier

    TiredOldSoldier Ace

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    I agree that the main problem with this what if is "what is Stalin doing in the meanwhile", so let's assume the most favourable scenario for Hitler, Stalin gets assasinated and the resulting power struggle "freezes out" the USSR for a few years as they are too busy sorting themseves out. We must also assume this happens in a way that Hitler doesn't try to profit from it, maybe already feels he is in a life or death struggle west so he, which could happen if something like Hamburg happens earlier, or possibly signs of a USSR breakup like what happened 50 years later that if allowed to consolidate would leave him facing much more digestible "chunks" like Ukraine or Belarus rather than a united USSR so he decides to wait it out.

    Historically long range fighters took a long time comming, for some reason I can't understand the Spitfire didn't take to drop tanks nicely, and after the jet fighters came on line they would need to do it all over again, the early jets were fuel guzzlers.
    There is no way to build a long range rocket fighter, but from a strategic warfare standpoint the unreliable Me 163 was more a liability than an asset, given more time the Germans may have come up with something that actually worked.
    I would add one more possible scenario to the techs favourable to the defender, the Germans were pretty decent chemists, wooden airframes for fighters would go a long way to redress the resource imbalance and "getting the glue right" wasn't beyond their capabilities if they put more effort behind it. A bomber equivalent of the spruce goose would not help the allies as much.
     
  17. Jenisch

    Jenisch Member

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    The main reason for this was that deep penetration missions didn't started until 1943. Until then, casualities were acceptable. In this scenario, perhaps there would be a change in Allied strategy and long range fighters would become a priority.

    They actually tried everything they could. As I already told you, they were focused in the LW after the Barbarossa started. Absence of a war in the East would not meant Krupp would produce planes for example. The LW would certainly give more trouble, perhaps the bombing would need to be suspended until escorts became avaliable, but the final result would likely be the same, or maybe with atomic bombs dropped in Germany. The Luftwaffe didn't had muscles to fight the USAAF and the RAF. Hitler was aware of this. That being one of the major reasons to invade the USSR. According to the Nazis, the necessary resources to make German a superpower, and consequentely fight the Anglo-American aerial armies, would be obtained there. In actual fact, even by having most of the Soviet resources, it wasn't enough. Germany would need some years of peacetime to start to extract resources from the occupied territories in a satisfatory manner. As for this scenario, the German situation would be even worse, because they would have to pay the Soviets for everything. And the Soviets were not stupid, they were asking for many warships ships as payment for example. That would consume substantial German resources and also let the German war with the West in more equilibrium, so they could profit at the maximum with the war.

    But frankly, if the Germans would become true allies of the Soviets, it would be just the question of let the former enter in the Axis. That would probably make the Allies accept peace.
     
  18. Volga Boatman

    Volga Boatman Dishonorably Discharged

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    My answer would be a firm YES....but it might have taken a long time to break the back of the German Army.

    I have always felt that British diplomats were the planners that really succeeded in getting their political machinations to work properly. It was a far more likely scenario that Germany would invade the USSR than any other single factor. How do we know this? Siml;y look at Hitler's speeches. No other country comes in for more criticism than the Communistregime in the USSR. The primary slogan that drove this was "DRANG NACH OSTEN". Note the "Osten". It wasn't "Drang Nach Wessen". 'Living Space' was ALWAYS going to be found in the East. "Mein Kampf" had said so, in black and white.

    What is the best way to eliminate on opponent? Somehow get them to fight someone else, of course. Historically, this was Brit foriegn policy and had been so since the 1790, when it was realised that a continental ally was needed to help fight Buonaparte and the emerging menace of the French revolution.

    Britain was in a much better financial state in 1914 to achieve this than in 1939. Both enemies had no seapower as such, something that Stalin was sure to pick up on, and did.

    Roosevelt was more than a little committed to pulling apart the Nazis. There was no question of the U.S. ever fighting FOR the Fascist dictatorships. So, if you have no continental freinds, a way must be found to drive a wedge between continental nations, getting them to fight for you until such time as you can project your power across the oceans and finish the both of them off for their audacity.

    The nightmare scenario was Germany and brother totalitarians banding together to push British interests off the continent altogether. This is why the Hitler/Stalin Pact was such a threat, because it made that scenario a sudden possibility. But Hitler was such a rabid anti-communist that it was really only a matter of time before the two dictatorships clashed, precisely what was needed to bring about the mutual downfall of the lot of them.
     
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  19. LJAd

    LJAd Well-Known Member

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    The theory of the British political machinations is only popular science-fiction:there was no such thing between the two world wars .
    In 1870,Britain remained neutral during a war in its backyard.
    In 1939,Britain intervened when there was a war in the wilderness,in a neglectable region.
    The reason is the processus of democratization and the ideological oppositions.
    The Hitler-Stalin pact was no threat to Britain,but to Poland .
     
  20. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    Molotov-Ribbentrop pact did exactly give Hitler both hands free in the west, the chance to attack France first, and thus making it a definite threat to Britain as well. Poland was invaded and destroyed by Nazi Germany and the USSR to test their military machines and for "revenge". Hitler was determined to attack to the west as his ca 20 cancelled attack dates to the west prove from autum 1939 to May 1940. Poland was not the main target, the operation in the West was,and the units would go to the western border as soon as possible after the fall of Poland.
     
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