And it shows about 19 million in the Wehrmact + SS Given a German population that's less than 25%. But if you are talking mobization sence Germany was drawing soldiers, laborers, and food from out side Germany you can't look at her in isolation. They are effectivly mobilizing from a much larger population.

They quite obviously were. However they quite reasonably did not want to.
But they wouldn't have been doing it by themselves. There were also quite a few other Western allies.
Low doesn't mean out. Enthusiasm would have depended a lot on how the war started. Indeed politically the West could not have initiated the war but that means the Soviets would have provoked a Pearl Harbor like reaction by attacking. While the allies might have quietly accepted German advice I think there were a number of very good reasons for not incorporating the Germans in the alliance.
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On the other hand the USSR was morally geared up to fight a continuation war, any aggression from the US would simply have been interpreted as an attack on the 'sacred soil of Russia' (even if that soil was Germany) which after 4 years of fighting Germany could easily keep the population motivated.[/quote]
No they were not geared up for a continuation war. If you have been reading this thread you would have noted how they tuned their industry to fit with LL. As was mentioned they were also in bad shape man power wise and a significant portion of their most productive areas had been fought over at least twice and thoroughly looted and trashed. They were hardly in shape to continue and Stalin knew it. There was no way he was going to attack the West in 45 or 46 and there was no way the West was going to attack him.

Not sure how obvious that is, Britain could maybe continue the fight for another couple of months, the US maybe a little longer. That said I would argue that morale was bad enough to make an aggressive war impossible.

Ahh yes, because Britain, France, Holland, Brazil and so on were going to find thousands of troops to send.

But the USSR had no interest in attacking the west, there was nothing to gain by it as they had already achieved most of their objectives. As far as I know no one in the USSR was proposing a war against the west whilst on the other hand men like Patton were very aggressive towards the Soviets.

Which is precisely my point, the USSR was never going to attack the west, if the west attacked the USSR (with the already strung out and knackered forces they had in Europe at the time) they would have lost. For all your data about soviet industry etc keep in mind the US was in a similar situation but didn't have the advantage of being a dictatorship. consider the speed of the Soviet advances up until the capture of Berlin compared with that of the western allies. Consider the resources the US in particular was devoting to the PTO by this stage.

It is rather like watching a WWE tag team wrestling match, one team win and then, knackered, begin to argue. With the last of their energy they start to slug it out and the more aggressive of the two wins. More importantly though, at the end of the day it is just like WWE because at the end of the day we know it ain't real

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There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.

Quite obviously?

You do like gross exaggerations don't you.


Precisely the points that were made earlier Some however dont seem to like them

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The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. -Adolf Hitler

Come on lwd... There was more to the Germany war machine then just the Wehrmacht and the SS. You are leaving out the Heer, Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine, unless ofcourse you dont think that the German population was needed to mobilize those branches.

Add the numbers again then get back to me.

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The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. -Adolf Hitler

Could you provide any data or information to support this assumption, the statements concerning military spending and economies?

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Best Regards,
JW

'Fraid I can't get at the book I need as it's in a box somewhere so feel free to disregard my points, however keep in mind the following. The war by 1945 cost the US $304 billion of which $136.8 billion came from taxation, the rest was made up from schemes such as the War Bond scheme, this eventually provided $185 billion which helped no end but on the other hand meant the US government was massively in debt to the population. Thus without such schemes the US would have been unable to fund a continuation war without the backing of the general populace, something they would probably never have recieved. [Figures from ]EH.Net Encyclopedia: 404 Not Found

As for the point about Britain, consider how in debt we were to the US in 1945 and the state we were in for years after the war, the UK could never have sustained itself for a few more years.

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There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.

I doubt very seriously that the US citizenry would have been amenerable to extending the war in the absence of an overt act of war by our then Allies. As has been said, all parties were weary of war but I strongly believe that the US had enough room in the economy to continue a war longer than you suggest, from an economic viewpoint.

All US war bond issues goals were met and as long as the population continued to support the fighting, I would think bonds would continue to be bought. During the war, the US had the highest rate of saving in it's history and was one of the reasons that US economy came out of the war wide open. The bonds kept consumer spending artificially down during the war, keeping excess dollars from chasing non-existant goods, so the bonds did serve another useful purpose. After the war, the change over to consumer goods production was supported by the available cash provided by bond purchases. On the downside, the Federal government fully discovered a cash cow, thanks to Morgenthau's tax withholding plan. Now, there's a sceme for ya!

One other thought concerning the US economy. The US held a little over 70% of the world's known gold reserves at the end of WWII. That number has since dropped to around 25%.

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Best Regards,
JW

But how long would a war with the USSR last? Unless the bomb was used we are probably thinking at least another 3 or 4 years, could the US economy have supported that?

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There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.

Equally as important, would be the question of how long would the US population support such a war?

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The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. -Adolf Hitler

Wehrmacht = Heer + LW + KM

How do you arive at that situation?
Source on the bad moral?

If you make an abstract comparison of miltary force and potential then clearly the west is superior. If you start throwing in conditional modifiers like aggressive war moral then the thread no longer makes sence because neither side was going to attack the other.
If they needed to. The Commonwealth asside from GB and non European allies were obviously in a better position to continue the war than the European allies.
Expicitly stated in Communist dogma was the goal or ruling the world. The Soviet Union running from the Atlantic to the Pacific would obviously been in a stronger position than the historical one.
Rather irrelevant to the thread though isn't it.
I have been. The situation was hardly similar. The US productivity per worker both in industry and agriculture was much higher. US industry was untouched by the war todate. The US had lines of supply the Soviets could not interdict. The US had mobilised a smaller portion of her overall population. US losses todate had been much less. The US had greater resources to draw on. Being a dictatorship is hardly an advantage in general. The US war planning boards were quite efficient but were much better at allowing ideas to perculate up as well as in encourageing greater productivity.
The troop concentrations and terrain were hardly comparable. The resources in the Pacfic could quickly have been used against the Soviet Far East which would have pretty well eliminated any Soviet naval threat in the Pacific.

Your are correct, sorry not really sure what happend there...


Brain fart I guess

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The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. -Adolf Hitler

1) The bomb would have been used.
2) It's far from clear that they could have lasted 3-4 years. Given the food and distribution system and what would have happened to it in a continuation war it starts getting dicey after the fall of 45. Admitedly western Europe has similar problems except that there is a lot of food available to improt from the US, Canada, and the rest of the Americas.

How so?

Needed of whom? Why would the common wealth ever consider going to war against the SU?

So what, doesnt mean its going to be done so through force.


I very much doubt that there ever was a "Soviet Naval threat".

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The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. -Adolf Hitler