Do you think The United States And Britian would Still Win or Would the Axis Win? Even if one of the sides won how long would the Second World War last?

I personally think The Axis would win cause Russia Had a huge army at the time. If Germany could not worry about the eastern front and focus on the western front plus send a majority of german army, navy, air force, etc to the Western Front I think the Germans would win the battle of britain and win the War possibly.

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When I feed the poor, they call me a saint,
but when I ask why the poor are hungry,
they call me a communist.

At that time, US industrial production and its war machine had no limitations at all, as it was completely self-sufficient in all strategic minerals, petroleum and lubricants. Manpower was also no problem, as the original plans was for a US Army of well over 200 Divisions to be trained and available for committment in three year's time.

The Axis Powers never stood a ghost of a chance, especially when combined with the power and might of the British Commonwealth Nations.

Britians long term strategy for defeating Germany was to combine economic warfare with air bombardment. In the first case Britian seemed to be going bankrupt as fast as Germany. Britan had resourses slipped to it from the US, Germany could loot the nations it occupied, but it was a race to see which collapsed economically first.

With the US in the war the combined Brit US economys can outlast Germany by several years.

In the air the heavy bombing campaign did not have the rapid effect Harris & his supporters hoped for. After the US airforces were added in the effect was still slow. Perhaps too slow. However the strategy was Europe first, so the super bombers like the B29 and the atomic bombs would be used in Europe first.

Britians land strategy was to pick away at the edge of the German controlled territorys, supply the partisans and gurillias in the occupied nations, to invade the continent only after Germany had its cities burned to the ground and economy in collapse.

The US did develop a plan for defeating Germany without the USSR. This plan contemplated providing resources for equipping and sustaining approximatly 200 infantry and armored divsions and doubling the size of the airforces. Not all these ground combat units were to be manned by Americans. The additional units were to be made up of other nations men. The US would have had difficulty keeping up its industrial production had it tied to man more than 130 ground divsions and a similar number of air wings.

With the extra combat units, air bombardment, and atomic bombs Germany could have been eventually defeated smetime in 1946 or 47. Perhaps sooner if morale collapsed and the nazis were shot. The destruction in Western Europe would have been much greater and the casualties of the US and Britian much greater.

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I forgot my password, can I use yours?

What If people checked the Archives? LOL

What if........Hitler never invaded the Soviet Union?

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For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman.

Yes, Bob, that thread does exist already but you have to take it into account that newcomers into this forum (Welcome abord, KTH, by the way ) don't have the obligation to follow scrupoulously all this forum's etiquette, with all it' quirks and written and unwritten laws. Speaking of which, here they go: What If? Forum Rules

Anyway, this could be developed: a) What would Adolf do instead? b) What would Stalin do?

As b) is more my field than a) I'd like to insert a few words. Our Lady of Kazan help me because this is going to be touchy

Stalinist theory (simplifying) posited that Communism was very fine and dandy, but it was going to be difficult to generalise to all countries. Therefore as Socialism was already more or less implanted in the Soviet union (as a step towards full Communism), the idea was to lie low for a while and keep working for it where it had already been in it's way to success, and leave the export of Communism abroad (one of the tenets of Trotskyism - the Permanent Revolution) till later, after the Capitalist nations had destroyed themselves through their internal and external contradictions. This was also helped by a realistic view, whereby worker's movements had so far catastrophically failed everywhere, so it would be stupid keeping betting on the wrong horses. All the way the USSR would remain aloof, watching the fight. This line had the apt name of Socialism in One country *

At the very most the SU would keep the pot abroad simmering a bit by agitating and supporting a bit the local Communist Parties, but never daring to go so far as to threaten to take power, as this might provoke a backlash from the Capitalist Powers.

This did not preclude the SU to meddle a bit with what was felt to be adding strategic depth to some territories and/or returning some former Imperial lands back to the USSR. Hence the (initially negotiated) "acquisition" of border lands with Finland, the Baltic countries, "Romanian" Bessarabia, Poland eastern third. All these were seen as defensive moves, being no more than a return of previously owned territories. Also throwing a stick or two into the Capitalist World wheels wouldn't come amiss once in a while, see the Spanish Civil War intervention.

So in short the idea was to keep twiddling one's thumbs while the big powers choked in their own blood, a sort of WWI with Russia out this time, and waiting till later when a new version of Spartakists took over in Germany, acting as a spearhead of the Socialist movement.

All this was going famously well, especially with that madman Adolf at the head, acting as an unwitting Icebreaker (Vladimir Rezun/"Suvorov" has a point here, although I don't agree with the rest of the gibberish), setting Europe aflame, better and quicker than expected. This fits well with the German/Soviet pact policy, as Stalin was ready to sign any treaty with the Devil he didn't believe in, if it would keep the wolf away from his frontiers; moreover so with a technologically advanced nation, from which the USSR had a lot to benefit from.

All this started to look horribly wrong when instead of a classical bloodbath in "The Fields of Flanders" the Germans came up with that new military method whereby Denmark and Norway were conquered and France asked for an armistice in weeks, while England retreated in schock. Instead of a prolonged war away from the USSR's borders what was seen now was a Greater Germany with all Continental Europe's assets at it reach, ready and willing.

So all efforts went into appeasing this monster, never giving it the slightest provocation, fulfilling to the last dot and comma the commercial agreements, and allowing all sorts of provocations, such as not defending against overflights of Soviet territory by German planes, etc.

So. June 22nd 1941 comes and the Germans do not attack. Would the Soviet Union do anything about it, sooner or later? I doubt it.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_in_one_country , god bless Wikipedia!
http://www.marxist.com/LeninAndTrotsky/chapter08.html

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I did check the archivies. However i must of missed the topic. Sorry for the second topic.

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When I feed the poor, they call me a saint,
but when I ask why the poor are hungry,
they call me a communist.

Are we ignoring the fact that the Soviets may have had plans to declare war on the Germans ?

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Yes we are. The US have plans to invade Mexico, Mexico has plans to invade the US, Canada has plans to invade the US, the US has plans to invade Canada,Spain has plans to invade Portugal, Portugal has plans to invade Spain, etc. That's what General Staffs are made for, to plan for every eventuality.

So what, haven't you understood my latest post? I tried to set out the ideology at the time. Perhaps it was too long and bored you.

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Za Rodinu, why don't you just tell that the Red Rabbi would've invaded Germany anyway

And think.. Germany would've still invaded the Sovjet-Union even when he didn't declared while then, the oil and the stair to the US. He already had plans to send a V2 look-a-like (A rocket in a 'rocket') to send to the US, so one way or another, the Soviet-Union had to many things which Hitler couldn't resist.

Why didn't Hitler readed a book of Napoleon

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Simplifying a bit eh?

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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

Couple of quick thoughts as I have to run.

Tungsten was so short that it was flown out of China/Burma to ship to the US.

I needed that today. Thnx

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The Axis, on the other hand, ran out of tungsten in...1944? 1943? The United States had over 50% of the world's total munitions output. And nothing here stops the USA from developing the Atom Bomb in 1945.

The war would take longer. There would be more deaths. But chance still favors the Allies. Though it is possible to conceive of an Axis win, the same way it's conceivable for a nation to be saved twice by a freak storm (Kamikaze).

Actually at the time The Red Rabbi was serving time in Kholima precisely to cool him a bit while the Capitalist Nations were supposed to strangle each other while in the True Land of the Free yadda yadda ...

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The Axis started having difficulties from 1943 onwards when the Spanish and Portuguese tungsten ore - which till then was divided equally between both camps - suddenly became the object of "an offer you can't refuse"...

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Stalins paranoia would have gotten the best of him and the 2nd front would have opened up anyway.

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Those who kept silent yesterday will remain silent tomorrow"
~Elie Wiesel~

No paranoia needed really, Stalin knew very well of Hitlers intensions. He did afterall read Mein Kampf...

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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

Favors how?

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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

You don't know him like I know him

And Roosevelt's polio would make him invade Mexico. How's that for a gratuitous statement?

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It seems to me that here you miss one important thing; the Soviet attack on Finland 13th of September 1939.

Finland was a small, peaceful nation without any territorial claims beyond its own borders.
But the Soviet Union had started its expansion towards the west.

As neighbours we know the finlanders as a though, hardworking people, with a special kind of resilience called "sisu".
I assume Stalin must have executed all his officers knowing this, because the Red Army ended up getting its nose bloodied.
The first Winter War revealed big flaws in the Red Army and its communist leadership.

The rest of the world was disgusted by this attack on a small, peaceful nation.

The poor performance by the Red Army was an important factor in Hitler's decision to attack The Soviet Union.

Regards
RAM

I'm not missing it.

There were negotiations prior to the Winter War aiming to exchange territories between Finalnd and the USSR. As the negotiations failed, politics went on by other means.

25 - Suur Suomi « Strange Maps

Winter War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
????????-??????????? ????? 1939 - 1940 ??.

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The new border would have crippled the Finnish defence system in the Karelian isthmus and as well the USSR would have gotten a position ( in Hanko ) close to our Capital Helsinki. The new land in exchange would have been almost totally unpopulated "desert" and Stalin could have as well promised the whole of Siberia as well. Would not have changed a thing. In fact Finland could have invited the Red Army to Finland if they had accepted Stalin´s exchange program. That was just a game to make it look righteous in the eyes of the world. I think the fact that Germany and the USSR had given each other priorities on certain countries with Ribbentrop Molotov pact proves this solidly.

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That's another kettle of fish but it sure looked pretty on the map

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Well, I wouldn't exactly call a full scale attack on your neighbor for

"lying low"....

Regards
RAM

"Lying low" in that it concerns the expected contradictions among capitalist countries, while dealing with the aforesaid "frontier adjustments", which were regarded as legitimate defensive measures.

I'm not trying to defend or justify Stalin's actions, and if I were I've seen worse in this forum. What I'm doing is presenting and explaining the other point of view, as seen from the Kremlin (or Russia) at the time. A pathologist does not have to be a necrophile.

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Good point in airing that view, Za. I think that was a very logical thing to do for Stalin: letting the other countries to pound each other to bits allowing the Soviet Union later to pick up the pieces in an easier manner.