Who would have won if the Soviets had attacked the allies

[Old Troop]

in April 1945? I'm reading a book about it right now and wanted some informed opinions.

[rrneck]

1. Mine is only an uninformed opinion

but I think we would. We just had too much industrial capacity.

[Captain Hilts]

16. Agree. I think the Red Army had momentum, but we had the industrial stuff. nt

[MiddleFingerMom]

2. I can tell you that in 1974 or -75, during the annual Nato war games...

.
...known as Reforger, our company was called to gather on a hilltop where this
general officer flew in by helicopter to give us all "Attaboys!!!"
.
He told us that our tank regiment had encountered two Russian tank regiments
and (according to the computer simulations), we had completely destroyed one
of their regiments.
.
Everybody around me went NUTS!!!
.
I just kept wondering, "Um... what happened to that SECOND Russian regiment?"
.
And, of course, my follow-up question would have been, "And what did they do
to US?"
.
If the Russians had wanted Europe in the 70's, and without a nuclear deterrent...
I believe the simulations had them on the coast of France within a coupla weeks.
.
.
But that doesn't answer your 1945 question in the least.
.

[JVS]

3. Stalemate.

There was no way that the USSR would be able to get to the US (in fact England would have been tough)

On the other hand, there is no way that we would have been able to sustain a large enough force on the European continent to hold the Soviets back, or for that matter to ever push into their land. Basically the Russians would be able to succeed where the Germans failed as far as keeping a Normandy from happening.

[JVS]

4. So, to be clear. The result of the Stalemate would be

US and UK in their 1942 positions, USSR holds all formerly axis lands, with the possible exception of Norway.

[NewJeffCT]

25. Would the Germans have accepted Soviet occupation?

over their entire country?

[JVS]

34. Hell yeah, they were scared as fuck and the Soviets were looking for any excuse to take revenge.

They could either accept occupation, or face an extremely wrathful occupier.

[NewJeffCT]

36. There was some thought

that because of the enmity between the Nazis & the Russians that Germany might have sided with the allies if that situation arose.

[taterguy]

5. Hiroshima wouldn't have happened

We didn't have very many nukes at the time so we would have used them on Russians.

But my question to you is why the Soviets would have attacked in the first place.

[Old Troop]

8. Purely hypothetical

This author, Robert Conroy, has written about a German attack on America in 1902 (based on conplans that the Germans had). It's simply alternate history, but I have little doubt that Stalin would have continued his drive West if he thought he could win.

[Forkboy]

12. At the time of Hiroshima and Nagasaki we had two bombs...which we used on said cities.

In April of 45 we weren't using them on anybody. We didn't have them yet.

Your question is the meat here. Why would they have attacked in the first place, and where? Berlin? This hypothetical needs more input, dammit!

[JVS]

14. I take attacked allies in 1945 to simply mean that the Soviets kept going West through Germany.

[Dr Morbius]

6. The good old U.S. of A.

At that point, America was a manufacturing stallion, producing most of the allied equipment. The Soviets could not stand against an American barrage in the air; the Soviets were pretty weak in the air. The Soviet navy was largely nonexistent. Much of the Soviet food came from us, as well.

Stalin was a bastard and a monster but he was no fool. He would never have attacked a nation which he was able to stalemate, and believe me, in 1945 America emerged as the only superpower not just because of the bomb. Our nation was war-weary and definitely wanted it to be over, but if attacked the American people were as tough as nails. No way the USSR would have won, no way. They simply didn't have the industrial capacity to compete. If not for America Stalin might well have lost to Hitler.

[Richard Steele]

7. The Allies. The USSR took a hell of a beating in driving back the Nazis...

...their economy and eastern infrastructure
were in ruins, and alot of their "leadership"
was just as clueless (militarily)
as the Nazis they had Pyrricaly defeated.

Like Germany, many of their best
military leaders had been PURGED for
political reasons by the war's end.

Meanwhile, the US mainland had never been touched by the war,
& we were cranking out military hardware like no one in history.
(Remember, the USSR only had an 'Air Force' because the USA
was shipping them the material to build planes with.)

And we still had our finest military minds alive and in charge.
Well, mostly in charge...but if the USSR had attacked us,
I'm certain that Patton would have been returned to command
within 12 hours.

The Allies would have won that war, had it occurred.
No fucking doubt.

[RainDog]

9. my uninformed opinion - allies. we had the bomb.

they had years of casualties.

[Taverner]

10. I know who would have lost: The Jews

Both had serious anti-Semitic policies

[Captain Hilts]

17. No, I don't think so. Should the plight of Jews been a higher priority? Yes!

But the Allies can't be listed as institutionally anti-Semitic.

[Taverner]

27. No - you misunderstand me

Stalin and Hitler were both avowed anti-Semites

If the two of them would have gotten together, no more Jews in Europe

[Captain Hilts]

29. Ah, got you. nt

[ThoughtCriminal]

11. What is the book? Curious

I've wondered the same thing if war had broken out during the Berlin Airlift.

Would not have been pretty. One might assume that the U.S. atom bomb monopoly would be decisive, but in 1948-49, the arsenal was still very small and the means to deliver it reliably (B-29 bombers) questionable.

[Dr Morbius]

19. True, but the arsenal was small because the need wasn't there.

This is a nation just recovered from reabsorbing over a million men back into the workforce, which spent a ton of money on the war and was basking in a new era: America had never been seen as a world power before WWI, and remained very isolationist until 1941. Then just five years later, America is the preeminent world power. Nobody was eager to keep spending money on defense. Nobody else had a bomb, or was likely to get one... or so we believed.

But I think without doubt that if it had been necessary to obtain more U235, Ernest Lawrence in California would have found a way. He designed and built the first centrifuges to separate uranium, and his team produced most of the uranium used in the two bombs. President Truman was not the kind of man who tolerated failure; had it been necessary for America to make more atom bombs in 1945 or 1946, America would have done so. But I wonder; the original post had the Soviets attacking America in April 1945. We didn't drop the bomb on Japan until August. Had the Soviets entered the war, I suspect this new technology would have been used on Moscow.

Also, I submit the production of military jets would have happened much more quickly if WWII had gone on longer, between the US and the USSR.

The war was over; everyone wanted to relax.

[ThoughtCriminal]

23. I think they were pushing production pretty hard

It just wasn't that easy to make bomb grade material in 1945. At the end of 1945, the U.S. only had two bombs stockpiled (having used one U-235 device and two plutonium). By the end of 1946 the stockpile was 9 and by 1948 it was up to 50, but there were still only 32 B-29s fitted to carry them. I doubt production could have been increased in 1945 - the war went to September and they were planning to use whatever they could manufacture in case Japan did not surrender. I would also assume that there would be at least two more bombs available in 1946, if there was a war with the Soviet Union. The two 1946 Crossroads test devices get used on Russia instead of Bikini Atoll.

[Old Troop]

38. I apologize for being unclear

the attack I posited occurred during the waning days of the European war.

[Iggo]

22. "Red Inferno: 1945" by Robert Conroy

He does alternate history. He's got another one called "1942" in which the Japanese are successful at Pearl Harbor. They're both sitting on my desk right now and I'll probably read them some time this summer. My dad (ex-warrior, Korea) likes them a lot.

[NewJeffCT]

24. The Japanese were succesful at Pearl Harbor

Or, do you mean they sank more ships and/or the US carriers that were at sea?

[Iggo]

28. Oops. You're right.

The author says there was an aborted bombing mission on 12/7/41 that was supposed to have destroyed "crucial oil facilities", then he further imagines an "all out invasion of Hawaii to put a stranglehold on the American Pacific Fleet."

[NewJeffCT]

30. That would have been interesting

if Japan could have successfully invaded Hawaii after Pearl Harbor - it would have given them a base to launch attacks on the west coast - even bombing runs to port cities on the west coast would have caused havoc, and people on the mainland would not have felt safe.

However, I think if they had invaded Hawaii, Japan would have been stretched too thin with holding onto China, Southeast Asia, the Philippines and other islands in the Pacific, plus Hawaii on top of that.

[Old Troop]

42. Of all things, Newt Gringrich had a couple of books

a few years ago that explored an alternate history where Japan invaded and took the islands.

[MicaelS]

31. Red Inferno: 1945

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345506065/ref=ord_cart_shr?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER

WWII alternate historian Conroy (1945) sets this tale largely in Berlin as it prepares for division among the four Allied powers in accordance with the Yalta agreements. President Truman doesn't trust Stalin and makes the controversial decision to move his troops across the Elbe River toward Berlin in an attempt to lessen Stalin's growing influence in Europe. The move ignites smoldering tensions between Russia and the States, and Stalin's enormous Red Army attacks its former allies, extending the war and threatening the world.

[Old Troop]

37. The book is Red Inferno 1945 by Robert Conroy

His premise is that the allies, thinking Stalin will renege on the Potsdam Agreement, send a US division to the outskirts of Berlin just as the battle is being joined by the Soviets.

[Forkboy]

13. Need more data. Where are the Soviets attacking the Allies?

What forces are they using, what theater are we talking about? In April of '45 there was only a couple of spots the Soviets could have attacked the Allies directly, namely along the Eastern Front. They had no position to attack us directly in the Pacific in '45.

Assuming an Eastern Front attack it would have to have happened in and/or around Germany, no? Both sides were well fortified, though the Soviets might have felt more righteous than us after losing 28 million people. At the time we had no nukes, so if war had broken out between the two it would have been conventional warfare until August when we developed the bomb. In a conventional war the Soviets would have tried to fight all the way the Atlantic, and wartime production between us and the Soviets was fairly equal by this point. The Soviets had to rebuild their rail lines, which were not destroyed by the Germans, but rebuilt to fit German rail line requirements (different width between rails). On the flipside we had to ship our equipment overseas. Supply lines for both would have been interesting, though the Soviets had no real naval presence to threaten our shipping at the time.

After all this, my answer is that we would have fought them to a standstill somewhere in France or England until we got the bomb.

A real fun question is what would have happened if the Soviets got the bomb before us and had invaded Japan. Reagan would have had a tougher time bringing down the ole Evil Empire. :)

[Orsino]

15. Oliver Stone n/t

[Old Troop]

39. I don't think they mentioned Oliver Stone in the book

[Bucky]

18. Stalin never picked a fight with kid his own size. He rarely attacked & only attacked weaklings.

Basic alcoholic bully mentality. Stalin would never have gone after a unified west, regardless of momentum.

[NewJeffCT]

20. What would the Germans have done in that case?

While they had had the crap bombed out of them and had lost millions of people, they still had some men, tanks and planes and could have caused a lot of havoc as a 3rd party caught between the US/Britain/Allies and the Soviets.

I think the Allies would have defeated the Soviets, though.

[dawg]

21. Depends on the scale of the engagement.

From everything I've read, the allies were not capable, at that time, of projecting conventional force comparable to that available to Stalin. Although we in the West fixate on the D-day invasion and the Western front, the war in the East involved many more men and was much more key to the collapse of German resistance. If the Russians had turned on the allied forces with the limited goal of "liberating" all of Germany, I don't think they could have been repelled with the conventional forces available to the allies at the time.

[Captain Hilts]

26. Yes, but we could have held ground well. Remember, we held our forces back. nt

[Old Troop]

43. Good point. The book doesn't mention the US combat manpower

shortage in 1945 or the significant breakdown of allied discipline in rear areas including platoon sized groups of bandits.

[MicaelS]

32. The US would have won

But only after nuking most Soviet cities. And we had several thousand TONS of poison gasses stockpiled for the invasion of Japan we could have used on the USSR. Probably another 10-30 million dead in Europe before it was over.

[PassingFair]

33. Read this:

By the time you're finished, you won't know
what the eff happened to you.



:crazy:

[proteus_lives]

47. Love that book.

I'm a alternate history buff.

[PassingFair]

48. I've read it three times and I STILL don't get it. And I still LIKE it.

Next to his Exegesis, I think it's his
strangest work. Yet it was his biggest
commercial and literary success.

:crazy:

I think I'm following it, but by the
end of the book ...it's still...WTF?

[rug]

35. It entirely depends on whose side Switzeland entered.

[Old Troop]

40. Good point and don't forget the Swiss Guards at the Vatican

[proteus_lives]

41. The Soviets would have rehashed the Nazi conquest.

Early successes, later failures.

They probably would have kicked the Allies out of Europe but they wouldn't have made it to England. The Soviet naval capabilities were limited and they had no experience in cross-sea landings.

Our air-power was vastly superior. US/UK pilots would chopped-up Soviet formations piece-meal.

And in the end, US had the nuke and no clear understanding of it's effects. We would used atomics repeatedly until the Soviets threw in the towel.

[RandomThoughts]

44. Throw in the towel, saw that in a video recently.

Where one of the riders in black did that. Don't think it was the soviets although it is not about a hypothetical war between nations. Riders in back were men that gave into greed to follow the Ring of Power.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=9361079&mesg_id=9361372

Second video has that scene in it. at 2:15, the new tea time mentioned on The Daily Show on Comedy Central last night.

Interesting. :D

[JanMichael]

45. For one the USSR was part of "The Allies" but if they...

...had attacked their former allies after crushing Nazi Germany, which they did, we would have been kicked straight out of Europe. At that moment they had a very battle tested ground force that had fought back from the brink of destruction, fought house to house, street to street for around 1,000 miles to bear down on the major cities of Germany. They had pretty much perfected ground to ground - ground and pound with tanks and those Katushka Rockets. Hell they had women bomber pilots too.

After that who knows. It would have been ugly.

[proteus_lives]

46. Too-long supply lines, inferior air-force and no nukes.

It would ended very badly for the USSR.

[Angleae]

49. Had it happened, Moscow would have suffered the same as Hiroshima/Nagasaki.

[quakerboy]

50. the cockroaches.

Of all sorts. The cost to both sides would make the things that came before look like childs play.

We had the industrial capacity. They had the nichievo(sp). Personally looking at things, I strongly doubt there would have been any quick resolution to that war if it had gone hot.


Alternately, what if the Pact between Hitler and Stalin had held?

[Lurks Often]

51. Would have been messy

The Allies had an overwhelming edge at sea, however that would not have made much of an impact. I think the Soviets would have had a slight edge on the ground with more troops and better tanks. We had a significant edge in the air, which likely would have been the deciding factor.

I think Patton was by far the best Army commander on both sides and the flatter terrain as you move east would have favored his style of warfare and made things much easier for the fighter-bombers of the Army Air Corp, which would have exacted a terrible toll on the Soviet army.

In the end, the Allies win, but casualties would have been heavier then against the Germans.