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Defeat Of Germany In WW2 Was Possible Without U.S. Help, Russia Says

Discussion in 'WWII Today' started by BeeGeesOne, Jun 24, 2017.

  1. JCM6395

    JCM6395 New Member

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    if the Royal Air Force doesn't win the Battle of Britain in 1940....England sues for peace and the Soviets are toast in 1941. No way the Russians by themselves defeat the full power of the Wehrmacht.
     
  2. RichTO90

    RichTO90 Well-Known Member

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    I didn't think either you or Lou were. Nor was I referring to the poll, but rather to the mass of "what if"/alt-facts threads that over-populate this and other fora...
     
  3. OpanaPointer

    OpanaPointer I Point at Opana Staff Member WW2|ORG Editor

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    What-iffing is called "war gaming" at Newport.
     
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  4. RichTO90

    RichTO90 Well-Known Member

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    Yep...starting from a reasonable premise and following a logical sequence based upon known data.

    Most "what ifs" start with a premise on the order of "what of Napoleon had B-52s at Waterloo" and go downhill from there...
     
  5. GunSlinger86

    GunSlinger86 Well-Known Member

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    I'm paraphrasing, but Stalin also said at Tehran that this was a war of octanes and engines, and without American manufacturing it couldn't be won. Some of the best equipped and best fighting divisions of the German Army were in Italy, someone else pointed out the Italian theater in an earlier post, which is a good point.
     
  6. OpanaPointer

    OpanaPointer I Point at Opana Staff Member WW2|ORG Editor

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    Amatuer wargaming is ill-informed and mostly for entertainment. However, the War College and Naval War College use war gaming to study "what if" situations. The IJN war gamed the raid on Pearl Harbor. In one scenario they lost several carriers before getting there. They didn't call off the games, they reset. The carriers weren't actually sunk. But there were more scenarios to study. So they went on. I sometimes imagine the carriers resurfacing like a boomer showing off for the cameras.
     
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  7. RichTO90

    RichTO90 Well-Known Member

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    I would give a cogent reply, but it is difficult with a cat sleeping on one hand...
     
  8. OpanaPointer

    OpanaPointer I Point at Opana Staff Member WW2|ORG Editor

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    You wait until you get purrmission. I'll be here.
     
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  9. LRusso216

    LRusso216 Graybeard Staff Member

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    I didn't mean to veer off into "what if territory. I avoid those threads like the plague. I was merely positing that the response to the poll was based on emotion, not fact. I certainly can't marshal facts as you do, but the average Russian and the average American answer such polls without understanding the issues that are posted here.
     
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  10. RichTO90

    RichTO90 Well-Known Member

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    Purrmission finally granted, but then distracted by grill duties...steak, sausage, and asparagus... Yum! Did I mention malbec? I think I had a point a one point.

    Yes, the Japanese got a lot of grief for doing just what such wargaming was meant to allow. What makes it really interesting was at one point the Japanese were as a result of the wargames planning on sacrificing Kido Butai to gain the result they wanted.
     
  11. lwd

    lwd Ace

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    Gas and Biological weren't linked with atomic at the time. Furthermore Germany was lacking in delivery systems where the Western allies weren't. I suspect the use of chemical and/or biological warfare would have tipped the scale even more against Germany. The use of NBC weapons could potentially increase the chance of affecting Hitler as well which might result in a more pragmatic German government and an earlier surrender.
     
  12. BeeGeesOne

    BeeGeesOne New Member

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    The big advantage would be the Atlantic Ocean between them. The US didn't have Germany in their backyard. The advantage Germany had on others was their proximity to them. If there had been no English Channel dividing the UK from Continental Europe, the Battle of Britain's outcome just may have been different. The Soviet Union took the beating it did due to its proximity to Germany and whether on not Germany could have been defeated with zero aid or support from others is questionable if they were even able to defeat them. They weren't far from being defeated themselves.
     
  13. belasar

    belasar Court Jester

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    All too often people reduce the discussion to a exercise in 'bayonet counting', and while that has its value, it is never a comparison of apples to apples but of one of apples to oranges. You are correct in that if the English Channel had been a wide river Great Britain (the island) would have been conquered because their army had been defeated in France. Conversely though the German Army had not been designed to fight a long war of attrition in the East. For the US, the Atlantic was no barrier, indeed America fought a two ocean war to victorious conclusions at the same time. The US had both the industry and technology to overcome those obstacles. Victory for Both the Soviet Union and the United States would come largely as a matter of will and the willingness to pay the price in blood to win.

    In this scenario I would give the SU a slight upper hand to stick it out, but only slight. .
     
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  14. green slime

    green slime Member

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    I would also like to point out the fact that the Soviets actually did managed to stop the Germans before Moscow. American Lend-Lease to the USSR was not at that time tangible at all. UK's contribution was not trivial by the time of the battle around Moscow, especially in the context of the massive losses the Soviets had suffered, but that deserves to be examined further.(Whether it was decisive or not is not at all determined). By December ´41, the Wehrmacht was a spent force, or they wouldn't have been beaten back from the gates of Moscow, regardless of the outcome of the Battle of Britain. The Battle of Britain did not inflict 200,000 missing and dead Germans, 600,000 wounded Germans, nor render 2/3 of the German tanks available in July '41 in the East useless by December '41. The Battle of Britain did not prevent the Germans from effectively replacing their losses in manpower, aircraft, or tanks. While Soviet losses were massive, it was their entirely unanticipated ability to replace their manpower that kept them in the war. The Germans never did replace their losses adequately. There was no way Germany was going to win in the East short of a coup or utter collapse in the Soviet leadership.

    The Nazi economy was dependent on exploiting the captured territories in the West. With peace in the West, Germany doesn't get to exploit it's captured territories to the degree it did historically; it can't extract slave labour from France, it can't charge for occupation troops that aren't there, and it can't buy goods (including food) at reduced prices... In other words, the shaky German economy just got a lot worse. A worse economy means it is less likely to attract civilian workers from across the continent too. 7 million civilian workers from across Europe... This radically reduces the size of the population available to the armed forces, if the factories are to produce anything, and anyone is to actually eat.

    Neither is it certain that the extra German divisions spread out in Europe would've had any positive effect in those first 6 months of the Great Patriotic War: Partisan activity was as yet minimal, and the German logistics in the East were already severely strained. Counting German divisions is problematic, as their quality varies greatly, No body is going to equate an Fallschirmsjäger or SS-motorised division with a division of Ost-truppen. There is a reason the Hiwi and Osttruppen were given defensive duties and rear area duties.

    The LW was taking a beating in the East and fumbling on its hands and knees trying to survive, even before the Western bombers acerbated the problem by bombing Germany.

    Regardless, without the German desired Soviet political collapse, it is hard to see how Germany would cope with continued fighting in Russia, regardless of war against the Western Allies. It was Nazi Germany that suffered an attempted coup in 1944, but attempts on Hitlers life go back even prior to the war with startling regularity.

    List of assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler - Wikipedia
     
    Last edited: Aug 4, 2017
  15. BeeGeesOne

    BeeGeesOne New Member

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    Well this begs the question, we know that there were many Soviet citizens that welcomed the Germans. There's footage of whole towns welcoming them (though I can't remember which off top my head). Why didn't we see a Soviet political collapse? It seemed like the conditions were perfect for it.
     
  16. green slime

    green slime Member

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    a) Many? That's a subjective non-number. We know the Ukrainian nationalists were looking for an independent Ukraine, but that wasn't on the cards. They weren't a significant force prior to, nor in ´41, they were acknowledged a "fringe" group, and those that existed in '41 found themselves more often than not dead.
    b) We know cities and towns where atrocities were carried out against Jews immediately. Strange these were never captured on those films made by the German invading army, it couldn't be propaganda pictures, could it? After a decade of anti-slavic anti-jewish propaganda, the ordinary German soldier wasn't very tolerant.
    c) If an old couple has their country invaded, their army has fled, they can hide in the barn and hope not to get burnt to a crisp by some kid playing around with a flamethrower, or they could wave a white flag and invite them to tea. Decisions, decisions. BTW, in 1917, the correct answer was "tea." Doesn't make them anti-communist, it makes them pragmatic survivors.
    d) The average Soviet citizen had seen a huge increase in living standards in the previous 6-8 years, far greater than the German workers, whose Real wage earnings had at best stagnated. Most Soviet citizens believed in what they were creating. So conditions were not as rife as the German stories re-told and re-imagined during the Cold War would have us believe.
    e) The worse time in Moscow was in October '41 during the Battle of Bryansk (looting was occurring in Moscow), as plans were being made to evacuate Moscow. Then Stalin decided to stay. We don't know why he suddenly appeared to change his mind, or if he had actually really intended to leave (preparations had been made, government had been evacuated). At the time he decided to stay, the atmosphere of panic subsided. The usual narrative is because of Stalin's decision to stay. The NKVD stopped the looting. Order was restored.
    f) The was never any significant "5th column", and no known challenge to Stalin's leadership during the Great Patriotic war. It was robust. There was no resistance against Soviet rule behind Soviet lines in Russia proper, not until they once gain captured Western Ukraine, and the Batlic states. You would think that if it were truly as bad as some people would have us believe, that more would've tried to seize areas ahead of the arrival of the German troops to gain concessions.
     

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