USSR VS.USA

I am sorry but the information is far from 'fact' Please be good enough to supply some checkable information and NUMBERS.
History Channel as a source? Please...........!!!!

Quote:
"Once again, someone's provided you with facts, but it seems to be a one-way process"

It must be comforting to know you have a special grasp of 'the facts' when other can't seem to see that which is obvious to you.

Instead of trying to make this a personal issue can we concentrate on the subject in hand?

 

In terms of a east vs west war in 1945 then the outcome is far from unclear. The Soviet forces would have been at breaking point due to losses and the Allies would have been under the strain of many years at war. Certainly the Germans expertise in fighting the Soviets would have been needed but there are many communist sympathetic groups in Europe. What would have happened in soviet occupied areas if a west vs east war broke out? would we see Polish partisans attacking the Soviets? What would be the response of other European Allies such as France? It seems possible that a war would have been initially to favour the west but would soon become a bogged down attrional war similar to some sectors of the Eastern Front and possibly like WW1 as the weariness of war creeps into the armies and brings them to a standstill. It would seem at best a stalemate situation unless the west was willing to deploy atomic weapons in the struggle.

 

To those of you underestimating the Russians, think about this: The very same mistake was made by General McArthur in the Koren War with the Chinese...!

 

And to take the heat out of this thread I don't go too much into 'what if's' and am basing my belief on the performance of the Red Army in WWII. They had the dubious pleasure of being on the recieving end of the best the German Armed Forces could offer and they rode the punches, recovered, got back up and delivered a knockout blow in return. No Western Nation could have taken that punishment and survived. I don't care about Communism or Capitalism. Stalin may have been as evil as Hitler but the performance of the Russian soldier in WWII was magnificent.

 

Was it "mad"?Patton's idea that is.According to some here it would have been a cake walk.Track records? NO ONE has invaded Russia and won! NO ONE.The Air force might level Russia but troops still have to go in.Did the allies have the stomach for storming the cities?Remember we let the Russian's storm Berlin so they'd rack up the casualties.France?They'd fold like a bad poker hand as always,even today!M Kenny,you have some good arguments but remember Germany had us bombing and invading from the west[2 fronts].Something the allies face now in my "what if".Remember we'd have to still invade Japan[no nukes]and they don't surrender!Probably stalemate. FramerT.

 

Let me take this question in another direction, particularly for m kenny. I an operational level battle given each (the US and Soviet) army's doctrine, orgainzation and, equipment as it stood in say, September 1945 how would a Soviet offensive US defensive or, the reverse situation say division on division (corps for the then current Soviet orgainzation) or corps on corps (army for the Soviets)(eg., roughly "equal" sized units) fall out?
I would contend that given roughly equal material odds the US units would crush their Soviet opponets. Without extreme mass (and resulting horrendous casualities) as the Soviets used against the Germans they would fail to win in combat against the US (or West) on an operational level. I would also contend that in 1945 the Soviets could no longer sustain such casualities in a long term (year or more) war.

 

Quote:
"I would contend that given roughly equal material odds the US units would crush their Soviet opponets".

could be .........

quote:
"Without extreme mass (and resulting horrendous casualities) as the Soviets used against the Germans they would fail to win in combat against the US (or West) on an operational level".

But in 1945 they had all the advantages you say they needed to succeed. You also say the US could stand the resulting losses...arguable but it is known the Russians could take that level of loss. Manpower was extremely short for all Nations in 1945. Both the US and Britain had severe shortages of combat troops starting in mid 1944. It would not be a Russian problem alone.

 

No one has called it a cake walk, I would imagine the war would last well into the '50's, but still, I think the West would win. As for no one invading Russia and winning, well, no one has invaded the United States and won either, or the modern United Kingdom (since 1066). And there is no evidence we didn't take Berlin becuase we were unwilling to face the casualties, I think it is widely agreed we simply decided to not suffer the casualties becuase the occupied zones had already been decided on, and Eisenhower and the politicians didn't want to waste troops lives to liberate regions of Germany that the Soviets would get just to get to Berlin.

 

And of course no one has invaded Canada and won! Not a valid comparison though is it? Russia has been invaded several times in her past and the the invader always suffered the same fate. The sheer number of Soviet troops in Europe in 1945 meant they would have been able to continue the offensive west quite easily and though they would take casualties they proved they could live with that. Patton also tried to blindly charge into the Falaise bottleneck because he thought he could handle it there as well but wiser men than him realised he would be trampled and refused him permission. His dash to the German border did not turn out the way he planned either did it?

 

The Mongols did it in the 13th Century. They overran virtually all of what eventually became the Soviet Union.

 

But there is a major difference between invasion and conquest. It would be out of the US ablity to invade and then hold the territory, the reason no-one wins is that the country is too vast to police properly. The more likely result would be a stalemate somewhere in eastern europe followed by a korean war style peace brokering.

 

Well, cannot be sure if Ike was the guy who could decide for all that on his own but I think it was a very good call that he did not fall for Patton´s and Monty´s plans to attack Berlin/Russians because that would have caused a huge war and I bet both Patton and Monty would have regretted it later on. In this case I think no-ones really a winner if war should break out, all are losers.

 

Allow me to place a few parameters:

1) The question up for debate is who would win a war in Europe. Clearly in the long run the USSR had no real way to affect the continental United States, and thus could never really permanently win a war in 1945-1946.
2) Obviously we are ignoring atomic weapons for the moment. Stalin was not prepared to risk a struggle until such time as he had his own atomic weapons to balance the scales of global power.

Given those caveats, I have to say it seems pretty clear that the USSR would win a war against US forces in Europe, though by no means would it be easy. Too many people are comparing the mid war soviet army with the end-war US army. By late 1945 the Soviet army had managed to overcome almost all of its doctrinal and tactical deficiencies of the early war, there were no shortages of materials or machinery, except possibly for civilian converted transports, as the USSR still used US imported trucks (And continued to do so until well into the post-war years) Notably however, the US was also facing a huge shortage of trucks and troop transports at the time, so that places them on pretty much even footing.

In terms of equipment, the Soviets deployed better armour, better SPGs, better machine guns, better artillery and rocket artillery. The US deployed significantly better bombers, better rifles, better communications. In terms of air power, the quality of the top air fighters was actually about equal. However, while the USSR had vastly more aircraft in the theatre, the US has more of their top-line fighter. Pilot skill was again equal, with the edge going to the USSR, however the US had a more effective pilot replacement training program than the USSR.

Now consider that Soviet forces in theatre outnumbered US forces by about 3 to 1 or more, and that of the troops deployed, far more of the Soviet forces were veterans.

So clearly the US would have won a large scale engagement in the short term (though not easily) but considering caveat #1, this would have been a victory of 4 years or so at best, and considering caveat #2, it would have ended much sooner with a series of small mushroom clouds…

 

Let us compare US and USSR armies.
In 1945 totally 85 allied divisions (4.600.000 men )invaded Germany , while USSR had at the same time 12.000.000 men with 5.000 heavy, 12.000 medium ,9.000 light tanks and 10.000 SPG's, was unmatched in firepower ( only in the operation of Berlin we used 20.000 artillery pieces , mortars are not considered).
And what about "quality" ? US Army generally consisted of dogsboys (unlike US Navy and USAF).Only two US division had seen action when allies landed in Normandy. There Americans faced 56 second-quality demoralised German division,short of everything (compare it with 2.500.000 Germans at the East), and could defeat them only because they absolutely overhelmed them in number of men, all kind of weapons and air superiority.Americans are proud of Patton and Cobra, but they forget that it became successful only because in Normandy best Wermacht and SS divisions fought against British and Canadians, who desperately tried to hold the left flank of the invasion and tried to capture Caen(I think British veterans would approve my opinion). But when Americans faced really elite nazi forces in Ardennes, which again were short of fuel and had no air support, it became a complete disaster for yankee. Even in the April of 1945 the weakest German 12 Army could stop US divisions at Elba. So, GI were not very skillful warriors.
At the same time, the backbone of Soviet Army consisted of well-equiped veterans and talanted military leaders, who smashed Wermacht. In 1942 Germans had 6.000.000 excellent soldiers in Russia.In 1944 - only 2.500.000 and German losses by the January of 1944 were 3.000.000 men. I ask you , how many Germans had been killed by Americans by the same time ? In fact, the only help for Russians in the early period of the war was the stubborn resistance of 8'th Army in Africa.
Totally, Soviet Army destroyed 607 German divisions and 75% of thier weapond and equipment. Somebody wrote here about exellent B-17 , B-24 and Pershings. Has he heard something about JS-1 and JS-2 or La-7 and Yak-3? Corean war clearly showed that T34's were much better than Shermans.And indeed yes , P-51 was a splendid high-altitude fighter , but when in Romania two Mustangs attacked our ace Kozhedub ( he flew La-7 ,his score is more 60 German planes )by mistake , he had no options but to shoot one them,while another rapidly retreated.
So, the only advantage of US Army were A-bomb and its ally - British Army. Don't forget that Patton also wanted to throw Tommies back into English Channel. He greatly disliked everybody : Monty ( who , along with several other British generals, such as Dempsey and Horrocks ,in my opinion was the best and most talented Allied military leaders ), British, Russians, but treated Goring , the worst nazi criminal as the dear guest.
So does anybody still beleive that US could defeat USSR in May of 1945 ?

 

Uhm USSR vs. USA 1945...nice to see some threads coming back every three years.

"only" advantage, well I can't underwrite this. In 1945, the USSR was experienced and on full war footing, but already on it's zenith and already facing manpower problems. At the same time, the U.S. was still creeping into a "total war" footing, with quite some war potential not put into the game.

But how much we debate about a conventional USSR superiority...as you say, the U.S. advantage was the A-bomb. And this was a decisive advantage, a clear matchwinner: How many A-bombs would it have needed to

a) kill off the conventional advantage of the Red Army
b) destroy the Soviet key industries
c) turn Moscow, Kiev, Leningrad and let's say three other major Soviet cities into crematorias?

Not conventionally. But a couple A-bombs from August 1945 onwards would have completely changed the game.

Cheers,

[ 08. January 2004, 04:13 PM: Message edited by: AndyW ]

 

The USA had plans to invade Canada in the 20's and 30's, its something a nations military always does even in peacetime, plan for every situation.

 

Dear Andy W !

I wrote that US couldn't defeat USSR but I didn't write that USSR could defeat USA.

Yes, US could bomb Soviet cities, but in this case Red Army would quite rapidly smash that unlucky US divisions in Western Europe and capture Germany , France and Italy. Do you really think that Truman would order also to bomb Paris, Rome, Praha, Warsaw etc. and US POWs ( we would capture great numbers of them I suppose - in case of second "Dunkerque" British first would avacuate their own soldiers ).
So, a coulpe of bomb won't bring victory , just a draw; by the way ,we successfully fought against Germany without half of European Russia, so we could do the same with a "couple" of A-bombed cities.
And about what Red Army zenith do you write if during the Cold war our army became stronger than not only US Army , but entire NATO ! (OVD had more than 60.000 tanks)

Best regards.

[ 09. January 2004, 08:03 AM: Message edited by: Alexanderr ]

 

Redcoat,
Agreed, but the point I was making was that if the all-conquering Red Army was as invincible as some believe, why didn't they put it into action?
Because they knew the consequences.

Regards,
Gordon

 

Where do I start with this nonsense?
Ok, starting at the top:
The Soviets produced just over 3300 IS 1 and 2 tanks prior to the end of WW II. Where does the 5000 number come from? A bit over 4000 IS series assault guns were produced in the same time period. The most common assault gun in Soviet service in 1945 was the SU 76 comprising well over 50% of those in service.
The US had in 1945 a total of 4,194,000 men in the ground forces WORLD WIDE. Of those, almost 600,000 were listed as ineffectives due to wounds, medical problems, etc. If one includes the French, British etc in the total invading Europe in 1944 it amounted to far less than the 4.6 million listed.
I also doubt (and this is without looking it up) that the combat strength of the Red Army much exceeded 3 million in 1945.
As to US Army quality: "Only two division (sic) had seen action when the allies (sic)landed in Normandy..."
The 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 36th, 45th Infantry Divisions, 82nd Airborne, 1st, 2nd, 3rd Armored Divisions had all seen action variously in North Africa, Sicily and or Italy prior to Normandy to name but a few. Most US divisions had been given 1 + years of training prior to going into action. Some, like the 88th to name one, had almost 2 years training. With a few exceptions (usually ones that had heavy draws on their manpower during training for replacements) US divisions performed quite well in combat. How many Red Army divisions got a year of training prior to going into action......Do I hear none?
"There Americans faced 56 second quality demoralized...." What nonsense. The 1st, 2nd, 9th, 10th and 12th SS Panzer Divisions were second quality and demoralized?!! Lehr, 2nd, 9th, 11th and 116th Panzer second rate demoralized?!!! The 352nd ID on Omaha Beach second rate? The 3rd and 5th Fallschirmjäger second rate?!!! I could go on and on with this. The US (and other Western Allies) fought some of the cream of the German Army in 1944 and 45. Certainly, the same CANNOT be said for Army Group Center in July 1944 during Bagration where the Red Army with up to a 10 - 1 + advantage took well over 3 days just to break the German front and then still faced stout resistance once they managed to rout the initial defenses.
"At the same time, the backbone of Soviet Army consisted of well-equipped veterans..."
The 1st Guards Tank Corps was equipped entirely with US tanks in 1945. The most widely used "light" tank in Soviet use in 1945 was the British Valentine. The word Studebaker was synomous with "truck" due to the amount of lend-lease vehicles in use in the Red Army at the time. As to those veterans....in many Red Army units in 1945 the rank and file were impressed troops from the far flung reaches and recently liberated Eastern European nations who didn't even speak Russian. They couldn't even communicate with their officers! The Soviets were scrapping the bottom of the barrel for manpower in 1945.
"Totally, Soviet Army destroyed 607 German divisions..." The Germans in total didn't raise 607 divisions. The total was closer to 400 even if you include rebuilt divisions. How many Red Army divisions were destroyed (some as many as 3 or 4 times) during the war? The US had one division destroyed....the 106th Infantry. After France 1940 the British lost one division in Europe: 1st Airborne at Arnheim.
As I have already noted, from 1945 to present Soviet armor and Soviet style armored tactics and training has not won a single major armored action against Western armor using Western tactics. That includes Korea. ("Corean war clearly showed that T34's were much better than Shermans....").
The Red Army fought bravely in a desperate battle against Germany and prevailed in WW II. They took the brunt of the battle on land almost alone for much of the war. I do not wish to take anything from that achievement. But, it was a battle won far more by brute force against an overstretched and economically overmatched enemy than by finesse and superior tactical and operational technique.
The US and Britian, likewise had their flaws and strenghts and they too fought just as hard and successfully against Germany.
But, had the two (East and West) met in 1945 - 46 brute force alone would have given the Russians no advantage aganist the superior economic might and far better population reserves of the West.
So, I still believe the US could have defeated the USSR in May of 1945 even without nuclear weapons.

 

It is unlikely that even given best odds, surprise and, everything going just so for the Red Army that it could have pushed beyond the Rhine even if virtually unopposed. Look at the battles fought in the East in 1944 and 45 by the Red Army. The furthest advances range from 200 - 300 miles in distance at which point the Red Army outruns its supply lines and halts. What always followed was a 6 to 8 month halt while the supply system caught up with the advance. Why should this change if there was an East - West conflict in 1945 - 46?
So, let's say this happens. The Russians reach the Rhine at most. The US, Britain, etc bomb the Soviet economy into the stone age (and, the longer the war goes the bigger the economic and scientific advantage to the West is. Just one example jets...The US and Britain had operational jets in May 1945. The Soviets didn't. Without the Rolls-Royce Nene no Mig 15 either later...Being saddled with nothing better than the Jumo 004 or 011 isn't going to cut the mustard against Western jets by mid 46). The Western nations will build up their forces faster than the Soviets can manage. At best (for the Soviets) a ground stalemate ensues. At worst the Soviets are ripped apart in a counter offensive. The likely outcome even in this scenario is the Soviets end up losing all of Europe and negotiating a peace at their original 1939 borders.