Could the Western Allies Win Without the USSR?

Thanks for the data. So, the total heavy bomber losses of the allied powers would be 14.000 during the war, I guessed 15.000, that would be 40% of total american production! Quite a lot, don't you think?

Btw, are this total losses or it counts partial losses too?

What about that:

 

I ignored that because if the we consider a Soviet attack we have a different what-if
This what-if is Could the Western Allies Win Without the URSS. A Soviet attack, probably in 1942 or 1943 as Stalin was not so crazy as to attack with an Army still recovering after the purges, is a completely different scenario. If you can't find a reason for Stalin to stay out of the fracass immagine the British had gone ahead with their plan to bomb Baku, after that he is not going to be well disposed towards the western democracies, that had alrady intervened heavily against the reds after WW1, so he decides to wait until the two opponents bleed themselves white and limit hmself to any "low hanging fruits" in the meantime. As long as Hitler is not winning he has no reason to get involved. He will probably eventually stop the supplies unless Hitler can find something to pay him back with.

 

the allies would not have been able to win the war without the help of the ussr in the first place

 

You seem to think once a piece of equipment is made it should last to the wars end. Perhaps you should look at German loss rates and then you will find out just how 'high' they can get.
Start with the total AFV production of Germany and subtract all still in service in say March 1945. What was that 'loss rate'?
Bet the Germans wished it was 40%!

 

This is a fascinating topic to me because I am writing a paper on how Germany might have won the war. I would argue that with the USSR conquered the Nazis could then use the natural resources of the agrarian east and caucuses to fuel their military, gas for tanks and aircraft, metals for vehicle construction, and food for soldiers. They could have diverted russian war goods such as tanks and aircraft, (the T-34s being superior to the panzer), and man power to the western theater and rebuked a normandy invasion. Operation sealion could have been realized and from there Germany could have used long range bombers to hit the United States and possibly invade. Well, obviously this is a huge chain of events, and alot of things would of had to of happened ideally. I also beleive that Hitler would have had to be out of power for this to happen because as we know, he was worth more to the allies alive then dead, due to his piss poor decisions such as Dunkirk and the decision to hold Stalingrad.

 

Hi Fox,

A few things you are going to need to address to make this a solid paper:

How does this happpen?

Careful here, Soviet scorched-earth and poor German logistics are going to make this difficult. Make sure you present a reasonable timetable for these events

The defeat of the USSR does nothing to immediately help the German Navy. Therefore, Sealion is still unreasonable

First of all, Germany had no long range strategic bomber, they were not a strategic air force. Second, no country had a plane that was capable of flying across the Atlantic and back

Feel free to post up your paper for editing before you hand it in

 

Well after researching, my main source being Andrew Nagorski's The Greatest Battle, it seemed that Hitler's main mistake was waiting. Again. In the second half of september he waited for three weeks to decide what to do, and instead of deciding to attack moscow before fall rains set in he instead went for Kiev. My arguement was that if Hitler used the center combat group during these three weeks, a couple hundred miles of moscow at the time, to capture moscow this would have facilitated easier captures of other russian cities, and neautralized russian war fighting capability. From there it is possible that the japanse could have pushed in an eastern pincer and sealed the deal on the russian empire.

Good call about the scorched earth, I'll need to revise that. How wide spread was this policy throughout Russia during barbarossa?

The defeat of the USSR does free up over 100 divisons of troops, tanks, aircraft, and material. These could then be diverted for use in operation sea lion.

Germany was researching a long range bomber which was capable of hitting NYC (a sort of flying wing before gruman's trials) atleast towards the end of the war, and if sealion was a success they could have bought more time to research and develop long range capability and tactics, and or the atomic bomb.

Again, its always hard to play the speculation game because so many variables come into play, especially with the allied over the axis.

 

The rains were certainly in effect by that point, it was more the delay and diversion of forces that is controversial. Although you have to consider whether it was worth exposing his flank and driving right for Moscow.

Its not that simple. Moscow is three times as large as Stalingrad, the Germans were running on one rail line per army group, the forces around Moscow were dreadfully undersupplied and by November they had lost all major offensive capabilities.

Not a chance, Japan had much more than it could handle in the Pacific and had recently had unfavorable encounters with the Soviets

It was pretty uniform, the Germans certainly wouldn't have captured any oilfields intact.

Believe it or not, this was less of the issue for the Germans in Sealion. They lacked a navy, something clearly essential for a naval invasion.

The Germans were developing a lot of things, not all of them reasonable.

Take Lou's advice, search Sealion and Moscow and long range german bombers before writing your paper, it will be of much help

 

The question really is "why wouldn't Hitler attack the Soviets?" He was initially allied with them in 1939-40, and receiving substantial material support from them up until the point in time when he launched his surprise attack on them. he actually should have been attempting to get them to join the Tri-Partite Pact, but he attacked them instead; that seems counter-intuitive or just plain stupid.

But Hitler didn't see it that way. If the Soviets had continued in an alliance with Germany, even after Germany captured most of Western Europe, the economic, industrial, and material weakness of Germany's position meant that Germany would become increasingly dependent on the USSR as time went along. It would be the USSR that became the dominant power in the Axis, NOT Germany or Japan. Therefore Hitler felt he had to attack the Soviets in order to gain control of the resources of the Soviet Union. Furthermore, Hitler was convinced that Stalin was determined to attack Western Europe sooner or later, and he was determined to beat Stalin to the punch.

Not even close. On paper, the resources of Germany and the occupied territories in Western Europe may have been comparable to the US, but in reality the economic and industrial base were operating under several constraints which crippled Germany's capacity to utilize them to wage war. Coal, oil, and food supplies were all very scarce in Europe in the fall of 1940. In addition, the US could, and did, produce five or six times the number of aircraft that Germany (including the occupied territories) could during any comparable time period, and this does not include the productive capacity of the British Empire. The hard fact is that Germany, plus the rest of the European economy, industrial base, and material resources, were no match at all for just the US, let alone the US and the British Empire. That was another reason Hitler felt it necessary to attack the USSR in a desperate gamble to obtain a secure source of raw materials.

Wrong!

The Wehrmacht was the most powerful weapon under Hitler's command, and effectively defeated both the French and British armies in 1940, but that was it's high point, and it was far from being the "best fighting force in the world" in 1942. It couldn't stop the Soviets, the Americans, or the British, after 1942. The Wehrmacht's equipment, by 1942, was outdated and rapidly being outclassed by that of the Western Allies and the Soviets. More importantly, it was deficient in staff planning, logistics, engineering, and doctrinally did not have an edge on any belligerent army. The Germans were never "supermen", and the best German units, those with good training and up-to-date equipment, were spread too thin to seriously effect the course of the war after 1942.

I'd recommend "The Wages of Destruction" by Adam Tooze as a reality check on your inflated opinion of the German Armed Forces.

 

Stalin's scorched earth policy was ubiquitous and ruthlessly applied; it probably starved as many Russian peasants as it did Germans. But it was extremely effective in denying the Germans fodder for their mostly horse-drawn army, and meant that everything that the Germans needed had to be shipped from Germany over the hopelessly inadequate German logistical system. By the time the Wehrmacht neared Moscow, they were short of just about everything they needed to sustain their offensive.

As what? Boat anchors?

Germany wasn't short of troops for Operation Sealion, that was about the only requirement they could be sure of fulfilling. What they desperately needed and didn't have, was air and naval supremacy in and over the Channel. Without that, it didn't matter how many spare divisions they had, they weren't going to be able to successfully execute the invasion of Britain.

Germany was "researching" a lot of really far out stuff at the end of the war, but none of it was realistic as a military threat. The Germans never had the economic or industrial capacity to build a creditable long range strategic bomber fleet, nor the fuel to operate such a fleet had they been able to build it. Operation Sealion was never a real possibility because the German navy was so weak, so there was no way for them to "buy more time". They had given up on the atomic bomb long before the Americans got in the war because their chief nuclear scientist, Heisenberg, had screwed up his calculations on how big such a bomb had to be to work; The Germans thought it would be almost as big as a house and impossible to transport in any foreseeable aircraft. Besides that, they never had anywhere near enough fissionable material to build an atomic bomb.

The only really effective military force the Germans had was their Army and it couldn't go anywhere except by land, so it was limited to the European continent. And not only that, it's effectiveness was constrained by deficient logistical and engineering capabilities. Essentially, Germany was militarily helpless outside of continental Europe. The only real exception to this during the whole of World War II was the Norway campaign and that only worked for them because of the incompetence of the British General Staff and political leadership.

 

Oh I understand but I'm just pointing out some of the fine print that gets in the way of these type of discussions. I was in a debate over on warships1.com about the USN versus the HSF .In that scenario the US joins the war as per historical in April of 1917 but the UK drops out a couple of months later because German U-Boats force her out. The problem with that is unrestricted sub warfare is what got the US involved in the first place and an earlier start date for said type of warfare would have the US entering the war sooner and in April,1917 would have a much larger army then the historical 150,000 +. Another case in point is all of these UK & Germany versus the US in 1914 or 1915 1916 or whatever scenarios that make it in the internet forums ,the problem is you really have to rewrite about 40 years of prior history to get Germany & the UK alligned against the UK and act like the US won;t get alarmed at such an alliance considering the attitudes Germany had towards the US at that time. Anyways I'm ranting & am sorry about that but trust me I'm not directing it necessarily at you. To be a better scenario would be if Hitler held off till stalin attacked him but that's JMHO.

 

Simply put that's an absurd defintion of "poor fighter". The US was always more willing to throw money and bullets than men at thier opponents but that hardly makes them poor fighters. It just means that the US command has more respect for individual soldiers, sailors, and marines. Arguably it makes the US a better fighter.

 

Given that he was presumed to be a critical part of the problem the first bomb may well have been timed to hit a city while he was there. If he's still alive and in power I agree he wont surrender.

You have this backward. Germany avoided using gas because they didn't want to face the allied retaliation. The allies didn't use it because they didn't feel it was necessary (Britian considered it in the event of a succesful German invasion of Britain). However atomic weapons were not considered to be in the same catagory as gas or biologicals at that time.

Yes.

 

TOS, answered it perfectly...

 

As long as they can pay for it. How long is that going to be? And how much stronger are they making the Soviets in the process?

 

A great read.

This decision was on more of a political scale rather than a military one (we have discussed this decision by Hitler on another thread). Several important factors played into the decision to go after Kiev. For one, Germany's original strategy was to destroy as many armies in the field which she could and 4 Soviet armies in one sweep was very enticing We must also remember that taking Kiev would eliminate any chance of the Russians bombing the crucial oil fields in Romania. Ukraine was also a bread basket, taking Kiev and eliminating the Red Armies would secure all the food which the Wehrmacht needed to continue its campaign in the east. Finally, in the opening weeks of Barbarossa (I believe Timoshenko) ambushed AGS with the first major artillery assault of the war. Before retreating, the Soviet general did manage to inflict heavy casualties on the advancing German force. This assault ultimately convinced Hitler of reinforcing the army heading to take Kiev.

 

Well it seems that this remains to be the wild card in this scenario.

If we would continue to assume that Stalin would have waited till Germany and the Allies were completely exhausted before stepping in and "liberating" Europe, under the Red Flag, perhaps Stalin might have very well given Germany just enough to continue her war against the allies but nothing more even if it meant crediting Germany. Stalin was a sly dog when it came to politics....

Of course we are trying to steer away from this debate as we might all get derailed from the current topic.

 

1) Most Americans especially at that time were of European decent.
2) I suggest you need to read a little more US history. The US had a fair number of wars depending on what you consider a "war" more than Germany in the 19th and first half of the 20th century.

Probably not but that's not what we are talking about either.

Indeed but the US was pretty good at that too. Indeed they were arguably the best in the world in that regard which further amplified their industrial capability.

I think you'll find that the British Commonwealth was number 2 but it may depend on your measures.

Not even close. The Huns, Mongols, and even Napoleonic French would rate higher. A case could be made for the Swiss at one point as well.

At the start of the war perhaps by the end of the war they were trailing their opponents and doing so badly.

Divisions are a particularly good way to measure army size. For one thing US divisions are substantially larger than German ones. For another you leave out the airforces and navies. As for the US having logistcs problems indeed they did but for the most part they planned for them and solved them unlike the Germans. Remember US divisions (essentially all the army ones) wore pretty much fully motorized while most German divisions were still dependent on horses.

But they don't need 10 times the capability. The western airforces destroyed the majority of the Luftwaffe's fighters. They did this with a combination of fighters and bombers.

A rather fallacious observation. I don't think anyone here thinks that the US was invincible but you are simply not putting forth well formulated arguments.

 

Could the Rumanian oilfiels be enough to supply a defensive war? Oil was the most critical shortage but without the expenditure of major offensive operations consumption is bound to be lower. Having more oil is not an advantage if your oppent has enough to operate at 100% efficiency.