What if Britain and Germany sign peace agreement

I would suggest that the answers to "who was for what", and who "knew what when" as per Hitler can be, and are found in the new book; Defending the Realm; The Authorized History of MI5, by Christopher Andrew. It just came out last year on the hundred year anniversary of that establishment.

The inter-war years are well covered, and documented, and while the MI5 people had been warning both Baldwin and Chamberlain about Hitler it wasn't until all the things they had said started coming true that the men at 10 Downing Street listened and believed. That came about right after the Munich Accords, when they forwarded the minutes they had managed to acquire in which Hitler referred to Chamberlain as a "pompous, impotent, as*hole", that both he and Halifax started to see Hitler for who he was.

Fascinating book all things considered, and after the MI5 reports started to be listened to in late 1938, there was no chance of the British ever taking Hitler at his word again. They knew full well by then he wouldn't honor any agreement, written or verbal.

 

about the supplies to the SU (I think you mean L-L),in 1941,L-L was not influencing the war in the East.
due to the weather(peace with Britain or not),an earlier start of Barbarossa was impossible .
as far I know,there were almost no Luftwaffe units left in Western Europe,besides,I don't think a stronger Luftwaffe would make much difference:the LW had air superiority in 1941 against the Russians,and,still,the Germans failed .

 

Did Ralph Wigram of the Foreign Office influence anyone besides Churchill with his information? Or was he just a "mole" working illegally and specifically for Winston?

 

There is some information on Wiki;one article is even doubting the general assumption that he was a convinced anti-appeaser .
Maybe he was betting on two horses (if the expression is correct):if Churchill became PM,it would be good for his career,if he was detected,he always could say he was following orders from Vansittart.
Of course,maybe,he was following his conscience,,but I don't much believe in civil servants following their conscience and risking their career,unless there is an undisprovable proof.

 

I don't agree, but I'll start a new topic for this.

No, LL was from the US, and only began in October '41. The majority of the war material sent in the first few months was British equipment, and British tanks made up about a quarter to a third of Soviet tank strength in the Winter '41 counterattack, so yes, it did make a difference in the east.

 

Something else generally forgotten in this is that the Soviet assets in America had been "frozen" when the Molotov Pact was announced in 1939. When Hitler invaded the USSR in 1941, FDR immediately freed those assets up, advised the Soviet representatives he had done so, and allowed them to begin purchasing American goods again.

He also sent Stalin telegram informing him that a low interest "loan" (1 billlion dollars ?) was available for his immediate use in purchasing American goods, I believe these were both before the USSR was included completely into the L/L program officially. But, I could be remembering this part wrong.

 

Oh, very wrong!
From Price's book. (quoted from ->) http://sturmvogel.orbat.com/Balkan.html#Barb
38% of the Luftwaffe was deployed "elsewhere" on 24 Jun 1941, which would mean against the British, whether in the Med, Norway, North Sea or with DAK in the desert.

If you look at the table, almost half of the bombers were being used against the British, not on the Eastern front. With the LW having air superiority, an additional ~300 bombers could be very effective in destroying more Soviet forces or preventing their retreat.

 

Indeed correct.
The "value" of the supplies sent are inverse to the time elapsed during Barbarossa, so the supplies sent in the first 12 - 15 months were a much more important factor in the survival of the USSR than the much larger amount sent in 1943 -1945

 

This is too true as well. The UK sent tanks and planes, not great tanks and planes, but better than NO tanks and planes that the Soviets hadn't yet produced.

American aid alone (not counting the UK), received by the Soviets not just "shipped", looks like this from October '41 through June '42 (before the Nazi Stalingrad offensive), and this is also NOT counting the military equipment bought outright by gold transfers before and after June, 1941 when the Soviets funds were unfrozen in American holdings, and they were actually included in the Lend/Lease Act. In those nine months alone (Oct. '41-June '42), the American shipping recorded as received by the USSR totaled:

All aircraft types; 1,285.
All Armored Vehicle types including tanks; 2,249 (mostly light Stuarts and those sad stop-gap M3 Lee/Grants).
Machine-guns, all calibers; 81,287.
Explosives, in pounds; 59,455,620.
Trucks, all types; 36,825.
Field telephones; 56,445.
Copper telephone wire; 600,000 kilometers (375,000 miles).

All BEFORE Stalingrad! The Lend/Lease material was kept close track of by the Soviets, since the terms of the agreement meant they were required to pay for, or return anything NOT destroyed by, or "used up" in the war itself.

In the later stages of the L/L program the Soviets had withstood the onslaught, regained and restarted much of their own industrial and agricultural areas, and the Lend Lease became less and less necessary. America ended up some of our shipments with vacuum cleaners, roller-coasters and amusment park rides, and nylon stockings and cosmetics for the ladies of the upper echelon. We even sent Stalin a customized pipe and tobacco, a couple of high grade shotguns, and some other "personal" items of little war value. That first fifteen months was crucial, the last time-frame, not so much.

Welcome for sure, but not absolutely vital life or death of the nation stuff.

 

I know Britain was sending tanks to the SU,but
1)by the end of 1941,only 8 British convoys with 55 cargo ships reached the north Russian ports.
2)on 1 december 1941,the tank strength of the Russian operational forces was 1958,I don't know if the British tanks are included.
3)As the German advance was already stopped before the Russian counter offensive,and the success of the counter offensive wasonly relative,I am doubting the importance of the number of British tanks.
4)The Russian tank production in WWII,was that huge (some 100000,depending on what one is counting),that the number of British tanks was not that important .

 

Yes, they were.

Lend Lease act tanks and aircrafts for Russia in WW2 1941-45

I'm not sure how many of the 182 American tanks had arrived before Dec 1941, but the 487 British tanks had.

The winter offensive pushed back the germans, and cause significant casualties. Ask any commander if losing 30% of his forces would make a difference.
The Soviet manufacturing capability was much weaker in the winter of 1941, due to having moved many factories to the Urals. There was a good amount sent besides tanks, including guns, planes, ammunition etc. The war material sent by Britain in the summer/fall of 1941 certainly did make a big difference.

That's where your figures are misleading. The bulk of WWII Russian tanks were built from mid '43 to mid '45, when the war had already been won.
The key to the soviet Union's survival is in the first 18 months, when British & American supplies were critical.

 

I was to slow,meanwhile I found the same figures

 

some additional points
1) the importance of the winteroffensive is much overestimated:the directive of Barbarossa was to defeat the SU in a quick campaign(some 10 weeks),well,the Germans failed,already in september,the Russians were stronger and the Germans weakened.To win the war after september was an illusion .
2)the aim of the winteroffensive was not reached:the Germans were not repelled to the frontier,they were not destroyed.
3) about the German casualties of 30 %:that is a myth.The German losses during the winteroffensive were only 50 % of those between june and december :357000 against 725000,while the Russian losses for october,november and december were some 1.5 million and for the first quarter of 1942,some 1.65 million
4)for 1942:the Germans were that weakened and the Russians that stronger,that it was impossible to defeat the SU by 'military means':the aim of Fall Blau was to take the oil of the Caucasus,in the assumption,that ,without these oil,the SU could not continue the war ;the oil production from the Caucasus decreased(due to destructions) by 50 %,and,yet,the SU continued the war .
The critical period for the SU was june to september 1941,and,they did survive this period ,without the help of the West .
5) about the 487 tanks (I doubt they were operational in december)f course,it was better to have them,than not,but,the importance of tanks in the war in the East,is overrated:tanks without trucks (for supply )and motorized infantry are not very usefull;about the trucks:it was impossible for the Russians(and for the Germans) to supply their armies with trucks:they were depending on horses and railways.

 

I have read on another forum that some of the British tanks were not only operational by then but that they took part in some of the battles near Moscow perhaps as early as October.

Responding to another post while today the M3 medium may not seem like a very good tank when it was introduced it was one of the best on the field. Certainly better than Pz I, II, III and early IV's it faced. Inferior to the T-34 agreed but for a time a very useful vehicle.

 

The source I consulted (and I presume it is the same for Freebird):Lend-Lease tanks and aircrafts for Russia,gives the following :the first units equipped with Vanentines and Matildas went into service in december 1941 and january 1942.
I don't want to discuss the mutual merites of Stalin and British tanks,but I think there were some problems with the use of British tanks :to make Russian crews familiar with British tanks would not be easy :how to translate the guidelines,problem of the fuel(different for British and Russian tanks),problem of spare parts and ammunition .

 

I take it that's a book. Certainly trumps a nebulous forum posting.

 

Here is a pretty interesting article on the shipments to the USSR right after the Nazi invasion, or as soon as they could be organized and put on their way.

According to research by a team of Soviet historians, the Soviet Union lost a staggering 20,500 tanks from June 22 to December 31, 1941. At the end of November 1941, only 670 Soviet tanks were available to defend Moscow—that is, in the recently formed Kalinin, Western, and Southwestern Fronts. Only 205 of these tanks were heavy or medium types, and most of their strength was concentrated in the Western Front, with the Kalinin Front having only two tank battalions (67 tanks) and the Southwestern Front two tank brigades (30 tanks).

Given the disruption to Soviet production and Red Army losses, the Soviet Union was understandably eager to put British armor into action as soon as possible. According to Biriukov's service diary, the first 20
British tanks arrived at the Soviet tank training school in Kazan on October 28, 1941, at which point a further 120 tanks were unloaded at the port of Archangel in northern Russia. Courses on the British tanks for Soviet crews started during November as the first tanks, with British assistance, were being assembled from their in-transit states and undergoing testing by Soviet specialists.

The tanks reached the front lines with extraordinary speed. Extrapolating from available statistics, researchers estimate that British-supplied tanks made up 30 to 40 percent of the entire heavy and medium tank strength of Soviet forces before Moscow at the beginning of December 1941, and certainly made up a significant proportion of tanks available as reinforcements at this critical point in the fighting. By the end of 1941 Britain had delivered 466 tanks out of the 750 promised.

…While the Matilda Mk II and Valentine tanks supplied by the British were certainly inferior to the Soviets' homegrown T-34 and KV-1, it is important to note that Soviet production of the T-34 (and to a lesser extent the KV series), was only just getting seriously underway in 1942, and Soviet production was well below plan targets. And though rapid increases in tank firepower would soon render the 40mm two-pounder main gun of the Matilda and Valentine suitable for use on light tanks only, the armor protection of these British models put them firmly in the heavy and medium categories, respectively. Both were superior to all but the Soviet KV-1 and T-34 in armor, and indeed even their much maligned winter cross-country performance was comparable to most Soviet tanks excluding the KV-1 and T-34.

A steady stream of British-made tanks continued to flow into the Red Army through the spring and summer of 1942. Canada would eventually produce 1,420 Valentines, almost exclusively for delivery to the Soviet Union. By July 1942 the Red Army had 13,500 tanks in service, with more than 16 percent of those imported, and more than half of those British.

Lend-Lease aircraft deliveries were also of significance during the Battle of Moscow. While Soviet pilots praised the maneuverability of the homegrown I-153 Chaika and I-16 Ishak fighters—still in use in significant numbers in late 1941—both types were certainly obsolete and inferior in almost all regards to the British-supplied Hurricane. The Hurricane was rugged and tried and tested, and as useful at that point as many potentially superior Soviet designs such as the LaGG-3 and MiG-3.

There were apparently only 263 LaGG-3s in the Soviet inventory by the time of the Moscow counteroffensive, and it was an aircraft with numerous defects. At the end of 1941 there were greater numbers of the MiG-3, but the plane was considered difficult to fly. The Yak-1, arguably the best of the batch, and superior in most regards to the Hurricane, suffered from airframe and engine defects in early war production aircraft.
　
Goto:

Did Russia Really Go It Alone? How Lend-Lease Helped the Soviets Defeat the Germans » HistoryNet

The whole three page article is pretty good, I liked it at least.

 

It would be obsolete for Britain to ask the enemy to evacuate from sacrificed conquests in the eastern front. The realistic conclusion if they were still entangled with Germany's secured spot would be an armistice if Germany succeeded in the east;hampering the Soviet offensive and turning into a niche partisan resistance movement. Don't assume that Britain alone would still aggressively resist to maintain its power base. They were clearly in defensive positions in their colonies and mostly launched covert and sabotage operations to divert Germany's war machine before the arrival of the American invasion fleet.

 

You don't understand the context of my post. I said he had no desire to wage wars of against them or colonize the allies because he saw them as worthy assets. There is no doubt he wanted to match the western empires. He believed it was Germany's life-serving obligation to expand influence and resource independence in the most approachable route possible.

 

No you said:

At least to my reading there is considerable difference between the two.