Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
NO, without American aid in equipment, oil and cash/credit. The Soviets would have been on the rocks. If the Allies had not opened up the North African and Southern fronts. Hitler would have overrun the Soviet Oil fields of
Baku, leaving the Soviets with an insurmountable shortage of gasoline to run their T-34 tanks and personell vehicles IMO.
I would highly recommend going back to read the thread. Many of the claims you are putting forward simply don't hold water. Lend Lease Aid was a minor factor in the war until mid-late 1943 when the vast majority of supplies started to flow. The Soviets also had plenty of oil, their issue on the fuel front was high octane refined fuels for use in things like planes. The US supplied the Soviets with substantial quantities of TEL additive and highly refined aviation fuel that the Soviets blended with their lower quality fuel stocks. However, this was a very small, if somewhat critical component of Lend Lease Aid and was not really sent in quantity until later in the war. The Soviet tanks and armored vehicles were pretty much universally powered by diesel, which required far less refining to be made usable. The higher quality fuel in terms of moving their army was only necessary when they started to field larger numbers of western trucks, again 1943 timeframe.
Allied actions in North Africa had very little to do with the failed German invasion of southern Russia, Stalingrad and the Baku oil fields. The invasion had already failed and bogged down in Stalingrad before the Second Battle of El Alamein occurred or US forces landed in North Africa during Operation Torch. At that time, the Germans had very little forces committed to Africa, amounting to less then two divisions with the bulk of the forces composed of Italian and Vichy French forces. By the time the US was getting mauled in Kasserine Pass the Soviets had launched Operation Uranus and smashed the German Armies on the southern front.
I don't know, but the West could have whipped Hitler without the Russians. Remember that we finished the atomic bomb first......
The Soviets actually saved Germany from more destruction because if they hadn't surrendered in Berlin we would have used the atomic bomb on them too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ovcatto
By the time the U.S. dropped the A bomb on Japan, Japan had pursuing a negotiated settlement (funny thing is despite claims to the contrary, they got pretty much what they asked for to begin with) and were pretty much bottled up on the their home island. In contrast by 1945, absent the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany would have consolidated its hold over the entire expanse of the Soviet Union and all of Western Europe all the way to the Mediterranean. Where exactly would the use of the only two atomic bombs in U.S. possession would have been all that affective at bringing the Nazis to the peace table considering the size of the Reich absent Soviet opposition?
PS given such counterfactual arguments, had the Nazi's effectively defeated everyone but Britain by 1941 how willing do you suppose the American people would have been to enter into war with Nazi Germany? And given the fact that having defeated the Soviets in 1941 with not much else standing in there way, who says that the Germans would have both the time and inclination to pursue the atomic weapons research that they simply lost interest in?
Just a couple comments. It's hard to know for sure what would have happened if the Soviet Union was either not involved or had been defeated during the war. What we do know is that historically the US never intended to use the atomic bomb against the Germans over the fear of a dud falling into the hands of the Germans who could then very easily reverse engineer the bomb and have a most likely intact and refined core to boot. Outside of a wildly unrealistic scenario, the bomb, once it became a reality, was always intended for use on Japan.
The second part is the number of bombs available. Assuming some crazy scenario, the US did in fact have more then the two atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan. Following on those two, there was a production schedule that would have seen the completion of an additional 3-4 bombs per month through November 1945 at which point it was believed that the US could produce an additional atomic bomb every 10 days ad infinitum. It is a widely held misconception that there were only two or three bombs available for use and/or that is all we could produce. While that was true at the exact moment they were dropped, the US did have the ability to produce plenty more.
I would imagine in the event they were to be used to bring a dominant Nazi Germany to its knees that we would have saved up a sufficient store of 10-15 bombs to release a large scale atomic assault. They may not have been dropped all at once, but certainly they would have stockpiled enough to drive home the point with some kind of sustained attack.
Thats a tuff one to call. You have to figure that if the USSR fought the Germans without the western allies Germany could have put more divisions againt the Soviets which could have made a difference. I believe they would have taken Moscow as they would have attacked a few weeks earlier if they did not help the Italians. Ron
The USSR Able to destroy Germany. The battle of Moscow was for a long time before the beginning of the 2nd front. And the West wanted in the beginning if the USSR Kursk that will fight for the Germans. 2-nd front was in 44 year and opened owing to the fact that, in itself of the USSR took all of the power of Germany, in order that the allies could have landed. Teach history.
With out fighting the west, the Nazi's would have had plenty of time to persue an Atomb bomb. They would have got it done in 1947 if they were only fighting Russia. And they would have had V2's and V3's to deliver them.
The Luftwaffe was a menace over the skies of Europe. It was not until the sky was filled with b24, b-17, and p51 mustangs that the Luftwaffe met it's fate. The Soviet Union was not even capable of bombing Germany for most of the war. In fact, the Luftwaffe often used the Eastern Front as training ground for new fighter pilots, before they faced superior pilots that flew in the west.
As for the horse drawn carts Germany had: Exactly. That was the myth of the blitzkreig. It was a sharp daggar with an inside filled with mashed potato. And when all was said and done, they got steam rolled.
As for the t34, that speaks about Soviet production and lack of trucks. They were able to produce t34's en masse largely because they converted most of their tractor factories into tank factories. The USSR was a backward nation known for making tractors, not cars and trucks. This is why they had to rely heavily on the west for trucks. It is also noticable in the differnce in design of American and German tanks (which ran on gas), vs Soviet desil tanks (their tractors were desil too).
If to speak on this assistance, It was bezsporno necessary, but can you call this help? The USSR pulled America out of the crisis. Up to the beginning of the war was a lot of equipment and it was not a backward country.In the Soviet Union before the war studied many German scientists, Pilots, tankmen and exploration, including the Gestapo, and after that you call her the USSR backward country. American banks financed Germany. The USSR bought often old written-off equipment in 3 times more expensive than a new and this is for pure gold. In the USSR at that time were all plants even civil war. For example in the time of peace this plant produces bottles, in time of war, shells, as well as the caliber of the projectile coincided with a diameter of bottles, where the produced pasta, released перакселин (smokeless pores for shells) Under the name of the tractor plants have always been the tank factories. So the whole of civil industry was originally have been prepared to the transformation of the military. So it was a lot of development of supersonic aircraft and missiles, and even before Germany
Last edited by GreyKarast; 08-25-2012 at 06:20 AM..
I think the russians would have eventually won. THey could have lost a few more million people though.
Yes losses would be more.
America could lose more than a million people in the war against Japan and the war could last for up to 46 and 47 of the year. If the USSR did not have entered the war with Japan, it said America in those years. The USSR destroyed the Japanese army in just 24 days after entry into the war with Japan
The victory of the red Army in the battle of Kursk had a profound influence on the further course of the Second World War. After it became clear that the USSR was in a state of one without the help of allies to win the war, completely clean the territory from the occupiers and to unite the peoples of Europe, томившиеся in Nazi captivity. Boundless courage, endurance and mass patriotism of Soviet Voinov - die but not to allow the enemy .. were most important factors of the victory over a strong enemy in battles on the Kursk bulge.
The defeat of the Wehrmacht to the Soviet - German front by the end of 1943, completed a radical turn in the course of the great Patriotic War, the beginning of which put a counter-offensive of the Soviet troops in the battle of Stalingrad, deepened the crisis of the fascist bloc gave the magnitude of the anti-fascist movement in the occupied countries and Germany itself, contributed to the strengthening of the anti-Hitler coalition. And only At the Teheran conference of 1943, it was finally decided to open a second front in France in may 1944. To the West still thinking on either side of him fight. If to speak about the military assistance, with regard to equipment and food it was a lot of help from the West but not without selfish. Very well-paid gold.
Responding to the portion of the question which asks if the contribution of the Allies was critical....
I still believe without U.S. involvement the Germans may have been able to sufficiently attrition the Soviet Army where the battles would end in a stalement somewhere in a front extending from the Polish frontier to the Carpathian mountians.
The Germans would have been able to refocus a sizeable portion of their anti-invasion efforts in terms of fortification construction and mobile forces in the West towards the East. Same regarding the fighter production and AA investment. Personally believe the Soviet penetrations of large expanses of Eastern frontage would have been dissipated if a German tactical air presence was available. The German army was rather immobile, even the armored units could only successfully reach out in force from rail centers. I believe a study of the literature will show that the few occasions were the Luftwaffe was present in ground attack form sufficiently unbalanced Soviet armor concentrations to contain a breakthough.
The Soviet Army was experiencing a shortage of infantry by 1945 and compensated by using massed armor and artillery. These latter are ideal for the commencement of the offensive but the former would be important for retaining a position. The Soviet army was very capable in terms of organizing an attack but coordination once the breakthough was achieved appears rigid due to the limited communications network.(This was still a Soviet issue in the 1980s!) Germans, per their doctrine, were adapt at assuming the initiative to respond to local situations. I can foresee a German eastern defense doctrine with the added armaments, fortifications and land/air units which were sent West to capitalize on this advantage. We see how the Panzerfaust considerably and cheaply increased the anti-tank capability of static infantry units. Germany did not even properly mobilize for total war until 1943? Dates are a point of contention but armaments output peaked in late 1944 when other fronts were drawing heavily on the output.
The Germans proved unable to tactically defend the Eastern Front after Kursk. That is they traded space for time and it appears Soviet offensives pettered out due to exhaustion of supplies which could be brought forward to maintain the momentum. Not because the Germans were in a position to halt the Soviets. I see the German inability to defend the Dnieper and later Crimea as emblematic of how weak they were compared to mid-1943. So we have late summer, early fall 1943 as the nodal point where Germany could no longer fight defensively and blunt Soviet attacks. This coincides with the increase in forces needed West for occupation duty in the former Vichy France, Italy, former Italian zones of control in the Balkans, etc. Also, we have more air resources committed to the daylight air war.
What the British Commonwealth would be doing at this point is open to conjecture. They were building up Bomber Command and raising new land units but without shipping no invasion even against Vichy France or Italy or the Balkans would have been feasible. Then there are a host of logistics issues involved after an invasion. Appears to have been beyond their industrial capability.
Regarding Lend-Lease, Soviets did not really need extensive mobility in defensive battles as they centered around cities which were centers for RR lines. Soviet pre-war army truck was capable but not to the standard of the GMC 6x6 provided under LL. The mobility which was such a benefit later came with the offensives in 1943 and later where LL trucks were able to compensate for RR lines and centers destroyed by the Germans as they retreated. No LL and you have much reduced Soviet mobility and the time consuming need to repair lines of communication through devasted areas.
Last edited by Felix C; 08-25-2012 at 10:30 AM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
