innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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Yeah, after that there was no way the war in the Pacific was going to end with anything other that a complete japansese surrender.
How far west could the Soviets have invaded...
- Thread starter Incodcito
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Yeah, after that there was no way the war in the Pacific was going to end with anything other that a complete japansese surrender.
Xineoph
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Sorry, my mind was a bit out of it when I asked that.
By China, I actually wondered about the possibilities of both Nationalist and Communist temporarily working together under the pretext that the USSR is too busy in Europe to stop them from trying to retake say Mongolia and most of the Russian Far East.
Then again, that seems too farfetched considering they fought eachother even when the Japanese were killing them (right?).
Wouldn't a more realistic scenario be, Soviet Union attacks and after a bloody war (With high Soviet losses...after all, they/re facing an enemy even tougher than Germany on some level now), the Allies push them back to their previous borders? I think that is the most realistic scenario. I doubt there would be any sort of coup or revolution, but I don't see the Warsaw pact (or at most limitedly) or division of Germany happening now.
As for Japan, the USSR can work with Japan, but with no Navy or Air Force worth mentioning by this time, the US can mostly leave them alone, and save the nukes for both.
This of course might end horribly since they didn't know about Nuclear Radiation. I remember there were plans by the Americans to invade areas that were nuked if they invaded the Home Islands. I imagine much the same would occur here...ridiculously high losses on all sides and well..I'm not entirely sure what would occur after the Soviets are pushed back to at least their original borders.
Humm...a radioactive Central/Eastern Europe with a severely depopulated young male population for the Allies and Europe in general...
Winner
Diverse in Unity
The difference is that the Vichy French were never a real enemy (the fighting between VF forces and Americans in North Africa was brief and almost bloodless, compared to other battles of WW2), the Italians were just a joke, and there was never any fighting with Stalin's armies.
Japan and Germany were bitter enemies of the Allies, and after all the fighting and blood and guts and painful losses, the American public would never have swallowed them being suddenly embraced as allies. It would have been seen as a bad joke in the best case, or as a reason to mutiny and riot in the worst case. The civilian war effort would havely most likely collapsed, because there would have been no trust in the government any more.
What some Nazi or Imperial Japanese leaders thought about possibilities for a cease-fire or even alliance with the West against the Communists was just a wishful thinking of beaten and doomed war criminals.
taillesskangaru said:
Yes, the thought being that Japan could re-arm before the colonialists had time to return. Whether or not it was a realistic plan is something else entirely. But it was thrown around alongside plans to field the navy as part of the army in the inevitable American-Soviet war. The navy objected to that.
ParkCungHee said:
Oh, we did that. The Japanese were retained in place to keep the colonies in Good Order until the colonialists rocked up. In some places that took 18 months.
Xineoph said:
No. The Nationalists might if the going looked really good. But dealing with the problems at home was far more important and far more likely to yield decent returns. The Nationalists wouldn't have collapsed as quickly if the Soviets were unable to arm the Communists.
Xineoph said:
The Soviets could not have reached Japan in 1945 in strength because of the US navy. Korea and Northern China on the other hand? That's a whole different story. Not to mention Western Europe.
Xineoph said:
Radiation exposure would not have been life-threatening in the short run; long term well that's a different story.
Winner
Diverse in Unity
Well, depends on whether Stalin would have regained at least some of his sanity when his invasion of the Allied sectors had been defeated, or whether he would have continued fighting. In that case, I don't think a palace coup in Moscow would have been unlikely. After all, the Soviet leadership were all selfish ruthless bastards concerned only with their own well being and power. If Stalin's insanity had threatened the very survival of the regime, they'd have acted, sooner or later.
The Allies would have had no wish to advance into the Soviet Union, that would have completely ruined the morale of the Allied troops, who just wanted the war to end. They'd probably have tried to kick the Soviets out of Central Europe and maybe the Balkans and then forced them to agree with a cease fire. If they had refused, they'd have strategically bombed the Soviet industry in the Urals region as well as major logistical hubs in the western parts of the USSR and if that hadn't worked, they'd have nuked them.
The effects of radiation from the fallout from the early A-bomb is waaaaaaaaaaaaay overplayed. There would have been no radioactive Central/Eastern Europe. It would have been damaged much more just as a result of the front sweeping over it once more.
The government in North Africa didn't last very long before the Gaullists set about assassinating it. The Americans - due to Roosevelt's stupidity - cooperated with Vichy, but only until De Gaulle was able to oust the majority of them from power. Those that didn't get shot in the head five times by a Gaullist assassin ended up resigning their posts within a few months. And France itself quickly fell to the Free French administration.
The Japanese weren't re-armed until the Communist victory in China in late-1949, picking up with the war in Korea.
ParkCungHee
Deity
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They were re-armed as early as September of 1945 before they had even left China. The American Occupational forces decided it would be best for them to stay in place and maintain order against 'bandits' until Chiang's forces could control the area, and in some places they didn't leave until 1947.
I don't see the scenario when the USSR attacks Western Allies in 1945 as realistic, even remotely. People were extremely tired of war, country suffered huge casualties and was utterly destroyed. Stalin's insanity is just a pop-historical myth - and even insane leader wouldn't start a war which he had zero chances to win.
The only realistic scenario of such war, in my opinion, is when Allies attack USSR to push its forces back from Eastern Germany and Poland (and this is not a speculation, you've probably heard about operation "Unthinkable" plans), but even in this case, Allies were unable to defeat Soviet land forces quickly, simply because Soviet land forces in Europe were 3 times larger, not to mention they were more experienced and in many aspects technically superior to the Allied forces. So, the initial Allied advance would most likely end on the coast of Atlantic ocean - and subsequent war on attrition would not be beneficial to any side, especially the Soviet one.
The Soviets could attack into Northern China and Manchuria in the event of all out war with the Western Allies, but it would be a terrible idea. It would draw troops from Western Europe, and send them out to the end of an extremely long and overstressed supply line to die regardless of success when the TransSiberian gets cut by B-29s.
Not saying the Soviets wouldn't make such a miscalculation, but their best hope for a favorable peace is concentrating everything in Western Europe and winning enough initially to break the Allied will to fight before logistics become impossible and frontline troops start starving.
Communisto
Condottiere
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_keren
The idea of the Italian forces as a joke is a historical myth which exists largely as a result of British propaganda. The Italian officer corps and soldiers were generally well trained, competent and capable, especially the Bersaglieri and Regia Aeronautica. Lack of logistical support and fascist ideological bungling is what led to a breakdown of morale and the mass surrenders -parallels can be drawn with elements of the German command near the end of the war, especially on the eastern front- it was not due to a lack of effectiveness of the Italian soldier.
/derail
Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
aelf said:
Even against monkeynity.
I don't know why you can't concede an attack by the USSR was more likely.
We disbanded our troops immediately after the war, the USSR did not.
Because the USSR wasn't really capable of fighting another war and had no real motivation to do so. They need to secure the gains they already made and stabilize from the war. The West was is a far beter position to sustain an extended war and the Soviets relied on Western aid.
As for maintaining significant forces in Eastern Europe, they were rather unpopular so greater garrisons were needed until the locals got on their feet, suddenly releasing millions upon millions of now unemployed men into the Soviet economy probably wouldn't have done very good, and Stalin was paranoid as hell and feared a Allied attack (and he had reason to as a number of Allied leaders, both political and military, wanted to do so and are backed by nukes).
The most likely scenario in my view would be someone like Churchill or Patton provking the Soviets into launching a pre-emptive strike.
As for maintaining significant forces in Eastern Europe, they were rather unpopular so greater garrisons were needed until the locals got on their feet, suddenly releasing millions upon millions of now unemployed men into the Soviet economy probably wouldn't have done very good, and Stalin was paranoid as hell and feared a Allied attack (and he had reason to as a number of Allied leaders, both political and military, wanted to do so and are backed by nukes).
The most likely scenario in my view would be someone like Churchill or Patton provking the Soviets into launching a pre-emptive strike.
So... most of your post argues why I'm wrong, yet you concede the point at the end.
I'm glad we can agree
aelf
Ashen One
No, monkeys might not understand the concept of relevance.
I explained why in the message which you quoted.
Because the Soviets had neither will nor ability to fight another war on attrition.
USA, on the other hand was virtually unharmed during war, controlled about half of world GDP and 2/3 of world gold reserves.
Under that logic, the U.S. started the Pacific War too. After all, the preemptive strike on Pearl Harbor followed provocations like the oil embargo.
Perhaps in fact (though I doubt you would be able to come up with any rigorous distinction), but not in practice. Whoever launches a preemptive attack is by definition the one that started the war to everyone that matters. Nobody seriously argues that Israel didn't start the 6-day war, for instance, though what preceded it sure as hell wasn't peace.
If the Soviets launch a preemptive strike, then to the Western public, they will be the aggressors, and public opinion will react accordingly.
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