What if Patton's Plan.........
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By the way, comparison of German forces vs Soviet using number of divisions, German and Soviet respectively, perfectly shows your level of understanding.
My bad
Winner
Diverse in Unity
Given the costs (millions of men in arms when they could have contributed to reconstruction effort, large parts of the economy focused on arms production when many other things were desperately needed), I don't think it was a show of force, not after the Allies demobilized their vast armies.
When that happened, Western Europe was like a small kid with a candy with a daddy far away - there were practically no military forces that could oppose a larger Soviet invasion. As the later NATO planners concluded, conventional defense of Western Europe was practically impossible with the forces available. Only in the 1960 when NATO started to build up its conventional forces and stopped relying on nuclear weapons as much had conventional defense of Western Europe become an alternative.
Stalin was an opportunist, and he clearly saw the WE weakness as an opportunity.
And what do you do when you believe that your enemies are slowly building up forces to encircle and destroy you? That's right comrade, you strike hard and deep into the hearts of the imperialists!
Don't forget that according to Stalin, nuclear weapons didn't really change war - he saw them simply as a more effective way how to strike against the enemy's rear. He was not really afraid of nuclear war, he just wanted to have his own bomb to retaliate and more importantly, he needed to build up the airforce to be able to defend from an Allied strategic bombing (he probably concluded that without it, the USSR would have lost any future war, just as I described earlier in the thread).
Fortunately he died before he got the opportunity to start WW3.
Everything is good, just one problem in your calculations - Soviet forces in western districts were far outnumbered by Germans in June 1941. Not to mention wonderful allies' performance in France 1940. Oh, I forgot - American soldiers were ten times better than British ones
This has nothing to do with personal courage or manly qualities, it's about different doctrinal thinking, training and approach to warfare. Brits were clearly inferior to the Americans by the end of the war.
Don't you know that execution of Patton's plan would be Soviet aggression anyway? Just as any hostility between USSR and Western powers
Soviet Union clearly ignored the agreements which were made about the fate of liberated Eastern/Central European countries. Do you deny that?
Oh please, I am well aware of the fact that Soviet divs were smaller, but if you want to deny the fact that the Red Army in 1941 was at least 3x as big in terms of mobilized men and 10x as big in terms of available tanks and airplanes, it shows your level of "understanding". Keep that in mind the next time you try to lecture someone about the glorious great patriotic war (actually a string of defeats and catastrophic losses delivered by a vastly outnumbered and outgunned enemy).
---
(@Ralphy: you can't miss an opportunity to point fingers, can you?
)Which agreements are you talking about?
Then what is the reason to compare oranges and apples? Or, you mean that now you are well aware?
Sorry, but what you have written (320 divisions were thrashed by ~100), means that most of what you know about German and Soviet forces in 1941, based on a few paragraphs from wiki.
- Deployment and readiness of troops?
- Time required for mobilization, in conditions of "Blitzkrieg" war?
- Battle experience and training of soldiers and officers?
- Quality of vast majority of tanks and airplanes?
- Result of war, compared to battle for France?
Tell me that you are well aware
Darth_Pugwash
wobble wobble
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As others have said the political reality pretty much means this scenario can only happen in bizarro world. That said, the Soviets were running much lower on manpower in 1945 than most people realize, so if the USA and the USSR fought each other I would be inclined to bet on the Americans - but casulties would be horrendous on both sides, and Europe would be taken to the cleaners.
And what would they have used to stop them? To my knowledge no Soviet production aircraft at the end of the war had the performance to threaten the B-29. I'm not even sure that there was a single post-war non-jet fighter that could have done so. The La-11 for example attempted intercepts in Korea, but completely failed because it took so long to reach the B-29's altitude and had only a tiny (~10 mph) speed advantage over the bomber. Even if we make the (unlikely) assumption that the Soviets still manage to begin bringing their first gen jet fighters online in 1946, they're only going to have small numbers of them and will have to face American jet escorts.
frekk
Scourge of St. Lawrence
Soviets would crush the Allied forces. Although I doubt they would be able to immediately expand their territory very much, they'd probably get ahold of the rest of Germany and probably Italy and Greece too. And, in the aftermath, their prestige and leverage would be considerably enhanced.
Logistics? Supplies for Allied forces would have to be shipped across the Atlantic! This was no easy feat; remember that for the campaign in Europe, they had spent years stockpiling supplies in Britain. That was all pretty much exhausted by the end of the war, meaning Allied supplies would be reduced to trickle. The Soviets, meanwhile, would only have to ship their supplies by rail, and not as far as is being suggested in this thread. While they were shipping from the Urals etc from 42-44, by 45 they had moved their industry back to the west. They'd be shipping from the Volga and the Don, not far at all (and have we forgotten they're the defenders in this scenario? They don't have to ship to France in order to defend Poland!)
Their forces were not that weak after the war. Their capability to produce tanks and armaments was vast by 1945, and any notion of winning a war of attrition against Russia is impossibly stupid, even under the best possible circumstances. Any notion of winning a rapid victory against Russia is equally idiotic. Everyone seems to forget, this was not the 1980s. Soviet forces were technologically as good, perhaps even better, than Allied forces; more importantly, they had far more experience fighting in Europe than Allied troops and officers had. They'd been fighting a land war since '41, don't forget. The pool of experience they could draw from was vastly greater.
The wildcard is nuclear weapons, but a rinky little Hiroshima bomb wasn't going to make any difference. Those did less damage than a typical saturation bombing with incendiaries. And there weren't many of them available. After the two that dropped on Japan, the US had just 1 weapon left in stock. By June of 1946, they had only 9. General Norstad, who had planned and directed the attacks on Japan, reported to Groves that 204 weapons would be required to neutralize the Soviet advantage in land forces ...
Finally, Allies would likely be dealing with fifth columns throughout Europe ... perhaps even in Britain and the US itself. Going to war with the Soviets would be hugely unpopular, at a time when everyone was so eager for peace. I cannot imagine the level of anger that would have been directed at the leadership that forced this decision against the will of democratic populaces, but I can guarantee it would have been a terrible thing to behold. These were not the complacent, gratification-addicted consumer classes of today.
All in all, conditions were a hell of alot less auspicious for an invasion than they were after WW1. And look what happened when they tried that. 14 nations, including the US, Britain, and Japan, got together and tried to invade a shattered Russia in the middle of a civil war - from both ends of a country with even less infrastructure, at the time. The Russian Expedition was a supreme failure.
While the biographer D'Este has proposed a possible brain injury to explain some of Patton's more bizarre proposals, even Patton was not so much of clueless moron to propose an invasion across Russian borders; all he proposed was pushing the Soviets back to their own borders, which is a much different thing altogether.
Logistics? Supplies for Allied forces would have to be shipped across the Atlantic! This was no easy feat; remember that for the campaign in Europe, they had spent years stockpiling supplies in Britain. That was all pretty much exhausted by the end of the war, meaning Allied supplies would be reduced to trickle. The Soviets, meanwhile, would only have to ship their supplies by rail, and not as far as is being suggested in this thread. While they were shipping from the Urals etc from 42-44, by 45 they had moved their industry back to the west. They'd be shipping from the Volga and the Don, not far at all (and have we forgotten they're the defenders in this scenario? They don't have to ship to France in order to defend Poland!)
Their forces were not that weak after the war. Their capability to produce tanks and armaments was vast by 1945, and any notion of winning a war of attrition against Russia is impossibly stupid, even under the best possible circumstances. Any notion of winning a rapid victory against Russia is equally idiotic. Everyone seems to forget, this was not the 1980s. Soviet forces were technologically as good, perhaps even better, than Allied forces; more importantly, they had far more experience fighting in Europe than Allied troops and officers had. They'd been fighting a land war since '41, don't forget. The pool of experience they could draw from was vastly greater.
The wildcard is nuclear weapons, but a rinky little Hiroshima bomb wasn't going to make any difference. Those did less damage than a typical saturation bombing with incendiaries. And there weren't many of them available. After the two that dropped on Japan, the US had just 1 weapon left in stock. By June of 1946, they had only 9. General Norstad, who had planned and directed the attacks on Japan, reported to Groves that 204 weapons would be required to neutralize the Soviet advantage in land forces ...
Finally, Allies would likely be dealing with fifth columns throughout Europe ... perhaps even in Britain and the US itself. Going to war with the Soviets would be hugely unpopular, at a time when everyone was so eager for peace. I cannot imagine the level of anger that would have been directed at the leadership that forced this decision against the will of democratic populaces, but I can guarantee it would have been a terrible thing to behold. These were not the complacent, gratification-addicted consumer classes of today.
All in all, conditions were a hell of alot less auspicious for an invasion than they were after WW1. And look what happened when they tried that. 14 nations, including the US, Britain, and Japan, got together and tried to invade a shattered Russia in the middle of a civil war - from both ends of a country with even less infrastructure, at the time. The Russian Expedition was a supreme failure.
While the biographer D'Este has proposed a possible brain injury to explain some of Patton's more bizarre proposals, even Patton was not so much of clueless moron to propose an invasion across Russian borders; all he proposed was pushing the Soviets back to their own borders, which is a much different thing altogether.
Winner
Diverse in Unity
Jalta and agreements from previous conferences. Soviets had agreed to allow free and fair elections in countries "liberated" by their forces - with a very doubtful exception of Czechoslovakia, this didn't happen at all. The "liberated" countries only exchanged one occupation for another. As for Germany, the deal was to administer the whole country as one economic entity, but the Soviets totally ignored that agreement.
Then what is the reason to compare oranges and apples? Or, you mean that now you are well aware?
Sorry, but what you have written (320 divisions were thrashed by ~100), means that most of what you know about German and Soviet forces in 1941, based on a few paragraphs from wiki.
No. I've read my share of history books and we had quite a few courses about it at the college. I am of course no military historian, but I believe I have the knowledge necessary to make these general assesments. However, unlike WW2 nerds I don't have the numbers of tanks, airplanes, men and division memorized, so when I need exact figures, I use readily available sources - like Wikipedia. You pointing to that just reveals how desperate your "arguments" are. You adressed none of my basic points (logistical impossibility of supplying big enough Soviet armies so far in the West during all-out war against the Allies; vulnerability of the soviet industrial heartland to Allied strategic bombing; qualitative inferiority of the Red army as compared to the US army).Now you're just nitpicking about exact figures, hoping it will distract me from pursuing the bigger picture. It won't happen
Do you deny that the Red Army was much larger than the invading German forces in 1941? Do you deny it got totally trashed in the first 4 months of the war?- Deployment and readiness of troops?
- Time required for mobilization, in conditions of "Blitzkrieg" war?
- Battle experience and training of soldiers and officers?
- Quality of vast majority of tanks and airplanes?
- Result of war, compared to battle for France?
Tell me that you are well aware
How is any of that relevant to the question I asked? Laying a smoke screen again?
One particular thing about the bolded sentence. France lost because the quality of its military was inferior to that of Germans, despite the fact that it was larger and often better equipped. The reason why it lost lies in its doctrinal thinking and inefficient use of its assets.
If France was as big and as populous as the USSR, it would have ended in pretty much the same way - it would get its butt kicked in the first half a year until it would learn the basics of modern warfare, and then it would take advantage of the enemy's long supply lines and stretched front.
Get over your Soviet fanboism (which is sadly so common in today's Russians) and look at the reality. Soviet armed forces suffered THE BIGGEST MOST DEVASTATING DEFEAT in history of warfare. Yes, the capital letters and bolding is necessary to illustrate how big and catastrophic the defeat was. 3 million casualties in 3 months, enemy advance 2000 km into Russia, Soviet armies destroyed one after another. Even though the USSR eventually won the war, it didn't win it because its armies were better - it won because of its vast superiority in manpower, resources, military production and (I know you Russians like to ferget that) because the Western Allies prevented Germans from throwing everything they had against it. As one German general put it: "German army is like an elephant fighting ants. The elephant will kill thousands, millions of them, but eventually it will be eaten by the ants to the bone." History of the Russo-German war proved his words.
Lastly, even though the Red Army had more men, more guns, more airplanes, more tanks, more EVERYTHING, it took it 3 YEARS to kick Wehrmacht out of the USSR. How pathetic is that when it takes an army 3 years to get back what the enemy seized in roughly 5 months?
This alone is a testament to Red Army's "capabilities". It was an inefficient, wasteful meatgrinder which sacrificed millions of lives in vain and in 1945, this fact didn't change.The US military was entirely different. One of the lecturers at my college once said: "When Russian general lost a battle and lost 200,000 men, he was awarded a medal and promoted. If a US general reported that he won a battle and lost the same number of men, he'd be sacked and most likely also court-martialed." I think that's pretty good summary of the differences in military thinking between the Soviet and American armies.
Winner
Diverse in Unity
Great analysis, really. Too bad you have not based in on a shred of good argument.
No, it took some time to build enough supply ships and clear the Atlantic of the U-boot threat. Once this was (largely) accomplished, the supply accross the Atlantic wasn't a problem.
Citation needed.
That's thousands of kilometers you're talking about - on railways which would be targeted by Allied airforce and seriously damaged. Funny how you missed that part of the argument. The distances were too big and the available routes were too few. This partly explains the long delays between Soviet offensives in the West by the end of WW2. Red Army was lucky that the Germans didn't have meass to disrupt these supply lines, but the Allies in 1945 had.
It is idiotic to use words like "idiotic" and think that they're constitute an argument. So far you offered nothing to support this assesment, so phrases like that used in this context are "incredibly stupid"
Again, you missed the key arguments (obviously you didn't even read the previous posts) - that Soviet industry and supply was kept running by the deliveries of Allied help (most of their transport trucks, jeeps and locomotives, as mentioned earlier) and that in an event of a war with the Allies, this industry would be pounded hard by the Allied strategic airforce - including nuclear attacks. Suddenly, the notion of winning a "war of attrition" seems entirely believable. The soviets wouldn't be able to properly supply their armies in Central Europe and they'd eventually be forced to withdraw to their original 1939/1940 border - which is the Allied goal in this sscenario
False argument, already adressed in previous posts. The record of the Red Army simply doesn't justify the conclusion that the Soviets armies were better. The American doctrine were clearly superior to the Soviet one, their training was better, their NCOs were better, their officers were better. Americans relied on small units initiative and flexibility, whereas the Soviets used the heavy-handed top-bottom approach to command their forces. It didn't fare well and it wouldn't fare well if they had to fight the Allies in under the circumstances defined by this scenario.
They would be used against Soviet industrial cities and transportation hubs. Even a small number of strikes (combined with massive conventional bombing) would be enough to turn the Soviet logistical system into disarray. Which is (AGAIN!) the main reason why they'd lose in Central Europe, which in turn is (AGAIN!) the reason why the Patton's suggestion was valid. The goal in this scenario isn't to destroy the USSR or occupy it, the goal is to push it back to its 1939/40 borders.
And that was entirely doable.
You are not in position to guarantee anything. This matter was already discussed and we concluded that the public opposition to more war was the main reason why the Allies seeked to appease the Soviets after the war.
The fact is, however, that the US people were not very war-weary in 1945 - unlike the Brits and the Soviets. Though the continuation of the war would be popular, it would start a revolution either and it would not affect the armies in the field.
Bravo, you just shot yourselves in the foot
Yes, this is what we're discussing in this thread if you haven't noticed 
It's pathetically easy to win as the USSR in Doomsday.
frekk
Scourge of St. Lawrence
When a post starts with a snide tone, I lower my expectations. Alot.
You need a citation to tell you that once a stockpile built many months in advance is depleted, that supplies will be reduced?
Well, at least you don't disappoint.
Of course it was a problem. It was a problem throughout the Cold War! One of the principal reasons why planning focussed on winning a very brief conflict in a short span of time. The U-boat threat seriously hampered efforts to just get basic supplies to a Britain under siege; once it was removed, this was relatively simple. But they didn't stockpile supplies for D-Day since 1943 because they thought the logistics of supplying an army in Europe for an extended period of time was going to be easily accomplished without having stockpiles built up overseas ahead of time. They were abundantly aware of the fact that they could not rely only on the flow of materials coming in; they knew they would need to have more supplies, much more, to supplement the flow.
Allies could do a little interdiction and cause a few logistics headaches by 1945, but you're really overestimating the effectiveness. For instance, in the final stages of the campaign in Italy, they attempted just what you're suggested to demobilize German forces and cut them off from supplies. It failed to accomplish either thing. Even in Korea and Vietnam, attempts to hamper mobility and logistics were not "all that". They sometimes gave a slight edge (at enormous expense) but they were hardly any sort of war-winning wunderweapon.
It is idiotic to use words like "idiotic" and think that they're constitute an argument. So far you offered nothing to support this assesment, so phrases like that used in this context are "incredibly stupid"
I stand by my words. Hoping to win a war of attrition against Russia is, historically, idiotic. So is hoping to reach all of one's objectives in such a vast territory in any rapid amount of time. This is geographically obvious.
Soviet industry in 1943 was kept running by Allied deliveries, true. Of course, they were also losing far more material in combat than the Allies were before D-Day ... anyway, this is an anachronism in 1945.
Total production statistics for war material in WW2:
Tanks and self-propelled guns
Soviet Union = 105,251
United States = 88,410
Germany = 67,429
Artillery
Soviet Union = 516,648
United States = 257,390
Germany = 159,147
Mortars (over 60 mm)
Soviet Union = 200,300
United States = 105,055
Germany = 73,484
Military trucks
United States = 2,382,311
Canada = 815,729
United Kingdom = 480,943
Personally, I'd feel more comfortable with an industrial edge in tanks and heavy weapons than in trucks.
The Soviets had a worse record for many reasons - a principal one being that they bore the overwhelming brunt of the German onslaught, and got caught with their pants down. All of which they had mitigated by 1945. If Allied forces were so hot, what were the Soviets doing hoisting their flag over the Reich Chancellery? Why'd they "git thar fustest with the mostest"? I'm sure you'll throw a laundry list of excuses and explanations at me, but the simple fact is that the Allies were facing fewer troops of lower quality and, even with two fronts established (Italy and France) and naval and air superiority, still couldn't pull it off.
The training of Allied forces was superior, indeed. But training can't match experience, and the Allies simply didn't have as much of it. By 1945 the Soviets had lots of very experienced officers and NCOs, some of whom had years of experience on the field. The Allies just didn't possess such a large core of veterans, and training has never been a substitution for that.
It fared just fine in 1945. Your scenario, from what I can tell, is that the Allied forces in Europe in 1945 get to fight the Soviet forces of 1941 or so. That's what your analysis of Soviet capability appears to be based on. I keep hearing alot about their "record", presumably their performance in the early phases of the war, and various other anachronisms (like reliance on lend-lease).
You mean sort of like how Rolling Thunder was supposed to work, 20 years later?
It didn't even work with much more advanced aircraft against a bunch of rice farmers living on a patch of land that was just a postage stamp next to Russia! You're being far too naieve about the value of air power.
It didn't take long to switch from trucks to tanks. The fact remains that the US had more industry, significantly more. And if needed could outproduce the Soviets. And your numbers are hardly indicative of industrial power. In the US, peak tank output was much higher than the Soviets and by 1945 American production or medium and heavy tanks (and vehicles using those chassis) was ~35% of peak, while Soviets were still producing about 90%. These were voluntary decreases in production, so it seems quite clear that if they needed to the US could quickly outproduce the Soviets in this regard.
And this is ignoring other Allied production (which in the case of tanks, at least, would close the "gap" you mention.
The biggest problem still is that the Soviets had even less chance of striking against Britain, let alone the US, than Germany.
I agree that without some major tactical and strategic genious, the West is getting smacked in Germany to start with, but if they had the will to stick it out, the US would win a battle of attrition.
frekk said:
The Soviets also had to built up massive reserves of supplies for any hypothetical thrust across the Fulda Gap. Any potential conflict in the Cold War was assumed to be a ''come as you are war", it was almost inconceivable that any side would have been able to maintain supply lines from their industrial centers.
frekk said:
The German railway system in terms of track wasn't all that hard hit but the rolling stock and engines were mauled horribly. Granted, the majority was caused by ground attack runs by allied fighter-bombers but it was still sufficient to cause the Germans operating in France all manner of problems. The Russian air-force wouldn't have been up to the task of taking on the allied air-forces head-on, if they weren't completely cleaned out of the skies first, which was a possibility.
frekk said:
I'd like to be able to feed and arm my troops but that's just me. Also, raw numbers are kind of useless considering that the United States never fully mobilized for war.
frekk said:
Both of those conflicts are at all comparable to what were talking about? One being asymmetric and the other being anything but a conventional conflict.
frekk said:
Vietnam is the size of modern-day Germany. It was also an asymmetric conflict which didn't involve large troop concentrations like I don't know a war against Soviet Union would?
I was asking, how attack of Western powers on USSR could be the Soviet aggression
?Your answer - such attack against USSR after declaration of elections in Czechoslovakia as rigged (because you don't like the results) would be Soviet aggression?
Ok. Let's assume you really understand the figures you are talking about.
In this case, you've compared ~100 German divisions, deployed for attack against USSR, whereas German division was significantly larger than Soviet - against total number of smaller divisions in USSR, significant part of which were not deployed to counter German aggression. Your comparison gives impression that Germans destroyed 3X more numerous forces, when in reality it was surprise attack and destruction of comparable sized forces.
If you knew this, it means that you wrote wrong information on purpose.
I have not to much to add to other people's comments.
Non-existing logistical impossibility.
Vulnerability which didn't much affected German war production in far worse situation.
Non-existing qualitative inferiority, giving better experience.
Fighting forces were of comparable strength. Red Army needed time to mobilize, whereas forces in Western districts of USSR were crushed in first 2 weeks.Now you're just nitpicking about exact figures, hoping it will distract me from pursuing the bigger picture. It won't happen
It suffered huge casualties. If it was completely trashed, I wouldn't be here discussing it with you.
Directly relevant. Do you know, for example that only about 7% of Soviet tanks were modern T-34 and KV? If I remember correctly.
Yes, and Red Army had the same problems. In 1941.
Now check German and Soviet casualties to the end of war. We are talking about 1945, right?
Battle of Berlin
Soviet casualties 80.000 dead, 280.000 wounded
German casualties 460.000 dead and wounded, 480.000 captured
Something happened after 4 years, with ants and elephants?
Now, find the reason why Berlin battle doesn't mean anything
Journalists like such stamps - it's strange that military historians don't share such point of view. Yes, Wehrmacht was at the time the most capable and powerful military force. And Soviet Army was the only force which managed to defeat it.Lastly, even though the Red Army had more men, more guns, more airplanes, more tanks, more EVERYTHING, it took it 3 YEARS to kick Wehrmacht out of the USSR. How pathetic is that when it takes an army 3 years to get back what the enemy seized in roughly 5 months?
Oh yes, the US military in Europe in 1945 could quickly defeat several times more numerous and much more experienced Soviet one. Too bad it's just wishful thinking.
P.S
I think that in the case of total war for attrition, USA would possibly be in more advantageous situation to eventually win. But in real world, such war started in 1945 would quickly end with peace agreement in stalemate situation, when all continental Europe will be in Soviet hands. And the situation after this peace agreement would be much less favorable for Britain and USA then it was in reality, after German defeat.
privatehudson
The Ultimate Badass
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Without wishing to get overly involved in the heated debate that the thread seems to have become I'd just like to point out that I find the notion that the Western Allies were facing inferior German divisions isn't really supported by a quick glance at OOBs from June 1944 onwards. Out of the 6 SS Panzer Divisions 5 of them were brought to Normandy to counter western allies and stayed there (with occasional periods when they were withdrawn from the lines to refit) pretty much until the Battle of the Bulge ended. Four Parachute divisions fought in Normandy along with others used in Italy. That's not mentioning the Heavy panzer battalions and Nebelwerfer units deployed in Normandy or the deployment of an entire battalion of King Tigers against the Polish Paras at Driel when they would have been much more use knocking out T34s on the eastern front.
It is true to argue that the cream of German manpower had been almost wiped out through the years of warfare by the time the Allies hit the beaches in Normandy but not really accurate to argue that the Germans facing the Normandy invasion were inferior to their colleagues on the eastern front.
It is true to argue that the cream of German manpower had been almost wiped out through the years of warfare by the time the Allies hit the beaches in Normandy but not really accurate to argue that the Germans facing the Normandy invasion were inferior to their colleagues on the eastern front.
Several things are wrong with this paragraph.
1) We are not talking rinky little Hiroshima bombs. The U.S. had already settled on the considerably more powerful Fatman as the basis for its production weapons, both because of its greater power, and because of its more efficient use of fissionables.
2) They do vastly more damage than any saturation bombing with incendiaries, even the gigantic thousand bomber raids of 1945, when not targeting the rather uniquely flammable Japanese cities.
3) The U.S. only had 1 weapon in stock in August. According to Groves' estimate, the U.S. was expecting at least 2 more weapons in September, and at least 3 a month thereafter. Like every other part of the U.S. military industrial complex, the nuclear weapons project was massively downsized with the end of the War, which explains the small stockpile in 1946. Had the wartime production rate been maintained, and the wartime expansion projects been conducted, 50+ weapons by the end of 1946 is pretty much certain, with 100 not impossible.
4) Neutralizing the Soviet military by outright destroying it with nuclear arms needs a lot of weapons. Crippling any Soviet offensive capability by blowing up Moscow and a few other rail hubs is vastly easier. All those gigantic tank factories you talk about, or the oil refineries at Baku, are connected to the frontline through a handful of rail-hubs. Destroying all those hubs requires no more than 10 weapons, and afterwards, Soviet frontline armies can only recieve a trickle of supplies other than what they can plunder, and assuming the allies are careful to allow no fuel to fall into Soviet hands, the entire Soviet army would be walking on foot and starving in short order. Destroying Moscow alone will nearly halve Soviet offensive capabilities even discounting the damage to morale or command and control.
I have so far avoided joining this debate, but this one got to me.
The Soviets got to Berlin first because the politicians said they could. Allied forces were rampaging over western Germany, moving with almost total lack of opposition. The troops wanted to take Berlin. They could have taken Berlin. But Eisenhower, following orders from his superiors, made them stop, and wait for the Soviets.
frekk
Scourge of St. Lawrence
And why did the politicians say that?
Soviets had leverage because of their military position, and won lots of concessions when it came time to draw the maps. There aren't any freebies in these sorts of negotiations - you get only what your perceived leverage can afford you, not an iota more.
The other reason, besides the fact that the Soviets were going to get Berlin afterwards anyhow, was that they didn't want Soviet and Western Allied forces fighting in Berlin at the same time ... not even under the best circumstances were the Western Allies going to liberate Berlin before the Soviets arrived, at best they would be there simultaneously.
You are talking about war on attrition, which would take years - I don't think Patton suggested such variant and I don't think Roosevelt or Churchill would approve such plan. There is nothing to gain for America for sure.
This is a way to go - America, building A-bombs month by month and burning industrial centers of Eurasia with their population one-by-one. Exactly as free democratic nation should behave
In fact, American troops were going to withdraw from Europe after May 1945. They had something unfinished in Pacific region, don't remember exactly what...
No more than half a year before organized Soviet military operations outside of Russia can no longer be conducted, at which point Patton's goal would already be achieved. Not much of a war of attrition, at least for the WAllies.
If only the U.S. and Britain hadn't been busy burning the industrial centers of Germany and Japan for the last 4 years, they might step back and say, "My God, we are violating the late 20th Century precepts of how a democratic nation should behave."
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