Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Loud Whispers]

I think it's a safe bet that the Allies wouldn't have been wiping out the Russians with nuclear hellfires anytime soon.

If the Rosenbergs give the Soviet Union nuclear secrets, the USA has 7 years to nuke the USSR into oblivion. If they fail, the USA has at most 20 years to nuke the USSR into oblivion.
They'd manage.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Well, I'm saying that the Soviets won't be completely annihilated by nuclear bombs. Yes, they'll be a factor, but the war isn't going to drag on long enough for more than a handful of bombs to be used. Unless the Soviets push the Allies out of Europe, of course. Then who knows.

[stabbymcstabstab]

But if Moscow and every major city is a crater you don't really need to completely kill everything.

[MonkeyHead]

Meh, what would have been the point of nuking somewhere like Stalingrad anyway?

[Glloyd]

PTW

[Fniff]

Here's an old, old question from an emotion thread: if a a second civil war was started in America/Britain, what resources and circumstances would be needed for the rebels to overthrow the government?

[Culise]

The problem with using nuclear bombs to gank the Soviets is production. The Americans more or less used their entire nuclear arsenal on Japan, with a single bomb ready in the reserves. At most. And that's after several months of Uranium refinement. Admittedly I have no idea how many bombs were still under construction when WWII ended, or the projected rates of production assuming that WWII continued against the Soviets, but I think it's a safe bet that the Allies wouldn't have been wiping out the Russians with nuclear hellfires anytime soon. But on the other hand, strategic deployment of nuclear bombs to eliminate Russian production centers should tip the advantage towards the Allies. So... sucks to be the Russians?

In 1945, six warheads were available by the end of the year.  1946, that goes up to 11, then 32 in 1947, and by the end of 1948, it skyrockets to 110 [Ref], most of which were Mark 3 "Fat Men" implosion weapons.  In other words, that's Moscow, Stalingrad, Leningrad, Vladivostok, Sevastopol, and oh, let's say Baku hammered in an instant.  That said, it's not the end of the world.  These were the little suckers used on Nagasaki, not what we of the 21st century usually think of when we hear "nuke".  The first proper post-war bomb, the Mark 4 (a comprehensive rationalization and simplification of the Mark 3), didn't enter production until 1949, and the first major expansion of explosive yield wouldn't come until the 1952 Mark 5.  You can expect a massive expansion in the Mark 4 program under ongoing wartime pressures, but I'd expect that to actually take resources from the Mark 5 and Snark (the first American ICBM) projects as well. 

The real threat to the Soviets in the near term would be a massive step-up of a conventional bombing program, not the nuclear arsenal - in other words, the part of the aerial campaign that contributed to bringing Germany and Japan to their knees.  The Soviets in 1945 are at the very end of their logistics tether, and this is not helped by the fact that their logistics are in large part hugely reliant on Allied Lend-Lease shipments of trucks.  A war with the Soviets will stretch from Berlin to Iran (which at this point is still effectively partitioned between the Soviets and Britain due to Operation Countenance) to China and Korea.  Bombers operating out of the Middle East can immediately strike at Soviet oil refineries at Baku, and other trans-Ural industries are also at risk.  The issue is actually if the Allied powers can actually finish the job.  Their logistics aren't that much better, and they also have to deal with domestic issues as well.  The war was supposed to be over by this point; continuing it by backstabbing a fellow ally is not going to be a pleasant task, nor a popular one.  They'll have to fight all the way from Germany to the Urals against not the disorganized and micromanaged-to-oblivion Red Army of 1941, but the hardened and experienced fighting force that is the Red Army of 1945. 

[mainiac]

Here's an old, old question from an emotion thread: if a a second civil war was started in America/Britain, what resources and circumstances would be needed for the rebels to overthrow the government?

Defection of the army.  Next!

They'll have to fight all the way from Germany to the Urals against not the disorganized and micromanaged-to-oblivion Red Army of 1941, but the hardened and experienced fighting force that is the Red Army of 1945. 

The west doesn't need to push to win though.  The west can win a war of attrition and can win a stalemate.  In an attrition circumstance, the Russian manpower is already exhausted while the Americans+British+French have most of their young men still alive.  The Russians have another 2 million or so men coming of age annually (idk the real figure, just a guess), the six million already under arms and whatever they can raise from their new empire.  They had more men but the war hurt the Russians badly.  The west has more men coming of age each year, plus huge numbers of undrafted men and could probably get quite a few Germans on their side too.  Attrition is bad for the Soviets, they would need to win the war before those numbers tells.

Stalemate is even worse for the Russians though because the airwar is ridiculously stacked against them.  The west would have like a 3-4 numerical advantage in fighters and the fighters would be of greater quality.  When the allies finally broke the German airforce the results were very bad for German industry and logistics, we just dont appreciate how bad because the war ended so soon after.  The Russian army was brilliantly organized for deep penetration operations but those operations require having trucks and tanks in working order, not logistically trapped.

So the Soviets need to attack or they lose.  If they could somehow take all of France they could maybe figure something out but it would be dicey.

[Helgoland]

Okay, another question: If the Republicans had won the Spanish Civil War, would Spain have joined WWII on the allies' side? If yes, what are the implications of such a change?

[Glloyd]

Depends. In this scenario, which faction of the Republicans held the majority share of power after victory? The anarchists and socialists or the communists? If the former, I feel like it would have gone the same way with a neutral Spain. If the latter, I think they would have remained neutral until the Soviets joined in the war. Either that or stayed neutral for the whole thing as well.

Spain really didn't want to get involved in that war.

[mainiac]

Okay, another question: If the Republicans had won the Spanish Civil War, would Spain have joined WWII on the allies' side? If yes, what are the implications of such a change?

If the SCW had taken three years to drag on as historically, no chance in hell.  Spain was way too exhausted to join the war on either side and would be justifiably pissed with the British for hamstringing them.  Expect a decent number of volunteers but no DOW.

I could see Hitler being stupid enough to invade Spain.  The Germans would win of course but their victory would get them very little.  They would take Gibralter, thus denying the allies a convoy route that was already all but shutdown by Italy.  In exchange they would get a huge new shoreline to garrison, costing them another half million troops if not twice that.  Best case scenario for the Russians is Barbarossa gets pushed back until the next spring and Russia ends up in a much stronger position.  The balance of power would be hard to predict with Russia being stronger but no Great Patriotic War to influence the Soviet mindset.

[Culise]

The west doesn't need to push to win though.  The west can win a war of attrition and can win a stalemate.  In an attrition circumstance, the Russian manpower is already exhausted while the Americans+British+French have most of their young men still alive.  The Russians have another 2 million or so men coming of age annually (idk the real figure, just a guess), the six million already under arms and whatever they can raise from their new empire.  They had more men but the war hurt the Russians badly.  The west has more men coming of age each year, plus huge numbers of undrafted men and could probably get quite a few Germans on their side too.  Attrition is bad for the Soviets, they would need to win the war before those numbers tells.

Stalemate is even worse for the Russians though because the airwar is ridiculously stacked against them.  The west would have like a 3-4 numerical advantage in fighters and the fighters would be of greater quality.  When the allies finally broke the German airforce the results were very bad for German industry and logistics, we just dont appreciate how bad because the war ended so soon after.  The Russian army was brilliantly organized for deep penetration operations but those operations require having trucks and tanks in working order, not logistically trapped.

So the Soviets need to attack or they lose.  If they could somehow take all of France they could maybe figure something out but it would be dicey.

If it's a stalemate going into the 50s, both sides lose as the war goes nuclear.  The Soviets cannot attack due to their logistics situation, but the Allies, if they make the Soviets an open enemy, absolutely cannot afford to let the Soviet Union survive in any form.  If you thought the German Dolchstoss legend was bad, create a Soviet stab-in-the-back that's rooted in facts and open war, and one with a soon-to-be-nuclear power that knows for an absolute truth that the West will betray them at the drop of a hat and must be destroyed first before it destroys them.  If the Allies invade, they will need to occupy Russia to win, utterly eradicating everything about the Soviet system root and branch to inculcate an entirely new psychology in the people to make them think that the Soviet system that brought them to Berlin was fundamentally wrong and that the Western system that stole their victory away fundamentally right, because anything less is a loss for both sides.  Even such an Allied victory (and we'll assume it happens, even though there's a very real chance it won't) will be costly, leaving aside the war itself; it will necessitate de-Nazification on a continental scale.   If the Soviet Union or some theoretical Russian successor state following a Soviet defeat goes the way of interwar Germany, it's going to be a World War Three between nuclear powers.

[mainiac]

A stalemate isn't going to last four years in the face of complete air superiority.  Either the Soviets push the western powers off the mainland or they wont be able to operate frontline armies.  A tie is a loss for them.

I am confused as to why the West needs to fully occupy Russia to secure victory.  Once the border is at Finland, Poland and either Romania or Ukraine they have achieved all their objectives.  Sure the Soviet union would lick it's wounds but it would be doing so as a far, far weaker power.

[Strife26]

The USSR survived a hell of a lot of time being underneath Nazi air superiority. Planes don't win wars, and the Ruskie had a pretty big advantage on the ground, with the t34 being a great tank, the logistics in place well able to create them, and having a 3 to 1 advantage over the Western Allies. Planes and Nukes aren't enough to make up that difference, especially when the West would be politically fractured.

Of of the Wikipedia page for Operation Unthinkable

The plan was taken by the British Chiefs of Staff Committee as militarily unfeasible due to a three-to-one superiority of Soviet land forces in Europe and the Middle East, where the conflict was projected to take place. The majority of any offensive operation would have been undertaken by American and British forces, as well as Polish forces and up to 100,000 German Wehrmacht soldiers. Any quick success would be due to surprise alone. If a quick success could not be obtained before the onset of winter, the assessment was that the Allies would be committed to a protracted total war. In the report of 22 May 1945, an offensive operation was deemed "hazardous".

[mainiac]

The USSR survived a hell of a lot of time being underneath Nazi air superiority. Planes don't win wars, and the Ruskie had a pretty big advantage on the ground, with the t34 being a great tank, the logistics in place well able to create them, and having a 3 to 1 advantage over the Western Allies. Planes and Nukes aren't enough to make up that difference, especially when the West would be politically fractured.

The german bombing of the Soviet Union was peanuts compared to what the western powers could bring to bear.  For one thing there is the part of having several times as many planes, Germany produced less then 10k long range bombers (so not Junkers) while the US alone produced 50k medium and heavy bombers.  For another there's not having a second front, from 1943 onward 80% of German planes were sent west.

It's true that planes didn't win WWII on their own but that's because the war ended just when they started ramping up the pain.  It took the allies until late 1944 to break the German airforce but the effect was pretty harsh, just overlooked among the collapse of the German land forces.  In WWIII it doesn't take the allies three years to ramp up because they have a bigger airforce then they had in WWII from day 1 and have already developed all the doctorines and equipment.

Operation Unthinkable was judging the viability of a short offensive campaign in Poland, not a war as a whole.

The T-34 was a decent tank but it wasn't the godmachine that it's sometimes made out to be.  When M4(76) Shermans fought T-34(85) in later conflicts the T-34s made a pretty poor showing.  And while the Soviets had more T-34s immediately in theatre, that simply reflected deployments, it was the western powers who had the most tanks worldwide.

After '46 the Soviets proceeded to close the economic gap and increase the land forces disparity for a couple decades.  In the 70s the legendary hordes or Russian tanks ready to sweep out over western Europe were real.  Not so much in 1946.