IDAGG said:
I think you meat to reply to unknown_handle. You and I are basically saying the same thing.
Unknown_handle said:
Your reading comphension has failed you. No where did I say start a nuclear war in Europe.
VE day was in May 1945 while the first live test of a nuke was in July 1945. Once we dropped two bombs in August on Japan Stalin had no idea of what our arsenal would be or where they were or if we had the ability to drop a bomb on Moscow. The threat of us nuking Russia could have been used to get the Soviets to get out of Eastern Europe. But again this would be contrary to FDR's promise to give them what they conquered from Germany.
Five years later, if the Chicoms thought for a second that Truman would make China into a glass parking lot they would have never attacked us in North Korea. Yes Russia had nukes but China correctly surmised that Truman was a weak leader. He was too chicken to even use conventional bombs to blow up the bridges that the Chicoms used to bring in the eventual 3 million Chinese troops that fought the US led UN coalition in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953. It is estimated that somewhere between 110,000 to 180,000 Chinese soldiers died in the Korean War. Again another war that would not have occurred if we had kicked the Soviets out of eastern Europe at the end of WWII.
Buck Turgidson said:
After we dropped the two bombs on Japan, how long would it have taken us to build a dozen or two more nukes to hit the major industrial and population centers of European Russia?
Also, not to derail, but I never did understand why we didn't just glass the Chicoms in the Korean war. Never have gotten a sound explanation for that, other than Truman was a ***** or "Russians". Shoulda nuked North Vietnam too (but it probably wouldn't have been necessary if China was already turned into a parking lot 15 or so years earlier.
I guess we'll never know. My bet would be that China would sue for peace once their cities and ports started getting glassed. I doubt they really cared that much about North Korea that they would get turned into a radioactive wasteland over it. I don't think China had much of an air force, so I doubt they could stop it. On the other hand, no way would I attempt a land invasion of China.chickencoupe16 said:Buck Turgidson said:
After we dropped the two bombs on Japan, how long would it have taken us to build a dozen or two more nukes to hit the major industrial and population centers of European Russia?
Also, not to derail, but I never did understand why we didn't just glass the Chicoms in the Korean war. Never have gotten a sound explanation for that, other than Truman was a ***** or "Russians". Shoulda nuked North Vietnam too (but it probably wouldn't have been necessary if China was already turned into a parking lot 15 or so years earlier.
The logic behind not extending into China is where do you stop? You nuke China because they sent trips into Korea. Reasonable. Now they send more and being so large, with such a tight grip on the populace and disdain for their own people's lives, the nukes aren't working. So you invade China.
Keep in mind, Soviet equipment and supplies are pouring in to China. When the Korean War began, the North was better equipped than the Chinese thanks to the Soviets. Now that equipment is being funneled to the Chinese. So you bomb the railroads. But with so many people, the Chinese are able to repair them quickly and with such a large border, the roads into China also become filled with incoming equipment.
Much of the equipment is being shipped from nearby Russian cities like Vladivostok. So do you nuke Russian cities? With a large portion of your forces tied up in China and Korea, the Soviets invade Western Europe. You're now fighting a two front war against two of the two largest armies in the world.
Its not only weird, its unrealistic beyond even the obvious hurdles -- if you mean near the end of war. The Kwantung Army no longer has the power to help decisively. Or do you mean earlier --- what year are you talking about?kubiak03 said:
As weird as that sounds, best option probably would have been to team up with Japan and Germans. Two front war.
Hopefully sans their leadership/ideology.
Probably would have been extremely hard to quash their ideology while quickly turning them into fighting allies.
Europe would have been a big killing field due to the size of Russian military over there.
Would have needed to get the Japanese to allow us to use Japan and Manchuria as staging areas to invade eastern Russia to provide some relief to the west.
I'm not sure how informed I am on this question, but just spit-balling here ...Quote:
But the jury seems to be still out whether Russia would have won with zero help or logistics from us. There may be some here that have an informed opinion on that?
I go back and forth. Still, it's hard to think that after bringing the Pacific Theater to a close, redirecting that war power to Europe and engaging the Soviets wouldn't have resulted in a toppling of the Stalinist regime at the very least.Stive said:
Patton may have been "right" but put me down as thinking we wouldn't have beat them.
I think you're right, but of all the years, I would think it could only have happened in 1945-47 and Chiang's Nationalists could have been somehow, some way, victorious using what was left of the Kwantung Army, combined with US air power. But then again, by that time the Communists had completely taken root in China's countryside.titan said:Its not only weird, its unrealistic beyond even the obvious hurdles -- if you mean near the end of war. The Kwantung Army no longer has the power to help decisively. Or do you mean earlier --- what year are you talking about?kubiak03 said:
As weird as that sounds, best option probably would have been to team up with Japan and Germans. Two front war.
Hopefully sans their leadership/ideology.
Probably would have been extremely hard to quash their ideology while quickly turning them into fighting allies.
Europe would have been a big killing field due to the size of Russian military over there.
Would have needed to get the Japanese to allow us to use Japan and Manchuria as staging areas to invade eastern Russia to provide some relief to the west.
If going pre-1942, your best window with Japan is not to take China's side. The Pacific War doesn't have to happen if you don't embargo. In fact, if you use the Nomonhon clash in 1939 to even signal to Japan you want to `assist' in some way with the Soviet issue, that is quite possibly an option.
If you avoid the Pacific War, that leaves some options with whether you let Germany take Russia down or not. But the jury seems to be still out whether Russia would have won with zero help or logistics from us. There may be some here that have an informed opinion on that?
What Patton could not have known --- think about it it was only really learned well after the war -- was the true SCALE of the war on the Eastern Front. What we found so touch and go in the Bulge was the default there in some ways. Just how much Russian power was there to hurl against the Wehrmacht, or for that matter, how *much* power Germany was holding on the Eastern Front and didn't have to hurl against us. If they did, D-Day's a goner. BQ_90 is probably right that it is far from obvious we would win in 1945.
Havn't seen a discussion on this , but we had atomic cannons in Germany in the 50s !Buck Turgidson said:
After we dropped the two bombs on Japan, how long would it have taken us to build a dozen or two more nukes to hit the major industrial and population centers of European Russia?
Also, not to derail, but I never did understand why we didn't just glass the Chicoms in the Korean war. Never have gotten a sound explanation for that, other than Truman was a ***** or "Russians". Shoulda nuked North Vietnam too (but it probably wouldn't have been necessary if China was already turned into a parking lot 15 or so years earlier.
It would make far, far more sense, to just go for the big one if going to try Patton's war. Assassinate Stalin, arrange that, and maybe recognize Zhukov if he seized power in the vacuum that followed. With the resources of both the OSS and Abwehr available, it might have been doable.Belton Ag said:I go back and forth. Still, it's hard to think that after bringing the Pacific Theater to a close, redirecting that war power to Europe and engaging the Soviets wouldn't have resulted in a toppling of the Stalinist regime at the very least.Stive said:
Patton may have been "right" but put me down as thinking we wouldn't have beat them.
One thing is for sure, all of Europe would have been ground to a powder. Much worse than it was in 1945. It would look vastly different today had that happened.
Now THAT is a very interesting what-if don't see explored as much. Namely, what if Russian war launched on schedule, and not only that, it is because Hitler is blowing off Greece and bailing out Mussolini? When you talk about Moscow falling, the real question is, do you mean they "get" Stalin and the government? If the Germans DO, they might be able to pull off a cease fire. If not, it just means the same war and it grinds on longer.Quote:
As it happened, Mussolini ran into difficulty while attempting to take Greece, and Hitler sent his forces to help out his buddy. This was a diversion that cost the Wehrmacht its originally scheduled launching date of Operation Barbarrossa. Even with the later start of the invasion of Russia, the Wehrmacht made it to the outskirts of Moscow. Had the diversion to Greece not happened, I feel it reasonable that the Wehrmacht may very well have conquered Moscow, but that does not equate to taking all of Russia, obviously.
At some they stop and dig in and try to fend off the rest of Russia. I'm sure the plan was send everyone to concentration camps anyways. They wanted to repopulate the east with Germans. Not sure they wanted all of RussiaCinco Ranch Aggie said:
I admittedly know next to nothing about Soviet leadership beneath Stalin (I mean, why bother since he likely had anyone with any competence whatsoever shot). Who knows what the Soviets do if the Nazis manage to take Moscow and capture/kill Stalin? Generally, I'd think that a guerrilla resistance effort would have come about even if the Soviet state had capitulated, as in France, but it is an interesting "what-if?" question.
This is actually not true, most were not killed and brought out of the gulags and reinstated because in 1942 he needed leadership for his Army. They all swore allegiance to him, and the communist party but mostly Stalin, and were allowed to return to leading the military. This is part of why things went to poorly in 1941 and got better in 1942. Turns out you actually need Generals trained to lead large formations of troops to be effective.Cinco Ranch Aggie said:
I admittedly know next to nothing about Soviet leadership beneath Stalin (I mean, why bother since he likely had anyone with any competence whatsoever shot). Who knows what the Soviets do if the Nazis manage to take Moscow and capture/kill Stalin? Generally, I'd think that a guerrilla resistance effort would have come about even if the Soviet state had capitulated, as in France, but it is an interesting "what-if?" question.
they where never allies, the Soviets where occupiers. Remember the secret non aggression pack between Russia and Nazi Germany split up Poland between the two.Quote:
Soviets did turn their back on many of their allies almost immediately after the war (like the Poles).
BQ_90 said:they where never allies, the Soviets where occupiers. Remember the secret non aggression pack between Russia and Nazi Germany split up Poland between the two.Quote:
Soviets did turn their back on many of their allies almost immediately after the war (like the Poles).
Remember WWII started over Poland. The Western Allies turned their back on Poland knowing full well they would be occupied by Russia. During the Warsaw uprisings, the Russians blocked the Western Allies from providing aid.
Russia want Poland destroyed so they could install puppet govt.
also on the Manhattan project. Many of the Scientist wouldn't have worked on the bomb if they knew it was going to be used against Russia. Many didn't really want to use it against Japan to the point of writing a letter to Truman.
IIRC the first inkling the US had that there were soviet spies in the Manhattan project was in late 1946 or early 1947 when the first Venona intercepts were decrypted.chickencoupe16 said:
I'm not saying that it would have been possible to stop the leaks or to even k.ow about the leaks in time, but it would have gone a long way towards winning a war against the Soviets.
A good bit longer. And we should have pushed into germany and expanded paperclip to keep german science out of russian hands too. Nukes were inevitable, basic understanding of physics and chemistry leads in a straight line to fissionable u235 and pu. But separating 235 and creating pu took massive and delicate effort.IDAGG said:IIRC the first inkling the US had that there were soviet spies in the Manhattan project was in late 1946 or early 1947 when the first Venona intercepts were decrypted.chickencoupe16 said:
I'm not saying that it would have been possible to stop the leaks or to even k.ow about the leaks in time, but it would have gone a long way towards winning a war against the Soviets.
One wonders how the 1950s would have played out if the US had prevented any secrets from being stolen from the Manhattan project. I am sure the Soviets would have developed an A-bomb, but how many more years would it have taken. Instead of 1949, would it have been 1952? 1955? Longer?
The wehrmacht screwed up bigtime letting the nazis come in and **** all over the populace. The germans were hailed as liberators and cheered like we were in france at first. Not really what our popaganda wanted to highlight.chickencoupe16 said:
I think the real way to success is to be liberators instead of conquerors like the Nazis. Had the Nazis treated the populace better, they would have had far less partisan actions to deal with and plenty of soldiers willing to fight the Soviets and they would have had a chance at beating Russia. Maybe the high of beating the Nazis as part of or allied with the Red Army would have been too much to for American good will to overcome. But, the Soviets did turn their back on many of their allies almost immediately after the war (like the Poles).
The trick might be that you have to wait after the war for the Russians to build up contempt and mistrust within their conquered lands but not so long that they get the bomb.
Or maybe it is impossible to wait long enough for unrest. Maybe by '45, the war against the Soviets is already lost due to previous missteps. Maybe if you could go back further and cut Russia out of Lend-Lease and cut their spies out of The Manhattan Project, then you can win a war.
It doesn't really make sense to say that the Wehrmacht should not have "let" the Nazis come in and do things in occupied territories. The Wehrmacht was an instrument of Nazi power and despite some (seriously overstated among some amateur historians) resistance to Nazi ideology among a small minority of the officer corps, most of the Wehrmacht was either fully on-board with the Nazi program or apolitical and ready to follow orders from the Nazi leadership. There was never a moment until the end of the war when the Wehrmacht was not fully under political and operational control of the Nazi government. And the Nazi government sent the Wehrmacht to invade those countries because it wanted to eliminate or enslave the local populace and create a broader German colonial empire within the European landmass. Liberating the locals from Communist oppression and then letting them live freely was never on the Nazi agenda and thus never on the Wehrmacht's agenda; you might as well argue that the Nazis should not have been Nazis.cbr said:The wehrmacht screwed up bigtime letting the nazis come in and **** all over the populace. The germans were hailed as liberators and cheered like we were in france at first. Not really what our popaganda wanted to highlight.chickencoupe16 said:
I think the real way to success is to be liberators instead of conquerors like the Nazis. Had the Nazis treated the populace better, they would have had far less partisan actions to deal with and plenty of soldiers willing to fight the Soviets and they would have had a chance at beating Russia. Maybe the high of beating the Nazis as part of or allied with the Red Army would have been too much to for American good will to overcome. But, the Soviets did turn their back on many of their allies almost immediately after the war (like the Poles).
The trick might be that you have to wait after the war for the Russians to build up contempt and mistrust within their conquered lands but not so long that they get the bomb.
Or maybe it is impossible to wait long enough for unrest. Maybe by '45, the war against the Soviets is already lost due to previous missteps. Maybe if you could go back further and cut Russia out of Lend-Lease and cut their spies out of The Manhattan Project, then you can win a war.
Logistics of getting materiel and support into Afghanistan versus into Europe from the USSR is a completely different ball-game and level of difficulty even given 40 years of technical advances. Even with much of Europe in ruins. The infrastructure, terrain, proximity to the supply points....every single thing is worse with Afghanistan. Not to mention that the Soviets never pacified the countryside.CT'97 said:
That makes sense, the Soviets had massive logistics issues in Afghanistan. Living conditions and food for their troops was bad and there are stories of them sustaining themselves off of the local economy. A lot of equipment got parked and left because they couldn't get parts to repair it on site nor had the ability to transport it to a higher level repair facilities back in Russia.
