It is important to also note that the Soviet Union had greatly exhausted its manpower reserves and any and all people pulled into the army would devastate the soviet economy and food production.
I was just to comment the same, and as such in a long war, the allies would simply steamroll the soviets, there would be an initial push from the aggressor in the first phase, a stabilization of the front lines in the second, and then in the third the attritional strains would overwhelm the soviets since they were scraping the bottom of the barrel with regards to their manpower reserves. The end would happen pretty fast since it would be a cascading effect when the front finally start moving, also what Binkov is forgetting is that it was not just war material that Lend Lease provided, it was also things like canned goods, locomotives, and raw materials, again this shortfall would be negligible in the first phase, start to become an issue in the second, then in the third it would be sorely lacking and as such be a huge problem.
And unlike the Germans, the US had the biggest strategic bomber force in the world plus unlimited fighters to sweep ahead of them. Soviet oil fields would have been bombed around the clock and Soviet railways would have been smoked by thousands of US fighters, not to mention relentless fighter attacks on Soviet troops and armor.
Therefore it's important who starts the war first, other side (the western side) would have no other choice than to fight or relive the german occupation again
@@abbfilmann3735 in the real if the allies started the war it wouldve failed due to internal opposition, exhausted soldiers, and preception. Rest of the world wouldve seen allies as backstabbing and untrustworthy. Vice versa for USSR.
@@scaryclouds1403 Therefore I placed the emphasis on who starts the confrontation first - for Allies it would be equivalent of political suicide, for USSR not very smart move to do either
@@abbfilmann3735 alternatively let's say for fairness sake its something like American solider and Russian get into a fight causing a full blown skirmish leading to a war.
@@abbfilmann3735 Russia was actually an alley of Hitler (at least in their minds) at first. And if America and England attacked Germany it would been a disaster. We didn’t have the capabilities to take on Germany alone - forget if u add the Soviet Union into the equation! We entered the war at the perfect time. When Hitler turned on the Soviet Union. Remember Hitler secretly built his Tanks originally on Russian soil. And I believe his air-force or Luftwaffe was originally being worked on, on Russian soil. Since it was illegal for Germany to do anything (militarily) on German soil. That’s why operation Barbarossa was so shocking to The Soviet Union. (Or Stalin)
Losing 10 million fighting men, and another 10 or so million civilians and a severe lack of food cannot be overcome easily. The Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse at the end of WWII. I do not believe they could have survived another conflict so soon.
I remember when Gen. Patton supposedly said, "Re-arm the German army and we all go after the Russians." This aspect seems to have been totally ignored.
Because it was totally unrealistic....very few in western governments actually trusted Stalin but were at least pragmatic enough to realise the western allies would be unlikely to score an easy decisive win in such a scenario. Hitler's efforts had only just proven that and USSR military when Hitler invaded was in pretty bad shape. Russia is just too large, the settlements too far apart that acts as much if not greater defence for Russia then actual military assets. The western allies were lucky to hold on to even western Germany...I don't see Stalin getting any further then that though even in an optimistic scenario (for him).
@@andrewmckenzie292 the only regrets I think America has (in WW2) is #1- giving up Poland (with Stalin’s promise that it’s only temporary to free Poland of German occupation) to the Soviet Union! That was a horrible mistake! The Polish were a VERY Catholic country having more churches than any other country in Europe! And allowing Poland to become communist. #2- Allowing The Soviet Union to take Berlin! And that was a huge mistake! Russia (the Bolsheviks) was horrible to their own people - they were Medieval to the Citizens of Germany! Raping and robbing everyone and person in sight! - not that, that hasn’t probably happened in many conquered countries in the past. But never in modern day, on such a huge scale. (Although the Japanese did it to the Chinese during WW2) But if u ask me that was the United States two big mistakes during and following the war!
My grandfather was a 1st sergeant(German was his first language) at Battle of the Bulge and was wounded. After he recovered in Britain he was put to interrogating German prisoners and he said "every single one asked when he would be given his American Uniform and guns to go fight the Soviets." Every single one asked him that, so they expected to fight the Soviets and they wanted to do it.
Well, they (germans) all had a chance to fight the Soviets " ... In german uniforms and with their own german weapons. Without wasting time to surrender, change side, equip with US gear and weapons, get in to US uniforms and charge ( again?) the soviets. But i think that german prisoners just wanted to look "pro -west" and civilized to gain mercy from the western alies... But they failed.
@@george217 many divisions, blue, green, yellow... now are part of the soil as fertilizers. Lucky guys escape from soviet revenge but most the "divisions" never got back.
There was never really any chance of a war in 1945 between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. Despite a few contrarians like General Patton, nearly all Americans and British wanted to go home as soon as Japan was defeated. Nor was Stalin interested in war with the U.S. and Britain in Europe. Stalin's focus was on consolidating his new power in Central Europe, not attacking west beyond the Soviet zone. Such a war between the Soviets and the Western Allies while theoretically interesting was simply never a real possibility.
That's why we're talking about it and why it didn't actually take place. Realistically the human element would have made this war impossible even though both combatants were at the maximum military strength of all time in the history of humanity. Not counting nukes of course. obviously now ballistic missiles and MAD make scenarios like this totally unrealistic. I don't trust either side to stay conventional, especially with the existence of smaller tactical battlefield nukes. Things would get muddy pretty quick
I gotta disagree with ya! I firmly believe that’s why Patton had a mysterious hunting accident, and was killed “accidentally” by his own troops! (Not his per say but American troops) I think if he were allowed a smidgen more freedom we would have had a much longer WW2!!
Stalin would have advanced all the way across Europe..but he know he had no hope of over running Americans in Europe.. America now had atomic weapons to stop any further Russian advance, and vast fleets of bombers
The issue with your scenario is the Allies never wanted to "invade" the Soviet Union. Only push them back to their original borders. As a historian I can say with a decent amount of confidence, this is a no win scenario for the soviets. The US isn't fighting in the pacific, & can focus all their power on the USSR. Also there is no way Turkey doesn't let the allies use their bases as staging posts, after witnessing the atomic bomb. However the biggest issue is the absolute naval dominance of the Western allies. It's totally plausible the US figures a way to launch a nuclear capable bomber from a aircraft carrier. After a few major cities in the USSR get wiped off the map, even Stalin would ask for a ceasefire. The only issue preventing this was "war weariness", but once some of the soviet atrocities are made public, that weariness is gone. The war would last a year at most.
but would the western public or troops support the war they just got done fighting the germans in a very costly victory just to be told we are back at war this time with our former ally
@@kazakhstanisastate4614no internet back then. Media although not government sponsored, when it came to military usually toe the line of printing what the government says as factual. Only after the fact would they look at with a microscope
If you want to read more about this kind of thing a really good book series about this would be the Red Gambit Series by Colin Gee. It is pretty in depth and covers helps to empathize with the soldiers on both sides.
American has something. Untouched infrastructure. The russian factories and cities were flat while Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, etc were pumping out all munitions
@Xiping China soviet ideology was different to the west, they had the same war Ethic as Britain in ww1 around that time they literally pulled Everyman they could. If the west had the same approach we would have outnumbered the soviets.
@Xiping China The Soviets had no way to cross the either ocean or ways to stop the supply chain coming to europe they had no navy and the only long range bomb threat was coming from US it would of been over before it even started.
@Randall Scott Daway The USSR had only 2 functioning long range bombers the Tupalav and as I said earlier the war time production of the USA especially with the B17 and B29s being cranked out at a rate of over 1000 a month with bases in China, Europe and Alaska the US could bomb at its discretion and leisure every major city in the USSR cutting off the forward Soviet troops in Germany with no hope of being resupplied.
Your the type of comments people need to be watchful of, your delusional is uncanny, the Soviet would have gave the Americans a run for their money. Stop believing West media.
@@MrAce2000 the Soviets were quite literally receiving 2/3rds of their food supply in March 1945 from the US, they absolutely did not have the agricultural infrastructure to sustain their army at that point in time and were receiving daily shipments from Murmansk. In addition to that the Soviets lost 27 million people during a 4 year span, 80% of Soviet males born in 1923 did not live to see the end of the war, had they gone to war with the US they likely would have killed off an entire generation of people in the process. As well as the Soviets lacking any sort of long range strategic bomber, the US was producing about 300 planes per day and were the ones ravaging Japanese and German industry, the Soviets did not have an answer to accessing American industry across the ocean, while the Americans very well could obliterate any major Soviet targets with air superiority. In conclusion, even if all else failed, and the Soviets somehow were in a position to win, the Americans had the atomic bomb and the Soviets did not, their capital city and entire government would be reduced to ash, to which they would have no choice but too capitulate or face total annihilation.
@@MrAce2000the Americans had a nuclear program, the Soviets didn’t at the time. The Soviet Army was also crippled after WW2 so the Allies would have won. Might have taken a year or two but the Allie’s would have won eventually.
Soviet reserves were basically non existent by this point, the allies could effectively replenish their loses with more young fighting aged men, while soviets if they did replenish we’re down to older men, people with disabilities, and women.
Allied airpower would've shocked the USSR. They had never been subjected the numbers of bombers, fighter-bombers and fighters the Allied possessed. Another shock would be the sheer numbers of Allied a/c operating hundreds of miles behind the front, ravaging convoys, carpet bombing troop concentrations, etc etc.
@@LuvBorderCollies allied airpower struggled to reach Germany how were they gonna hit Moscow? And the red air force was huge, had more fightercraft than the west even. The allies focused on bombers
The russian oilfields are not vulnerable. The Nato supply was. There was 1 month of diesel reserve available in Europe...and that was a very optimistic assumption. . Suez would be shuttered. The North Atlantic and Northsea under massive threat. Baltic sea under russian control. Black sea a russian lake. Shipping around the horn not happening. The 150 Russian subs could stay on patrol almost indefinitely and were invulnerable to attacks since they dove deeper than the Wests..
@@808bigisland What are you talking about? This is World War II... not the Cold war. The Western Allies had THOUSANDS of ships! Those 50 or so Russian subs would have been gone in a couple of months (if they stayed in port) and they weren't nuclear. They couldn't patrol almost indefinitely and they couldn't dive deeper. And besides the arms we were giving to Russia, we were giving them convoy loads of raw materials and food. Once the west stopped shipping that they would be hurting big time. Once the West's air force had wiped out the Russian air cover it would have been a shooting gallery. Again we're not talking Cold War equipment and numbers. This is a WWII scenario.
One thing often overlooked is just how short on manpower the Soviets were by 1945 - they had to resort to conscripting old men almost as much as the Germans, and even then that would not be possible (certainly not in such a scale) had it not been for lend-lease food shipments, which eased the manpower required for agriculture. Utilizing "Allied" troops from the future Eastern Bloc was also not a measure of good will - the Red army needed men to fill the front lines, and they would take them from anywhere. On a related point, the USSR may not be able to fully rely on those allies - Poland for example had a significant anti-communist resistance movement up until 1947, and it would only get stronger if there was a real possibility of western assistance, along with the potential support of the Polish government in exile in London. Partisan actions could noticeably hamper already vulnerable supply lines, and provide intel to the Western Allies. Mass desertions from eastern bloc countries would also be likely.
what you said about Poland was also true for the other big central/eastern european country, Romania, they had a huge anti communist resistance in the end 40s and early 50s, which diminished way till the end of the 60s.
The ussr population at the time was 170 million, and a common misconception is that the soviet heavily relied on the lend lease tanks late war. They helped but by 1945 the soviets had made there own tanks that easily outclassed the m26 and centurion, such as is-3 which was feared by every nation outside of the bloc at its time.
Americans say that is their right to have firearms in order to protect themselves and to fight a tyrannical government [100% agree] - my countrymen did just that against the communist until the late 60's. In Romania there was a strong anti-communist resistance that did not want to surrender the country to the soviet red plague. We had been invaded by the Russians, just like the rest of Eastern Europe...nobody wanted this. With very limited access to firearms, the resistance fought the communists in the mountains of Romania in order to keep a bridgehead for the moment when the Americans and the British would come to the rescue and join the fight to push the soviets out of Europe. Unfortunately that moment never came, the armed resistance was eventually defeated and my parents and grand parents had to wait for another 45 years for freedom. My countrymen would have fought side by side with Polish people, the allies and the other eastern nations against Russia. The scenario presented in this video does not portray the reality of Eastern Europe at the end of WW 2.
@@michellesimmons8998 The Soviet population was impressive sure, but by 1945 they lost some 35% of men aged 20-50. Add to that all the men that still had to work in fields or factories, and it didn't leave very many you could conscript without starvation at home. Lend-Lease in terms of tanks isn't terribly relevant, sure (save perhaps for the winter of 1942, where British tanks made a good portion of Soviet armor), but the primary purpose of lend-lease was to help Soviet logistics. the Allies supplied thousands of trucks and locomotives, and were the best source of high-quality gasoline and several rare minerals. If the USSR were cut off from those supplies they'd need to divert even more men (which they were already short on) to work in the industry, and even then they may not get the same output as they did with Lend-Lease. As for the IS-3, it scared the Allies, but it wasn't that successful of a design. The big gun's long reload didn't go well with anti-tank combat (where you have to estimate range and correct off that), the interior was more cramped than even in the IS-2, and the mechanical reliability left a lot to be desired. Plus, with only 350-500 built in 1945 (compared to some 2000 Pershings) it would be far from the main tank of the Soviet armored divisions, which would still have to rely on T-34/85s, by most means inferior to Shermans.
You really think that Allied populations and armies would be very supportive of another war? There would've been mass demonstrations and defections immediately.
@@jahmah519 They threw Troops wave after wave against the Germans. They could only produce items for war because of our lend-lease policy. I f we didn't do that, German would have taken them out.
Perhaps, but it is just as obvious that without the USSR no one would have defeated Germany, 70-80 percent of the Wehrmacht's losses came on the eastern front. Without Soviet victories, D-Day would have been impossible, the “Allies” would have been drowned in the English Channel.
The same can be said about USA without Russia in WW2, France and Britain without Russia in WW1... what's the point of this argument? That the existence of one or two bottlenecks in Soviet industry that USA helped with makes America's participation in the war effort more important than that of Russia?
the combat radius of a B29 is 3,121 km surely not 6X any comparable German aircraft. That being said, hitting the Urals would obviously depend on the location of the forward bases, Using Finland yes, they reach the Urals, with 3/4 or half bomb loads easily far beyond. Additionally, the oil field were well within range.
The Soviets were exhausted by the end of WW2. Tremendous losses of life, and extreme exertion of it's people over 4 years. Continuation against a relatively fresh, and economically much more powerful USA would have collapsed the USSR by the end of 1946.
I think Soviets could hold up until mid-1947 if the war stays "conventional" if the US decides to carpet bomb factories and fields, while combining that with nukes, Soviets could probably surrender by end of 1946 like you said.
The soviet union was in prepared and low on morale during operation barbarossa, and now you're thinking the same as The German High Command that USSR will fall by 1947. War is not just a numbers game, as proven by History even the most advanced and most numerous force will still lose to a very determined enemy, see Saudi v.s. Yemen and / or USSR v.s. Mujahaden and / or USA v.s. Afghan, v.s. Vietnam
Not by 1946, even with nukes the war lasts several years. The allies simply didn't have the manpower to push the Soviets back far enough and it's far easier to defend then it is to attack.
There is also the fact that once the Allies start pushing the Soviets back, there would have been numerous Anti-Soviet partisans who would have dotted Eastern Europe upon their realization that the Soviets were no better occupiers than the Germans.
Unfortunates we betrayed our Underground Leaders, executing them as war criminals instead. The anti-Soviet partisans were like Ukraine more pro-German, or in Siberia pro-Japanese like Manchurians. Not that Soviets did better. When Brits stupidly trusted Stalin sending Polish etc govts in exile from London to Yugoslavia home, same veterans fought for Britain, executed right off the planes and ships. Soviets NEVER saw themselves part of our Allies. We kept compounding our mistakes. 😢
I remember reading about German POWS being held by American troops. One German colonel actually asked an allied prison commandant when he and his men would be allowed to join the Allies when they fought the Soviets. The commandant incredulously told the colonel that there was no such plan, and the German colonel could hardly believe that the Western Allies didn’t seem to think of the threat posed by the Soviet Union. If war did break out between the Allies, I do believe that many Wehrmacht troops would reenlist to fight with the Allies against Soviet forces as they considered the Soviets to be much worse than the Western Allies.
Moscow could definitely be hit by a B-29 because of its unmatched altitude. Binkov is incorrect to assume the B-29 would suffer losses due to a lack of escort fighters; it was built to not require escorts but use altitude. The Soviets had no experience with defending against strategic bombing on the scale of the American box formations that would have rolled over marshaling yards or Soviet positions before being carpeted. In addition, much of the Soviet fuel supply could be cut between bombing the Caucasus oil fields and simply turning off the flow of American imports. I think the notion of the US having longer supply lines is also wrong in the sense American supply lines begin to be threatened when ships pull into harbors on the continent, and with no Red Navy to speak of, the Western allies can keep moving that point to anywhere in the Baltic or Black Sea. Soviet supplies are rail-bound and travel the full length of the country.
Soviets had 12000 , (Twelve Thousand ) IL-2's in reserve , their version of the Spitfire , I wonder how many 1000 B-52 Bomber Fleets would have survived an onslaught , thats why they never went ahead , in fact the opposite would have happened, the Red Army would have ended up on the North Sea Coast.
@@brendonnz1964 How can you be so wrong in such a short comment? Il-2 is a close air support aircraft which had a flight ceiling of 5500m, Spitfire was a FIGHTER, the only common thing between them was that they both flew and were military aircraft. Next, B-52s had their first flight in 1952. And even if you are talking about the B-29, its flight ceiling is 9710m, How did you imagine a plane made to hit land targets could hit an aircraft flying 4000+ meters above it? Short answer: It can't even see the B-29s. However the soviets did have fighters that could fly as high as 10000m, But those aircraft were designed for low altitude flying, meaning that said fighters were too slow to reach the bombers and even if they did they would be lacking firepower, maneuverability and tactics to take said bombers down. It would take a year or two for them to deal with that.
The Soviets would have as much success with the B-29 as the Japanese did, which wouldn't be much. The whole point of the B-29 at that era was to fly high enough to avoid most enemy fighters while giving the crew a pressurized cabin to work with, flak would take some down but most fighters would struggle with it especially if escorted by P-51's.
@@castor3020 also even if the il2 were used as cas they would get shot down immediately by allied airforce Still can't believe this dude thinks il2 is the same as spitfire and can counter long range heavy jet bomber that won't exist until 5 years later
@@castor3020 not to mention the lost the avgas with the high octane rating for superchargers and other forced induction required to work at high altitudes.
In the face of crushing Allied air superiority, the Soviets' chances looked rather poor. A crushing Allied bombing air superiority would have quickly led to a logistical paralysis of the already notoriously limping Soviet supply system. Allied bomber operations would have been impossible for the Soviets to counter due to a lack of high-altitude fighters and the technology to produce them. Without lend lease supplies and with the oil industry razed to the ground, the Soviets would quickly have to surrender before the Americans were forced to use nuclear weapons.
Naive boy, the Soviets did not surrender even when the German Nazis were at the gates of Moscow, superiority in the air without superiority on the ground will not bring victory. And the American and British Nazis did not have superiority on the ground, so they were afraid, afraid of heavy losses, especially since most people in the U.S. and Europe have not yet forgotten who played a decisive role in the victory over Hitler.
Soviet manpower was nearly exhausted by 1945. It is unlikely the Soviets could’ve sustained a war for very long so unless they can make a rapid push to Paris and hope the Allied populations simply give up, there’s no way they could win. Although in contrast, I don’t think the Allies would be capable of actually successfully invading the USSR. Even with proper supplies for Winter, the infrastructure would be practically non existent at that point in the war. Once they reach the border, the US would probably just nuke them until they surrender or the citizens revolt against the government and end the war that way.
But the same thing was happening to Britain and France Britain had no more trained men and they were running out of men that could used to reinforce the divisions. Let alone make new divisions France did have manpower they could draft bit they were mostly coming from Africa. They would take long to get to the frontline
Russia is easy to invade. There are no natural barriers. All populations to the rear would be eager to resist the horrible Soviets. Soviet factories would be destroyed by B 29s, escorted by superior allied fighters. Why would the allies depend on Portuguese ports when Le Havre and Rotterdam are readily available? 1944 on the Western Front saw record cold temperatures. Sheesh!
@@sidecar7714 Because B-29s deployed in Europe and bombing Russia is a fantasy. Besides everybody in Western Europe would be fighting the aggressive Americans and their Nazi friends.
You have forgotten how lend lease specialized the Soviet economy. They were able to manufacture the tanks, planes and small arms they had due to not having to manufacture trucks and other support vehicles. The red army moved on Studabaker trucks and received the spair parts as well. Without that supply they could not replace damaged or worn vehicles. In short order they would have been back to foot infantry. Tanks can't carry supplies or troops. What about the farm equipment they received. That would have been the same problem. They had a shorter supply line but their supply line was vulnerable while the Allies was not. The alliies proved that they could create ports on any coast and supply large armies from them. The Soviets would be in danger of flanking invasions all along the Atlantic and Baltic coasts. Not to mention the black sea. Patton proved the viability of such operations in Sicily and the alliies landings in southern France. The Soviets would have had numerical superiority but that is an illusion as the Germans proved all through the war. The Soviets were repeatedly beaten by smaller German forces and did not really learn from the lessons. Their response was not to give their troops more flexibility but to centralize the command structure and use barely trained troops to assault German positions. They were battle hardened but would not be able to react to reverses below the brigade or division level. Their officers did not fare think for themselves and left to their own without the threat of a second front they.would have been smashed by the Germans. Had Hitler waited even 1year to attack the Soviets would not be any better prepared and probably would have lost Moscow in the initial invasion of 1942. Lend lease would not help them quick enough and the Germans would have better gear for the cold. I think you minimize the effect to morale having Moscow fall to an atomic weapon. The Allies had bombers with the range to hit Moscow from German bases and the fighters to defend them. Without knowing how many bombs the US had would put them in the same position as the Japanese. As was proved in the Gulf War the fear of Atomic and Nuclear weapons would cause large numbers of Soviet troops to surrender. Just one Moab bomb cause thousands of troops to surrender simply because they thought it was nuclear.
I drive a truck everyday thats a close brother of the Studes. Very simple engineering, longlasting and easy to manufacture. Same with farm stuff. The Red Army was purged from officers by Stalin. It took till early 44 to fix that. After that it was assessed that all Allied forces could not take on a battlehardened RA with its own supply line reaching into Germany. 2.5 years later nuclear parity was achieved. Stalin could not move in in those 2.5 years of nuclear stalemate...The RA and Moscow would be heap of radioactive rubble if he did.
Heres some things to think about: In 1945, over half of the vehicles the Soviets had came from America. Going to war with America would mean losing a huge source of materiel. Soviet fighters and air defenses would be hard pressed to combat B-29s operating at altitude, and their radar development lagged behind. Their navy was almost nonexistent, at least compared to the West, so the US and Royal Navies could enact a total blockade and bombard their coast. The air forces of the western allies were so superior to the Soviets its not even funny. With allies in Asia in the form of Nationalist China and India, along with the American forces in Asia and the Pacific, we couldve opened an eastern front with Russia. On top of that, the Allies would have atomic bombs. Yes, we would take massive casualties, but in the end, the Soviets would lose
Simple. Threaten Russia with a nuclear strike. Maybe one dropped. Europe all the way to the Urals would escape further destruction. The Atom actually save Japan from door to door destruction.
The longer the fighting went the weaker the Soviets would get. The majority of raw material used by Russian factories was imported via allies. With the allies no longer feeding the Soviet war machine it would starve
That’s false Russia had lots of raw material, Soviet could end the United state’s if they allowed female conscription, but they would end the war at a deadlier cost
Exactly... a limited & Chokable industrial supply base and outmatched by the game changing American force multiplier of splitting the atom... Russia would have done nothing except surrender like Japan in the face of overwhelming technology... Bomb shelters were NOT designed for radiation or blasts on that level... Stalin would have been buried alive & more Russians would have STILL lived if he had been killed... We may even be allies today perhaps like Japan & Vietnam Now?
@@Emdee5632 you can definitely say that about Soviets, well documented. But the Americans, Brits and all the other allies did alot to avoid unnecessary damage. At least with on the ground fighting. Bombing care was taken, but didn't always work out. Americans daylight was better at that. Brits Night time bombing was less accurate, so even if care taken. Dresden being a outlier rather than the norm. If there was a good reason for it, I have yet to hear it.
Soviet soldiers had seen the difference between US and German treatment of civilians and enemy POW’s. This alone, would cause a quick end of any conflict. For the US treated its enemies better than their own socialist overlords treated its peasants.
The Soviets would have had a short term advantage in number but the nation was in tatters after the war. The U.S. Industrial capacity was largely untouched. The allies would have also have superior navel and air forces. The U.S. also had nukes. Numerical superiority counts for something. But it isn’t everything.
@@clonetrooper2782 at the end of WW2 the US military along was as large as the red army. US also had a far superior Air Force, dominated the worlds oceans so it can invade wherever it pleased, and by far the superior industrial power. US would win, it would’ve just been too costly.
@@artruisjoew5473 The wild cards in this would be Turkey and India. Turkey maybe not a true wild card as it knew Stalin was in trouble with Stalin for not joining against Germany sooner. That would put oil production and Southern Soviets forces of even the short range fighters. But Stalin could say he would forgive Turkey if they joined against the West. I believe this was tried and Turkey joined NATO. So I still go with assisting the west. The US bargained with India to help in the war in its push against the British after the war. Continue fighting might erode that belief. They provided 1 million to the common wealth military. I believe it was about 1/3 of its ground forces. But economic wise ww2 was a great benefit to India. Only 2nd to the US. still think they would stick with the West.
Thanks for the video; however I think you overestimate the soviet's offensive capacity. In 1945 the Red Army was out of reserves and facing a chronic man power shortage that had become especially acute in that year. It's not likely that they could have sustained a meaningful advance against better manned Anglo-American unites operating on a narrower front line. (Unit cohesion of soviet formations would have been undermined because of these troop shortages.) Also I think you undersell the effect of cutting off lend lease aid. Considering the devastation to soviet agriculture, food supplies sent by the US were probably the most important form of aid, along with high quality aviation fuel (which the soviets could not replicate), trucks, etc. To replace this lost supply, the soviets would have had to take able bodied men and women from the military (which they were already short on) and commit them to war production (or hamstring other essential areas of war production such as from artillery and tank production. However, due to the depredations of war, it's not clear soviets could have boosted agricultural production in war torn regions of Russia and Ukraine to maintain offensive operations against the Western Allies. Motter estimates that US lend lease supplies through the Persian corridor were enough to maintain 60 combat divisions in the field. That just can't be automatically replaced. Thanks again for the vide.
Ultimately allied naval power and the fact that so much of their industry was safely hidden away in North America and England would have left Russia in the same situation as the Germans. A strong start, followed by a slow crushing loss by attrition. I don't doubt Stalin realized that
Naval power would not do anything to the soviet union, because all of their territory is pure vast land, thats why invading russia is impossible, the ussr would have conquered germany, and france, they wouldn't have invaded england, and most likely they would've looked for allies in China, battles would have focused on france, england, belgium and possible poland, but it would not reach ussr land, in the end, i believe the allies would have seeked armistice with the ussr, to avoid such unimaginable casualties.
@@ACRus19 Allied Carriers would move to the Black Sea and attack Soviet Oil Fields in the Caucasus Regions. Additionally, the Allies could use B-29s, which the Soviets couldn't reach with their Fighters, to completely level Red Army's logistics, forward armies, airfields and, ultimately, factories. # The Red Army was scraping the barrel with their manpower reserves and had been conscripting people they previously deemed unfit for service and from former Axis countries like Romania to fill in the ranks, but it wasn't enough. If the Allies flatten a few Soviet Armies, their number advantage is gone and they can't replace it. Additionally, food imports from the USA kept the Soviets out of a famine at the end of the war. Without those imports, the Soviets can't feed their people or armies. And 2 of those Armies were majority Polish, who only fought with the Soviets because they were fighting Germany. Those Poles, still bitter about the 1939 invasion and betrayal at Warsaw would have loved a chance to turn their weapons on the Soviets, robbing them of 2 armies. Sorry, but the Red Army doesn't last a year. Famine, logistical problems and factories getting nuked cement an Allied Victory.
@@Pietrek_Channel Oil the USA and British would go hard after the Caucasus Oil fields the Germans didn't bomb them because they wanted them intact. They would light the biggest fire the North has ever seen. Plus the USSR was getting almost all it's aviation fuel from the USA.
Ah, the good old Comment Section. Where everyone is a Historian and also a War Analyst. Where disputes are solved by polite and constructive discussions.
If only. On one side you have some war hawks from the West, foaming in the mouth to see the destruction of Communism. On the other, you have several tankies and self-described 'anti-westerners' who casually dismiss anything to the contrary of their views as 'American propaganda'. It's disappointing that nuance is dead and that hyper-partisanship is the new norm.
@@SP-rt4ig I bed to differ. Humanity has not changed a bit. If you think these posts are emotionally charged, and off base -- check out what was passing for political chatter in the 19th Century -- pick any country. Folks these days are actually calmer than their great-grandparents. Blame the world-wide flow of information and history. As a side note: most tyrants who lead aggressive conflict have never left their country of origin. There are exceptions, but not many. Tojo, Hitler, Stalin, Mao -- these guys were not tourists! They filled their immediate staff with other fellows that had never travelled, either. In contrast, Churchill, FDR, De Gaulle were all men of the world. Famously, FDR practiced collective leadership. Suppressed at the time, FDR was actually too sick -- he was dying -- through most of the war. He kept short hours -- especially from 1943 onwards -- the period when the US really went into high gear. Remember that the US landed two corps in Normandy in June 1944 -- and a Marine corps in June 1944 -- half-the-way around the world -- and only two-weeks apart. BTW, in manning and support, a Marine division is twice as expensive as an Army division. Getting wet cost a ton of money -- and all Marine formations were 'shock' formations... 50% extra man-power relative to an Army formation. All during this frenetic military activity -- FDR was kicking it back with his doctor and Congress. He did not micro-manage the Pentagon.
This under estimates the vital importance of US aid, especially food, to the Soviets during the war. There was a bad famine in the USSR after the war and that was during peacetime with huge manpower being freed up to farm. Now imagine war continuing with the American lifeline cut off, the Baku oil fields being destroyed in bombing raids (no fertilizer, no tractor fuel), etc
Food was minor. Raw numbers without comparing to soviet production look big, but were meaningless. For the worse, lend lease only reached the USSR in quantity by 1943. So they passed 2 years of the worse times without it, by then they were already winning. The Soviets had still lots of farmlands in southern Russia, kazakhstan, the caucasus. The ir food was chicken, fish, fat, wine, beer, fruits, and vegetables, mainly in stew and soups, famous is the babushka soup, made with vegetables And chicken donated by old women across the country as the farms were empty with their sons and husbands in the front. The major blow to soviet food production was the loss of the western farm lands which represented 35% of the soviet wheat production. Lend lease food was mostly used as rations for tankers, front it's which couldn't use hot meals and civilians refugees. Fun fact up to 1948 the soviet occupied Germany received better rations than the western one and people where moving there "people will ratter eat a bigger communist ration than starving one from freedom" said an US officer then a d they stopped the plan to starve the Germans. So the Soviets could and did fed people. All Eastern europe from 1945 and with no lend lease. They armed and fed massive armies and the people there. The famine after WWII was for idiotic policies to make corn in cold regions instead of wheat in the 1950s. By that time webin Argentina sent millions of tons of meat and wheat for free for humanitarian reasons.
People here focus on discussing who would have won, but I just would like us to appreciate that it didn’t happen, and that confrontation between the USSR and the US was indirect.
If this would have happened, Vatican San Marino, Malta, Andorra, Liechtenstein and the Isle of Man would have created an alliance and conquered the world
@@theobserver3753 Where'd you get that? ML was ex-communicated by the Pope BECAUSE he was holier than thou... a "Born-Again-Catholic" who was taking the Pope & Company to task for everything from Indulgences to Simony. He wasn't creating a new religion at all. He was -- in modern terms -- an evangelical. He didn't come up with ANYTHING new -- sourcing all of his indignities based upon long established Church doctrine. Those in high Church office tossed their cookies when they read his indictment// petition nailed to the door... for they were guilty as sin.
Bruh what the fuck is a Sherman or crusader tank supposed to do against a t 34 or KV 2? Ram it? By 45 the full soviet union had been liberated for about a year and the populations of Minsk Kiev and leningrad were now available to produce and enlist. Its like if in the last year of the Civil War, new York and Boston suddenly joined the union army. Both of you clowns seem to forget the allies couldn't field even 2 million men because of supply lines. Remember how Patton and monty competed for campaigns and they only had gas for one? And then they picked monty and he tripped over himself in Holland? Yeah those issues hadnt been solved in July there just wasn't any shooting. The armies could only fight as fast as dock workers in Antwerp could unload. Meanwhile the reds had almost 7 million in europe alone with every railway bridge and back road in half a continent as a viable supply route. You kids sound like the wermacht on the eve of barbarossa. Oh sure Patton charges into Berlin in a couple weeks and you write home that it will be over by Christmas. Then he runs out of gas, gets enveloped, and it turns into another stalingrad. Zhukov would be giving stalin a tour of Paris for new years. Not to mention the outrage on the home front
What this video does't consider is the political turmoil in France and Italy at the time. In 1945 the communists got the majority vote in france and a big chunk in Italy. If the Allies attacked the soviets AND recruited former Nazi armies it would be very likely that there would be leftist uprisings in France and Italy. Maybe even a communist coup or full on civil war. Same would likely happen to Greece. Its also a high possibility that Spain would join the allied side in this scenario. India was also on the verge of revolution and might openly rebel against the British rule, same goes for many other colonies of allied nation(example: Middle east, Indonesia, Indochina) this would likely tie down some parts of the allied army. Leftists in the UK would also likely start strikes against the government for attacking the USSR.
@Stratos I 😂 you forget Russia actually invaded Afghanistan with the intention of taking it over and failed hard. America was after specific people and wasn’t there to take the country. We could have turned it into a ditch had we chosen to.
@@viddobrisek6953Great comment. I also wanted to write about it. It is a pity that this video did not address political issues, as well as other aspects of that time. Everything was very ambiguous there. But I think then the video would have lasted many hours.
I think the quantity and quality of overwhelming allied airpower is being a bit glossed over. Large tank formations can be quickly turned into flaming graveyards by close air support. Yes, they had a great close air support aircraft the IL-2...but they would NEVER have air supremacy.
Bombs weren't that accurate. Wiping out large tank formations wasn't going to happen. On the other hand, wiping out supply lines would happen because in that case it's numbers that matter not being accurate.
@@redhunter8731 bombers weren’t close air support aircraft. P47s, Typhoons or Mosquitos could be used in that role, using bombs, cannons or rockets. Besides there are accounts in ww2 of planes destroying a large amount of tanks. This one German pilot using Ju87 with cannons destroyed over 200 soviet tanks.
A good take on this is the Red Gambit book series by Colin Gee. After a hard fight the Allies would win due to air power, nuclear weapons, and they would be able to tap into the experience of the Germans fighting the Russians.
Could you imagine if Germany could perfect their tank technology and combine it with American production and quality control. Not to mention the centurion also coming online. As a military veichle enthusiast thats my wet dream.
The red army was massive at that point, but also on its last legs. The US was just getting warmed up. Russia would've broke under weight of American industry and man power.
@@crackcbainefl2675 damn dude no need to get a stick up your ass, I didn’t claim to be a corporal, I just said you don’t look at history much if you think “former allies becoming enemies” isn’t one of the only constants in history
Why downplay the US Navy? You have a giant fleet of battleships, destroyers and aircraft carriers coming back from Japan. Send a fleet to level St Petersburg. Once that's done, it's 400 miles to Moscow to fly some bombers there with a nuke. It would be an incredible battle
I agree I wish they would have touched more on the US Navy. All those aircraft carriers were not worked into the overall strategy employed in this video. Still a fun video playing with “what if” scenario.
@@cpob2013 Sure they do, but the red army at that time relied heavily on American supplies. American trucks, tanks, boots, food and ammo all found there way in huge proportions to the red army.
Would soviets forgive the western allies after this ? I would say that soviets deserved their share of europe after doing most of the job in the european theatre of ww2.
@@GenocideWesterners The who? The soviets got their ass handed to them in this scenario, they are no longer a factor. St Pete gets leveled by the combined Pacific fleet of 38 battle ships and 22 aircraft carriers throwing everything at at. We want the land, so we won't just nuke it. Then once the land looks like a parking lot, we build runways and every city with over 500 people gets nuked basically. The only thing left to say squat will be the cockroaches. Now go away
My mates dad was a tanky. In '45 his unit were ordered to advance up to the limit of the agreed Western powers advance. It was just a handful of them. He said it was one the scariest moments of his war (He'd fought in Italy, Normandy, all across Germany) He said they had no idea if the Russians were going to stop or not. He said if they hadn't there was nothing him and mates could've done to stop them as they were totally outnumbered.
But the Soviet manpower couldn’t last forever. They had just fought a war from 1941-1945 and had lost millions. The United States did not suffer casualties like the Soviet Union so eventually we would outnumber them.
@@Juan-qu4oj The thing is even after the war, the soviets still had a higher population + a higher industrial production than both the US and UK, why would them outnumbering the West be a problem?
Most scenarios of a 1945/1946 Western Allies vs. Soviet war seem to assume that the Red Army would simply steamroll the Allies all the way to France if not the Channel. I find this curious as the Soviets were unable to steamroll the Wehrmacht as the German Reich was coughing blood in the late winter and spring of '45, but instead had to fight a tough and costly campaign to take Berlin...and it would be presumed that the Soviets would have none of the material support of such important commodities as high-octane avgas that the U.S. was supplying. In manpower as well, the Soviet Union had maxed out its pool of conscripts, so that replacements in any sort of contested campaign would have to come from the very industries keeping the Red Army a going concern. Forget about the atom bomb: the United States and United Kingdom had developed air forces capable of delivering thousand-plane raids deep into enemy territory, so once bases are created in Iran and India the Soviet war factories in the Urals and Siberia that were practically invulnerable to German attack would be devastated by round-the-clock bombings. The Soviet air forces were meant primarily for ground attack support, so it would be difficult to say the least for Stalin to effectively change the whole thrust of Soviet air doctrine to meet this threat. What I think would be by far the most significant effect of a new war would be the damage done to liberal/progressive political thought and FDR's legacy. The FDR administration had pushed hard on making Stalin and the Soviets accepted as "fighters for freedom", if US/USSR war breaks out there won't be a sling big enough to support that wing of the Democratic Party.
The only problem I see is how would the US justify more war agaisnt a former ally. I think it's unlikely they would act first but if the USSR had attacked (also unlikely), allied victory was certain.
@@SrCoxas how do you think this couldnt happen. Litterally within a few years you have the Red Scares starting and then after that McCarthyism. The Berlin Airlift was in 1947 so we were already openly antagonistic within 1.5 years.
baraxor lol, the only reason the Allied had more aircrafts than the Soviet at the start if the war is because the Luftwaffe had over 75% of the Planes and the best pilots on the eastern front, so they sustained more losses. At low altitude Russian fighters were muuuch better, at high altitude the Russian had yaks with vk-107 engines and i-225s that still outperformed p51Ds, Griffon spitfires, and P-47Ds. The superiority of allied fighters in WW2 over the Soviet fighters is a pure myth. The Soviets could easily intercept B-29s. The Allies could not do the same bombing that they did on Germany: reasons? They would face stronger opponents (bf109Ks and ta-152s were superior to allied and Soviet fighters, but the fact that German pilots were poorly trained largely compensates the superiority of German fighters, and by 1945 red army pilots were equally trained if not better trained than the Allied ones), they would face a country with 400% bigger numbers than the Germans, they would have had to bomb a surface much bigger, they lacked fighters to escort bombers deep behind the Urals. While the Soviets could stop the Allied bombers, how the Allies would stop Il-10s? At low altitude the Russian fighters performed much better than the Allied ones. The only thing holding back the USSR was the lack of manpower to launch any offensive.
@@ferrarisuper Another brainless amateur neglecting logistics. The soviets would basically stop having an air force at all. Maybe half of soviet produced aircraft (manufactured with lend-lease tooling) were made of lend-lease aluminum and domestic production of the additives necessary for aviation fuel was practically non-existent. Good luck replacing aircraft or even getting off the ground with the 70-80 octane gas they would have had. Considering you cited an experimental aircraft as an argument for soviet capability, it's pretty clear you're talking out your ass anyway.
Mike K.s The US Navy would’ve dominated with their carriers and planes, and help the army hold the line along the shores with cruiser and battleship artillery support, along with the Royal Navy’s ships
Amurhicans are the silliest bunch in history. I only took your own cops to bring your own country down. USA = 3rd world country, get over yourself you bunch of neo-nazis.
Mike K.s onewhosaysgoose America was like better dead than red jk but seriously America did most of the work in that Pacific, hopping from island to island and then Russia comes in and tries to take japan, this could’ve resulted in a conflict if they somehow made it to Japan.
@@mikek.s1707 This guy had bad luck. He witnessed (but survived) both blasts. After he survived Hiroshima, he said I gotta get out of here and get home. Home was Nagasaki. www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.history.com/.amp/news/the-man-who-survived-two-atomic-bombs&ved=2ahUKEwiGsNP12fvrAhWoHzQIHauBA0AQFjAFegQIAxAB&usg=AOvVaw3Q2Ttdcbap-do82KjsF439&cf=1
WWII in Europe ended in May 1945, The bombs that hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and August 9th would have been repurposed to hit Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The US alone had more than 80,000 airplanes to Russia's 17,000. Tank Busters like the P47, P51 and Hawker Typhoon would work over Russian Armor and Artillery.
Well, nuclear weapon in Japan has showed it useless in strategic or tactical meaning and it was more like psychological weapon. In two words: there's almost no military sense of using atomic bombs, especially back then, when US has just a little bit of them. Also, its hard to imagine, that US with allies, even together, would "easily destroy" Soviets, because they had more airplanes, because USSR presented to the world one the best airplanes. And even more: US and its allies gained more experience in the sea and ocean during war with Japan, when Russia gained enormous experience on the land war, thanks to Germany. More likely nor Ussr, nor Allies would reach any success in that kind of war. When Cold war broke out there was a clear example, that WWIII between Western allies and Russia was pretty unreal in meaning of reaching some results in "knocking down Russia" and that example was US plan "dropshot" which has served more as Propaganda instrument, because it's pretty unrealistic.
@@АлександрДаминин The strategic value of dropping Atomic Bombs om Hiroshima and Nagasaki was it changed the mind of Emperor Hirohito. It made him decide to stop fighting the US. The strategic value of nuclear weapons today is it prevents war between nuclear armed countries. India and Pakistan and India and China are examples. When WWII ended in Europe the US had not used atomic bombs yet. VE Day was in May,1945, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were in August 1945. The US had Little Boy and Fat Man and a third bomb in production. Twelve bombs were planned. Patton sounded the alert about Russia's intentions and he was told to shut up. The allies were making preparations for war with Russia. The two bombs would have been shifted to the European theatre for use on Moscow and St Petersburg and the third would have been used later against any massive Russian troop concentration. Bombing an enemy capital and its major cities was strategic thinking during WWII. Stalin did not order the Russian Army to go further west because he had spies inside thee Manhattan project and he knew about the bombs. He would have felt personally threatened because he abandoned Moscow as German forces were approaching. He thought he was going to be arrested when government officials came to his Dacha to convince him to go back to Moscow. He didn't order the invasion of Western Europe because he knew about Americas atomic program.
@@RobertoAtkinson-q3xno, Japan surremdered because the soviets declared war on japan, and japan wanted them to be the negotiatoris of a peace agreement between japan and the us
@@3ColorJaguar Neither the bombs or Russia's entry into the war convinced the Japanese military to surrender. All three events convinced the Emperor , not the military, to surrender. The Japanese military mounted a coupe in an attempt to stop the Emperor from announcing surrender. The Emperors residence was the scene of a gun battle between his guards and members of the Japanese military who were looking for the surrender tape, in the Emperors voice, that was going to be broadcast to the people of Japan. . At the Teheran conference Stalin agreed to enter the war against Japan after the Germans were defeated. Germany was defeated by May 8 1945 and Russia declared war on Japan on August 8 1945 two days after little boy was dropped on Hiroshima. Why did Russia wait three months and after Japan was hit by an Atomic bomb? Maybe it was because Japan defeated Russia in the Russo Japanese war of 1904. It looks like Russia got courage after the US dropped the first bomb. Stalin had spies in the Manhattan project and he knew the US was building a bomb. Was he so afraid of Japan that he waited for the US to drop it on Japan before declaring war on Japan? The answer is somewhere in someone's memoirs.
@@3ColorJaguar @mexicobasado8177 Neither the bombs or Russia's entry into the war convinced the Japanese military to surrender. All three events convinced the Emperor , not the military, to surrender. The Japanese military mounted a coupe in an attempt to stop the Emperor from announcing surrender. The Emperors residence was the scene of a gun battle between his guards and members of the Japanese military who were looking for the surrender tape, in the Emperors voice, that was going to be broadcast to the people of Japan. . At the Teheran conference Stalin agreed to enter the war against Japan after the Germans were defeated. Germany was defeated by May 8 1945 and Russia declared war on Japan on August 8 1945 two days after little boy was dropped on Hiroshima. Why did Russia wait three months and after Japan was hit by an Atomic bomb? Maybe it was because Japan defeated Russia in the Russo Japanese war of 1904. It looks like Russia got courage after the US dropped the first bomb. Stalin had spies in the Manhattan project and he knew the US was building a bomb. Was he so afraid of Japan that he waited for the US to drop it on Japan before declaring war on Japan? The answer is somewhere in someone's memoirs.
When I was serving my apprenticeship at Vauxhall Motors in the UK in the 1970's we had a German welder who served with the German army during WW2. He always stated that his company, on surrendering, were moved to Austria, re -armed and re -uniformed in preparation of joining the allies to attack Russia and his company was far from alone. They stayed there for six months then disbanded and sent home.
One thing Binkov didn't mention is that the USSR was having severe manpower shortages and had issues refilling divisions even in 1944. An attack in 45 would see the soviets have so little men left that they would be forced to conscript children and men in their 50's and 60's like the germans had to. The allies however had a ton of manpower left (the US only mobilizing 10% of its population, whereas the soviets straight up lost a quarter of its original population already).
The Red Army was huge in 45, but it was also stretched to its limits in manpower. The US still had vast reserves of manpower that they would have eventually brought into play. The US and Britain also had a strategic air bombing capability that Russia had no counter for. The Russian navy was also a joke, while the British and US were considerable. The Red Army's supposed strength was also largely false. For 4 years they had been fighting a depleted German army who they frequently outnumbered 10 to 1 but the Germans still held. We also would be able to call on native troops , who would flock to the Western banners, particularly after suffering under BRUTAL Soviet ocvupation.
That is true. The Ukrainians had NO love for Stalin. In fact when Germany first invaded a lot of them were happy about it. Stalin starved about 20 million of them. Heck if Hitler had really wanted to win the war he would've armed the Ukrainians and had them fight the Soviets on Germany's side. But he treated them the same as Stalin did. And it did cost Germany in the long run.
@@jamesbutler8821 once Japan was defeated the entire British Indian Army was now free, along the American Pacific forces. Plus the Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Polish, Finns and Romanians that were under Soviet Occupation would've easily turned on them to regain their sovereignty
US had over 100 nukes by the late 40s Soviets were just finishing their 1st and by 1951 would only have 5, this would have never happened, and if MacArthur had his way both the Chinese and the Soviets would have found out the hard way.
Had McArthur had his way, imagine the oppression in the Middle East and South and Central America that could have been avoided. Go through the history of the last 70 years and think of the things that would have been avoided if communism had been stamped out properly as it should have been. The world would be a better place, and I can guarantee you that politics in the US would be a whole lot different. Unless and until the world gathers together and utterly eliminates the scourge that is communism, including the people who advocate for it, the world is and will always be at risk of slavery.
@@vaughnblaylock6069 Uhh but communism IS dead. Plus, the problems in the middle east wouldn't go away because communism did, a lot of their problems stem from an older issue called the sykes-picot agreement
@@abbyalphonse499 Communism is dead? We are in the opening stages of Cold War 2.0 with China, with Taiwan playing the role of a 21st Century West Berlin. Venezuela adopted a Cuban style government as recently as 1999. It’s FAR from dead. MacArthur and Patton had the chance to save the world a whole lot of misery and suffering, and we blew it.
A well balanced "what if?". The only issues I have, is that the narrator underplays the importance of both the allied air superiority. Which would have had an enormous effect in either scenario. And the industrial potential of the allies, which would have been far greater than the soviets.
Thank You and I agree, Ive been posting as well how Allies would have total Air and Sea Superiority which equals win another good point you make which I forgot is manufacture of the war effort clearly in Ally favor.
Even Naval superiority. The UK had hell since they had to hunt U-Boats, defend the invasion in Husky, Torch and D-day, along with bottling up the German Surface Fleet. The Soviets have barely any Navy to speak of, no modern warships (barring the Kirov-Class Heavy Cruisers, but they were WAY inferior to Western designs), and their Submarines were worse than what the Germans had. If they tried to interdict supply lanes, the Royal Navy and US Navy will detect, find and stomp them before they even get a single torpedo off.
Stalin oversaw upwards of twenty million casualties from Barbarossa to Berlin, which saw the hardest urban warfare in the history of the world. The Germans threw everything they had at the advancing Soviets, while the Allies had a relative cakewalk between Normandy and the Elbe. The Eastern Front had single battles with more Soviet casualties than the US suffered in the entire European war (including Italy). I believe the mismatch in these experiences would lead to a mismatch in expectations, which would lead to a massive disparity in morale very quickly.
@@kruger7796 Russia would realistically have gotten destroyed by nuclear weapons, but if we're talking fighting on the battlefield, it's much harder to say. Germans inflicted two to three times as many casualties on the Russians as they took from them, and the Russians kept coming. It took the Germans six months to reach the outskirts of Moscow; it took the Soviets three and a half years to reach Berlin. Yet they did. Perhaps this resolve would have broken, perhaps Russian manpower would have been exhausted, but the Western Allies would have been in for a very difficult fight against the army that beat the best of the Wehrmacht in a pitiless war of attrition while they were playing around in a sandbox against Italians and a skeleton corps, or in France and the Rhineland against teenaged conscripts. I would bet that Patton would have been very surprised if he'd gotten his wish. The Russians don't call it WWII, by the way. To them it's the Great Patriotic War, and they earned the right to call it that.
@@riptidemonzarc3103 The Soviets really only start to outnumber the Germans in late '42 and into '43. But besides that, Germany had a whole slew of problems that the Western Allies don't really have to deal with. Supplies being a major key point, and Manpower being another. The U.S. remained relatively untouched for the entire war, and had at on point almost 16 million personnel. With most of it deployed to the Pacific to fight the Japanese, it is really incalculable thw fighting that would have occured in a continuation of the Second World War not counting Nukes. Nukes just end the game quick and in a hurry.
@@riptidemonzarc3103 You seem to forget that the Germans were also fighting a 2-front war. Sure, they had most of their forces on the East, but they still held a lot of troops in the West to defend from the Allies, including more Luftwaffe Fighters due to the Bombing Campaigns by the Allies. Had Germany NOT had that second front against the Allies, they still wouldn't have won, but they'd have bled the Soviets even drier. By 1945, the Red Army had no manpower reserves left and were conscripting men that were previously deemed as unfit for service, along with conscripting men from "liberated" countries like Poland, which made up a majority in two Soviet Army Groups. With more men on the front, the Germans would have racked up more casualties against the Soviets and destroyed more Divisions entirely. Still wouldn't have won though, just killed more Red Army Soldiers. On the other side, the Allies still have HUGE manpower reserves to bring. Sure, the UK was running out of trained men and had to spend time training more, since UK training took a bit longer, but they still had Armies in India they could bring after Japan surrendered and they have their colonies to draw forces from. The US is better off since they had an even larger population and barely lost anything during the war, with untouchable factories churning out munitions and equipment at rates the Soviets can't keep up with. Add onto the fact that the Soviets won't be able to interdict those supply ships due to having no modern warships that could be considered as threats.
@@riptidemonzarc3103 Bruh Russia would be starving first of all.Allies supplied Russians through the whole world war.Russia had no chance against the west.
I agree with the conclusion: the allies COULD have defeated Stalin. But they chose to APPEASE him and gave him Poland instead; and history proved once again that appeasement is as asinine as 'negotiating with terrorists'. So I would add the allies SHOULD have defeated Stalin; it would have meant far less bloodshed overall, not to mention there wouldn't have been a cold war centered around 'Mutual Assured Destruction'.
A reasonable interpretation and object lesson related to the war in Ukraine and how an appeasement of Putin will only make things worse in the long run.
Have you ever heard of the concept of "boots on the ground"? The Reds had them in Poland; we didn't. There was no giving involved even if FDR was horrendously naive about our eastern co-belligerent.
Yes, it is in the spirit of the “civilized” West to first use the Russians, who suffered colossal losses in this war, and then stab a weakened former ally in the back. Fortunately for the Russians, the cowardice of the West was stronger than its meanness and hatred of Russia.
if the west had attacked into the Soviet Union they would have one advantage. The Soviets like the Germans were tired from years of war but the US still had a powerful economy which the Reich never had.
@Big Smoke The Reich had a good factory base, but no raw materials to fully utilize it. Fuel and rare metals (tungsten) especially were always a problem, and the primary reason why the German Army couldn't ever be fully motorized, even with infinite time.
@Big Smoke The Reich was never fully prepared for a full scale war. Especially on the magnitude of WW2! Half the German Army relied on horses! Most of the infantry had to get to places by road marching! 95% of allied infantry hopped on trucks! The only units that relied on horses for the US were stationed in the US to act as border patrol because their were no reliable roads near the border with Mexico at the time.
A common meme is that the USSR was a limitless well of men and equipment. However, even the Soviets had limits. Tens of millions of their soldiers and civilians had been killed by 1945. In contrast, the US casualties were in the low hundreds of thousands and the continental US was untouched. It could have easily pumped out another 100 US divisions in 9 months and equipped another 100 allied divisions in a year. At a certain point The sheer weight of America's industrial production and manpower pool would have overwhelmed the Soviet Union.
A few issues with this. Russian Allies! - other than the Serbs in Yugoslavia, the rest were Occupied. It would not be a single front war there would have been an Eastern front as well with the Pacific and Asian US and Commonwealth forces as well as possibly China. Also they would have to defend against any attacks in the South via the Middle East. Russia needed additional oil supplies from US and UK to supply it's forces in WWII - Their own oil fields in the Caucasus where well within Allied bombing range. No oil - No Tanks, Aircover or Motorized transport. The length of materiel supply lines is absoloutely staggering - Consider how much fuel it would consume to carry enough deisel and ammunition for a single tank over distances in excess of 700 miles.
Nope, The Romenians switch side by thier own and fought the Germans in the Balkan, Further there were Soviet loyal armies from Czechoslovakia and Poland. Furthermore there was Mongolia for the far eastern front. Second point, In theory yes, practically? No, the border area of USSR to the Middle East and China, even the Caucasus. Are extreme mountainous and deserted area's. Supply troops and even let them fight there is difficult and extreme costily and favour the defender extremely. This troops have to come from Europe of East Asia, weakening those and take months to station troops there and prepare operations. Furtheremore why attack there? It would take the allies hundreds of miles before reaching vital Soviet infrastructure. Miles overwhich supplies must be transported on non existing roads, open for soviet partisan to act on. Attacks on the Caucasus region would face similar dificulties for the allies non-existing supply lines and terrain heavily favouring a defender. A defender that has learned a lot mountain warfare when germans tried to fight in Caucasus mountains. Thirdily, they needed the US and UK oil as it was of higher octaine level, needed to fuel aillied vehicles especially planes. Soviet equipement was designed to function on the lower octaine level fuel comming from the Soviet oil industry. So the loss of the supply of High octaine level fuel would be only a problem for the Soviet air force rather than tank or vechicle park of the Red Army. Fourth although Baku was in flying range of Allied bombers, there is problems with plan that would fail it. Soviet Air defence and the Caucasus Mountains, could prevent Allies from reaching the oilfields or cause extreme loss. Mountains were dangerous obstacle for aviation still in the 1940s. Finally, who would support such a war in the West? In the 1941 allied propaganda have created the idea of alliance and bond between soviet and allied nations. It showed the resovle the soviet had and casualties they took, creating sympathy. Would you think that people would simply accept, well they are the enemy now? It took four years for this sympathy to cool down and for the cold war to become a reality. Ofcourse not all people would be pro-soviet, but many were before the war and they number have grown. France faced massive strikes from the left in 1948 with many being sympathic to the Soviet. Italy had large left movement with many being under arms as they fought the Nazi in Italy from 1943. Greece was in a civil war with pro-soviet forces being on the win in 1945/46. A war was possible but would face an enormous backlash by the public in the west as they would find it as stab in the back or simply wanted one thing peace. They were tired of war. For the soviet things would be easy as the propaganda could a just capitalist doing becoming the bed-fellows with nazi's. Harnassing the rage about the stab in the back but also building on the fears that allies would finish the job what german started, exterminating the slavic people. The use of atomic bombs with thier destructive powers would strengthen that image. But the soviet would face same issue, the people being tired and exhausted from war. And this the main reason that war would fail or did not happen in the end. After 6 years of war everyone was tired of war and when end finally arrived, the people were hesitant to return to it. We see it in Korea, the west send troops for the UN force but thier numbers were relative small and it was in general unpopulair war and governments on both sides limited thier commanders so that they did not escalate the war.
Not really, they produced A bombs at a very slow rate, and they dont have missiles, theyd have to use planes that could be shot down and have the bomb possibly captured
@chadthundercock4806 also they could just distract the anti air and intercepting planes by launching bombing raids before sending in the plane with the nuke
The USSR was rippled by famine in the years of 1946-1947 which claimed the lives of over ~900,000-2,000,000 people. What would this famine have looked like if the USSR was now locked in a war with the West, unable to demobilize their soldiers in order to work the farms?
The return of large amounts of demobilised troops actually played a role in causing the famine. My bet is Stalin would either push through regardless of the human cost as usual, or order a chunk of the army to return home to farm.
I think pretty well, because they would be in a war-economy. Out of the 34,000,000 soviets that were mobilized in the World War, 20 to 24 million remained alive, add the soviet manpower reserves on top of that, do you genuinely think it was easy to wipe it out? Also, if unthinkable was to happen, it would happen in 1945, not in 1946 or 47, this would mean the USSR would prioritize and increase food rations to feed its people. Also, the global food shortage in 1946-47 was the worst in history, famine threatened asia, Indo-China, Central and Eastern Europe, bread rationing was introduced in the UK for the first time EVER, and even the US and UK requested food aid from stalin to ease the worldwide shortage.
@@Yo-ps2pf Wasn't it the other way around? The US Lend lease program sent From factory equipment to Planes to food, in fact If I remember correctly the US industrial capacity was so great that it already had 14% war production capability...in 1937, I also doubt the if war were to still continue with unthinkable going into action these US leases would be a bit of headache. not to mention allied airpower was better both in Technology and Training (don't get me wrong the soviets also had good planes and Pilots) not to mention US bomber and CAS capability especially the B-29 and P-47's. British MI6 would also help in the bombing of Soviet factories Edit: I was correct the United States sent 3.2 billion tonnes of food to the USSR
@@NokotanFanCentral No, because many people will be fast enough to mention the supposed the Lend Lease, lets compare the already existing production of the USSR with the supply that it received from the US Lend Lease: Lend Lease / Russian product (1941-1945) aircrafts: 14,795/134,100 tanks: 7,056/109,000 artillery cannons: 8,218/825,200 oil: 2,670,000/110,600,000 (tons) steel: 1,500,000/39,680,000 (tons) (Somehow American Steel won the war!) food: 733,000/64,121,000 (tons) The truth is that All of western allied battle fronts opened after the USSR started winning the war single-handed. And Operation Overlord was carried out in June 6th, 1944. Before this, USSR has already won the battle of Moscow in 1941, battle of Stalingrad in 1942, battle of Kursk in 1943. By the time 1944, April, the Soviets has already pushed the Germans out of Ukraine and entered Romania. They were already winning. During this time, the allies never provided any very useful intelligence and information to USSR. Also, where did you get the 3 billion figure from? the US supplied the USSR with lend-lease. This is usually supported by two statements. Firstly, people are told some out of context numbers, let’s say the most popular is tanks, trains and trucks. Secondly, people might get some dubious statement about how important it was from a historian who have no idea how economy works, or a Soviet historical person who had no idea how the Soviet economy worked. When someone challenges the belief, the usual procedure is to google lend-lease, which will allow you to find a lot more out of context and usually completely wrong statistics. My favorites are the US embassy in Russia, Radio Free Europe, Russia insider, or unsourced free PDF papers top google search results. This usually results in people including new categories, like aluminium, aviation fuel, gunpowder and food. But they still absolutely fail to compare them to Soviet statistics. New quotes can also be introduced as well, the favorites are Stalin, Zhukov and Khrushchev, none of which of course were involved in the planning of Soviet economy in WW2. There are so many problems with this approach to lend-lease, but I will highlight some of the problems briefly. People do not compare lend-lease statistics to Soviet production. How can someone say that an item is important, without knowing how much it is compared to Soviet production? People do not account for stockpiles, for example, when it comes to trucks, a lot of people simply show Soviet produced trucks vs delivered trucks. They completely ignore that the USSR had about 1 million trucks already produced before WW2, which was used. They also ignore that Soviet factories produced American trucks, which were often delivered in parts. People do not account for timeliness. For example, many statistics, include items delivered after WW2 was ended, to suggest this was important for the USSR in WW2, which obviously is highly misleading. People also tend to ignore that most lend-lease was delivered after the USSR had already won Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk. At which point most historians agree Germany had already lost the war. People do not do something as basic as converting units, when reading historical documents, people completely disregard some are in Imperial ton, some are in US ton, some are in metric ton. Even some historians as late as 2017, do not grasp this. In a more general sense, people do not grasp the scale of national economy, particularly of a country the size of the USSR. For example people constantly bring up food to me, no one understands this seemingly. The USSR consumed at least 600 million metric tons of food in WW2. They received approximately 3.9 million metric tons of food in lend-lease. This is 0.65%, some people refuse to understand that 3.9 million metric tons of food is actually nothing over a 4 year period for a population of over 100 million people.
Check out the Strategy Stuff channel, my take is that Soviets would follow the Eurasian/Heartland strategy while the US would favor Sir Julian Corbett, Limited War strategy for maritime powers, which is basically what George Orwell depicted
@@mattmopar440 I doubt the allies would have done that but given the fact that American and Britain considered using nuclear weapons against military targets soon after WW2 (a bit later for the UK) i feel like that's be a likely outcome. Whole bases just vapourised in an instant with survivors telling other soldiers of the horror of it
@@mrcaboosevg6089 I think with Roosevelt dead a Truman Churchill combo would have been devastating Churchill would of been Ok with leveling everything in Soviet union and Truman wouldnt stand up
@@mattmopar440 all that would do is make sure the Soviet people support the war 100% to the last man. And make the Americans look no better than. The Nazis, since they start this war and kill civilians en mass.
in 1989 the wall came down. I was a cadet at West Point at the time and the Soviets brought over their Frunze Academy cadets. A general equivalent to a three-star gave a speech to the Corps of Cadets, after which he took questions. During his speech he stated that in a WWIII situation he thought they had one month to get us off the European continent before we rolled them back into their country and faced a nuclear solution. He stated he did not believe Soviet conventional forces were any match for ours due to the massive technological advantage (remember, 1989). In 1990 we all got a demonstration of what he was talking about in the deserts of Iraq. After his presentation he was asked if they ever planned to invade the US and after a VERY healthy fit of laughter, he said no, they hadn't since the US is the most heavily armed country on the planet and they would have to deal with a gun behind every blade of grass. He went further and said the movie Red Dawn was an incredible comedy to them and indicative of irrational American Hollywood paranoia, which is the comedic element of it. In a private conversation with some senior officers (of which I obviously was not privy to) he was asked about his comment regarding the guns behind every blade of grass and he said that fact, and that we have oceans on either side of us, are two of the biggest deterrents to conflict with the US. He went further and said WE BETTER NOT GET RID OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT and confiscate weapons like other societies have done, including theirs. If you think things are so much better now, you haven't been paying attention for the last four years.
@@IanHimself28 umm nukes every week are you crazy? it took MONTHS for the USA to build one singular nuke and there were thousands of workers who support the USSR who would most likely go in a workers strike
@@IanHimself28 300 nukes from 1945 to 1950 what? the US produced 4 nukes in total during ww2 1st being the trinity test then Hiroshima and nagasaki with the 4th supposedly used to nuke a japanese city but was scrapped due to japan surrendering and was then used as a testing nuke bomb besides even if the US produced 300 nukes now europe will most likely be in soviet hands
@@IanHimself28 besides it would take months for another nuke to be produced and if so soviet planes will most likely try to destroy any plane capable of releasing a nuke
@@IanHimself28 theres also the problem of shipping the nukes from america to europe it could take weeks or even months and the soviet union knows this so they would probably use the time to ship a nuke from america to europe and try to break through the lines and also the nukes need to be dropped onto their target. ICBMs,SRBMs and MRBMs do not exist yet
Over the long term Allies win. Allies provided 10% of Soviet food, fighter aircraft, trucks, railroad engines, 50 % of rolled steel and explosives and 100% of rubber (tires). Plus 10 -20% of German Army could have been reconstituted relatively quickly. Plus Allies had ability to attack in far east with 10 to 20 divisions and the sea lift to move them. Allies would have air superiority, total control of the sea. Atomic bombs plus poison gas already in Europe. So it would have been the Soviets against the whole world.
Well the thing is the Soviets only had to rely on US supplies because the Soviets destroyed most of their own infrastructure and industrial capabilities so they could deny it to the Germans as they advanced. All of their industrial capabilities were initially on their western borders with Germany which they later relocated to the east. They would’ve been pretty self-sufficient going forward, and they were in fact able to build a pretty huge army on their own in the post war years.
Who's ass did you pull those numbers from? Lend lease was never more than 15% of domestic production. 100% of rubber? Seriously? Even ignoring synthetic rubber, they had a transplanted colony of rubber trees around the Caspian
@@th3ninjabut they had nukes and since they stole the ICBM from the Germans it would only be a few years before they didn’t need aerial superiority. Even if they didn’t have it they could still probably land a bomb
Lol, It's all about air superiority. The allies would have it in a matter of weeks, the Russians couldn't have moved in the day. The Russians were at the end of their supply chain. The Poles would have risen up, the Ukraines, all the baltic states, romania, yugoslavia. Oh, and the allies were already moving to jet aircraft. The Russians still relied on food and supplies from the west. And if things go bad, you have the bomb
Baby Yeed lol? Did you read anything he said? What about that seems unrealistic? 😂 and again, if all else fails the US now had the option to drop an atom bomb
And the only reason the Soviets eventually got info on how to make the bomb(which they wouldn’t get perfected for a few years after this) is because of the Communist traitor Rosenbergs. We had air superiority, Russia had no blue water Navy at all. We would’ve blockaded their ports...which we knew all about, since we kind of gave them tons of supplies with the Lend Lease. We could out-industry Russia. Crazy to think that Pittsburgh alone turnt out over 60% of the steel supply for WW2! This is all without having Britain, who would most definitely put us way over the top of them. The Soviets were great, but let’s not kid ourselves, here. They’d be screwed without the Lend Lease. Zhukov and Stalin even said they couldn’t build up reserves without it! Essentially aiding all of the countries and our own at the same time shows how fast our industry was. Yes, their T34s were the best, but we had tank busters for that, and their Katyushas were lethal, but we weren’t dumb enough to be out in the open like Germany was to get annihilated...we would have taken them out with aircraft before they became a problem. Did I mention Russia had no blue water navy and we could make atomic bombs? St. Petersburg was the most likely target, and easiest to access if it ever came to that.
They would just run out of men. By the end of the war the Soviets were using men that were not supposed to be fighting on the frontlines anyway (older or younger men). They simply could not take a few million more casualties. The USSR would collapse simply because they would have no more people to throw against the numerically superior and better equipped Allied forces
@@dabeez4454 They could try, but I don't think they would succeeded. Majority of countries conquered by soviets were on a bad term with communism and Union itself. Probably they would resist conscription and if taken anyway, they would turn sides on the first occasion. In some D-Day movie there was a scene in which two Czechs were conscripted and sent to Normandy. They didn't even shoot at Americans just tried to surrender as soon as possible.
@@dabeez4454 they had damn near constant armed rebellions with near complete popular support for them in most everywhere for the next 3 to 5 years after the war. That would be turned up to 11 if they were fighting the western allies and their government in exiles and if the Americans and Brits were trying to liberate them.
The role of Lend-Lease is underestimated. Yes, the fact that the material was delivered by the end of the war is a shot in the foot to the Allies, but in an ongoing conflict attrition will systematically burn through it. Within a matter of months the Soviets would find that the lack of incoming material seriously hampers their ability to wage war. The Allies could even employ that unused naval capability and the stream of material to Murmansk to land troops there, opening up a northern front. For another front, wait until 1946, when the Russians had moved their forces back to Europe, and then make a move on Vladivostok. We also invaded Iran to get material to them. Man that material ourselves, and slice through the Soviets soft underbelly. And then there is the problem of Mao...
2 mains factors I see: 1) USSR had already been bleed dry in their struggle against Germany... they couldn't keep "zerging" much linger 2) USSR oil supply was very near ally controlled land (Iran) and it would have been "easy" to stop this supply (incendiary bomb on the oil field and voila, because the means to controls burning oil field wasn't really developped at the time) on the USSR favor, the supply line of the allies could have been impaired by pro communist partizans in western Europe (like, many of the French partizan were communist supporters and in many ways, could sabotage the roads, bridges and railways like they did the night before D-Day against the German)
People’s republic of China seizes India, Japan, Mongolia, and Persia, along with defeating Siam and taking south East Asia. This results in Great War against Neo Bolshevik Eurasia resulting in seizure of the Central Asian area and the Far East from exhausted Eurasia. But everyone has nukes now so they decide to peace. Oceania Tis for Thee.
We sent 3 billion tons of food to Soviets during WW2. Russian sources report 2.5 to 3.2 million Soviet civilians, died due to famine and disease in non-occupied territory of the USSR. Without lend-lease the Soviet Union would have quickly became a different nation at war with the west. Certainly different than one the German's faced which became stronger with time and our supplies.
I love it when people go "we send X" 1) YOU didnt send jack shit, you werent even born 2) It makes it hard to talk about the issue because it clearly makes your personal bias and lack of objectivity obvious 3) It makes it unclear about what exactly you are talking. Who exactly is "we"? The allies, only the USA, only the UK and colonies? Also, if only "you" would have been so nice and send Iran food as well after invading them in 1941 and causing a massive famine killing millions (and the forcing Iran into colonial treaties regarding their Oil ressources that would directly result in the Iranian Revolution later on...). But "you" invading neutral countries and starving them to death in the millions isnt bad, its jsut bad when the germans or japanease do it, am I right?
Also the British, Russians, and to a much lesser extent the Americans were running low on trained men, the British frontline divisions were at this point exhausted and shrinking due to lack of manpower being drafted. On the other hand the French were only beginning to rearm, and had a large pool of man power and colonial empire to draw upon.
We also should consider that this videos doesn’t take consideration about partisan operation or allies not joining like Italy which had a too big communist population to enter this war without going in a civil war on day one
@@bo1bo1bo1unlosode the Brits dealt with a communist revolution in Greece with ease with a tiny force. They wouldn't have trouble dealing with them in their home countries with a supportive population willing to inform on them.
Well the Americans still haven't maxed out their population for the war. They now have a ton of manpower sitting around building useless stuff for this war such as liberty ships. Furthermore the US and Brittain has built a massive navy or destroyer escorts, submarine hunters, escort carriers, and merchant marines, as well as the port facilities to handle that. It has tons of prewar treaty ships that can be decommsioned because of the new stuff comming on line that requires much smaller crews. Decommision most of that. Cool theres .5 to 2 million more men for the armies. The Russian on the other hand stripped many industries of manpower, among them food, transport, and petroleum because the us was supplying it. Now they have to go back or the army has to go without. The Russian have a way more dire manpower issues then the Allies ever did.
@@imjashingyou3461 the CIA and the Brits dealt "easily" with the Greek civil war in the span of 3 years and with Stalin not supporting the Greeks. All this would have been extremely different during Operation Unthinkable with Stalin supporting the French resistance, the Italian Garibaldis, Tito's partisans and the Greeks in sabotaging the hell out of the American, British and Polish forces and their Nazi friends.
@@lape2002 how would Stalin get materials to them much less even communicate with them. The allies control the airwaves and its very hard to communicate that war. There isn't free trade. And Stalin doesn't have the navy or the air force to deliver anything. Prayers dont get you much especially since the primary force for supplying these partisans was the allies who obviously are not doing it now. The history proves they were not very strong to begin with. They are hardly mentioned in post war accounts of these countries. They had little to no political effect till the 50s and 60s over a decade later. Barely anyone knows about the Greek Civil War, including people i have met in the British Army. Thats how minor it was. The british got the majority of the country under control right away. They were brutally effective in Indochina until the French took over right before Mihn was all but destroyed and rooted out.
I disagree somewhat. First, Russia was scraping the bottom of the manpower barrel in early 1945, second, their entire army was moving on American trucks which they could not supply parts for, third, massive U.S. Industrial production combined with German remobilization would crush Russia which would not have air superiority anywhere. Lastly, Poland and the eastern countries would wreck havoc with Russian logistics. It would be over in a year. LTC US Army(Ret.)
You are delusional if you think a Western force allied with former Nazis attacking a former ally in July 1945 would have been welcomed by any other than crazy nationalists in Poland and the Ukraine. Mostly communist French resistance would have made life miserable any form of US/British logistic efforts passing French territory as they would have viewed it as the new 'fascist army" and their capitalist supporters. Same goes for Italy where the Garibaldi communist brigades pretty much controlled large chunks of Italy or in Greece where the communist DSE army reigned supreme. A VERY LIKELY scenario is France under recently elected communist leader Maurice Thorez as Prime Minister and Charles DeGaulle declaring France's neutrality and opposing the use of their ports for Western Allies disembarkment of troops. A similar scenario might have happened in Italy as recently elected Constitutional Assembly composed of two-thirds Socialists and Communists would certainly NOT have viewed the presence of Allies and former Nazis in their recently liberated territory. Therefore the only reliable place where the Western forces could deploy their so-called numerical manpower and material advantage would be the port of Antwerp, extremely close to the Red Army's range.
@Libs Hate Montesquieu Yes, that's right. My Father was head of "G" group, at the National Security Agency which oversaw Group of Soviet Forces Europe. He discovered the plans for the Bolsheviks to invade Afghanistan way before the invasion. Many other things. Dad had same opinion as you and your Dad.
The allies didn't just have an edge in aviation, they had dominance. Far more numerical and better quality aircraft. Total naval supremacy, with the US Pacific fleet in a good position to launch a major offensive into the Soviet Union from the far east. Not to mention nuclear weapons. The Soviets were devastated, and had no chance. They would slowly but surely be pushed back, loosing one city at a time, slowly but surely loosing ground.
Political will in the Allies would have ended it. American soldiers in Germany after VE Day actually had demonstrations wanting to go home. Soldiers with enough "points" were sent home. Others had to wait. My father witnessed it after WWII ended in Frankfurt.
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True but if the allies were going to attack the Soviets they would have had to have had the mindset of Patton to even start that war. So even though your point is well taken and true, it wouldn't have been applicable in this scenario.
@ the leaders being madmen like Patton wouldn't change the fact that the soldiers don't want to fight a suicidal war of aggression where they would be the bad guys for attacking first.
@@SelfProclaimedEmperor They would have been the good guys for destroying communism. I'll bet if they could see the world today and what communism and what the dogma of Marxism has wrought, they would want to go back to destroy every last one of them.
@@vaughnblaylock6069 Modern SJWs have nothing to do with Marxism, they are a new and more vile plague. Even the Marxists were usually culturally conservative. Supporting man/woman marriages and stopping race based riots.
@@SelfProclaimedEmperor But the doctrine of Marxism has led to this point. Even the leadership f BLM admits that they are "trained Marxists". Trotsky spoke of the benefits of constant upheaval and revolution, and that's pretty much what we're getting now.
I am certain that in 1946, Finland would have been happy to allow the Allied powers to use their territory as a launching pad into the USSR. Also, there is nothing preventing U.S. from increasing the number of combat forces unlike the USSR, which had reached the end of its reserves. Over 40 million Americans registered for the draft from 1942 to 1947 and yet less than 12 million served. America could have easily uncoiled another 10 million combat troops if it wanted to. You mention the Pacific front in such a war, but wouldn’t China (Nationalist forces) have been more than happy to have Americans fighting along side their forces to fight the USSR and Chinese Communists? And if former German forces might be used, why not Japanese forces too? Finally, what’s preventing US, UK, and Indian forces from launching a new front through Iran into Central Asia? It would put all the entire USSR East of the Urals industry in danger not to mention if it is joined by a USA push into Mongolia and through Chinese Turkmenistan into Central Asia.
Although such war would cost several million lives,I think it would be for the best.Just think in what kind of the world we would be living right now...
Exactly, or just bombed Baku, Maikop(sp?), and Grozny. That was 80% of soviet oil production. On the subject of Soviets manpower and production lend lease supplied something like 3/4 of all artillery shells 57% of aviation fuel, and nearly all the radios in tanks. The soviets were out of men, they would have had to demobilize men just to start making supplies. You had 11,000 tanks supplied, the elite guard armies were almost exclusively equipped with US tanks again without US parts and technical know-how where they going to get replacement parts? There is no one left to produce anything. Soviet forces would have collapsed had lend lease suddenly been pulled and those supplies used against them.
yeah. The polish resistance movement was very much still potent at this point in time, and would pose a serious threat to the soviets. You could probably also get dudes like Von Manstein to head up huge numbers of German ex nazis and POWs in fight against the soviets. Finland could probably also be convinced to restart the winter war, and the British Raj could maybe even mount some sort of invasion into south-central Russia. The Chinese civil war would probably merge with this 3th world war, and this would not benefit the soviets.
THESE ARE COOL ASSUMPTIONS WITH NO GROUND ON REALITY. FINLAND WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN "HAPPY" TO PROVIDE THEIR TERRITORY AGAINST THE USSR, YOU SEEM TO FORGET THE PEACE TREATY OF 1944 WHICH EFFECTIVELY PLACED FINLAND INTO NEUTRALITY TO THIS DAY (FURTHER RATIFIED IN 1947). NO MENTION ON HOW THE WESTERN ALLIES WOULD HAVE MANAGED TO BRING UP THE SUFFICIENT FORCES INTO THAT DE FACTO NEUTRAL COUNTRY WITHOUT BEING DETECTED BY SOVIET COMMAND. USING FORMER NAZI OR JAPANESE FORCES IS THE OTHER INCREDIBLY CRAZY IDEA THAT PASSES TODAY AS REASONABLE. WOULD ANY OF THE SO CALLED "EASILY DRAFTED" MANPOWER BE COMPELLED INTO FIGHTING AS WAR OF AGGRESSION AGAINST FORMER ALLIES SIDE AND SIDE HAND IN HAND WITH NAZIS AND JAPANESE FASCISTS?? SERIOUSLY?? FACT IS, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A BLUNDER OF MASSIVE PROPORTIONS THAT WOULD HAVE TAKEN OUT THE INSTIGATORS (CHURCHILL, PATTON, MACARTHUR AND MONTGOMERY) VERY EARLY IN THE CONFLICT.
lape2002 you forget the German army was co-opted to defend the frontier in Germany against the soviets, so no I don’t think it is a cool assumption with no basis in reality no matter how much you enjoy your caps lock key. As for Finland I agree, but nuking Moscow was also not hugely important again bombing Baku and the other caucuses oil centers and ending lend lease would have effectively crippled the now fully mechanized red army anyway. All the while listening in on the troops talking on their US made radios that the soviets would have had no way to do the same to the allied forces.
Strangely I miss one element in this equation: in 1945 the US dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. The Soviet Union had it's first atomic bomb tests in 1949. This means that the western allies had 4 years to threaten the USSR with their nuclear power. How resistant would that USSR have been, I ask you?
@@Sloppy._ You think the B29 has enough chance to get 1000 km into enemy territory. and the Soviet city was much smaller than any other country; moscow only had a population of 3 million people
@@carkawalakhatulistiwa the US had better a better Air Force, also the nukes would probably be used on military targets not cities…. also it was a joke in the end
I don't claim to be an expert on navies, but I think I read about a few hulls of Sovyetsky Soyuz battleships being completed? They were never armed or actually used, but he might have included them
@@lukedufaur5368 they were never close to being completed. The soviets had no capacity to even manufacture the armor plate they wanted. The Russians were lent a British Battleship at one point. It was so poorly maintained that the turret rusted in place when they got it back.
I think they had one or two P. Velikiy class battleships, but they were inherently outdated, since they were built by the empire. Sum: 1 Gangut, 1 Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya, 1 Ismail, 1 Maurat, 1 P. Velikiy (all outdated, most recent is Ismail built in 1920 if I'm correct)
No mention of the huge heavy bomber fleet US & UK had, which neither Germany or Russia had. So Russia didn't have the high quality air defence that Germany had.
Patton wanted to attack Russia knowing that they were just as much a threat as the Nazis were. He wanted to enlist the defeated German Army to help. He was quite vocal about which is why they murdered him.
If he was actually investing in that idea then he clearly had lost his mind. Does he understand that the Nazi were ideological enemies and by allying with them he would lose the trust of the British and even worse, drive the French to join the Soviet? Joining the Axis also means that the whole of East Asia will se the USA as untrustworthy because they just joined an enemy that had subjected them to acts beyond babarism. The whole ww2 thing was for America to takeover Asia for resources and markets. And doing that will defeat the whole purpose of America's interventionism. Let hope the alliance with fascist Franco worth it because he didn't do shit for the whole war.
@White Ness right after 1945? That wouldn't change anything. It's one thing to employ former Nazi high ranking officers few years after putting them to trial or moving their scientists to the space programs. It's another thing to put weapons right into every Nazi soldiers and officers and told them fight on the eastern front with the French on their side. Can't see how that wouldn't back fire right at them. Besides letting the cold war happened as it was allow the Tito-Stalin split to happen without it, the Allied will never push past Yugoslavia seeing how effective yugoslav partisan were and they caused that much damage without Soviet supply of weapons. Many eastern European hate the Soviet union but they would not join any side that have the Nazi on because by now everyone know that the Soviet will occupy their lands but the Nazi was and will forever be hell bend on eradicating them out of the surface of the Earth
For years throughout the war, the USA supplied Soviet Russia with food, shoes, trucks, etc. Add nukes to the USA's huge naval power and huge air power in 1945 -- Soviet Russia would have been a goner.
@@raam1666 Just three atomic bombs and Japan still not finished. Therefore you let the ludicrous idea of atom bombing the Soviets go through before ending the Pacific war?? Is that serious logic?? Plan was for attacking the Soviets on July, just as the first A-bomb was getting ready with all chances of spending it deliberately to avoid Dunkirk part two with the US/UK replaying their role in 1940.
The US had x4 additional nukes in its arsenal before the end of Summer 1945, and had manufacturing lined up to produce TWENTY more nukes by the end of 1945. Nuclear-armed B-29 bombers with a 5,000km combat range can fly from Iceland to Moscow, and even as far east as Yekaterinaberg on the other side of the Ural Mountains to deliver atomic payloads from altitudes above most Soviet fighter planes and AAA guns. If the US used the B-29 variant known as the B-50, the B-50s flew above *all* Soviet aircraft and AAA. US nuclear-armed Bombers could also fly from Western Europe, Egypt, Japan or India, safe from any Soviet retaliation to range across the entirety of the Soviet Union. BOOM! Are we done yet? No? BOOM? How about now - not yet? BOOM! OK, we can keep doing this until you don't have any cities left, are we done yet???
You dummy, they could have just pushed to west Europe and held Western European citizens hostage after wiping out their tiny exhausted militaries, and lived within their cities amongst the people. u gonna nuke the Europeans too? Also 20 bombs of that size that dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki aren't gonna do jack in the vast territory of the USSR, (you could check their blast radius online, they looked like super tiny dots lol just like ants.) -soviets would also have sleepers agents all over USA ravaging it in the worse ways possible after all they managed to steal your nuclear program in the 40s by using secret agents too. not even your presidents were safe, after all jfk got sniped hard and that was the 60s, So imagine what hundreds of determined sleeper agents could have done to your cowardly American nation in the 40s. -Your nuke trump card isn't much of a trump card after all, it would have been your own suicide pill. And soviet fighters in 1945 could easily compete with America's best at the time, aka p51h or f8fb/f7f and they out numbered you to the high heavens even at 5km altitude.(Unbelievable that the rusty russos out produced you in both tanks and planes even while their land was literally under invasion and USA was safe and cosy lol. Definition of fat lazy incompetent americans.) Check the specs of soviet figters from 1945 dumbo and also there's something called under ground factories/facilities, USA had no satellites in the 40s obviously, so good luck scouting the biggest land mass on earth knowing where the might be creating their own nukes.
These nuclear warheads were very weak and slow to produce. In addition, not all American planes would have reached their target - they would have been shot down by Soviet air defenses. And within a few years the USSR created its own nuclear bomb and nuclear parity arrived
The West would win this battle hands down because of the insane air superiority, the atom bomb, b-29s, many more allies, and the soviets were generally disliked by the world. Another major issue is that the soviets had lost a ton of people in the previous war and the amount conscripted was starting to destroy their economy. They were having manpower shortages in 1944 so while they have a ton of people in their army, the losses couldnt be replaced like the west could without destroying their war economy.
@@stilpa1 West vs East 1945 TU-4 was produced 1949 Tsar Bomba in 1961 TU-142 in 1968 The Soviets had none of these things at the time the video takes place.
@@stilpa1 The TU-2 was retired in 1939 officially, and the BE-6 was made in 1949. The rest were ground attack aircraft or medium bombers, with the exception of the 93 PE-8s, which does not compare to the 3,970 B-29s. And with the exclusion of the PE-8 I don't think any could carry the first Soviet nuke, in August 1949.
@@charliebasar9068 how was TU-2 retired in 1939? It was in world war 2... And then you have AAs which there is more than all the world combined... And then tanks, they had IS-3 which was the best from 45 to 50
I think it would still count as WW2
Yea
But German became allies and still is third reich
Yes of course, the Soviet Union also attacked Poland after all
WW2 part 2
Probably
It is important to also note that the Soviet Union had greatly exhausted its manpower reserves and any and all people pulled into the army would devastate the soviet economy and food production.
I was just to comment the same, and as such in a long war, the allies would simply steamroll the soviets, there would be an initial push from the aggressor in the first phase, a stabilization of the front lines in the second, and then in the third the attritional strains would overwhelm the soviets since they were scraping the bottom of the barrel with regards to their manpower reserves. The end would happen pretty fast since it would be a cascading effect when the front finally start moving, also what Binkov is forgetting is that it was not just war material that Lend Lease provided, it was also things like canned goods, locomotives, and raw materials, again this shortfall would be negligible in the first phase, start to become an issue in the second, then in the third it would be sorely lacking and as such be a huge problem.
And unlike the Germans, the US had the biggest strategic bomber force in the world plus unlimited fighters to sweep ahead of them.
Soviet oil fields would have been bombed around the clock and Soviet railways would have been smoked by thousands of US fighters, not to mention relentless fighter attacks on Soviet troops and armor.
@@Chuck_Hooks Actually Britain and the US loves building strategic bomber, the rest (whether Allies or Axis) hehe.
@@Sutton-vp3bf true many of the food and military equipment came from the United States.
Many mention how exhausted USSR was, but Westerners were tired of war as well. Churchill himself got voted out because his men were tired of war.
Therefore it's important who starts the war first, other side (the western side) would have no other choice than to fight or relive the german occupation again
@@abbfilmann3735 in the real if the allies started the war it wouldve failed due to internal opposition, exhausted soldiers, and preception. Rest of the world wouldve seen allies as backstabbing and untrustworthy. Vice versa for USSR.
@@scaryclouds1403 Therefore I placed the emphasis on who starts the confrontation first - for Allies it would be equivalent of political suicide, for USSR not very smart move to do either
@@abbfilmann3735 alternatively let's say for fairness sake its something like American solider and Russian get into a fight causing a full blown skirmish leading to a war.
@@abbfilmann3735 Russia was actually an alley of Hitler (at least in their minds) at first. And if America and England attacked Germany it would been a disaster. We didn’t have the capabilities to take on Germany alone - forget if u add the Soviet Union into the equation! We entered the war at the perfect time. When Hitler turned on the Soviet Union. Remember Hitler secretly built his Tanks originally on Russian soil. And I believe his air-force or Luftwaffe was originally being worked on, on Russian soil. Since it was illegal for Germany to do anything (militarily) on German soil. That’s why operation Barbarossa was so shocking to The Soviet Union. (Or Stalin)
Losing 10 million fighting men, and another 10 or so million civilians and a severe lack of food cannot be overcome easily. The Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse at the end of WWII. I do not believe they could have survived another conflict so soon.
I remember when Gen. Patton supposedly said, "Re-arm the German army and we all go after the Russians." This aspect seems to have been totally ignored.
Re-arm the German army and be rebranded as the main villain in the rest of Europe. The Soviets wouldn't even need to organize coups.
@@VonFreklstein Very unlikely the allied troops would have tolerated it. Add some soviet propaganda on top of that...
That would have failed miserably. Eisenhower and Truman would have easily been against that.
Because it was totally unrealistic....very few in western governments actually trusted Stalin but were at least pragmatic enough to realise the western allies would be unlikely to score an easy decisive win in such a scenario. Hitler's efforts had only just proven that and USSR military when Hitler invaded was in pretty bad shape. Russia is just too large, the settlements too far apart that acts as much if not greater defence for Russia then actual military assets. The western allies were lucky to hold on to even western Germany...I don't see Stalin getting any further then that though even in an optimistic scenario (for him).
@@andrewmckenzie292 the only regrets I think America has (in WW2) is #1- giving up Poland (with Stalin’s promise that it’s only temporary to free Poland of German occupation) to the Soviet Union! That was a horrible mistake! The Polish were a VERY Catholic country having more churches than any other country in Europe! And allowing Poland to become communist.
#2- Allowing The Soviet Union to take Berlin! And that was a huge mistake! Russia (the Bolsheviks) was horrible to their own people - they were Medieval to the Citizens of Germany! Raping and robbing everyone and person in sight! - not that, that hasn’t probably happened in many conquered countries in the past. But never in modern day, on such a huge scale. (Although the Japanese did it to the Chinese during WW2)
But if u ask me that was the United States two big mistakes during and following the war!
My grandfather was a 1st sergeant(German was his first language) at Battle of the Bulge and was wounded. After he recovered in Britain he was put to interrogating German prisoners and he said "every single one asked when he would be given his American Uniform and guns to go fight the Soviets." Every single one asked him that, so they expected to fight the Soviets and they wanted to do it.
My Godfather was a Spaniard who hated the Communists so much that he volunteered for the Blue Division and fought against them on the Eastern Front...
Well, they (germans) all had a chance to fight the Soviets " ...
In german uniforms and with their own german weapons. Without wasting time to surrender, change side, equip with US gear and weapons, get in to US uniforms and charge ( again?) the soviets.
But i think that german prisoners just wanted to look "pro -west" and civilized to gain mercy from the western alies...
But they failed.
@@george217 many divisions, blue, green, yellow... now are part of the soil as fertilizers.
Lucky guys escape from soviet revenge but most the "divisions" never got back.
@White Ness shit happens. ;)
@@MeteorBIG Well, my Godfather got back and had the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross (for killing a LOT of Communists, I'll bet) to prove it...😜
There was never really any chance of a war in 1945 between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. Despite a few contrarians like General Patton, nearly all Americans and British wanted to go home as soon as Japan was defeated. Nor was Stalin interested in war with the U.S. and Britain in Europe. Stalin's focus was on consolidating his new power in Central Europe, not attacking west beyond the Soviet zone. Such a war between the Soviets and the Western Allies while theoretically interesting was simply never a real possibility.
That's the stupidest thing I've ever read
That's why we're talking about it and why it didn't actually take place.
Realistically the human element would have made this war impossible even though both combatants were at the maximum military strength of all time in the history of humanity.
Not counting nukes of course.
obviously now ballistic missiles and MAD make scenarios like this totally unrealistic. I don't trust either side to stay conventional, especially with the existence of smaller tactical battlefield nukes. Things would get muddy pretty quick
I gotta disagree with ya! I firmly believe that’s why Patton had a mysterious hunting accident, and was killed “accidentally” by his own troops! (Not his per say but American troops) I think if he were allowed a smidgen more freedom we would have had a much longer WW2!!
@@roccosantanelli2802 I'm pretty sure he was involved in a car accident
Stalin would have advanced all the way across Europe..but he know he had no hope of over running Americans in Europe.. America now had atomic weapons to stop any further Russian advance, and vast fleets of bombers
The issue with your scenario is the Allies never wanted to "invade" the Soviet Union. Only push them back to their original borders. As a historian I can say with a decent amount of confidence, this is a no win scenario for the soviets. The US isn't fighting in the pacific, & can focus all their power on the USSR. Also there is no way Turkey doesn't let the allies use their bases as staging posts, after witnessing the atomic bomb. However the biggest issue is the absolute naval dominance of the Western allies. It's totally plausible the US figures a way to launch a nuclear capable bomber from a aircraft carrier. After a few major cities in the USSR get wiped off the map, even Stalin would ask for a ceasefire. The only issue preventing this was "war weariness", but once some of the soviet atrocities are made public, that weariness is gone. The war would last a year at most.
Don't forget Nationalist China they'd gladly have allows use of airfields in exchange for assistance against their communist problem.
but would the western public or troops support the war they just got done fighting the germans in a very costly victory just to be told we are back at war this time with our former ally
@@kazakhstanisastate4614no internet back then. Media although not government sponsored, when it came to military usually toe the line of printing what the government says as factual. Only after the fact would they look at with a microscope
As someone who studied history myself, I can tell that you're not a historian, you're a clown 🤡 But then again, it's no rare occurence these days
Why they haven’t made a movie about this scenario is beyond me.
@@hankhill5622 Battlefield 6 Baby
Turkish Army vs Greek Army Military Comparision
ua-cam.com/video/yUMnF1-kKfE/v-deo.html
@@pathfinder6997 Supposedly Battlefield 6 will basically be a rebooted Battlefield 3. Like Modern Warfare 2019 to the original.
@@afroartist1086 if that’s true I’m gonna die from deep vein thrombosis after playing for 2 days straight
Or about the Cold War going hot. Not like a White House down or that crap. But like crazy combat in europe
Yes! I've been waiting for something like this!
So HaS sTaLiN
If you want to read more about this kind of thing a really good book series about this would be the Red Gambit Series by Colin Gee. It is pretty in depth and covers helps to empathize with the soldiers on both sides.
@@ryanbeske5504 Oh thanks for the suggestion, I'll see if I can buy it.
Original Name No problem!
Same!!!
American has something. Untouched infrastructure. The russian factories and cities were flat while Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, etc were pumping out all munitions
@Xiping China soviet ideology was different to the west, they had the same war Ethic as Britain in ww1 around that time they literally pulled Everyman they could. If the west had the same approach we would have outnumbered the soviets.
@Xiping China The Soviets had no way to cross the either ocean or ways to stop the supply chain coming to europe they had no navy and the only long range bomb threat was coming from US it would of been over before it even started.
@Randall Scott Daway The USSR had only 2 functioning long range bombers the Tupalav and as I said earlier the war time production of the USA especially with the B17 and B29s being cranked out at a rate of over 1000 a month with bases in China, Europe and Alaska the US could bomb at its discretion and leisure every major city in the USSR cutting off the forward Soviet troops in Germany with no hope of being resupplied.
@Randall Scott Daway Americans had air superiority
@Randall Scott Daway I sincerely doubt they would have been able to match the amount of interceptors we would have been able to crank out
The Soviets would’ve been beaten, even with some initial victories.
That’s why it didn’t happen-the Soviets knew they would lose.
Your the type of comments people need to be watchful of, your delusional is uncanny, the Soviet would have gave the Americans a run for their money. Stop believing West media.
@@MrAce2000nukes
Well church hill is the one who wanted to Invade also the Soviets and Allie’s were both spent
@@MrAce2000 the Soviets were quite literally receiving 2/3rds of their food supply in March 1945 from the US, they absolutely did not have the agricultural infrastructure to sustain their army at that point in time and were receiving daily shipments from Murmansk. In addition to that the Soviets lost 27 million people during a 4 year span, 80% of Soviet males born in 1923 did not live to see the end of the war, had they gone to war with the US they likely would have killed off an entire generation of people in the process. As well as the Soviets lacking any sort of long range strategic bomber, the US was producing about 300 planes per day and were the ones ravaging Japanese and German industry, the Soviets did not have an answer to accessing American industry across the ocean, while the Americans very well could obliterate any major Soviet targets with air superiority. In conclusion, even if all else failed, and the Soviets somehow were in a position to win, the Americans had the atomic bomb and the Soviets did not, their capital city and entire government would be reduced to ash, to which they would have no choice but too capitulate or face total annihilation.
@@MrAce2000the Americans had a nuclear program, the Soviets didn’t at the time. The Soviet Army was also crippled after WW2 so the Allies would have won. Might have taken a year or two but the Allie’s would have won eventually.
Soviet reserves were basically non existent by this point, the allies could effectively replenish their loses with more young fighting aged men, while soviets if they did replenish we’re down to older men, people with disabilities, and women.
They could have counted on Germans too.
that would have change in case of further war.
@@CsImre tell that to the Volksturmm, the Germans were hellbent on resisting the Bolshevists
Maybe they had used “liberated” troops extensively because of their manpower shortages
It’s questionable if they’d remain loyal to the Reds
time for KRANKENDIVISION
Oil
The Soviet supply was massively vulnerable.
The Western supply wasn't.
Game over
Allied airpower would've shocked the USSR. They had never been subjected the numbers of bombers, fighter-bombers and fighters the Allied possessed. Another shock would be the sheer numbers of Allied a/c operating hundreds of miles behind the front, ravaging convoys, carpet bombing troop concentrations, etc etc.
@@LuvBorderCollies allied airpower struggled to reach Germany how were they gonna hit Moscow?
And the red air force was huge, had more fightercraft than the west even. The allies focused on bombers
@@cpob2013
They don't need to hit Moscow to cripple the USSR War effort.
The Caucasus Oil fields were vulnerable.
No Oil
No War
The russian oilfields are not vulnerable. The Nato supply was. There was 1 month of diesel reserve available in Europe...and that was a very optimistic assumption. . Suez would be shuttered. The North Atlantic and Northsea under massive threat. Baltic sea under russian control. Black sea a russian lake. Shipping around the horn not happening. The 150 Russian subs could stay on patrol almost indefinitely and were invulnerable to attacks since they dove deeper than the Wests..
@@808bigisland What are you talking about? This is World War II... not the Cold war. The Western Allies had THOUSANDS of ships! Those 50 or so Russian subs would have been gone in a couple of months (if they stayed in port) and they weren't nuclear. They couldn't patrol almost indefinitely and they couldn't dive deeper. And besides the arms we were giving to Russia, we were giving them convoy loads of raw materials and food. Once the west stopped shipping that they would be hurting big time. Once the West's air force had wiped out the Russian air cover it would have been a shooting gallery. Again we're not talking Cold War equipment and numbers. This is a WWII scenario.
One thing often overlooked is just how short on manpower the Soviets were by 1945 - they had to resort to conscripting old men almost as much as the Germans, and even then that would not be possible (certainly not in such a scale) had it not been for lend-lease food shipments, which eased the manpower required for agriculture. Utilizing "Allied" troops from the future Eastern Bloc was also not a measure of good will - the Red army needed men to fill the front lines, and they would take them from anywhere.
On a related point, the USSR may not be able to fully rely on those allies - Poland for example had a significant anti-communist resistance movement up until 1947, and it would only get stronger if there was a real possibility of western assistance, along with the potential support of the Polish government in exile in London. Partisan actions could noticeably hamper already vulnerable supply lines, and provide intel to the Western Allies. Mass desertions from eastern bloc countries would also be likely.
what you said about Poland was also true for the other big central/eastern european country, Romania, they had a huge anti communist resistance in the end 40s and early 50s, which diminished way till the end of the 60s.
The ussr population at the time was 170 million, and a common misconception is that the soviet heavily relied on the lend lease tanks late war. They helped but by 1945 the soviets had made there own tanks that easily outclassed the m26 and centurion, such as is-3 which was feared by every nation outside of the bloc at its time.
Americans say that is their right to have firearms in order to protect themselves and to fight a tyrannical government [100% agree] - my countrymen did just that against the communist until the late 60's. In Romania there was a strong anti-communist resistance that did not want to surrender the country to the soviet red plague. We had been invaded by the Russians, just like the rest of Eastern Europe...nobody wanted this. With very limited access to firearms, the resistance fought the communists in the mountains of Romania in order to keep a bridgehead for the moment when the Americans and the British would come to the rescue and join the fight to push the soviets out of Europe. Unfortunately that moment never came, the armed resistance was eventually defeated and my parents and grand parents had to wait for another 45 years for freedom. My countrymen would have fought side by side with Polish people, the allies and the other eastern nations against Russia. The scenario presented in this video does not portray the reality of Eastern Europe at the end of WW 2.
@@michellesimmons8998 The Soviet population was impressive sure, but by 1945 they lost some 35% of men aged 20-50. Add to that all the men that still had to work in fields or factories, and it didn't leave very many you could conscript without starvation at home.
Lend-Lease in terms of tanks isn't terribly relevant, sure (save perhaps for the winter of 1942, where British tanks made a good portion of Soviet armor), but the primary purpose of lend-lease was to help Soviet logistics. the Allies supplied thousands of trucks and locomotives, and were the best source of high-quality gasoline and several rare minerals. If the USSR were cut off from those supplies they'd need to divert even more men (which they were already short on) to work in the industry, and even then they may not get the same output as they did with Lend-Lease.
As for the IS-3, it scared the Allies, but it wasn't that successful of a design. The big gun's long reload didn't go well with anti-tank combat (where you have to estimate range and correct off that), the interior was more cramped than even in the IS-2, and the mechanical reliability left a lot to be desired. Plus, with only 350-500 built in 1945 (compared to some 2000 Pershings) it would be far from the main tank of the Soviet armored divisions, which would still have to rely on T-34/85s, by most means inferior to Shermans.
You really think that Allied populations and armies would be very supportive of another war?
There would've been mass demonstrations and defections immediately.
Without help from the USA, Russia would have never been able to fight back against Germany.
Yes maybe but have credit for the Russians who fought valiantly against 75% of Germanies army & lost over 20 million. Respect is due muka.
@@jahmah519 They threw Troops wave after wave against the Germans. They could only produce items for war because of our lend-lease policy. I f we didn't do that, German would have taken them out.
Perhaps, but it is just as obvious that without the USSR no one would have defeated Germany, 70-80 percent of the Wehrmacht's losses came on the eastern front. Without Soviet victories, D-Day would have been impossible, the “Allies” would have been drowned in the English Channel.
The same can be said about USA without Russia in WW2, France and Britain without Russia in WW1... what's the point of this argument? That the existence of one or two bottlenecks in Soviet industry that USA helped with makes America's participation in the war effort more important than that of Russia?
USSR: what do you mean your bombers can go 6x as far as German ones and reach the urals?
Mother russia is now a scary little girl kkkk
Nice
@Reader Stuff what do you mean our fighters are completely outnumbered and outclassed and the rest are completely useless as interceptors.
the combat radius of a B29 is 3,121 km surely not 6X any comparable German aircraft. That being said, hitting the Urals would obviously depend on the location of the forward bases, Using Finland yes, they reach the Urals, with 3/4 or half bomb loads easily far beyond. Additionally, the oil field were well within range.
@@frankhajek6349i believe he is referring to the b36 which if i remember can reach the urals
"Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia."
_ _ 8 _
stop crimethink
There is no war in Ba Sing Se!
N
I dont get it
The Soviets were exhausted by the end of WW2. Tremendous losses of life, and extreme exertion of it's people over 4 years. Continuation against a relatively fresh, and economically much more powerful USA would have collapsed the USSR by the end of 1946.
I think Soviets could hold up until mid-1947 if the war stays "conventional" if the US decides to carpet bomb factories and fields, while combining that with nukes, Soviets could probably surrender by end of 1946 like you said.
The soviet union was in prepared and low on morale during operation barbarossa, and now you're thinking the same as The German High Command that USSR will fall by 1947. War is not just a numbers game, as proven by History even the most advanced and most numerous force will still lose to a very determined enemy, see Saudi v.s. Yemen and / or USSR v.s. Mujahaden and / or USA v.s. Afghan, v.s. Vietnam
Not by 1946, even with nukes the war lasts several years. The allies simply didn't have the manpower to push the Soviets back far enough and it's far easier to defend then it is to attack.
it would have been a long and bloody war as the video says as well.
every side hopes for a quick and decisive victory, but it is very rarely so.
@@18vladz the war against the afghans has more rules than ww2
There is also the fact that once the Allies start pushing the Soviets back, there would have been numerous Anti-Soviet partisans who would have dotted Eastern Europe upon their realization that the Soviets were no better occupiers than the Germans.
Unfortunates we betrayed our Underground Leaders, executing them as war criminals instead. The anti-Soviet partisans were like Ukraine more pro-German, or in Siberia pro-Japanese like Manchurians.
Not that Soviets did better. When Brits stupidly trusted Stalin sending Polish etc govts in exile from London to Yugoslavia home, same veterans fought for Britain, executed right off the planes and ships.
Soviets NEVER saw themselves part of our Allies.
We kept compounding our mistakes. 😢
I remember reading about German POWS being held by American troops. One German colonel actually asked an allied prison commandant when he and his men would be allowed to join the Allies when they fought the Soviets. The commandant incredulously told the colonel that there was no such plan, and the German colonel could hardly believe that the Western Allies didn’t seem to think of the threat posed by the Soviet Union. If war did break out between the Allies, I do believe that many Wehrmacht troops would reenlist to fight with the Allies against Soviet forces as they considered the Soviets to be much worse than the Western Allies.
And then open concentracion camps.
@@jakubkarczynski269 like the gulags?
Many of the German troops were rearmed during the cold war with the same uniform and equipment
@@shanewoody4232 Jews used Nazi equipment during first Israeli wars.
@@FasterthanLight11 gulags were closer to modern day prisons than concentration camps dude
1:16 What the hell?
Belgium?
Wins France?
The Belgian Empire?
WTH is that game?!
Moscow could definitely be hit by a B-29 because of its unmatched altitude. Binkov is incorrect to assume the B-29 would suffer losses due to a lack of escort fighters; it was built to not require escorts but use altitude. The Soviets had no experience with defending against strategic bombing on the scale of the American box formations that would have rolled over marshaling yards or Soviet positions before being carpeted. In addition, much of the Soviet fuel supply could be cut between bombing the Caucasus oil fields and simply turning off the flow of American imports. I think the notion of the US having longer supply lines is also wrong in the sense American supply lines begin to be threatened when ships pull into harbors on the continent, and with no Red Navy to speak of, the Western allies can keep moving that point to anywhere in the Baltic or Black Sea. Soviet supplies are rail-bound and travel the full length of the country.
Soviets had 12000 , (Twelve Thousand ) IL-2's in reserve , their version of the Spitfire , I wonder how many 1000 B-52 Bomber Fleets would have survived an onslaught , thats why they never went ahead , in fact the opposite would have happened, the Red Army would have ended up on the North Sea Coast.
@@brendonnz1964 How can you be so wrong in such a short comment? Il-2 is a close air support aircraft which had a flight ceiling of 5500m, Spitfire was a FIGHTER, the only common thing between them was that they both flew and were military aircraft.
Next, B-52s had their first flight in 1952. And even if you are talking about the B-29, its flight ceiling is 9710m, How did you imagine a plane made to hit land targets could hit an aircraft flying 4000+ meters above it? Short answer: It can't even see the B-29s.
However the soviets did have fighters that could fly as high as 10000m, But those aircraft were designed for low altitude flying, meaning that said fighters were too slow to reach the bombers and even if they did they would be lacking firepower, maneuverability and tactics to take said bombers down.
It would take a year or two for them to deal with that.
The Soviets would have as much success with the B-29 as the Japanese did, which wouldn't be much. The whole point of the B-29 at that era was to fly high enough to avoid most enemy fighters while giving the crew a pressurized cabin to work with, flak would take some down but most fighters would struggle with it especially if escorted by P-51's.
@@castor3020 also even if the il2 were used as cas they would get shot down immediately by allied airforce
Still can't believe this dude thinks il2 is the same as spitfire and can counter long range heavy jet bomber that won't exist until 5 years later
@@castor3020 not to mention the lost the avgas with the high octane rating for superchargers and other forced induction required to work at high altitudes.
In the face of crushing Allied air superiority, the Soviets' chances looked rather poor. A crushing Allied bombing air superiority would have quickly led to a logistical paralysis of the already notoriously limping Soviet supply system. Allied bomber operations would have been impossible for the Soviets to counter due to a lack of high-altitude fighters and the technology to produce them. Without lend lease supplies and with the oil industry razed to the ground, the Soviets would quickly have to surrender before the Americans were forced to use nuclear weapons.
Naive boy, the Soviets did not surrender even when the German Nazis were at the gates of Moscow, superiority in the air without superiority on the ground will not bring victory. And the American and British Nazis did not have superiority on the ground, so they were afraid, afraid of heavy losses, especially since most people in the U.S. and Europe have not yet forgotten who played a decisive role in the victory over Hitler.
Soviet manpower was nearly exhausted by 1945. It is unlikely the Soviets could’ve sustained a war for very long so unless they can make a rapid push to Paris and hope the Allied populations simply give up, there’s no way they could win. Although in contrast, I don’t think the Allies would be capable of actually successfully invading the USSR. Even with proper supplies for Winter, the infrastructure would be practically non existent at that point in the war. Once they reach the border, the US would probably just nuke them until they surrender or the citizens revolt against the government and end the war that way.
But the same thing was happening to Britain and France
Britain had no more trained men and they were running out of men that could used to reinforce the divisions. Let alone make new divisions
France did have manpower they could draft bit they were mostly coming from Africa. They would take long to get to the frontline
USA would not be able to make it that far into Russia aswell
Russia is easy to invade. There are no natural barriers. All populations to the rear would be eager to resist the horrible Soviets. Soviet factories would be destroyed by B 29s, escorted by superior allied fighters. Why would the allies depend on Portuguese ports when Le Havre and Rotterdam are readily available? 1944 on the Western Front saw record cold temperatures. Sheesh!
@@sidecar7714 Because B-29s deployed in Europe and bombing Russia is a fantasy. Besides everybody in Western Europe would be fighting the aggressive Americans and their Nazi friends.
@@lape2002 How the hell did you come up with that tosh?
You have forgotten how lend lease specialized the Soviet economy. They were able to manufacture the tanks, planes and small arms they had due to not having to manufacture trucks and other support vehicles. The red army moved on Studabaker trucks and received the spair parts as well. Without that supply they could not replace damaged or worn vehicles. In short order they would have been back to foot infantry. Tanks can't carry supplies or troops. What about the farm equipment they received. That would have been the same problem. They had a shorter supply line but their supply line was vulnerable while the Allies was not. The alliies proved that they could create ports on any coast and supply large armies from them. The Soviets would be in danger of flanking invasions all along the Atlantic and Baltic coasts. Not to mention the black sea. Patton proved the viability of such operations in Sicily and the alliies landings in southern France. The Soviets would have had numerical superiority but that is an illusion as the Germans proved all through the war. The Soviets were repeatedly beaten by smaller German forces and did not really learn from the lessons. Their response was not to give their troops more flexibility but to centralize the command structure and use barely trained troops to assault German positions. They were battle hardened but would not be able to react to reverses below the brigade or division level. Their officers did not fare think for themselves and left to their own without the threat of a second front they.would have been smashed by the Germans. Had Hitler waited even 1year to attack the Soviets would not be any better prepared and probably would have lost Moscow in the initial invasion of 1942. Lend lease would not help them quick enough and the Germans would have better gear for the cold. I think you minimize the effect to morale having Moscow fall to an atomic weapon. The Allies had bombers with the range to hit Moscow from German bases and the fighters to defend them. Without knowing how many bombs the US had would put them in the same position as the Japanese. As was proved in the Gulf War the fear of Atomic and Nuclear weapons would cause large numbers of Soviet troops to surrender. Just one Moab bomb cause thousands of troops to surrender simply because they thought it was nuclear.
I drive a truck everyday thats a close brother of the Studes. Very simple engineering, longlasting and easy to manufacture. Same with farm stuff. The Red Army was purged from officers by Stalin. It took till early 44 to fix that. After that it was assessed that all Allied forces could not take on a battlehardened RA with its own supply line reaching into Germany. 2.5 years later nuclear parity was achieved. Stalin could not move in in those 2.5 years of nuclear stalemate...The RA and Moscow would be heap of radioactive rubble if he did.
Gen. Patton was serious about a continuation of WWII against the Soviets. He hated the Soviets and knew they would go on to be our bitter rivals.
Exactly he was so rite but nobody wanted to see or belive him
+ 15 million deaths for what?
Patton is overrated , mediocre commander like MacArthur.
@@romanfedotov1152 LOL
Heres some things to think about:
In 1945, over half of the vehicles the Soviets had came from America. Going to war with America would mean losing a huge source of materiel. Soviet fighters and air defenses would be hard pressed to combat B-29s operating at altitude, and their radar development lagged behind. Their navy was almost nonexistent, at least compared to the West, so the US and Royal Navies could enact a total blockade and bombard their coast. The air forces of the western allies were so superior to the Soviets its not even funny. With allies in Asia in the form of Nationalist China and India, along with the American forces in Asia and the Pacific, we couldve opened an eastern front with Russia. On top of that, the Allies would have atomic bombs. Yes, we would take massive casualties, but in the end, the Soviets would lose
wasnt nationalist china in an "alliance" with the ussr
@@youtefhynot really during ww2
Soldiers heading home from war:
"Aww shit, here we go again."
I would have killed my self
Simple. Threaten Russia with a nuclear strike. Maybe one dropped. Europe all the way to the Urals would escape further destruction. The Atom actually save Japan from door to door destruction.
Soviets: ah yeah, loot and raep never stops
@@BlackIce777-b6h People then were NOT soyboys.. ANOTHER TYPE OF MEN THEN
The longer the fighting went the weaker the Soviets would get. The majority of raw material used by Russian factories was imported via allies. With the allies no longer feeding the Soviet war machine it would starve
false
That’s false Russia had lots of raw material, Soviet could end the United state’s if they allowed female conscription, but they would end the war at a deadlier cost
Baloney.
One of the main reason germany attacked USSR was because of abundance of resources it had and this guy is saying that they lacked material
Exactly... a limited & Chokable industrial supply base and outmatched by the game changing American force multiplier of splitting the atom... Russia would have done nothing except surrender like Japan in the face of overwhelming technology... Bomb shelters were NOT designed for radiation or blasts on that level... Stalin would have been buried alive & more Russians would have STILL lived if he had been killed... We may even be allies today perhaps like Japan & Vietnam Now?
Thank god this never happened, imagine how few europeans there would be today.
Somehow I doubt the Americans and Soviets would have cared about that in 1945/1946...
@@Emdee5632 amen, the less europeans the better for them
Oh just wait, it wasn't the World Wars that ended the European people, but the policies that followed them.
@@towenaar4142 Huh?
@@Emdee5632 you can definitely say that about Soviets, well documented. But the Americans, Brits and all the other allies did alot to avoid unnecessary damage. At least with on the ground fighting. Bombing care was taken, but didn't always work out. Americans daylight was better at that. Brits Night time bombing was less accurate, so even if care taken.
Dresden being a outlier rather than the norm. If there was a good reason for it, I have yet to hear it.
Soviet soldiers had seen the difference between US and German treatment of civilians and enemy POW’s. This alone, would cause a quick end of any conflict. For the US treated its enemies better than their own socialist overlords treated its peasants.
The Soviets would have had a short term advantage in number but the nation was in tatters after the war. The U.S. Industrial capacity was largely untouched. The allies would have also have superior navel and air forces. The U.S. also had nukes. Numerical superiority counts for something. But it isn’t everything.
So who would win
@@clonetrooper2782 US/UK due to superior production, logistics and firepower. We would win in a steady attritional slog.
Were talking about us vs soviet union
@@clonetrooper2782 at the end of WW2 the US military along was as large as the red army. US also had a far superior Air Force, dominated the worlds oceans so it can invade wherever it pleased, and by far the superior industrial power.
US would win, it would’ve just been too costly.
@@artruisjoew5473 The wild cards in this would be Turkey and India.
Turkey maybe not a true wild card as it knew Stalin was in trouble with Stalin for not joining against Germany sooner. That would put oil production and Southern Soviets forces of even the short range fighters. But Stalin could say he would forgive Turkey if they joined against the West. I believe this was tried and Turkey joined NATO. So I still go with assisting the west.
The US bargained with India to help in the war in its push against the British after the war. Continue fighting might erode that belief. They provided 1 million to the common wealth military. I believe it was about 1/3 of its ground forces. But economic wise ww2 was a great benefit to India. Only 2nd to the US. still think they would stick with the West.
Thanks for the video; however I think you overestimate the soviet's offensive capacity. In 1945 the Red Army was out of reserves and facing a chronic man power shortage that had become especially acute in that year. It's not likely that they could have sustained a meaningful advance against better manned Anglo-American unites operating on a narrower front line. (Unit cohesion of soviet formations would have been undermined because of these troop shortages.) Also I think you undersell the effect of cutting off lend lease aid. Considering the devastation to soviet agriculture, food supplies sent by the US were probably the most important form of aid, along with high quality aviation fuel (which the soviets could not replicate), trucks, etc. To replace this lost supply, the soviets would have had to take able bodied men and women from the military (which they were already short on) and commit them to war production (or hamstring other essential areas of war production such as from artillery and tank production. However, due to the depredations of war, it's not clear soviets could have boosted agricultural production in war torn regions of Russia and Ukraine to maintain offensive operations against the Western Allies. Motter estimates that US lend lease supplies through the Persian corridor were enough to maintain 60 combat divisions in the field. That just can't be automatically replaced.
Thanks again for the vide.
Ultimately allied naval power and the fact that so much of their industry was safely hidden away in North America and England would have left Russia in the same situation as the Germans. A strong start, followed by a slow crushing loss by attrition. I don't doubt Stalin realized that
@Timmy Dragonborn True but you have to remember that a large portion of that land is just empty.
Naval power would not do anything to the soviet union, because all of their territory is pure vast land, thats why invading russia is impossible, the ussr would have conquered germany, and france, they wouldn't have invaded england, and most likely they would've looked for allies in China, battles would have focused on france, england, belgium and possible poland, but it would not reach ussr land, in the end, i believe the allies would have seeked armistice with the ussr, to avoid such unimaginable casualties.
@@ACRus19
Allied Carriers would move to the Black Sea and attack Soviet Oil Fields in the Caucasus Regions. Additionally, the Allies could use B-29s, which the Soviets couldn't reach with their Fighters, to completely level Red Army's logistics, forward armies, airfields and, ultimately, factories. #
The Red Army was scraping the barrel with their manpower reserves and had been conscripting people they previously deemed unfit for service and from former Axis countries like Romania to fill in the ranks, but it wasn't enough. If the Allies flatten a few Soviet Armies, their number advantage is gone and they can't replace it.
Additionally, food imports from the USA kept the Soviets out of a famine at the end of the war. Without those imports, the Soviets can't feed their people or armies. And 2 of those Armies were majority Polish, who only fought with the Soviets because they were fighting Germany. Those Poles, still bitter about the 1939 invasion and betrayal at Warsaw would have loved a chance to turn their weapons on the Soviets, robbing them of 2 armies.
Sorry, but the Red Army doesn't last a year. Famine, logistical problems and factories getting nuked cement an Allied Victory.
@@ACRus19 The Navy would have been able to take out their supply lines, and also launch amphibious assaults to out flank the Red Army.
Patton knew what was coming and fought hard to keep going east.
Ever one seems to forget the USSR lost 10 million of there army. Most of there main front line troops. They don't have
much left to draw on.
Thank You, I was wondering when someone else would bring this up, too!
@@Pietrek_Channel
Oil the USA and British would go hard after the Caucasus Oil fields the Germans didn't bomb them because they wanted them intact.
They would light the biggest fire the North has ever seen.
Plus the USSR was getting almost all it's aviation fuel from the USA.
Ah, the good old Comment Section. Where everyone is a Historian and also a War Analyst. Where disputes are solved by polite and constructive discussions.
If only. On one side you have some war hawks from the West, foaming in the mouth to see the destruction of Communism. On the other, you have several tankies and self-described 'anti-westerners' who casually dismiss anything to the contrary of their views as 'American propaganda'. It's disappointing that nuance is dead and that hyper-partisanship is the new norm.
@@SP-rt4ig I bed to differ. Humanity has not changed a bit. If you think these posts are emotionally charged, and off base -- check out what was passing for political chatter in the 19th Century -- pick any country. Folks these days are actually calmer than their great-grandparents. Blame the world-wide flow of information and history.
As a side note: most tyrants who lead aggressive conflict have never left their country of origin. There are exceptions, but not many. Tojo, Hitler, Stalin, Mao -- these guys were not tourists! They filled their immediate staff with other fellows that had never travelled, either. In contrast, Churchill, FDR, De Gaulle were all men of the world. Famously, FDR practiced collective leadership. Suppressed at the time, FDR was actually too sick -- he was dying -- through most of the war. He kept short hours -- especially from 1943 onwards -- the period when the US really went into high gear. Remember that the US landed two corps in Normandy in June 1944 -- and a Marine corps in June 1944 -- half-the-way around the world -- and only two-weeks apart. BTW, in manning and support, a Marine division is twice as expensive as an Army division. Getting wet cost a ton of money -- and all Marine formations were 'shock' formations... 50% extra man-power relative to an Army formation. All during this frenetic military activity -- FDR was kicking it back with his doctor and Congress. He did not micro-manage the Pentagon.
This under estimates the vital importance of US aid, especially food, to the Soviets during the war. There was a bad famine in the USSR after the war and that was during peacetime with huge manpower being freed up to farm. Now imagine war continuing with the American lifeline cut off, the Baku oil fields being destroyed in bombing raids (no fertilizer, no tractor fuel), etc
Turkish Army vs Greek Army Military Comparision
ua-cam.com/video/yUMnF1-kKfE/v-deo.html
Food was minor. Raw numbers without comparing to soviet production look big, but were meaningless. For the worse, lend lease only reached the USSR in quantity by 1943. So they passed 2 years of the worse times without it, by then they were already winning. The Soviets had still lots of farmlands in southern Russia, kazakhstan, the caucasus. The ir food was chicken, fish, fat, wine, beer, fruits, and vegetables, mainly in stew and soups, famous is the babushka soup, made with vegetables And chicken donated by old women across the country as the farms were empty with their sons and husbands in the front. The major blow to soviet food production was the loss of the western farm lands which represented 35% of the soviet wheat production.
Lend lease food was mostly used as rations for tankers, front it's which couldn't use hot meals and civilians refugees.
Fun fact up to 1948 the soviet occupied Germany received better rations than the western one and people where moving there "people will ratter eat a bigger communist ration than starving one from freedom" said an US officer then a d they stopped the plan to starve the Germans.
So the Soviets could and did fed people. All Eastern europe from 1945 and with no lend lease. They armed and fed massive armies and the people there.
The famine after WWII was for idiotic policies to make corn in cold regions instead of wheat in the 1950s. By that time webin Argentina sent millions of tons of meat and wheat for free for humanitarian reasons.
People here focus on discussing who would have won, but I just would like us to appreciate that it didn’t happen, and that confrontation between the USSR and the US was indirect.
Many of the German forces were itching to team up with the allies and beat the Soviets.
Especially after the raping and slaughtering of the civilians by the Red Army.
If this would have happened, Vatican San Marino, Malta, Andorra, Liechtenstein and the Isle of Man would have created an alliance and conquered the world
The Pope alone can conquer the whole world
@@nobleman9393 Nope, he'll be the False Prophet, not the Antichrist...
@@george217 What? By definition, the Anti-Christ is the ultimate False Prophet.
@George Borden Martin Luther was a heretic who started a man made religion
@@theobserver3753 Where'd you get that? ML was ex-communicated by the Pope BECAUSE he was holier than thou... a "Born-Again-Catholic" who was taking the Pope & Company to task for everything from Indulgences to Simony. He wasn't creating a new religion at all. He was -- in modern terms -- an evangelical. He didn't come up with ANYTHING new -- sourcing all of his indignities based upon long established Church doctrine. Those in high Church office tossed their cookies when they read his indictment// petition nailed to the door... for they were guilty as sin.
Lol the soviets were brought to the brink. At the same time the USs industrial night was at its highest. Not even a close call.
Bruh what the fuck is a Sherman or crusader tank supposed to do against a t 34 or KV 2? Ram it?
By 45 the full soviet union had been liberated for about a year and the populations of Minsk Kiev and leningrad were now available to produce and enlist. Its like if in the last year of the Civil War, new York and Boston suddenly joined the union army.
Both of you clowns seem to forget the allies couldn't field even 2 million men because of supply lines. Remember how Patton and monty competed for campaigns and they only had gas for one? And then they picked monty and he tripped over himself in Holland? Yeah those issues hadnt been solved in July there just wasn't any shooting. The armies could only fight as fast as dock workers in Antwerp could unload. Meanwhile the reds had almost 7 million in europe alone with every railway bridge and back road in half a continent as a viable supply route.
You kids sound like the wermacht on the eve of barbarossa. Oh sure Patton charges into Berlin in a couple weeks and you write home that it will be over by Christmas. Then he runs out of gas, gets enveloped, and it turns into another stalingrad. Zhukov would be giving stalin a tour of Paris for new years.
Not to mention the outrage on the home front
What this video does't consider is the political turmoil in France and Italy at the time. In 1945 the communists got the majority vote in france and a big chunk in Italy. If the Allies attacked the soviets AND recruited former Nazi armies it would be very likely that there would be leftist uprisings in France and Italy. Maybe even a communist coup or full on civil war. Same would likely happen to Greece. Its also a high possibility that Spain would join the allied side in this scenario. India was also on the verge of revolution and might openly rebel against the British rule, same goes for many other colonies of allied nation(example: Middle east, Indonesia, Indochina) this would likely tie down some parts of the allied army. Leftists in the UK would also likely start strikes against the government for attacking the USSR.
@Stratos I 😂 you forget Russia actually invaded Afghanistan with the intention of taking it over and failed hard. America was after specific people and wasn’t there to take the country. We could have turned it into a ditch had we chosen to.
@@viddobrisek6953Great comment. I also wanted to write about it. It is a pity that this video did not address political issues, as well as other aspects of that time. Everything was very ambiguous there. But I think then the video would have lasted many hours.
Patton was not wrong in his assessment..
I think the quantity and quality of overwhelming allied airpower is being a bit glossed over. Large tank formations can be quickly turned into flaming graveyards by close air support. Yes, they had a great close air support aircraft the IL-2...but they would NEVER have air supremacy.
Bombs weren't that accurate. Wiping out large tank formations wasn't going to happen. On the other hand, wiping out supply lines would happen because in that case it's numbers that matter not being accurate.
@@redhunter8731 bombs are not the first choice in weapons to destroy tank formations.
@@redhunter8731 bombers weren’t close air support aircraft. P47s, Typhoons or Mosquitos could be used in that role, using bombs, cannons or rockets. Besides there are accounts in ww2 of planes destroying a large amount of tanks. This one German pilot using Ju87 with cannons destroyed over 200 soviet tanks.
Accuracies of bombing runs on tanks was laughable
@@ahmedmaniyaruni4300 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Ulrich_Rudel German pilot who destroyed over 500 enemy tanks
A good take on this is the Red Gambit book series by Colin Gee. After a hard fight the Allies would win due to air power, nuclear weapons, and they would be able to tap into the experience of the Germans fighting the Russians.
Could you imagine if Germany could perfect their tank technology and combine it with American production and quality control. Not to mention the centurion also coming online. As a military veichle enthusiast thats my wet dream.
@@casematecardinal the T-44, IS-3 and SU-100 would be fair matchups to them
@@thatlawnmowerguy9 maybe. I mean the germans were developing what were essentially saboted aphe rounds. Either way I see this as an absolute win
@@casematecardinal really? APHEDS sounds good, why didn't it come about?
@@thatlawnmowerguy9 they had them in the works but the war ended. Mostly just schematic stuff but it was there.
Air and naval superiority would ensure the Soviets would lose.
Naval superiority? Are you serious? Have you ever seen a map of the Soviet Union? Last time I seen it, it didn't have any oceans in the middle.
Spoiler alert: The USA was the only nation with nuclear capabilities.
The red army was massive at that point, but also on its last legs. The US was just getting warmed up. Russia would've broke under weight of American industry and man power.
Russia had no reserve manpower left. Any losses are permanent
Imagine ending a war just to have your former allies declare war on u ://////
You don’t look at history much, do you?
@@looinrims fill me in then wannabee ass corporal
@@crackcbainefl2675 damn dude no need to get a stick up your ass, I didn’t claim to be a corporal, I just said you don’t look at history much if you think “former allies becoming enemies” isn’t one of the only constants in history
@@crackcbainefl2675 Greco-Persian wars, then the Peloponnesian War for example.
Communist China and Kuomintang China literally right after WW2 ended.
@@kylevernon Ik that former allies betray each other after conflicts, Im not clueless.
Why downplay the US Navy? You have a giant fleet of battleships, destroyers and aircraft carriers coming back from Japan. Send a fleet to level St Petersburg. Once that's done, it's 400 miles to Moscow to fly some bombers there with a nuke. It would be an incredible battle
I agree I wish they would have touched more on the US Navy. All those aircraft carriers were not worked into the overall strategy employed in this video. Still a fun video playing with “what if” scenario.
Anything going into the Baltic would be torn apart by the red airforce
Do you think they don't have a military?
@@cpob2013 Sure they do, but the red army at that time relied heavily on American supplies. American trucks, tanks, boots, food and ammo all found there way in huge proportions to the red army.
Would soviets forgive the western allies after this ?
I would say that soviets deserved their share of europe after doing most of the job in the european theatre of ww2.
@@GenocideWesterners The who? The soviets got their ass handed to them in this scenario, they are no longer a factor. St Pete gets leveled by the combined Pacific fleet of 38 battle ships and 22 aircraft carriers throwing everything at at. We want the land, so we won't just nuke it. Then once the land looks like a parking lot, we build runways and every city with over 500 people gets nuked basically. The only thing left to say squat will be the cockroaches. Now go away
My mates dad was a tanky. In '45 his unit were ordered to advance up to the limit of the agreed Western powers advance. It was just a handful of them. He said it was one the scariest moments of his war (He'd fought in Italy, Normandy, all across Germany)
He said they had no idea if the Russians were going to stop or not. He said if they hadn't there was nothing him and mates could've done to stop them as they were totally outnumbered.
But the Soviet manpower couldn’t last forever. They had just fought a war from 1941-1945 and had lost millions. The United States did not suffer casualties like the Soviet Union so eventually we would outnumber them.
@@Juan-qu4oj The thing is even after the war, the soviets still had a higher population + a higher industrial production than both the US and UK, why would them outnumbering the West be a problem?
@@Yo-ps2pf because they just lost 9 million soldiers and wouldn’t be receiving American lend-lease any more
@@Juan-qu4oj And they still had a higher industrial production than the US and could field tens of millions of more men.. not sure what your point is
@@Yo-ps2pfThey didn’t tho. All throughout the war, the US produced about the same or more than the Soviets.
Most scenarios of a 1945/1946 Western Allies vs. Soviet war seem to assume that the Red Army would simply steamroll the Allies all the way to France if not the Channel. I find this curious as the Soviets were unable to steamroll the Wehrmacht as the German Reich was coughing blood in the late winter and spring of '45, but instead had to fight a tough and costly campaign to take Berlin...and it would be presumed that the Soviets would have none of the material support of such important commodities as high-octane avgas that the U.S. was supplying. In manpower as well, the Soviet Union had maxed out its pool of conscripts, so that replacements in any sort of contested campaign would have to come from the very industries keeping the Red Army a going concern.
Forget about the atom bomb: the United States and United Kingdom had developed air forces capable of delivering thousand-plane raids deep into enemy territory, so once bases are created in Iran and India the Soviet war factories in the Urals and Siberia that were practically invulnerable to German attack would be devastated by round-the-clock bombings. The Soviet air forces were meant primarily for ground attack support, so it would be difficult to say the least for Stalin to effectively change the whole thrust of Soviet air doctrine to meet this threat.
What I think would be by far the most significant effect of a new war would be the damage done to liberal/progressive political thought and FDR's legacy. The FDR administration had pushed hard on making Stalin and the Soviets accepted as "fighters for freedom", if US/USSR war breaks out there won't be a sling big enough to support that wing of the Democratic Party.
The only problem I see is how would the US justify more war agaisnt a former ally. I think it's unlikely they would act first but if the USSR had attacked (also unlikely), allied victory was certain.
@@SrCoxas how do you think this couldnt happen. Litterally within a few years you have the Red Scares starting and then after that McCarthyism. The Berlin Airlift was in 1947 so we were already openly antagonistic within 1.5 years.
baraxor lol, the only reason the Allied had more aircrafts than the Soviet at the start if the war is because the Luftwaffe had over 75% of the Planes and the best pilots on the eastern front, so they sustained more losses.
At low altitude Russian fighters were muuuch better, at high altitude the Russian had yaks with vk-107 engines and i-225s that still outperformed p51Ds, Griffon spitfires, and P-47Ds.
The superiority of allied fighters in WW2 over the Soviet fighters is a pure myth.
The Soviets could easily intercept B-29s. The Allies could not do the same bombing that they did on Germany: reasons?
They would face stronger opponents (bf109Ks and ta-152s were superior to allied and Soviet fighters, but the fact that German pilots were poorly trained largely compensates the superiority of German fighters, and by 1945 red army pilots were equally trained if not better trained than the Allied ones), they would face a country with 400% bigger numbers than the Germans, they would have had to bomb a surface much bigger, they lacked fighters to escort bombers deep behind the Urals.
While the Soviets could stop the Allied bombers, how the Allies would stop Il-10s? At low altitude the Russian fighters performed much better than the Allied ones.
The only thing holding back the USSR was the lack of manpower to launch any offensive.
@@ferrarisuper Another brainless amateur neglecting logistics. The soviets would basically stop having an air force at all. Maybe half of soviet produced aircraft (manufactured with lend-lease tooling) were made of lend-lease aluminum and domestic production of the additives necessary for aviation fuel was practically non-existent. Good luck replacing aircraft or even getting off the ground with the 70-80 octane gas they would have had.
Considering you cited an experimental aircraft as an argument for soviet capability, it's pretty clear you're talking out your ass anyway.
Russia had pushed Germany from Warsaw to Berlin in a fucking month
Ussr: Yay there is only one plane
Ussr: “Remembers what some guy in Japan said about if you see a lone plane”
Ussr: “ ahhhh”
USA:”Why are you running”
US had only 2 A-bombs in 1945 , the question is could the rest of the army hold until they produce 10-15 more?
Mike K.s The US Navy would’ve dominated with their carriers and planes, and help the army hold the line along the shores with cruiser and battleship artillery support, along with the Royal Navy’s ships
Amurhicans are the silliest bunch in history. I only took your own cops to bring your own country down. USA = 3rd world country, get over yourself you bunch of neo-nazis.
Mike K.s onewhosaysgoose America was like better dead than red jk but seriously America did most of the work in that Pacific, hopping from island to island and then Russia comes in and tries to take japan, this could’ve resulted in a conflict if they somehow made it to Japan.
@@mikek.s1707
This guy had bad luck. He witnessed (but survived) both blasts. After he survived Hiroshima, he said I gotta get out of here and get home. Home was Nagasaki.
www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.history.com/.amp/news/the-man-who-survived-two-atomic-bombs&ved=2ahUKEwiGsNP12fvrAhWoHzQIHauBA0AQFjAFegQIAxAB&usg=AOvVaw3Q2Ttdcbap-do82KjsF439&cf=1
This cenario looks like Orwell's 1984 Oceania vs Eurasia.
WWII in Europe ended in May 1945, The bombs that hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and August 9th would have been repurposed to hit Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The US alone had more than 80,000 airplanes to Russia's 17,000. Tank Busters like the P47, P51 and Hawker Typhoon would work over Russian Armor and Artillery.
Well, nuclear weapon in Japan has showed it useless in strategic or tactical meaning and it was more like psychological weapon. In two words: there's almost no military sense of using atomic bombs, especially back then, when US has just a little bit of them. Also, its hard to imagine, that US with allies, even together, would "easily destroy" Soviets, because they had more airplanes, because USSR presented to the world one the best airplanes. And even more: US and its allies gained more experience in the sea and ocean during war with Japan, when Russia gained enormous experience on the land war, thanks to Germany. More likely nor Ussr, nor Allies would reach any success in that kind of war. When Cold war broke out there was a clear example, that WWIII between Western allies and Russia was pretty unreal in meaning of reaching some results in "knocking down Russia" and that example was US plan "dropshot" which has served more as Propaganda instrument, because it's pretty unrealistic.
@@АлександрДаминин The strategic value of dropping Atomic Bombs om Hiroshima and Nagasaki was it changed the mind of Emperor Hirohito. It made him decide to stop fighting the US. The strategic value of nuclear weapons today is it prevents war between nuclear armed countries. India and Pakistan and India and China are examples. When WWII ended in Europe the US had not used atomic bombs yet. VE Day was in May,1945, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were in August 1945. The US had Little Boy and Fat Man and a third bomb in production. Twelve bombs were planned. Patton sounded the alert about Russia's intentions and he was told to shut up. The allies were making preparations for war with Russia. The two bombs would have been shifted to the European theatre for use on Moscow and St Petersburg and the third would have been used later against any massive Russian troop concentration. Bombing an enemy capital and its major cities was strategic thinking during WWII. Stalin did not order the Russian Army to go further west because he had spies inside thee Manhattan project and he knew about the bombs. He would have felt personally threatened because he abandoned Moscow as German forces were approaching. He thought he was going to be arrested when government officials came to his Dacha to convince him to go back to Moscow. He didn't order the invasion of Western Europe because he knew about Americas atomic program.
@@RobertoAtkinson-q3xno, Japan surremdered because the soviets declared war on japan, and japan wanted them to be the negotiatoris of a peace agreement between japan and the us
@@3ColorJaguar Neither the bombs or Russia's entry into the war convinced the Japanese military to surrender. All three events convinced the Emperor , not the military, to surrender. The Japanese military mounted a coupe in an attempt to stop the Emperor from announcing surrender. The Emperors residence was the scene of a gun battle between his guards and members of the Japanese military who were looking for the surrender tape, in the Emperors voice, that was going to be broadcast to the people of Japan. .
At the Teheran conference Stalin agreed to enter the war against Japan after the Germans were defeated. Germany was defeated by May 8 1945 and Russia declared war on Japan on August 8 1945 two days after little boy was dropped on Hiroshima. Why did Russia wait three months and after Japan was hit by an Atomic bomb? Maybe it was because Japan defeated Russia in the Russo Japanese war of 1904. It looks like Russia got courage after the US dropped the first bomb. Stalin had spies in the Manhattan project and he knew the US was building a bomb. Was he so afraid of Japan that he waited for the US to drop it on Japan before declaring war on Japan? The answer is somewhere in someone's memoirs.
@@3ColorJaguar @mexicobasado8177 Neither the bombs or Russia's entry into the war convinced the Japanese military to surrender. All three events convinced the Emperor , not the military, to surrender. The Japanese military mounted a coupe in an attempt to stop the Emperor from announcing surrender. The Emperors residence was the scene of a gun battle between his guards and members of the Japanese military who were looking for the surrender tape, in the Emperors voice, that was going to be broadcast to the people of Japan. .
At the Teheran conference Stalin agreed to enter the war against Japan after the Germans were defeated. Germany was defeated by May 8 1945 and Russia declared war on Japan on August 8 1945 two days after little boy was dropped on Hiroshima. Why did Russia wait three months and after Japan was hit by an Atomic bomb? Maybe it was because Japan defeated Russia in the Russo Japanese war of 1904. It looks like Russia got courage after the US dropped the first bomb. Stalin had spies in the Manhattan project and he knew the US was building a bomb. Was he so afraid of Japan that he waited for the US to drop it on Japan before declaring war on Japan? The answer is somewhere in someone's memoirs.
When I was serving my apprenticeship at Vauxhall Motors in the UK in the 1970's we had a German welder who served with the German army during WW2. He always stated that his company, on surrendering, were moved to Austria, re -armed and re -uniformed in preparation of joining the allies to attack Russia and his company was far from alone. They stayed there for six months then disbanded and sent home.
That was in case Stalin tried to seize all of Austria.
Evidence that this happened beyond the hearsay? I have never read of anything approaching this and seriously doubt its authenticity.
I REALLY don't think Allied populations or soldiers would've been very pleased at starting a war with the Soviets
One thing Binkov didn't mention is that the USSR was having severe manpower shortages and had issues refilling divisions even in 1944. An attack in 45 would see the soviets have so little men left that they would be forced to conscript children and men in their 50's and 60's like the germans had to. The allies however had a ton of manpower left (the US only mobilizing 10% of its population, whereas the soviets straight up lost a quarter of its original population already).
This is true the conscription age was raised to 55 or 65 (I forget) in 1944
The Red Army was huge in 45, but it was also stretched to its limits in manpower. The US still had vast reserves of manpower that they would have eventually brought into play. The US and Britain also had a strategic air bombing capability that Russia had no counter for. The Russian navy was also a joke, while the British and US were considerable. The Red Army's supposed strength was also largely false. For 4 years they had been fighting a depleted German army who they frequently outnumbered 10 to 1 but the Germans still held. We also would be able to call on native troops , who would flock to the Western banners, particularly after suffering under BRUTAL Soviet ocvupation.
That is true. The Ukrainians had NO love for Stalin. In fact when Germany first invaded a lot of them were happy about it. Stalin starved about 20 million of them. Heck if Hitler had really wanted to win the war he would've armed the Ukrainians and had them fight the Soviets on Germany's side. But he treated them the same as Stalin did. And it did cost Germany in the long run.
Guess who depleted the german army?
"For 4 years they had been fighting a depleted German army " After that nonsense, it all became clear.
@@jamesbutler8821 once Japan was defeated the entire British Indian Army was now free, along the American Pacific forces. Plus the Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Polish, Finns and Romanians that were under Soviet Occupation would've easily turned on them to regain their sovereignty
US had over 100 nukes by the late 40s Soviets were just finishing their 1st and by 1951 would only have 5, this would have never happened, and if MacArthur had his way both the Chinese and the Soviets would have found out the hard way.
If only MacArthur had his way... the world would probably be a better place.
Had McArthur had his way, imagine the oppression in the Middle East and South and Central America that could have been avoided. Go through the history of the last 70 years and think of the things that would have been avoided if communism had been stamped out properly as it should have been. The world would be a better place, and I can guarantee you that politics in the US would be a whole lot different.
Unless and until the world gathers together and utterly eliminates the scourge that is communism, including the people who advocate for it, the world is and will always be at risk of slavery.
@@thatlawnmowerguy9 you are referring to?
@@vaughnblaylock6069 Uhh but communism IS dead. Plus, the problems in the middle east wouldn't go away because communism did, a lot of their problems stem from an older issue called the sykes-picot agreement
@@abbyalphonse499 Communism is dead? We are in the opening stages of Cold War 2.0 with China, with Taiwan playing the role of a 21st Century West Berlin. Venezuela adopted a Cuban style government as recently as 1999. It’s FAR from dead. MacArthur and Patton had the chance to save the world a whole lot of misery and suffering, and we blew it.
A well balanced "what if?". The only issues I have, is that the narrator underplays the importance of both the allied air superiority. Which would have had an enormous effect in either scenario. And the industrial potential of the allies, which would have been far greater than the soviets.
Thank You and I agree, Ive been posting as well how Allies would have total Air and Sea Superiority which equals win another good point you make which I forgot is manufacture of the war effort clearly in Ally favor.
Even Naval superiority. The UK had hell since they had to hunt U-Boats, defend the invasion in Husky, Torch and D-day, along with bottling up the German Surface Fleet.
The Soviets have barely any Navy to speak of, no modern warships (barring the Kirov-Class Heavy Cruisers, but they were WAY inferior to Western designs), and their Submarines were worse than what the Germans had. If they tried to interdict supply lanes, the Royal Navy and US Navy will detect, find and stomp them before they even get a single torpedo off.
or lend lease or the iraq iran occupation. the soviets had no rubber usa sent them every pair of soviet boots...
Stalin oversaw upwards of twenty million casualties from Barbarossa to Berlin, which saw the hardest urban warfare in the history of the world. The Germans threw everything they had at the advancing Soviets, while the Allies had a relative cakewalk between Normandy and the Elbe. The Eastern Front had single battles with more Soviet casualties than the US suffered in the entire European war (including Italy).
I believe the mismatch in these experiences would lead to a mismatch in expectations, which would lead to a massive disparity in morale very quickly.
Russia would get smashed.
@@kruger7796 Russia would realistically have gotten destroyed by nuclear weapons, but if we're talking fighting on the battlefield, it's much harder to say. Germans inflicted two to three times as many casualties on the Russians as they took from them, and the Russians kept coming. It took the Germans six months to reach the outskirts of Moscow; it took the Soviets three and a half years to reach Berlin.
Yet they did. Perhaps this resolve would have broken, perhaps Russian manpower would have been exhausted, but the Western Allies would have been in for a very difficult fight against the army that beat the best of the Wehrmacht in a pitiless war of attrition while they were playing around in a sandbox against Italians and a skeleton corps, or in France and the Rhineland against teenaged conscripts. I would bet that Patton would have been very surprised if he'd gotten his wish.
The Russians don't call it WWII, by the way. To them it's the Great Patriotic War, and they earned the right to call it that.
@@riptidemonzarc3103 The Soviets really only start to outnumber the Germans in late '42 and into '43.
But besides that, Germany had a whole slew of problems that the Western Allies don't really have to deal with. Supplies being a major key point, and Manpower being another. The U.S. remained relatively untouched for the entire war, and had at on point almost 16 million personnel. With most of it deployed to the Pacific to fight the Japanese, it is really incalculable thw fighting that would have occured in a continuation of the Second World War not counting Nukes. Nukes just end the game quick and in a hurry.
@@riptidemonzarc3103
You seem to forget that the Germans were also fighting a 2-front war. Sure, they had most of their forces on the East, but they still held a lot of troops in the West to defend from the Allies, including more Luftwaffe Fighters due to the Bombing Campaigns by the Allies.
Had Germany NOT had that second front against the Allies, they still wouldn't have won, but they'd have bled the Soviets even drier. By 1945, the Red Army had no manpower reserves left and were conscripting men that were previously deemed as unfit for service, along with conscripting men from "liberated" countries like Poland, which made up a majority in two Soviet Army Groups. With more men on the front, the Germans would have racked up more casualties against the Soviets and destroyed more Divisions entirely. Still wouldn't have won though, just killed more Red Army Soldiers.
On the other side, the Allies still have HUGE manpower reserves to bring. Sure, the UK was running out of trained men and had to spend time training more, since UK training took a bit longer, but they still had Armies in India they could bring after Japan surrendered and they have their colonies to draw forces from. The US is better off since they had an even larger population and barely lost anything during the war, with untouchable factories churning out munitions and equipment at rates the Soviets can't keep up with. Add onto the fact that the Soviets won't be able to interdict those supply ships due to having no modern warships that could be considered as threats.
@@riptidemonzarc3103 Bruh Russia would be starving first of all.Allies supplied Russians through the whole world war.Russia had no chance against the west.
I agree with the conclusion: the allies COULD have defeated Stalin. But they chose to APPEASE him and gave him Poland instead; and history proved once again that appeasement is as asinine as 'negotiating with terrorists'. So I would add the allies SHOULD have defeated Stalin; it would have meant far less bloodshed overall, not to mention there wouldn't have been a cold war centered around 'Mutual Assured Destruction'.
A reasonable interpretation and object lesson related to the war in Ukraine and how an appeasement of Putin will only make things worse in the long run.
Have you ever heard of the concept of "boots on the ground"? The Reds had them in Poland; we didn't. There was no giving involved even if FDR was horrendously naive about our eastern co-belligerent.
Yes, it is in the spirit of the “civilized” West to first use the Russians, who suffered colossal losses in this war, and then stab a weakened former ally in the back. Fortunately for the Russians, the cowardice of the West was stronger than its meanness and hatred of Russia.
if the west had attacked into the Soviet Union they would have one advantage. The Soviets like the Germans were tired from years of war but the US still had a powerful economy which the Reich never had.
@Big Smoke Yes but nothing comparable to the almost unlimited capabilities of the US.
@Big Smoke The POTENTIAL of the US is enormous because of its resources and manpower.
@Big Smoke The Reich had a good factory base, but no raw materials to fully utilize it. Fuel and rare metals (tungsten) especially were always a problem, and the primary reason why the German Army couldn't ever be fully motorized, even with infinite time.
@Big Smoke The Reich was never fully prepared for a full scale war. Especially on the magnitude of WW2! Half the German Army relied on horses! Most of the infantry had to get to places by road marching! 95% of allied infantry hopped on trucks! The only units that relied on horses for the US were stationed in the US to act as border patrol because their were no reliable roads near the border with Mexico at the time.
Yeah powerful economy but weak government and low stability
A common meme is that the USSR was a limitless well of men and equipment. However, even the Soviets had limits. Tens of millions of their soldiers and civilians had been killed by 1945. In contrast, the US casualties were in the low hundreds of thousands and the continental US was untouched. It could have easily pumped out another 100 US divisions in 9 months and equipped another 100 allied divisions in a year. At a certain point The sheer weight of America's industrial production and manpower pool would have overwhelmed the Soviet Union.
Exactly. While obviously costly, the Wester Allies would be almost impossible to lose after a while. Even if we don't count the nukes.
Americans were not as willing to lose people as the Soviets were. The US withdrew from Vietnam because they were not willing to keep losing people.
@@monkeyman321 That's not why they left, but I am in no mood to get into this now. Still, thanks for your point.
A few issues with this.
Russian Allies! - other than the Serbs in Yugoslavia, the rest were Occupied.
It would not be a single front war there would have been an Eastern front as well with the Pacific and Asian US and Commonwealth forces as well as possibly China. Also they would have to defend against any attacks in the South via the Middle East.
Russia needed additional oil supplies from US and UK to supply it's forces in WWII - Their own oil fields in the Caucasus where well within Allied bombing range. No oil - No Tanks, Aircover or Motorized transport.
The length of materiel supply lines is absoloutely staggering - Consider how much fuel it would consume to carry enough deisel and ammunition for a single tank over distances in excess of 700 miles.
Nope, The Romenians switch side by thier own and fought the Germans in the Balkan, Further there were Soviet loyal armies from Czechoslovakia and Poland. Furthermore there was Mongolia for the far eastern front.
Second point, In theory yes, practically? No, the border area of USSR to the Middle East and China, even the Caucasus. Are extreme mountainous and deserted area's. Supply troops and even let them fight there is difficult and extreme costily and favour the defender extremely. This troops have to come from Europe of East Asia, weakening those and take months to station troops there and prepare operations. Furtheremore why attack there? It would take the allies hundreds of miles before reaching vital Soviet infrastructure. Miles overwhich supplies must be transported on non existing roads, open for soviet partisan to act on. Attacks on the Caucasus region would face similar dificulties for the allies non-existing supply lines and terrain heavily favouring a defender. A defender that has learned a lot mountain warfare when germans tried to fight in Caucasus mountains.
Thirdily, they needed the US and UK oil as it was of higher octaine level, needed to fuel aillied vehicles especially planes. Soviet equipement was designed to function on the lower octaine level fuel comming from the Soviet oil industry. So the loss of the supply of High octaine level fuel would be only a problem for the Soviet air force rather than tank or vechicle park of the Red Army.
Fourth although Baku was in flying range of Allied bombers, there is problems with plan that would fail it. Soviet Air defence and the Caucasus Mountains, could prevent Allies from reaching the oilfields or cause extreme loss. Mountains were dangerous obstacle for aviation still in the 1940s.
Finally, who would support such a war in the West? In the 1941 allied propaganda have created the idea of alliance and bond between soviet and allied nations. It showed the resovle the soviet had and casualties they took, creating sympathy. Would you think that people would simply accept, well they are the enemy now? It took four years for this sympathy to cool down and for the cold war to become a reality. Ofcourse not all people would be pro-soviet, but many were before the war and they number have grown. France faced massive strikes from the left in 1948 with many being sympathic to the Soviet. Italy had large left movement with many being under arms as they fought the Nazi in Italy from 1943. Greece was in a civil war with pro-soviet forces being on the win in 1945/46. A war was possible but would face an enormous backlash by the public in the west as they would find it as stab in the back or simply wanted one thing peace. They were tired of war. For the soviet things would be easy as the propaganda could a just capitalist doing becoming the bed-fellows with nazi's. Harnassing the rage about the stab in the back but also building on the fears that allies would finish the job what german started, exterminating the slavic people. The use of atomic bombs with thier destructive powers would strengthen that image. But the soviet would face same issue, the people being tired and exhausted from war.
And this the main reason that war would fail or did not happen in the end. After 6 years of war everyone was tired of war and when end finally arrived, the people were hesitant to return to it. We see it in Korea, the west send troops for the UN force but thier numbers were relative small and it was in general unpopulair war and governments on both sides limited thier commanders so that they did not escalate the war.
@@egbertpopken5580 I agree totally with you
USA had the A bomb in 45. USSR didn’t. The Allies win and fast.
Not really, they produced A bombs at a very slow rate, and they dont have missiles, theyd have to use planes that could be shot down and have the bomb possibly captured
@@chadthundercock4806 in 1948 the United States had over 50 Atomic bombs before the Soviets had their first
They would've used it then marched troops through knowing nothing of radiation
@chadthundercock4806 also they could just distract the anti air and intercepting planes by launching bombing raids before sending in the plane with the nuke
The USSR was rippled by famine in the years of 1946-1947 which claimed the lives of over ~900,000-2,000,000 people. What would this famine have looked like if the USSR was now locked in a war with the West, unable to demobilize their soldiers in order to work the farms?
The return of large amounts of demobilised troops actually played a role in causing the famine.
My bet is Stalin would either push through regardless of the human cost as usual, or order a chunk of the army to return home to farm.
don't forget to mention what could of happened without the food from lend lease
I think pretty well, because they would be in a war-economy.
Out of the 34,000,000 soviets that were mobilized in the World War, 20 to 24 million remained alive, add the soviet manpower reserves on top of that, do you genuinely think it was easy to wipe it out?
Also, if unthinkable was to happen, it would happen in 1945, not in 1946 or 47, this would mean the USSR would prioritize and increase food rations to feed its people.
Also, the global food shortage in 1946-47 was the worst in history, famine threatened asia, Indo-China, Central and Eastern Europe, bread rationing was introduced in the UK for the first time EVER, and even the US and UK requested food aid from stalin to ease the worldwide shortage.
@@Yo-ps2pf
Wasn't it the other way around? The US Lend lease program sent From factory equipment to Planes to food, in fact If I remember correctly the US industrial capacity was so great that it already had 14% war production capability...in 1937, I also doubt the if war were to still continue with unthinkable going into action these US leases would be a bit of headache. not to mention allied airpower was better both in Technology and Training (don't get me wrong the soviets also had good planes and Pilots) not to mention US bomber and CAS capability especially the B-29 and P-47's. British MI6 would also help in the bombing of Soviet factories
Edit: I was correct the United States sent 3.2 billion tonnes of food to the USSR
@@NokotanFanCentral No,
because many people will be fast enough to mention the supposed the Lend Lease, lets compare the already existing production of the USSR with the supply that it received from the US Lend Lease:
Lend Lease / Russian product (1941-1945)
aircrafts: 14,795/134,100
tanks: 7,056/109,000
artillery cannons: 8,218/825,200
oil: 2,670,000/110,600,000 (tons)
steel: 1,500,000/39,680,000 (tons)
(Somehow American Steel won the war!)
food: 733,000/64,121,000 (tons)
The truth is that All of western allied battle fronts opened after the USSR started winning the war single-handed. And Operation Overlord was carried out in June 6th, 1944. Before this, USSR has already won the battle of Moscow in 1941, battle of Stalingrad in 1942, battle of Kursk in 1943. By the time 1944, April, the Soviets has already pushed the Germans out of Ukraine and entered Romania. They were already winning. During this time, the allies never provided any very useful intelligence and information to USSR.
Also, where did you get the 3 billion figure from?
the US supplied the USSR with lend-lease. This is usually supported by two statements. Firstly, people are told some out of context numbers, let’s say the most popular is tanks, trains and trucks. Secondly, people might get some dubious statement about how important it was from a historian who have no idea how economy works, or a Soviet historical person who had no idea how the Soviet economy worked.
When someone challenges the belief, the usual procedure is to google lend-lease, which will allow you to find a lot more out of context and usually completely wrong statistics. My favorites are the US embassy in Russia, Radio Free Europe, Russia insider, or unsourced free PDF papers top google search results. This usually results in people including new categories, like aluminium, aviation fuel, gunpowder and food. But they still absolutely fail to compare them to Soviet statistics. New quotes can also be introduced as well, the favorites are Stalin, Zhukov and Khrushchev, none of which of course were involved in the planning of Soviet economy in WW2.
There are so many problems with this approach to lend-lease, but I will highlight some of the problems briefly.
People do not compare lend-lease statistics to Soviet production. How can someone say that an item is important, without knowing how much it is compared to Soviet production?
People do not account for stockpiles, for example, when it comes to trucks, a lot of people simply show Soviet produced trucks vs delivered trucks. They completely ignore that the USSR had about 1 million trucks already produced before WW2, which was used. They also ignore that Soviet factories produced American trucks, which were often delivered in parts.
People do not account for timeliness. For example, many statistics, include items delivered after WW2 was ended, to suggest this was important for the USSR in WW2, which obviously is highly misleading. People also tend to ignore that most lend-lease was delivered after the USSR had already won Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk. At which point most historians agree Germany had already lost the war.
People do not do something as basic as converting units, when reading historical documents, people completely disregard some are in Imperial ton, some are in US ton, some are in metric ton. Even some historians as late as 2017, do not grasp this.
In a more general sense, people do not grasp the scale of national economy, particularly of a country the size of the USSR. For example people constantly bring up food to me, no one understands this seemingly. The USSR consumed at least 600 million metric tons of food in WW2. They received approximately 3.9 million metric tons of food in lend-lease. This is 0.65%, some people refuse to understand that 3.9 million metric tons of food is actually nothing over a 4 year period for a population of over 100 million people.
I think the Sovet's being constantly worried about nuclear attacks would be very demoralising
Check out the Strategy Stuff channel, my take is that Soviets would follow the Eurasian/Heartland strategy while the US would favor Sir Julian Corbett, Limited War strategy for maritime powers, which is basically what George Orwell depicted
I think seeing every major city in the Soviet Union vaporized the bombers could reach would be more demoralizing
@@mattmopar440 I doubt the allies would have done that but given the fact that American and Britain considered using nuclear weapons against military targets soon after WW2 (a bit later for the UK) i feel like that's be a likely outcome. Whole bases just vapourised in an instant with survivors telling other soldiers of the horror of it
@@mrcaboosevg6089 I think with Roosevelt dead a Truman Churchill combo would have been devastating Churchill would of been Ok with leveling everything in Soviet union and Truman wouldnt stand up
@@mattmopar440 all that would do is make sure the Soviet people support the war 100% to the last man. And make the Americans look no better than. The Nazis, since they start this war and kill civilians en mass.
Guess the name "unthinkable" was for a reason.
in 1989 the wall came down. I was a cadet at West Point at the time and the Soviets brought over their Frunze Academy cadets. A general equivalent to a three-star gave a speech to the Corps of Cadets, after which he took questions. During his speech he stated that in a WWIII situation he thought they had one month to get us off the European continent before we rolled them back into their country and faced a nuclear solution. He stated he did not believe Soviet conventional forces were any match for ours due to the massive technological advantage (remember, 1989). In 1990 we all got a demonstration of what he was talking about in the deserts of Iraq. After his presentation he was asked if they ever planned to invade the US and after a VERY healthy fit of laughter, he said no, they hadn't since the US is the most heavily armed country on the planet and they would have to deal with a gun behind every blade of grass. He went further and said the movie Red Dawn was an incredible comedy to them and indicative of irrational American Hollywood paranoia, which is the comedic element of it. In a private conversation with some senior officers (of which I obviously was not privy to) he was asked about his comment regarding the guns behind every blade of grass and he said that fact, and that we have oceans on either side of us, are two of the biggest deterrents to conflict with the US. He went further and said WE BETTER NOT GET RID OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT and confiscate weapons like other societies have done, including theirs. If you think things are so much better now, you haven't been paying attention for the last four years.
Great anecdote. The 1945 decision to wage a contest between ideologies, economies, and intelligence was vindicated.
Twaddle.
@@seanlander9321 Mo ron
Even without the nuclear bombs, I would still give the edge to the Western allies due to superior air power.
@@IanHimself28 umm nukes every week are you crazy? it took MONTHS for the USA to build one singular nuke and there were thousands of workers who support the USSR who would most likely go in a workers strike
@@IanHimself28 300 nukes from 1945 to 1950 what? the US produced 4 nukes in total during ww2 1st being the trinity test then Hiroshima and nagasaki with the 4th supposedly used to nuke a japanese city but was scrapped due to japan surrendering and was then used as a testing nuke bomb besides even if the US produced 300 nukes now europe will most likely be in soviet hands
@@IanHimself28 yes it would go on for years but realistically the soviet union should have nukes due to many soviet spies in the manhattan project
@@IanHimself28 besides it would take months for another nuke to be produced and if so soviet planes will most likely try to destroy any plane capable of releasing a nuke
@@IanHimself28 theres also the problem of shipping the nukes from america to europe it could take weeks or even months and the soviet union knows this so they would probably use the time to ship a nuke from america to europe and try to break through the lines and also the nukes need to be dropped onto their target. ICBMs,SRBMs and MRBMs do not exist yet
Over the long term Allies win. Allies provided 10% of Soviet food, fighter aircraft, trucks, railroad engines, 50 % of rolled steel and explosives and 100% of rubber (tires). Plus 10 -20% of German Army could have been reconstituted relatively quickly. Plus Allies had ability to attack in far east with 10 to 20 divisions and the sea lift to move them. Allies would have air superiority, total control of the sea. Atomic bombs plus poison gas already in Europe. So it would have been the Soviets against the whole world.
Agree
Plus how long till German rocket tech got incorporated into the US arsenal and nuclear missiles hit Moscow with impunity?
Well the thing is the Soviets only had to rely on US supplies because the Soviets destroyed most of their own infrastructure and industrial capabilities so they could deny it to the Germans as they advanced. All of their industrial capabilities were initially on their western borders with Germany which they later relocated to the east. They would’ve been pretty self-sufficient going forward, and they were in fact able to build a pretty huge army on their own in the post war years.
@Stratos I 1921 vs Poland and 1917 vs the Central Powers.
Who's ass did you pull those numbers from? Lend lease was never more than 15% of domestic production. 100% of rubber? Seriously? Even ignoring synthetic rubber, they had a transplanted colony of rubber trees around the Caspian
Hypothetically, moscow would have reached 10,000 degrees Celsius along with stalingrad and leningrad. End of story.
Us didn’t have air superiority lil bro
@@th3ninjabut they had nukes and since they stole the ICBM from the Germans it would only be a few years before they didn’t need aerial superiority. Even if they didn’t have it they could still probably land a bomb
Soviet enjoyers - "We would've won"
Western enjoyers - "No, we would've won"
Lol, It's all about air superiority. The allies would have it in a matter of weeks, the Russians couldn't have moved in the day. The Russians were at the end of their supply chain. The Poles would have risen up, the Ukraines, all the baltic states, romania, yugoslavia. Oh, and the allies were already moving to jet aircraft. The Russians still relied on food and supplies from the west. And if things go bad, you have the bomb
You are biased lmao, the usa would not have won
Baby Yeed lol? Did you read anything he said? What about that seems unrealistic? 😂 and again, if all else fails the US now had the option to drop an atom bomb
And the only reason the Soviets eventually got info on how to make the bomb(which they wouldn’t get perfected for a few years after this) is because of the Communist traitor Rosenbergs. We had air superiority, Russia had no blue water Navy at all. We would’ve blockaded their ports...which we knew all about, since we kind of gave them tons of supplies with the Lend Lease. We could out-industry Russia. Crazy to think that Pittsburgh alone turnt out over 60% of the steel supply for WW2! This is all without having Britain, who would most definitely put us way over the top of them. The Soviets were great, but let’s not kid ourselves, here. They’d be screwed without the Lend Lease. Zhukov and Stalin even said they couldn’t build up reserves without it! Essentially aiding all of the countries and our own at the same time shows how fast our industry was. Yes, their T34s were the best, but we had tank busters for that, and their Katyushas were lethal, but we weren’t dumb enough to be out in the open like Germany was to get annihilated...we would have taken them out with aircraft before they became a problem. Did I mention Russia had no blue water navy and we could make atomic bombs? St. Petersburg was the most likely target, and easiest to access if it ever came to that.
The West .Not even close. We had atomic bombs
Soviet would starve or run out of money before the allies, especially when the populations of newly acquired Soviet territories turned on the USSR.
They would just run out of men. By the end of the war the Soviets were using men that were not supposed to be fighting on the frontlines anyway (older or younger men). They simply could not take a few million more casualties. The USSR would collapse simply because they would have no more people to throw against the numerically superior and better equipped Allied forces
The soviet would be able to draft from their conquered lands
@@alexandrejosedacostaneto381 What was actually the allied forces after the second world war?
Please illumimate
@@dabeez4454 They could try, but I don't think they would succeeded. Majority of countries conquered by soviets were on a bad term with communism and Union itself. Probably they would resist conscription and if taken anyway, they would turn sides on the first occasion. In some D-Day movie there was a scene in which two Czechs were conscripted and sent to Normandy. They didn't even shoot at Americans just tried to surrender as soon as possible.
@@dabeez4454 they had damn near constant armed rebellions with near complete popular support for them in most everywhere for the next 3 to 5 years after the war. That would be turned up to 11 if they were fighting the western allies and their government in exiles and if the Americans and Brits were trying to liberate them.
The Allies would have beaten the Soviets. It would have been slow going at first, but once the steamroller got going, it wouldn't have been a contest.
The role of Lend-Lease is underestimated. Yes, the fact that the material was delivered by the end of the war is a shot in the foot to the Allies, but in an ongoing conflict attrition will systematically burn through it. Within a matter of months the Soviets would find that the lack of incoming material seriously hampers their ability to wage war. The Allies could even employ that unused naval capability and the stream of material to Murmansk to land troops there, opening up a northern front. For another front, wait until 1946, when the Russians had moved their forces back to Europe, and then make a move on Vladivostok. We also invaded Iran to get material to them. Man that material ourselves, and slice through the Soviets soft underbelly.
And then there is the problem of Mao...
Kevin Bryer lend lease is 7% of the Soviet effort, and is always OVERSTIMATED
2 mains factors I see:
1) USSR had already been bleed dry in their struggle against Germany... they couldn't keep "zerging" much linger
2) USSR oil supply was very near ally controlled land (Iran) and it would have been "easy" to stop this supply (incendiary bomb on the oil field and voila, because the means to controls burning oil field wasn't really developped at the time)
on the USSR favor, the supply line of the allies could have been impaired by pro communist partizans in western Europe (like, many of the French partizan were communist supporters and in many ways, could sabotage the roads, bridges and railways like they did the night before D-Day against the German)
off topic: ah, nice starcraft reference there :)
I say the Soviets would conquer continental Europe, while UK merges with a new superstate Oceania and changing name to airstrip one.
BIG BROTHER?
People’s republic of China seizes India, Japan, Mongolia, and Persia, along with defeating Siam and taking south East Asia. This results in Great War against Neo Bolshevik Eurasia resulting in seizure of the Central Asian area and the Far East from exhausted Eurasia. But everyone has nukes now so they decide to peace. Oceania Tis for Thee.
We sent 3 billion tons of food to Soviets during WW2. Russian sources report 2.5 to 3.2 million Soviet civilians, died due to famine and disease in non-occupied territory of the USSR. Without lend-lease the Soviet Union would have quickly became a different nation at war with the west. Certainly different than one the German's faced which became stronger with time and our supplies.
I love it when people go "we send X"
1) YOU didnt send jack shit, you werent even born
2) It makes it hard to talk about the issue because it clearly makes your personal bias and lack of objectivity obvious
3) It makes it unclear about what exactly you are talking. Who exactly is "we"? The allies, only the USA, only the UK and colonies?
Also, if only "you" would have been so nice and send Iran food as well after invading them in 1941 and causing a massive famine killing millions (and the forcing Iran into colonial treaties regarding their Oil ressources that would directly result in the Iranian Revolution later on...). But "you" invading neutral countries and starving them to death in the millions isnt bad, its jsut bad when the germans or japanease do it, am I right?
@@noobster4779bro how is this even relevant to the topic? Go cry somewhere else
@@noobster4779XDDdd you are like 12 what are you crying about ussr was sh1t and we did send them food.
Also the British, Russians, and to a much lesser extent the Americans were running low on trained men, the British frontline divisions were at this point exhausted and shrinking due to lack of manpower being drafted. On the other hand the French were only beginning to rearm, and had a large pool of man power and colonial empire to draw upon.
We also should consider that this videos doesn’t take consideration about partisan operation or allies not joining like Italy which had a too big communist population to enter this war without going in a civil war on day one
@@bo1bo1bo1unlosode the Brits dealt with a communist revolution in Greece with ease with a tiny force. They wouldn't have trouble dealing with them in their home countries with a supportive population willing to inform on them.
Well the Americans still haven't maxed out their population for the war. They now have a ton of manpower sitting around building useless stuff for this war such as liberty ships. Furthermore the US and Brittain has built a massive navy or destroyer escorts, submarine hunters, escort carriers, and merchant marines, as well as the port facilities to handle that. It has tons of prewar treaty ships that can be decommsioned because of the new stuff comming on line that requires much smaller crews. Decommision most of that. Cool theres .5 to 2 million more men for the armies.
The Russian on the other hand stripped many industries of manpower, among them food, transport, and petroleum because the us was supplying it. Now they have to go back or the army has to go without.
The Russian have a way more dire manpower issues then the Allies ever did.
@@imjashingyou3461 the CIA and the Brits dealt "easily" with the Greek civil war in the span of 3 years and with Stalin not supporting the Greeks. All this would have been extremely different during Operation Unthinkable with Stalin supporting the French resistance, the Italian Garibaldis, Tito's partisans and the Greeks in sabotaging the hell out of the American, British and Polish forces and their Nazi friends.
@@lape2002 how would Stalin get materials to them much less even communicate with them. The allies control the airwaves and its very hard to communicate that war. There isn't free trade. And Stalin doesn't have the navy or the air force to deliver anything. Prayers dont get you much especially since the primary force for supplying these partisans was the allies who obviously are not doing it now.
The history proves they were not very strong to begin with. They are hardly mentioned in post war accounts of these countries. They had little to no political effect till the 50s and 60s over a decade later.
Barely anyone knows about the Greek Civil War, including people i have met in the British Army. Thats how minor it was. The british got the majority of the country under control right away. They were brutally effective in Indochina until the French took over right before Mihn was all but destroyed and rooted out.
I disagree somewhat. First, Russia was scraping the bottom of the manpower barrel in early 1945, second, their entire army was moving on American trucks which they could not supply parts for, third, massive U.S. Industrial production combined with German remobilization would crush Russia which would not have air superiority anywhere. Lastly, Poland and the eastern countries would wreck havoc with Russian logistics. It would be over in a year. LTC US Army(Ret.)
Shut up baby killer
@@rohitroll2119 Moron.
You are delusional if you think a Western force allied with former Nazis attacking a former ally in July 1945 would have been welcomed by any other than crazy nationalists in Poland and the Ukraine. Mostly communist French resistance would have made life miserable any form of US/British logistic efforts passing French territory as they would have viewed it as the new 'fascist army" and their capitalist supporters.
Same goes for Italy where the Garibaldi communist brigades pretty much controlled large chunks of Italy or in Greece where the communist DSE army reigned supreme. A VERY LIKELY scenario is France under recently elected communist leader Maurice Thorez as Prime Minister and Charles DeGaulle declaring France's neutrality and opposing the use of their ports for Western Allies disembarkment of troops. A similar scenario might have happened in Italy as recently elected Constitutional Assembly composed of two-thirds Socialists and Communists would certainly NOT have viewed the presence of Allies and former Nazis in their recently liberated territory.
Therefore the only reliable place where the Western forces could deploy their so-called numerical manpower and material advantage would be the port of Antwerp, extremely close to the Red Army's range.
@Libs Hate Montesquieu Yes, that's right. My Father was head of "G" group, at the National Security Agency which oversaw Group of Soviet Forces Europe. He discovered the plans for the Bolsheviks to invade Afghanistan way before the invasion. Many other things. Dad had same opinion as you and your Dad.
The allies didn't just have an edge in aviation, they had dominance. Far more numerical and better quality aircraft. Total naval supremacy, with the US Pacific fleet in a good position to launch a major offensive into the Soviet Union from the far east. Not to mention nuclear weapons. The Soviets were devastated, and had no chance. They would slowly but surely be pushed back, loosing one city at a time, slowly but surely loosing ground.
The Soviet's are all gangsta until their lend lease supplies are depleted.
Jim Mac shut up man
Political will in the Allies would have ended it. American soldiers in Germany after VE Day actually had demonstrations wanting to go home. Soldiers with enough "points" were sent home. Others had to wait. My father witnessed it after WWII ended in Frankfurt.
True but if the allies were going to attack the Soviets they would have had to have had the mindset of Patton to even start that war. So even though your point is well taken and true, it wouldn't have been applicable in this scenario.
@ the leaders being madmen like Patton wouldn't change the fact that the soldiers don't want to fight a suicidal war of aggression where they would be the bad guys for attacking first.
@@SelfProclaimedEmperor They would have been the good guys for destroying communism. I'll bet if they could see the world today and what communism and what the dogma of Marxism has wrought, they would want to go back to destroy every last one of them.
@@vaughnblaylock6069 Modern SJWs have nothing to do with Marxism, they are a new and more vile plague. Even the Marxists were usually culturally conservative. Supporting man/woman marriages and stopping race based riots.
@@SelfProclaimedEmperor But the doctrine of Marxism has led to this point. Even the leadership f BLM admits that they are "trained Marxists". Trotsky spoke of the benefits of constant upheaval and revolution, and that's pretty much what we're getting now.
I am certain that in 1946, Finland would have been happy to allow the Allied powers to use their territory as a launching pad into the USSR.
Also, there is nothing preventing U.S. from increasing the number of combat forces unlike the USSR, which had reached the end of its reserves. Over 40 million Americans registered for the draft from 1942 to 1947 and yet less than 12 million served. America could have easily uncoiled another 10 million combat troops if it wanted to.
You mention the Pacific front in such a war, but wouldn’t China (Nationalist forces) have been more than happy to have Americans fighting along side their forces to fight the USSR and Chinese Communists? And if former German forces might be used, why not Japanese forces too?
Finally, what’s preventing US, UK, and Indian forces from launching a new front through Iran into Central Asia? It would put all the entire USSR East of the Urals industry in danger not to mention if it is joined by a USA push into Mongolia and through Chinese Turkmenistan into Central Asia.
Although such war would cost several million lives,I think it would be for the best.Just think in what kind of the world we would be living right now...
Exactly, or just bombed Baku, Maikop(sp?), and Grozny. That was 80% of soviet oil production.
On the subject of Soviets manpower and production lend lease supplied something like 3/4 of all artillery shells 57% of aviation fuel, and nearly all the radios in tanks. The soviets were out of men, they would have had to demobilize men just to start making supplies.
You had 11,000 tanks supplied, the elite guard armies were almost exclusively equipped with US tanks again without US parts and technical know-how where they going to get replacement parts? There is no one left to produce anything.
Soviet forces would have collapsed had lend lease suddenly been pulled and those supplies used against them.
yeah. The polish resistance movement was very much still potent at this point in time, and would pose a serious threat to the soviets. You could probably also get dudes like Von Manstein to head up huge numbers of German ex nazis and POWs in fight against the soviets. Finland could probably also be convinced to restart the winter war, and the British Raj could maybe even mount some sort of invasion into south-central Russia. The Chinese civil war would probably merge with this 3th world war, and this would not benefit the soviets.
THESE ARE COOL ASSUMPTIONS WITH NO GROUND ON REALITY. FINLAND WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN "HAPPY" TO PROVIDE THEIR TERRITORY AGAINST THE USSR, YOU SEEM TO FORGET THE PEACE TREATY OF 1944 WHICH EFFECTIVELY PLACED FINLAND INTO NEUTRALITY TO THIS DAY (FURTHER RATIFIED IN 1947). NO MENTION ON HOW THE WESTERN ALLIES WOULD HAVE MANAGED TO BRING UP THE SUFFICIENT FORCES INTO THAT DE FACTO NEUTRAL COUNTRY WITHOUT BEING DETECTED BY SOVIET COMMAND.
USING FORMER NAZI OR JAPANESE FORCES IS THE OTHER INCREDIBLY CRAZY IDEA THAT PASSES TODAY AS REASONABLE. WOULD ANY OF THE SO CALLED "EASILY DRAFTED" MANPOWER BE COMPELLED INTO FIGHTING AS WAR OF AGGRESSION AGAINST FORMER ALLIES SIDE AND SIDE HAND IN HAND WITH NAZIS AND JAPANESE FASCISTS?? SERIOUSLY??
FACT IS, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A BLUNDER OF MASSIVE PROPORTIONS THAT WOULD HAVE TAKEN OUT THE INSTIGATORS (CHURCHILL, PATTON, MACARTHUR AND MONTGOMERY) VERY EARLY IN THE CONFLICT.
lape2002 you forget the German army was co-opted to defend the frontier in Germany against the soviets, so no I don’t think it is a cool assumption with no basis in reality no matter how much you enjoy your caps lock key.
As for Finland I agree, but nuking Moscow was also not hugely important again bombing Baku and the other caucuses oil centers and ending lend lease would have effectively crippled the now fully mechanized red army anyway.
All the while listening in on the troops talking on their US made radios that the soviets would have had no way to do the same to the allied forces.
Strangely I miss one element in this equation: in 1945 the US dropped two atomic bombs on Japan. The Soviet Union had it's first atomic bomb tests in 1949. This means that the western allies had 4 years to threaten the USSR with their nuclear power. How resistant would that USSR have been, I ask you?
Don't forget the allied troops in the Pacific. The Soviet Union would have to fight a two-front war.
What about Communists in China
@Carl Gaming It didn't stop the Mongols.
Nothing stops the Mongols.
@Carl Gaming
More recently in 1918. The Allies did a similar job to re-establish the Eastern front of World War I and rescue the Czech Legion.
It’s simple: the allies had the B-29 superfortress, and Russia did not
Don't forget the nukes.
@@Sloppy._ You think the B29 has enough chance to get 1000 km into enemy territory. and the Soviet city was much smaller than any other country; moscow only had a population of 3 million people
@@carkawalakhatulistiwa the US had better a better Air Force, also the nukes would probably be used on military targets not cities…. also it was a joke in the end
The TU-4:
@@carkawalakhatulistiwab36 convair
"Soviet Union: 8 battleships"
Huh, i can only think of the 3 near obsolete gangut-class battleships, what others did they have?
I don't claim to be an expert on navies, but I think I read about a few hulls of Sovyetsky Soyuz battleships being completed? They were never armed or actually used, but he might have included them
@@lukedufaur5368 they were never close to being completed. The soviets had no capacity to even manufacture the armor plate they wanted. The Russians were lent a British Battleship at one point. It was so poorly maintained that the turret rusted in place when they got it back.
I think they had one or two P. Velikiy class battleships, but they were inherently outdated, since they were built by the empire.
Sum: 1 Gangut, 1 Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya, 1 Ismail, 1 Maurat, 1 P. Velikiy (all outdated, most recent is Ismail built in 1920 if I'm correct)
No mention of the huge heavy bomber fleet US & UK had, which neither Germany or Russia had. So Russia didn't have the high quality air defence that Germany had.
Similarly the B29 Superfortress could do a lot of damage to Vladivostoc
Yes im sure the soviets had no planes, definitely didn't produce 150,000 of 'em that destroyed the Germans and Berlin.
This video in a nutshell:
Allies: *i’ve won, but at what cost?*
Everything!
Probably a dozen A bombs a few hundred thousand more casualties and a huge area of Russian that's no longer habitable ?
Patton wanted to attack Russia knowing that they were just as much a threat as the Nazis were. He wanted to enlist the defeated German Army to help. He was quite vocal about which is why they murdered him.
studa yes that is why they killed him ////////////
Who did? His jeep?
..
If he was actually investing in that idea then he clearly had lost his mind. Does he understand that the Nazi were ideological enemies and by allying with them he would lose the trust of the British and even worse, drive the French to join the Soviet? Joining the Axis also means that the whole of East Asia will se the USA as untrustworthy because they just joined an enemy that had subjected them to acts beyond babarism. The whole ww2 thing was for America to takeover Asia for resources and markets. And doing that will defeat the whole purpose of America's interventionism. Let hope the alliance with fascist Franco worth it because he didn't do shit for the whole war.
@White Ness right after 1945? That wouldn't change anything. It's one thing to employ former Nazi high ranking officers few years after putting them to trial or moving their scientists to the space programs. It's another thing to put weapons right into every Nazi soldiers and officers and told them fight on the eastern front with the French on their side. Can't see how that wouldn't back fire right at them. Besides letting the cold war happened as it was allow the Tito-Stalin split to happen without it, the Allied will never push past Yugoslavia seeing how effective yugoslav partisan were and they caused that much damage without Soviet supply of weapons. Many eastern European hate the Soviet union but they would not join any side that have the Nazi on because by now everyone know that the Soviet will occupy their lands but the Nazi was and will forever be hell bend on eradicating them out of the surface of the Earth
For years throughout the war, the USA supplied Soviet Russia with food, shoes, trucks, etc. Add nukes to the USA's huge naval power and huge air power in 1945 -- Soviet Russia would have been a goner.
SilvanaDil the US did not have any nukes at that time. We used both atomic bombs on Japan
@@silentsurvivor2197 exactly and the USSR and US Captured German scientists
@@liampetersen7548 the USSR was 4 years away from their first atomic bomb. USA was one month away from their third.
Silent Survivor Did you watch the video? Up to 12 nuclear bombs would’ve been produced by 1946 had there been a World War 3.
@@raam1666 Just three atomic bombs and Japan still not finished. Therefore you let the ludicrous idea of atom bombing the Soviets go through before ending the Pacific war?? Is that serious logic?? Plan was for attacking the Soviets on July, just as the first A-bomb was getting ready with all chances of spending it deliberately to avoid Dunkirk part two with the US/UK replaying their role in 1940.
The US had x4 additional nukes in its arsenal before the end of Summer 1945, and had manufacturing lined up to produce TWENTY more nukes by the end of 1945. Nuclear-armed B-29 bombers with a 5,000km combat range can fly from Iceland to Moscow, and even as far east as Yekaterinaberg on the other side of the Ural Mountains to deliver atomic payloads from altitudes above most Soviet fighter planes and AAA guns. If the US used the B-29 variant known as the B-50, the B-50s flew above *all* Soviet aircraft and AAA. US nuclear-armed Bombers could also fly from Western Europe, Egypt, Japan or India, safe from any Soviet retaliation to range across the entirety of the Soviet Union. BOOM! Are we done yet? No? BOOM? How about now - not yet? BOOM! OK, we can keep doing this until you don't have any cities left, are we done yet???
On god. The fact that it's even a debate is comical. The Russians would have had no ability to retaliate they'd been steamrolled
You dummy, they could have just pushed to west Europe and held Western European citizens hostage after wiping out their tiny exhausted militaries, and lived within their cities amongst the people. u gonna nuke the Europeans too? Also 20 bombs of that size that dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki aren't gonna do jack in the vast territory of the USSR, (you could check their blast radius online, they looked like super tiny dots lol just like ants.)
-soviets would also have sleepers agents all over USA ravaging it in the worse ways possible after all they managed to steal your nuclear program in the 40s by using secret agents too. not even your presidents were safe, after all jfk got sniped hard and that was the 60s, So imagine what hundreds of determined sleeper agents could have done to your cowardly American nation in the 40s.
-Your nuke trump card isn't much of a trump card after all, it would have been your own suicide pill.
And soviet fighters in 1945 could easily compete with America's best at the time, aka p51h or f8fb/f7f and they out numbered you to the high heavens even at 5km altitude.(Unbelievable that the rusty russos out produced you in both tanks and planes even while their land was literally under invasion and USA was safe and cosy lol. Definition of fat lazy incompetent americans.)
Check the specs of soviet figters from 1945 dumbo and also there's something called under ground factories/facilities, USA had no satellites in the 40s obviously, so good luck scouting the biggest land mass on earth knowing where the might be creating their own nukes.
These nuclear warheads were very weak and slow to produce. In addition, not all American planes would have reached their target - they would have been shot down by Soviet air defenses. And within a few years the USSR created its own nuclear bomb and nuclear parity arrived
@@Anonymous-qj3sf
It's not like the war will go on until 1949 though.
Soviets will ask for a ceasefire in 1 year at the most.
The West would win this battle hands down because of the insane air superiority, the atom bomb, b-29s, many more allies, and the soviets were generally disliked by the world. Another major issue is that the soviets had lost a ton of people in the previous war and the amount conscripted was starting to destroy their economy. They were having manpower shortages in 1944 so while they have a ton of people in their army, the losses couldnt be replaced like the west could without destroying their war economy.
Wow its not like USSR doesnt have TU-4 which is better than B-29 and also has nuclear bombs and not to mention tsar bomb on TU-142
@@stilpa1 West vs East 1945
TU-4 was produced 1949
Tsar Bomba in 1961
TU-142 in 1968
The Soviets had none of these things at the time the video takes place.
@@charliebasar9068then PE-8, IL-2, TB-3, more IL-2, PE-2, TU-2, BE-6, YER-2, IL-10, SU-6, and then a lot of versions of them
@@stilpa1 The TU-2 was retired in 1939 officially, and the BE-6 was made in 1949. The rest were ground attack aircraft or medium bombers, with the exception of the 93 PE-8s, which does not compare to the 3,970 B-29s. And with the exclusion of the PE-8 I don't think any could carry the first Soviet nuke, in August 1949.
@@charliebasar9068 how was TU-2 retired in 1939? It was in world war 2... And then you have AAs which there is more than all the world combined... And then tanks, they had IS-3 which was the best from 45 to 50