U.S. versus Soviet Union- end of WW2

No, Patton didn't get it right. Truman and Marshall got it right.

We didn't fight them then, we didn't lose a million troops, and the Soviet Union no longer exists. Even if you can stretch the Soviets influence to include Vietnam- and that is a big stretch, we stil came out ahead. It was hell on the people of the Iron Curtain countries- but more of them survived that, then if they had had another war marching through their territories.

And the U.S. government would likely have collapsed if Patton had attacked the Soveit Union on his own in 1944 or 1945. The American people did not yet comprehend how bad the Soviet Union was- and still thought of them as allies. Many Americans were patriotic American communists who idealistically thought the Soviet Union was a 'workers paradise'.

Politically it would have been a disaster in the U.S.

Militarily, I would give the edge to the U.S. because of air power and the atomic bomb...but it would not be pretty at all.

 

Surrendering German troops said to the Americans...the real enemy are the communists...

1 in 10 German women were raped by Soviet soldiers...

Germany had jet aircraft technology, and rocketry nowhere near the Soviets capabilities...

You can add Germany to the list of allies against the Soviets...
Germans with experience in fighting the Russians...imagine Germany as an ally.

Folks keep saying "invasion of Russia" and that was never the goal...kicking them out of Europe was the goal and they would've accomplished this. No question.
Patton's goal was to push the Soviets back to Russian borders and keep Europe communist free...

With the end of the war in the Pacific, it frees up divisions of Marines and soldiers and America had the maritime logistics to move them to the European theater fairly quickly.

Britain, America and Germany united against the Soviets to purge the communists from Europe and said them back to the "Motherland"....

Very feasible.

I have no idea why the folks, in here think the Soviets were invincible...as it was...they suffered 70% of the casualties in the entirety of the war...with attrition like that...they were not invincible with an endless supply of fresh troops and supplies to war.

 

Maybe you are forgetting that German industry was devastated and Germany was occupied by the Russians in the east and it would have not taken them long to take the whole place if they had to. They had just defeated probably the best army the world had seen. All that tech would have been in Soviet hands. So I think you can discount the Germans helping you fight the Soviets.

 

And so what?

Didn't I say that the American public- and much of the American political leadership still thought of Soviet Union as our ally. Only later did the truth start coming out.

Germany did indeed have that technology- and the Soviets captured much of the technology, and those scientists and engineers also.

Think this through. While Germans would have been thrilled at this point to go from despised enemy to trusted ally of the U.S./Britain- Americans and Brits would have been far less thrilled.

Remember at this point in the war, Britain was promoting the bombing of German cities just to kill German citizens. America had spent the previous third years villifying the Germans- and pushing the Soviets as allies. American troops had spent years fighting the Germans, and thousands had been in German concentration camps. America was just finding out about German concentration camps and the genocide of the Jews of Europe.

I think it is very questionable that America would accept Germans as allies unless they percieved the Soviets as a threat- and they didn't- not to America.

Frankly- Patton was never one for the concept of 'limited' war- and merely pushing the Soviets back to their pre-war borders I think would have been just starting a war, and not finishing it.

And it would free up the Soviet troops that invaded Manchuria....which would be able to move by rail to the Western front even faster.

More to the point- Americans were transferring Americans from the European front to the Japanese front for the invasion. If the Soviets didn't invade Manchuria, we do not know for certain that Japan would have surrendered when it did.

I have never said they were invincible- but they were anything but a paper tiger.

I think our economic superiority would have eventually defeated them, just as we did in the Cold War- but we would have suffered perhaps a million casualties that it turned out we never needed to lose.

 

The allies would have crushed the Russian, we had better aircraft, better tanks and better navies, the USSR would have been crushed. But it was a good idea not to do that, saving millions of lives.

 

Dude,you could not crush even Vietnam.Whom did you ever defeat except Haiti, Grenada, Iraq and similar dystrophics?The crappiest soldiers in history...

 

We had better aircraft, and our much superior navy would have been largely useless against the Soviet Union.

Our tanks were markedly inferior to the Soviet tanks- I already commented on that. The U.S. was using almost exclusively the Sherman M4 with the 75 mm gun that would have been effectively useless against even the T34/85, let alone the IS2's or KV-85's or Soviet Assault guns.

Our tank destroyers had decent enough guns but were almost completely unarmored- compare the M10 with its 76 mm gun to say the IS-122- a massively armored anti-tank machine with a 122 mm gun.

We had better self propelled artillery but the Soviets had tons more towed artillery that was extremely good.

I don't agree with those that say the Soviet Union won WW2 on their own- but by the end of the war, they had an extremely effective, and experienced military, that I think people are underrating.

Our victory would have depended on decent weather for tactical air missions. Without tactical air support, our troops would have been in trouble- not for lack of courage, but for lack of armor able to take on the Soviets.

 

We had the brand new Centurion tank, a note that is forever forgotten. So our tanks were much better. And a navy it very important in a war of this scale, fought not just in Europe but also Asia.

Will that's because the USSR didn't win the war. The allies did.

 

The UK wasn't in Viet Nam. And Iraq has a large army with some good units.

 

The problem there is that Germany tried that for years, with very little effect.

After the start of the war, the Soviets did a very smart move. They spread their war production all over the place, mostly in Central Russia, but also all over the rest of the nation. There were no longer single massive factory towns, but smaller towns making various parts for their equipment that was then taken to assembly locations.

There is still no way of knowing how many towns and villiages were involved in this effort. This was after all the "Great Patriotic War", and every citizen thought it was their duty to do such things to help the nation survive.

Plus you must never forget that the Soviets were absolute experts on maskirovka. They would have airfields that were so well hidden that nobody knew they were there in the first place. And they would place troops guarding a town of no military importance at all, so it would get most of the German attention. Meanwhile the really important location (a production facility or massing of troops for an attack) went on totally unnoticed in a small collective farm that looked to be of no importance, or in a well disguised underground complex.

Personally, I agree with what others here have already said. The US was already involved in a war against Japan, and would not have done anything until that war was resolved. Because if the Atomic bombs did not work (either the weapon fail to work or the Japanese not surrender), they were looking at putting millions of troops into Japan. There was no way they were going to do anything without the fall of Japan first.

And taking on the Soviet Union would simply not have happened. Most of the other allies were to badly beat and war weary, they would not have supported attacking a former ally. And you could not have bombed them into submission, with Conventional or Atomic bombs. You might have destroyed the conventional government, but their people would have continued a guerrilla war for generations.

The only way the Soviet Union (like China today) could have truely fallen is from within. That nation is gone because it lost almost all support from it's own people. And after decades of corruption and oppression, they finally had enough.

 

A navy would have done absolutely no good in a war against the Soviets. They are a massive land power, with very few all-weather ports.

You could not starve them out, their food comes from their interior. You could not cut off their supplies, they made most of their own raw materials. You could not even cut off their oil, what they did not produce themselves came over land as well.

In a war against the Soviets, a Navy would have been about as usefull as a whistle to a fish. Good for moving your own troops to the continent to fight and to bring them supplies. But there would have been nobody for the navy itself to attack.

Essentially your navy would have been nothing but a fleet of ocean going tractor-trailers. Of logistical value, but of no real importance militarily.

As far as the Centurion, you need to go find the analysis I made of the newest North and South Korean tanks.

It may have been the finest tank on the planet, but that does not matter a single bit. Between 1945-1947, the UK was only able to build around 800 Centurion tanks. 2 years to make 800 tanks (400 a year, around 33 a month).

By 1945, the Soviets were churning out around 1,300 T-34 tanks a month.

What would happen to the Centurion against the T-34 would have been a repeat of what happened to the Panzer III against the M4 Sherman.

There is no question that the Panzer III was superior to the Sherman. But Germany could only produce around 2,000 a year, with a total production was around 5,700. Their later and better tanks took even longer to make.

Meanwhile, in that same time period the US built almost 30,000 M4 Sherman tanks. With a total wartiem production of over 50,000 Sherman tanks (total US tank production during the war was over 77,000).

Once again, you totally miss the point of what makes a weapon successfull in war. Many people credit the Sherman with a major reason the allies won in Western Europe. It was not a superior tank, it was horribly inferior. But they were simple to maintain and operate, and were turned out in such massive numbers that the Germans had no hope of standing against them.

 

For what purpose?

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The allies were fair amount ahead of the Soviets in terms of aircraft technology in 45/46. They had an operational jet fighter by the end of 1945 that they developed largely on their own. Did the Soviets?

I've often read, and heard first hand, that American/British troops found more in common with the German people they occupied than with the French, Italians and Russians they came across....just in terms of culture. While there was certainly animosity between the two sides, there's a reason hundreds of thousands of German soldiers fought through Soviet lines to get to the Allies.

Soviet commitments weren't anywhere close to what the Allies had in theater. The Kwantung Army they defeated in Manchuria were garrison troops who'd had most of their heavy weapons and veterans shipped to the Pacific theater. Their impact on the end of Japan is suspect at best. That's a completely different topic that we should all avoid.

There were hundreds of heavy long range bombers (something the Soviets lacked) in the Pacific theater as well as dozens of aircraft carriers and more than a million men. The Soviets had gone all out and shattered themselves in their final push on Berlin. The Allies had more men, significantly more industry (4-6 times), and better technology. It would have been a nasty war, but the allies could have expelled the Soviets from Europe.

 

The Sherman wouldn't have been useless against the T-34. They often (with a lot of numbers and some luck) would take out Panthers and Tigers, which were more out of their class than the T-34. Shermans were quickly upgraded with the 76mm gun and newer ammunition which could take out most German vehicles, including the Panther and Tiger, albeit not at range or in the Glacis plate.

Also, remember that tanks don't fight other tanks in isolation. Tanks, infantry, and air all combine to fight each other. Tanks are extremely vulnerable to Infantry. While the T-34 was certainly superior to the Sherman, this didn't mean it would sweep aside U.S. armored units. Definitely not ones with the M26 and proper air support.

 

The Germans never had a heavy bomber, and certainly nothing close to the B-29. The Allies strategic bombers were in a whole different class than the Germans. Your points still stand in regards to the Soviet disguising their industry, but heavy allied bombers could have played havoc on Soviet cities and formatoins.

The OP wants to discuss the conflict, not the feasibility of it. I agree that such a conflict was extremely unlikely....but that's no fun. I think most of us have agreed in such a conflict the Allies could have expelled the Soviets from Europe, but not made a march on Moscow.

 

The Navy could have been of some use in the Baltic Sea, the Pacific, and the Black Sea. Dozens of aircraft carriers and Marines could have opened up another front. Obviously it wouldn't have been game-changing, but the Navy wouldn't have been twiddling their thumbs.

 

But Iraq had corrupt generals who betrayed Saddam.

 

The Mark 1 Centurion entered into service in 1946. Unless you could postpone the war for a year or two, the Centurion would have been irrelevant. And while the Mk1 seems superior to the T34/85, I am not convinced it was superior to the IS2 or IS3- call them operationally equivelents but the difference is that around 3 or 4,000 IS2 and IS3 were produced by the end of 1945.

And I already mentioned that the British Sherman variant- the Firefly was upgunned enough to take on German tanks- it still had less armor and was slower than the T34/85 but it could take them on- but the Brits were never going to produce as much armor at the Soviets.


The navy's would have been largely irrelevant.

 

I disagree with some of your other comments, but I agree with your conclusion.

But as I also have stated- I am glad we didn't. The numbers just dont' add up- the Soviet Union fell without us ever having to directly confront them, and our Cold War casualties are far lower than what we would have lost pushing the Soviets out of non-Soviet territory.

And there was absolutely no will with the U.S. public or most of the political structure for such an action. The U.S. public still perceived the Soviets as allies. Politically it would have been a disaster in the U.S.

 

As long as the Americans had the air support, you are probably correct. But remember it was not just the T-34- it was the IS2 and the SU-122 and SU-152 and etc, etc. The Soviets had troops just as experienced as the Americans and Brits, had more artillery.

The bottom line- without air support- the Americans would have faced an enemy that had not only more armor- but more superior armor. Air support would have made all of the difference- look at the Battle of the Bulge and how much difference having air support or lacking air support meant.

 

Why were we not able to engage that new fangled form of Government, in an industrial automation race instead of a Cold War?

 

My take is that whichever side started the agression would probably lose.

By the time the Germans capitulated, people on both sides were tired of war and fighting. Both the Americans and Russians fought hard and bravely and their peoples were motivated and committed to the war by the unjustified attacks on their respective countries. However, it would have been an entirely different situation where an attack on a former ally were undertaken.

While the US had better bombing capability, industrial might, and nuclear technology (but not the capacity to make many), such an attack on our former ally would have resulted in a huge backswell of protest by both US soldiers and the people at home of making war on our former ally. Whether the US could sustain such an agression against what was a much larger SU army and that large losses that would entail in any reasonable scenario is certainly questionable.

Same with the SU. While they had a significally larger army, the horrendous losses they would take in an agression against the Western allies in what would now be a war of agression and not one against a hated invader would likely be very demoralizing for their own troops. The would be fighting farther from home against an enemy that was pretty good at interdiction and I doubt the SU could have sustained such an effort either.

 

More armor? The U.S. was producing 50,000+ Shermans per year.

 

The US would have b!tch-slapped the Soviets out of Europe. Russia wouldn't stand a chance.

 

That sounds like quite a lot. Are you sure that is not the total production?