If the Soviets and the West went to war in 1945 - who would have won?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 มิ.ย. 2020
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This video analyses the balance of military power in 1945, right after WW2 ended. Had a new world war broken out then, would the Soviets or the Western Allies fare better? Geography, production, population, technology as well as military power taken into account.
Image elements used in the thumbnail:
Winston Churchill by British Government / Public domain
C-47s at Tempelhof Airport Berlin 1948 by U.S. Air Force / Public domain
B-29 Superfortress by U.S. Air Force / Public domain
RA-2783G, Ilyushin Il-2m3 by Anna Zvereva from Tallinn, Estonia / CC BY-SA (creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
Music by Matija Malatestinicwww.malatestinic.com
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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
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)
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
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
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.
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!
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
I think Putin watched this video and thought “What a load of shit. Let’s fucking find out.”
Why they haven’t made a movie about this scenario is beyond me.
@@hankhill5622 Battlefield 6 Baby
Turkish Army vs Greek Army Military Comparision
th-cam.com/video/yUMnF1-kKfE/w-d-xo.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
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...😜
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
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.
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.
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!!!
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.
Oh man, an Operation Unthinkable video. I'm gonna love this!!!
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.
"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
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.
@@user-jp3wl4fg2h 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.
@@user-zj2mg9oo6ino, 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
@@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.
@@mexicobasado8177 @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.
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
@@Soyjakgamingbutawesome 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.
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
@@Celestial1000 People then were NOT soyboys.. ANOTHER TYPE OF MEN THEN
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
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.
I like very much how you end your videos with a message of peace.
1:16 What the hell?
Belgium?
Wins France?
The Belgian Empire?
WTH is that game?!
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
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.
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.
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.
@@CsImre and Poles if they managed to push east
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
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.
I agree with some of your video but i dont agree with your assessment of the pacific theater. By 45 the vast majority of US naval strength was in the pacific. Most of the battleships and air craft carriers were stationed there for the war against Japan. We had massive bomber groups out there as well using the pacific islands to bomb japan every night and day. all we wouldve done is moved our pacific resources to japan and used it as a staging area like Britain. From there we would have taken Vladivostok and most of coastal areas. In addition china was an alley back in 45 so we likely could have used them to push an army up though central Asia and split the soviet union in 2.
On a separate note, if we didnt go down that path we would have most certainly moved multiple carrier fleets into the black sea and invaded Russia through Ukraine. Not to mention we would have seized the Kerch Strait then the city of Rostov, then we would have worked our way up the Don River. Cutting off those vital resources from the Soviet Union.
You focused to much of your thinking on the fighting fields of central Europe. But you have to remember America's fighting force during ww2 was large enough to be virtually everywhere at once.
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?
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.
As a Pole I'm sad it didn't happen. We could've been free and didn't have to suffer 50 years of communism and all of its consequences. But I understand, everyone was tired of war and death, even us. Glory and peace to heroes and all of Europe.
The pain and suffering imposed in continuing WW2 would be worse than the cold war, but that is just my privileged Norwegian opinion.
@@TH-camisgettingworse. for liberated countries it would be, no doubt. That's why I understand it didn't happen. But for those behind the iron curtain it would be salvation.
How the hell did Poland "SUFFER" Under Communism? Was it because poland was not fixed over-night after the Germans had initiated a brutal occupation on the Poles and killed millions of them? or are you one of those edgelord child-poles who would say "The Germans treated us better than the Soviets!"
@@Yo-ps2pf They were both terrible. F totalitarianism
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 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
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
Considering that the Red army was surviving on US provided spam during the war i think the idea of a mass Soviet offensive would be very problematic.
True
Russia had already lost 10 millions soldiers. The US Canada, Britain and France had far more industry twice as many men to recruit from and had suffered 10 percent of the casualties. Russia would have been annihilated by allied air power and as the supplies from the US were cut off. The allies could have parked an enormous fleet in the Baltic and ripped Russia supply lines to shreds.
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.
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.
So by the end of 1945.. the Allies have about 20 atom bombs with enough B 36s to deliver them 10,000 miles . So the Soviet Union looses 20 of its largest cities and its oil and transportation hubs have been bombed out of existence by B29s based out of France. Not game over but unconditional surrender probably by the end of 1946 by whatever government the Soviets have left.
The first B-36 flight wasn’t until the second half of 1946. I assume you meant B-29’s?
You also have to remember, nuke bombs weren't really that big back then, it would take several to truly destroy a large city.
I did mean the B 36 . IIRC, the contract on the B 36 was let during the Battle of Britain. At that time it looked like the US would not have a forward base in Europe to strike Germany, hence B36. But the heavy bombers development was dramatically slowed in 1943 when it became apparent that England as a staging base for American would not be lost (B29s at most ). In comrade Binkovs timeline the development of the of long range strategic bombes would not be all but slowed but rather encouraged. The B36 would come early..and in greater numbers.
@@patclark2186 You’re being a bit optimistic if you think there will be operational squadrons of B-36’s in 1945
@@TheMormonPower With respect. To make a city unable to support the war effort you dont have to strike it with 8-10 20 megaton bombs. You just have to damage it's infrastructure enough so that it is no longer an asset to the war effort and so becomes a liability.
And then there is that the whole firestorm thing..as seen in both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki .Most of the damage was done not by the smallish atomic bombs but rather by their high temperatures turning the cities into blast furnaces with cool air being sucked in and hot air out the top.
West had secure supply lines and absolute air superiority. Even without nukes, USSR loses quick. Bear in mind that in 1945 they were utterly dependent on the US and UK for food and fuel and much other materiel besides. If they went to war then that supply source is severed.
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.
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.
One thing is certain. The Frence would surrender either way.
No
So funny...
I believe it would go to the western allies. While yes, tank production between the western allies and soviets were on par in numbers alone, there were serious production flaws when it came to those vehicles in the soviet union, with many of the tanks they made having production errors that hampered their fighting capabilities, purely to have more tanks in combat. Along with that, asside from perhaps trucks, they were behind the western allies in every other wartime industry. They were heavily behind in air industries, rail industries, and ocean going industries is not even a contest. Now, against the Germans, it was fine, because they happened to lag in all of the industries that the soviets lagged in, but, with the western allies, the risk was just too high. The main issue is, thr B-29, and later the B-36 just have the range and altitude to strike deep into russian supply lanes, and possibly even industrial or transportation centers, while the Soviet Union would not have the same luxury. At best, they could use their limited number of reverse engineered B-29s, but the affect that such a limited amount of bombers would have, against nations that already have production on jet fighters, would probably be negligible. And, at best, even if the soviets are able to conduct intermittent air raids, they'd only be able to damage the UK industry or French industry, this wouldn't have much of an affect for the US though, which would still be able to continue production of war materials without issue. And this doesn't even begin to go into the possibilities of an American invasion through Korea, or the partisan fighting that would occur in occupied territories. It would be a long, bloody war, but the industries of the western allies are just too powerful when compared to the Soviets, and the ability to disrupt industry and supply lines is firmly in western control. Logistically, it's too nightmarish for the soviets.
Don’t forget the technological advantage the west had over the east, the soviets focused heavily on metallurgy and more “practical” science at the cost of more innovative science, the US had radar shells, the oppenhammer (atomic weapons) more reliable engineered armor, better logistics (the soviets still used the push method while the us could get a cake from New York to France within a week) and the ideological advantage (the Ukrainians, poles, baltics and fins HATED the Soviet Union) etc.
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.
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
Interesting video but your analysis is completely wrong. You’re going on the basis of ww2 levels of manpower and reinforcement. The truth is that the Soviet Union was on the verge of manpower collapse by mid ‘45. They had almost 500 divisions in the field, and almost all of them were well below full strength. About half of them were at half strength. They had almost no replacements left. They immediately began disbanding units to bring those heading east to Japan up to full strength. If war in the west started up again before ‘46 the soviets would have been hard pressed to replace losses. By ‘46 if they hadn’t beaten the Allies their forces would have collapsed
Agreed. Point is also that the West had massive bomber fleet. USSR, none. Fighters comparison: perhaps USSR more but poor assambling. Same for tanks. On top everything between Oeral and France was desolated. Long vulnarable supply lines, etc. Etc. Food shortages since 1930s... stop of lend lease. It just wasnt looking good for USSR at any point. This video should be 1 minute. Churchill was right by thinking to move eastwards. We will always regret this today...
You've given soviets way to much credit
causes without them Germany was never going to be defeated
@@prizefighter8699 You mean Lend lease ?
@@iamiza1426lend-lease This was only 1.5% of what was needed.
The Soviets in 1945 would have managed without it.
@@Lord_Cointoss source : trust me bro
@@iamiza1426 google to help
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.
Well, the Allies would have Einstein, who would have created a Chronosphere and weather machine. The soviets would have had tesla coils and mammoth tanks.
Can we get C&C gang in here?
KHIROV REPORT
@Hussein Nothing says fun like making up facts about Einstein and applying labels you don't comprehend.
Patton was correct. Unfortunately it was not possible to sell another war, with own ally. Just when WW2 "ended".
Polish troops would join US if possible. Poles were extremely unhappy with results of Yalta.
Good video. You checked almost all the important material facts, except one: All the Western Allied divisions were full motorized, while none of the Soviet divisions were. That's part of the reason why the Western Allies in 1944-45 needed fewer frontline personnel than the Soviets, as one motorized division can cover several more kms of front than a non-motorized one, thanks to it's mobility. Even if put on the defensive, the Western Allies could retreat, reagroup and reinforce vulnerable spots of the front much faster than the soviets.
That said, it's also informative to take into account the battle doctrine of each potential combatant. The battle doctrine of the americans was to degrade the positions and logisistics of the enemy frontline by air and artillery attacks, then sweep over. They had the airpower to do it against the germans, and the motorized divisions to react fast and take full advantage of any vulnerable spot created in the enemy line. Those advantages remained against a potential conflict with the Red Army, as the americans had enough airpower to ravage soviet logistics. After a month or two of fighting, they would have degraded soviet logistics bad enough to force a soviet retreat across Poland and back to the Soviet Union.
The soviets, on their part, had the "Deep Battle" doctrine, which in short meant their strategy was to degrade the enemy forces by constant attack then roll them over with reserves. However, in 1945, the soviets lacked the manpower to send soldiers to the grind, as they had been bleed by the long war with the germans, and had barely enough personnel to reach 50% of their division's nominal strenght. The Western Allies, on their part, had suffered small casualties during WW2, and thus their divisions were at full strenght. So the soviets couldn't have been able to degrade the allied frontline by mass attack, as the allies had the reserves of personnel and materiel, and the motorized capabilities, that the germans had not.
Plus, the Soviet never-ending supply of manpower replacements was bled dry by ‘45. Almost all of their divisions were at about half strength. They could never have brought them up to full strength in time if Payton opened up his blitzkrieg
Also don’t forget the soviets we’re completely out of food.
@@unifiedhorizons2663 they also had a famine in 1946 - 1947 so that's gotta become a huge factor to supplies.
*bad video
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?
This cenario looks like Orwell's 1984 Oceania vs Eurasia.
By the end of the war, the USSR depended on allied supplies for food and transportation. The Allies would have crushed the USSR within 6 months.
Exactly. USSR critically depended from western supply and actually it already lost a half of men population for 1945. USSR most likely would fallen in this hypothetical war
Фига наполеоновские планы)
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
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.
@@abrahamcanales132
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.
@@abrahamcanales132 The Navy would have been able to take out their supply lines, and also launch amphibious assaults to out flank the Red Army.
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.
Whilst the Red Army might have had initial success the loss of lend lease would have led then to grind to a halt. One decider would have been US nuclear weapons, the entire Soviet leadership could be destroyed along with the centre of Moscow in just one strike.
lend lease wasn't as impactful that late on
@colecoal1365 the lend lease also included uniforms, medical aid, and food. Those didn't stabilize for the Soviets until near the fall of the Berlin wall. And even then food was still scarce. And medical aid the more advanced stuff was still mostly outside of Soviet hands.
Lend Lease also included 57 % of all the AvGas the Soviets used throughout the entire war.
In order to bomb Moscow the West would have to establish air superiority. The Soviets had a reasonable air force and you can’t just bypass that and throw a bomb in Moscow. The reason it worked in Japan was because the Japanese had lost air superiority by that late stage of the war.
The only targets the West could have effectively dropped a nuclear bomb on were in Central Europe, and I don’t think it would make a lot of sense to wipe out the cities of the counties you are “liberating”.
@@csm5040are you ignoring the United States navy that would simply blockade the black sea and launch their superior aircraft from there?
If Winston Churchill was the one who "proposed" Operation Unthinkable, it wasn't going to work.
0:49 let me save you time and curiosity, I'll check the game and I'll be back with a honest opinion.
*ok I'm back:* from 1 to 10 it gets 4
*Bad VS Good:*
*Bad:* it's laggy, on mobile it's not horizontal, you can't skip the long tutorial, it's filled with bots, and the game play is mostly not amusing.
*Good:* the maps are accurate to back then, observer mode is nice, and if you're really into that game you can enjoy it.
*That's it!* Thanks for reading my opinion, if you feel like it helped you don't hesitate to like so others will see and will enjoy the same way you did.
You're a God 🙌
Wow you're really determine.. nice
Is it like HOI4 but mobile or rather a grindy building and waiting game?
Guess the name "unthinkable" was for a reason.
You are so completely wrong on so many points. As soon as the Pacific War was over, the 6 US Marine divisions and 18 US Army divisions, and 7 Austrailian, would invade the Soviet far east and capture the industrial base there. Plus, the US 6th Army Group would be pulled out of France and invade through the Black Sea at Sevastapol. Thats only 700,000 troops. Plus armor. Lets not even talk about air power. B-29 opereating from London could bomb Moscow at will. After a base is secured in Vladivostok B-29's could bomb the industrial heart in Russia. Soviet tanks would be destroyed by air power. You must be a Slobiet lover.
And he fails to leverage the overwhelming sea power the Allies had available. No coastal region of USSR would have been safe. Allies would have naval and air support (both combat and logistical) all the way to Stalingrad on the Baltic Coast and would have quickly pivoted forces in Italy and N. Africa into the Black Sea, pressuring the Ukrainian bread basket and natural gas potential from behind the front. Meanwhile, reconsolidated forces out of the MIddle east and India would have pushed into the lower Caucus and captured or destroyed their oil fields. And then the big picture..what is the objective of the war? Capturing Moscow serves little purpose, and the territory eastward, all the way to Siberia has limited value. The Allies would have stopped most likely with Stalingrad, Ukraine, and the Baltic States on the western front, and likely not pushed further north beyond Georgia in the south. They would set up west-Friendly puppet governments reflecting tradtional ethnic groups (Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania) that would serve as a bulwark against future Soviet shenanigans.
Soviet Union lost so many men and women imagine going to war again after losing 10 million soldiers and 10-12 million civilians jeez i would hate to be born for war those days
Soviet attack Jepang with 1,5 million army. After lost 27 🤣million people
Nonstop nuking would have clutched the win for American rather quickly. In this timeline since the war is still ongoing the Americans wouldn’t be so loose on spy screening thus delaying soviets access to Nukes even longer
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
th-cam.com/video/yUMnF1-kKfE/w-d-xo.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.
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.
If the allies can endure casualties, it's safe to say, the allies will eventually win the war of attrition.
Soviets were out of manpower. Patton was pushing for rearming the Germans and pressing on Eastward against the Soviets but he died in a mysterious car accident shortly after making his proposal.
deep state is no joke
They had a bigger army in 1945 than 41.
@@JokersAce0 true those 3 millions man arent no jokes
Lots of people were dying in automobile accidents after the war and he would have been over ruled by his superiors higher up the chain of command anyway but it is likely his death was not an accident.
Possibly a soviet or even allied agent impersonating his driver either crashed on purpose or killed him outright and disguised the death as an accident.
Patton was right though. The USSR should have been squashed after WW2, as well as communist China.
Imagine how different...how much better the world would be today without the menace posed by those two nations.
"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)
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
The West would have won without a doubt. Let’s, for argument's sake, exclude the use of nukes. The United States still would’ve been a nightmare for the Soviets due to its location and naval dominance in many oceans. Trying to invade our mainland is impossible logistically, meaning factories in the US are free to make guns, bullets, artillery tanks, and other wartime weapons and supplies with no threats, and using land leases, the West would be armed with a never-ending supply of equipment to make mincemeat of the Reds along with the massive British colonies they could pull from an enormous reservoir of soldiers and arm them to the teeth with the US weapons
What will likely happen is the us nukes major cities of the soviet which make them more mad and they will push to Paris and conquer all of Europe and wait until an armestis is signed
Maybe, but was the american population going to support an endless war ? Probably not because they wanted to end it with Japan
Reds didn’t have proper air cover. The Air Forces alone would have been able to hold off the WP forces. Not to mention the ability to strike Russian oil while unable to strike western oil reserves.
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.
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
Stupid question. Allies had literally just started dropping nukes. And the allies had also been sending supplies to Russia for years. - Russia was holding a knife in a gunfight.
they used the onky nukes they had on japan it took months before they were able to produce more nukes
@theonioneater9307 There was enough material for two more nukes still available. Look up demon core. Drop one on Moscow and it's job done.
Gratefully and thankfully, cooler heads prevailed and the West and the Soviet Union never allowed their nationalistic jingo's to get out of hand. I am 63 years old and have lived through much of the Cold War and its vain stupidities from all quarters. I read through many of these comments and just shake my head at the sheer boneheaded remarks that people make. Little is said concerning the tens of millions of all nations involved that would have had to endure and die through yet another terrible conflict in their front yards so soon after the just concluded bloodletting. "Just nuke them" so many are dismissively writing....well....I could never be so callous and blind as to play God with other people's lives. If it were your families, your children, your parents, your spouses, I really doubt that you would be so eager to nuke entire cities. War is so easy to wage when you are expending the lives of your neighbor and starving their children, and destroying their 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).
This is true the conscription age was raised to 55 or 65 (I forget) in 1944
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.
From the start, US and its Alies would have dominated the air, as US and it's Alies had better aircraft and more experienced pilots. And when you control the air, you don't need to outnumber the enemy by a bunch. And with USSR having much fewer logistical personal, it would take much longer to get equipment and fuel and food up to the front line. Troops when battles, but logistics wins wars. People forget about how important logistics really is.
@GeneralGamerYT and it's amazing how just being able to keep your troops fed is so important
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.
@@KillerofWestoids 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
You mentioned it briefly when you talked about the Soviet losses in WW II, but Manpower would be quite a serious issue for the Red Army. MHV mentioned it in a bit more Detail in his "Top 7 Red Army Myths" Video, but to make it short: By late 1944 mayne Soviet nunits were under-strenght because they no longer had enough new recruits to fill the gaps, despite already recuiting a lot of people they would have deemed unfit before. In 1945 the situation only worsened.
Now Britain wasn't that much better of, the US was though, as was France.
One thing that is never considered is that Brittan and the US had millions of people tied up in fleets that are designed to hunt uboats and escort convoys. As well as build these fleets and support them. That is no longer needed. And Britian can either transfer them to the infantry or stop new recruits from going to the navy as these people are used to plug other naval gaps in lieu of new ascension. The manpower situation in the Soviet Union would be the exact opposite as now they would be needing to send men back to start manufacturing supplies the allies are not providing anymore and to rebuild and perform air defense duties during the inevitable strategic bombing campaign.
Also the western allies fought an industrial war not a soldiers war like the Germans and Soviets they had a small fighting tip with a massive logistical base they simply blasted their way across Europe
@White Ness are you actually comparing the soviet industry to the Americans? Come on the Americans bought and paid for winning the war even Stalin acknowledged that.
@@paulodingle2142
You missed "at the start of the war". After that, the American Industry could easily body the Soviet Industry without breaking a sweat.
@@youraveragescotsman7119 I didn’t say that the other fella did. Agree American industrial might at the end of WW2 was phenomenal.
Soviet Russia has several serious disadvantages.
1. International trade. As is often the case, people generally only look at lend lease when it comes to supplies Russia imported during the war. In the bigger picture, Russia actually used a lot of money and resources to buy supplies outside lend lease internationally. Not just from the Allies, but also many neutral countries. Buying rubber, one of the important strategic resources of WWII, was a must. But also coal, iron ore, aluminum and zinc were necessary imports that Russia could not produce enough off to fuel its massive military industry.
With the seas blockaded in this scenario that stops. This is especially damaging to the Aircraft industry, where both rubber and aluminum are essential.
2. Occupation vs. Liberation. When they fought back the Germans, they did not as much liberate Eastern Europe as occupy it. They had to waste much more manpower controlling and pacifying the occupied countries, than the Allies do. Additionally, soldiers drafted from such occupied countries are likely to have worse moral. Note that several of those occupied countries had historically bad relationships with the Russians.
3. Manpower reserves. During their War with the Germans, the Soviets had to dig deeply into their Manpower reserves. Even at the cost of reducing industrial production by enlisting factory workers producing military supplies, the same is true for agriculture, which was already below the limit. So while they have roughly the same amount of military fores and even more Soldiers at the front, they can not replace their losses or increase their troop numbers the same way the allies can.
In terms of Attrition, they are already at the verge of bleeding out. On top of that, most youths were recruited into the work- and military forces much earlier, reducing the number of highly educated and trained workers/specialists.
4. Quantity over Quality. Russia had a problem with this since the very beginning. Lack of skilled workers, lack of quality manufacturing equipment, disruption of supply chains, over hastened production, cutting corners to reduce resource consumption and manufacturing time (work hours), extremely long work shifts and forced labor were all common factors that reduced the quality of production. In none of the major allied countries were these factors as common and as prevalent as in Russia. But this was of the reasons why the Russians suffered higher casualties than the Germans for most of the War, even when outnumbering them significantly.
P.S. I would also point out that the Allies actually limited their Troop numbers in Europe because of supply issues. Germany held onto many important Port cities, including French ones, until the German capitulation. With those ports opening for business after the Fall of Germany, the supply capacity increases dramatically.
The Soviets were a smoldering wreck in 1945 while the USA was still largely intact minus pearl harbour, there is no way the Soviets would win in a direct war
At that moment, after 1950 the soviets would absolutely destroy the european continentz and then it would be a nuclear clusterfuck with USA.
@@Lucas-ew5lk it wouldn't. The ussr would lose
The soviet army in 1945 was the most experienced and enormous in the world,a soviet soldier in 1945 for combat experience is equivalent to 3 US soldier
@@LorenzoBruni-ol6pt thats not how experience works. and besides the ussr would fall to the western allies
@@engineerenginering8633 yes Is how works,they combat for 4 years in all over Europe in harsh condition
This is 1 of the most interesting hypothetical wars that can be conceived imo
I REALLY don't think Allied populations or soldiers would've been very pleased at starting a war with the Soviets
At the beginning of 1945, with the defeat of Germany imminent, the US pumped close to another 20 divisions into Europe. The US was just beginning to become fully mobilized by 1945. Cessation of supplies, air superiority, nukes, and eventual manpower superiority would have defeated the Soviets. The US had plans to mobilize 300 divisions for the war. It only needed to mobilize approximately 120 divisions.
America was planning for this. Just not wanting it to.
Having the benefit of being able to know the last 100 years of world history, and the ire I feel towards Putler (being of Ukrainian decent myself), I really wish Operation Unthinkable had been green lit. Think of what no communist Russia and China would have meant for modern global security. No war in Ukraine, no Taiwan conflict, no coup by a Junta in Niger, no Cuban Missile Crisis, no Vietnam, no North Korea, possibly a slightly more stable middle east too, but that whole shit show is actually mostly our (The West) fault.
@@nuru666Ukraine will win-it will cost much but they will prevail against the filthy russians
@@nuru666 yes, I'm 100% it was the communists responsible for the US gassing the vietnamese people, for the US overthrowing Libya's Gaddafi and depriving it of a good economy, It was also communism's fault of the War in Iraq, it was also communism's fault because of the war of Ukraine (not US taxpayers money going towards the puppet zelensky), and I'm sure it's communists fault that the USA dropped 2 nukes on japan killing tens of thousands of civilians, and killing 900k japanese civilians in the firebombing campaign.
if America had 14% war production capability in 1937 I guarantee it would take the soviets way longer (maybe up until the 50's)
We might have used V2 rockets to deploy nuclear warheads instead of bombers
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.
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.
Soviets would have been busted in a month. They had no supplies.
Allies real advantage was logistics.
And the atom bomb.
And manpower. the ussr was profligate and knew nothing of combined arms, so had a shortage in manpower in the late years. They can't get any more beyond freeing the Heer and waffen SS from captivity, because the entirety of eastern europe and soviet-occupied Germany suffered mass rapes, so there was no way they would get Romanians or Germans fighting for them, or let them pass peacefully past without getting molotovs launched their way every other yard.
Besides, the US and British armies knew combined arms, and had motorised transport and long range bombers in abundance. They would be strategically much more deadly than Germany, and if they used Finnish airstrips, they would be firebombing St Petersburg and nuking Moscow after levelling the Ural railways
The soviet red army would have been very tired because of them loosing like 8 million troops in ww2 compared to the allies not loosing as many. So it would of probably been a big ugly war with many casualties but probably an allied victory.
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.
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...
Russia would’ve lost badly. Their infrastructure base was crushed. 15% of their population died. Their defense strategy literally burnt and totaled their agricultural base. Most of their remaining equipment was provided by the usa and they would’ve quickly ran out of tanks, planes, rifles and bullets. I mean europe in general was very messed up but the USA existed the war basically unscratched due to being across the planet.
I’m not one of those meh communism bad bros either its just the USSR would’ve lost badly.
This isn’t even considering that the USA had occupied Japan and would also be opening up a front to russia’s east as well.
If this happened europe in general would be much less powerful today (germany would be a playground for Allied v Commintern battles, etc etc) and the USA would likely have a much stronger hegemony through the 20th century but I also imagine the USA would lose said hegemony much quicker to China due to even more of the world resenting the whole ‘world police’ mentality of america
Russia had to borrow equipment and fuel. Lol
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.