Patton leads German troops against USSR?

[Two Types]

I feel sorry for Poland and the Polish to this day - they were invaded by Germany and the war was started over them - and when it ended, they were still occupied by a brutal regime; only the colour of the uniform was different and there was no saving them again.

Although one has to say that, yes Poland had a dreadful regime imposed on it for the next 50 years, but it was far better than being occupied by the Germans. After all, Poland and its people still exist - the long term plans for Poland under the Nazis was for the entire population to be enslaved and worked to death, and the land absorbed into the 3rd Reich.

 

[jamespowers]

Ah, but the US had no more nuclear fission material at the end of the war - the two bombs used on Japan used all that they had. So following up with a double-whammy again wasn't a timely option - time was needed to garner more.
And I can't believe that there was any appetite amongst the public for another war - after all, Churchill himself was ousted from Downing Street having been proven right as the lone voice of reason in Parliament with all his pre-war words of caution, then saved the country by not capitulating and standing alone when the rest of Europe was defeated/neutral and led it to ultimate victory - but the British people were sick and tired of the regimentation that went with 6 years of war and voted him out straight away! There was zero appetite for the old former Sea Lord and the privations that people associated with him and war… so launching a whole new offensive on our former allies for an entirely new war with another uncertain outcome? No chance.
And I'm sure the US public was ready for peace too …

And quantity over quality works in conventional terms (not nuclear) - on average it took 6 US Sherman tanks to take the Tiger I down and the US had them, so they did - and plenty of piston-engine fighters to take out the very modern Luftwaffe jets (that had the first JATO rockets, ejector seats, pressurized cockpits etc) and the Germans developed the fore-runner to the AK-47 and night vision and so many other staples of modern warfare - all no match for the overwhelming numbers of allied troops. Numbers count - and Stalin didn't care a jot for how many of his people would have died in a new Patriotic War. He was a sociopathic monster with not a care in the world for sentimental things like that.

I feel sorry for Poland and the Polish to this day - they were invaded by Germany and the war was started over them - and when it ended, they were still occupied by a brutal regime; only the colour of the uniform was different and there was no saving them again.

I beg to differ. My cousin was working a chemist at Lawrence Livermore Labs during the war. He said we had enough to make 5 more A-bombs quickly. We could have had them dropped on them in short order and made more in the process. That out of material stuff was for public----Russian consumption.
In fact, Goring put forward the idea that the US would rearm the Germans and work with them to defeat the Russians. However it was later found out that Hitler left power to Doenitz and not Goering after he died. Doenitz had not interest in pursuing that.

It took usually five Shermans to take out a Tiger but they were very vulnerable from behind. If you got behind one----you could kill it. That was what the other four Shermans were---distractions. Thye real reason why the Germans could not go up against the Russians weapons wise was simply because the Germans did not use the assembly line. As a result, tanks did not have interchangeable parts and they were made incredibly slowly. Advancements in weapons and design were also added as they went through the tank shops. So you literally had the first tank in line being very different from the sixth tank in line. If the Germans had adopted the assembly line process and produced the tigers, weapons and aircraft that they did then they would have done far more damage to the world----so good thing they didn't. :doh:
The Russians on the other hand produced even more tanks than we did through the war. They were poorly fit and finished but, as I said, they were calculated to last 15 hours in battle. :doh:
The point is that the Russians could have been taken. There was just not the will to do so. The world would look very different if we had though.

 

[jamespowers]

Exactly. And I can't speak for the mood in the US, but in Britain, there was actually some benign feeling for the Soviets and what they'd endured, and the socialist cause had garnered a swell of support in the Labour Party which swept the election against Churchill's conservative party - so any endeavour against the Soviets would not have included Britain and the US would have had to go it alone.
I think it's easy to judge this hypothetical scenario with the benefit of hindsight - as back then, Stalin's best atrocities were yet ahead of him.

We could have easily done it alone. It would not have taken much. There would have been crying and gnashing of teeth in some arenas but it could have been done.

One thing for sure, it would have saved plenty of Russian soldiers themselves who, having come in contact with the West, were judged to be a threat to mother Russia. They ended up going into Gulags and "re-education camps" after they got back from the war. :doh:

There were several instances in Ukraine when the German troops came into the area they were treated as liberators! The people gave them bread and food etc. They asked if they could hold a church service---to which the German officers said: "go ahead." The problem was the NAZI party back in Germany wanted them exterminated not used. :doh: You cannot discount the fact that those liberated people would have been more than willing to fight back the Russians---especially the Poles.

 

[jamespowers]

Ah, but the US had no more nuclear fission material at the end of the war - the two bombs used on Japan used all that they had. So following up with a double-whammy again wasn't a timely option - time was needed to garner more.
And I can't believe that there was any appetite amongst the public for another war - after all, Churchill himself was ousted from Downing Street having been proven right as the lone voice of reason in Parliament with all his pre-war words of caution, then saved the country by not capitulating and standing alone when the rest of Europe was defeated/neutral and led it to ultimate victory - but the British people were sick and tired of the regimentation that went with 6 years of war and voted him out straight away! There was zero appetite for the old former Sea Lord and the privations that people associated with him and war… so launching a whole new offensive on our former allies for an entirely new war with another uncertain outcome? No chance.
And I'm sure the US public was ready for peace too …

And quantity over quality works in conventional terms (not nuclear) - on average it took 6 US Sherman tanks to take the Tiger I down and the US had them, so they did - and plenty of piston-engine fighters to take out the very modern Luftwaffe jets (that had the first JATO rockets, ejector seats, pressurized cockpits etc) and the Germans developed the fore-runner to the AK-47 and night vision and so many other staples of modern warfare - all no match for the overwhelming numbers of allied troops. Numbers count - and Stalin didn't care a jot for how many of his people would have died in a new Patriotic War. He was a sociopathic monster with not a care in the world for sentimental things like that.

I feel sorry for Poland and the Polish to this day - they were invaded by Germany and the war was started over them - and when it ended, they were still occupied by a brutal regime; only the colour of the uniform was different and there was no saving them again.

I beg to differ. My cousin was working a chemist at Lawrence Livermore Labs during the war. He said we had enough to make 5 more A-bombs quickly. We could have had them dropped on them in short order and made more in the process. That out of material stuff was for public----Russian consumption.
In fact, Goring put forward the idea that the US would rearm the Germans and work with them to defeat the Russians. However it was later found out that Hitler left power to Doenitz and not Goering after he died. Doenitz had not interest in pursuing that.

It took usually five Shermans to take out a Tiger but they were very vulnerable from behind. If you got behind one----you could kill it. That was what the other four Shermans were---distractions. Thye real reason why the Germans could not go up against the Russians weapons wise was simply because the Germans did not use the assembly line. As a result, tanks did not have interchangeable parts and they were made incredibly slowly. Advancements in weapons and design were also added as they went through the tank shops. So you literally had the first tank in line being very different from the sixth tank in line. If the Germans had adopted the assembly line process and produced the tigers, weapons and aircraft that they did then they would have done far more damage to the world----so good thing they didn't. :doh:
The Russians on the other hand produced even more tanks than we did through the war. They were poorly fit and finished but, as I said, they were calculated to last 15 hours in battle. :doh:
The point is that the Russians could have been taken. There was just not the will to do so. The world would look very different if we had though.

 

[Stand By]

Interesting points ! Thanks …
If only there was a looking glass into a parallel world to see what it could have been like …. for better or for worse? A shame we'll never know.

 

[jamespowers]

Interesting points ! Thanks …
If only there was a looking glass into a parallel world to see what it could have been like …. for better or for worse? A shame we'll never know.

Then again we could have had a Star Trek Zeon incident.

 

[jamespowers]

I should also mention that near the end of WWII, my cousin told my grandparents that "we" were working on something that would end the war. They questioned him more but he wouldn't say anymore. When we dropped the bomb on Japan, my grandmother called him. He said: "I told you and we have more." :eeek: Scared the heck out of her.

 

[Stearmen]

We could have easily done it alone. It would not have taken much. There would have been crying and gnashing of teeth in some arenas but it could have been done.

One thing for sure, it would have saved plenty of Russian soldiers themselves who, having come in contact with the West, were judged to be a threat to mother Russia. They ended up going into Gulags and "re-education camps" after they got back from the war. :doh:

There were several instances in Ukraine when the German troops came into the area they were treated as liberators! The people gave them bread and food etc. They asked if they could hold a church service---to which the German officers said: "go ahead." The problem was the NAZI party back in Germany wanted them exterminated not used. :doh: You cannot discount the fact that those liberated people would have been more than willing to fight back the Russians---especially the Poles.

Oh Yeah! Patton and what army? I know my Dad and Uncles couldn't wait to get back home, and there was almost several instances of mutiny by entire divisions when they were told they were being sent from Europe to Japan! Plus, we were drafting men in their 30s for front line service. It is lucky Patton died, he would have made a complete fool of him self after he retired. He wasn't Omar Bradley.

 

[jamespowers]

Oh Yeah! Patton and what army? I know my Dad and Uncles couldn't wait to get back home, and there was almost several instances of mutiny by entire divisions when they were told they were being sent from Europe to Japan! Plus, we were drafting men in their 30s for front line service. It is lucky Patton died, he would have made a complete fool of him self after he retired. He wasn't Omar Bradley.

You don't need an army to drop a few bombs. You need an occupation force much like we had in Japan.

 

[Big J]

Again, thank you all for your insights.

I agree with Lizzie and others that there was little stomach for any fight after Germany's surrender amongst the Allied public, since they were economically and physically/mentally exhausted by the struggle.

I do think that the US could have taken on the USSR with re-armed German troops without other Allied assistance had the will to do so been there, which I believe it was not.

I think, as James has pointed out, that a land invasion of Soviet occupied Europe and the USSR would have been a logistical nightmare bordering on an impossibility. And, in light of that, that the tactical use of a handful of atomic weapons could have decapitated Soviet leadership, and forced the USSR into a state of chaos, during which it would have been possible to arm and assist the non-ethnic Russian states to throw off local Soviet control under a banner of rediscovered nationalism, thereby dismembering the USSR.

How much that would have contributed to world peace in the absence of the cold war is debatable. It is likely that these former USSR states would have started border wars of their own amongst themselves, and may have led to the emergence of a type of radical islam that pre-dated that which we are combatting now. Who can say?

Without the USSR to support them, would North Korea ever have started the Korean War? What about China? Without the USSR, could the KMT have defeated Mao? If the Chinese nationalists had been unable to defeat Mao, then when China inevitably developed it's own atom bomb, would we have just experienced a different type of cold war, with the US facing off against China, via a number of proxy wars in former Soviet republics, or would the Chinese have seen the US use of atom bombs against the USSR as setting a precedent that led the Chinese to develop a 'first use' policy regarding their own atom bombs against the US?

Maybe, everything worked out for the best after all?

 

[LizzieMaine]

There was some talk as the bomb was in development that the US, in the interest of postwar peace, should have shared it , up front, with the other Allies. Could such a move have blunted Stalin's increasing paranoia in the years after the war? Likely not, as the preponderance of medical evidence is that Stalin was suffering from increasingly severe arteriosclerosis which was affecting his mental faculties as well as his physical. But it's also argued that much of the Soviet Union's expansionism in Eastern Europe was motivated by fear of the West and a desire to preserve its own national security -- might an above-board sharing of the bomb right from the start have blunted this fear and encouraged postwar continuation of wartime cooperation among the Big Three powers? Might that have curbed expansionism all around?

This scenario, of course, might seem just as politically unfeasable as some kind of Lone Ranger attack by a crazed Patton. But it did have support, and it was considered.

It's fashionable in the West to place all blame for the Cold War on Soviet duplicity. But Jimmy Byrnes has to bear a pretty big slice of the blame too. As Secretary of State, he was a great Postmaster General.

 

[Fastuni]

It was Soviet duplicity, breach of trust and expansionism that ended naive American hopes regarding post-war cooperation.

Argueably the occasion Soviet duplicity and expansionism finally became apparent to Truman and Byrnes, was the Soviet refusal to withdraw its troops from Northern Iran.
There was no justification of maintaining troops there beyond the end of war. Indeed it was a blatant breach of binding treaties.
The Brits and Soviets occupied Iran in 1941 and concluded in 1942 the tripartite treaty with the Iranian government to withdraw six months after cessation of hostilities with the Axis. The British (and the US service troops) withdrew, but the Soviets stayed until May 1946, even increasing their military presence in Northern Iran with heavy armored divisions. It was their clear goal to absorb the Northern provinces of Iran and eventually to impose a Communist regime on the country.
Already in December 1945 communist proxy regimes were declared in the Northern provinces and rebel armed forces created with Soviet aid (using mostly confiscated light Iranian and captured German weaponry).

The British were rather indifferent towards Soviet subversion... they were keen on keeping their economic and political influence over the oil areas in the South-West of Iran. Under the guise of combatting Soviet agitation in the South, the British formented unrest against the Iranian government among several tribes in the South.

It took almost a year for the US to come around (with a lot of prodding by the Iranians) to assist Iran against Soviet ambitions.
Truman eventually did come around and gave Iran the political (but not any significant military) support in the United Nations and on the ground to maneuver the Soviets out.

Apocryphically Truman threatened Stalin to use nuclear weapons... but this claim has never been corroborated by hard evidence.
What is known is that the Shah of Iran casually suggested to the US that such a threat be made. But it certainly was never seriously on the table.
Truman made it known that the US wouldn't go to war with the Soviets over occupied Iranian territory.

The Soviet army left Iran in May 1946 (the prospect of gaining an oil concession in Iran in return helped), but the local communist rebel troops were further armed.
Things came to a head in December 1946, when the Iranian army marched into the "red zone" and a simultaneous popular rebellion swept away the communist separatists within a few days.

It was the first and only time Stalin had to give up territory occupied during WW2.

Long story short: The Iran crisis of 1945/46 was an eye-opener to the West on Soviet reliability.
It also led to a reversal of US policy regarding occupied Germany, exemplified by Byrnes Stuttgart speech, in which the punitive character of occupation policy was ended.

 

[jamespowers]

It was Soviet duplicity, breach of trust and expansionism that ended naive American hopes regarding post-war cooperation.

Argueably the occasion Soviet duplicity and expansionism finally became apparent to Truman and Byrnes, was the Soviet refusal to withdraw its troops from Northern Iran.
There was no justification of maintaining troops there beyond the end of war. Indeed it was a blatant breach of binding treaties.
The Brits and Soviets occupied Iran in 1941 and concluded in 1942 the tripartite treaty with the Iranian government to withdraw six months after cessation of hostilities with the Axis. The British (and the US service troops) withdrew, but the Soviets stayed until May 1946, even increasing their military presence in Northern Iran with heavy armored divisions. It was their clear goal to absorb the Northern provinces of Iran and eventually to impose a Communist regime on the country.
Already in December 1945 communist proxy regimes were declared in the Northern provinces and rebel armed forces created with Soviet aid (using mostly confiscated light Iranian and captured German weaponry).

The British were rather indifferent towards Soviet subversion... they were keen on keeping their economic and political influence over the oil areas in the South-West of Iran. Under the guise of combatting Soviet agitation in the South, the British formented unrest against the Iranian government among several tribes in the South.

It took almost a year for the US to come around (with a lot of prodding by the Iranians) to assist Iran against Soviet ambitions.
Truman eventually did come around and gave Iran the political (but not any significant military) support in the United Nations and on the ground to maneuver the Soviets out.

Apocryphically Truman threatened Stalin to use nuclear weapons... but this claim has never been corroborated by hard evidence.
What is known is that the Shah of Iran casually suggested to the US that such a threat be made. But it certainly was never seriously on the table.
Truman made it known that the US wouldn't go to war with the Soviets over occupied Iranian territory.

The Soviet army left Iran in May 1946 (the prospect of gaining an oil concession in Iran in return helped), but the local communist rebel troops were further armed.
Things came to a head in December 1946, when the Iranian army marched into the "red zone" and a simultaneous popular rebellion swept away the communist separatists within a few days.

It was the first and only time Stalin had to give up territory occupied during WW2.

Long story short: The Iran crisis of 1945/46 was an eye-opener to the West on Soviet reliability.
It also led to a reversal of US policy regarding occupied Germany, exemplified by Byrnes Stuttgart speech, in which the punitive character of occupation policy was ended.

All good points and historically accurate. I can't add much except that Churchill knew far in advance that Stalin was not to be trusted. He was appauled at how much FDR gave over to Russia during the Yalta conferences. He later chalked it up to FDR not being whole physically or mentally able at the time as he was dead just two months later.

 

[Stearmen]

You don't need an army to drop a few bombs. You need an occupation force much like we had in Japan.

Come to think of it, what targets would you use just four bombs on? There wasn't much left to bomb. We couldn't very well bomb Berlin. Plus, how would our bombers fly all the way to Moscow without being shot down? It's all revisionists history, backed by one off the cuff remark by a man who had just been passed up for his fifth star.

 

[jamespowers]

Come to think of it, what targets would you use just four bombs on? There wasn't much left to bomb. We couldn't very well bomb Berlin. Plus, how would our bombers fly all the way to Moscow without being shot down? It's all revisionists history, backed by one off the cuff remark by a man who had just been passed up for his fifth star.

We bomb Moscow then St Petersburg, then Stalingrad then Sochi. By the third bomb there would be no need for the fourth. You don't have to fly over the entire country of Russia to get to those cities. We had planes based in Japan. You go that way.
It wasn't just Patton, it was Goring, and a host of other leaders that thought it was a good idea. There just wasn't enough will to do it. At that time we were on top of the world. We could have done it and no one would have said boo. In fact, the accolades would have come rushing in---especially from Russian satelite states.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Fat Hermann and Churchill -- who is documented in FBI files as having urged a certain right-wing-extremist senator from New Hampshire to push for just such an attack after everyone else in power dismissed the idea -- in agreement at last. Politics does indeed make strange bedfellows.

 

[Big J]

Come to think of it, what targets would you use just four bombs on? There wasn't much left to bomb. We couldn't very well bomb Berlin. Plus, how would our bombers fly all the way to Moscow without being shot down? It's all revisionists history, backed by one off the cuff remark by a man who had just been passed up for his fifth star.

In 1945 it would have been possible. In 1917 the British Expeditionary Force, Royal Navy's Fleet Air had a plan to bomb Moscow.

 

[jamespowers]

Fat Hermann and Churchill -- who is documented in FBI files as having urged a certain right-wing-extremist senator from New Hampshire to push for just such an attack after everyone else in power dismissed the idea -- in agreement at last. Politics does indeed make strange bedfellows.

"If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons."

And that senator was proven to be right after the Wall fell and Russia released records of the time.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think Churchill gets off the hook too easily for some of his more outrageous acts and comments over the course of his career. He was more often than not an enemy of the working class, whose belief in democracy was severely limited -- his idea of "democracy" was one in which the elite ran the show and the lower orders knew their place and were kept in it. Among other points, he favored the elimination of universal suffrage in the UK and the reinstatement of property suffrage, a point of view straight out of the eighteenth century. And as far as his concern for the rights of oppressed peoples to free determination, he'd have been much more convincing had he begun with India.

That said, he was right about Munich in 1938, and was very much The Man for The Hour in 1940 -- but if he hadn't been a wartime leader, I submit that he'd be remembered more as an unapologetic imperialist with a long history of bad decisions.

 

[p51]

Then there's the economic argument, in that the Allies had pretty much expended their entire economies by the start of 1945. The 7th war loan saved the US government from total collapse of the economy, given how much the war was costing.
Not a chance would any politician have even thought of starting a whole new war up after that unholy mess was finally done.