Patton leads German troops against USSR?

[Big J]

The SS would have rolled over the Russians if well supplied.

For sure, but what would we have done with them after that?

 

[Two Types]

The SS would have rolled over the Russians if well supplied.

Personally, I wonder how many SS men still had the same enthusiasm for war in 1945 that they had five years earlier. After all, their leaders - who they had so idolised - were dead, their cities were in ruins and they were defeated. You also have to remember that plenty of them were youngsters who had been recruited later in the war (people such as Gunter Grass). I suspect many SS men were just as happy as many members of the Wehrmacht that the war was over.

If Patton really did just want to re-arm the SS and use them against the Russians, I suspect it was because he was deluded into believing the myth of 'super-soldiers' - an army of war lovers (i.e. people he considered similar to himself). Except that most people are far more complex than that.

 

[LizzieMaine]

For sure, but what would we have done with them after that?

No doubt they'd have given them medals, and then assigned them as a special security detail for Operation Paperclip. Wernher and his boys would have felt right to home.

 

[Big J]

No doubt they'd have given them medals, and then assigned them as a special security detail for Operation Paperclip. Wernher and his boys would have felt right to home.

Win-win all round!

 

[Big J]

Personally, I wonder how many SS men still had the same enthusiasm for war in 1945 that they had five years earlier. After all, their leaders - who they had so idolised - were dead, their cities were in ruins and they were defeated. You also have to remember that plenty of them were youngsters who had been recruited later in the war (people such as Gunter Grass). I suspect many SS men were just as happy as many members of the Wehrmacht that the war was over.

If Patton really did just want to re-arm the SS and use them against the Russians, I suspect it was because he was deluded into believing the myth of 'super-soldiers' - an army of war lovers (i.e. people he considered similar to himself). Except that most people are far more complex than that.

I think the SS would have gone for it.
There's a great book, The Devils Guard, I think, written by a SS guy whose unit held out in the mountains for weeks after the surrender, then, to avoid going back to Germany, his unit joined the French Foreign Legion and ended up in Indo-China fighting the Viet-Minh.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The even more complicated question to me would be what happens *after* such an invasion. OK, let's presume Patton doesn't get shot in the back by his own men, the nukes drop, and the Soviet Union is annihilated. But you can't annihilate or imprison the entire Russian population, which covers a rather vast stretch of real estate. So you're looking at a long-term occupation force. The Russian people have never had any sort of Western-style government, so you're going to have to install some sort of provisional government to "show them how to do it," and at the same time keep enforcers on the job to ensure they'll toe the Western line in future. That's going to take years or even decades to do -- likely a lot longer than it took in Germany, which is *also* going to be in the process of rebuilding. You're going to need a pretty significant occupation force, which means you're going to need to raise and pay for that force, which is going to keep your society on a wartime basis for a very long time to maintain a de facto "American Empire."

The real joker in the deck is that you just might find that there are vast swaths of the world population -- not just the American people -- who wouldn't particularly want to live in such a society and might very well be willing to sacrifice their lives to put a stop to it. Ethnic tensions run deep in many of these areas, far transcending ideologies. You can't very well nuke everyone who disagrees with your worldview, so you've got conventional forces deployed everywhere to keep Those People in line, and "refugee camps" for the people you need to keep out of circulation to keep everyone else under control. You'll draw up borders which will be bound to dissatisfy various ethnic factions, but which fit in with your own military needs. The only freedom and self-determination the local populations willl have is that which suits your own purpose, and you've got guns and bombs pointed at them to make sure they make the "right choice," because that's how empires work.

In this scenario you can't help but to become something worse than either Hitler or Stalin. So what, in the long term, have you accomplished?

 

[Two Types]

How about this scenario?

US re-arms the SS; British Army mutinies in disgust ; US forced to chose between the British and the Germans.

I think it was best that no one chose to follow Patton's plans.

 

[pawineguy]

The even more complicated question to me would be what happens *after* such an invasion. OK, let's presume Patton doesn't get shot in the back by his own men, the nukes drop, and the Soviet Union is annihilated. But you can't annihilate or imprison the entire Russian population, which covers a rather vast stretch of real estate. So you're looking at a long-term occupation force. The Russian people have never had any sort of Western-style government, so you're going to have to install some sort of provisional government to "show them how to do it," and at the same time keep enforcers on the job to ensure they'll toe the Western line in future. That's going to take years or even decades to do -- likely a lot longer than it took in Germany, which is *also* going to be in the process of rebuilding. You're going to need a pretty significant occupation force, which means you're going to need to raise and pay for that force, which is going to keep your society on a wartime basis for a very long time to maintain a de facto "American Empire."

The real joker in the deck is that you just might find that there are vast swaths of the world population -- not just the American people -- who wouldn't particularly want to live in such a society and might very well be willing to sacrifice their lives to put a stop to it. Ethnic tensions run deep in many of these areas, far transcending ideologies. You can't very well nuke everyone who disagrees with your worldview, so you've got conventional forces deployed everywhere to keep Those People in line, and "refugee camps" for the people you need to keep out of circulation to keep everyone else under control. You'll draw up borders which will be bound to dissatisfy various ethnic factions, but which fit in with your own military needs. The only freedom and self-determination the local populations willl have is that which suits your own purpose, and you've got guns and bombs pointed at them to make sure they make the "right choice," because that's how empires work.

In this scenario you can't help but to become something worse than either Hitler or Stalin. So what, in the long term, have you accomplished?

Not sure how this could ever end up being worse than Stalin. (and for the record, I agree that it would have been a disaster) Taken out of this context, your second paragraph is pretty close to describing what the USSR did do both pre and post WWII.

 

[pawineguy]

For sure, but what would we have done with them after that?

Right, so then we'd have had a conquered USSR to feed and rebuild? And SS troops that we are going to politely ask to stand down?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Not sure how this could ever end up being worse than Stalin. (and for the record, I agree that it would have been a disaster) Taken out of this context, your second paragraph is pretty close to describing what the USSR did do both pre and post WWII.

I submit that any empire that would have and use nuclear weapons, indiscriminately and "preemptively", to enforce it its will on an unwilling population would be, by its very nature, Worse Than Any Other Empire That Has Ever Existed. Even Stalin, as paranoid as he was, never did that.

Empire building on both sides was an inevitable result of the Cold War, always rationalized -- by both sides -- by the need for "security." Another reason why the Cold War was a colossal waste of lives, time, and humanity, unless, like Averell Harriman, you happened to own an awful lot of stock in the Military Industrial Complex.

 

[Edward]

Right, so then we'd have had a conquered USSR to feed and rebuild? And SS troops that we are going to politely ask to stand down?

The case for cannibalism: feed the SS to the starving Russians. Tasty, nutritious longpig.

I submit that any empire that would have and use nuclear weapons, indiscriminately and "preemptively", to enforce it its will on an unwilling population would be, by its very nature, Worse Than Any Other Empire That Has Ever Existed. Even Stalin, as paranoid as he was, never did that.

Empire building on both sides was an inevitable result of the Cold War. Another reason why the Cold War was a colossal waste of lives, time, and humanity, unless you happened to own stock in the Military Industrial Complex.

Quite.

Not to mention that nuking Moscow and Stalingrad, depending on how the wind blows, could hit part of Europe with a nuclear Winter. Tha'ts not going to win many friends either.

Patton strieks me as a man a bit like Churchill: flourished in a war situation, but a bit lost in peacetime.

 

[jamespowers]

The even more complicated question to me would be what happens *after* such an invasion. OK, let's presume Patton doesn't get shot in the back by his own men, the nukes drop, and the Soviet Union is annihilated. But you can't annihilate or imprison the entire Russian population, which covers a rather vast stretch of real estate. So you're looking at a long-term occupation force. The Russian people have never had any sort of Western-style government, so you're going to have to install some sort of provisional government to "show them how to do it," and at the same time keep enforcers on the job to ensure they'll toe the Western line in future. That's going to take years or even decades to do -- likely a lot longer than it took in Germany, which is *also* going to be in the process of rebuilding. You're going to need a pretty significant occupation force, which means you're going to need to raise and pay for that force, which is going to keep your society on a wartime basis for a very long time to maintain a de facto "American Empire."

So we do exactly what we did in Japan then. Problem solved.

 

[jamespowers]

I submit that any empire that would have and use nuclear weapons, indiscriminately and "preemptively", to enforce it its will on an unwilling population would be, by its very nature, Worse Than Any Other Empire That Has Ever Existed. Even Stalin, as paranoid as he was, never did that.

So we were worse than Japan then?! Truman was worse than Stalin for dropping two preemptive A -Bombs then? I don't think so---no matter how much I disliked the piano-playing haberdasher, he did at least that right.

The cause of the Cold War was RUSSIA building an empire. We had what we had going in.

 

[jamespowers]

Not to mention that nuking Moscow and Stalingrad, depending on how the wind blows, could hit part of Europe with a nuclear Winter. Tha'ts not going to win many friends either.

Patton strieks me as a man a bit like Churchill: flourished in a war situation, but a bit lost in peacetime.

We nuked Hiroshima AND Nagasaki. People live RIGHT on top of it today. A-bombs back then were what we refer to as tactical nukes today. They were nowhere near as powerful as what we have today.
Patton never got a chance to be lost in peace.

 

[jamespowers]

How about this scenario?

US re-arms the SS; British Army mutinies in disgust ; US forced to chose between the British and the Germans.

I think it was best that no one chose to follow Patton's plans.

That wasn't going to happen with Churchill in power.

 

[jamespowers]

Personally, I wonder how many SS men still had the same enthusiasm for war in 1945 that they had five years earlier. After all, their leaders - who they had so idolised - were dead, their cities were in ruins and they were defeated. You also have to remember that plenty of them were youngsters who had been recruited later in the war (people such as Gunter Grass). I suspect many SS men were just as happy as many members of the Wehrmacht that the war was over.

If Patton really did just want to re-arm the SS and use them against the Russians, I suspect it was because he was deluded into believing the myth of 'super-soldiers' - an army of war lovers (i.e. people he considered similar to himself). Except that most people are far more complex than that.

The SS were fanatical. Nothing they did had to make sense----they just followed orders. It was as if they were brainwashed ala the Universal Soldier movies. I am pretty sure that if you wanted to resupply them and let them loose on Russia they would have been all in for it. Let them keep cranking out Panzers and ME62s.

 

[LizzieMaine]

So we were worse than Japan then?! Truman was worse than Stalin for dropping two preemptive A -Bombs then? I don't think so---no matter how much I disliked the piano-playing haberdasher, he did at least that right.

We were in a state of formal, declared war with Japan. The morality of the bomb can be debated, but either way it was a legal act of a legal war. The USSR was our ally in that war, not our opponent, and without a formal declaration of war against them, any attack on them -- let alone a nuclear attack -- would have been both immoral and illegal. You would never, ever have gotten that declaration of war in 1945.

 

[Edward]

We nuked Hiroshima AND Nagasaki. People live RIGHT on top of it today. A-bombs back then were what we refer to as tactical nukes today. They were nowhere near as powerful as what we have today.
Patton never got a chance to be lost in peace.

The long term ill effects of those bombs on people in surrounding areas have been well documented. Realpolitik aside, their effectiveness remains debateable.... but that's all old ground.

 

[Big J]

The A-bombs of the late 40's weren't as spectacularly powerful as we imagine today. Partially due to years of Japan bleating about being the only 'victim' of nuclear war to trump all the war-crimes they ever committed.
Fact is, one in twenty people at 'ground zero' in Hiroshima survived.

 

[jamespowers]

The A-bombs of the late 40's weren't as spectacularly powerful as we imagine today. Partially due to years of Japan bleating about being the only 'victim' of nuclear war to trump all the war-crimes they ever committed.
Fact is, one in twenty people at 'ground zero' in Hiroshima survived.

Interesting.....