This is another what-if scenario based on this video. As with the last one, you don’t have to watch the video (this one isn’t narrated and is a bit cruder than the last). Also, as with the last one, don’t tell me all the reasons why this would be very unlikely or impossible…assume it happens, that instead of invading Russia the Germans instead ally with them (the mechanism for this is in the beginning of the video…apparently Stalin et al secretly suggested an alliance that Hitler and the Germans basically ignored). What happens next? How does the war progress and what is the final outcome?
Seeing how something like 80% of Nazi soldiers who died were killed by the USSR, the Germans probably would’ve won in Europe.
Japan still would’ve lost the war in the pacific, but I’m guessing Britain would’ve eventually sued for peace.
Plus Germany could have set up manufacturing facilities deep within Russia, which would have made them near impossible for Allied bombers to get to.
I suspect the final outcome doesn’t change - the Allies still win. The USSR certainly did much of the heavy lifting on the Eastern Front fighting the Nazis, but they did so to a large extent with military supplies from the US.
And assuming Stalin still purged his general staff for disloyalty, the Russkis wouldn’t have been in any better shape to wage a war than they were when Hitler attacked them. No leadership.
The USSR couldn’t expand west, because Germany was already conquering Europe. Maybe they would go after Manchuria and China, but that would have brought them into conflict with Japan. Their supply lines were too long for them to help in Europe or the Middle East. And they already had Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia from before the war.
An invasion of Great Britain was never going to work, and the Soviets wouldn’t have helped any.
D-Day might have been a year later, but we would still develop the Bomb. And so maybe it would have been Berlin and Moscow instead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, although no doubt Japan would have suffered under our intentions later as well.
Regards,
Shodan
They could have gone south basically, teaming up with the Germans and Italians to attack into the middle east, Greece, Afghanistan and threaten India. They could team up with Japan to finish off China and assist in an invasion of South East Asia. You are right, they wouldn’t have the same army with the same motivation and certainly not the same material assistance, but Germany could have supplied them with some of their needs (and vice versa…for all it’s technological advancement the Germany aren’t wasn’t even close to fully mechanized, and the Soviets might have been able to help them by building trucks and logistics vehicles…something the US did for the Soviets in our actual history).
No, I don’t think an invasion of the UK would be possible, but I’m not sure if if they could protect their empire very well. India would actually be something that could be taken from them, and certainly Egypt and North Africa would be tough for them to hold onto, even if the US still entered the war at some point. Germany would be able to consolidate their gains in Western Europe and probably able to focus more on the air war with the UK.
That’s a good point about India, in particular.
I was under the impression that the Battle of London very much downgraded the Luftwaffe, as well as the large advantage conferred by radar. And I would also assume that all the production of the US industrial machine that went to GB and the USSR would go strictly to GB and/or get used by the Allies. How much of a naval power was the USSR in the 40s? Would they have been able to assist in the war against GB that far from their homeland?
Regards,
Shodan
Russian naval power was pretty negligible at this point. I don’t know exactly, but I doubt they had many, if any large capital ships. Certainly they wouldn’t have added a lot to what the Germans had. But the Axis almost certainly would have focused on the land warfare, I assume mainly in North Africa, especially Egypt, and the Middle East regions, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and threatening India. They might have been able to cut off the entire Mediterranean from the UK, something they were unable to do in our timeline.
Battle of Britain, but yes; the Luftwaffe lost over two thousand planes, and almost all the aircrew.
An invasion of Britain just wasn’t in the cards. The Axis literally did not have the ships to do it, USSR on their side or no.
Having said that, switching the USSR to the Axis side changes history so much that it’s difficult to speculate. It completely changes the strength of both the Germans AND Japanese, and gives the Germans more than enough resources to win the war in Africa and so take the Middle East. It is conceivable in such a scenario that Germany could find a way to placate the United States and avoid war with them, and negotiate terms with the UK.
A hypothetical Soviet-Nazi alliance renders the need to actually put boots on English soil moot. Without the maw of an Eastern Front chewing up the vast bulk of their industrial resources, Germany is freed to devote massive resources to the Luftwaffe, and more importantly, the Kriegsmarine. Dönitz gets his 300 U-boat fleet by, say, early 1942 - the UK is starved into submission in a matter of a few months. There’s no way the US has a D-Day in this scenario, because it would have been impossible without a friendly UK from which to launch it.
(post shortened)
Hitler and Stalin were allies. They signed a pact and everything. Stalin invaded Poland two weeks after Hitler had. Hitler later chose to invalidate their agreement by invading his former partner. Stalin was shocked, surprised, and bewildered.
No. They were not allies, at all. They were trading partners who had a non-aggression pact against each other, and an understanding on dividing up Eastern Europe into respective spheres of influence. Ribbentrop made a major push to get them to actively join the Axis in late 1940, but Molotov was having none of it.
This was a different secret alliance, where apparently Stalin et al proposed a joint German/Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq as well as a push into the Balkans and Greece.
:smack:
Supplied by the US, maybe then Britain could have held out.
So then the Axis concentrates on the Middle East. Was oil well developed enough there to address their fuel concerns? Were they strong enough to be able to dominate the Mediterranean, or was GB still the dominant naval power there?
As long as the Japanese don’t bomb Pearl Harbor, or Hitler and Stalin disavowed it.
I wonder how effective the Soviet army would be in a foreign war, like in Africa. Obviously, if Stalin said “send a million soldiers to Tangiers” they would go, and eventually the Soviets were able to defeat the Germans. But I thought the Soviets won mostly because, a) they were defending the Rodina, and b) General Winter. Would they have been willing to die so freely to conquer Timbuktoo? Would the winter also have interfered with their ability to move supplies overseas?
I don’t think any troops compared with the Germans man-for-man in 1940, especially after they were blooded in the conquest of France etc. But IIRC the Soviets relied on burying their adversaries in numbers, despite enormous casualties. “Defense in depth”, except it was depth of blood and body parts. They weren’t going to conquer Africa in a fighting retreat. And transporting a million Russian peasants to the Middle East is no small matter, nor is arming and supplying them after, especially without enough shipping. Could they win with the same tactics? Especially if they had a choice.
I didn’t listen to the YouTube vid completely, but does it assume that the Axis didn’t develop the Bomb thru lack of resources rather than lack of interest?
Interesting thread.
Regards,
Shodan
He kind of tosses in an Axis development of a bomb at one point but it wasn’t a major factor in the final conclusion which had all of Europe and Russia, most of China and South East Asia (and India due to a civil war) in Axis hands at the end, with the allies (the US does get involved according to the video) having Australia, much of the Pacific rim area and about half of Africa, Central and South America as well as the home islands of the UK in allied hands when an armistice is reached.
The video you linked to in the OP refers to the 12 November meeting between Ribbentrop and Molotov. However, it was not the Russians who were pushing this idea - it was a German initiative. See the following quote from The Deadly Embrace, Read & Fisher, 1988:
The Soviet counter-offer on 25 November, also referenced in the video, was not a serious one:
I might have mis-remembered that part in the video, but it was the (pretty weak) basis for the change in history with the Soviets allying fully with Nazi Germany and against the UK (and later the US). No, I don’t think it was a serious offer/counter offer…obviously, since that’s not how history played out. Neither side was really seriously contemplating a full on alliance with the other, and in fact Germany and Hitler were pretty much planning all along to invade the USSR (pretty sure Stalin et al were equally planning to eventually go to war and conquer Germany, just a few more years down the road). It was one of their primary goals, with the UK really being a side show for them.
How do US supplies get to a Britain surrounded by hundreds of U-boats augmented by a reinforced Luftwaffe?
Probably not much better than it was when it performed dismally against the Finns in the Winter War. Keep in mind, even in our timeline, the Soviets weren’t able to mount a major offensive (Operation Uranus) until after a year and a half of struggling against the Axis. And even then, the hammer blows fell largely on ill-equipped and poorly led Italian, Romanian, and Hungarian troops.
Hey, I’ve no problem with discussing hypotheticals. (I wouldn’t be here, otherwise!) That said, I just wanted to clarify the starting point of this particular hypothetical. Of course, you are largely* correct about actual German and Soviet intentions.
*The extent to which Stalin really intended to wage aggressive war against Germany is, AIUI, still a matter of considerable historical debate.
True, though if they were attacking into the Balkans, Iran, Afghanistan or maybe Northern China it wouldn’t be exactly against top of the line and focused forces at that time either. But it would probably be similar to their early cluster fuck campaigns and they would probably take some pretty heavy losses even in coordination with whatever other Axis powers they were able to link up with. They would also have some very serious logistical issues that the video linked in the OP didn’t really go into.
Naw, it was a good point that I freely concede. This is a pretty weak hypothetical as it’s very unlikely, but it’s still interesting to discuss, and as the other thread got some interesting responses (though not a whole lot of interest) I figured I’d do this one next.
And by the Soviet submarine fleet, which was the largest in the world in 1939.