Let’s say that after World War II officially ended with the surrender of Japan and Germany, there was a relentless anti-Allied insurgency in both countries; like the post-2003 insurgency in Iraq, but ten times worse.
So, dozens of Soviet, American and other occupying troops being killed every day by German and Japanese insurgents. This goes on daily with no end in sight.
What do you think would have happened? The Soviets would probably commit brutal retaliation to suppress an East German insurgency, but would the Americans have eventually pulled out of Germany and Japan? Or sent hundreds of thousands of more troops to quell the insurgency? I don’t think the U.S. public had the stomach for any more fighting by that point.
A token city in Germany or Japan gets nuked. It becomes a recurring threat that when Allied occupation forces are suddenly withdrawn from a former-Axis city, ostensibly because of the intensity of the insurrection, a nuking may follow. The lesson is apparent - a city is only safe while it is being occupied.
They had even less of a stomach for letting the Germans and Japanese get back up after everything they had been through. I think the Allies would have done whatever it took to suppress an insurgency.
This instructional video for US occupation troops in Germany answers the question pretty well: Your Job in Germany - YouTube
World War II wasn’t a questionable war started by a US president on his own initiative using limited forces with a population that doesn’t like civilian casualties against a country surrounded by weakly controlled countries and countries hostile to the US. For the US it started as an undeclared war in the Atlantic for the second time in 20 years, then became a declared war after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. There was no opposition to the war once it started, and civilian casualties were viewed as something to avoid if you can, but not something horrible. Japan is an island and the US Army had the second largest navy in the world, and Germany was surrounded by countries that were either occupied or recovering from being invaded by Germany.
Insurgents would have no way to get supplies and no safe haven to hide in - Germany and Japan were entirely dependent on allied aid just for basic food supplies. Support for winning against Germany and Japan was overwhelming (and pulling out would be seen as losing) for the Western allies, and there was a lot of bloodlust on the Soviet side, and there was an abundance of military equipment and troops to use for the occupation. No one would have any hesitation performing anti-insurgency operations until the country was pacified, it wouldn’t even be controversial - the US was considering reducing Germany to a non-industrial state without this change Morgenthau Plan - Wikipedia
Also, if somehow the US and Western Allies did pull out, then Germany wouldn’t be independent for long. Without the Western Allies protecting Germany, the USSR would march right in and make sure that Germany did not invade them again. The US would balk at depopulating Germany, but Stalin would have no problem with killing everyone in the country and bringing in settlers from less hostile places if there really was an ongoing, unstoppable insurgency - it’s what Germany had just tried to do in Russia, and Stalin was not known for his restraint.
There would be no insurgency against the western allies in Germany, because if the western allies left the whole country would be occupied by the Soviets.
And if you think that after 7 years of war Britain and the United States were exhausted, you should think about how the Germans felt. Germany was flattened. It was a smoking pile of rubble. All the people who thought it would be glorious to grab a rifle and shoot at enemy soldiers had plenty of opportunity to do that during the invasion of Germany, and those people were dead already.
The only people left alive in Germany were those who were finished with the war. People who wanted to continue the war were all dead. The only choice you had to make was whether to try to get to the western occupation zone to get away from the Soviets.
OP, you might want to read about Operation Werwolf, particularly the section on Allied reprisals. Basically a failed Nazi attempt to set up a partisan type resistance which still got the occupiers to act rather harshly to any percieved insurgency.
Also of course, any notion of equipping and training units in insurgency after Germany was occupied would be defeatism. What would be the point of preparing for defeat if Germany was going to win the war? And if Germany was going to lose the war, then its defeat would be total, what would be the point of continuing resistance after the war? You should have fought harder to win the war in the first place.
But Donald Rumsfeld said the post-2003 Iraqi insurgency was just like the anti-Allied insurgency in Germany after WWII. Why certainly a man of his character couldn’t be completely full of shit.
You don’t have a very good grasp on what the US public had the stomach for at that point; I think you’re projecting current attitudes onto it. The US had just finished defeating Nazi Germany at the cost of hundreds of thousands of casualties and had it not been for the bomb was going to invade the Japanese Home Islands where the casualties were projected to be even higher. It had bombed many of the cities in Central Europe down to rubble and burned most Japanese cities down to the ground. Regarding US public attitudes:
I wonder how those percentages compare to the percentage of families that lost a member during the war. I’m pretty sure that Grandmother would pay them to let her be the bombardier if more nuclear weapons were to be dropped.
They had no problem firebombing and nuking civilians during the war, I assume they wouldn’t be as squeamish about civilian casualties after the war. Our troubles in Iraq stemmed from our population’s disgust at the idea of leveling entire cities to take out a handful of bad guys. Also, we considered Iraq (post-Saddam) an ally we were just “helping out”, not an enemy to destroy. WWII-era America had no such disgust. The entire country was considered the enemy, not just the specific personnel fighting us at any given moment.
Without going into all the reasons why such insurgencies didn’t happen, note that the Allies expected more resistance than we ultimately got, from both countries, during an occupation. There was talk of ten years of fairly violent occupation for both countries. No one was countenancing not doing it.
We had a 12m man Army, we had literally turned German cities full of civilians into maelstroms of fire, killing 100,000+ at a go. If Germany had resisted too much there’s a very real chance the Western Allies would have basically scoured the country to such a degree Germany would not be an industrial power today.
Got a reputable cite for this? It sounds more like something his boss GWB would have said.
Rice and Rumsfeld mentioned it in speeches on the same occasion. I also saw it confirmed on the Heritage foundation website defending the reference.
Thanks for the cite, which certainly clinches the case v Rumsfeld, with Rice thrown in for good measure.
Do you mean to say that Heritage has recently defended this Werewolf make-believe? If so I hope you will post the cite if you run across it again.
It ain’t over till its over. Keep fightin’ till the fightin’s done.
Not recently. That Slate article and the below Heritage Fund one are both from 13 years ago.
Great video! Two points: Lots of hats. Why was Patton Oswalt getting stretchered off there about mid-way through?
Any insurgency would have been dealt with brutally by both the Soviets and Allied forces. Pullout? Never happen, since that would probably mean restoration of the old governments. If you’re willing to fight a world war, you’re willing to fight an insurgency. An insurgency, however painful and prolonged, would not cost 60 million lives worldwide. Pulling out and letting the old regimes restore their power might.
Germany and Japan were explicitly promised total destruction should they refuse to surrender. If there’s an insurgency, there’s been no surrender and the destruction of those countries continues.
If it hadn’t been for the atomic bomb, we might have had a chance to find out in Japan. The Japanese were preparing to have children be suicide bombers, and civilians to fight with bamboo spears. The Japanese were prepared to fight gloriously to the death; the difference the A-bomb made, imho, was that they realized they’d be annihilated from the air, without taking any Americans with them.
A dozen killed a day was a fraction compared to during the war. The Allies would have been able to stand that while they fought the insurgents.
Not really. The IJA was prepared to fight to the last man, but the civilians would most likely have gone with suicide rather than attack with bamboo spears and kiddie bombs.
The mass fire bombing, the war situation, the blockade and the state of the armed forces had convinced enough of the key players that further resistance was futile, and the effect of the atomic bombs and the Soviet entry into the war was that they forced the issue.