Of course India would have been in a position to say no. Why do you think they wouldn’t have been? They were independent in 1947.
Because Patton was calling for an immediate attack, which has its positive aspects: The Soviets weren’t dug in and the Allies were already there. Waiting two years would’ve been costly.
The US was in Europe and Japan. They didn’t have a significant presence in India, and there was no way the British were going to hold onto the country much past '47.
It’s worth remembering, in this discussion, that well into the 1970s there were significant numbers of Communists, or at least Reds broadly defined, in Western Europe (except for Britain) who were seriously hoping for revolution. They might well have been players, politically, in a nukeless Cold War scenario.
Yes, the SOE supported and armed them, tossing aside their politics as long as they opposed the Nazis. They would be a factor against an Allied success.
Everybody always forgets the Pacific. Europe is all well and good, and Stalin had already gotten the buffer states his paranoia demanded. But in East Asia? He was just getting started, and in a region we’d always considered our playground and protectorate.
Without the atomic bombs, the Soviets would have gone into the Japanese home islands, taking Hokkaido at least and maybe at least half of Honshu. With a fully Communist Korea and a divided Japan, I don’t think the US could have tolerated the Nationalist Chinese to fall as they did. Could we have ended up fighting side by side with the Nationalists to try to recapture northern China and Manchuria? That might have escalated into a hot and very ugly war right there.
Not without US consent and a provision of a huge amount of US amphibious lift assets, and massive amounts of training in amphibious assaults, cross-language training, etc. The USSR had pretty much no means of conducting any sort of meaningful opposed landing in the Pacific. Had the US consented to Soviet troops in Japan, it would have been far easier to offload them in already secured ports. If the USSR were to try to take even Hokkaido by them, their invasion would have died at the waterline.
The Pacific without the A-bomb would have been a huge deal for the US, however. Operation Downfall (the invasion of the Japanese home islands) would have gone through and would have resulted in massive casualties.
I wouldn’t count on that from the start. The Red Air Force was very large in numbers and would have to be slowly ground down to achieve complete air superiority, or aerial supremacy; something that took years to do to the Luftwaffe. At the end of the war, the US and UK were facing an impotent German and Japanese Air Force while conducting strategic bombing, but against the USSR in 1945 they would have a serious fight waiting for them - I have no doubt that they would win in the end, but it would take a long time and a lot of losses to accomplish.
Everyone was exhausted by the end of WW2; even the USSR was having manpower problems after the massive casualties. The US was the least exhausted of the major powers, but having to conquer Japan inch by inch conventionally would have been extremely costly.
Very important point. The US provided the USSR with over a half a million trucks via lend-lease, to say nothing of oil, raw materials, trains, food, boots, you name it.
You’re forgetting a few things. I have no intention to minimize the success of Bagration. However, Bagration was conducted in an environment of aerial superiority, which the USSR would not have against the US/NATO/the West. There were no 1,000 bomber raids hitting their rail yards or medium bombers hitting road junctions, fighter-bombers strafing and rocketing anything moving on the road in daylight, etc. Bagration also stalled once it hit Polish territory, it was simply too far for the Soviet logistical tail to continue to support without a pause to catch up.
While the advantage of surprise goes to the attacker, defense has always been the stronger stance with all other things being equal. Add to that it’s a hell of a long way from central Germany to the English Channel. There is no way Soviet logistics - or well anyone’s logistics for that matter - could cover going from central Germany to the Channel in one go.
I think you’re being a bit too dismissive here. If that were the case, how were the Soviets able to make landings on the Kuriles ahead of Japan’s surrender a few days later?
Also quite a few mentions of Soviet landing operations in the offensive on Manchukuo.
Sheesh, from the way some people talk you’d think that the world had never seen landing operations before the Americans invented the concept, or something.
Sorry I keep missing the edit window, but one more point: you seem to be imagining the Soviets would face something like Omaha Beach in a bloody slog “at the waterline”, but American experience in the Pacific – especially at that late stage in the conflict – showed that Japanese island defense tactics were completely different: the Japanese preferred to allow the invader to make a relatively unopposed landing and then do their best to wear them down by making them fight for strategic positions inland.
Like I said, everybody always forgets about the Pacific theater.
Especially since the areas comprising Pakistan and India were part of the British Raj (AKA British India) until 1947.
I suspect that there’d be a lot more material aid going to Chiang Kai-Shek as well, and that you’d see a massive Proxy War between the East and West fought in China, with Vietnam being a sideshow of that (assuming the French didn’t decide to renege on their deal with Ho Chi Minh, and instead allow North Vietnam to be an autonomous state within the French Union).
There was, incidentally, a Plan To Invade Russia drawn up by the UK at the end of WWII, which involved re-arming surrendered German soldiers as well as using British, American, and Polish troops. I doubt it would have been successful, but it proves they were thinking ahead.
It’s important to note that “Operation Unthinkable” as noted above by Martini gave, even with effective and quick refit and rearm of the German army (doubtful) a less than stellar chance of winning against the Soviets. And the British had a very solid idea of Soviet capability.
General Bernard Montgomery (1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein) is well known to have offered this advice to soldiers everywhere:
“Rule One, on Page One off the Book Of War, is: DO NOT MARCH ON MOSCOW”, with the Second Rule of War being “Do not go fighting with your land armies in China” (Popularly paraphrased as “Don’t get involved in Land Wars in Asia”)
Given that advice- from Britain’s top WWII General, no less- it’s certain that the British knew that the best Operation Unthinkable could hope to achieve was to keep the Soviets where they were and give them second thoughts about adding Germany, France, and perhaps Spain to the Soviet Bloc.
There’s no way it was ever going to succeed in capturing Moscow, and even if the Allies did, then what? The Soviets would simply move to Astrakhan or somewhere out of the way like that and keep fighting from there. And in the end the Allies would simply be ground down from attrition or you’d end up with a repeat of the horrors of the Western Front all over again, but with more air support. And the Russian Winter.
Indeed. Hitler tried to invade Russia from the west and it broke him. Bonaparte tried to invade Russia from the west and it broke him. Which is why when envisioning how the US and it’s allies might have prosecuted a conventional World War Three against a Soviet-Red Chinese alliance, I came up with what might be termed “the Mongol Strategy”, named after the one force that did successfully overrun both Russia and China: conquer the Soviet Union from the east, and China from the northwest, after occupying central Asia. This would be done by taking the Soviet far east from the Pacific and then temporarily bypassing China to the south. The Arctic islands would be taken and resupplied by air over the pole and used as air bases, plus if possible forces would move north from India.
The reasoning goes like this: Assuming the war began in the early or mid 1960s, the US would have yet again been in the position of having to produce an army of experienced soldiers from green civilians. This learning curve typically takes about eighteen months. During this time it would be helpful to not face bitter die-hard resistance by a canny enemy. At least initially, the USSR and China would be far more ready to yield territory in central Asia than in their homelands. No matter where the US tried to invade, it would have an enormously long supply line in any event, so it would be advantageous if the communist forces intially had long supply lines too. The indigenous peoples of central Asia (non-Russian, non-Han) would be more likely to accept or even cooperate with the Americans rather than fight as guerrillas. The hinterland would have to be taken eventually anyway, and taking it first would cut off a retreat by Russian or Chinese forces. Geographically, Russia and China are easier to invade from central Asia, having huge unguardable frontiers.
This would require thinking for the long term. Critics would ask why the US forces were farting around in Oblivistan instead of attacking European Russia and the Chinese coast and river settlements. But if it were up to me, I would be convinced that this would be the long-term strategy that would lead to a decisive victory.
Better yet, fully commit yourself financially, materially and militarily to propping up the Nationalist Chinese regime immediately after WWII ends. Help Chiang Kai-shek wipe out Mao Zedong’s Communists. Then after a couple of years of consolidation, work with your Chinese allies and their 1 million plus -strong army to invade the Soviet Far East.
The problem with propping up the Chinese in order to have a quasi-superpower’d ally to help destroy the opposing superpower by means of conquest is that, when the dust settles… there’s *still *two competing superpowers.
Unless the plan also involves backstabbing China at some point.
There’s a lot of skepticism over whether China even in its present form could ever be a superpower. Back in the 1940s, with the corrupt Chiang regime beholden to its US patrons, I don’t think that ever would have been viewed as a concern.
But I don’t think Washington would have viewed the existance of other powers in the world as a bad thing, as long as they weren’t communist or fascist. I have the impression that right at the end of WWII, the perceived superpowers of the world were the US, the USSR, and the British Empire. And Roosevelt had wanted to promote China as a fourth power to maintain the peace in the Far East after Japan fell (though the Brits thought the idea ridiculous).
There were historically mutinies post war. I really doubt the place could have been useful, without tying down many thousands in ISD. OTH, historically Peshawar Air base and the ones at Badaber were the scene of the U2 flights and also one of the dispersals zones for SAC bombers, so an independant Pakistan might have supported the operation; after Jinnah was dead.
I’m not being dismissive at all. Take a look at the size of the Soviet landings in your own cites: a combined marine battalion and the 113th infantry brigade in the Kuriles. For Seishin “The main landing force included the 355th Separate Marine Battalion under Major M. Barabolko (1st echelon), the 13th Marine Brigade under Major-General V. P. Trushin (2nd echelon) and the 335th Infantry Division (3rd echelon).” These are minor landings (the largest a reinforced division in size) on secondary areas. You’re talking about taking the home islands of Hokkaido and half of Honshu - an operation on an altogether different scale. A force this small trying to take Hokkaido wouldn’t get very far, and without naval gunfire support aside from a few destroyers it would be in danger of being thrown back into the sea.
Where am I seeming to be imagining that? They shifted to these tactics because it had become painfully obvious that trying to stop the invasion at the waterline and counter-attacking it immediately didn’t work in the face of US naval and air power - things the USSR didn’t have in the Pacific. Since the invasion of the home islands would be the final hurrah, the Japanese did plan on attempting to defeat the invasion at the waterline with a major effort, and only fall back to defense in depth if it failed.
Or there’s me in another thread:
Who are these people?:dubious:
And that’s why you’re saying this in response to me noting that in the absence of the A-bomb that the invasion of Japan would have been extremely costly for the US and would have to be factored into any WW3 hypothetical?
If you study WWII in depth one thing becomes painfully obivous, it wasn’t British tenacity or Soviet manpower that won the war, it was American Lend Lease. Without it, Britian would’ve collapsed (but survived in her colonies) while the Soviets would’ve survived but east of the Urals.
You would’ve seen a vaste stalemate, that would’ve been broken by Hitler’s death (from natural or un-natural causes), as even without suicide Hitler didn’t appear in robust health.
Soviets had no problem retreating and biding their time. And the British navy was too strong so they would’ve survived in Canada and other “white” colonies.
Japan never expected to win the war. Their game plan was to “over-take” all sorts of territory, then when the Allies exhausted themselves, they’d be in a good position to negotiate and keep what they really wanted.
America was so powerful by the end of WWII, America industrial output was more than every other country in the world COMBINED. American suffered not even half a million dead. FDR was no more fond of British imperialism than he was of Soviet expansionism, but was willing to put up with it for the most part.
As another poster pointed out, the Soviets took the easy pickings. After the losses of the USSR it seemed only fair to grant them a buffer. Czechoslavakia was the only real place the Allies failed. It was only after this that the Allies quickly sat up and started to take notice.
Could the Soviets have marched on through to the Atlantic. Yeah probably, but they wouldn’t have held it long. The Soviets could’ve been picked apart in Finland, the Baltics, in the Balkans and through Turkey. Not by Americans but simply by Americans supplying aid to those peoples and denying Soviets the opportunity to take things from their zone of Germany.
Assuming neither side gained nukes, the situation would’ve been much different in many places. The Chinese Civil War may have resulted in a Communist puppet state in Manchuria and a Nationalist China in the rest. The Nationalist put too much faith in America’s nukes and tried to hold too much territory. Had they given up the NE and consolidated their holdings outside of Manchuria, they had a decent chance of holding it.