I’ve been reading these posts and find them interesting.
I feel that The Ryan is close. I think people greatly under estimate the Russians in WWII. I think they would have wiped the floor with Germany/Italy, it just would have taken 2-3 years longer.
Blink
…and Bartman
I also think Germany would have been toasted if they HADN’T invaded the Soviet Union. I think that if no U.S. (as in OP) and no invasion of Soviet Union, that the Soviet Union would have invaded Europe in 1944 or so and, after huge battles, crushed Germany.
Well BlinkingDuck now you have left the highly speculative and entered the wildly speculative. Which is of course appropriate for Great Debates ;). Stalin was certainly an odd duck who kept his eyes open for a good oportunity. Historically he never attacked an opponent anywhere near his league. His invsions (Finland, Rumania, the Batlic States and Poland) were all against nations which were radically inferior. Of course one of them (Finland) was able to win some tactical victories but he was able to force them to the barganing table and accept his pre-Winter War demands (a non-aggression pact, just enough territory to take Leningrad and the Murmansk railroad out of artillery range and a naval base to keep the Gulf of Finland open).
If Hitler never launched Barbarossa, it is quite possible that Stalin would have let GB and Germany fight it out and exhuast themselves. I can easily imagine a scenario where Hitler and Churchill spend the war sniping at each other. Neither able to deliver the knockout blow. Hitler slowly increasing his stranglehold on the continent and GB eventually picking off each overseas territory, Libya, the Vichy colonies, Norway etc. Stalin certainly didn’t have any love for the British and had no desire to help them. However this is sepculative enough that even I will decline to offer an opinion on the outcome of a WWII with no US and an initially neutral USSR.
To go from wildly speculative to insanely speculative, what if Stalin/Hitler decided that their hatred of the West (GB/USA) overcame their differences and they allied. That would have made for a very bloody history.
Ahhhh, let’s not go there, way to far fetched.
“Just imagine how we would have advanced from Stalingrad to Berlin without it.” --Nikita Kruschev, referring to American transportation.
Boy, I missed this thread, and me a military historian…
The simple answer to the question posted is yes, absolutely. The Axis would have easily won the war w/o U.S. involvement. The question is what form would that victory have taken, and how long until WWIII would have followed. I am also going to assume that U.S support of the Allies would have been limited to selling them what they could pay for. ( I realize real world realities such as FDR make this uncertain, but the OP said “neutral”, so neutral we shall assume) A couple of misconceptions here. Would Germany have occupied all of Russia? Not a snowballs chance in hell. I do believe, as other posters have mentioned, that without the drain on resourses required to counter the Anglo-American threat, that Germany could have forced Russia to sue for peace, stabelizing the lines along the Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad front. It would also have given Germany access to one critical thing, also previously mentioned-oil) Stalin would have used the time, of course, to build up his forces to retake the land occupied, but that is not the subject here.
In the west, just as Germany had no chance of occupying Britan, England had no chance of doing anything in Europe proper w/o American support. We would have “Fortreess Britain” right across the channel from “Fortress Europe” and the war would have cooled down a bit. Hitler might very well have occupied Spain, and doing so would make Britian’s continued domination of the Med problamatic at best. ( again, remember, if resourses are not going to be used for one purpose( maintaining a strong defense against probable Anglo-American attacks), they can be used for another( Stabelizing the Eastern front on the Leningrad/Moscow/Stalingrad line, or taking Spain, for example(and a Germany victorious in Russia might likely have found a Spain quite willing to acomodate her wishes))) The Nazis could then have conceded North Africa ( for the moment), consolidated what they held, and planned for the future. It would have become, to coin a phrase, a “cold” war.
In the Pacific, without U.S. involvement, Japan would certainly have held sway. They would occupy Korea and the area of China on a line from Manchuria dowm through Rangoon in Burma. They would easialy have occupied Sumatra, Java, the Celebes and New Guinea, giving them access to their coveted “Southern Resourse Area”. As a practical matter they would need to occupy the Philippine, Marshall, Caroline, and Marianas islands, and how they could do that without fighting the U.S. I have NO idea, but if ( as per the OP, we assume that U.S. neutrality is a given, it would have been easy.( a TOTALLY isolationist U.S. Congress, maybe?) At this point they would have stoped as well, most likely. ( Remember, Japan did most of this even while fighting the U.S. Their navy was the most powerful in the world at the time. Yorktown, assisted by other U.S Navy forces sank or severly dammaged Six major carriers at Coral Sea and Midway, without that, the Japanese Navy is still the 800lb gorilla of the Pacific Ocean. I foresee this as the end of WWII. Unfortunately, WWIII would shortly follow as either A: Stalin counterattacks to take back the areas of Russia occupied by Germany, B: Germany and Japan attempt to link up by driving into the Middle East and India respectively, or more likely, both.
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Is it just my warped mind, or did anybody else see this thread title and the other hypothetical Whack-A-Mole thread about slavery if the South had won and immediately thinbk of the old Saturday Night Live sketch “What if Eleanor Roosevelt could fly?” where they had a historian and an aeronautical engineer very earnestly discussing the implications of this?
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Weirddave got a cite? Not to be pendanic or anything but I have several very long posts on the subject earlier on including numbers. You have taken a counter position to mine and not provided any evidence.
To answer several of your points. Even if the USSR was unable to get into Germany itself the front line had already stablized well west of Stalingrad (near Kursk) by '43. Hitler never had another chance to get the Baku oil fields. Here is one set of numbers showing the comparitive power of the nations.
Aircraft Production
1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945
USSR 10382 10565 15735 25436 34900 40300 20900
Britain 7940 15049 20094 23672 26263 26461 12070
British 250 1100 2600 4575 4700 4575 2075
Commonwealth
Total 18572 26714 38429 53683 65863 71336 35045
Germany8295 10247 11776 15409 24807 39807 7540
Italy 1800 1800 2400 2400 1600 – --
Total 10095 12047 14176 17809 26407 39807 7540
The only year that the European Axis produced more than half of the European Allies was 1944. Of course Speer’s assumption of control over the economic ministry started the German upturn in 1942 and his influence really shows in '43-'44. If you look at total armament spending and production the numbers are similar across the board. GB and the USSR were outproducing Germany by about 2-1. In addition these countries would be able to buy other materials from even a neutral US where as Germany was completely blockaded from all but a handful of Eruopean countries. (I know that some goods were shipped to Germany through neutral Spain and Portugual. But these countries kept these shipments at very small quantaties to maintain the appearance of neutrality and prevent their ports from being included in the blockade. In any case the Spanish rail network was in horrible shape and could not support much traffic to Germany without adversely affecting food distribution in Spain.) So in the end the Allies should have been able to eventually win.
As far Japan goes you are certainly right. If we assume US neutrality is a given and somehow the Japanese are unable to prevoke a response, Japan keeps what she had at the height of her power in '42. GB and the USSR would be to occupied with Germany, and later to tired to engage Japan. However I cannot think of a way Japan could have taken any additional territories without a war with the US. Proposing a neutral US while Japan runs over the Pacific (including US territories) is like proposing a neutral Poland in Europe. It just couldn’t have happened that way.
So I still hold to my guns. A neutral US delays the inevitable Allied victory. It does not prevent it.
Now the Disclamer:
I am not saying the Axis couldn’t win. I am saying they wouldn’t win. Historically Hitler could have won the war had several things been different. One important thing would have been switching over to a full wartime economy. Even as late as 1944 many plants were not operating at full capacity and women were being discuraged to enter the workforce. Several tactical issues also were misplayed. However given that the posit of the original post was if the only thing that was different was the US being neutral I have been working under the assumption that everyone would act in the same way as originally happened and would follow on the same lines as happened historically.
Ooops. That last post should be Bartman. I didn’t notice that my wife was logged in.