What if history scenarios

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telsor said:
Yeah, the benefits of lend lease were mostly at the logistical end for the Russians, and even with that, they still tended to have to stop offensives due to supplies more than anything else.

The Russians had really hit their limit, and if memory serves were releasing men from the army to send them back to the farms/factories (not that they didn't need them at the front, they just couldn't feed/supply them unless they did that). If it'd gone much longer they would have faced massive issues (they'd probably have needed to release a couple of million more). This would have been the real question had the US gone with the 'Patton Scenario'.

Coincidentally, Australia had a similar issue in 42(?) after rallying almost everyone into the Army/militia to face Japan, they realised they were more use elsewhere and demobilised most of them.
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That's what l find amazing about the German military efforts between 1943-5, is despite massive manpower shortages, they could hold out against a lot of pressure, same said of Hungary to a degree, the large number of Hungarians that stayed loyal to the Germans to the end was amazing, fanaticism aye.
 




Maus prototype russia.





 

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Kangaroos4eva said:
Great points. Just quickly, the Russians had few reserves left by 1945 after their 10-12 already under arms. Logistically the soviets by 1945 had something like 70% of their trucks were of American origin, might have been higher even than that.
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Yep the Russians were actually starting to have manpower issues as early as 1943.

When they re-conquered all of Ukraine and Belorussia in 1944 i believe they conscripted something like 600,000 to 1,000,000 of the locals into the Soviet armed forces.
 
Elroo said:
Yep the Russians were actually starting to have manpower issues as early as 1943.

When they re-conquered all of Ukraine and Belorussia in 1944 i believe they conscripted something like 600,000 to 1,000,000 of the locals into the Soviet armed forces.
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Plus a lot of left behind partisans that numbered in the millions, but they also recruited from their central asiatic republics and many of these soldiers were the ones responsible for the mass rapes in Poland, Prussia, Hungary and Germany.
 
Slax said:
Would of been interesting if they were dropped on Tokyo instead of Hiroshima.
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Tokyo had already been gutted. Kyoto was on the target list for the bomb but was actually removed because of its cultural value.
 
thejester said:
Tokyo had already been gutted. Kyoto was on the target list for the bomb but was actually removed because of its cultural value.
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Tokyo was still home to the emperor and if they killed him things would have been very different. Killing of the living god could of either led to a drawn out battle for Japan itself or led to a post war Japan which found it easier to admit to the atrocities that were on a scale even the Nazi's didn't reach.
 
Elroo said:
What if George Patton got his way and the Western Allies attacked Soviet forces?
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Depending on how committed the British were, but the Americans would have won out, particularly if they gained Polish support due to more men, more supplies, the Soviets being heavily undermanned by the end of the war and more war weary (particularly the civilian population in the Soviet Union) and using knowledege from their German prisoners on the mistakes and advantages the Wehrmacht had on the Eastern front, the Western Allies would have won out eventually. Superior air force, in the long term more men and supplies, more effective supply trucks/vehicles (the soviets were heavily dependent on American vehicles at this stage of the war and spare parts for American vehicles would have been scarce after 1945) and if things got really desperate the Americans could use Wehrmacht troops to bolster their lines and use the a bomb in a strategic sense.
 
Kangaroos4eva said:
Depending on how committed the British were, but the Americans would have won out, particularly if they gained Polish support due to more men, more supplies, the Soviets being heavily undermanned by the end of the war and more war weary (particularly the civilian population in the Soviet Union) and using knowledege from their German prisoners on the mistakes and advantages the Wehrmacht had on the Eastern front, the Western Allies would have won out eventually. Superior air force, in the long term more men and supplies, more effective supply trucks/vehicles (the soviets were heavily dependent on American vehicles at this stage of the war and spare parts for American vehicles would have been scarce after 1945) and if things got really desperate the Americans could use Wehrmacht troops to bolster their lines and use the a bomb in a strategic sense.
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What does "win out" mean? They couldn't occupy the USSR, do you mean force regime (communism) change? I'm not sure either option was likely unless they were prepared to drop the bomb.
 
Happy Mastenator said:
What does "win out" mean? They couldn't occupy the USSR, do you mean force regime (communism) change? I'm not sure either option was likely unless they were prepared to drop the bomb.
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I should have been more specific. Win out, l should have stated force mass and eventual surrender of all soviet forces, but it depends where was bombed, because it would require the political machinery of the party and Stalin to be killed or captured to force surrender as Stalin was just as committed and nuts as Hitler was (continuing the war in 1945, l mean wtf, outnumbered nearly 10-1). The bomb is the big what if and l am going off the actions of Japan in 1945 in the aftermath of the bomb as both are totaltarian style regimes, though different in ideology obviously. If there was no bomb, the American's would have steamrolled the soviets, especially if they used German and Axis knowledge of Soviet tactics/strategic areas/local allies in the Baltic states and possibly Finland, the USA and British did have several key advantages even without the bomb.
 
Happy Mastenator said:
What does "win out" mean? They couldn't occupy the USSR, do you mean force regime (communism) change? I'm not sure either option was likely unless they were prepared to drop the bomb.
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The "drop the bomb" scenario is part of the "what if" hypothesis. If the western allies continued eastwards against the Soviets would they have dropped both, or any nuclear bombs on Japan rather than the Soviet Union?
 

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darth_timon said:
If the Nazis had the A bomb I don't think I'd be here to post this. They would have almost certainly used it against London, and they would have eyed Moscow too. Might have been enough to convince the US to back out of the war.
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It had smaller yield and that would have been detriment, plus more favourable peace terms for Germany, even if they built 2-3 of them by 1945, they didn't have enough material to build more and the allies and Germans knew it.
 
Kangaroos4eva said:
It had smaller yield and that would have been detriment, plus more favourable peace terms for Germany, even if they built 2-3 of them by 1945, they didn't have enough material to build more and the allies and Germans knew it.
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The would have used them against the soviets and sued for peace with the Western Allies.
 
Ice-Wolf said:
The would have used them against the soviets and sued for peace with the Western Allies.
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Maybe, we'll never know l suppose, the Western Allies would have been more open to peace, but Soviet manpower reserves were stretched to the limit in 1945, despite common beliefs.
 
Ice-Wolf said:
The would have used them against the soviets and sued for peace with the Western Allies.
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When army group south surrendered after 2 years of full on fighting and dispatching millions of Russian soldiers, the fuhrer approached Speer and asked about nuking Moscow and suing for peace. The Germans knew how to build but didn't have the resources. Hitler was told it would take around 80 % of their energy to build one in 12-18 moths. If Germany supplied that to its nuclear program they would of been overrun before then. They also would of not been given a free ride fighting the Russians, as they were by the allies.

The allies made some strategic and accurate air raids on their attempts to procure a nuclear weapon in unconventional ways, yet never touched the railways east that supplied the war against Russia.
 
little graham said:
When army group south surrendered after 2 years of full on fighting and dispatching millions of Russian soldiers, the fuhrer approached Speer and asked about nuking Moscow and suing for peace. The Germans knew how to build but didn't have the resources. Hitler was told it would take around 80 % of their energy to build one in 12-18 moths. If Germany supplied that to its nuclear program they would of been overrun before then. They also would of not been given a free ride fighting the Russians, as they were by the allies.

The allies made some strategic and accurate air raids on their attempts to procure a nuclear weapon in unconventional ways, yet never touched the railways east that supplied the war against Russia.
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I have doubts about the German capacity to build it...They might have understood the theory, but that is massively different to actually building one. Some of the stories from the Manhatten project were truly frightening in their ignorance, and that contained some of the greatest minds on the planet (radiation safety was 'light', and they almost set off an explosion due to reaching critical mass by accident!). That said, it was estimated that the Manhatten project took ~10% of the US war effort over ~3 years, so 80% over one year for Germany (which had a much smaller economy) is probably on the low side....Also, big projects like that probably can't be sped up THAT much.

As for the Allied air raids...Yeah, they mostly hit the western side of Germany, but that had as much to do with range as anything (especially range beyond fighter cover). They did flatten Dresden though, in large part because it was a major railway supply node for the eastern front.

That said, if the Germans had the bomb, they almost certainly would have used it on the Russians, they hated each other, while they were only fighting in the west because they had to. The war in the east was a different thing altogether...German soldiers 'atrocities' against Western allied troops were usually done by troops just transferred from the Eastern front who hadn't adjusted to the new 'rules' yet....Those atrocities (e.g. killing prisoners when they were 'inconvenient') were pretty normal in the east.
 
telsor said:
I have doubts about the German capacity to build it...They might have understood the theory, but that is massively different to actually building one. Some of the stories from the Manhatten project were truly frightening in their ignorance, and that contained some of the greatest minds on the planet (radiation safety was 'light', and they almost set off an explosion due to reaching critical mass by accident!). That said, it was estimated that the Manhatten project took ~10% of the US war effort over ~3 years, so 80% over one year for Germany (which had a much smaller economy) is probably on the low side....Also, big projects like that probably can't be sped up THAT much.

As for the Allied air raids...Yeah, they mostly hit the western side of Germany, but that had as much to do with range as anything (especially range beyond fighter cover). They did flatten Dresden though, in large part because it was a major railway supply node for the eastern front.

That said, if the Germans had the bomb, they almost certainly would have used it on the Russians, they hated each other, while they were only fighting in the west because they had to. The war in the east was a different thing altogether...German soldiers 'atrocities' against Western allied troops were usually done by troops just transferred from the Eastern front who hadn't adjusted to the new 'rules' yet....Those atrocities (e.g. killing prisoners when they were 'inconvenient') were pretty normal in the east.
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Good points regarding the atomic weaponry, no disagreements here. I'll disagree that the German atrocities on the western front was purely due to the eastern front, there were incidents in 1940 where the first SS panzer division frustrated by the British defence around Dunkirk executed British soldiers after their surrender. Other incidents, the executions in France in 1944 were a result of German anti-partisan tactics used in Yugoslavia and on the Eastern front, committed by SS rather than Heer units, but you were right on that score, with the Das Reich ss panzer division was involved with that, but was more in response to German frustration at resistance strikes against German commanders (the americans would issue no prisoner orders on large sections of the front if one of their commanders was killed, particularly if committed by German snipers at Normandy and the Ardennes). The Malmedy massacre is an interesting one as it was largely out of character of the Germans to kill American prisoners en masse and may have been caused by a prisoner uprising, but the ss members were from the first ss again. I would argue that it was SS motivated (even then just 2-3 waffen ss divisions) caused in response to resistance by either partisans, resistance members, cut off units still fighting (Dunkirk and Mameldy) and responses to Allied bombings and stories of the execution of German prisoners.
 
darth_timon said:
Ends the war in the west swiftly, sends a message to the US and USSR.
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90 % of the dying was done in the east. Nuking Moscow ended all that. Yes Moscow had extensive plans to fall back on the Urals. But not from 1 bomb taking everyone out.
 
little graham said:
90 % of the dying was done in the east. Nuking Moscow ended all that. Yes Moscow had extensive plans to fall back on the Urals. But not from 1 bomb taking everyone out.
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Would have been interesting, especially since the Stalinist system was centralised under Stalin and the Nkvd leadership in Moscow.
 
Kangaroos4eva said:
Would have been interesting, especially since the Stalinist system was centralised under Stalin and the Nkvd leadership in Moscow.
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Not to mention STAVKA.

They made some preparations for Moscow falling in late 41, but by the time a bomb would have been ready (if they were able to deliver it...), the organisational structure was all well and truly back in place. Add to that that Stalin wouldn't have left a clear line of succession (and whatever manouvering there was for this would have been mostly been in Moscow and thus ruined anyway), and the Soviets would have been close to anarchy.
 
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