was not aware of Churchill's plan

[eagle7-31]

until I watched this video. Good idea although it would have very difficult to achieve. Keeping Stalin out of Europe after WWII very noble idea.

 

[jwoodie]

A somewhat fanciful idea, especially coming from Churchill. He was great for British morale, but his motive for fighting another war against Germany was more personal than patriotic. (He wanted to make up for his catastrophic mistakes at Gallipoli during WW1.) Britain didn't give a shit about Poland other than an excuse to declare war on Germany (but not on the USSR, which was equally culpable). Even during the ensuing war, Britain's main strategic concern was maintaining its own empire rather than liberating other countries.

Ironically, the one thing that could have convinced the USSR to leave the Eastern European countries alone was its spy network that had infiltrated the Manhattan project and informed Stalin of its progress. However, the ailing FDR fell for Stalin's promises of free elections at Yalta and allowed the communist enslavement of those countries for the next 50 years.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

A western assault would have succeeded so well that Russian troops would have been on the English channel, Normandy, Bordeaux, and the Spanish border in six weeks.

 

[AZrailwhale]

A western assault would have succeeded so well that Russian troops would have been on the English channel, Normandy, Bordeaux, and the Spanish border in six weeks.

Yeah, right. The Red Army had already outrun its supply lines and had never faced TACAIR as capable as what the WAllies had or strategic bombing. It’s tactic of lining up hundreds of guns hub to hub for bombardment would get eaten alive by WAllied fighter bombers , attack bombers and medium bombers. The Russians maybe might have made it to the Rhine, but no further and couldn’t have held what the gained in the face of WAllied AirPower and mobility.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

Yeah, right. The Red Army had already outrun its supply lines and had never faced TACAIR as capable as what the WAllies had or strategic bombing. It’s tactic of lining up hundreds of guns hub to hub for bombardment would get eaten alive by WAllied fighter bombers , attack bombers and medium bombers. The Russians maybe might have made it to the Rhine, but no further and couldn’t have held what the gained in the face of WAllied AirPower and mobility.

The German tacair set the standard, and the Russians beat it.

The Russian artillery would survive Allied air.

The Russians had reserves; the Allies did not. There were no training divisions left in the US.

We were sending what we could to the Pacific to defeat the Japanese.

The British and our allies in Western Europe had survived almost six years of war, and the countries needed to rebuild. They would not support the US in war against the USSR.

Neither FDR or HT would have supported the idea.

 

[AZrailwhale]

The German tacair set the standard, and the Russians beat it.

The Russian artillery would survive Allied air.

The Russians had reserves; the Allies did not. There were no training divisions left in the US.

We were sending what we could to the Pacific to defeat the Japanese.

The British and our allies in Western Europe had survived almost six years of war, and the countries needed to rebuild. They would not support the US in war against the USSR.

Neither FDR or HT would have supported the idea.

By the time the Red Army went on the offensive, the Luftwaffe had been gutted. Its best pilots were piloting fighters over Germany. The Germans were flying He-111s, Ju-88s and Ju-87s. All carried small payloads and had derisory defensive armament. The Ju-88 was the best of the bunch, but compare it to the B-26 Marauder: 6 7.92mm hand-held machine guns and 3,100 pounds of bombs, vs 11 .50 caliber guns and 4,000 pounds of bombs. The A-20 carried heavier gun armament and a larger bomb load than the Ju-88. The WAllied heavy bombers would have obliterated the Soviet supply lines completely cutting off supplies from the combat areas. WAllied pilots were better, their fighters were better and more numerous, their light bombers were better and more numerous, ditto medium bombers and the Soviets lacked heavy bombers entirely. The only Soviet aircraft in the same league as WAllied ones were the Il-2 and the Pe-2.

 

[AZrailwhale]

The German tacair set the standard, and the Russians beat it.

The Russian artillery would survive Allied air.

The Russians had reserves; the Allies did not. There were no training divisions left in the US.

We were sending what we could to the Pacific to defeat the Japanese.

The British and our allies in Western Europe had survived almost six years of war, and the countries needed to rebuild. They would not support the US in war against the USSR.

Neither FDR or HT would have supported the idea.

The Russians had no reserves, the Red Army had 10,000,000 men killed or captured during the war. The Soviets drafted men and women from 16 to 30 years of age during the war. Red Army troops got minimal training, in theory ninety days, much of which was wasted since weapons and ammo were lacking in training units, but often that was shortened to as little as three weeks with raw recruits being fed directly into units in combat for “training”. By 1944 the draftees had been living on a thousand calories a day for three years. Russian civilians were on starvation levels of rations for the entire war. What food there was went to the Red Army.

Medical care was poor, units were left in combat until they took over sixty percent casualties, then pulled back and consolidated with the survivors of other units and green recruits and fed right back into combat.

by the Battle of Berlin, the Red Army was on its last legs.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

Silly rebuttal. The Red Army was anything on its last legs.

And you ignored all of my valid points.

No uniform for you, buddy. To the stockade.

 

[whitehall]

Plans are like assholes. Everybody has one. After the disaster of Dunkirk that the media turned into a propaganda victory, England was on it's last legs and dependent on America's industrial might. There is no way that the island nation could mount an invasion of Russia especially while Russia was considered an ally.

 

[AZrailwhale]

Plans are like assholes. Everybody has one. After the disaster of Dunkirk that the media turned into a propaganda victory, England was on it's last legs and dependent on America's industrial might. There is no way that the island nation could mount an invasion of Russia especially while Russia was considered an ally.

Dunkirk turned an unmitigated disaster into a mitigated one. If the British had lost their army there, it's likely that even Churchill would have been forced into a negotiated peace with Germany. That would have extended the war in Europe by years since the USA would have had to conquer either the British Isles or another base before being able to face the Nazis on their home ground. In the scenario, it's unlikely that even FDR could have rallied American support for a war with Germany.

 

[ThirdTerm]

It was a contingency plan just in case for the Soviet invasion of Western Europe. Churchill thought Operation Unthinkable would be necessary, if the Soviets had invaded France and the Netherlands after the withdrawal of US troops from Europe. Churchill was voted out of office in 1945 and the plan was effectively canned.

 

[Zebra]

A western assault would have succeeded so well that Russian troops would have been on the English channel, Normandy, Bordeaux, and the Spanish border in six weeks.

are you sure?

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

Yez, Zebra. The Allies did not have the munitions or other supplies necessary to sustain an all out assault on the Russians. The French would not have supported it, and the British were done with the war. American troops were being shifted from Europe to the Pacific. The material goods were just not available.

 

[AZrailwhale]

Yez, Zebra. The Allies did not have the munitions or other supplies necessary to sustain an all out assault on the Russians. The French would not have supported it, and the British were done with the war. American troops were being shifted from Europe to the Pacific. The material goods were just not available.

The US had war material coming out of its ears in 1944. Troop movements can be cancelled or reversed as needed. The Soviets, on the other hand were totally dependent on Lend-Lease for most of their war material. Only the hundreds of thousand Studebaker deuce and a halves allowed the Red Army to operate offensively. Without them the Red Army would have had to depend on its home-grown, licensed copies of Ford and Chevrolet trucks from the 1920s and horse-drawn wagons.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

You, AZrailwhale, forget that we are talking about the spring 1945. The Germans were defeated, the French and British populations would not have supported it, we still had a war with Japan to finish that took priority on supplies.

Nope, my pup, no war with Russia then or today.

 

[martybegan]

The German tacair set the standard, and the Russians beat it.

The Russian artillery would survive Allied air.

The Russians had reserves; the Allies did not. There were no training divisions left in the US.

We were sending what we could to the Pacific to defeat the Japanese.

The British and our allies in Western Europe had survived almost six years of war, and the countries needed to rebuild. They would not support the US in war against the USSR.

Neither FDR or HT would have supported the idea.

The Russians wore it down, by the end of the war they were barely hanging on.

The US was still in full war production.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

You, AZrailwhale, forget that we are talking about the spring 1945. The Germans were defeated, the French and British populations would not have supported it, we still had a war with Japan to finish that took priority on supplies.

Nope, my pup, no war with Russia then or today.

The Russians wore it down, by the end of the war they were barely hanging on.

The US was still in full war production.

Aimed at Japan. Not Germany. But the French and British populations never would have supported it.

 

[AZrailwhale]

You, AZrailwhale, forget that we are talking about the spring 1945. The Germans were defeated, the French and British populations would not have supported it, we still had a war with Japan to finish that took priority on supplies.

Nope, my pup, no war with Russia then or today.

The war with Japan was already won. Any sane government would already have surrendered. Leaving the Japanese to starve for a few months or years wouldn't have hurt the American war effort. Yes it would have been hard on the Chinese and French Indo-Chinese civilians suffering under Japanese rule. Supplies were not in short supply anywhere. All the supplies destroyed by "Halsey's Typhoon" were replaced within weeks. By early 1945 the USA was churning out war material in quantities that couldn't be used.

I can't see either the French of British governments bowing out of a war caused by a Soviet Invasion of Western Europe after the defeat of Nazi Germany. It would be a direct threat to France and by 1945 the British were very much the junior partner of the WAllies and would follow the American lead.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

The war with Japan was only won if they would give up, and ask my relatives on Okinawa about their combat willingness while losing a war.

Everyone wanted Japan defeated and were not willing to wait a few months less a few years.

The war material was going to the Pacific.

It would be different if the Soviets invaded western Europe. But they did not. And the West had no intention in fighting the Soviets.

 

[Zebra]

A western assault would have succeeded so well that Russian troops would have been on the English channel, Normandy, Bordeaux, and the Spanish border in six weeks.

dont think so ….