"A US-Soviet War in 1946/47" Topic

So we arent talking Sov forces, just more armaments, supplies and training?

The warm water port looks VERY alluring in the post war world. The only other part of the globe where that looks possible is Iran.

One flashpoint might be if the Sovs decide to kick Tito out of Yugoslavia. Tito goes screaming to the West for help.

I suspect that everyone was just too exhausted, the only people with enthusiasm seem to have been Mao's people.

Grizzlymc

Well, maybe not Soviet forces 'officially' as that would risk the massive retaliatory bombing and / or nuking others mentioned… but I am sure there would be plenty of Soviet or Bulgarian 'advisors' and 'trainers' deployed, just like in all the other proxy wars of the Cold War.
The Greek Communists could have been supplied with Soviet weaponary which would give the players chance to try out "the cool stuff" which most wargamers so desire – and which is, surely, the whole point of a 'what-if'.

It is speculated that the Soviets kept out of Greece because of Churchill's 'percentages agreement' with Stalin, though Stalin does not seem to have paid much attention to this document (if it did indeed exist) with respect to Hungary, Bulgaria or Yugoslavia.

Does any one know / have any links about Soviet forces in the Balkans in the late 40s? What sort of numbers are we talking?
Also, any details of the Bulgarian army of that time, plus Greek Nationalist and British expeditionary forces, esp naval assets?
I'm busy Googling, but not having much luck… I keep getting referred to sites like maxist.org and would rather not open them at work: my boss is ex-Rhodesian SAS and I'm in the middle of the Congolese jungle – so it's a long walk home!

Hi

Front, the issue with the VVS and the red ball express is simplistic on your part. The luftwaffe was vastly outnumbered by the VVS, the USAF and the brits would not be outnumbered which changes the paradigm about the IL2.

Rocky

Or you could just game the Korean War.

Rocky

I seem to remember from earlier TMP threads re the VVS that the question of whose airforce was better than whose is a bit like "I'll see your Patton and raise you three Monty's" it gets from reason to Religion in a few posts. Although I agree that the Il2 is a bit like the Stuka – its a winner's plane not one for air parity or worse.

The difference is that if both armies are brought to a standstill by interdiction, the result is a defender's victory. And the allies can make more Fords and Studebakers, the Russians cant.

What was not a Russian speciality was nightfighters. Given the number and geographical spread of bombing targets, the few inadequate machines that they have are going to be hitting the allied bomberstreams in small numbers whilst most are in the wrong sector. Tankograd, Magnitorsk; there will be a statue of Bomber Harris in Iraq.

I think a reasonable scenario is that as soon as Japan exits the war there is a Russian push for a warm water port in Southern Europe, which triggers a desperate western defence there from forces still in the Med and a pre- emptive assault in Germany.

The Russian plan is a land grab and force a better peace than they had. They are betting the West will not go for all out war so Soviets will get a 2 step forward, 1 back settlement.

I think a reasonable assumption for a good 6 months is that both sides' tactical air forces are duking it out for superiority, and the allied strategic airforces have not yet bombed tankograd/whatever to it's knees ~(few bases close enough/not enough time/Russian high altitude stuff still operational), and there are no A bombs available. I think to assume Russians could not develop night fighters is wrong, they had superb engineers – it's just that they had no need so far.

I also personally don't buy the argument that US stuff was markedly superior as both sides pursued a similar strategy of using simpler "good enough" kit that they could produce in big numbers. I was the European armies, with smaller numbers, who tended to opt for technology fixes first. Nor do I buy incipient Russian inability to supply trucks etc in 1945, at least for the 6 months or so of a push.

I do buy the view that Western troops were better in C&C, and had better fire control on the tanks and radar etc for game design purposes.

Freecloud

I think the political goals are the most credible – Communist Greece satisfies the great Russian dream of a port and its rail system can be integrated into the soviet system relatively easily.

Betting that the West will not go to war over an insignificant little country was not a smart strategy at that time, but I guess that the political goal would be "fait acomplis, lets stop the slaughter" which might have succeeded.

You are understating the ability of the allies to do interdiction in disputed airspace. The survivablity of a P47 or Typhoon in defended airspace is going to be much greater than that of an IL2.

The USA had enormous manpower tied up in construction batallions in the Pacific. Move those units to Northern Iraq and you can start a buildup of allied bombers. Whilst I tip my hat to Rocky's knowledge of these matters, I think that the USAF might find daylight raids difficult to sustain, but their ally had literally written the book on night bomber warfare and I would guess that Bomber CVommand would mobilise to Iraq first with the B29s coming in from the Pacific as bandwidth increased to hit longer range targets.

Given that a nighfighter is the marraige of a twin engined plane, heavy armament and a radar system, supported by effective ground control, the chances of the Sovs achieving the limited success enjoyed by the Luftwaffe night arm are remote.

Russkies are not big in my library so I am forced onto Wiki (shudders)
link
About half way down the page is a table entitled "Vehicles and ground weapons". Last column is WWII production of military trucks – do you see how in a simple excercise of "Each of us can destroy X trucks per month", the US can outbuild the world, and Canada + Britain outbuild the world – USA, and the Sovs are non starters?

Mechanised war is not about guns and armour; it is about supply. Strategic air warfare is not about flight envelopes and the relative value of a 50 cal vs a 20mm cannon, it is about saturation vs defence systems and tonnes of bombs in an acceptable CEP.

If your Sovs reckon that they have 6 months clear, they are going to get very bloody noses.

Rocky – how long did it take the SeeBees to build the B29 bases for spanking Japan?

@Grizzly yes but I'm thinking – for purposes of the scenario – that Russians have enough stuff and can replenish well enough to cope with losses over the 6 months or so.

I also note that it is a strong tendency to overestimate "our guys" vs "their guys" stuff. Russian aircraft design was pretty good in WW2, and remains so to this day – and they had a lot of them.

Also I just don't believe those Russian truck figures, they look far too low compared to te relative output of other stuff

And besides, who needs trucks when you have tanks :-)

Well, the scenario is a departure from reality so assuming that the Soviet Union could create stuff out of the air is just taking that departure to an extreme. But if Uncle Joe had made your assumptions, he would have had the knock on the door.

How was Russian radar, how good was their air defence information processing system, did they have a modern airborne intercept radar? Doesnt matter how many carrots you eat, sticking 23mm in the noises of your PE2s is only the first step in creating a night defence system.

One of the reasons the sovs could spit T34s out like hotcakes was that they received a lot of Studebackers, replacing those Studebackers after they have been shot up by the Allies is going to require re tooling tank factories to make trucks – similar problem with boots.

Given the choice of 1000 tanks or 100 tanks plus 900 trucks I would go for the latter. Of course if you take all that armour and the guns off your tanks they could carry more than a 3 tonne truck, but their fuel consumption is terrible.

Hi

The story about the see bees is simple. The japanese were working on Guadacanal for months with no working strip…see bees landed, took over the equipment and were operational in days. One "secret weapon" of course was PSP but as with most of these things, we can talk tactics or logistics.

But in this discussion, the simple fact is that the allies had a weapon of "strategic bombing" and the russians did not. Personally, I love fighters. I have lectured at Lackland on fighter tactics. They are FUN…. but the winning conditions for WW2 was strategic.

What is the saying? "Fighters make the news, bombers make history".

Rocky

@Grizzly IMHO you are risking:

(i) overestimating the speed at which a strategic bombing force could be brought to bear, within range, in great numbers – and the speed at which it could stop a large scale Russian assault by bombing the rear inftrastructure (assuming no nuclear bomb is available for quite a while) of a very large country. And that is assuming an uninterruped access to targets to bomb. Re radar, thay had been given top class UK and US stuff during the later war and had captured German equipment as well, and by end '44 had re-engineered one of the British systems into their own Neptune.

(ii) underestimating the volume and quality of Soviet tactical air assets in 1945.

(iii) underestimating Russian industrial scale and resources. They took 400,000 lend-lease softskins over 4 years, but even so lend lease was only 1/3rd of all the trucks they had in service by 1945 and even those (very low) production assumptions on that link you gave (remember, WW2 data out of Russia is typically very inaccurate) imply they coukd cover 6 months worth of attrition, especially as many of the light tank factories were originally truck factories and were coming off light tank production by 1944-45. And to say its coming from "thin air" is absurd – they had serious natural resources.

Anyway, my scenario wants the Russians around for 6 months of scrapping, if yours wants their trucks and cities to all be burned out by week 2, so be it – each to their own.

(We're not arguing about *how* it will be brought to a halt, but by "when*)

Sorry Rocky I didnt ask the question well.

How long did it take for the Seabees to make the B29 airfields on Tainan in '44?

Of course we could also give a load of decent kit to the Finns… I'm sure they'd be appreciative. :)

Could probably take Murmansk again without too much effort, and use Naval power to kick the Soviets out of Vyborg.

Interesting scenarios…

(iii) underestimating Russian industrial scale and resources. … they had serious natural resources.

And a lot of those 'natural resources' came through Lend-Lease. LL provided them with about 1/2 their aluminum, 1/2 their gas (including just about all their high-octane stuff) and piles of other stuff. The Soviet railroad system worked because of 1,000 LL locomotives and 10,000 rail cars and thousands of miles of track, while the USSR produced very little of this kind of thing itself during the war. Given that their rail system would have been a high-priority target for Allied bombers, there soon would have been no resources to fix the many breaks caused by the bombing. Remember what the Allied air forces did to the French railway system before D-Day? It would have been worse for the Soviets, given the much longer lines of supply they had to work with in 1945.

In short I think the Soviets would have made a hard fight at first, but would eventually have been ground down logistically after a few months. The final outcome probably would have been a stalemate somewhere east of where the Iron Curtain finally came down, unless the US deployed atomic weapons.

But the allies arent going to accept peace, because "We got here and cant go any further", The Russkies have to look for peace before they run out of momentum.

This makes the question of can they last 2 months or 6 quite pertinent.

Two and there is a knock on the door at 04:00, "Comrade Vissarionovich, these two gentlemen are from (insert your favourite organ here) they would like to discuss your revisionary counterrevolutionary activities and your recent adventurism"

"What counterrevolutionary activities?"

"Please comrade, get your coat, it is cold in the Lubyanka"

I would have thought 3 or 4 US carrier battle groups in the Black Sea in 1946/7 and 2 or 3 more in the Baltic would have been a bloody nuisance…

@Mserafin – absolutely, the issue is how far the soviets can get, and timing of allied response – ie if they can get a lot of turf before teh allies get geared up the probability is far more towards accomodation. If not, and I think the 4 O'Clock visit becomes more likely.

(Btw I read on a discussion group while looking at truck numbers that Lend Lease vs Home Production is a near-religious between US and Russo philes, so I don't intend to get drawn into it. In my scenario, the Russians have enough materials and capacity to keep going IF they can keep western allied 'planes off it – and vice versa)

@ 4th C – sure – naval assets into the Black Sea will be part of the response…I think the RN will get there first btw, though the real big hits will come from the Meditteranean/ Balkan Air Force, from the get go.

Maybe the most believable rationale would be:

1. A-bomb didn't work or was never developed.

2. U.S. is tied down in an amphibious invasion of Japanese home islands.

3. Roosevelt is dead and Churchill no longer Prime Minister.

4. Stalin sees a chance to roll over most of Europe after U.S. has transferred many of its units to the Pacific.

Actually the RN is off the coast of Japan, but I reckon the Allies will keep their carriers for supporting the Archangel landings, they arent short of planes and facilities in Europe.

Donlowry, If the Sovs start invading small European countries, I would say the invasion of Japan is off the table. They are all going to starve in a year.

1. A-bomb didn't work or was never developed.

2. U.S. is tied down in an amphibious invasion of Japanese home islands.

3. Roosevelt is dead and Churchill no longer Prime Minister.

4. Stalin sees a chance to roll over most of Europe after U.S. has transferred many of its units to the Pacific.

Or:

1. Japan surrendered but no A bombs can be built for several months at least

2. Pacific forces can be handled owing to huge land mass, powerful soviet forces that have just driven Japan out, and opportunity to make common cause with China (and Japan) vs US. British in Burma too far away to act.

3. Attlee and Truman have replaced Churchill and Roosevelt, Russians believe they are more conciliatory

4. Russians see US demobbing, also feel if they took the lions share of beating Germany and won they can handle US/Commonwealth in Europe easily.

By the way, I have just stumbled across Suvorov's views and the big picture could be that this was the now or never moment for Soviets to complete European conquest they planned pre-war

link

The Soviet railroad system worked because of 1,000 LL locomotives and 10,000 rail cars

This specific example is the typical method used to inflate the importance of LL.

The Soviets had 30,000 locos and 600,000 railcars at the start of the war. They (sensibly) decided they could manage on what they had and replacements could wait.
How on earth anyone can claim the 1200 LL locos/10,000 railcars that did not START arriving until late 1944 were critical?

The bulk of LL trucks were sent in 1944-45 and they Soviets had enough in the pipeline to cover their losses for a long time EVEN IF the supply was stopped on day one of any war

Any 1945 war would have started very badly for the West.

Interesting point made by donlowry re. the Western Allies being tied up with invasions of the Japanese home islands. If the A-Bomb tests had been a failure, or there had been a lack of political will to deploy such a devastating weapon, then the US (With Commonwealth support) have to go for an invasion of Japan in perhaps 1946.
Most things I have read on this suggest it would have been an outrageously bloody affair, and would thus have rocked public opinion at home and sucked in enormous amounts of military assets… which might have been a perfect time for the Soviets to make a move in the West.

mkenny

A very interesting post on Lend Lease and I think you make a great point. From the figures you give, LL provided only 3% of Soviet locomotives used in the war.
Out of interest, do you know how many of the 30,000 pre-war Soviet locos were still operable by 1944? Were the LL locos comperable to the pre-war Soviet ones?

I'm not certain that Allied penetration of soviet airspace at this era would be a given- yes the Soviets wouldn't have jets, but the only Allied nuclear-capable bomber would be the B-29 and the Soviet Air Force was in far better shape then the Japanese one when we dropped the A-Bomb on them.

B32 Dominator, with 1670 on order and 130 built by the end of 1945. 20k lbs bombload, and a 3800 mile range. Not many ordered, because the B29 was very good.

4000 B29s (up 20k lbs of bombs, 40k lbs for B29C/B50s) built, and 5000 *canceled*, never delivered. Combat radius of 3200 miles, by the way. We could ferry bomb, launching from bases in Japan or China and land 6000+ miles way, then reload, turn around and fly back the other direction.

And the B36 flew in 1946. Only 384 built in peacetime, but those could fly from bases in the UK to the Ural mountains, drop 72k lbs of bombs *each*, and fly home, all at an altitude that no piston-engined fighter can reach. Oh, and the first 100 could have been in service by October 1946, if Convair got the lead out and pushed harder. How many do you think they could have built if there was still a shooting war going on? A couple thousand?

The Germans couldn't handle several thousand bombers each dropping 4klbs of bombs. What makes you think the Russians could, when the bombers reaching them were carrying 10x the payload? Also, anything from Poland west was fair game for the B17s, B24s, Lancasters, etc.

Strategic Air power cannot win a war by itself, but it really makes the ground war a lot easier to win.

I have no idea how many atomic bombs the US could have cranked out in 1946/47, but it doesn't really matter. A single raid by 100 B36s would put about as much HE on target as an entire 1000-bomber raid by B17s and 24s. I'm not sure the bomb makers could keep up with that delivery rate!

Add the nasty strategic situation to the air parity held by proto-NATO, and it would be fugly on the ground, especially since the 'arsenal of democracy' could be put back into full wartime production, the Russians had absolutely no way to stop the convoys, and the break would allow for new designs to reach units. How many Pershings or M27 mediums?

Anyway, the whole strategic bombing stuff is all very interesting, but we need to get tanks on the lawns people :)

Where, Who, How, etc is what we need.

I vote for Soviets trying to get a warm water port and fulfil the pre war "conquer a spent Europe" gig, but they move to soon in S Europe, Operation Unthiinkable is unleashed by allies in Germany, and some time later a Pacific and Indian/Eastern based invasion follow.

Now that's what I call a cmapaign.

Memory here but I think the Soviets lost c. 10,000 locos during the war to all causes.The Soviets had a large railway system and the distances involved meant they had to have large long haul type locos, they were not backwards in this respect.
Their locos were simpler than the fancy German ones for sure-that is why the German locos froze up during the winter. Germany had to strip all the bells and whistles from their locos to get them working in the cold. Sometimes the simple solution is the best solution!
All the scenarios I have seen here depend on the Soviets sitting transfixed on their ars*s whilst new Allied weapons are developed that will crush them. You must always allow for an enemy countermeasure that will inevitably negate your current lead.
It all sounds an awful lot like the Luftwaffe 1946 dreams we get from the fanbois community.

mkenny

Very interesting – thank you.

I think something else that some are forgetting is political will / public opinion etc. This is where the Soviet Union would have a massive advantage over the west. After 6 years, many of the rank-and-file in the armed forces of the Commonwealth were simply sick of the war – there were, for example, 'mutinies' in the RAF and Royal Indian Navy in 1946 prompted by the slowness of demobbing.
I have no doubt that these fellows would have fought tooth and nail to defend their homelands – but to defend Norway, Turkey, Persia or Greece? Rather less likely, I'd suggest.

A socialist government had been elected in the UK before VJ day and there were many across Europe who were still to see Stalinism for what it really is. Indeed, there are STILL plenty in Europe who refuse to see Stalinism for what it was.

There would have been plenty in the west who – either for reasons of war-weariness, political expediency, financial ruin or genuine support for Communism – who would have wanted to turn a Nelsonic eye to any Soviet move on Finland ('well, they sided with the Nazis, didn't they?), Austria ('Hitler was an Austrian, don't you know?'), Yugoslavia ('let the Commies fight it out among themselves') or Greece ('well, half of them are commies anyway – why should we bother?') etc.

I'm not saying there wasn't a similar feeling within the Red Army rank and file, or from mothers all across the Sovieet Union – only that you'd be a damned fool to express such thoughts out loud.

A free press, democracy and all the rest of it are great things – but I'd suggest they would have put the west at a distinct disadvantage in any immediate post-war clash with the Soviets.

Freecloud

I think the best Soviet target would be Greece, for the reasons you say. India is not practicable, you have a logistical tail running through Afghanistan. Entering the soviet Union through Vladivostok is like perfoming brain surgery using the anus as an entry point; there are easier routes. The Iranian entry is interesting, remember the country was partitioned by the Brits and the Sovs.

Mkenny, I would say that the only credible scenarios are dependent on the Allies sitting on their arse awaiting events. The allied strategic bombing arms were not luft 46 stuff, they were in the early stages of re deployment to bomb Japan, build airbases in N Iraq and they can re deploy there. There were still large tactical airforces in Europe.

BullDog, I think that industrial disruption in Britain and possibly guerilla war in France. But I think the Atlee government would have fought, perhaps not for Finland, but certainly Norway and Greece.

The fundamental problem with it, and I suspect the reason Uncle Joe didnt try it, is that the whole business stinks of the Japanes strategy of 41/42 – 6 months of mayhem, then sue for peace on the current limits of your empire. The allies just have to tot up GDP's to know who is going to win a protracted war:

Sovs 500bn (1990 dollars)

Commonwealth 350bn
France 100 bn
USA 1.5 bn

End of story – the USA's GDP was about half of that of the industrialised world. So why let Uncle Joe turn Greece into the new Czechoslovakia?

Grizzlymc

Are you sure your figures for GDP's are correct? I guess the figure for the USA is a typo, but the Combined Commonwealth being less than the USSR? Bearing in mind that the UK alone has a bigger economy than Russia today… and the UK has been in decline for 60 years…

Bulldog

The figures are from "The Ecopnomics of WWII, Mark Harrison".

The GDP of the USSR is not easy to measure, but was comparable to that of Germany, which makes sense in terms of the two years of stalemate on the Russian Front.

I am pretty sure that the USA figure is not a typo. USA had a comparable GDP per capita to UK metropolitan, but a large population.

It is a common British misconception that the UK has been in decline for the last 60 years. Until the GFC a couple of years ago nothing could have been further from the truth. And dont forget that Russia today is a bit like Austria in the twenties and Britain in the sixties; an empire with all head and no body.

Grizzlymc

A bit of Googling has given me the following:

link

Soviet Union 343
UK 331
USA 1474

GDP in 1945, US 1990 dollars eqiv, figures in billions.

Yep build airbases in Iraq to bomb Russia.
Russia that has a land connection with Iraq.
I am sure the reds will just sit and wish they could get at theose airfields!
It still is simplistic. There is no account taken of the Soviet '1946' developments at all.

Grizzlymc

The reason I said you made a typo on your post if you said the USA had a GDP of 1.5bn, compared to the Commonwealth's 350bn – surely the USA can't have had an economy less than 1% the size of that of the Commonwealth?
Surely 'billion' should be 'trillion' in the case of the US?

re. UK decline – you are, of course, correct.
The British economy has grown pretty much year-on-year since 1945 – it was a lazy soundbite on my part, and I should have said: 'the UK's economic position has declined relative to other nations'.
I see that the latest figures for the G20 show China's economy is now twice the size of the UK's and Brazil is poised to over take it too.
In 1945, the UK's economy was over 3 times the size of France's and almost 4 times the size of Italy's – whereas now these three are now all much of a muchness.

mkenny

The airfields and all that oil too!

Bulldog – you have the right of it – trillion, your figures are for '45, I used '44 because the GDP slackened a bit in '45, presumably as nations slowed down war production. So I felt the 44 figures gave a better indication of nation's capacity to slug it out. Any which way, the rump of europe could just hold its own against the Sovs (although this requires them to survive ther first 6-12 months, as the French and Poles could not in '39/40), but to defeat the USA would take a global coalition.

mkenny
Any attack on northern Iraq is going to come from Sov occupation forces in Iran, there was no direct frontier with Iraq. This would be the easiest front for the brits to reinforce from Burma. The size of both forces would be limited by the poor road and rail net, but the allies have control of the gulf ports and have a shorter tail.

It is true that the Sovs can attack in Norway, Germany, Greece, Iran, Manchuria, and even in Mongolia. But that is not sound and will merely accelerate the inevitable.

Forget technology folks, a yak with a jumo in its nose is just a fighter, maybe it's 1.1 fighters, likewise a JS3 is a tank. What matters is capability and logistics. Places like Iran and Greece favour small well supported armies.

Now what Sov 46 develpments will make a great difference?

Donlowry, If the Sovs start invading small European countries, I would say the invasion of Japan is off the table. They are all going to starve in a year.

My assumption was that Stalin would wait until the U.S. was ashore and firmly committed.

I am reminded of Hitlers confident prediction he had only to 'kick in the front door' and the whole Soviet system would fall to bits!

donlowry

Agreed – in fact, Stalin might even have made some sort of a deal with the Japanese and allowed their army in Manchuria to return to the homeland.

Hi

Adding to "Lion's" points….I don't off hand know how long it takes to make a specific B29 base. The issue was not one for US engineers. In any case, the 20th and 21st were already on station in china with assets galore. Flying north or west to bomb russia versus their old flying east mission isn't a big change.

And again, the issue was not weather the russians had radar. They simply could not reach the 29 or the 36s, that simple.

Economics. I used to see the studies we were doing, and when inside argued that the numbers were wrong. One thing you might look for is Moscow itself. Look at the infrastructure of 1944 or 1950 Moscow. Big cities need rail and road just to feed themselves let alone supply war material. I always argued that the population of russia we were reporting during the cold war was too high for the simple reason that they were not eating enough. Subsequently after the fall, it turned out that the official numbers were high, and I would argue so was everything else.

So, in order to get down in the mud and fight T34s versus Shermans, you need to base the fight on stuff other than the facts.

Rocky

mkenny – It nearly did, it took the Russians three years to get back to status quo ante bellum.

Donlowry

So are we waiting till November 45 or April 46? Because the assumption that the first bombs didnt work is credible with any weapons system, but we are getting to the end of the anniversary of the first nuclear test if we wait till Coronet.

Well Rocky, I guess that all whatifs need some handwavium, but the disagreement here seems to be whether the handwavium budget is appropriate for a whatif or a fantasy game.

mkenny, the Soviet frontier on the Iraq border is mountainous. Really, really mountainous. That limits the avenue of approach to south into Iran and then west, which is also pretty hilly.

I wasn't writing anything about 'if the Soviets wait on their hands', I was saying what was either in service, ordered, or under no hurry because the war was over.

No developing new superweapons, everything was in service or could have been if a need developed.

Rocky is the first to mention one of the major weapons Lend-Lease supplied the Russians--food. The Ukraine was a mess and had lots of Nazi-sympathizers/collaborators left in place. Talk about a 5th column! The US shipped millions if not tens of millions of man-days of food to the Soviet Army. How much was still in stock several months after the cessation of hostilities, who knows. But it wasn't going to be replaced once things heated up again. An army can strip an area of only so much food until even a locust would starve. Where would the Soviet Union get its calories?

Gents

At the risk of a dawghousing:

Socialists need less calories than capitalists – ask Michael (Supersize) Moore

@Freecloud: As far as the cause of my WW3 in 1946-47, a warmwater port that isn't constrained by the Dardanelles.

The Baltic fleet is too easily interdicted by anyone, and Turkey of all nations could strangle traffic going into the Black Sea. A port on the Med wouldn't be a huge improvement, but it would cut down on the number of nations that could economically attack the Soviet Union. A port on, say, France's Atlantic coast, would be a godsend to the Soviets. So would all that space and natural resources.

Grizzlymc

Michael Moore himself, presumably, being the exception that proves the rule?

On the food front remember somebody has to produce that food if he's doing that he's not fighting.

jdg

@Lion that was why I thought of Trieste as the target. Balkans are too hard (see Germany/Austria and Balkans, failure to keep control of) but extending the Red Fist into Austria and Trieste, why not. Thessaloniki may be another option but Greece is a long and hard supply line.

I think this fascinating discussion is devolving into 2 camps – those that think the Allies (mainly US) had such extreme superiority that it would be a turkey shoot due to the strategic bombing, and those that think it would be much tougher.

I personally believe the latter case is far more credible, and reflect that everybody in history underestimates the Russians time and again. (May I also add that the US tends to overestimate itself time and again too ;-) )

Before this gets "religious" and each side accuses t'other of designing "make believe" scebnarios, I will get back to the original objective – a backstory to get our allied WW2 armies fighting each other :-)

Thus, my scenario thesis is for 6 months:

1. WW2 is now over, the point of departure occurs as Allies are starting to demob in Europe and Russia sees Japan as no threat

2. Soviets seek a warm water port in the Med, and to consolidate hold in Balkans. They try a 3 pronged approach – attempt to bring Yugoslavia under control, ditto Greece, and invade Austria with the objective of getting Trieste.

3. To divert allies, they launch a large but mainly diversionary operation in Germany with limited aims

4. They attempt to make make common cause with Japan and interfere in China as a counter to US activity in Pacific, which slows all that down. Ditto, Iraq is a hard terrain to fight over so I assume not a lot happens there except setting up for strategic bombing

5. I largely discount the "No Lend Lease Will Cause Soviets to Collapse" argument because (i) As many will point out the Russkis had a lot of stuff already, (ii( they had a lot on the ground already by then, and (iii) their own industry – like the US – had grown massively in WW2. I agree that after 6 months they may be starting to struggle to replenish losses, but that is a long time in war…

6. I also think the short term ability of the Allied strategic bombing force is limited as (i) the Soviets did have high flying planes and far better technology and numbers than Japan, (ii) the Allies will take time to get an effective campaign going at these extreme ranges and huge land areas and (iii) if we assume no nukes in the short term, the history of strategic bombing is that it takes a long time to have a major effect even once it is started.

7. As to the tactical air battle, frankly I think the view that beating the VVS would be a cakewalk is optimistic – the Russian have always made perfectly good planes, and they had a lot of them. Thus I assume for 6 months it's a struggle by both sides to achieve air superiority.

8. As to the land battle, I think it will be easier for the Soviets to make their reluctant trooops fight offensively until it is clear to the west what is gouing on, so we need to limit western allies offensive behaviour initially.

9. For differentiation purposes I'd assume that Soviet shooting and C&C is on the whole worse than western allies

10. The western alies start to "Un-demob" a lot of their European assets which start to arrive in incraesing numbers in the 6 months, so the Soviet gains in month 1-2 are critical.