We’d have nuked Commie Joe.
We had nukes.
Depends on how effective our use of the atomic bomb would have been.
We could only produce a one or two at a time, so we would have to have picked the targets very carefully.
But one thing is certain. We would have obtained air superiority very quickly, and the Eight Air Force would have been able to strike Soviet war industry in a thorough and effective way. Even the factories which Stalin had moved to east of the Urals.
In this alternative view, do we still nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
The we nuke Leningrad and Moscow and the Soviets surrender.
Depends on how quickly we could have made more A-bombs.
We would have. We had the only atomic bombs.
Traitors had not yet slipped the Soviets the information on making them.
Alt-history ping.
We could have fought them from two fronts, western Europe and a conquered Japan
According to Patton the Red Army ate, burned and pillaged there way to Berlin. If they had to retrace their steps they would starve to death.
Direct link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8B3ceKwV8Q
The Russians were certainly tough soldiers who had been through hell (our troops too but not as long a period of time) but our air superiority, massive numbers of equipment, I believe, would have eventually won the day, even without nukes - if we were just talking about pushing the Soviets out of Eastern Europe.
To completely destroy the Soviets would have taken longer, but still, the Allies would have eventually prevailed.
The United States was supplying Soviet Russia with war material. If all that were cut off, I don’t think Russia could have made up the difference on their own.
I will say this.
Thank God for Hitler sending 4.3 million Germans to their death on the Eastern Front.
And thank God The Russians spent 10.6 million lives fighting the Germans.
Otherwise how many millions of US lives would have been spent?
The US would have won. Russian divisions where about half to a quarter size of regular army divisions(something we didn’t know at the time) effectively making their armies only about 50% larger than ours and Russia were almost entirely out of manpower. Add to that our domination of the air, the fact that we where supplying them with all the trucks, food, and gas needed to keep the USSR from collapsing we would have been to Moscow within a year.
Nukes wouldn’t have been a huge factor in this war because the production of the weapons wasn’t very fast at the time. We would have nuked maybe 2 or 3 Russian cities before the fight was over while our long range bombers would have destroyed Russian heavy industry within 6months using conventional attacks.
Patton wanted to re-arm the German army troops and use them as a strike force. That would have taken until Japan had been dealt with. So you would probably be looking at a fall, rather than a spring, kickoff.
Of course, Patton’s elimination took care of that option.
The Russian ground forces would probably have beat the allies as long as they could maintain a fresh supply of men and equipment to throw at the allies in mass. However, The allies would have quickly swept the Russians air force away and the allied bombers would have quickly degraded their supply lines until the Russians ran out of everything especially food and ammo and their soldiers would have surrendered for a hot meal.
Glad it never came to that. That’s about the only scenario worse than the invasion if Japan.
Only nukes would have done it. By that time Ivan had a hard crust on him.
Cut off the lend lease gravy train to the USSR and they would be hurting in short order.
That being said, such an effort would certainly face unforeseen issues and be painful for all involved by the time it was completely finished. The US swept the floor with all others when it came to logistics, but this is still an invasion of Russia we are talking about.
Also the will of the American People to continue the fight would also have to come under serious consideration. I have always wanted to find a source that spoke about what level of dissatisfaction there was among Americans leading up to V-J day (if anyone knows any, please suggest them!)
God only knows what the long term political ramifications would be, but if WWI’s effect on the European psyche is any guide, I can’t imagine they would be positive.
We would have since we supplied a lot of what Soviet Russia needed.