Posted on 02/10/2022 5:00:48 AM PST by Phoenix8
Shortly after the commencement of Operation Barbarossa, Stalin sent a telegram to Churchill that told him in most undiplomatic terms that:
I think the only way is to open a second front this year somewhere in the Balkans or in France, one that would divert 30-40 German divisions from the Eastern Front, and simultaneously to supply the Soviet Union with 30,000 tons of aluminium by the beginning of October and a minimum monthly aid of 400 aeroplanes and 500 tanks (of small or medium size).Without these two kinds of aid the Soviet Union will be either defeated or weakened to the extent that it will lose for a long time the ability to help its Allies by active operations at the front against Hitlerism.
Churchill replied that he would try to accomodate Russia's needs and would have a convoy of supplies dispatched to Russia's northernmost seaports as soon as the Admiralty could arrange for it, followed by another convoy every 10 days thereafter.
Within a year Churchill had a second supply route opened from the Black Sea northward into Russia.
Without the aid from Churchill, Stalingrad certainly would have fallen, probably followed by Moscow. In traditional Russian fashion, Stalin would have abandoned Moscow and fled to the east but in any case Russia's warfighting ability would have been drastically reduced. The second front that proved so vital in draining the Wermacht's resources never would have materialized.
If Lend-Lease saved Russia, it was only because England already had provided Russia the aid it needed to still be there when Lend-Lease finally arrived.
We should have sent it all to non-commie allies. If the Nazis had taken down the commies, and the other allies and us taken down the Nazis, it’d have been a two-fer.
The Molotov-VonRibbentrop agreement for the division of Poland was probably the basis for that belief. Even the USSR might have agreed as long as such a deal were sweetened, as the fighting was bound to get worse as the German front shortened and the Red Army was pouring into the Balkans and whatnot. Right up to quite near the end of the war (as had happened in WWI), German casualty rates were generally much lower.
The British did try to kill Hitler, via proxies, indirectly feeding money into the internal German resistance. Their involvement didn't pan out, and the twenty or so attempts to kill Hitler between (sez here) 1932 and 1944 either were discovered in time, or couldn't be carried out, or failed. Hard to say what might have been, always, and none of the nutjobs involved in plots against him would have ushered in any great improvements.
He rose to power due to the parliamentary system, as an invited member of the coalition; he brought Germany back economically, and became wildly popular, but was never elected per se. It's likely that his supporters among the rank and file citizens would have been less supportive had they known he wanted to restart world war, but once they'd said yes a little, and had seen what happened to political opposition, they went along to get along.
Hmm, why does that seem familiar?
The Japanese plan to attack the US was seen as foolish by some prominent Japanese, and it was foolish. The Japanese had set up Manchukuo as a Japanese colony and pseudostate under defacto Japanese military control. It too had lots of resources.
Kanji Ishiwara, the joker who'd spearheaded the conquest of Manchuria, opposed Tojo's plan to expand further into Chinese territory, seeing in advance that it would turn into a long war of attrition that would bleed Japan dry.
He lost that argument, wound up retiring to his farm, and died of natural causes a few years after the defeat. Tojo and his fellow dolts were tried for war crimes, executed, cremated, and their ashes dumped somewhere offshore, so there would be no shrine to them later.
Incredibly the Wehrmacht had destroyed well over 20,000 Red Army tanks by the time of their belated attack on Moscow. ( usa has 6333 tanks today total, although it’s not fair to compare). Hitler delayed the crucial move for a swing to Kiev.
This article explains how British armor proved a very big factor at Moscow. Supports what you are saying. Without British armor they likely would have either lost Moscow or inflicted many fewer causalities on Germany., which might have made a difference in the next year.
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