Could the Soviets had taken Europe after the unconditional surrender of Germany?

[westwall]

Russia had a chance at freedom in 1990

They chose Putin

No, pootin took them over via corrupt voting.

DURRRRRR

 

[westwall]

Patton won battles, Eisenhower won wars

Eisenhower had the good sense to let Patton win those wars for him. Ike was a good politician, and kept the peace between his generals.

His planning skills were lacking. His "Broad Front" strategy cost the allies more casualties, and more time, than if he had chosen a more focused strategy.

 

[rightwinger]

Eisenhower had the good sense to let Patton win those wars for him. Ike was a good politician, and kept the peace between his generals.

His planning skills were lacking. His "Broad Front" strategy cost the allies more casualties, and more time, than if he had chosen a more focused strategy.

Pattons weakness was he had little consideration of logistics
Logistics wins wars

 

[westwall]

Pattons weakness was he had little consideration of logistics
Logistics wins wars

Patton fully appreciated logistics. He was a master of accomplishing much, with little.

Eisenhower was wrong to starve off Pattons supplies to appease the incompetent Montgomery.

 

[AZrailwhale]

Communist China was still out there and both Korea and Vietnam were engaged in Civil Wars

Without direct Soviet support, neither the Korean or Vietnamese wars would have happened. The Chinese MIGHT have still won their civil war without Soviet support, but both the PRVN and the DPRK were direct results of Soviet intervention and support. The PAVN ( People’s Army of Vietnam) and the KPA (Korean People’s Army) were trained and completely supplied by the Soviet Union. Neither country ever produced as much as one round of ammunition or one combat vehicle.

 

[AZrailwhale]

Soviet patriotism was at its high point in 1945
They would not have treated us as liberators any more than they treated Hitler as a liberator

Our Allies would have abandoned us if we invaded the USSR

Russians were happy with the war. All the other nationalities in the USSR hated the government and would turn on Stalin in a second with a better choice. The Ukrainians absolute hated the Soviets and welcomed the Germans as liberators until the Germans started brutalizing and killing Ukrainians in job lots. Why do you think the USSR AND the entire eastern bloc disintegrated as soon as the Russian iron boot was removed from their necks. The same thing would have happened in 1945.

 

[AZrailwhale]

Patton won battles, Eisenhower won wars

By putting the needs and wants of the allies above those of the USA. Ike was the prefect general to run a coalition war, he was the politician’s politician who never saw combat or commanded a combat unit in time of war.

 

[DudleySmith]

All the conspiracy rubbish aside, Eisenhower was a fairly conservative strategist, and the fact is the Elbe line was a better military choice than spreading out around Berlin. There are a number of reasons not to want to be set up within 50 miles of the Soviet lines, and by the summer of 1945 Berlin was no longer a military target worth having, it was a pile of rubble with at least a million refugees and we were already dealing with overwhelming numbers of those, plus we wanted forces in Czechoslovakia at the time as well.

Here is a fairly decent situational summary of the problems and issues. Eisenhower stayed with his broad front strategy.

Halt at the Elbe

history.army.mil

Patton was a good division commander, not so much a strategist. That stupid movie made him look a lot better than he really was. A lot of his successes were a product of his picking good staff men, like Omar Bradley and whats-his-name Wright, the tactical air wing commander that made his offensives work. He wasn't stupid enough to beleive his own PR hacks, thankfully, and deferred to the better man, Eisenhower.

Eisenhower gave us three reasons for standing on the Elbe: His armies were already well beyond the line of the western occupation zones that had been agreed to with the Soviets. Why take casualties for land that would have to be handed over? He had always worried about his troops meeting Soviets on the run around a corner. He thought it safer to meet them with a broad river between. And, finally, ''Berlin is only a political objective, not a military objective.''

Why Eisenhower Halted at the Elbe

Roosevelt's death did not stop West's drive to Berlin -- but Ike did, with a controversial decision

www.csmonitor.com

Not the complete reasons but good enough. Most of the sniveling is just part of the usual FDR conspiracy rubbish after the fact. Losing 100,000 over nothing of value was probably a conservative estimate.


Conclusion
The decision to halt Allied troops short of Berlin and Prague had been severely criticized both in Europe and the United States on political grounds. It is argued that Churchill was right in suggesting that we proceed as far as possible into Germany in order to strengthen our hands for later negotiations with the Russians. [38] Other say that we should have recognized the Russian menace earlier and have prepared our strategy to block the Soviet advance into Central Europe. This obviously takes up beyond the scope of this study into the making of foreign policy. We should also have to answer such questions as: (1) what would the Russians have done if we had embarked on a policy of racing them to various European capitals in the spring of 1945? and (2) what would have been the effect of the action on the war in the Pacific?

It is evident that the political leaders in the United States had framed no policy for dealing with an aggressive Soviet Union in Central Europe. It is equally clear that no political directive was ever issued to General Eisenhower by his American superiors or by the Combined Chiefs of Staff. His initial directive called for the defeat of Germany's armed forces, and it was obvious from messages that he received from Washington that military solutions were preferred. In this situation, the Supreme Commander reached his decisions relative to Berlin and Prague on military rather than political grounds. It is difficult to believe that critics of his decision would argue that he should have taken political action on his own initiative. When considered from the purely military viewpoint of the quickest way to end the war in Germany with the fewest number of casualties to our troops, leaving the maximum number available for rapid redeployment to the Pacific, his decision was certainly the proper one.

Amen to that.

 

[DudleySmith]

By putting the needs and wants of the allies above those of the USA. Ike was the prefect general to run a coalition war, he was the politician’s politician who never saw combat or commanded a combat unit in time of war.

It was Patton's lobbying that got Eisenhower promoted over the heads of over a hundred other officers to the top job in Europe, so obviously Patton thought he was the most qualified as a strategist and commander. While the Brits had Lord Northbrook and a couple of others equally qualified, they were confident Ike could do the job as well. When he was called in to the meeting, he didn't know what it was for, and when asked how he would proceed with the war, he went to a room and spent a half hour, and came out with his broad front strategy and impressed them all. He kept that plan more or less intact from then on to his goal of the Elbe, and in fact got there earlier than scheduled.

 

[Kondor3]

After Japanese surrender the US had no more atom bombs.

We planned on dropping as many as 12 atomic bombs on Japan and the third was being assembled on Tinian and the plutonium core was preparing for shipment from the US when the Japanese surrendered. The Soviets didn't explode an atomic bomb until - what? - 1949? - that's a four-year (-ish) gap... if the Soviets had decided to press into Western Allied -held territory do you really think additional atomic bombs would not be brought to bear quickly?

 

[surada]

Could the Soviets had taken Europe after the unconditional surrender of Germany?

So at the end of WWII, the Soviets decide to take their massive war machine that they just defeated the Germans with and unleash it on American and British forces.

Could the Soviets have taken Europe?

Sans Britain, cause Britain is an island.

Look at Germany behind the Berlin wall. Pretty dismal.

 

[Mushroom]

Could the Soviets had taken Europe after the unconditional surrender of Germany?

So at the end of WWII, the Soviets decide to take their massive war machine that they just defeated the Germans with and unleash it on American and British forces.

Could the Soviets have taken Europe?

No, for the same reason that the rest of the Allies could not have taken out the Soviets.

They were largely expended at the time, because all of their concentration had been on taking out Germany. They still had a lot of forces and equipment, but much of it was exhausted and units were shattered after the long battles before the end (the Soviets had almost 400,000 casualties just in the month long Battle of Berlin). And going forward, they would have had more problems as they were already on the end of a long logistic supply chain.

They could not even continue with trains, and had to set up elaborate work-arounds as the rails that they used in the Soviet Union were not the same as that used in Germany. They generally trained most of their supplies to Ukraine, then had to unload and reload the cars again before they could continue to Germany. This is why they tended to move in hard pushes and try to go as far as fast as they could, then stop and spend weeks or more rushing in supplies to prepare for the next push.

And as they made the next pushes, they would have been shortening the supply lines of the rest of the Allies. Who had completely secure rear areas once past Germany as countries like France and Belgium were on their side. Yet they would have still been operating in "Occupied Territory", as neither Germany nor Poland were "Friendly Territory" to the Soviets.

Could they have tried to take all of Germany, possibly. But I doubt they could have gone any farther, nor would have they been able to hold it. They had a lot of men there, but at the end of a very long logistics chain that was largely propped up with supplies from the other Allied nations. An attack would have removed all of that support, and seen even the equipment being staged and sent to the Pacific rerouted to Europe.

What many fail to realize is that after May, the Soviets started to send equipment East to take on Japan. The US however had been running the entire war as a "2 front war", and only after Germany was secure did it finally start to send some of their European Units to the Pacific Theater. They had not even really gotten there yet, as Okinawa was still being converted to the main staging base, and the units being transferred were still in Germany for the occupation, or in the US preparing to head out when the war ended.

Germany threw in the towel in May, Okinawa was secured in June. The build-up there started in July, with the intention that the next phase would come in November. That never happened because Japan threw in the towel in August, but the US was already planning on throwing over 5 million men at Japan. And the UK another 1 million men. And the Pacific Theater was always the smallest one for the US, as only around 2 million were involved there from 1941-1945.

If the Soviets had tried that, they likely would have been in for a rude shock as those forces already staging in Okinawa could just as easily have been thrown into Vladivostok. That was a port that the US was already familiar with, as a lot of the supplies they sent to the Soviets went there first. If the Soviets had kept going West, then they would have not had the time or manpower to build up there at the same time.