Kondor3
Cafeteria Centrist
Doubtful.If a war broke out between the west and the USSR in 1946, the west would have lost, even with the few nukes we had.
The Soviet Union had population of 170,000,000 in 1939 and it had lost 20,000,000 in fighting the Germans.
A tragedy that could have been averted had they not treacherously made a secret pact with Nazi Germany to invade and divide Poland.
( if you lie down with dogs then don't be surprised if you get fleas )
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The Soviets were approaching exhaustion by early 1945 and their logistics were desperately strained; buoyed by continued logistical support from the US.
The Soviets (and their Russian Imperial predecessors and their Russian Federation successors) function on the Cannon-Fodder Principle.
The Soviets of that era had a very good main battle tank, the T-34, and a decent Yak fighter or fighter-bomber or two...
But the American M4 (Sherman) was at parity with the T-34 and the M26 Pershings coming online were superior to their Soviet counterparts.
Not to mention the vast superiority of the United States in air assets... P47s and P51s, early jets, armadas of B29s, B24s and B17s - heavy strategic bombers.
And tremendous fleets of transport airplanes - C54s, C47s and the like, and massive airborne assault assets already in place.
Air superiority alone, in 1946, would have been enough to turn the tide of any conventional war between the Soviet Union and the West at that time.
And tremendous fleets of liberty ships and other logistics and infrastructure assets and production facilities well-protected on the other side of the world.
To paraphrase a French general speaking to Churchill in 1940... we have a very good anti-tank ditch... two of them, actually... called the Atlantic and the Pacific.
Also, there existed an incredible disparity of naval forces favoring the United States and the UK including vast capabilities for amphibious assault as needed.
Not to mention a US population reserve still largely fresh and untouched, to bring new and replacement ground forces to bear quickly upon the problem.
Toss in a handful of state-of-the-art atomic bombs just for grins and you've got such a lopsided contest in favor of the United States that it's embarrassing.
No... I do not agree with your assessment that the Soviet Union of 1946 would have won any contest between itself and The West.
It's all speculation, mind you, but that's the way I see it... rightly or wrongly.
One that was profoundly exhausted by 1946, whereas we had barely warmed-up by that time.The Soviet military by that point was a well-oiled machine that had much shorter supply lines.
Yep. Then again, at the time, their Navy and Air Force were still very formidable.The British Empire was pretty much spent at that point. (It in fact, collapsed within a decade as all its colonies declared independence.)
We would probably have tasked them to take-and-hold the Middle East and mid-Asia oil fields, and if they had any energy left-over, to take Crimea for us.
Yes and No. It's not a "lie". It's "ignorance". A matter of simply not being reasonably well-read on the subject. or an inability to draw the correct conclusions.You see, here's the big lie that Americans believe about World War II... that we were the ones who won it.
Keep in mind that we are one of only a handful of nations to ever win a large-scale TWO-FRONT war ( the Pacific, and Europe ).
There can be no doubt that we won overwhelmingly in the Pacific and that it was mostly the US that did it - not single-handedly, but darned-near.
And we won in the Pacific after starting-out at an overwhelming deficit and while building-up for Europe and while feeding the Brits and Soviets.
We won in Europe by using our manpower intelligently on the macro level...
* Letting the Soviets take 60-70% of the "heat" from Nazi ground forces - although it took the Soviets 4 years to finish them off, and that with our help
* Letting our Air Force (and the RAF) smash Nazi war-production centers and infrastructure and logistics and cities from the air, with sustainable losses
* Establishing overwhelming air superiority for both strategic and tactical (ground support) purposes - a game-changer in its own right
* Amassing overpowering assault forces for Africa, Sicily, Italy, Normandy and Southern France, and hitting the Nazis from multiple directions
WE are the ones who "wrote the book" on integrated multi-force ( ground, air, naval ) operations and we continue to be the best at it to this very day.
The Soviets (like their Imperial predecessors and Federation successors) know two things... conscription and cannon-fodder frontal assault techniques.
Hell... here we are in 2022, and the Russian Army is the second-best army in Ukraine... put them back on their heels and their dogma begins to fall apart.
In Eastern Europe, yes indeed... that was their penance for climbing into bed with Nazi Germany in assaulting Poland in September 1939.In fact, the Soviets did most of the heavy lifting in Europe
And it took them four years (1941-1945) to beat-back the large army of a pipsqueak nation only a fraction their size - and that with a LOT of help.
In Western Europe (and the Mediterranean, and Africa, and the Middle East) - all nearby theaters - it was all us... the US and the UK... all of it.
And all that while manufacturing and transporting vast amounts of equipment and food to the Soviets, given that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Things were not going well for the Soviet behemoth in its struggle against pipsqueak Germany, and Stalin begged for a second front for a very long time.
And, from a purely mathematical and cold-hearted perspective, it made sense to let the Soviets and Germans kill each other, so that more of ours survived.
Top-shelf thinking, that.
Yes... that little lightweight effort on our part that Uncle Joe Stalin had been begging us for, for three years (1941-1944)...while the US and UK dicked around in Italy and France.
Nonsense.It was Soviet entry into the Pacific War that finally convinced the Japanese to surrender, more than Atom bombs did.
The Soviet entry into the war and the beginnings of its assault on Manchuria was a minor accent in the catastrophe unfolding for Japan.
The Japanese had lost all of their outlying islands and these became strategic air assault platforms and assembly points for an amphibious assault on Japan.
The Japanese knew the ground assault was coming and had been training their schoolchildren and wives and old folk to resist to the last living soul.
The conventional air assault by high-altitude air armadas (that AA and Japanese fighters could not reach) was "on" in full and laying waste to the country.
They were running out of fuel and they were beginning to starve and they had no hope - zero - of winning any longer and the population knew it.
And, most importantly, they were running out of fighting men and equipment and ammunition and were already desperate to save the Emperor and Tokyo.
The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki WERE the deciding factor in the Japanese decision to surrender.
This is well documented and is beyond rational contestation.
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