• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

World War 2 without the US.....

PhantomWolf

Penultimate Amazing
PhantomWolf
Joined
Mar 6, 2007
Messages
21,203
in another thread there was a link to this twitter feed and I noted the comment..

Mats Åberg‏ said:
Tasteless of Stern. A friendly reminder to all Germans. Without the US there wouldn't be a Germany. The Soviets would wiped it off the map.
Click to expand...

I'm not so sure this is true. I think that while the US didn't single handedly win WW2 as sometime movies would like us to believe, that without their entrance, the war would have favoured the Axis.

Without the US Carriers and manufacturing base that kept planes in the air, the Pacific would have been lost to Japan, and without the backup of US troops then it is unlikely that the Allies would have had the forces to have staged a successful D-Day assault. This would have left the West of Europe almost undisputed and in Germany's hands. Without the bomber assistance from the US then the RAFs raids would not have crippled the German production, and all of that might could have been focused on defeating the Russians.

I'd suggest that without the US, Germany would not only exist, but would have taken over Europe.

Thoughts?
 
Russian logistics, as far as I'm aware, relied very heavily on US built trucks. No number of T-34s and IS-2s will defeat an enemy if they have no petrol, no ammunition and no food for the crews. Without the USA, the Eastern Front may well have degenerated into the stalemate that Hitler really wanted. Britain could probably have survived, but I can't see Overlord being anywhere near possible. It's probably more accurate, therefore, to say that without the USA there wouldn't be a France.

Dave
 
Agreed. But that was another country then. Placed in similar circumstances today, hard to tell which side the US would be on, flirting as its President does with the only major contemporary power that changes international borders by force, same as the Austrian nutter did.
 
Err... you know, it's kinda silly to assume that the Soviets wouldn't have trucks without lend-lease.

For a start, the Red Army had already started with almost 300k trucks (rounded up.) Between domestic production and requisitioning industry and agricultural vehicles (make a tractor tow a trailer and it's a truck) and captured enemy trucks, some 400k more were added before the end of the war (rounded down.) The lend-lease trucks were about another 300k, or about 30% of the total.

Now obviously the lend-lease trucks ARE a hefty contribution, and kudos to the allies for that. But it's FAR from the point where you could say that they couldn't haul their fuel for the tanks without US trucks.

Additionally, look at where they produced those tanks. One German objective at Stalingrad was for example the Dzerzhinskiy Tractor Factory, which produced an awful lot of tanks for the Soviets. Now look at its name again: TRACTOR factory.

While getting land-lease vehicles did allow the Soviets to convert more factories from producing trucks and tractors to producing tanks, they did NOT lack the ability to produce tractors and trucks to start with. They just converted a lot of it to producing tanks. Without the Lend-Lease trucks, they could simply convert a couple less factories and have a couple thousand less tanks and a some tens of thousands of extra trucks.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to understate the help that LL was. But at the same time, there's no need to grossly OVERstate it either.

Yes, LL helped. A LOT. But when claims get as outlandish as that the USSR would flat out lack trucks and be unable to haul fuel for its tanks without those LL trucks, that's... massive hyperbole.
 
Last edited:
HansMustermann said:
Err... you know, it's kinda silly to assume that the Soviets wouldn't have trucks without lend-lease.

For a start, the Red Army had already started with almost 300k trucks (rounded up.) Between domestic production and requisitioning industry and agricultural vehicles (make a tractor tow a trailer and it's a truck) and captured enemy trucks, some 400k more were added before the end of the war (rounded down.) The lend-lease trucks were about another 300k, or about 30% of the total.

Now obviously the lend-lease trucks ARE a hefty contribution, and kudos to the allies for that. But it's FAR from the point where you could say that they couldn't haul their fuel for the tanks without US trucks.

Additionally, look at where they produced those tanks. One German objective at Stalingrad was for example the Dzerzhinskiy Tractor Factory, which produced an awful lot of tanks for the Soviets. Now look at its name again: TRACTOR factory.

While getting land-lease vehicles did allow the Soviets to convert more factories from producing trucks and tractors to producing tanks, they did NOT lack the ability to produce tractors and trucks to start with. They just converted a lot of it to producing tanks. Without the Lend-Lease trucks, they could simply convert a couple less factories and have a couple thousand less tanks and a some tens of thousands of extra trucks.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to understate the help that LL was. But at the same time, there's no need to grossly OVERstate it either.

Yes, LL helped. A LOT. But when claims get as outlandish as that the USSR would flat out lack trucks and be unable to haul fuel for its tanks without those LL trucks, that's... massive hyperbole.
Click to expand...

It's not just lend lease. It's also the great reduction in industrial output caused by strategic bombing (speer estimated production in 44 onwards would have been 50% higher) and that production was increasingly shifted to fighters and anti-aircraft guns rather than tactical bombers and artillery. (Not to mention the second front, which from mid 44 had half of all german armor assigned to it).

Soviet manpower was running short by 1945 as it was. .. fighting 3 times as much german armor in 1944 and 4 or more times as much artillery, and not having been 'gifted' air superiority by the Luftwaffe being pulled back to defend Germany. ... russia would have found things much much harder.
 
Giz said:
It's not just lend lease. It's also the great reduction in industrial output caused by strategic bombing (speer estimated production in 44 onwards would have been 50% higher) and that production was increasingly shifted to fighters and anti-aircraft guns rather than tactical bombers and artillery. (Not to mention the second front, which from mid 44 had half of all german armor assigned to it).

Soviet manpower was running short by 1945 as it was. .. fighting 3 times as much german armor in 1944 and 4 or more times as much artillery, and not having been 'gifted' air superiority by the Luftwaffe being pulled back to defend Germany. ... russia would have found things much much harder.
Click to expand...

Sorry but Speer is an unreliable narrator at best and there were resource bottlenecks that the Germans could not get around such as Copper, crucial for the production of ammo for all those weapons. Nazi Germany was permanently teetering on the brink of economic collapse, unless Barbarossa knocks the USSR out of the war in a matter of a few weeks they are going to start hurting.

As to the OP, well I've never heard a credible explanation for the USA offering absolutely no support to Britain, it was in the USA's strategic interest not to let Nazi Germany establish a European hegemony.
 
Much harder, yes. I'm just against the hyperbole that the USSR had no trucks without the LL ones. I think it's best to keep things in a realistic perspective.
 
HansMustermann said:
Yes, LL helped. A LOT. But when claims get as outlandish as that the USSR would flat out lack trucks and be unable to haul fuel for its tanks without those LL trucks, that's... massive hyperbole.
Click to expand...

Agreed, it's hyperbole to say that the USSR wouldn't have hauled any supplies without LL trucks. But it's true that they relied quite heavily on LL trucks, and so it's clear that, had they not been available, the choices available would have been more restricted, and they would have had either fewer tanks, though well enough supplied, or insufficient supplies for the same number. In either case the operations they actually carried out would have been cut back, and it may have been enough for Germany to force a stalemate.

I'd be interested to know, too, how the reliability compared between US and Soviet trucks. Soviet automotive engineering was actually pretty good, but was it up to US standards? Was one Russian truck actually worth as much as one American one?

Dave
 
Last edited:
The soviet ones tended to be two-wheel drives, and had poorer off-road performance. A lot of them were smaller too. But they got the job done, basically.

As for forcing a stalemate, not really. VERY little of the LL came in '41 and '42, when such a stalemate could still be pushed. Just a little over 400 vehicles were received by the USSR in 1941, for example. Nice to have, but a spit in the ocean compared to the nearly 300,000 they already had. The LL ramped up a lot by '43, but by that point there was no way in freaking hell that Germany actually manages to force a stalemate. Nor much chance that they'd actually win that kind of stalemate in the long run.

But if we're thinking hypotheticals, it can go lots of ways.

If the USA stays isolationist, well, how early? Japan obviously doesn't go after the USA in this scenario, and presumably doesn't get the oil embargo for their fleet. Hence it has no reason to go south after the oil fields of the western powers in Asia either. The USSR is presumably still off the table. So what IS Japan doing in this scenario? Presumably continuing a war of attrition in China?

Does the USSR realize that Japan is no threat in this scenario? Without LL, does necessity at least force it to ignore Japan for now?

Because, see, one thing that people seem to forget when discussing "they'd have less tanks" or "they'd have less trucks" or whatever scenarios, is that the USSR actually had a LOT more army at any point than it threw at the Germans. Actually the majority of the USSR army was stuck defending the east from a Japanese attack that never really came.

So if we're talking a world different enough that the USA and Japan have no problem with each other, and the UK and USA aren't BFFs, can other countries too have different ideas? Can Japan for example stay allied with the UK, if the UK doesn't side with the USA at the peace treaty in Paris? (One possible reason why the UK and the USA are no longer BFF.) Can Stalin realize that the Japanese are too bogged down in bigger problems to attack him any time soon?

And what does it mean for the UK? Are they OK with leaving China to the Japanese? (Which was a big point of contention for the Anglo-Japanese alliance.) Does that free UK troops and supplies to use in the west, making up for the lack of the USA? Can the UK and Japan even be friends again, if the UK agrees to leave China to Japan? I realize it would be a hard sell for the UK, but necessity makes strange bedfellows.

Additionally, if we're talking no USA, we're probably talking no Overlord. Probably no Anzio either. Which in turn means that Stalin has no real reason to force the breakneck race to Berlin. See, the reason that the USSR was taking high losses (though actually not THAT high if you put in context that they were on the attack and only had anywhere between 2 and 3 to 1 superiority on the actual front) was that Stalin wanted to grab all the land he can -- and ESPECIALLY take Berlin -- before the allies. No western front, no reason to rush, so the Soviet manpower wouldn't deplete nearly as fast.

Etc.

There are a LOT of factors which would be different in such an alternate universe, is all I'm saying. One can't assume that we'd have the exact same war minus the USA. Only Yog Sothoth knows what that war would look like.
 
Last edited:
HansMustermann said:
t the USSR actually had a LOT more army at any point than it threw at the Germans. Actually the majority of the USSR army was stuck defending the east from a Japanese attack that never really came.
Click to expand...

Any backup for a "majority of the USSR army was stuck defending the east from a Japanese attack"?

Even in 1941, at the start of Barbarossa when the proportion of Soviet forces facing Germany was smallest:
"When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, in Operation Barbarossa, the Red Army's ground forces had 303 divisions and 22 separate brigades (6.8 million soldiers), including 166 divisions and 9 brigades (3.2 million soldiers) garrisoned in the western military districts. "
(Note: that is more than half in the European theatre and many more were in central regions far from the Japanese or Germans.)

(Note2: looks like the Far Eastern Front had about 21 divisions... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Eastern_Front#Notes)
 
HansMustermann said:
If the USA stays isolationist, well, how early? Japan obviously doesn't go after the USA in this scenario, and presumably doesn't get the oil embargo for their fleet. Hence it has no reason to go south after the oil fields of the western powers in Asia either. The USSR is presumably still off the table. So what IS Japan doing in this scenario? Presumably continuing a war of attrition in China?

Does the USSR realize that Japan is no threat in this scenario? Without LL, does necessity at least force it to ignore Japan for now?
Click to expand...

Not sure exactly how Japan is less of a threat to the USSR if its main strategy is now one of pushing north through China. Nomonhan was quite a bloody nose for the Japanese army, but they might well have convinced themselves that, with no significant threat at their back and the USSR now rather desperate to defend itself in the west, they might have better luck with Banzai charges against tank armies a second time round. They probably wouldn't have got very far, but all they'd have to do to make a big change was to tie down the forces that were transferred west to defend Moscow.

Dave
 
If the US never formed and North America was just loaded with various dictatorships like South America used to be, and somewhat still is, we'd have Russia or Germany dominant in Europe, Japan in the Pacific, and they'd be carving up the New World again anyway. It's just that technology would be at least 50 years behind where it is now, probably more, and with no shot in hell of consumer electronics and whatnot.

With any luck, Fortress Britain would still exist with a significant navy.
 
@Dave Rogers
The point is rather that we don't know what would happen in such an alternate reality, really. *I* don't, in any case.

The thing about a world war is that it's a rather global event. One small change, like Japan not being embargoed, can have all sorts of side effects. We can't just replay the same war minus the USA.

E.g., in Japan one CAUSE of the rise of fascism was its feeling isolated and threatened, among other things by the expansion of the USA influence in the Pacific. Plus things like having its "all races are equal" clauses rejected at the end of WW1 (essentially the western world was quite frank that they only care about Europeans), the feeling that the Washington naval treaty was unequal and intentionally disfavours Japan, having their emigrants discriminated against in the USA and treated as an inferior race, etc. A situation was shaping up where at least the perception is that the West is its own exclusive club now, so the idea to make their own "Asian co-prosperity sphere" started to sound a lot better.

Change enough of that, and Japan may not even turn fascist. If enough push is removed, they may not have the reaction they have to that push. It can just stay a colonial power with some minor local conflicts. Or at least may or may not join the Axis at all, if it thinks it can still keep coexisting with the West.

But even if it turned fascist, Japan is at first actually trying to not provoke the USA. It's why it pretends it still fights a border incident with China. Also why they offer reparations for the USS Panay incident. The USA may theoretically be able to use the THREAT of embargo as opposed to an actual embargo, to force them to keep it low key.

Mind you, I'm not saying that the USA or any of the allies did anything wrong there in the real world, nor that Japan was right in the real world. But if we're talking an alternate history scenario, a different USA could possibly do things differently, and a different Japan might do things differently, and send all sorts of ripples down the line. Is all I'm saying.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom