re: Do you think the Allies would have won WWII if Russia has sided with Germany?

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remember reading somewhere that Hitler didn't send winter clothes to his troops because he didn't want to hurt their morale during summer. it was supposed to be a quick campaign

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I never heard the morale part although I’m sure there’s some truth to it. However Germany’s generals believing it would be a quick campaign elected for more bullets and beans rather than winter clothing. Then when their supply lines went to hell in a hand basket they were even worse off bc there was no way to even get the winter supplies to them.

Germany also had issues with their own soldiers stealing from the supply trains. As the trains would make stops the guys in the rear would steal from the train and by the time it got to the front there was already a dent in the supply.

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Wondering what would have happened if Germany doesnt invade Western Europe and say invades the USSR in early May of 1940? Do they take Russia if they invade 2 months earlier than they did in 1941?

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Well the problem is that the invasion of Poland put them into a state of war with the British and French in 1939 so they had little choice. Not moving against the French and BEF in 1940 would have put them at a much more disadvantageous and vulnerable position in opening a two front conflict as their Western flank would now be wide open to British and French forces. It also would have threatened their access to Swedish iron ore not to secure Norway from British forces. After French and British declarations of war on Germany following their invasion of Poland, the Western war became a top priority for Germany.

A more realistic question might be what would have transpired had the Germans launched Barbarossa in May of 1941 instead of late June, which was the original plan. The overthrow of the German friendly regime in Yugoslavia compelled the Germans to launch the Balkan campaign in April of 1941 and then to push the British out of Greece and the subsequent attack on Crete in order to secure their southern flank and, once again, to protect the Ploesti oil fields. This pushed Barbarossa's start time back to the June 22 date. With an extra 4-8 weeks of good weather, could the Germans have reached Moscow and been able to dig in and fortify their positions prior to the Soviet winter counteroffensive? Or would the German forces still have been too weakened and overstretched from the campaign to prevent the Soviets from effectively counterattacking? It's hard to say but with the Soviets moving their production centers east of the Urals and being confident enough in lack of Japanese intervention to send their Siberian forces to fight the Germans, perhaps it wouldn't have fundamentally changed the Eastern Front dynamic. The Germans grossly underestimated the shear quantity of Soviet armor and air power and their ability to withstand massive losses of men. What the Germans really needed was a Soviet political collapse and given what we know now, it appears the Soviets would have been able to maintain political, military, and economic stability even in the instance that the Germans were able to reach Moscow. Whether they could have effectively counterattacked and regained Moscow in the instance that it was deprived from them in the initial German efforts, I can't say. Obviously maintaining control of Moscow afforded them a major logistical advantage in staging their December counteroffensive. The Germans probably would have needed to cut off Leningrad, Moscow, and access to the Caucasus to deal the Soviets a fundamentally unrecoverable blow in the initial campaign. The Soviets likely would have been able to continue resistance even if Moscow had been taken but had the Germans been able to secure it from being recaptured in any initial Soviet counteroffensives the Soviets would have been in deep shite. The wildcard is still Hitler's decision making. If the Soviets are able to withstand the initial blows, even losing Moscow, and Hitler goes still declares war on the United States following Pearl Harbor, Germany likely still loses as the U.S. could supply the Soviets with necessary logistical and military equipment and resources to maintain their massive human reserves. The variables are just too infinite to really draw any confident conclusions.

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We got the bomb first. Nobody could top that. Nuke Berlin and the war is over..

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Likewise, nuke NY, LA, Chicago or Washington and we all "sprechen sie Deutsch" or Japanese today and the alternative history "Man in the High Tower" becomes no longer alternative history, but mainstream.

Irony is that our getting that bomb first rode on the coat tails of German and European refugees fleeing the Nazis...

Scientists and the bomb

Their defection to the West and inclusion in the Manhattan Project had a two-fold impact on Hitler's Germany. 1. It deprived the Germans of brilliant minds and researchers who may have reached the nuclear goal first. The Germans had discovered nuclear fission as early as 1938-39, and understood the implications in making a working bomb. The 2nd impact is that their flight to the West provided much to the Manhattan Project's eventual success.

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One of the ironies of Hitler's desire for racial purity was that it drove out of continental Europe or into the camps many individuals who would have been extremely useful to the Axis war effort. Nowhere was this more evident than in the effort to produce an atomic bomb. A startling proportion of the most famous names on the project belonged to scientists who came to England or America to flee from the Axis. The large number of refugees and immigrants working on the Manhattan Project gave the American nuclear program an international character unusual in such a top-secret program—and unique amongst the nuclear programs that followed in other countries—and helped give life in Los Alamos, NM during the war its unique character.

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This is a quiet but major factor in Hitler's losing, akin to his ill-timed/advised decision to invade Russia.

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We should’ve stayed completely out of Europe, let the Nazis and Communists kill each other until they were all dead. Win/win.

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Russia would've likely kept going West after they finished off Germany. Most of Western Europe would've been under communist control if we did nothing. The big mistake was letting the Russians go into Berlin first. It saved American lives but it lead to Germany being split.

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The Soviets likely would have been able to continue resistance even if Moscow had been taken but had the Germans been able to secure it from being recaptured in any initial Soviet counteroffensives the Soviets would have been in deep shite.

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True. Capturing Moscow was the key to the campaign. Almost all of the Soviet roads and rail lines in the east went through Moscow. Any supplies and reinforcements intended for the entire eastern front, from Leningrad to Stalingrad, whether moving east/west or north/south, likely passed through Moscow, there was simply no efficient way to move around using any other route. Hitler failed to recognize this and instead focused on oil supplies, when he should have shut off the Soviet supply pipeline east of Moscow.

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The Soviets likely would have been able to continue resistance even if Moscow had been taken but had the Germans been able to secure it from being recaptured in any initial Soviet counteroffensives the Soviets would have been in deep shite.


True. Capturing Moscow was the key to the campaign. Almost all of the Soviet roads and rail lines in the east went through Moscow. Any supplies and reinforcements intended for the entire eastern front, from Leningrad to Stalingrad, whether moving east/west or north/south, likely passed through Moscow, there was simply no efficient way to move around using any other route. Hitler failed to recognize this and instead focused on oil supplies, when he should have shut off the Soviet supply pipeline east of Moscow.

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Exactly this. The whole key to defeating the Soviets was for the Germans to take Moscow and then holding it. Whoever controls Moscow, controls all of Russia west of the Urals.

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Also, your comment on Stalingrad is chronologically incorrect. The goals of Barbarossa were Leningrad, Moscow, and Kiev. Stalingrad was not made a strategic goal until the 1942 summer offensive in which the German strategic situation was drastically different. It also wasn't a primary objective until the offensive was underway.

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Yeah, Stalingrad was not even a major part of the Operation Blue, the Caucasus Oil fields were. Diverting the 6th Army and 4th Panzer to Stalingrad was a major distraction of the main goal of that offensive.

No way to obtain the number- but I wonder how many Soviets who died during WW2 were actually killed by order of Stalin, himself? As bad as Hitler was, Stalin was arguably just as vicious- if not worse.

Interesting site....The German occupation of the Channel Islands during WW2 offered some very strange sights....Thankfully this was not a preview of what an all-out invasion and occupation would have been like....

LINK