Stalin had no intention of taking over Western Europe.

This is US propaganda, used to justify the dropping of the bombs.

The US would have never gotten the chance to invade Japan. Russia defeated a million man Japanese army in Manchuria. The Russian army was ready to invade Japan. The dropping of the bombs gave Japan the chance to surrender to the US instead of the Soviets. The biggest difference if the US had not dropped the bombs, is Japan would have likely been communist. The US would have not had such a strong foothold in Asia during the cold war.

The Soviets had neither the amphibious capacity to carry out an invasion of Japan, nor sufficient shipbuilding facilities in the Pacific to create the capacity. While it is entirely possible that the Russians, with Chinese and British help, could have completed the defeat of Japanese forces on the Asian continent before the Americans could have completed an invasion of the Japanese home islands, there is no way the Soviets could have invaded Japan before the Americans, unless the Americans decided not to invade at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet–Japanese_War_(1945)

In the "Sixty years after Hiroshima" issue of the Weekly Standard, American historian Richard B. Frank points out that there are a number of schools of thought with varying opinions of what caused the Japanese to surrender. He describes what he calls the "traditionalist" view, which asserts that the Japanese surrendered because the Americans dropped the atomic bombs. He goes on to summarise other points of view.[20]

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's research has led him to conclude that the atomic bombings were not the principal reason for Japan's capitulation. He argues that Japan's leaders were impacted more by the swift and devastating Soviet victories on the mainland in the week following Joseph Stalin's August 8 declaration of war because the Japanese strategy to protect the home islands was designed to fend off a US invasion from the South, and left virtually no spare troops to counter a Soviet threat from the North. This, according to Hasegawa, amounted to a "strategic bankruptcy" for the Japanese and forced their message of surrender on August 15, 1945.[21][22] Others with similar views include The "Battlefield" series documentary,[2] Drea,[17] Hayashi,[18] and numerous others, though all, including Hasegawa, state that the surrender was not due to any single factor or single event.

I am not disputing whether the Soviet victories in Manchuria had any impact on the Japanese decision to surrender. I am arguing with the three bolded parts of your previous post.

1. There is little indication that the Japanese would have surrendered unconditionally without either an atomic bomb attack or a successful invasion of the home islands.
2. The Soviets were not "ready to invade Japan". They had no capability to do so.
3. A separate surrender on the mainland to the Soviets would not have resulted in Soviet occupation of the home islands nor in Japan being taken over by the communists. Also, the Soviets had already agreed to cooperate with the western allies regarding no separate peace and only accepting an unconditional surrender.

The wikipedia (LOL) article you cite does not support any of your three points.

Stalin was aware that the US had an advanced Nuclear program and that it was only a matter of time til those weapons would be available. The Russian intelligence concerning this was very good and considered extremely reliable. So the fact that the US hadn't by that time demonstrated the awesome capability of an atomic bomb didn't mean it wasn't up front and center in Russian strategic minds.

I'll agree with the underlined part, but disagree with the bolded parts.

I have to agree that the possibility that the western Allies might eventually develop an atomic bomb would have been a Soviet consideration, but we have no idea how much weight that would have been given when considering possible operations in western Europe. The deterrence offered by the possible eventual development of a device of uncertain effect is a lot less than the deterrence of an actual functioning bomb of measured effect.

It would have been hard for the Allies to defeat the USSR immediately after WWII, but even if it were not possible, that's a far far different thing from saying Stalin could have conquered Western Europe. Does he get to bring a Russian winter with him wherever he goes?

Yes that's an important distinction. There is absolutely no way the western Allies could have pushed the Soviets out of Central Europe in 1945-46 without nukes. There is only a better than even chance the Soviets could have pushed the western Allies out of Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and France in 1945-46 if there were no nukes.

No, just a regular European winter (think of the fun US troops had in December-January '44-'45), plus an approximately 5:1 quantitative superiority in combat troops that were also qualitatively superior in many aspects.

USSR would have been crushed once it got far off Russian soil. Soviet soldiers would probably end up starving and deserting in droves.

Show your work.

I am unaware of any of the Soviet occupation troops in Germany or Austria experiencing starvation. Why would they starve or desert in Western Germany or France?

Any attack on western Europe would not immediately follow the German surrender. The Soviets would wait for western demobilization and for the Americans to transfer forces to the Pacific theatre. They would use that time to build up supplies in East Germany. They would have a roughly six month period (May - November) to stockpile what they needed for the offensive, just as they did before their successful offensives against Germany. The delay would also allow time for repairs to the French and German transportation infrastructure.

The logistical problem of supplying a move from the partition line to the Rhine would have been easier than the problem of supplying them from the Vistula to the partition line (shorter distance, better roads and rail, fewer troops). And supplying them from the Rhine to the Atlantic would use a much better transportation infrastructure than what was available for the advance to the Vistula.

The force balance would be one-sided. The Russians would have available for first stage offensive operations 60% of the force they used for the 1945 offensive against Germany. (The frontage from Switzerland to the North Sea was significantly shorter than the frontage the Red Army advanced along against the Germans.) Once the Rhine was crossed, a separate force would be activated for operations downstream along the Rhone. Another separate force, as large as the remaining western Allied forces in Europe, would be available for occupation duties and rear-area security. Meanwhile, western forces would be a fraction of what they had employed against Germany.

Think about the problem that Wacht am Rhein caused the US. The Battle of the Bulge cost the US more casualties than any other ground battle in WWII. The Russians would be attacking with 15 time as many heavy tanks as the German used, 5 times as many other AFVs, and at least 4 times as many divisions. The western allies would have at best 1/2 of the force they had at the time of the Bulge. Unlike the Germans, the Russians would have enough fuel to reach Antwerp.

Because of the nature of the terrain and the location of early stage objectives, most of the early attacks would fall in the British occupation zone. There is a chance this would knock the British out of the campaign entirely. While it would be easier for the British than the Americans to send reinforcements to the combat areas (being relatively closer), they had relatively fewer available troops. Allied command and control problems would be further complicated by most of the likely Rhine crossing objectives being in the French occupation zone.

As mentioned the respective economies of postwar US and USSR were in vastly different shape. At that point the Soviets really needed a break to recover & rebuild domestically. I don't think they had the logistical resources for a successful push across Europe with the US in the way. They had armor, artillery and those sorts of assets but were decimated in personnel and the ability to feed people.

The Eastern Front was beyond brutal, victorious or not they were smoked. It would be like an NFL team going to overtime and then having to play another game that night. I think it would have been a disaster.

A better question would have been whether they could have defended another invasion at that point. I had a battalion commander who was a big WW2 buff, asked him that years ago and he thought there was a good chance that they couldn't. But he also pointed out that their field assets were best suited for defense and that it wouldn't have been worth the US's while even if successful.

Source for any of the above? Sure their economy was more stretched and they had suffered many more losses, but how do you conclude they didn't have the warfighting capacity to conduct a western offensive? They had the capability to deploy a new 1 million+ man army to crush the Japanse in Manchuria in early August. If they were going to invade western Europe, they would have left the Japanese alone, to further increase the burden on the Americans. In the 12 months following Germany's surrender they produced > 2300 JS3 heavy tanks and >2700 T34/85 medium tanks. We can presume about half of these would have been available for a winter offensive in Germany/France, in addtion to the forces already in Germany. In fact, we have no reason to believe that medium tank production post-May was at anywhere near to capacity, which seems to have been > 2000/mo.

They would have had half a year to recover and prepare. I totally agree they would not have been able to just continue on in May and June. But I am suggesting that the only realistic scenario for a Russian invasion of western Europe would be for a November-January start. I have seen no reason to believe they did not have the capacity for this.

Don't have time for two long posts in a row after responding to Stormfront guy in other thread. I didn't at all conclude they didn't have the capacity for an offensive. Anyone can do that. I'm speculating they'd have been unsuccessful at it vs. the US at that time. I can source what you want and don't mind a refresher as it's been a while (some of it comes from Snow Hall at Fort Sill circa a long time ago). The status of their respective economies as far as I know is common knowledge. I'll be more a little more specific, just call out whatever you don't like and I'll read up on it when I get some free time. Reading a book on each president in order now but will eventually get more WW2 stuff.

Stop me wherever you don't like - advancing army needs overwhelming force vs a defender and one issue was a severe truck shortage. That would be an extreme problem for ground commanders moving forward and proportionate to whatever armor and personnel they wanted to advance beyond their rail system, which was a huge asset for them. Compounding that is the strength of the US air and naval forces when Berlin fell which would be problematic for long supply lines.

Maintaining those long supply lines would be difficult. I'm not sure that Britain stays out of that either.

I think troop morale and discipline are quite under-rated here. Defending their country from the Germans or even occupying the adjacent countries after the war, with the memory of tens of millions recently killed by the Germans, the Russians had little choice but to fight.

Where's the evidence that Russia, then or ever, could successfully fight at any distance away from home? The Russians didn't enter Germany until after the US was massively bombing Germany with little opposition (also US ground troops entered Germany almost a month before the Russians). When the Red Army got into Germany it was just to rape, pillage and claim as much as they can for after the war.

Why not? I did!

But seriously, if you only had time for one substantive reply, I'm glad you spent it on the other thread. Holocaust denial is a more important subject than blueskying about what the Soviets could have but wouldn't have done.

If we are going into this further, I hope you have reviewed the set-up in posts 11 and 17 ITT.

I meant a successful offensive.

I think it is important to be clear what time we are talking about. I suspect that the course at Fort Sill was more likely to have dealt with the Soviets continuing westward immediately after Germany's surrender, rather than pausing until the western Allies had partially demobbed and also shipped forces off to the Pacific for a non-nuclear resolution there.

I have no doubt that any war which was just a competition though attrition would have been won by the west. I am suggesting that the Soviets could have used their initial overwhelming advantage in a surprise attack that might have cleared the continent of allied forces except in Italy, Iberia and the Scandinavian Peninsula, none of which offered a sound base for a recapture over time. They thereby avoid a competion of attrition.

OK. Looking forward to what better access to sources might lead to.

Agreed. I am suggesting that the Soviets would have a greater advantage than they had over the Germans on the eastern front (where their advantage was overwhelming enough to be successful). Furthemore, the Soviets would have a much greater advantage than the Germans had in Wacht am Rhein. One of the prime reasons for the German's failure to retake Antwerp was their lack of sufficient fuel to advance that far. The Russians would not have had that problem, despite having significantly more forces available for the offensive. I am projecting a greater than 4:1 overall force advantage, with a 5:1 advantage in armour and a 10:1 local advantage in the main assault zones. That's usually enough.

I was unaware that the Red Army was still facing a severe truck shortage in the summer of 1945. Source? They seem to have had enough trucks to manage the logistically more challenging task of supplying the advance from the Vistula to the partition line. For the first stage of their advance on the west, the Russians would have the advantage of being able to use the German rail network, which the allies would have been busily repairing for them. Plus they get to use captured German equipment (what little remained) and whatever new production was available for the second half of the year.

There is little doubt that the number of Soviet trucks per division was smaller than the US standard, but the Russians also had a much smaller scale of supply per division, so they had a smaller requirement of trucks per division. You might want to look into trucks per tank or trucks per rifleman or trucks per gun after subtracting all the western allied trucks used to supply their huge non-combatant tail. Don't forget to consider Russia's manufacturing capacity (The last figure I saw seemed to indicate the Russians were producing more military trucks per month than the US in 1944 and 1945.)

I'm not sure what difference their naval superiority would make regarding the Soviet's entrely land-based supply lines. The strategic bombing capability of the western allies would of course be a major concern regarding supply inderdiction, but it would take a while for the US to redeploy back to Europe, and in the interim, the Soviet fighter force might be enough to counter the British and French fighters in theatre.

I don't think Britain stays out of it at the beginning. I just think there is a signficant possibility that the British land forces on the continent are destroyed, given their deployment area. That would leave Britain back in a post-Dunkirk situation again. Would they have an appetite to continue given how exhausted they were? They might consent to reprise the role of unsinkable aircraft carrier.

Yes, morale and motivation might have been issues. No home defence motivation and little or no revenge motivation. OTOH, I seem to recall that the Russians employed methods to "motivate" reluctant troops that were more strenuous than those used in the West. One of the best moral boosters is winning battles, and in the initial phases of any campaign against the west, the Soviets would have repeatedly won battles.

Well, if you don't consider the Elbe, Prague and Vienna any distance away from home, I have none. In 1945, most Russian troops were fighting 1,000 to 3,000 km from home. Where's the evidence they couldn't?

You really need to read a lot more about the differences between the scale of fighting on the eastern and western fronts. During the last 20 weeks of fighting the Russians advanced nearly twice as far as the Western Allies against twice as much opposition, which was more motivated to resist than in the west. LOL at any implication that the west won the war rather than or more than the Russians. The Russians inflicted six times as many fatal military casualties on the Germans and their allies than all other nations combined.

Ok, I'm ready for a new book. Give me a recommendation. (me: 45yo, degree in math and english, never took history in college, watched a lot of wwII documentaries, but I might have skipped stuff on the Eastern Front 'cause no USA, gotta be a bit of a page turner - I'm not doing primary research here.)

Studs Terkel: The Good War: An Oral History of World War II

Good discussion so far. I think the idea of an attack by the Russians on the Western allies before any demobilisation would possibly throw more doubt on the outcome, even if it was far less likely from a strategic point of view. In the Russians favour would be their superiour armour and sheer weight of numbers. I think the main advantage for the Western allies would be in airpower but I don't think they'd be able to achieve anything like the air superiority they had over the Germans (unable to disrupt aircraft production or fuel production to the same, if any, extent)

Great book, but maybe not what an American reader needs to overcome the blinkered view most Americans have of the war. I'd suggest Americans read anything but an American account of American experiences.

A few specific suggestions:

Russia's War: A History of the Soviet Effort: 1941-1945, by Richard Overy. A readable introduction to the Eastern Front.

Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939 - 1945, by Catherine Merridale. A UK historian's description of the life of Russian soldiers.

A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army, by Vasily Grossman. Notes from the front by a Russian war reporter.

The Forgotten Soldier, by Guy Sajer. Memoirs of an Alsatian serving in the German Army. Highly evocative, despite some minor historical errors.

In Deadly Combat: A German Soldier's Memoirs of the Eastern Front, by Gottlob Biedermann. Writen by a soldier for soldiers, but accessible to the general reader. The author won the German Cross in Gold, two Iron Crosses, the Honour Roll Clasp, the Gold Wound Badge (means he was wounded five times), the Crimea Shield, the Tank Destruction Badge and the Close Combat Badge.

The Battle of Normany 1944, by Robin Neilands. Examines the conduct of the Normandy battles and debunks the older American view regarding the effectiveness of Montgomery's plan. The author is a former Royal Marine Commando turned historian.

The Guns trilogy, by George Blackburn. The unromanticised memoirs of the longest serving allied FOO* on the Western Front. For readabilty, read volumes in order 2, 3, 1. Volume 2, The Guns of Normandy, covers the author's, and his unit's, introduction to real combat and the Normany campaign. The Guns of Victory covers the campaign across France, Belgium, the Netherlands and into Germany, and deals with the increasing impact of battle fatigue. Where the Hell Are the Guns?, covers the author's enlistment, training and further preparation in England before D-Day, showing how one of the unpreprared western nations built a fighting force from next to nothing.

*FOO: A Forward Observation Officer was an artillery officer attached to front-line infantry or other combat forces. He would call in artillery strikes in response to enemy movements. This role had the highest rate of casualities amongst allied forces. A Canadian, Blackburn won the Military Cross for saving a bridgehead in Holland from being overrun when he called down an artillery stike on his own position. He served as a FOO longer than any other American, Brit or Canadian in Western Europe.

I've read Writer at War and The Guns books and enjoyed them. Just got around to reading Forgotten Soldier last year but wasn't sure what to make of it after reading the controversy over its authenticity

I only included it because Microbet was looking for a page-turner rather than historical accuracy. I haven't followed the controversy too closly, but I had understood the errors were mostly details of when and where, rather than the nature of combat. This would seem to put it in a middle ground between the accuracy of Biedermann's book and the totally fictional description of combat in Herbert Werner's Iron Coffins. For accuracy try Biedermann.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_nuclear_weapons

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_spies

There's nothing here which contradicts what I said earlier.

The revelations at the Potsdam conference came after the successful Trinity test, 2 1/2 months after the end of the war against Germany.

I agreed that "Stalin was aware that the US had an advanced Nuclear program". He may even have known about the successful test detonation before Truman told him. However, he did not know in May that the US would have a bomb by August.

I disagreed that it was "only a matter of time til those weapons would become available", and I disagreed that the Russian intelligence regarding the Manhattan project was "extremely reliable". The scientists weren't sure the bomb would work until it worked. Along the way they discovered obstacles to making a bomb (e.g. background radiation of U-239 making controlled fission more difficult). The Russians considered the intelligence information so unreliable that their scientific team working on their own bomb design refused to use it as the basis of their development.

Despite this intelligence that you seem to think was so amazing, the Russians didn't have their own bomb until 1949.

I think the best summary of he Russian intelligence position in spring 1945 was that the Allies were working on a nuclear bomb, were making progresss and, if one could be made successfully, the west would probably have one years ahead of the Russians.