I've always wondered what would have happened if scientists in 1945 weren't able to harness nuclear energy.

That means Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have never happened, only an Allied invasion of Tokyo would succeeded.

Would anything have stopped Josef Stalin from stampeding his tank army all across Asia and Europe?

A big reason why Russia never moved their armies was because nuclear bombs were planted in Turkey within distance of Moscow. Josef Stalin legitimately feared being whipped out within hours.

Would it have just resulted in WW3 with massive American armies vs Russian armies on the Eastern front yet again with an eventual American victory / stalemate?

Or would we have witnessed an entire red Europe / Asia / Eurasia. I'm really thinking Josef Stalin could have taken Europe if he wanted to without a nuclear threat. The allies were practically decimated economically for the entire 1950's and would not have been able to muster any kind of meaningful army.

Is there any archival evidence suggesting this was contemplated? The war in Europe was over before the bomb was successfully tested and Stalin made no effort to conquer further. I can't imagine an empire of occupation that large could last, and Joe was pretty shrewd, had enough trouble holding Eastern Europe together. The Soviet's prime interest post war was preventing a revived Germany and maintaining the Eastern European occupation as a buffer against future invasions. Everything, spreading revolution included, was secondary to security, so that does not suggest he favored more world war.

Western European economies were in full rebound by 1950. Being Marxist, Stalin put considerable significance on the economic balance and knew he was behind. Closing off East Germany had a lot to do with its poverty and people voting with their feet. Lowering the Iron Curtain was a sign of weakness, it was to prevent countries from gravitating west, so he was well aware his bloc was behind.

He definitely would have had a stronger hand in East Asia without the bomb because the US had agreed to a joint occupation of Japan in order to bring the Soviets into that war. That was scotched because having the bomb meant the US no longer needed help invading the main islands. And he would not have shared the occupation of Korea -- the US did not demand that until the bomb worked. Lucky us.

The West (Americans) would have curb-stomped Stalin with or without nuclear weapons imo.

Churchill wanted to do something similar straight after the end of WW2.

"Operation Unthinkable was a code-name of two related plans of a conflict between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. Both were ordered by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1945 and developed by the British Armed Forces' Joint Planning Staff at the end of World War II in Europe.
The first of the two assumed a surprise attack on the Soviet forces stationed in Germany in order to "impose the will of the Western Allies" on the Soviets"

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

Plenty of people felt the same way about Hitler when he attacked the Soviet Union.

Hitler fought on two fronts; granted OP is saying the US would have had to invade Japan so that's two theaters but there's not much of a comparison between 1945 Japan and 1941 Britain. Also the US endgame in all probability would never have been to conquer the USSR (as Hitler's objective essentially was) but to force Stalin out of Europe and accept peace on the West's terms, which would have been easier to achieve. US would have had better allies (they might have even gotten the remnants of the German army to fight the soviets), no threat at all to their home land, air superiority over Europe (I assume), and definitely better bombing capabilities, control of the sea, etc.. USSR had a huge army and a ****load of tanks, so maybe in one big sweep they could have taken a lot of territory for a few months, but I just don't see how they hold it.. I think they'd quite quickly succumb to the variety of advantages that I've mentioned the US would have had.

The shape of postwar Europe was agreed on before the war ended. The big 3 (ChurchillStalinFDR) divided Europe into spheres of influence at the Yalta conference. Nobody was seriously contemplating ending the alliance.

US suffered 300k dead, the USSR 25 million and still won, had been winning since Stalingrad in 1943. No way was the US going up against a country that could take that punishment and still win. I don't know details of the order of battle, but would not assume the US had a chance of driving USSR out of E. Europe.

Keep in mind the USSR was still an ally, none of the Cold War breakdown in relations had occurred, and no one wanted to consider that kind of carnage.

OP is asking about a scenario without nuclear weapons, whether the USSR could have taken over all of Europe (and Asia). I don't see how it could have if it meant winning a war against the US and whatever was left of Britain, France, etc. (even Germany). Of course it is evident that very few on either side wanted such a war, so it didn't happen.

I think you're severely underestimating the soviet military.

And overestimating the US.

If we're talking about continuing the war in 1945 the English speaking countries would not have many actual allies. France was still rebuilding and the remnants of the German army were sitting in Russian gulags for the most part.

In the pacific Japan was still an issue. Although Russia retook territory it lost in 1905 + the kuriles at the end of the war. The US by contrast had no desire for Japanese territory tho it would not have allowed Japan to keep Korea. Whichever side made a better offer to the Japanese would gain a large advantage I think.

By saying they would lose?

By saying they would win?

I mentioned that the Soviets had a big edge in troops and armor. They also had decent generals, experienced soldiers, a large and respectable air force, etc.. I don't think I'm underestimating them. But I think these advantages are clearly outweighed by US/allied advantages in air power, technology, production, logistics, with the US also having the advantage of not having just endured the greatest number of causalities in world history. Remember the scenario in OP is Stalin would attempt to take control over all of Europe if there's no nuclear threat to deter him. Think about how much resistance the Germans gave to the Russian advance whilst being obliterated by British/American air power. If that allied air power was instead used against the advancing Red Army, I think Germany holds quite easily.

If the only benefit of having those allies was to have staging areas for US assets, then that's already a bigger relative advantage. The US was in position to outproduce and outspend the USSR 4-1, saying nothing of the fact that the USSR already had received significant assistance from the US via lend-lease.

I'm not sure how the US calculation changes if they don't have the bomb and if the USSR allies with Japan while the Red Army is marching to the Atlantic. One would think that they could keep Japan in check even with USSR aid; but maybe that means they would put off any invasion.

That depends on the time frame. Obviously something other than nuclear weapons stopped Stalin from stampeding all over Europe between May (when Germany surrendered) and August (when the existence of the bombs became known when they were dropped on Japan) 1945.

No nuclear weapons were deployed in Turkey until nearly half a decade after Stalin died.

May I remind you that the western allies and the communists fought a war in Korea in 1950-53? The Russians were careful not to deploy any of their own ground trooops in combat operations, but Russian fighter pilots did shoot down "UN" aircraft. Of course, by then the Russians had developed their own nuclear weapons. (no coincidence the Korean war started in 1950, not 1949.)

American doctine WRT the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe between the late 1950s and the early 1970s seems to indicate they had doubts that NATO could stop a conventional Soviet attack using only conventional weapons. This despite the fact that Western weapon systems of the 1960s had more of an edge over the Soviets than in the 1940s. In fact, in the 1940s it is easily arguable that the Soviets had the better land weapons systems.

Um, no.

The major part of the US army deployed to Europe would have had to be transferred to the Pacific if there had been no nuclear end to the Japanese campaign. The Russians already had many more troops in Europe than the Western Allies had, and they were not limited by port capacities wrt the amount of supplies they could bring into Western Europe. With a major drawdown of American Forces, the Soviets would have had enough force superiority for a general offensive.

Don't know why you'd assume that. While the US, UK and Canada had a comfortable numerical advantage in total planes over the Russians (Russians had the second largest air force, US, 1st, UK 3rd, Canada 4th), the Russians had considerably more combat experience and success than the Americans, and a higher proportion of their air force was fighter planes and ground attack planes. The Russians had 44 aces who had more kills in the European theatre than the US' top European theatre ace (who had 28 kills). The UK and British Commonwealth had 8 aces with more than 28 kills, but the Russians had 10 aces with higher scores than the Commonweath's top European theatre ace (who had 40 kills). The top Russian ace had 62 kills.

The obvious Soviet plan of attack would be a main thrust across the North German plain, across the Rhine around the Dutch/German border and then continuing south of Antwerp to Le Havre. This effectively denies the West the use of all major north European ports. The advantage the US has is production. If they can't get their production onto the continent in any efficient way, that advantage is lost.

If the Russians can mount a second drive down the Rhone valley to the Med, the US forces have no useful on-continent staging ground until Spain comes in on their side (which they would).

OK let's examine those claimed advantages. The US and UK clearly have vast superiority in strategic bombing. But despite that, German war production rose during most of the straegic bombing campaign. Russian production facilities would be less vulnerable to western bombers than German factories were.

US technology was clearly superior to Russian in many ways, yet despite that the Russians had better tanks, better infantry arms and more successful fighter aircraft. The technically superior Norden bomb sight turned out to be no more effective in real-world use than low-technolgy bomb aiming devices.

Man for man and tank for tank the Soviets Red Army (1943-45 edition) was the most effective of the major combat forces that fought the Gemans, and the US were the least effective.

You mentioned that the US could out-produce the Russians 4:1. That may be true, but the US had to use some of the production to ship the rest of the production across the ocean. The Russians didn't have to worry about sea transport. The US forces had a much lower ratio of combat troops to overall force size. They had a much higher standard of supply of non-essentials. So keeping a similar number of front-line combat troops supplied required a lot more producton yet produced less fighting capacity. The US advantage in logistics is balanced by the higher level of logistical problems they faced.


Despite the casualties, the Russians had many more men in the army and available for deployment in Europe than the US and its allies had. Since the US wouldn't be fighting over their own continent, they'd be a lot less motivated to mobilize to the extent the Russians did. The Western allies had greatly underestimated the need for infantry replacements, and by 1945 the three Westerm Armies were all suffering from an infantry shortage (the Americans not nearly as bad as the Brits or Canadians). In the end, to hold ground you need boots on that ground. The Russians had the boots.

There is no evidence the air power was obliterating them, and the Gemans were a much tougher nut for the Russians to crack than the Americans would have been.
If there is no bomb, and the Soviets time their European attack to coincide with the American assault on the Japanese home islands, the Soviet numerical advantage in Europe would be huge.

I think the most likely result is the front line stabilizes at the Pyrenees and the English Channel. All of France is lost.

The thing missing from this discussion is whether the Politburo would even consider a general offensive even without facing the bomb.

Good post. I imagine I will have to walk back the 'curb-stomp' part somewhat, but nevertheless, in most scenarios I see a large but over-extended USSR military quickly getting ground down by a variety of allied operations, and I also see an economy that was drained and frayed that would not in its wildest dreams compete with the US in the postwar time-frame.

Sure, we can draw up a handful of plausible scenarios in which the Russians with some clever timing coupled with changes in US deployment could mount a formidable offensive. But we can equally draw up plausible scenarios in which the US with some clever timing could thrash the Russians out of Germany. I'm eyeballing it and saying that the US would have clear advantages in most scenarios.

I don't know what the ratio of kills to number of opportunities was, which would be important to judge whether your point is significant here. I agree with the general point that good training is not a substitute for experience, but are you specifically claiming that the average Russian fighter pilot was better than the average US/British fighter pilot? That seems like a big stretch. At any rate, I submit that just as we don't usually debate who had better tanks and more artillery (the Russians), I don't see how we can debate who had the better air force, especially if we're talking about the combined power of the US air force with other allied air forces. Sure, we can say that some Russian planes were better or they had a lot of them, but on the whole, come on

And how long can they hold those ports (without a navy)? Within weeks it will be like the Battle of Copenhagen at any port the US wanted to attack.

This is a common claim and it's frankly beyond my interest level to investigate or form a solid opinion about, although the basic objection to it is that German production didn't go down because it was very much underutilized in the early stages of the war. Can we agree though that if the Soviets couldn't stop US/British bombers then hundreds of thousands of Russian civilians would be killed or displaced by Dresden style raids? And that wouldn't phase a population that had already endured so much punishment? Bombers were also very effective against oil production (targeting refineries and such), which would be singularly important in this conflict.

Well, to the extent it was clearly superior in many ways is the extent to which I claimed US technology was a clear advantage. I'm not claiming that the technology was superior across the board.

The US could send their assets over sea and never be harassed. The Russians would have to supply their divisions into Western Germany and into France (if they're going that far), and these supply lines would be long and vulnerable to attack in a hundred different ways. I'd take the US logistical problems over the Soviet ones any day of the week.

I agree in so far as I doubt that the US could have mobilized as many ground troops as the Soviets, but I'm not sure whether the style of the war would have required them to. I'm also suggesting that supporting that many men with a spent economy and vulnerable supply lines would have been extremely difficult, lessening the advantage.

The hypothetical (albeit silly) was that if you had US/British air power on the side of the Germans on the Eastern Front in 44/45, the Russians do not sniff Berlin. The point being that the Soviets had a nice insurance policy essentially zerging Eastern Germany knowing they had relatively little to worry about from the air.

They had their buffer states, I think they were quite content to stop fighting.

Perhaps I should have split my previous post in two parts and made a more definitive statement in the first part.

There is little to no evidence that the Soviets had any intention of going beyond their agreed sphere of influence by means of military conquest during the latter half of the 1940s. The deterence of nuclear weapons was not available for the first three months after the end of the war in Euope, and they did not act at that time. The factors that restrained them then would have continued to do so through the first part of the nuclear age. So, no, nuclear weapons did not prevent a Soviet conquest of Europe during the 1940s. By the end of that decade the Soviets had their own A-bomb, which brings about a whole new set of considerations.

I agree; was trying to guide discussion towards clarity.

Because of its production advantage, if the US had the will, it could have waged a long-term attrition war that would have evicted the Soviets from Western Europe. It would have had to go it almost alone though. The British economy was wrecked. French military power was whatever the US would give it. The Canadian economy was healthy. Canada outproduced the US on a per capita basis in many sectors. For instance, with only 9% of the US population at the time, Canada produced 20% of the military trucks used by the western allies. However, the Canadian Army was suffering from an acute shortage of infantry. There is some doubt that Canada would have played an active role in any operations if the British were sitting it out.

Whether the US could have conducted "a variety of [effective] operations" against the Soviets would depend on what territory the Soviets could take before the line stabilized. How effective do you think the US would be attacking accross the Alps, the Pyrenees and the English Channel?

The Soviets would have been a lot more successful defending Fortress Europa from invasion than the Germans had been, because they didn't have to use 2/3 of their forces to guard the Eastern Front. If the Soviets could take France before the situation stabilized, I think the US would have found the cost of reinvasion prohibitive. So frankly, IMO it comes down to whether the Soviets could cross the Rhine in their initial thrust. If they do, there is no signifcant barrier to them denying the US the port capacity required to supply a force large enough to protect southern, western and central France.


OP stipulated two conditions:

• No nuclear bombs
• Soviets attack, trying to seize western Europe.

I don't believe I am hypothesizing anything further than that. The US had already planned a major redeployment of troops from Europe to the Pacific. The Soviets knew this. If there was going to be a Soviet attack it would be after they had built up supplies and the US had drawn down forces. Sometime between November '45 and February '46. I'm afraid I can't imagine any plausible scenario that has the US booting the Russians out of Germany without the bomb.

I don't know what those scenarios would be. OP's stipulations mean far fewer US troops in Europe, but essentially no Soviet draw-down.

IDK the ratio of kills to opportunities either. I think that it is quite likely that at ten sorties into his career the average western allied pilot was probably a bit superior to the average Soviet pilot with the same amount of sorties. The main reason the Soviets had more aces and larger scores for those aces was that they flew more missions. Generally, I think a Soviet pilot 10 sorties before the end of his combat career was better than a US pilot 10 sorties before the end of his combat career.

We are talking about air supremacy, not an edge. While I would agree that the western allies had an advantage in air power, I disagree that it is a foregone conlusion that this would have given the western allies air supremacy before the end of a ground campaign for western Europe (minus Italy and Iberia).

As Dieppe showed, you don't need a navy or an airforce to hold a port. The Soviets would not be using the ports as ports. They would just be denying their use to the west. The Soviets didn't need ports to get supplies into western Europe. The west did. I raised this specifically in response to your citation of the one big advantage the US had: economic production. This advantage is worth very little if you cannot deploy and supply the forces you are producing in the theatre where you want them to operate.

That's certainly part of it. Germany didn't convert its economy to total war production until more than halfway though the war. However, it is my understanding that total German economic output increased, nor just war goods. This despite the German economy having pretty much recovered from the Great Depression by 1939. I don't think there was a large amount of capacity sitting around idle.

But Soviet production facilities were much farther away from Western air bases than were German production facilities. Soviets would need much less technologically advanced fighters to contest Soviet home airspace than the allies would need to escort bombers that far.

My point wasn't that US technology wasn't superior across the board. It was that having superior technology doesn't necessarily lead to superior military outcomes. I cited the Norden bomb sight because it was almost certainly the most technologically advanced bomb aiming device used during the war. However it did not lead to the most accurate bombing in the war. (Here's a quiz for you. Which country's air force bombing caused the most casualites among allied generals in France in 1944: a) Germany, b) Italy, c) the US.) The superior Soviet tanks were constructed using inferior technology. What the Soviets were far better at than the US was optimizing the use of what technology they had available.

[QUOTE=smrk2;39636620]The US could send their assets over sea and never be harassed. The Russians would have to supply their divisions into Western Germany and into France (if they're going that far), and these supply lines would be long and vulnerable to attack in a hundred different ways. I'd take the US logistical problems over the Soviet ones any day of the week./QUOTE]Vulnerability to attack is only one component in the set of logistical problems. System capacity is by far the most important factor. The Allied logistical system capacity was bottlenecked by port capacity. Russian land forces capturing or interdicting Le Havre, Antwerp, Rotterdam and Hamburg would far outweigh any effect allied strategic bombing for supply interdiction could have. (What other ways do you think Russian suplies lines would be vulnerable?)

What "style of war" do you think would have been required to resist and counter-attack a Russian surprise ground attack on western Europe? What the western allies discovered when they finally got around to fighting on the ground in Europe was that it was a lot less about technology and a lot more about grunts taking and holding ground. The western planners carefully calculated the resources they thought they needed to invade Europe and knock out Germany. They spent a couple of years preparing those resources. By late 1944 they had found out that they had totally overbalanced towards the technical arms, and were quite short in infantrymen. It sounds to me like you are making the same sort of error.

One final thought. From mid-January 1945 until effective resistance ceased, the Soviets faced roughly twice as many German forces as the Western alies did, and an even larger proportion of armoured forces. For much of that time, the Germans were more strongly motivated to resist the Soviets than the west. Despite that, the Soviets advanced farther in the same amout of time. Much German miltary technology was more advanced than western allied technology. This tells me that despite their techlogical and (presumed) logistical disadvanatges, the Soviets had a more powerful armed force than the west. Against the West, they would be facing less of a technological gap than they had when fighting the Germans. In the hypthetical situation posed by OP, the West would have had less power, because the lack of an A-bomb would have resulted in major US troop withdrawls from Europe. There is no reason to postulate any reduction in Soviet power.

IDK whether the Russians would have breached the Rhine in their first thrust. But if they had, I think it would have been game over in Europe.

So is the consensus basically Stalin had no desire to ever take over western Europe even if there were no nuclear bombs?

Desire? Sure, probably. Realistic ability is another story. It would have been one hell of a fight, maybe one that the USSR could have won, but not sure the Red Army would go for it, and even Stalin only had so much control over the military situation post-1945.

Better to say he didn't have the will. But yes.

If he did take over the richer, more industrialized part of Europe he couldn't control it like he did Eastern Europe. I think he'd worry it would trigger a great unraveling.

Let's not forget about China. If the Soviets show intention of becoming a worldwide empire, I think it might make the Chinese quite anxious. In the real history there was in a large civil war after WWII where the communists took control, but if the Soviets would have been considered the enemy, communist might be considered traitors, much like was seen in the US.

I think the Chinese might have tried a pre-emptive strike at the USSR, whilst they were occupied on the western front. A Chinese-USSR war would have probably had the biggest battlefields in history.

Bolded is not really necessary. China and the USSR became adversaries in the 1960s while they were both still communist.

That's different, because in the '60s China was already communist. China only became communist in '49 and I'm suggesting that if the USSR would try to take over the world in '45, China might not have become communist.

That's not what happened. Since the downfall of the last emperor, until the proclamation of the People's Republic, China was a divided, anarchic territory beset by rival factions of warlords, foreign invaders and armed political movements. Throughout that time period, the Communist Party was one of the players. Initially, it was of little consequence compared to the warlords and the Chinese National People's Party (Guomindang). However its comparitive competence and freedom from corruption, combined with the support it gained from Stalinist Russia led to a steady rise in both popularity and power. It fought a civil war against the Guomintang off and on throughout the tenure of the latter. The post WWII-campaign was merely the final phase of that civil war, which had been interrupted by Japanese expansionism.

The various factors that led to the rise in support for the Chinese Communists would have remained even if Stalin had invaded western Europe. If noticed at all by the Chinese people, such an invasion would merely have been seen in much of China as another Communist campaign of liberation of the people from nationalist militarist reactionaries.

Unlike in McCarthyist America, there was no near-monopoly of capitalist-controlled anti-Communist media whose propoganda could reach into nearly every household. There was no mechnism by which Communists could become bogeymen in the eyes of Chinese public opinion. Your average Chinese peasant would be much more influenced by events closer to home, like which party kicked out the foreigners, whch party helped with the harvests, which party provided a more stable currency, which party brought about land reform, etc. In all these, the Communists were seen in a better light than the Guomindang.