Great Britain v. Soviet Union all out total war 1946.
 

Interested as I am in the recent report about how we would come off in a non nuclear conflict with Russia today, I want to pose this question.
How would Britain have come out against Stalin's Soviet Forces in 1946 if the new iron curtain was breached with an all out attack from Russia?
Indulge me as I set out my scenario.
1. Attlee Government. No nuclear capability on either side.
2. We haven't de-mobbed, and the 3 forces generally are at May 1945 strength.
3. We are financially broke and America hasn't yet backed us in the actual fighting, they are keeping out (but happy to supply us with military aid-at a price).They offer no such aid to Russia.
4. Soviets have struck first with multiple armoured thrusts across Northern Europe with a apparent push to the ports of N Germany, Holland and Belgium.

Indulge me.What would have happened, who would have "won"?
HS.

American Forces have withdrawn to France.
 

No American Forces are in situ beyond the 1939 borders of France ( the border is a DMZ 10 miles deep. Britain, militarily is on its own stand fast newly forming armies in the recently liberated European countries. Germany has been entirely disarmed and militarily stood down.

1. We have secure lines of communication as USSR has no maritime capability.
2. We have jet fighters albeit short range, high performance prop fighters, long range bombers, radio navigation aids, and probably air superiority if not supremacy.
3. The army is numerically inferior and its tanks, whilst numerous are out numbered and outgunned.
4. A scorched earth policy and a devastated 3rd Reich deny the Red Army opportunistic logistic supplies.
5. The Red Army loses manoeuvre ability.
6. Red Army has slow advance and continuous interdiucy and attrition.
But
7. A thrust into Caucasus oil fields and Persia and Iraq secure oily supplies and deny these to British forces.
8. Red Army reaches North Sea but lacks any ability to reach UK.
9. British Army retires in good order to UK.
10. RAF jet bombers continue deep penetration raids into eastern Europe.
11. RN units blockade Dardanelles and Baltic.
End game, Reds hold northern Europe. UK controls all SLOC and Air Supremacy to Russian border.

I see my fag packet assessment mirrored the wiki defensive plan mentioned by desk wizard, particularly the navy and air aspects.

That wouldn't be because you read it before posting? :E

I note you say no nuclear capability,but one would have assumed that the U.S. would have given us the use of atomic weapons and the aircraft to deliver them fairly quickly. No one has mentioned Japan either. If Japan could have been remilitarized, they could have posed a threat to Russia's far eastern territories.

In order to answer this question, you could do worse than to read this book about Stalin, looking into his mind, by a Russian 'defector'.

MG, not at all.

The imponderable is not kit - theirs broadly quite as good as ours, in overwhelming quantity - but motivation, especially of conscript infantry. They need a good reason to advance into harm's way.

Well, in 3 days, August,1945, Ivan disposed of the Imperial Japanese Army. We read that we faced that in SE.Asia, and that USMC faced it in the Pacific...but no: it sat throughout 1941-8/45 up on the edge of the Arctic. Rolled up in brief hours, by brown jobs whose understanding of their Mission will have been vague.

So, 1946, Ivan would have rolled forward and swamped us, reaching Antwerp briskly, heedless of casualties. So, what then? Well: Q: why would Stalin have done this: West of the Urals Mother Russia was devastated - why add to that? A: to spread the good word in France, Italy, everywhere really.

And, I surmise, to good effect. Chaos, revolution, workers and peasants rising up all over. In the real world:
France's Chief of Staff, early '47 “concurred (USSR) would be in Paris by August(’47)” Bullock,Attlee,P537: Joliot-Curies and other nuclear physicists, and 182 French National Assembly Members (11/46), were Communist; so to 11/3/47 were some Belgian Ministers. Soviet Arctic Fleet route to our Atlantic passed Iceland - ⅓ MPs were his; Occupied Austria seethed with Third Man strife.

Stalin had a one-time chance to create his version of Socialism throughout the European land-mass. Nothing we could have done to stop him. Truman had pledged to bring all the boys home by 8/47.

Stalin tho wasn't that interested in exporting Communism IF it was at a serious cost to the USSR - he was very much of the "Socialism in One Country" mind-set

thrashing the Germans and establishing a 2 country buffer zone pretty much gave him all he needed - and the troops were needed to rebuild Western Russia as well.............

I think a thrust such as this would have kept going until it reached the Suez with Egypt then lost.

A WHAT IF scenario written years ago suggested that if Hitler had not invaded Russia but instead thrust from Eastern Europe/Greece etc into Middle East they would have put Egypt in a pincer between Rommel and Army driving through Syria / Palestine.

Racedo, indeed, but look at the British logistics train: an air route right across Africa and the sea route around the Horn and still Rommel failed to take Egypt.

Oh agree but if you had cut off Middle East then Nazi's would have had pretty much whole Mediterranean to themselves and could have continued towards India joining with with the Japs.

Losing Middle East / India / Ceylon and its a different outcome.

racedo, the Germans might have reached into Egypt but the logistics tail was already stretched and approaching India and the Indian Army fighting on home ground would probably have finished that expedition off.

Put simply, while the Germans chose the wrong enemy in the west so did the Japanese in the east. Now that would have been a can of worms.

Pontius

you assume the Indian Army would continue fighting for the British after the Germans had motored through the Middle East - I think that's a big assumtion TBH. The collapse of British arms in the ME would probably have led to a de facto collapse of the Raj and a takeover by Congress.

Apart from our losses the supply chain would have been unsustainable and, at the end of the day, the UK Govt would want to hold onto the Britsih Isles even if it meant the abandonment of the Empire....

HH, I know some Indians sided with the Japanese. I know India wanted indepoindependence and I also know that they have many committed communists.

My assumption was not that they would support the Raj but that they would not welcome either German or Japanese occupation.

Yes I think PN's is probably the most realistic outcome, and something we talked about at work in a strictly amateur way....my question triggered by a website I found with hundreds of recon pictures following up RAF bombing raids....I fairly admit I had no idea the actual real physical damage a raid could do to a town or city until I saw this site and made me think about the power the RAF held at this time. Utterly awesome. Think this was a section of Histomil - someone had access to the IWM and uploaded a lot of stuff I had never seen.
I watched a documentary years ago about the a UK Army Officer who happened to come face up to a Russian tank crew in 1945, and he recalled the hostility he received by a thoroughly anti western Russian military. They were motivated to fight onwards as the propaganda they had received seemed to place us very little higher than the actual Nazis. They could have got to the ports Id wager, but it would have been difficult under the sights of a powerful RAF Air Force. And I agree they would never have got across the North Sea.

But very thankfully it never happened, things stand as they did. HS.

Where was UK Oil supplies coming from in WW2 ?

I assume Iran / Saudi but really don't know......

https://www.quora.com/Where-did-Brit...om-during-WWII

Mainly from the USA, Venezulela and the Caribbean - I think a lot of the ME oil was diverted to Australia, India & Egypt (to replace Burmese & Indonesian oil)

Saudi wasn't a major producer until the 1950's - most ME oil came from Iran

racedo, the logistics tail I was suggesting was more than oil but mechanical spares, ammunition, personnel etc. What you can say it that the LOC through the ME would have been secure, unlike the sea/air dependent route for British forces in Egypt, but once you reached Saudi/Iraq etc the road/rail infrastructure and mapping were virtually nil.

I see you have no US forces in-situ in your scenario, so it seems like this is purely a thought exercise as in reality it would be very tough to come up with a realistic scenario that the US would not be involved in. There were US forces all throughout Europe in 1946 and I don't think they would just sit there while hordes of Soviet forces came streaming in...


I agree that the land side would quickly go Soviet, but they would lack the capability to easily reach the UK. The UK would dominate the maritimes.


I do think that the B-29 "Washington" lending would have been expedited, with special cargo....

Sandiego, the OP specifically ruled out US involvement.

However he also mentioned how we were broke. This was set out when we told the US SofS that we could not sustain forces in Greece and would pull out. The US would have to step in. We did;they did.

This scenario is a dead letter. The American Army of occupation was alive and well in 1946. (My dad was a part of it). As well to put together a scenario where the Germans weaponized bratwurst and potatoes in 1946 and began a rebellion in the Soviet occupied sector.

Sorry Cuz, I think the OP used as his premise the prognosis from the recently retired chief of Joint Forces Command that the UK could not defend itself against an all out attack by Russia.

HangarShuffles scenario is probably the more realistic one. Churchill feared a Soviet advance and there was no certainty that the US would not revert to its previous isolationism; Truman was an unknown quantity.

Why can't people accept that the US is not part of this discussion, yeah we know what happened but for this discussion the US is not available. Maybe for the same top secret reason the US is not available for Syria.

Yes the Soviets and everybody were tired but without the US (or maybe even with?) they'd just have to walk to the coast of France. Island hopping from there might have been too much trouble initially. However, the Soviets could pick up with bombing where the Germans left off.

FP, you forget, we had jet fighters, they didn't. We had long range bombers, they didn't at the outset with a first flight of the Bull not until 2 years after the war.
The precursor of the modern Soviet submarine force was at Belfast so that would not have been an option either.

If the premise is UK fighting the Soviets without any US help, it's pretty clear there could only have been one end result and we would have been ground into submission by sheer weight of numbers and resources

Pontius: counterfactuals are not all equal in nature. This one's a complete piece of crap. For further reading, our own OP, and the old fart whom he cites as a "source" ought to examine a well constructed example of how countfactuals work, or don't, in a book written by Niall Ferguson called Virtual History.


"Truman as unknown" ignores that Truman didn't act in a vacuum. He also learned on the job. See Berlin Airlift, 1947, in which my father was also present.


As to "isolationism:" the Draft was reinstated in 1940, and our people of political power (the blue bloods on the East Coast, where a lot of political power remained in the post WW II era) were supporting the Brits via lend lease well before Pearl Harbor. "Isolationism" was a sentiment that killed the League of Nations (post WW I) but that isn't all that did it. There was other internal political bickering between the Executive and Legislative branches involved in that showdown over a treaty. "Isolationism" is hardly the force in mid century that people like to pretend it is once we went large. Our commitment in WW II was orders of magnitude larger than our commitment in WW I.


Factor also ignored: the Red Scare was alive and well in the 20's, 30's, and 40's which would inform any American position in mid century. Harry Truman was not tone deaf. The Red Scare had not gone away, see the Alger Hiss case a few years later.


Russia versus UK in 1946 does not just involve those two nations. It becomes the concern of anyone and everyone in the neighborhood. Left unsaid: who does the US supply? The UK? USSR? Both? Neither?

As above stated: the counterfactual offered isn't worth the paper it wasn't written on.

RAF mass destructive firepower.
 

I still think the range and power projection of the RAF would have been the decisive factor in 1946 against Russian forces in grinding them.
Russian tank forces would have had little in the way of supporting fighter aircraft cover of a standard to match the RAF Fighter Command either. Perhaps they (the tanks) could have got to the North Sea but once there they would have taken a terrible pounding from the RAF and this would have continued for a considerable period.
The strain of trying to endure that air assault, hold and rebuild Europe, keep an army happy that had endured, what 5 years of hell(?), it would have been too much for them. Perhaps they would even have entirely collapsed.
Harris would then have been seen to be right.
Additionally we would also have recalled a very capable RN and FAA into the North Sea. Their own interdiction against the Russian armoured forces would have been considerable...
We would have just had to keep on fighting and fighting.....
It truly is a most horrible thought mind, how it would have gone.

I believe the Soviet strength in WW2 was overstated. It suited their own propagandists and it suited people in the west to lap it up.

The Soviets received large amounts of aid from the west - and I suspect that the benefits have been airbrushed from their historyl. So in official WW2 footage we tend to see homogeneous groups T34s riding over the countryside and not a lot else.

They never had to tolerate strategic bombing campaign -and AIUI for all the fact I was taught in school that all the industrial production moved east of the Urals from what I have since read there was an awful lot that didn't and the Luftwaffe simply didn't have the resources to attack it.

The Soviet Navy wasn't particularly significant. And the UK had a decent submarine force and aircraft carriers.

And it's not as if after 1945 theat the Soviets weren't likely to be fatigued.

I would guess that after VE day there would have been people in Moscow concerned about an attack from the West.

Moreover given their lack of strategic airpower I sometimes wonder if Bomber Command's role in WW2 and its subsequent treatment was in part influenced by a subtle campaign from the east using sympathisers in the west.

LW, OK, if you want to play, do so. Instead of supplying equipment you now bring your armies in to play, and remember we are considering 1945 not 1947.

Allied air is now reinforced with B17, the heavy bombers can mount continuous interdiction denying road and rail movement.

Allied ground is considerably enhanced but enemy armour has a near Tiger capability and greater numbers. Their land logistics lines are stretched and harassed.

Additional allied naval forces are not significant at this stage.

So, balance, where British forces would be pushed back to the North Sea, US forces would enable the Red Army to be checked. Patton would mount an armoured thrust through light Red frontal forces and sweep around taking Berlin from the east much to Montgomery' s annoyance.

OK?

I'm not sure that Bomber Command was a 'strategic' bomber force in this context, since - IIRC - their 'heavy' bombers were optimized for payload rather than range. They could strike targets in Germany, but there weren't any worthwhile strategic targets left in Germany. An infusion of B-29s, of which the US had a considerable supply, or the development and production of a follow-on British bomber, would have been needed to carry the war to the Soviets.

Our bombers could have been using airfields in Europe if need be.So their range would have increased somewhat.No mention of weather conditions in these scenarios.

PFP, OP, who mentioned strategic? During the post-invasion period the heavy bombers were used in an interdiction role against communications. From a Soviet advance perspective they would be advancing though land where the infrastructure was largely destroyed.

The heavy bombers could have been used in the same manner as LineBacker 25 years later.

As far as moving the heavy bombers forward I would suggest the logistics cost would be too high. 10 tons of bombs v 1 or 2. Spares etc. Better continue from main bases and let the tactical aircraft deploy and fall back as required. May be operate carrier groups in the Baltic.

In much the same way as they advanced on Berlin all the way from Stalingrad facing the exact same lack of infrastructure.

To answer the OP's question, taking the Americans out of the equation, if the Sovs had kept marching westwards it would have been dasvidaniya.

Hempy, true to a point except for the matter of air supremacy in the west. Of course once they reached the North Sea we get to a further what if.

They would have expedited the Bull programme but would they have got the bomb secrets from the atom spies? How soon could they reverse engineer jet engines. Would they have got their share of German scientists and technology?

Then in 1947 they developed the AK47 while we were stuck with the SMLE and presumably would not have got the Belgian FN.

The Canberra would have outperformed anything but would our aircraft industry have progressed that far in wartime
We would really have been in hock to the US for B50s, P2s, P51s etc.

Hopefully the Mig 15 would have been much later.

PN, the Sovs had something no one else had. Superior manpower. Thousands of Soviet sappers died just laying down bridges over the half frozen Elbe, yet it didn't even count as a blip on their orbat.

The only question west of Berlin is morale. To the Sovs, WW2 was the 'Great Patriotic War'. The Germans had deceived Stalin by breaching the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and Stalin was pissed off completely.

After conquering Germany, morale may have been different if they were ordered to keep marching.

"The Germans had deceived Stalin by breaching the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and Stalin was pissed off completely. "

After reading "The Chief Culprit" you may want to review that sentence. I am not excusing Hitler at all but according to this source Stalin was about to launch a attack just a few weeks later and Hitler had no choice but to strike first while the Red Army was still building up.

The description of the Finnish-Russian winter war in this book is also very breathtaking, how many Red soldiers were sacrificed to take just one pillbox.

No, I'm reasonably happy with that sentence.

Perhaps you should have a glance at the first few chapters of Antony Beevors 'Stalingrad'. Drawn primarily from Soviet archives.

Failing that, Mein Kampf gives a reasonable insight into Barbarossa