What if

[Caesar-Seriona]

Remember you have to discontinue the idea that Lend Lease isn’t happening except from UK which was mostly tanks and fighters.

Germany drove very deep into USSR with the help it was getting so I can’t image how much worse it would of been if US wasn’t sending supplies.

[seancb]

Play a game and leave the USA out. Just skip their turn. It should become very apparent that it wouldn’t have ended well for the remaining allied forces.

[Gargantua]

@seancb:

Play a game and leave the USA out. Just skip their turn. It should become very apparent that it wouldn’t have ended well for the remaining allied forces.

Well applying this game logic to the question, could Russia/UK beat Germany,  I would say in Global 1940 it’s entirely possible for the allies to win with no US help.

US often goes full pacific, and UK/Russia is left to it’s own devices in Europe.  If Adolf plays and mishandles Germany because he’s a noob.  It’s an Allied W! :)

[CWO Marc]

A UK/USSR partnership might well have defeated the Axis (though it would have taken longer than was historically the case, and much more of Europe would probably have ended up under Soviet control than was the case historically), but let’s look at the UK element by asking the following question: would a US/USSR partnership without the UK have been more successful than a UK/USSR partnership without the US?  The answer depends partly on whether the British Isles would have remained under UK control, and thus on whether they would have been available for use by the US as a springboard for its strategic bombing campaign and its later cross-Channel invasion, but I’m raising the point because of another factor: the fact that the US and the UK had very different material capabilities and significantly different philosophies when it came to waging war against the Axis.

The difference in material capabilities doesn’t need any elaboration: the US was massively superior to the UK in terms of numbers, though the qualitative difference wasn’t as large.  In terms of philosophy, however, the British and the Americans were worlds apart and they had many bitter arguments on the subject throught the war.  The British – in part because they’d been in the war longer, in part because the war was on their doorstep, and in part because they had fewer resources overall – favoured the indirect approach of fighting the Axis on the periphery of its territories, and they also sometimes favoured tactics that economized men by taking a slow-and-steady approach.  (Montgomery was heavily criticized for this by the Americans during the Normany campaign and its follow-up in the rest of France.)  The Americans, by contrast, wanted to hit the Germans head-on, in the Ulysses S. Grant tradition, and get the job done as quickly as possible.  That’s why, for example, the British lobbied for operations like the invasion of Italy and the Market-Garden paratroop operation in Holland, while the Americans pushed for a cross-Channel invasion and a broad-front push across France towards the Rhine.  Ironically, the Americans were closer to the Soviets in their hit-them-head-on approach to ground warfare than they were to the British were, though like the British (and unlike the Soviets, who were prepared to take massive casualties) they did make considerable efforts to use capital-intensive technology (like strategic bombers) to reduce to a minimum the overall number of human casualties they had to incur in their war effort.

[Argothair]

What I’m not seeing yet in the comments so far is a discussion of whether Britain would have had additional resources to commit to the German/Italian front because Japan presumably stayed out of the war. How many extra divisions can Britain ship in from ANZAC, New Guinea, Malaya, Hong Kong, Burma, etc. once Britain’s not tied down by the Japanese Empire?

Right, like if the war is Germany, Italy, and Japan vs. Russia, France, and the UK, with absolutely no involvement by the USA, then it seems like a pretty clear Axis win. Without the USA serving as a check on Japan, Japan would have been free to focus its full might on either Siberia or India, either of which would have been a disaster for the Allies. If Japan goes north, Russia runs critically short of the manpower it needed to push the Germans back west of Moscow. Instead of building up a wall of reserves that won the famous January 1942 counter-offensive outside Moscow, Moscow winds up in street-to-street fighting over the winter, with Germans penetrating part of the way into the Moscow suburbs and using them as winter quarters. Hitler winds up with a real chance of taking Moscow in spring 1942, potentially triggering a collapse of Russian morale. With an unbroken string of land-based military victories, further resistance to the Wehrmacht might have looked hopeless – even if much of the Red Army fought on, many divisions would surrender without fighting, further weakening Soviet strength, and setting off a chain reaction leading to an Axis victory.

If Japan goes south, Britain runs critically short of the manpower it needs to hold Egypt and put down the pro-Axis coups in Iraq and Persia. Divisions that would otherwise have been shipped west from India to hold the Suez Canal instead get sent east to hold the Japanese and Thai armies at the gates of India. Rommel pulls off a miracle after El Alamein and drives the British forces into the Red Sea. With the port of Alexandria in Axis hands, Italy can finally send proper supply to the offensive spearhead, and so by April 1942, the Desert Fox is resupplied and marching on Baghdad with substantial Arab support. British control over the Middle East collapses, and the Axis wind up with a stable, secure, practical source of the oil they need to fight a long war.

So what’s more interesting is UK + France + USSR vs. Germany + Italy. Japan stays firmly neutral except for its ongoing war against China. What happens there? I’m curious.

[Imperious Leader]

Look you cant use any AA game to decide this question. Its more than ridiculous to have a Larry Harris game used to deal with a Historical question. The game even in Europe is not Historical and the manpower reserves of the allies is much greater than Germany and Japan. Even China had some 500 divisions alone ( of course on average their divisions were much weaker than Japanese).

Its pretty clear the axis win in any Axis and Allies game if USA does not play. Go play a Russian campaign style game if you want to get a closer perspective of what Germany was up against.

[suprise attack]

Yes Japan is in the war, only the U.S. is out

[Argothair]

Yeah, well, at that point it’s the Axis’s war to lose. If America is out of the war and Japan knows America is out of the war, then the first strike of the Japanese Air Fleet hits Ceylon, not Pearl Harbor. Instead of just losing a battleship and a carrier, Britain loses its entire naval presence in the Indian Ocean on the first day of the war. Oil shipments from Borneo flow directly into Japanese factories with no shipping losses from American subs, allowing them to adequately train a new cadre of fighter and bomber pilots. With nearly unchallenged air superiority, Britain loses the battle for eastern and coastal India, retreating toward Pakistan and New Delhi. Revolting Indian nationalists further sap British Indian military strength. India makes no net contribution to the North African / Middle Eastern front in 1942, and as a result, British lines collapse. With no Persian oil and no American destroyers, British control of the Atlantic evaporates. With no Battle of Midway, no Battle of the Coral Sea, and no Battle of Guadalcanal, Japan successfully boots the Australians and Kiwis out of the Solomon Islands, cutting ANZAC off from the rest of the British Empire.

So by May 1942, the “British Empire” is pretty much just England, Scotland, Wales, and Canada. South Africa and ANZAC maintain their nominal loyalty to the British crown, but they’re not logistically able to contribute any troops or supplies. That rump British Empire might be able to maintain its independence and spit defiance at the Nazis – they could maybe protect a narrow corridor for Canada to export enough grain and oil to England to feed the factory workers in Manchester and keep the fighter pilots up in the air on patrol…but they’re not going to be in a position to launch any offensive operations against the Nazis or share any supplies with Russia.

Without importing American Studebaker trucks (not to mention ammo, boots, food, etc.) Russia is in no position to launch any offensives at all. Maybe they hold Moscow in the winter of 1941, and maybe they don’t. Either way, they’re not going to retake any ground. Russia can haul in reserves by rail to defend any cities they still hold, but every time they lose a city, it’s gone for good. The Germans have plenty of oil from Persia, and extra reserves that they can strip from a quiet Western Front. Sooner or later the Russians get pushed over the Urals.

It’s pretty grim.

[Imperious Leader]

Germany was supposed to put away Russia by 1941, and lend lease shipments in that year were 2.1% of the total they received witch is nothing. So basically with no USA helping Russia for that 6 months and Germany? Italy  FAILED TO WIN ,demonstrates your argument also fails as they could not put away a truckless Russia. Reason is Russia would replace one destroyed division with two divisions. With better tank models that used universal parts, as opposed to German tank design that mostly had customized parts ( even within the same model the parts were not interchangeable) Russia could better cope with breakdowns. No Russians even seeing the Urals. Germany would make her same mistakes and lose eventually to the eastern hordes that made divisions like Germany made schnitzel.

Hitler had only rearguard swine …like sgt shultz to replace loses. Stalin had ridiculous manpower to draw from

[Argothair]

I dunno, IL, you’re kind of contemptuously waving away my arguments without really addressing them. If you just wanna say “hurr hurr, Hitler was stupid and his troops were too,” then there’s not much I can do about that. If you want to talk about the facts, please read on.

In 1941, the Allies shipped 360,000 tons of supplies to Russia. Let’s say 5% of that was trucks – that’s still over 12,000 Studebakers in 1941. You put five soldiers in each truck, you bring two fresh truckload of soldiers to a railway junction each month with each truck, and you’ve just mobilized an extra 480,000 troops. That’s about 40% of the Russian army as it stood in front of Moscow in December 1941 – almost double the margin of superiority Stalin had when he launched the Moscow counteroffensive in December 1941. Without those troops, instead of slightly outnumbering Hitler, the Russians would have been somewhat outnumbered. You take those extra Russian troops away, and it’s totally possible the winter counteroffensive would have failed, leaving Germans in place only 15 miles from the Moscow city center.

So I hear you that Stalin’s got his limitless eastern hordes. But the problem is, you can’t get the eastern hordes to Moscow without trucks. They live out in the trackless prairie and the arctic mining towns, a thousand miles from nowhere. And if you don’t get them to the front in time, you lose a major city, and you can’t take that city back without tanks and artillery.

An article in WW2 magazine (http://www.historynet.com/did-russia-really-go-it-alone-how-lend-lease-helped-the-soviets-defeat-the-germans.htm) claims that 30 to 40% of the medium and heavy tanks in front of Moscow in November 1941 were imported from Britain. Having lost 60,000 tanks, Russia was down to its last 600 tanks. Russia’s artillery only had enough ammo to fire two rounds per cannon per day. If America hadn’t been providing its own lend-lease to the UK in the Atlantic, you really think Britain would have found the shipping to spare to get those tanks to Murmansk? Or do you think the Russian infantry could have stood in the snow and held ground against Panzers with virtually no artillery or and virtually no armored support?

After the start of 1942, the Russians quickly set up tank factories and aircraft factories on their rear lines – in part by using imported Allied machine tools to jump start production. A tank factory is a complicated work of art. If you’re missing a key tool, you’ve got to manufacture the tool that makes the tool that makes the tool that finishes your factory. That takes years. The Russians didn’t have years; their tanks were driving out of the factory and into battle. You slow that process down by even a few weeks, and maybe the Germans take Stalingrad, and, with it, shut the Russians out of the entire Caucasus region west of the Volga.

In real life, the Germans made large territorial gains against Russia all through 1942, even though the Allies delivered 14% of their total Lend-Lease that year – the equivalent of 80,000 Studebakers, plus an equivalent number of tanks and aircraft. If you cancel all of that aid, AND you free up half of the 600,000 German combat troops held on the Western Front to repulse the British, AND you reduce Soviet morale, because the Soviets can see that the British are being pushed back on all fronts, the Japanese are advancing, and the Americans still don’t care…

Could Germany have found a way to take this cushy setup and ruin it? Sure. Hitler was insane. He could have made all kinds of mistakes and eventually lost, even without the USA in the war. That’s why I say it was the Axis’s war to lose. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

[seancb]

I’m so glad i could spur such disdain for my statement. I am going to wrest the title from Lord Curtmungus soon. Maybe even rival the Vann formulas for uproar!!

[taamvan]

The answer is pretty simple, UK + USSR vs Axis = Axis World Island 1946

The actual decision was much clearer than that, the US didn’t even want to join the war, but it faced a genuine, two-way dilemma

#1 Face Germany now with some “loyal” allies at your side.

#2 Face Greater Germany later with it’s “loyal” allies at its side.

[Imperious Leader]

yea but still only 2.1% of total lend lease aid reached Russia in 1941, so they ( Russia) defeated Germany without really any aid, which your argument is that without USA Russia was doomed. The winter allowed the Soviets time to bring the Siberians over and get a collective gasp of air to shift their reserves into the line. The Russian reserves even pushed back the Germans after Dec 4th, and they brought in alot more men and manpower than Germany could ever bring to the front. Russia had her rail lines, and German transport was mostly horse drawn and could only replace the wider gauge of rail at 10 kilometers a day. The partisans would see to it that the rail would be cut. So im using your argument against you. I don’t think 30-40% of all soviets tanks were British in 1941. That sounds impossible.

As far as tank factories, they moved their factory out of bomber range in a matter of months and quickly set up and produced. Germany could never do that.  Remember also, Hitler still needed to defend all of western Europe against UK et al.

[Caesar-Seriona]

Once again, you’re ignoring the fact that Germany and Italy only face French, Dutch, Poles, Canadians, and British in this situation. And UK at the time of the USSR situation was only in North Africa. Let’s state the facts here, USA isn’t in the war and neither is Lend Lease so this means the British in Africa are in a much horrible situation than before, they’re not getting any Lend Lease like they did meaning that Afrika Korp could very well be taking Egypt and thus gaining the middle east. Germany and Italy are operating more freely against allied shipping now that nothing is coming from the US so they only have to worry about the Canadians. So the western front against the allies is mostly naval and air and basically doesn’t exist leaving more to operate against USSR. USSR isn’t getting any help at all, I don’t care if you’re going to argue 3%, that 3% is gone now and so is all the reserves that come after it when USSR was finally getting a hell of a lot more. Germany and Italy could very well be turning the tide of battles now that the other allies aren’t getting help what so ever. UK isn’t getting Destroyers or Tanks from the US which is mostly what they got in the early days and USSR isn’t getting Food or Boots which is what they mostly got at the start.

[Imperious Leader]

But im not in 1941 USA wasn’t really in the war and the European Axis lost in 1941 . They could not overcome their mistakes and in 1942 the weight of projected USA power increasingly overwhelmed the Axis. The Axis made more mistakes in 1942 that sealed their doom. If you want a perfect world where everything goes the axis way and they are mistake free, perhaps they had a chance but only in 1941, not 1942

[Caesar-Seriona]

Sure but you are forgetting that before Lend-Lease, there was Cash and Carry which UK was getting before even Japan wanted to destroy the Pacific Fleet. So let’s take US involvement that would directly effect USSR, so first of all, USSR isn’t getting any strategic bombing against German Oil Fields from US that helped on their front. So lets do math here: 1941: 360,778 tons = 2.1%. 1942: 2,453,097 tons = 14%. 1943: 4,794,545 tons = 27.4%. Battle of Stalingrad ended in Feb. of 1943. So total Lend-Lease shipment from US to the end of 1943 is 43.5% of over all USSR Lend-Lease. So according to Wikipedia under “Lend-Lease” which these numbers come from means that USSR received these units by the end of 1943: 172,000 Jeeps. 5,160 of armored units including tanks. 4,902 aircraft. 752,500 tons of food. So the reason why I choose to use all of 1943 instead of up to Feb. is to take into account winning the battle and then turning the tide where Germany could not recover. So we are living in a world where no Lend-Lease exist. Take into account everything I counted which is what USSR got by the time this battle ended? Could Axis over turned USSR? Possible, very possible. So image all of these lack of resources that are not coming against the entire front against Axis forces in USSR.

[taamvan]

You have said something important here;  that before the USA was even in the war, between the Blitz and Barbarossa, that Germany punched itself out and went down the Napoleon road of bigger bets and bigger losses.

But there are some important things to consider–the material commitment being only one.  You are correct and we all seem to agree that the total bulk of the Lend Lease materiel did not flow until later in the war, but no doubt the amounts sent later in the war were less critical and even more massive considering the increased capacity of the 3 routes to send it.  So the physical and moral and protective support of having another productive ally was felt for several years, which prevented despair.

While Germany faced setbacks in the East, one must consider that their timetable and no-step-back approach was dictated by the necessity of ending or at least advancing the war on one front with aggressive moves before the full weight of the enemy is felt.  This was the motivation for the Hundred Days Offensive in WW1, that they only had limited time before they were overwhelmed, which forced them to attempt to destroy the USSR in a reckless and incomplete fashion before they had to face the Western Allies.

Once that process began, we cannot discount the

1. US contribution on the water, which prevented Axis domination of both Oceans.
2. UK power was insufficient,  as others pointed out an unchecked (or even separate-peace Japan) would have dominated the former UK economy and sphere
3. US Strategic Bombing, while not decisive or even debilitating, required a huge and inconvenient redistribution of assets the Axis did not have (radar belts, night fighters)
   4)  The US ended any hope of Axis domination of the ME by giving the UK (monty) a ton of tanks and troops to fight Rommel in a war of attrition…in some situations the Allies were losing 3;1 and they still overwhelmed the Axis
   5)  The threat of the Western Invasion, while not critical for some years, required a substantial diversion of forces in order to dissuade a 1943 cross.
   6)  The failure of unrestricted submarine warfare and the wunderwaffen to produce some decisive effect were the product of limited, hopeful and defensive thinking that flowed from being attacked from all sides.

I think we can conclude that while 1941-42 the Germans would have had setbacks, huge disasters against Russia, but that the UK was effectively paralyzed and without any concern for being attacked from behind in force, that Germany could have easily recovered from these setbacks and torn Russia apart, if not taken Moscow.  It is a good point that US entry into the war (in both wars) was at first partly symbolic; the psychological and strategic effect of the Axis being forced to act in time with limited resources was profound.  Once Germany was being assaulted in on multiple fronts, in multiple ways, this is when its economy was forced to rationalize and this led to an extreme stretching of resources that could not be sustained (except by Russia or the US, not Germany).  Think just in terms of a limited supply of oil being parsed out.  The USA at that time provided a large proportion of the oil and refined products to the Allies (and the world).

The schwerpunkt/blitz method relies on maximum force applied all at once–any diversion of force at the critical time can cause the strategy to fail.

[Argothair]

As usual, I agree with Taamvan.

I also want to point out that the German campaigns of 1941 were only a “loss” in the context of a War where Russia could count on being backstopped by the Western Allies.

In 1941, the Axis conquered Karelia, Vyborg, the Baltics, Bryansk, Smolensk, Eastern Poland, Belarus, and the entire Ukraine, all while inflicting 5:1 casualties on the Soviets infantry and 10:1 casualties against Soviet tanks and airplanes. They crossed 765 out of the 780 miles to Moscow. We usually call that a win! Would you call Operation Overlord a loss because the Americans didmt reach Berlin in 1944? Operatuon Barbarossa’s only a loss if someone or something can guarantee that the Germans won’t make similar progress in 1942. A reeling, unaided Russia is not that someone or something. As demonstrated by the actual war, Germany had more than enough reserves of oil and manpower to fight through 1942, and without Western aid, the Russian front would have fatally collapsed in 1942.

[Caesar-Seriona]

Alright, only way to solve this. Everyone pick a nation during WWII in Europe and Asia and we’ll get the numbers and equipment back to 1941 and then re-due this war without US help.

[Imperious Leader]

Stalingrad was a German created disaster and Lend Lease trucks were not a factor, and not UK tanks that never appeared anywhere near Stalingrad. They went after it because they already failed the year before to take Moscow and too many Russians were in front of their capital.

Germany only had resources to fight in a localized area. In 1941 they had saved up enough supplies to fight all along the front. They squandered those opportunities in 10941 and would never get them back. in 1943 it was even worse, except they truncated their battleline and made it easier somewhat to perform offensive operations ( again in a local area- Kursk). The wasted chances in 1941 doomed them with or without USA aid.

Also, UK controlled the sea . if you took every British ship vs. every German and Italian ship in some stupid Jutland style battle, the Axis would have lost every ship bar none.