@Herr:
It’s rather off topic considering the question asked by the original poster, but as far as a potential Soviet attack on Western Europe is concerned, I find it very hard to believe that the nuclear bomb would have stopped Stalin. We’re not talking about a man here who was particularly concerned about the possible death of millions of his soldiers or civilians. Besides, at the time that Stalin would potentially arrive at such a decision, it wasn’t at all clear how devastating the nuclear bomb would be - but it was clear that they wouldn’t be produced by the dozen any time soon.
Say that it’s July 1, 1945. The Trinity test hasn’t happened yet, so nobody knows whether or not the bomb will even work. US troops stationed in Europe are being relocated to the Pacific to finish off Japan, and the USSR military has an overwhelming numerical superiority. If Stalin intended to conquer the West, that would seem like a perfect opportunity.
So why didn’t he? I suppose that only historical research could provide the answer, and maybe it already has, now that many the old Soviet archives are accessible - I’m no expert there. But there are two reasons I can think of:
- While the communist doctrine of the first half of the century was aimed at world domination, the typical route to achieve that would have been by means of worker’s revolutions similar to that in Russia itself. The USSR was more than willing to promote that, typically by supporting communist parties around the world. Stalin believed military conflict with the West to be inevitable, but didn’t intend to start an all-out war unless the West had been weakened by internal dissension.
- At the end of World War II, Stalin’s grip on the Soviet Union itself had been severely compromised by the events of the war. During his reign of terror of the late 1930’s, he had been in full control - but the purges of those years had severely weakened the Red Army and the entire administration of the country. The German attack left Stalin with no other choice than to allow more freedom, to loosen the reins to a degree that was required to fight the war in a somewhat effective manner. So he had to delegate power to others to a degree that he wouldn’t have been comfortable with in peace time. The war created celebrities and heroes, and in 1945, Stalin was probably not even in a position to start a war with the West - there would have been a lot of opposition, and it might have led to his downfall. It took Stalin several years to reassert his power - a prime example was the case of the highly popular field marshal Georgy Zhukov, who was relegated to a relatively unimportant post.
You’ve raised excellent points. To add to what you’ve written, the Soviet army had become disorganized toward the end of the war in Europe. They were more interested in robbing, raping, shooting civilians, getting drunk, etc. than they were in remaining a disciplined fighting force. There was a celebratory atmosphere which made it unfit for a major new conflict–at least at the time. Another problem it faced was a lack of supplies. While the soldiers could eat by stealing what they needed from civilians, ammunition was another matter.
Stalin was a man who believed in thorough preparations for war. During the '30s, he purged his army of anyone he suspected might prefer Nazism to communism. (Mostly people on the right.) Leading up to a war with the United States, a different sort of purge would have been used. The United States and Israel had formed a strong alliance. Stalin suspected that Jewish Zionists (read: Jews generally) might prefer an American victory to a Soviet one. In the early '50s, Stalin began show trials of Jewish doctors–trials which supposedly unveiled a Zionist conspiracy aimed against the Soviet Union. It is felt that, had Stalin lived, these trials would have been expanded to target Jews generally. It has also been noted that during this time, Stalin ordered the construction of two large new concentration camps. While the intended victims of these camps are not known with certainty, they were widely rumored to be for use against Jews.
The extermination of the Soviet Union’s Jewish population would have been one of two facets of Stalin’s overall effort. The other would have been an invasion of Western Europe. The MiG had been specifically designed to shoot down American strategic bombers. (Though it was also effective at destroying American jet fighters.) While the Sabre was somewhat better than the MiG, the U.S.'s other jets were not nearly as good. And the Soviets had a lot more MiGs than the U.S. had Sabres.
Evidence suggests that Stalin allowed the Korean War to be launched as a test of American military readiness. The U.S. failed this test, which made Stalin comfortable going forward with his plans to invade Western Europe. The Truman administration realized that the U.S. conventional forces in the area were no match for their Soviet counterparts–especially not after the nations of Eastern Europe had had their armies recruited, trained, and integrated into the Warsaw Pact. (The addition of Soviet satellite state forces to the communists’ army was another reason for delaying the communist invasion of the rest of Europe.)
Because the NATO conventional forces in Germany were no match for their Warsaw Pact counterparts, the Truman administration’s plan was to respond to any Soviet invasion by using nuclear weapons on the Red Army as it moved deeper into West Germany. Stalin understood this, and his plan was to use MiG jets to shoot down American bombers before they could deliver their payloads. In any case the U.S. did not have very many nuclear weapons to use. (This was before the era of ICBMs, so any nation which could shoot down enemy bombers effectively enough could defend itself against nuclear attack.)
Stalin died before putting these plans into effect. Had he lived another five years, it’s likely the Soviet Union would have invaded Western Europe, and that the Jews within Soviet territory would have been exterminated.
Wow, very interesting post! I had no idea.
