History thread [split] from "New Rule - Promoting Terrorism"

[Pat Mustard]

Overlord wouldn't have happened. The war in Europe would have been c 2 years longer and Soviet forces would have overrun most of the continent.

The suimple fact is that Germany effectively lost the war on 30/01/1933.

That’s far too complacent a view.  The contribution of the US and UK direct aid to the Soviet effort is vastly understated and underestimated.   At the same time the impact of western air effort and later ground efforts upon the ability of their german armed forces to wage war effectively on the eastern front is also understated and underestimated.

The notion of the irresistibility of Soviet juggernaut is somewhat exaggerated.   It is probably fair to say without western material aid to the USSR, the Soviet army would not have had the stretgic mobility to conduct deep penetration attacks that proved so destructive of the german combat power in 1944.   Without in the British and american air war against Germany proper, the USSR would not have been able to gain air superiority over the eastern front.    

Without the US in the war, Germany likely would have been able to fight the USSR at least to a stand still.  Soviet Union might have been far more efficient and effective in mobilizing her material resources for war, it remains that Germany had far greater material resources and much more advanced industrial base.    It might have been true the USSR had far more manpower than Germany, but USSR was still burning through her greater manpower at a higher rate than the Germans, and would have ran out of man power first had the war continued much as in 1942, when germany’s Retained air superiority and still possessed superior strategic mobility on land.

I'm predicating my conclusions on two facts a) US lend lease was at full steam long before the US formally entered the war and b) the German economy was so weak it never once managed to outpace UK production during the war.