No doubt the historical conditions of America's economic surge during World War II were singular. When the war ended, almost 33 percent of all the Red Army's vehicles had been provided through Lend-Lease. The Germans were fantastically luck between 1939 and 42, which by the way is when Lend-Lease to the Soviets actually kicked in, and their defeat earlier is entirely plausible. During World War II the Soviet Union received large amounts of aid from the Western world in the form of supplies and military intervention, both of which were declared to have been irrelevant for the Soviet Unions victory over Nazi Germany by Soviet historians. The German Army was practically at the gates of Moscow in late 1941. But when we look at the production numbers, we notice that Soviet war production was multiples ahead of German and Japanese war production. The same applies to their contribution in forcing the Germans to leave most heavy artillery in the Reich as anti-aircraft weapons, preventing them from being used as anti-tank weapons in the East. On September 2, 1939, the day after Germany invaded Poland, Hitler offered to withdraw from all of Poland except for the Polish Corridor, which constituted scarcely more than 4 percent of Polish territory, in order to avoid war with Britain and France. WebAnd without U.S. supplies, the Soviet war effort would have been massively diminished. Stalin was of the same opinion but naturally did not admit it publicly. What were strength estimates of German forces in Budapest and Munich? Though this indeed tied some German forces, the forces were not anything which could be compared to what was being thrown to Eastern Front, with one notable panzer group being stationed ner Pas de Calais (Hitlers folly), and most of the preparation taking the form of elaborate fortifications that were called Atlantic Wall prepared mainly by Rommel. Could Nazi Germany conquer Britain in World War II. ", Nikolai Ryzhkov, the last head of the government of the Soviet Union, wrote in 2015 that "it can be confidently stated that [Lend-Lease assistance] did not play a decisive role in the Great Victory.". This proved crucial in the Blitzkrieg against the Low Countries and France. But as most historians are aware, German defeat in the war would have been far from inevitable had Nazi leader Adolf Hitler refrained from making certain critical mistakes. This series of events also would have almost certainly led to a German-Polish alliance against the Soviets that Hitler had long sought for as the Poles would have had no choice but to ally with Nazi Germany if they had any hopes of ever regaining the two-thirds of their territory which had been annexed by the Soviets under the terms of the original Hitler-Stalin Pact. But it would This would have reduced investment in the US arms industry and thus slowed it growth or even caused plants to close. Isolation was no longer an option. Whether Stalin would have still invaded and annexed the Baltic States, eastern Finland, eastern Poland and northeastern Romania from 19391940 is unclear. Archived post. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, fifteen years older than FDR and highly respected by him as an open-minded, patriotic Republican, had had Hopkins to lunch in his office at the Pentagon the day before he left for Tehran expressly to explore how they could stiffen the presidents resolve. I suspect the worse that would have happened immediately would have been an emergency relocation to Canada by the government if a Nazi invasion had taken place and been successful. Red Army tank officers were not impressed with the 2-pounder (40mm) gun on the Matilda and Valentines, nor their poor cross-country mobility, but their 6075mm-thick armour was impervious to German 3.7cm and 5cm anti-tank weapons. Thus, landings in 1944 came at a point at which Soviets broke German armies and were racing towards Berlin. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty 2023 RFE/RL, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Would the allies still have won World War 2 without an US WebAmerica's noteable allies in World War II were the USSR, Great Britain (and all her commonwealths, including New Zealand, Canada, Australia, etc. Without the American entry into World War II, its possible Japan would have consolidated its position of supremacy in East Asia and that the war in Europe could have dragged on for far longer than it did. Opposing camps of historians generally agree on that, but little else when it comes to For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. The fact that the US never hit production capacity in ww2 is just insane. Dont Violate the Munich Pact by Occupying the Czech provinces of Bohemia and Moravia. Which still means the answer to the OP is yes, the Allies could win. Adolf Hitler joined a list of would-be invaders of the British Isles but clearly didn't remember that no one successfully invaded since 1066 when William the Conqueror defeated Harold II, the last crowned Anglo-Saxon king of England. I already posted a similar thread about US involvement in WWI. Defeat of Germany in World War II Was Possible Without U.S. Im not sure if Germany would have won but they might have ended up with more favorable terms or even just went back to their original borders. The result would have been an eastern block streching to the atlantic and a much weaker post war US. Germany invaded France with more horses than Napoleon had used in 1812! Rommel had scarce manpower and supplies at his disposal, yet he made good use of what he had, and Britain succeeded in stopping Germans only with amassing of massive resources and manpower in firstFirst Battle of El Alamein. However it doesnt seem to be critical to the wars result. Stalin said that the allies won World War II with British brains, American cash, and Russian blood. As the world marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, it would be much better not only for the history of Russia but also for the countrys future if Russian leaders were willing to permitand even encouragea more even-handed discussion of the Soviet Unions role in the war. Hitler could have accepted Britains generous offer and scheduled the conference for late 1938 or early 1939 rather than foolishly violating the Munich Pact in March 1939. While the Japanese did draw away British resources to the Far East, which included the Commonwealth forces of Australia and New Zealand, as well as the Indian Army, this really didn't benefit the Germans all that much. While the United States quickly transitioned to a wartime economy that had companies like IBM making rifles instead of typewriters and GM making tanks instead of cars; Germany was producing consumer goods all the way until 1942 when Albert Speer took over as Minister of Armaments. The others were never found. This, in turn, would have delayed the Soviet invasion of Finland until 1940. Yes Lend-Lease was vital, In order to ensure that tank production goals were met by Soviet industry, Stalin made Vyacheslav Malyshev, an engineer who had proven himself in the expansion of Soviet heavy industry in the 1930s, head of the Peoples Commissariat of the Tank Industry of the USSR (NKTP) that was established on 11 September. World War II in Europe was Germany and Italy, which was joined by Finland, Hungary, Romania, and to some extent Bulgaria. A map of lend-lease shipments from the United States to the U.S.S.R. from 1941-45. WebA quick look at the strategic setup, relative war production and technology level of countries seems to suggest that Ww2 could have been won without United States. They are related because both buildups on both sides of the cold war started during WW2 to fight the Axis powers. Germanys resumption of submarine attacks on passenger and merchant ships in 1917 became the primary motivation behind Wilsons decision to lead the United States into World War I. But it would also take longer and cost more loss of lives. The Terror? Almost all of the 23 victims of the attack on Friday Again I asked myself the question would the Allied powers had won without US involvement, and it is harder for me to say than the previous thread. Allies have won WW2 without As noted, it dragged the Germans into campaigns that were unnecessary including in Greece and North Africa, and then when Benito Mussolini's government was toppled Germany was forced to occupy its former ally. Of course, we are not taking tactical considerations into account. Theres rather broad agreement among mainstream historians on this. Also the liberty ships were built mainly for the US government and weren't in full production until late 42 (after the u-boats had been beaten by bletchly park). Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. When landings become inevitable, he diverts the landings to Italy, calling it soft underbelly of Axis. I am not one of those Americans who enthusiastically embrace the "chestnuts out of the fire" myth. Would the Allies have won WWII if the USA had never entered the war? It was really the only time Nazi Germany had actually declared war on an enemy, and it needed not to have happened. It was a great symbol of prestige for the resurgent Kriegsmarine, but the money and material could have been utilized in a larger U-Boat force. You must log in or register to reply here. British-built armour plate also had a much higher nickel content 3 per cent versus 1 per cent for Russian-made steel which reduced the risk of armour spalling (i.e. By improving the balance of overall resources it brought about a ceteris paribus increase in the payoff to patriotic citizens. Historically, Germany already outproduced the USSR in certain areas like locomotives, trucks, and even bombers, with 12,664 produced by Germany in the years 19411943 as compared to 11,359 built by the USSR.170 Without Allied intervention and Lend-Lease, Soviet margins in these areas would most likely have widened, while margins in areas such as tanks would have shrunk significantly. One look at the map of southern Europe easily tells even people with non-military education that there is nothing soft about that location at all Italy is hilly, rough terrain, and where Italy connects to Europe is even worse impassable Alps totally clog the north, and beyond Alps there are many more difficult obstacles like Black Forest, or Yugoslavian hilly countryside. Keeping America out of the war should have been the goal for Germany. BBC NEWS | Europe | Who won World War II? On December 7, 1941, the U.S. naval base Pearl Harbor was the scene of a devastating surprise attack by Japanese forces that would push the U.S. into entering WWII. I think the USSR could have beat Germany even without american aid, aldo I wouldn't be surprised if one of the three mayor Soviet cities on the frontline had fallen, probably Stalingrad. As history tells us, Operation Overlord was a success as Allied forces managed to breach Hitlers "In order to really assess the significance of Lend-Lease for the Soviet victory, you only have to imagine how the Soviet Union would have had to fight if there had been no Lend-Lease aid," Sokolov wrote. Kennedy says that most historians agree that American entry into World War I tipped the scales against Germany and that without the participation of the United States the Allies would have lost, defined as having to make a compromise peace with the Germans largely on German terms. Things werent going well for the. Japan is a special case which maybe we shouldnt even consider in regard to war production. However, if Germany had limited itself to liberating the Polish occupied German city of Danzig and invading the Polish Corridor, which represented the full extent of his territorial claims on Poland, and which it captured in the first four days of fighting, then Hitler could have requested an armistice from Polish leaders on September 5. Geographic feasibility. By the same token, the extraordinary pitch of mobilization achieved by the Soviet Union in 1942 and early 1943 was not sustainable. You are using an out of date browser. Defeat never came down to one battle or one campaign. The Poles would likely have accepted their peace offer after the Soviets invaded Poland on September 17 in order to defend Poland from the all-out Soviet invasion and planned Soviet annexation of nearly two-thirds of Polish territory under the original Hitler-Stalin Pact. Did Spanish really brutally enslave and murder Native Americans, All US Needed To Beat Russia Was To Wait 10 Years, You Can Be a Billionaire Without Exploiting Others, Stress is Most Likely the Biggest Reason for the Obesity Epidemic. British Matilda tanks are loaded onto a ship for transportation to the U.S.S.R. as part of the Lend-Lease program. The lack of lend-lease would have made life very difficult, and it would have taken much longer to assemble any kind of invasion force - possibly allowing Germany to develop atomic weapons and extended range missiles. Without landing craft another example of wrong equipment and lacking control of the skies of Great Britain, an invasion by Germany was simply impossible. What would have happened if the Allies lost ww1? "Without Lend-Lease, the Red Army would not have had about one-third of its ammunition, half of its aircraft, or half of its tanks. This naturally means that though lack of such supplies like radios and vehicles like trucks would be detrimental, they would not have been critical. I assume that since Overlord hasn't happened that most or at least many of the German troops garrisoning France are available to be redeployed to Munich, Budapest, or anywhere else the Germans care to send them. But things suddenly take a weird turn after North Africa: Landings in Western Europe keep getting delayed despite all pressures from Soviets. The reintroduction of unrestricted submarine warfare. WebIn the summer of 1945, Japans war leaders knew they were not going to win World War II. Which could be easily defended by much fewer divisions than the number of divisions it would need to attack. He believed that a war with Russia would lead to the downfall of both empires.. You are using an out of date browser. After all the euphoria in London and Paris over the avoidance of war with Germany in 1938 with the Munich Agreement, which enshrined the Wilsonian principle of self-determination to allow the 3.5 million Germans in the Sudetenland to unite with Germany, Chamberlain viewed Hitlers violation of the pact as a personal insult and breach of honor. Therefore when we look at the presence of US forces in Western Front, we see them delayed by Churchill to almost until the end of the war, and wasted in much bloody, irrelevant and peripheral battles in Italy. All rights reserved. And Soviet forces would have been much more poorly coordinated with a constant lack of radio equipment. The Short History Of The Great Patriotic War, also from 1948, acknowledged the Lend-Lease shipments, but concluded: "Overall this assistance was not significant enough to in any way exert a decisive influence over the course of the Great Patriotic War. The lessons from the First World War should have been enough for Hitler and the German high command, but the decision to invade the Soviet Union in June 1941 when the British were still undefeated was a colossal blunder. The War of 1812 lasted for two years between 1812 and 1814. If Zhukov was able to destroy a veteran Japanese army in ~4 months in Khalkin Gol, they could easily hold them off with less divisions and resources. In other words, Lend-Lease was stabilizing. A major question, a major discussion topic. They were rapidly obsoleted and were relegated to back line duties (reserve, regional back line defense, training) towards 1943 due to speed of technological advancement on both sides. The major effects would have been on the US. Neither the Allied Powers (France, Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan, and several smaller states) nor the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria) would have gained everything they wanted from a negotiated settlement. Would the Allies have won WWII without the USA? | History Forum And the US's wartime economy still had room to spool up even more. The impact of the United States joining the war was significant. Britain, and probably France as well, would have likely pressured the Poles to accept such a reasonable compromise proposal and informed them they would not support Poland militarily if Poland rejected it just as they told Czech leaders after Munich. World War II Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? Thus, Hitler could have achieved the last of his territorial objectives without war, with the exception of those pertaining to the Soviet Union. There were the puppet states of Slovakia and Slovenia, volunteers from across Europe including neutral Spain, but all this was matched against Great Britain, France, Poland, the Soviet Union, and notably the United States. Allies have won After the defeat of Imperial Russia, which came as the result of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, the German Army was able to move vast quantities of men to the western front and launched a final offensive in the spring of 1918. There would have been effects life in britain and russia would have been less plesent and food less plentiful. The US had massively increased production of planes and had developed some of the best single engine fighters of the war. Inevitably so, since British were still in the war, and even though British and Canadians were frustrated in a grand fashion when they attempted a landing inDieppe Raidto test German defenses in regard to a possible landing, the risk of a potential landing was still there. During 1942, the Red Army lost over 15,000 tanks, including 1,200 KV-1, 6,600 T-34s and 7,200 T-60/70s.100 About half of the 10,500 Lend-Lease tanks (3,000 British, 7,500 USA) delivered in 1942 were also lost.101 Soviet industry built 24,231 tanks in 1942, including 12,535 T-34s and 2,426 KV-1s. More than 20,000 Katyusha mobile multiple-rocket launchers were mounted on the chassis of American Studebaker trucks. Most famously, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin raised a toast to the Lend-Lease program at the November 1943 Tehran conference with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt. However when we look at the sizes of the fronts, we see that even at the end of the war by mobilizing even teenagers, Germany would have still been at half strength compared to Soviets even if they moved all their divisions from Western Front to Eastern Front: The count of aircraft, tanks and especially guns follow a similar pattern, and especially in the case of guns or artillery, the disparage is greater. The consideration that the possibility of landings tying German forces before invasion comes to mind. In addition, the Lend-Lease program propped up the Soviet railway system, which played a fundamental role in moving and supplying troops. 'We Would Have Lost': Did U.S. Lend-Lease Aid Tip The Balance In Soviet Fight Against Nazi Germany? WebIt must be baldly stated: Germany would have won World War I had the U.S. Army not intervened in France in 1918.The French and British were barely hanging on in 1918. Does Nike Training Club Have Weight Training? However non-combat aid like trucks, radios are an important factor. Ukraine war latest: Boy, 6, cries as sister killed in Russian attack The United States later declared war on German ally Austria-Hungary on December 7, 1917. For asking casual questions about History. However, even with lack of US presence in the war, Germany would still need to keep some presence in this Atlantic Wall of theirs. On top of that, we dont see Japan being able to subdue even China before it entered World War II. On: July 7, 2022. In 1941 Germany only produced 2,900 tanks a number that increased to 17,300 by 1944! Instead, the United States became the arsenal of democracy and Germany's defeat was all but assured. Quora - A place to share knowledge and better understand the world Nazi Germany had a powerful High Seas Fleet, but it was still really no match for the British Royal Navy and it never really could be. There was another sad example of not learning from history. Should we condemn the French Revolution? The plane spent 69 years on the tundra before a Russian Geographical Society expedition rescued it in 2016 and returned the wreckage to Krasnoyarsk. The war may have lasted into 1946, but the Soviets would still have captured Berlin and probably would have overrun the rest of Germany, too. "I knew that its place was in a museum," Vyacheslav Filippov, a colonel in the Russian Air Force reserve who has written extensively about the Lend-Lease program's Siberian connection, told RFE/RL at the time. However the steam roller would still have been there and would still have rolled over Berlin though possibly 3-6 months later (don't over estimate the effect of moterised transport in russia, both the red army and the wermacht advanced troops on foot and used horse drawn transport in large quantities as it was, the Russians would have coped) 80% less T-34s due to the aluminium diesel tank engine problem would have been a catastrophe for the Soviet war effort. Russian Federation Soviet Union The Lend-Lease program also sent tons of factory equipment and machine tools to the Soviet Union, including more than 38,000 lathes and other metal-working tools. Would the US have entered WWII on the Nazi front if Germany got the UK to surrender after the blitzkrieg? And how much steel! After the fall of France in June From there, it flew 5,650 kilometers to the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, one of some 14,000 aircraft sent by the United States to the Soviet Union during World War II under the massive Lend-Lease program. At these loss rates, the Red Army was still far more dependent upon Lend-Lease armour than it was willing to admit, and it did not have enough excess production to fully outfit its best units with T-34s until mid-1943. Without US help Britain would Whereas Japan would not benefit from the lack of resources and infrastructure in these areas. There may have been mass starvation in the UK. Myth: Japan could have won World War II, if only the Japanese had bombed the oil depots at Pearl Harbor in addition to the ships. Germany had to deal with resistance and partisan efforts, and as the tide of war turned its "allies" left the fight. Unless you can refute the other scenarios for Allied victory before 1941 then the answer to the OPs question remains yes. Though Germans would rightfully conclude that at that point a British invasion would not have much impact, therefore reduce their divisions in the West quite a lot. If there had been no lend-lease, then the UK would have lost the war. without Poland would most likely have joined in the German-led invasion of the Soviet Union in exchange for promises for Germanys support for the return of these lost territories. During World War I not to mention wars in European wars through the ages Germany didn't really fight alone. Thats assuming they were able to make advances. U.S. Neutrality The United States remained neutral at the beginning of the war. WebMost Russians believe the Soviet military would have been able to win World War II without the efforts of the U.S. or its allies, a new poll finds. With farm labour cut to the bone, to permit the maximum concentration of manpower on the Red Army and on armaments production, only those who worked received adequate rations. This Douglas is the only Lend-Lease aircraft that remains in Russia.". New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. The exhausted Allies would have had to negotiate some kind of settlement with Central Power forces occupying almost all of what is now Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic republics in the east; most of Romania and Yugoslavia in Southern Europe, as well as a bit of Italy; and almost all of Belgium and most of northeast, 5 Reasons the United States Entered World War One.