If Stalin didn’t stop at Berlin America would have eaten shit for like a year until they built more nukes which they had a monopoly on at the time.
They would have used them.
I don’t see a path to victory there unless it’s acceptable to be losing like two entire cities a year (I honestly have no idea how many nukes could be built a year at that time, I say two because that’s how many were built for Japan) to a nuclear and bloodthirsty empire in its prime.
I know it’s a meme. But I see it said enough I wanted to hear what people actually thought on the matter memes aside.
Edit: lots of good takes and I’ve learned some stuff, thanks for all the responses.
Even ignoring the nukes, the Soviets had lost much, much more in the war than the Americans had. I sincerely doubt anyone would have the stomach for MORE war after all the Soviets had gone through the last 10 years
That’s a good point. you don’t refocus a society to an existential struggle and Not want some peace after.
I could also imagine civilian and military morale would crumble. It's one thing to ask people to give up everything to eliminate an enemy that threatens their existence directly, and a whole different thing to try and justify keeping the war going because it's in the interest of the SU and international communism.
Good point, it’s overly romantic to assume the majority would be willing to sacrifice knowing peace for the greater good.
The Russian people were tired they along with the rest of the world had fought their second major war in decades. Stalin had a duty of care to end the war once he could
I like this framing. Libs would lose their shit of somebody told them stalin’s benevolence overrode his desire to spread communism and decided to make peace as soon as possible.
I’m not framing it like that to take away from your point, I agree with you now that you’ve introduced the idea. Just a funny thought.
I read this book in college, which makes a similar argument to what usernames are difficult said
It would have been virtually impossible to convince the Soviet people to continue to endure the extraordinary sacrifices demanded by the Great Patriotic War after the genocidal threat of Fascism was defeated, particularly when their new enemies would be a coalition of the world's only other remaining industrial powers, who had just been the Soviet Union allies against that very threat. The average Soviet citizen wouldn't care that the Allies only backed the USSR reluctantly, in the period immediately after WW2 ended feelings of warmth and good-will still pervaded in relations between the powers.
Add the nuclear bomb into the mix, and I'd bet you'd see coup of Red Army generals against Stalin within hours of him ordering them to make war on the Allies.
Damn, that’s a rather bloomer possibility as alt histories go. I choose to believe it
My serious take, as much as I hate having those, is that it's hard enough to get a comprehensive view of the present, harder to get one of the past, and harder still to make consistently accurate predictions about the future
So for me, the idea of using a view of the past to predict an alternate present is just a genre of fiction
He MIGHT have gotten away with all of Germany. It's a risky proposition, but that could have worked. The US may have had a monopoly on nukes, but conventional thinking at the time was still massive armies and massive losses on all sides. Immediately starting a war against your ally after winning WW2 is a tall order to fill when it comes to public support and could have actually been risky for the US. They might have let Germany go. If the Red Army had set foot in France though, I'm pretty sure it's super mutant time for all of Europe.
That’s an interesting take, I’m going to look into American opinions on how they felt about the USSR immediately at war end and before the propaganda refocus.
How would that have worked though (regarding Germany)? Like, if Americans are occupying a part of Germany how do you actually take it without being the one who declares war (via words or actions)?
They would have had to actually take the rest of Germany before the US got there. No way the US is giving up their conquered territory. But if I remember my WW2 history right they had a head start. They actually STOPPED at Berlin and let the western allies take everything west of there. That keeps combat losses lower, because the Germans were surrendering to the allies immediately but would not have done so for the Soviets. But if they had pushed on they could have possibly taken at least as much of Germany as they could get their hands on before running into their western "allies". Still, the US might have gone bananas over that, so I'm not saying this is something they would have for sure gotten away with and considering the risks they made a pretty sensible decision. But I think that is pretty much the limit of where they could have gone before the nuclear destruction of Europe is a foregone conclusion.
I see what you mean now, that must have been a very difficult decision to be in the room for.
Do we spend the lives of our comrades to liberate greater areas of Germany? Surely it would rankle a bit practical concerns aside.
I think it was a pretty easy decision. After taking Berlin, when the US, as your biggest ally, pre cold war, tells you that they will deal with the western part of Germany and you can just sit back and enjoy having won the biggest war in human history... You kind of have to. Stalin needed public support too, and pushing west would have spent very many lives for what - at the time - seemed like no reason.
A US military response to the Soviet Union taking all of Germany might have been risky for the US, but a Soviet push to take all of Germany when they didn't have to would have been risky for the Soviet Union. When the option "the war is over and we won" is on the table after what Germany did so the Soviets, you take it.
Very thought out way of putting it.
Who would say no to ending the worst period in living memory?
The war in Europe ended in May 1945, America wouldn't successfully test a nuke until July. There was a window.
You are right, I’m including hindsight and projecting into analysis at the time.
That would be even more disastrous, the first nuke test might not have been Japan if war with the USSR started and nukes were still up the sleeve.
Another thing to consider is that FDR and Uncle Joe had a strong relationship, I don't think either of them would war each other over Western Europe. But Roosevelt died in April '45 and Truman did not have rapport with Stalin
Nah, Stalin was on the verge of perfecting the Iron Curtain device that would have allowed the Red Army to render critical units completely invulnerable, meaning that even a direct nuclear strike could not cripple the Red Army.
The real problem was poor economy management in the early game - Stalin refused to use Engineer Sell MCV Rush in preference of a booming resource exploitation strat.
The US hadn't deindustrialised so it was still superior industrially anyway. Any conventional war would have needed a knockout blow from currently deployed Soviet forces. It's not like the US army didn't have their own advantages either, they would likely have had air superiority and Soviet AA systems weren't nearly as sophisticated relatively speaking as in the Cold War. Realistically, the window of opportunity there is far too short, and said window too tenuous to act on.
Tying into your industry point, an aircraft carrier was being built like every couple of month or so.
that one is slightly misleading because the fine text is that actual fleet carriers of the Essex class had at the shortest a lead time of 9 months, the Midways all took two years. the light/escort carriers were the ones that were being finished in a few months.
I believe you, but they were starting that lead time on new ship’s consistently. If the war continued they wouldn’t draw down production. Unless of course somebody managed to fuck up the shipyards or steel supply or some other necessary part of the supply line.
Edit: forgot to say thanks for correcting my misremembering on the class that referred to.
woah i got redirected to your coment , but was in "caption this" (the current Dirt owl ) and you comment is also about te Korean soldier , not Stalin and Berlin ...
funky shit ..
Lol, I love the framing of “the current dirt owl”.
Person on the train: “have you read the latest dirt owl”?
Person 2: “why yes, I have a bookmark to their profile page so I can get it hit off the press”.
"Speaking of the Devil! here , this is from 2 hours ago .. amazing .. how does he come up with these things
you can keep this hexbear Edition .. i m throug with it .. i do recomend the Drama on [page 3 ]"(https://hexbear.net/post/279059) great stuff!
All the Mods are pissed that he did not mention them , therefore they wanna give him another chance to make a better list... ?
I think hexbear did a fuckywucky again because this showed up under the stopping at Berlin post not the defector post.
Idk what you’re responding to but I generally agree with it. As for the anonymous part, it’s almost definitely controlled information release. Pick a person to anonymously contact there journos, tell them what they can and can’t say. Boom! Mainstream media treats as credible because anonymous=whistleblower in their puppy minded level of trust.
Shit that popped into my head as soon as I hit post: possible path to victory is the nuke happy response might turn everyone against America because the nuke happiness would drop the flesh mask and reveal the face of death drive incarnate?
Seems unlikely. The entire West was on board with Death Drive Incarnate and deeply indebted to the USians, while the Soviets were in an awkward spot having endured massive losses and deprivation that as far as I know was much worse than what the western allies faced. The last Soviet famine was in '46 directly due to the massive destruction wrought by the war.
I didn’t know about that famine, I’d been told the last proper famine was the one banderites soy face at.
My understanding is that the destruction of farmland and industrial capacity, plus the mass mobilization, lead to shortages across the USSR. I'm not sure if it was bad enough that anyone died from it directly, but I've heard it described as the last famine.
Gotcha, probably an error of unquestioned priors on my part (famine = starvation deaths).
