What if suggestions about world war 2

Agreed. I had forgotten about Amsterdam and Rotterdam, so yes, the French would probably have suffered as well. And yeah, if the Axis was smart (and if Italy wasn't overambitious), they would have given up on Africa entirely. However, we say that with the benefit of hindsight. German High Command was expecting WW1-style fighting in France, not the quick decisive blow and conquest of Western Europe. Riding off of that high, it becomes clearer why Germany so confidently sent troops to Libya in OTL.

Also, I've always been curious about an alternate historical timeline, where Overlord fails and gets delayed, how much of Europe would become red? Would Italy be split (there were many communists in Italy) or even fully red? Greece? Finland? Denmark? The Soviets might have even demanded full control of Germany if the war had gone that badly for the Western Powers. It could have even led to a Third World War, depending on how Stalin thought at the time...

Rotterdam was heavily bombed in may 1940, but why do you mention Amsterdam? Apart from the Jews being deported and any sign of protest brutally being oppressed (like everywhere else in Europe), the situation for ordinary people only got desperate in the hunger winter of 1944.

The most interesting thought about if D-day failed is how it would affect the Cold War. I think it depends on how it fails. If the allies manage to withdraw their forces and equipment they could just attack again in a few months and succeed then, but if their forces are crushed and captured then they’ll have to wait a very long time to be able to land again… D-Day was very meticulously planned. Iirc Greece was liberated by the allies in a quick naval invasion as the Soviets swept through Eastern Europe (I think they didn’t care or something) and you also have to remember that the Yalta conference sort of decided how Europe would be divided. Maybe Stalin would not care if the allies failed, though.

I’d say that making France red is unlikely, the allies would probably just make another rushed landing to liberate it before Germany collapses. It’s too far. However if all of Germany falls to the Russians, what’s to say they won’t “liberate” the rest of Western Europe? I could see Western Europe falling into their hands, and if they are lucky they make get the Low Countries, perhaps Denmark? If they break through the mountains quickly then much of North Italy may fall as well. A Cold War with most of Europe Red would be strange… not sure how different it would be. If the Soviets are smart they may be able to get the rest of Italy and create a Red France, who knows. Them having all of Germany changes things a lot.

Worst case scenario, civil war, prolly. Didn't have as much chance of success as Mussolini...

Yeah, that bastard got as lucky as he could. Almost any change to the timeline likely ends in failure for him.

A World War II without the USA and UK would have meant no Italian and Western Fronts, no North African campaign, no strategic bombing campaign over Germany, and most importantly, no Lend-Lease. This lack of support would have caused the Soviets to struggle mightily. While they might still have achieved victory, it would undoubtedly have come at a far greater cost in lives and extended the war's duration significantly

Overall their chances of victory would have been lower than in our timeline

People who fought in the war disagree


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.

"I want to tell you what, from the Russian point of view, the president and the United States have done for victory in this war," Stalin said. "The most important things in this war are the machines.... The United States is a country of machines. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war."

Nikita Khrushchev offered the same opinion.

"I would like to express my candid opinion about Stalin's views on whether the Red Army and the Soviet Union could have coped with Nazi Germany and survived the war without aid from the United States and Britain. First, I would like to tell about some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were "discussing freely" among ourselves. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany's pressure, and we would have lost the war. No one ever discussed this subject officially, and I don't think Stalin left any written evidence of his opinion, but I will state here that several times in conversations with me he noted that these were the actual circumstances. He never made a special point of holding a conversation on the subject, but when we were engaged in some kind of relaxed conversation, going over international questions of the past and present, and when we would return to the subject of the path we had traveled during the war, that is what he said. When I listened to his remarks, I was fully in agreement with him, and today I am even more so"

In 1963, KGB monitoring recorded Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov saying: "People say that the allies didn't help us. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. And how much steel! Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own."

Three things. One, that could very well just be diplomatic BS in order to thank the Allies. Notice how the years when they said such things were during WW2 or right after the Cuban missile crisis. Great time to repair relations. Not necessarily scientific information.

Two is assuming that the Soviets could not have just… imported the goods anyway. What’s some debt when you are fighting to the death? The U.S. wouldn’t just embargo the USSR.

Finally, nothing they say changes the facts. Lend lease was still overwhelmingly given in 1943-1945, with over half of the value given being in the final two years of the war.

You don’t understand how Stalin was thinking before operation Barbarossa. To put it simply, he didn’t think he’d be a suicidal enough idiot to attack both the British AND Soviets in once, as that would lead to his end. He was wrong and right. If The UK had opted out, the entirety of their process would have changed. Rather than transitioning and preparing for an offensive after the war was over (the Soviets and Nazis both hated each other and knew that war was inevitable), it’s very likely that they would prepare to actually defend their country rather than be caught off guard and in transition. The sheer surprise of the attack is what gave the Axis such momentum. Without that, so much of their advantage would be lost. The fact the Soviets would use their (still larger even when accounting for other fronts that are now closed) army more effectively, and actually preparing for the German attack gives the Russian’s a far stronger chance. The way the mindset changes is unpredictable, but Stalin’s panic and micromanagement would very likely be less extreme… considering that German industry wasn’t the issue, and rather manpower, allied strategic bombings weren’t what ultimately doomed the Reich. North Africa and Italy, which taking out hundreds of thousands of Axis soldiers, don’t really have that much of an effect when you account for a war of millions… and I’ve already went over why Lend-Lease would not be needed.

Maybe their chances would be lower, but not by as much as you’d think. The Nazi’s would have their asses handed to them the vast majority of times.

This is a fantastic post made by someone on r/AskHistorians

**THE SHORTER ANSWER**


On the whole, the lend-lease accounted for only a small portion of Soviet combat armament (tanks, trucks, planes, ships, artillery pieces, etc.). That much is a fact, and Soviet-era propaganda never let that fact sleep in peace. However, these armaments, precisely the aid from Britain that arrived in late-1941, made a powerful impact in 1941–1942 (especially during the Battle of Moscow). And if the Soviets had lost at Moscow, it would have taken a much longer time for Germany to be defeated, if at all. In addition, the lend-lease accounted for a sizable portion of Soviet war amenities and materiel, like gasoline, aluminum, explosive agents (this in particular was VERY significant), steel (this in particular was decisive), non-perishable food, etc.


**THE LONGER ANSWER**


**Tanks:**


At the outbreak of war in June 1941, the USSR had roughly 22,600–23,100 tanks and self-propelled guns [MK][BVS] (the largest tank force in the world at the time) against Germany's invading force of 3,350 [DG1]. This opened the Eastern Front of WWII. In total, Germany had 5,639 tanks and assault guns at the time, but did not deploy all of them for the invasion [PB].


In several classic battles of encirclement, the Germans wiped out the Soviet prewar armada of tanks – an estimated 20,500 were lost by the end of December 1941[K]. The Germans, on the other hand, were in a very bad shape as well. They were left with only 35% of their initial tank strength (~1,100 tanks) in the Eastern Front by the end of October [DG2], many of which would be lost to attrition and winter-induced defects in the following two months. The two titans were at their limit, and this is where the British Lend-Lease Aid of 1941 (which began in October) helped to turn the tide. In an interesting paper published in the official peer-reviewed journal of the Society for Military History, Alexander Hill convincingly showed that:
>British-supplied tanks made up in the region of 30 to 40 percent of the heavy and medium tank strength of Soviet forces before Moscow at the beginning of December 1941, and that they made up a significant proportion of such vehicles available as reinforcements at this critical juncture [AH].


But this important detail is lost in the big picture where the USSR produced 102,500 tanks and self-propelled guns for the whole war (according to the official Soviet history of the Great Patriotic War, completed in 1965) [AH], whereas the US, Britain and Canada altogether supplied only 12,537 tanks and self-propelled guns [BVS]. This means the Lend-Lease aid accounts for only 11% of tanks. But the same Soviet account declared that Lend-Lease aid only amounted to 7% of tanks; and unfortunately you'll see this figure alongside, 1.9% for all artillery, 13% for aircraft and 4% for total military production, floating around on the internet (all are from the same official Soviet account).


In 2007, the renowned Russian historian Boris Vadimovich Sokolov published a paper in a highly reputed peer-reviewed journal that thoroughly trashed this Soviet-era propaganda tract. Using production reports and declassified documents, he also thoroughly showed that the figure of 100,000+ tanks is likely a serious inflation, and that the actual proportion from Lend-Lease aid is around 24% [BVS]. If you can get your hands on Sokolov's paper (requires subscription to the online database Taylor & Francis), it will completely answer all your questions. I'm so tempted to upload and share it here, but that would be a copyright violation.




^Unfortunately ^I'm ^running ^late, ^so ^I'll ^keep ^the ^rest ^brief. ^Sorry!




**Aircraft**


Official public Soviet-era figures all place the proportion of Lend-Lease aid at 13–15%. Sokolov's analysis places it at ~30%.




**Fuel**


The US, Britain and Canada supplied the USSR with 2.586 million tonne of aviation fuel and light-fraction gasoline, 1.4 times greater than the Soviet production during the war [BVS]. That was a very big boost to the Soviet Air Force.




**Explosives**


Sokolov stated the following:
>Allied supplies of powder and explosive materials also played an important role. We assess the production of explosive materials in the USSR during the period from mid-1941 to mid-1945 as approximately 600,000 tons. No less than 295,600 tonne of explosive materials were supplied by the US. In addition, 22,300 tons of powder were supplied by Great Britain and Canada. Thus, Western deliveries of explosive materials reached 53 per cent of the total volume of Soviet production.




**Tires**


Sokolov stated the following:


>We must also note that American deliveries played an essential role in the supply of the USSR with tire covers (outer tires) and separate types of food-stuffs. Lend-Lease supplied the Soviet Union with 3,606,000 tire covers, at the same time that the Soviet industry of 1941–45 delivered 8,368,000 tire covers (which included only 2,884,000 of the large tire covers named "Gigant"), while in 1945 vehicle tire cover production constituted 1,370,000 in comparison with 3,389,000 in 1941. American deliveries amounted to 43.1 per cent of Soviet production.


**References**


[MK] Martin Kahn. *Russia Will Assuredly Be Defeated: Anglo-American Government Assessments of Soviet War Potential before Operation Barbarossa*. (Peer-reviewed journal article). Link: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13518046.2012.676498.


[PB] Pier Battistelli (2008). *Panzer Divisions: The Eastern Front 1941-43*. (Book). Page 65.


[K] Grigory Krivosheev, *Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century*. Page 252


[DG1] David Glantz (2010). *Barbarossa Derailed: The Battle for Smolensk – Volume 1*. (Book). Page 20.


[DG2] David Glantz (2012). *Operation Barbarossa: Hitler’s Invasion of Russia 1941*. (Book). Page 183.


[AH] Alexander Hill (2007). *British Lend-Lease Aid and the Soviet War Effort, June 1941–June 1942*. (Peer-reviewed journal). The Journal of Military History: Vol. 71, issue 3.


[BVS] Boris V. Sokolov (2007). *The role of lend‐lease in Soviet military efforts, 1941–1945.* (Peer-reviewed journal). The Journal of Slavic Military Studies: Vol. 7, issue 3, pages 567-586. (Originally published in Russian in 1994).

In production of trucks during the war, the US dwarfed the USSR, and their role in Soviet operations is hard to underrate. To quote from Glantz:

>Lend-Lease trucks were particularly important to the Red Army, which was notoriously deficient in such equipment. By the end of the war, two out of every three Red Army trucks were foreign-built, including 409,000 cargo trucks and 47,000 Willys Jeeps. [...]

>Without the trucks, each Soviet offensive during 1943-1945 would have come to a halt after a shallower penetration, allowing the Germans time to reconstruct their defenses and force the Red Army to conduct yet another deliberate assault.

And it is also worth nothing that many of the domestic produced trucks were licensed version of Ford designs. And aside from the vital role played in the motorization of Soviet divisions, and increase in logistical capacity, we also shouldn't forget that *not* having to build all those trucks freed up production capacity for other things.

As for food, the USSR lost 42 percent of cultivated land to the German offensive, including 2/3 of its grain production. US food aid amounted to roughly 10 percent of Soviet production, and while whether or not that was the difference between famine level scarcity or not gets debated, but regardless of the exact effect, it was enough food to "to feed a 12,000,000-man army half pound of food per day for the duration of the war." And of course, as with manufacturing, food imports freed up hands for other duties that otherwise would be needed to till the land.

Well, how does any of this change my point? They could have just imported all of it anyway, much of this either being a smaller proportion of their army, or there being already existing (albeit crude) alternatives. Your factors about lost land only apply if the Soviets plan the same exact way in which they did irl, which they wouldn’t if the UK left the war. The Soviet offensives would have taken place in a different way or later, but they could anyway. The Soviets wouldn’t have the same mindset going into the war, and that’s important. At the start of the war, the Soviets have the potential to halt and crush even a larger German force if their strategy is successful. Without the initial panic and surprise, since they could now anticipate and attack, they would have time to transfer Siberian forces, releases and place generals like Rokossovsky in charge, build defenses, etc… which would change the way this war goes completely. German logistics at the end of the day couldn’t handle more soldiers… they’d be overstretched and pushed out no matter what they do as long as the red army avoids total collapse. What if they just say.. stopped them at the Stalin line? Retreated instead of getting encircled at Kyiv? With the way the war was ran early on, pointless counter attacks, panic, etc… Germany did far better than it really had any right to do, mostly thanks to Stalin’s incompetence. That all gets changed in an alternate timeline. If the Soviets hold on to Ukraine, those food and much of their resource issues are far less muted… they have the ability to produce and even import more… even a Axis army of 4 instead of 3 million (which would strain their logistics further btw) would still be outnumber by the Soviets… when we consider this alternate timeline, we have to imagine how the Germans and Russians would think… the Germans would likely overestimate themselves even more, and the Russians the opposite… there’s so many changes, but in the end things still don’t seem right…


Btw…

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Vadimovich_Sokolov

“Historical errors:


Sokolov is one of the experts of the film “The Soviet Story”^[5], which caused controversial assessments and accusations of manipulation and falsification^[6][7][8]
S. Milovanov, in his Ph.D. thesis, counts Sokolov among those who are now resuscitating the “myths of Hitler’s propaganda". Without naming it specifically, he even refers to false documents distributed by the Nazis^[9].
Many of Russian historians, sociologists and publicists consider the data on the losses of the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War, given in the publications of B.V. Sokolov, to be unreliable^[10][11]. In 1990, in his book “The Price of Victory,” Sokolov estimated that 14.7 million Soviet military personnel died. Since 1993, B.V. Sokolov estimates the total number of Soviet military deaths in 1941-1945 at 26.4 million people. Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, sociologist Gennady Osipov described B.V. Sokolov as “the most tireless “professional” falsifier,” and called his calculations absurd, since “over all the years of the war, 34.5 million people were mobilized (taking into account the pre-war number of military personnel) , of which about 27 million people were direct participants in the war. After the end of the war, there were about 13 million people in the Soviet Army. Of the 27 million participants in the war, 26.4 million could not have died”^[12].
On May 12, 2016, he was expelled from the Free Historical Society for “inappropriate handling of historical sources and incorrect quoting of other people’s works.”^[13]
Otheredit
In September 2008 he had to resign under pressure of the Administration of then-President Dmitrij Medvedev. After publishing the article 'Did Saakashvili lose?', he wrote numerous monographs, e.g. on Gogol, Sergei Esenin, and Mikhail Bulgakov (Sokolov was the author of the Bulgakov Encyclopedia, published in 1996).^{[dubious – discuss]}
He denies the anthropogenic nature of global warming<sup>[14]”

One of your sources was expelled from a historical society and doesn’t believe in Human-caused climate change, which kinda reduces his credibility…</sup>

If we're going down the import road, why can't Germany also import? Perhaps we need to lay down some ground rules for how this alternative timeline looks, because to me, I'm thinking it's a straight-up 1v1 fight with everyone else (aside from the European Axis) being neutral. If that's the case, Germany would win even more because they just import things they need.

I find it ironic how you question my sources while you have provided none to me; at least I have a source.

Overall, I've presented my case and you've presented yours, and we can agree to disagree. But personally, I believe in this hypothetical scenario, the victory ratio would either be 50/50 or 60/40 in favor of Germany. I do not support your assertion that the Red Army would have won the majority of times.