World War Two revisited

I saw an interesting argument on a bulletin board the other day that had two guys making the following comments:

We *&%*&% saved the world in WW2, next time some European country goes bat shit crazy and you've all got your balls on the chopping block we will be the only one to call

 The response to this was a profanity filled no to which the original poster commented:

Name a single country that had the power to take over germany, besides the united states. Great Britian was on the verge of surrendering, the soviet unions 2 greatest cities were under seige, and any other country barely has an army.

The response was this:

Lol in the case of U.S vs The Third Reich the Third Reich would've won. Without a doubt. It's a fact that the German army at that time period could totally butt rape anyone they wanted too. I don't like saying it, but it's true.

Germany had better technology (even though the american technology was easily the most advanced amongst the allies), better trained and motivated soldiers and a better society.
Without America, the allies would've been ^%amp;amp;$. Yes. But it's vice versa too.

The conversation devolved into a  name calling contest but the original exchange is a bit interesting.  Are these guys right?  Did the United States save the world?

To start the conversation I thought I'd come up with a few arbitrary categories for comparison for discussion for the main combatants.

Allies	Prep	Mil	Pop	Resource	Tech	Prod
United States	1	3	7	9	6	9
USSR	3	1	9	9	2	4
Great Britain	6	6	3	3	7	5
France	5	5	3	3	5	4

Axis	Prep	Mil	Pop	Resource	Tech	Prod
Germany	8	9	4	4	9	6
Italy	7	2	3	3	3	3
Japan	8	7	4	1	4	4

France
At the start of the war this is no doubt that Germany had the most preparation and the best trained military in the world.  At the beginning of the war they faced the combined military of France and Great Btitain through superior tactics quickly forced the British from the continent.  That allowed them to take on the French alone and quickly force them from the war.  This step alone gave the Germans a huge advantage as they controlled all the land in Western Europe from the Arctic Circle to Gibraltar.

Great Britain
The British were isolated on their island and there is no way the British with their small population and lack of natural resources could have ever done much damage to Germany's 'Fortress Europe'.  In fact imagine if the war was just Britain vs Germany.  Do you think that the war in northern Africa would have had the same outcome?  While it is true that the British ruled the seas, the Germans ruled the air and as the war in the Pacific showed, airpower wins over naval forces.  All it would have taken was for them to invade a few key locations, especially Gibraltar and Malta, and the Mediterranean would have soon been a German lake.  That would have opened up the Middle East all the way to the Persian Gulf.  One key thing this would have done is make it difficult for British bombers to hit at the German industry or raw materials like the oil fields in Ploiesti, Romania.  If the war was left to the British alone, the whole continent would be speaking German today.

USSR
There is no doubt the dumbest thing Hitler did in the entire war was invade the Soviet Union.  He saw the biggest problem facing Germany was they didn't have room to grow and he saw the great Russian plains as an ideal place for expansion. He is supposed to have said, 'Everything I undertake is directed against the Russians. If the West is too stupid and blind to grasp this, then I shall be compelled to come to an agreement with the Russians, beat the West and then after their defeat turn against the Soviet Union with all my forces. I need the Ukraine so that they can't starve us out, as happened in the last war.'  The issue is it would have taken years to offset the resources needed to invade the USSR with any potential gains. If he had waited five or ten years once he stabilized the situation in the rest of Europe it would have been much different. In his defense he assumed that Great Britain was no longer a threat and the United States would stay out of the conflict. When that didn't happen he had spelled his own doom.

In any event,  the Germans launched the largest invasion of the war in June 1941.  Within months the Germans had 150 divisions marching deeper and deeper into Soviet territory.  The German army that marched into the Soviet Union was unmatched by any force in history to that point.  Their reletively few casualties in the war in France, Norway and the Balkans gave them a well trained army led by some of the most able commanders of their time.  To give you an idea of the size of the German army, it totalled about 200 divisions at the time, and the ones not in the USSR were sitting along the Atlantic coast as a safeguard against invasion.  Over the next two years the German army actually grew to almost 300 divisions.  They were able to do this by conscripting the young, the old, and by accepting troops from countries in Southeast Europe.  As the losses on the Eastern front mounted, the quality of the German Army declined as more and more soldiers were fed into the Russian meat grinder.

The Russians were used to this kind of warfare.  Life in the Soviet Union was hard and one of the biggest obstacles was their leader Josef Stalin.  In the early 30s the Russian Army was on par with the rest of the world technologically and with their large population had a formidable force.  Stalin was well aware that Germany and Japan were threats to his country but instead of working to modernize the army like Hitler, he instead chose to decimate it during the purges meant to root out traitors.  In 1937-8, 3 of 5 marshals, 13 of 15 army commanders, eight of nine admirals, 50 of 57 army corps commanders, 154 out of 186 division commanders, 16 of 16 army commissars, and 25 of 28 army corps commissars were removed from their posts and most were killed. It is estimated that 30% of lower level Russian officers were removed from their posts during this time though many were reinstated in the years after the start of the war.  Stalin's reasoning is he wanted a force loyal to him when war came but the immediate effect was to drastically reduce the readiness of his army.  When the war started, this inexperience would prove deadly.

At the beginning of the war in the East the manpower was tilted slightly in Germany's favor as the Soviet Union had their forces spread throughout the country and a large force was stationed in the East as a safeguard against Japan in Manchuria.  As the German forced ripped though the Russian forces the size the armies shifted.  At the start of the war, Germany had a population of around 70 million while the Soviet Union was over 170 million.  For comparison sake, France, Great Britain, and the United States had populations of 42, 48, and 131 million respectively.  The problem for Germany was as they advanced further and further into Russia, they got further from their base of supply and every soldier killed meant the the combat readiness of their forces declined while the inexperienced Soviets got better in every battle.  The peak hit in the winter of 1942 during the battle of Stalingrad and once the Russians stopped the Germans the initiative switched sides and the Germans moved to the defensive.

This doesn't answer the question posed by the  poster - Could the Russians have beaten Germany by themselves?  That's a tough question to answer as there are a few variables at work.  First, if the Germans didn't need to worry about Great Britain or the 50 divisions sitting on the Western Front the Germans would have easily taken Moscow in the first year.  They almost did it with the 150 so it would have been easy with 200.  Would that have meant anything?  It didn't to Napoleon as he took the city only to realize the futility when the Russian Army continued to retreat further east.  Warfare had changed since that time but the Soviet Union used their huge advantage in labor to start new industries east of the Ural mountains.  The only question is whether they could have survived without the United States sending billions of dollars of transportation equipment and food to the Soviet Union through Iran and Vladivostok.

Ultimately my answer to this question is yes and no.  While there  is no way the Soviet Union could have stopped them east of the Urals, I don't see how the Germans could have advanced much further than they did.  The amount of land they were trying to hold was immense and partisans were already becoming an issue.  To give you an idea of what the Germans faced they had taken an area twice the size of Germany and held barely 15% of the Soviet landmass.  It was impossible to split their forces to control every part of the country nor was that ever their intention.  Once they took Moscow they would have consolidated their lines and pushed to the Caucasus.  If the Russians couldn't be convinced to surrender, the next few years for the Germans would have consisted of trying to hold off the invading Soviet armies while domesticating the conquered lands.  As the American Army in Iraq can attest, conquering a country is much easier than governing it.  The line most likely would have started in the Caspian and followed the Volga to where it ends just northwest of Moscow then North  following the rivers and canal systems north to the White Sea.  This line would have been especially hard for the Soviets to penetrate especially in the south where the Volga was over a mile wide.  That would be the best case scenario.  I doubt the Soviets could have decimated the Germans like they did in the war without support and the best they could have hoped for is a German retreat back to the original line of battle.

United States
This question is a tough one because it really depends on American public will.  For the Americans to enter the war alone you have to assume the Germans took Great Britain and now control all of Western Europe while the Soviet Union is biding its time under a non-aggression pact.  Would the United States invade to liberate Europe?  I'm sure Roosevelt would have liked to do just that but most Americans were against going to war right up to Pearl Harbor.  Hitler made it easy for Roosevelt as he declared war on the United States the next day who then responded in kind.  Roosevelt then joined with Churchill and Stalin in making Germany the prime target, saving Japan for last.  Imagine if none of that happened.  Would we have gone to war with Germany by ourselves?  I highly doubt it.

But let's assume we did.  Where would we base our operations?  The only choice would be West Africa as everything north of that is easily defended.  The first step would have been to take the Azores, Madeira, or the Canary Islands then to Casablanca, through Western Africa to form a base in Tunis.  That would need to be followed by an invasion of one of the Mediterranean Islands like Malta, Corsica or Sicily and that would be used similar to how we used England in World War II for an eventually invasion of southern France, Italy or Greece.  My guess is France would have been the target with the hope that eventually we'd end up in Berlin to make the Germans sue for peace.

Did the United States have the power to do that?  Almost definitely.  Would they have done it without Pearl Harbor?  It is doubtful.  Public opinion would have crucified Roosevelt when casualties of 1 million+ occurred during an invasion of Southern France.  Keep in mind that Britain and the United States only faced about 60 weakened German divisions in Western Europe on D-Day.  Imagine instead if they faced an additional 200 elite divisions from the Eastern front.  The war material the United States could produce was immense but without the the bases in Britain, German production capability would have increased and that might have been enough to push the Americans off the continent.  American public opinion would have done the rest.

What about the reverse?  Is the posters assertion that in a battle of Germany vs the United States that the Third Reich would have won?  Frankly this is a ludicrous assertion for the same logistical reasons that would have made it difficult for the United States to invade Germany.  In a battle of the US vs Germany, the only possible outcome would have been a draw.  One side didn't have the will and the other didn't have the capability.

Conclusion
It is fun to sometimes think about the what if's of history.  What gets lost in the original posters argument is for anything similar to the historical outcome to occur, all 3 powers were needed.  If it were Germany vs Britain, Britain would have lost.  Soviet Union vs. Germany would have most likely ended up in a stalemate with the Soviets conceding lands.  The United States vs Germany most likely would have never occurred due to American public opinion.  The only thing that allowed the war to work as it did was that the British held on which eventually gave the Americans a base of operations in Europe.  That forced the Germans to hold troops on the Western front which combined with American food and logistical support gave the Soviets enough breathing room to allow them to use their manpower to turn the tide of the war.  D-Day was important as it hastened the end and prevented the Soviets from ruling post war Europe but by that time the Germans were beaten through the prior efforts of all three powers.

Atomic thought
One interesting thought is how the atomic bomb have been affected under the above scenarios.  The only reason Roosevelt was able to start the Manhattan project is we were in a time of war.  If the United States isn't at war then we most don't develop the bomb.  That would have allowed German scientists the freedom to develop it instead.  The idea of Hitler with the bomb is scary indeed and  we are lucky the man lacked patience.  His premature attack on the Soviet Union changed world history as there is no doubt the world we live in today would be very very different if that didn't happen.

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