Operation Unthinkable

[theolor]

Allied invasion of the Soviet Union

I don't know if there has been another thread about this but I just seen the thread "Operation Downfall" and it got me to thinking, Right after world war 2 this could be the start of world war three, hell it would make an awesome DLC the newly created Eastern Bloc vs the Western Bloc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable

Everyone knows where my loyalties lie.

 

[Caesar15]

TIL that your signature is not a joke.

 

[77Hawk77]

without nukes operational unthinkable would be quite unthinkable. The difference in troops at this point would have been outragously skewed.

 

[theolor]

TIL that your signature is not a joke.

Why would I make a fake description about myself?

 

[adam_grif]

Actual Operation Unthinkable would have been a military disaster for the west. The Western formations could compete man to man and tank to tank, but there were half as many tanks and 1/4 as many men. They would have air superiority, no question, but this is still a time when that can't guarantee total success and the Soviets will be able to dispute air control in key areas during their offensives.

Theoretically, if we lived in an alternate universe where public opinion means nothing, soldiers are happy to stay in uniform for indefinite periods of time, and everyone agreed that the USSR needed to be destroyed at any cost, they could have defeated the Soviets. The total population and industry figures for the west and western occupied areas gives them theoretical superiority, at least long term. USA+Canada+Mexico+Brazil+Commonwealth+Japan+Italy+France+Low Countries+Norway+Greece+West Germany. However, this would require total dedication from the United States, Canada and Western Europe, they would have needed to raise more divisions than they had, they would have needed to reactivate all the soldiers who got sent home after the fall of Germany and Japan, and keep cranking out tanks, airplanes and other war materials as if it were still war time over the 1945-1946 period.

Conflict in January 46 = not going to work for the west. If the west kept up production and raised new formations without skipping a beat when the Nazis got dealt with, they might have been ready in time for summer 46 or summer 47. They will need to forget about trying Nazis for war crimes and instead start shipping the German military survivors back into uniform and recruiting from the population there. They're already very worn down but they could still plausibly raise a number of formations.

Strategic air campaign smashing industry in the USSR from Northern India or Persia or somewhere like that will probably be a requirement for a successful operation. Thus, Indian independence will need to be delayed. Since this is a magical fairy land where public opinion means nothing and everyone wants to take down the Soviets, that's ok. Atom bombs will inevitably need to be deployed, probably directly onto Moscow. Actually hitting Moscow might be possible if this is taking place at the time when the Soviet's high altitude air defenses are not very good, but this window will close eventually, and by '49 the USSR will have their own a-bombs. So the war would need to be over by then or it could get ugly.

 

[Axe99]

I think Operation Unthinkable isn't dissimilar from the US invasion thread that's going - in-game, where (as Adam Grif rightly points out, people don't mind serving in the army for the term of their natural lives) things like the US and UK Governments being concerned about finances and public opinion don't matter, they can be very much competitive with the USSR (particularly if they're bright about it and cut off lend-lease in 1943 - if Op unthinkable had gone ahead in 1946, they would have been fighting an army most of whose trucks they had supplied!), as the airpower advantage would have helped to limit the Soviet's capacity for offensive action until they could get their ducks in a row. Even in-game though, it should be a hard, brutal slog for either side, at least for the first few years. If the Soviets can't take Western Europe by 1948, I'd say by around then it's all over for them (and not just because that's when the game ends ). Just theorycrafting though, don't take the above too seriously .

 

[aruon]

operation unthinkable would've been a total loss for the allies. like what hawk and grif said, the west had the money, supplies, and tech to fight it out even before the first tac nukes, but the the east just had too many expendable soldiers. just look at german-soviet loss ratio even in 1943-44 and at face value it looks like the germans were effortlessly mowing soviets down by the gross, but the casualties were meaningless against the full power of the human wave doctrine, which meant that once the germans started retreating, the retreat never stopped. the situation would be the same, except the west had less overall morale and both sides were at peak readiness.

 

[TiberiusfromSWG]

operation unthinkable needed to be decided from day one before one dollar of lend lease was sent to the ussr. maybe then if the germans had bleed the ussr even more. the western powers conquered as far east as Poland. and then western powers can utilize a much larger part of the German armies, and forward air basses against the ussr. and we drop the big one over and over again. then we can force a peace. but if we have to drive to Moscow, there is not a red ball express that make it through the mud.

 

[adam_grif]

operation unthinkable would've been a total loss for the allies. like what hawk and grif said, the west had the money, supplies, and tech to fight it out even before the first tac nukes, but the the east just had too many expendable soldiers.

1940 population in the USSR including recently annexed territories was 170 mil give or take, versus 135 mil in USA. Uk adds about 48 mil, France about 40, Canada 12, Australia 7. Then add what exhausted remanents of Italy, the low countries and West Germany you could muster, Japan too, to counter additional manpower from Soviet occupied zones. It's not just an industrial advantage, the Warsaw Pact is also numerically inferior in terms of potential manpower. The difference in actual manpower in armies was lopsided in the other direction.

The main problem for Operation Unthinkable is systemic to the democratic vs autocratic divide. Just as it took major flashpoints and outright aggression by the Nazis to cause France and the UK to mobilize for war years after the Germans had been able to start their major buildup, the disparate democratic states of the west cannot plausibly mobilize the millions of men under arms necessary without obvious, imminent war, by which time the conflict will have already been decided in favor of the much better prepared Soviet forces and their affiliates. Once war was declared, USA and the UK were both extremely efficient in seizing control of the economy and efficiently directing it to the war effort, of drafting huge volumes of manpower and directing them where needed. But outside of the context of these emergency wartime measures, the democracies are sluggish, unresponsive, and sometimes shortsighted. They will not stand for a heavy war footing in peacetime without sufficient reason, they will not produce war materials in vast quantities without government demand and the government cannot authorize that demand without approval from their democratic bodies. And so the idea of being ready for an offensive war against the USSR is the unthinkable part of the operation.

All this is to say that the west has far greater potential, even in pure "cannon fodder", but the political disunity between and within these states will mean that they will never be sufficiently ready for the conflict in time. By the time it breaks out, the initial superiority of the USSR and her allies will result in swift victory on the continent, and by the time the allies can mobilize what they need to, they will already be pushed back to the British Isles. With the loss of France and other continental allied powers, the blocs are much more evenly matched, and the self sufficient Eurasian bloc will be completely unassailable. At which points perhaps only full scale nuclear bombardment could do anything about it.

 

[Director]

Just my 2 cents here -

Churchill's generals told him the result of launching an attack on the Russians would be complete disaster. For a rarity, he believed them and the planning was turned to defending against a Soviet attack. The US had deep untapped reserves of manpower and at least some historians assert the Soviets were low or nearly tapped. Against that, the US had no interest in conquering eastern Germany and/or Poland, not to mention the USSR, and the Soviets we know had a deep commitment to repelling an invader. Also, the Allied armies were at least as road-bound as the Germans - arguably more so since they were more motorized and mechanized - and would fare poorly in areas that didn't have an extensive road net. Add to that the devastation of the road and rail network in Germany and supplying a push to the East becomes a logistic nightmare even if you can clear and use the Baltic ports. And let's give credit where it is due - the Soviets had good to great equipment, a very experienced officer corps especially at the higher levels, decent and effective tactics and a two-year-old tradition of overcoming what had been the best army on the planet. That army is not going to collapse, it is going to have to be thoroughly beaten flat - and even so, it got up again in the Civil War and it got up again in 1942. Do not take the Soviet Army lightly.

Best case would be to draw the Soviets forward and punish them with Allied artillery and air superiority in a zone where the Allied forces could be adequately supplied and reinforced. It's not likely the Soviets would fall for that often enough to be decisive - see the Chinese experience in Korea - so the next Allied trick would be to massively re-arm and re-equip the armies of the former Third Reich along with a mobilization of the French and Dutch and anybody else who would sign up. Someone would suggest re-arming and equipping the Japanese and setting them loose on Siberian Russia... It says a lot about this operation that carrying it out seems to require cozying up to former Nazi and Japanese Imperial officers and soldiers instead of trying them for war crimes. (Yes, the US and Britain did that in fields like rockets, but from a pure real-politic standpoint there was a clear strategic goal there and the number of 're-flagged' Nazis was small.) Operation Unthinkable's only acceptable goals would be either throwing the Soviets out of Germany or deposing the Soviet leadership. The first is pretty vague - why leave them in Poland and Czechoslovakia and Hungary and so forth? And as for the second, it's a long, long way from central Germany to Moscow - further to the Urals, if you have to really root the Soviets out - so you will need to plan for years of total effort.

Without some clear, definite and attainable political goal in view -- and I don't see one for the West - I just don't see the West starting it. But if it did start you can bet that Truman would have used a-bombs anywhere he thought they'd be useful. A one-way mission to Moscow to try to decapitate the Soviet leadership would certainly be considered.

Color me very skeptical - not that an invasion of the USSR was impossible per se, just that it was a logistical nightmare bound to produce massive casualties, enormous debt and high political costs (like rehabilitating all of the German army officers who agreed to fight) in pursuit of an open-ended goal at the far end of the earth of dubious value even if you pull it off.

Of course, it could have all started accidentally. Or as George Patton was thinking, accidentally on purpose. Or Stalin could have had a bad night...

 

[adam_grif]

The US had deep untapped reserves of manpower and at least some historians assert the Soviets were low or nearly tapped.

\

Just an addendum here, the harvest of 1946 was extremely bad in Ukraine and Russia, and without partly demobilizing armed forces to help with it the 1946-7 famine would have been far worse. There was also some foreign assistance with foodstuffs (including from American citizens) they would not have received in the event of war. The military and civilian death toll of WWII was indeed very harsh on the USSR and it's definitely true they did not have the same endless manpower in 1946 they could rely upon in 1941. But I don't think it ultimately matters, since the war would be decided before such factors could play out in the long run.

 

[gamedude]

Westen would have won, Soviet union would get attacked from multiple sides. The americans would have pushed on from the east with troops in Japan, with help from the british in China and British Raj, as well as New Zealand and Australia.
And the combined arms from the west with most european countries.

But now now, Soviet Union would have starved with not much supplies from the western area. I believe this is the reason they defended St. Petersburg(Dont remember the name in ww2), so they could get supplies from the west.

 

[Caesar15]

Why would I make a fake description about myself?

It's just hard to believe that there are communists outside of soviet nostalgics.

 

[ComradeCommissar]

operation unthinkable would've been a total loss for the allies. like what hawk and grif said, the west had the money, supplies, and tech to fight it out even before the first tac nukes, but the the east just had too many expendable soldiers. just look at german-soviet loss ratio even in 1943-44 and at face value it looks like the germans were effortlessly mowing soviets down by the gross, but the casualties were meaningless against the full power of the human wave doctrine, which meant that once the germans started retreating, the retreat never stopped. the situation would be the same, except the west had less overall morale and both sides were at peak readiness.

Actually, David Glantz points out that German irrecoverable casualties total to 10 million, while Soviets 14.7 million. With axis allies included the numbers for the Axis total to about 13 million. If human wave was really a thing, then there would be hundreds of thousands more dead compared to Germans.

And of course, for the Soviets, this includes the Barbarossa POWs taken and killed, so really, for the rest of the war, the irrecoverable casualties were about even.

 

[Denkt]

US and British armies and industries was probably in better shape then the Soviet conterparts but I don't think the people would wan't another war straight after world war II.

 

[Caesar15]

Actually, David Glantz points out that German irrecoverable casualties total to 10 million, while Soviets 14.7 million. With axis allies included the numbers for the Axis total to about 13 million. If human wave was really a thing, then there would be hundreds of thousands more dead compared to Germans.

And of course, for the Soviets, this includes the Barbarossa POWs taken and killed, so really, for the rest of the war, the irrecoverable casualties were about even.

How come whenever I look at it I always seem to find "5 million axis dead and 10 million soviet dead" or some similiar number? This is dead and not casualties by the way.

 

[Opanashc]

How come whenever I look at it I always seem to find "5 million axis dead and 10 million soviet dead" or some similiar number? This is dead and not casualties by the way.

1. Germans only counted the German dead, and only those who were from Germany proper.
2. Even in step 1, Germany did creative accounting.
3. Soviets counted irreplaceable losses differently, from dead.

Germany had 20.7 mil people go through their armed forces during the war. 11 million became prisoners, where did the rest go?

 

[dav77-b]

1. Germans only counted the German dead, and only those who were from Germany proper.
2. Even in step 1, Germany did creative accounting.
3. Soviets counted irreplaceable losses differently, from dead.

Germany had 20.7 mil people go through their armed forces during the war. 11 million became prisoners, where did the rest go?

Home?

 

[Had a dad]

It's just hard to believe that there are communists outside of soviet nostalgics.

let's not have this conversation

 

[Opanashc]

Home?

From the ground they came, into the ground they went (c)
Highly doubtful. I can believe in 2-2.5 million wounded that got discharged (loss of limb, eyes, etc), that still leaves ~8 mil.