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  1. AHC: optimize Soviet performance in WW2

    You wouldn't say the 2nd Jassy-Kishinev? Not only did it secure a similar proportion of territory as D'niepr-Carpathian (if not more), but it is one of the only operations of the war where overall casualty ratios were more than 2:1 in favor of the Soviets and irrecoverable casualty ratios...

  2. AHC: optimize Soviet performance in WW2

    Hmm... perhaps. It'd be a very tough pill for Churchill -with his very romanticized view of the Empire and White Man's Burden attitudes - to swallow, but yeah if the alternative is utter defeat he might be pressured into agreeing to start transitioning over to immediate Dominion status with an...

  3. AHC: optimize Soviet performance in WW2

    Which, as I noted, did not exist. Historical recruitment hit its limit and even then most of the volunteers wound up on policing duty because India was restive as fuck. Indian nationalists actually looked to the Soviet Union as a hope for independence, taking its anti-colonial rhetoric at face...

  4. AHC: optimize Soviet performance in WW2

    Turkey, maybe, as the Turkish Army is something of an unknown quantity. But getting bogged down in Iran? No, not happening. If the Soviets are in the war in 1940 or and attacking Iran, spare British Middle Eastern strength amounts to a few brigade, not mythical "large armies". Given how the...

  5. USSR gets absolute victory in the Winter War, effects on WW2.

    Oh, I see. Yes, gotcha. A quick glance at the Wikipedia article tells me that the Finnish President basically had to be badgered into accepting the historical terms, so your answer does track.

  6. USSR gets absolute victory in the Winter War, effects on WW2.

    I'm talking in March 1940, after the military told the government their options were to either make peace or start go into the woods for a guerrilla war.

  7. USSR gets absolute victory in the Winter War, effects on WW2.

    A bit of both. Hitler didn't really ever let logistical realities bother them while the German General Staff tended to have a tradition of trying to force logistical realities to fit operational requirements rather than the other way around.

  8. USSR gets absolute victory in the Winter War, effects on WW2.

    Stalin was hardly robbing the Germans blind. In fact, the ratios on the trade deals were HIGHLY FAVORABLE to the Germans and much less expensive than the expenditure of material (never mind lives) that the Eastern Front ultimately cost them. It's just that the Nazis conception of economics was...

  9. USSR gets absolute victory in the Winter War, effects on WW2.

    I mean, even with the purges, the Soviets could have done it if they had just taken the Finns seriously and prepared for an actual invasion rather than just assuming the Finnish proletariat wouldn't fight them. It still would have been bloody for the Soviets and taken around about two months...

  10. Barbarossa without the Great Purge

    Not surprising. The consistency of fuck-ups probably fell, but fuck-ups nonetheless kept happening. War won by the least incompetent army and all that... Yeah. That's the impression I got as well. Junior officer training became better and refined based on experience, but it had to be condensed...

  11. Barbarossa without the Great Purge

    Yes... and no. While junior leadership was always a weakness for the Red Army, it was still something that improved as the war went on and Red Army junior leadership in by '45 was... still relatively poor (and poor enough for the generals to complain about, as your passage reveals), but at least...

  12. Barbarossa without the Great Purge

    Well, that certainly explains such things as STAVKA having to issue orders which said such obvious things as "make sure you weaken the enemy with an artillery bombardment before launching attacks" in 1941.

  13. How would a NATO invasion of Warsaw Pact go?

    I mean, not entirely. There were some plans to try and force open passages to Berlin in the event of a second Berlin blockade. The largest of these that I've heard of were a 1962 plan for a corps-size attack starting from either the Helmstedt or the Thuringwald area. Still, the conditions and...

  14. Barbarossa without the Great Purge

    I'm more skeptical. The thing is, that isn't how industrial/post-industrial, bureaucratic, professionalized militaries seem to react to sudden existential invasions. Their reaction - and the reaction of the Red Army historically - is to concentrate on the task at hand. To worry mostly about...

  15. Could nuclear weapons have gotten Germany to surrender in 45-47 without a Western Allies invasion of Germany?

    Not really? Soviet military manpower replacement in '44 was largely neck-in-neck with losses and even that was because the Soviets had started diverting manpower into economic reconstruction. The Class of 1927, which came of age in 1945, was not even mobilized as fully as it could have been for...

  16. Barbarossa without the Great Purge

    The biggest differences entirely depends on what doctrinal developments and organizational changes the Red Army manages without the purges influencing the process, which is unknowable. While Tukhachevsky is the most famous, his name really acts as a mere shorthand for many of the Soviet...

  17. What if General Patton takes command of First US Army after Normandy

    Patton was great at exploitation and responding swiftly to a developing situation, but in terms of forcing a breakthrough he really didn't prove any better than Hodges or Bradly or any other number of Allied commanders. We should also keep in mind that a large formations modern commander's own...

  18. WI/AHC: Communist China in a Nazi-American Cold War

    Christ, what a hollow analysis. Since when have countries based an alliance on something as simplistic as aesthetics?

  19. Would Japan surrender conditionally without an invasion or atomic bombs?

    Yeah. While America's ability to use atomics in '48 was pretty poor, had war broken out in 1948 they still probably would've done their best to fix those problems as quickly as they could and try to use them ASAP. American post-war military strategy documents were extremely explicit in it's...

  20. Could nuclear weapons have gotten Germany to surrender in 45-47 without a Western Allies invasion of Germany?

    Well, best I can say is "maybe". Maybe one of the atom bombs kill Hitler. Maybe they inspire the military to coup him. Or maybe they don't and the Allies have to invade after hammering key German industries enough times. Or maybe the Allies decide for a cease-fire in 1944[1] rather then bet on...
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