"Enourmous force of Red Army"?
By april 1945 average soviet rifle division had around 3-4 thousands of men. Manpower reserves were seriously depleted and men badly needed in agriculture and industry. So you need some sort of ASB mind control of all soviet government to start a war against Allies.
For illustration: Soviets to compensate their lack of infantry in late stages of war attach to rifle divisons whole tank and artillery brigades. And infantry mostly just take and hold the land.
These claims usually crop up but I've never seen any supporting evidence and wouldn't be surprised if the original information referred to the motor rifle divisions in one particular army (corps) after maybe a particularly fierce battle and that this information (which is really only relevant for that specific point in time) was then applied wholesale to the entire Red Army.
Apart from the fact that terminology differs between the Red Army and the Western Allies (for instance "army" does not mean the same thing as in the Red Army what was called an "army" would have been called a "corps" in the US Army and what was called an "army group" in the US army was a "front" in the Red Army), how can the supposed fact that motor rifle divisions were down to 3-4,000 men be reconciled with the fact that no source has ever given the size of the Red Army after the war as being under 7 million? How can manpower reserves be seriously depleted with that many people (in the army
alone as Churchill's own chiefs of staffs knew when they were drawing up Operation Unthinkable)? The figures given in there can in no way be worked to give 3-4,000 men per division. In sum it gives the total amount of Soviet forces in Europe, Caucasus and Iran as being the equivalent of 200+ western divisions and I doubt any such document would work off the assumption of anything less than the equivalent of a full-strength western division. Divide the minimum estimate (7 million) by a total of 300-350 western allied division equivalents and at the very least one gets
20,000 men. It also conveniently gives the number of Soviet divisions (as "division" was defined by the Red Army at the time) - over 570. Even if we use a figure of 600 it would mean what the Red Army called a division at the time consisted of 11-12,000 men. This would seem to fit in with the fact that 360+ "divisions" were assigned to 40 "armies" (corps). Since corps are usually thought of as being 2-3 divisions (but really it is only a minimum of 2 divisions and I don't think there is necessarily an upper-limit) then having 7-8 "divisions" per "army" (corp) indicates that the terminology seems to have differed between the Red Army and other armies.
Likewise some fairly simple calculations with regards to the units transferred to the Far East to invade Manchuria don't give 3-4,000 people per division on average. The Manchurian campaign was carried out with 1.5 million soldiers which was given as being 80 divisions or about double the number of divisions the Soviets had there before (anyone can look it up). 1,500,000/80 = 18,750. And of course even if we remove some of them and say even half weren't combat forces but something else (administration, cooks, whatever) it still wouldn't give anything close to 3-4,000.
All of that said, you rightly point out that there is no way the USSR is going to want to maintain about 8-10% of it's total population (and probably 20-30% of it's adult male population) under arms. Technically it would be possible since Germany was probably starting to go through worse by 1944-1945, but it wouldn't be sustainable.
In addition this Conroy's book seems to ignore the fact that the US Army by war's end was estimated at 3.5 million (with 16 million having served in total). Compared with the Red Army's 7-8 million at the end of the war (with some estimates as high as 10 million and 12.5 million being the high water mark at some point during the war out of 34 million who served at some point), these figures are not peanuts.
Conroy's book just insults basic intelligence. The real gem in the summary is when it says
With the Soviets vastly outnumbering the Americans - but undercut by chronic fuel shortages and...
....and I wondered how this didn't immediately kill the idea. So he has the Soviets
knowing that they have chronic supply problems but decides to have them prolong WWII anyway?
The second bit in the summary which seems to show little or no research on Conroy's part is when the summary says:
Soon, Truman makes a series of controversial decisions, enlisting German help and planning to devastate the massive Red Army by using America's ultimate and most secret weapon...
Yep, so in addition the Soviets being stupid enough to continue pressing into Europe with supply problems that they are aware of, he has them pressing into Europe and making it 100% likely that the US will use it's not-so-secret weapon (at least not to the Soviet government).
