Once the captured American and allied supplies run out, do the Soviets even have the rail capacity to support their army west of the Rhine?
That demand would be unimaginably massive; food, fuel, ammunition, spare parts, new brigades, tanks, and aircraft... And it all has to go everywhere, because the Soviets have no choice but to guard every possible place the western Allies could land or raid from the sea, on which the Allies have absolute dominance.
Not only that, but as the air campaign ramps up, the Soviets will need to deploy (and supply) great masses of anti-aircraft defenses around critical logistical targets while at the same time burning mass quantities of highly refined aviation fuel in fighter sorties.
Where will all that come from? The Soviets were running down their admittedly massive manpower toward WWII's end, and allied supplies were critical to allowing conscripts to get off the farm and into the army or factories... There's none of that here, and the USSR itself is still struggling with the needs of reconstruction and restive populations in Ukraine and the Baltics (and probably Poland, now). Europe has barely begun to recover and rebuild, and any Soviet requisition or plundering will just make those badly overstretched logistics harder, as partisans plant bombs on the railways.
This doesn't even take into account that such industries as Soviet oil production around the Caspian can be bombed from Iraq and Iran, and any Soviet response would involve another expansion of the war with even worse logistics across northern Iran (and who knows what will happen with Turkey). Allied production is, by contrast, out of reach; as is allied shipping.
The Soviet bear is hollow. As this war continues, the USSR ought to simply deflate like a balloon...
That demand would be unimaginably massive; food, fuel, ammunition, spare parts, new brigades, tanks, and aircraft... And it all has to go everywhere, because the Soviets have no choice but to guard every possible place the western Allies could land or raid from the sea, on which the Allies have absolute dominance.
Not only that, but as the air campaign ramps up, the Soviets will need to deploy (and supply) great masses of anti-aircraft defenses around critical logistical targets while at the same time burning mass quantities of highly refined aviation fuel in fighter sorties.
Where will all that come from? The Soviets were running down their admittedly massive manpower toward WWII's end, and allied supplies were critical to allowing conscripts to get off the farm and into the army or factories... There's none of that here, and the USSR itself is still struggling with the needs of reconstruction and restive populations in Ukraine and the Baltics (and probably Poland, now). Europe has barely begun to recover and rebuild, and any Soviet requisition or plundering will just make those badly overstretched logistics harder, as partisans plant bombs on the railways.
This doesn't even take into account that such industries as Soviet oil production around the Caspian can be bombed from Iraq and Iran, and any Soviet response would involve another expansion of the war with even worse logistics across northern Iran (and who knows what will happen with Turkey). Allied production is, by contrast, out of reach; as is allied shipping.
The Soviet bear is hollow. As this war continues, the USSR ought to simply deflate like a balloon...