Is it reasonable to believe that if the cold war went hot in

US had nukes tho.

>>31215939
Yeah but if anyone can weather nukes and keep fighting, it's Russians.

>>31215925
Unlike the plains and steppes of eastern Europe, France and Italy had actual defendable terrain that couldn't be taken by throwing waves of men into a meatgrinder until the opposition ran out.

The west had the technological advantage, nukes, logistical advantage, and the manpower and production to actually back it up.

>>31216031
That's assuming the war would be one of Russian aggression. What if it was started by some crazy nigga like Patton who wanted to "liberate" East Germany, Poland, Hungary etc.

There is no russian winter in Germany.

The only problem I see is the effort of painting the Russians as "good" probably hadn't all worn off on people.

>>31216046
it would a Korean war like event Patton would advance in and then get pushed back into a defensive fight

>>31216013

nobody can "weather" nukes, not in the numbers that the US had starting in 1947 or so.

The other thing is you can use nukes on formations, which would not only kill the soldiers but also make it hazardous terrain and allow the US to defend where they want to.

Russians would lose if it started soon after the end of WW2. The US had nukes, a better equipped and trained military with better logistics train, larger economy backing it and somewhat importantly, long range bombers.

The allies would quickly gain air superiority and proceed to wreck the Russians back to their own territory. Both sides would take heavy casualties, but it would end in an allied victory.

>>31215925
Europe would have been fucked, the USSR didn't have the ability to attack the US conventionally.

>>31215925
lmao ivan stop listening to your propaganda. US would of destroyed all you little manlet ivans.

>>31215939
Would the nukes of that time have been that effective tho? I dont know the production rate of warheads back then but I imagine they were valuable weapons. Nuking Moscow would've been largely impractical due to the size of the soviet air force and nuking ground forces is probably not that effective in the end.

>>31215939
Only a few dozens, and only puny atomical ones with no more than 50kt, that could only be delivered by bomber plane.
Good as terror weapons, worthless on strategical level.

US air power too stronk.

>trying to fight an enemy who supplemented your army for years

Russia developing their own bomb was the only reason they were untouchable.

>>31216366
>>31216383
To make a long story short, nuclear weapons would still be very effective.

I kind of wish the Berlin blockade had escalated into a war so that the communists would have gotten some much needed sunshine.

>>31216046
It would be a legitimate liberation, you pinko

>>31216031
France has no defensible natural fortresses, just as the german and american armies have amply proved.
Italy might have, but they also had an enormous communist army behind the lines, it would have been a walkover.
Nope, no technological superiority at all, quite the contrary, nukes were too few and too small to count on a strategic level, while the US had the advanted of logistics at tactical level the russians had it at strategic one, and the russians would have simply crushed the opposing manpower and production.

>>31215925
Filthy capitalist pigs wouldve fallen like ripe fruit from tree

>>31216396
Do you believe they would be used vs. cities and supply centers or used tactically? Looking at some nuke map thingies I can't imagine them destroying/making combat ineffective more than a battalion at best, if the unit is combat ready, and that sounds like a waste.

Vs. cities, I assume it'd be fair to say that a single nuke of the time carries the effect of a heavy strategic bomber fleet. There's also the issue of deploying the weapon, although it's probably doable in a bomber fleet where the other aircraft act as decoys, assuming the Soviet air force cannot be disabled.

>>31216390
Not so much, US air force has had worse casualties than all the other armed corps.
On top of that most of the russian manufacturing facilities were simply untouchable- way out of range and extremely hardened
>>31216148
Actually US has never managed to achieve full air superiority over Germany and you believe that they would have a chance to do that over USSR? HA!
>>31216396
On a tactical level, not so much.
On a strategic level they were pretty much worthless - remember, miserably small yield and obsolete/unreliable way of delivery.

>>31216031
>throwing waves of men into a meatgrinder until the opposition ran out.
This fucking meme
Look up casualty rates in late 1944 and 1945.

Most battles had nearly 1:1 casualty rates and pretty much none exceeded 2:1 which is still pretty good for an offensive against heavily fortified german positions like Konigsberg and shit.

File: Allied_army_positions_on_10_May_1945.png (481KB, 1216x769px) Image search: [Google]

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Operation unthinkable was called operation unthinkable for a reason.

>>31215925
Probably not (say 1945)

The United States had long range high altitude bombers, and the Soviets lacked any high altitude aircraft at all (great low altitude stuff like Yak-3 though), thus the United States had one extra arm

The Americans also had many large carriers, allowing them another arm to strike at Soviet forces

Also as a whole the Americans were much better supplied, German soldiers who fought on both fronts would say that the Americans had insane amounts of artillery as well as pretty dope rations.

Not to mention that
>92.7% of new rail cars and locomotives in the USSR during WWII were due to western lend lease
>a third of the Soviet truck force was American built
>the amount of aircraft the Soviets received from lend lease totaled to 30% of their aircraft production

Simply put it, the Russians were still a relatively new nation. They just had a revolution in 1917, and went through numerous periods of hardship and famine. They were literally some peasant nation a few decades ago, and their industry was not as powerful as the west, despite their great advances.

>>31216542
>Not so much, US air force has had worse casualties than all the other armed corps.

That's because we flew bombers into continent-sized grids of flak batteries. In the middle of the day in full view of everyone.

>>31216686
Mfw we still succeeded doing so

>>31216583
>battle of tannenberg line, 1944
>136,830 russians and estonians vs 22,250 germans and estonians
>germans only have 7 tanks, lose 6 of them
>russians lose over 150 tanks
>russians lose 35,000 men
>germans lose 2,500 men

>>31216695
They called them flying fortresses for a reason.

>>31216747
stop

>>31216686
And you think that doing exactly the same thing against even more flak batteries and way more fighters while flying a lont longer missions would have worked better?
>>31216695
Actually no, with the exception of the last months of the war when the russians have started directly destroying the german industry of war, it has manufactured more and more, despite all the US and UK bombings. The only thing you have managed to do was to kill a lot of civilians and destroy some unindustrialised cities.

>>31216757
No
The USA won the war

>>31216764
So did the Soviets, or do you just want to meme hard in this thread?

>>31216747
Yes, because the propaganda told them that they were able to survive some damage that would have shut down earlier US planes. Compared to british and russians ones they were still flimsy as hell

>>31216764
Yes, just like Robin beats and subdues all those criminals.

>>31216773
I'm pretty sure it was just a Russian masterbating over how supreme The USSR was anyway so not like it would ruin anything.

1945. We would have rekt the ussr.

Russia would be fighting a two front war. Almost instantly. The us could park 20 carriers off their coast line and repeat Op overlord x10.

Even if Russia could take Europe it would loose the motherland.

>>31216762
>And you think that doing exactly the same thing against even more flak batteries and way more fighters while flying a lont longer missions would have worked better?

Our factories were top notch, I think we could have easily kept up the exact same strategy, especially with the B-29s.

Unlike Russia, we didn't have to worry about our factories and cities being ruined by Nazis for years. If we carried on in the late 40s like OP suggests, it would have been absolutely possible.

>>31215925
The USSR would have been able to readily take over Europe, though the casualties would be heavy for everyone involved (not that they minded that sort of thing).

The US would have no real way of invasion that wouldn't result in a bloodbath, but would still have a more experienced and powerful navy than the USSR- which would be able to protect them from any attempt from the Soviets of an invasion. So basically the real losers in this scenario would be all of Europe.

This is only possible if nukes were never invented, however. As nukes were basically the single reason why this didn't happen.

>>31216542
>Not so much, US air force has had worse casualties than all the other armed corps.

Source?

>>31216542
The Germans had better fighters and better pilots than the Russians. The best fighter the Russians had in any number was an American plane. They go to war with us and they no longer have access to replacements or spare parts for that air craft.

Could Russia have continued to be at war for another what would probably have been 10-15 years? With the amount of death going on in the country is imagine moral would be at zero after a point.

>>31216886
The closest thing I can find was something on Wikipedia, which said that the total aircraft loss for the US was nearly 95,000 (with both fronts combined) with 52,951 lost in combat (38,418 in Europe and 14,533 in the Pacific) while the USSR had over 106,000 aircraft lost (with 46,000 being lost in combat, the rest being from accidents)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equipment_losses_in_World_War_II#Air

basically he was completely wrong

>>31216889
Yak-3 was a nice little short range low altitude plane, so good that the Luftwaffe High Command said to "avoid combat below five thousand metres with Yakovlev fighters lacking an oil cooler intake beneath the nose!"

Please stop with this meme seriously

>>31216988

I thought he was talking about actual human casualties.

>>31216747
the B17 wasnt especially durable the name flying fortress came from an reporter who wrote that with all the guns "it looks like a flying fortress" iirc

>>31217006
So their fighter wings were a mix P39s and Yak 3s (totalling less than 10k in number combined), which had a service ceiling of 15k ft and 35k ft respectively.

This is somehow going to stop 15k P51Ds, which were longer range, more maneuverable, and with a higher ceiling of 42k ft. I'm not even including all the other fighters the US had in service at the time that out performed Soviet planes, nor the fact that the US had ~30 aircraft carriers.

It wouldn't even be a contest. The US would just fly out of range of the Soviet air force and carpet bomb their cities and staging areas with nukes.

>>31217022
the only way he'd be right is if every American plane shot down were b-29s

>>31216542
ok vatnik by the end of WWII russian manufacturing without supply of US material would not be able to keep up, with lend lease gone and with Russia having to fight a 2 front war because we would have also attacked in the east hell we already had a massive force in the pacific ready to invade japan. To top all that off the russians were worn out if they had to fight a war of attrition against the western allies they would get stomped because they could not out produce the west without western supply and material, and 2 the west had a far greater readily available pool of manpower.

>>31216396
>I kind of wish the Berlin blockade had escalated into a war so that the communists would have gotten some much needed sunshine.
Not enough nukes. Best time to wipe out communism was 1955-1965.

>>31217339
this
shoulda let cuban missile crisis get hot, soviets had fuck-all in ICBMs and no reserve to speak of
europe would have been wrecked for sure but by now they would have recovered
loss of three or so US cities would have been worth it to nip communism in the bud

>>31216886
You do understand how lend lease was working.

We were shipping thousands of tons of material thru western Russian ports.

Even it the red army in the west was as strong as in the east. The us had the largest navy in history operating in the pacific. Along with an invasion force that would dwarf the Normandy invasion.

Imagine all of the landing ships from countless island campaigns sailing for Russia.

Under the protection of 40 odd carriers.

A fleet of high altitude bombers that were almost untouchable by any fighter aircraft. Not to mention hundreds of regular bombers.

The red army in the west wouldn't last long. And then the flood gates would open.

Add to that the US nuclear dominance.

How long could Russia last?

>>31215925
You really think the russians had another long war in them?

I don't have the facts, but I am guessing they were completely exhausted and tried to cover it up in the best way possible. They lost roughly 20 million people, that isn't something you recover from quickly.

File: image.png (212KB, 1092x630px) Image search: [Google]

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>>31217631
Pic is Vladivostok. Primary western port for us lend lease material.

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>>31216432
>What are hedgerows
>What are mountaintop fortresses
>What is the Siegfried line

Pic related

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I'm not a very big fan of the Soviets, but I have to give credit where it's due.

The 1945 Red Army was nothing like the one in 1941. By that time the Russians had learned most of the lessons on how to fight a war the hard way. They fucked up a lot, at the cost of millions of soviet soldiers, but they could afford the losses, and were able to develop weapons, tactics, and operational doctrines from these blunders.

And the soviet officer corps? It was shit during Barbarossa and before, but by '45 it had gone through some serious "natural selection". The NCOs and senior officers that didn't get killed or captured were baptized in fire for 4 years. They were battle hardened, having just fought some of the most devastating campaigns in history.

Morale is another factor. You're average red army soldier in 1941 was usually a conscript, and many didn't have much loyalty to the state. When the Germans drove in, many did fight alongside them, but the attrocities committed in anti-partisan/colonization campaigns alienated a lot of soviet citizens, who, once drafted by the "liberating" red army, fought very hard. And once they reached Berlin, they felt unstoppable, and probably thought they could take the world.

>>31217906
>thought they could take the world
Until lend lease stops and American nukes start dropping

>>31217906
>morale was high in the Soviet army in 1945
Only because the war was over. If hostilities had continued then it would go right back to rock bottom.

>>31217932
I didn't say they /could/ anon I said they /thought/.

And an army that think's it's unstoppable tends to perform better than the one that thinks it's hopeless.

>>31217906
Imagine what kind of a catastrophe 1941 would have been for the Soviets if they at least hadn't learnt something from the Winter War and Hitler had invaded despite not seeing the massive Red Army fail against Finland.

Altho it is kind of hard to imagine how the Soviets could have done worse in the summer of 1941.

>>31215925
Russian intelligence knew about those who created the 3rd Reich. They knew who created the communist revolution across eastern europe. I dont think they wanted to fall prey to the conflict they were creating called the cold war. They would not have created a war.

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>>31217986
Actually the soviets did try to learn from the Winter War, and the invasion of eastern Poland, which was also a huge fiasco.

The main reason the soviets were steamrolled in 41 was because the Germans invaded right as the Red Army was being re-organized, re-equipped, and retrained.

And at that point the officer corps was very, very inexperienced and not good at thinking for themselves. David Glantz, the top US historian on the EF, put it best:
>"In contrast to the German belief in subordinate initiative, the purges and other ideological and systemic constraints convinced Red Army officers that any show of independent judgement was hazardous to their personal health.”

I highly recommend Glantz for EF history. Most historians only use German archives when dealing with it but Glantz also had access to declassified soviet archives.

Will post a longer response in a few minutes, but it depends on the year. The longer after 1945, the less likely the US/Allies would be able to hold against the USSR for a number of reasons. Also, it depends on who starts the war.