USSR in Axis Variant?

[JerseyJohn]

During the year between the fall of France and the invasion of the USSR, several possibilities were explored by both Germany and the USSR.

One, of course, was Germany's trying to coax both Franco and Salizar to bring Spain and Portugal actively into the Axis; neither dictator went along with the idea, though they were tempted.

Second, Stalin put out feelers that, if Germany would cede a warm weather port to the USSR via a 99 year lease, along with access to a rail line across nothern Finland and Norway to the leased port, the USSR would be willing to join the Axis.

Hitler refused, partly because Molotov, on his visit to Berlin, was very obnoxious in his presentation of these propossals.

-- But, suppose Germany and the USSR had struck up an understanding? Presumably the Soviet role would have been to hit Britain in Asia, moving down through Afghanistan and into India. It would have been an extremely difficult task, but not impossible. How would this have affected the European situation? It can be assumed that neither dictator would have hesitated to betray the other, but the circumstances would have been considerably different.

-- -- With Russian troops fighting them in Asia, the Brits couldn't have sent aid to the USSR and the USA wouldn't have either. Additionally, the additional theater would have to mean a lessening of Soviet troops available to face Barbarossa and fewer available afterwards to reinforce those in European Russia.

It's probable that the USSR & UK would have signed a treaty, releasing troops on both sides to fight elsewhere.

-- Also, how would this have affected Japan's actions? There was a large faction in Japan that thought the Axis should have been Japan-USSR-Germany.

Any thoughts on either of these historical almost were scenarios?

-- Would they be worth considering as a scenario varriant in SC2?

[ September 23, 2005, 02:31 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[SeaMonkey]

Absolutely JJ....I like the presumptions, have often thought along these lines myself.

Now as I remember it, Hitler had a paranoia about the USSR invading/bombing the Romanian oil fields as Stalin was very interested in the Balkan area and did annex some territory of Romania(Bessarabia & Bukovina). It was Hitler that convinced the Romanian government to appease Stalin's demands and not fight the Russian invasion. Remember also that Bulgaria and Romania were somewhat at odds, always wary of each others ambitions, not to mention the Hungarian border disputes.

I also believe that if Germany and USSR did hook up there would be a further addition to the Alliance....Turkey(USSR interest in the Dardanelles). Turkey would be hard pressed to remain neutral even with continuing pressure by the UK, as she was at risk of imminent invasion with a German-USSR alliance lurking.

When I get home, I'll look at some of my reference material for this captivating "what if", but I believe that both Hitler and Stalin actually entertained this enticing alliance at one time or another.

As far as India, I believe the Japanese had a greater design on the area than the German-Italian conglomerate. Hitler was more inclined to stay in the European theater and would have aptly been wooed by the Caucasian oil possibilities that Stalin would have offered.

One interesting tidbit to support this scenario, I believe it was sometime in 1917 or 1918 that the USA and UK actually landed troops into USSR to support the White Russians against the Bolsheviks. The whole history of the world would have definitely been changed had they prosecuted the expedition to its ends.

You see gentlemen the UK and USA have stuck their noses in the world's business from times way back in history. It is their tradition, and it was usually when freedom of trade or regional stability was at risk. So they have been the policemen since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, first the UK as the Sheriff and USA as the Deputy. Now its reversed, but always the same role for both countries....check your history. So you think we're worse off with someone prosecuting the rule of law?

[ September 23, 2005, 05:39 PM: Message edited by: SeaMonkey ]

[Edwin P.]

Most interesting.

As for SC2

If Germany and USSR were noncooperative allies, with their troops prevented from venturing into the territory of the other this could be a balanced scenario, except for the fact that Russia would build up such a huge army so as to be unstoppable since it would only face threats on a very narrow and isolated Fronts.

Perhaps;

USA - UK - France: Cooperative Allies

Italy - Neutral or Pro Axis. Let diplomacy decide.

Spain - Leaning Allied, due to Franco's hatred of communists.

Turkey - Leaning Allied, due to Turkish hostility towards Russia.

Russian mobilization growth is limited as their existing armies could deal with the UK in the Pacific and Middle East.

[ September 24, 2005, 07:36 AM: Message edited by: Edwin P. ]

[SeaMonkey]

Alright, here is my summarization for this scenario to develop according to my interpretation of the historical facts.

In order for Germany to honor USSR's intentions and enter into a loosely stable alliance, they would have to allow Soviet occupation of Dardanelles, Finland, perhaps Sweden eventually and guarantee a right of passage through the western Baltic, either Kattegat or Skagerrak.

There may also be some land adjustments to Romania and Bulgaria, ceding to the USSR.

In return, Germany would receive a full investment of oil, minerals and subsistence(food) allowance from the Russians and would probably pursue an empire into Africa with Italian assistance.

Later I'm sure a Red Army intrusion south to the Persian Gulf and India would develop.

And Japan? Well, I'm open to suggestions.

Of course this is all based on a full commitment to co-operation between these two historical belligerents, which is mighty farfetched....but not impossible.

[JerseyJohn]

Thanks SeaMonkey, we've always had very similar, often identical, views on these almost history ideas and scenarios. It will be good to develop them in the new scenario editor.

Edwin I have a slightly different view regarding Turkey in this situation and agree with SeaMonkey, it would side with Germany and Russia, of course! There's almost no chance at all that Britain would be able to invade it, while there would have been every chance that Germany and the USSR would have pulled it apart and swallowed it the same way they divided Poland. So, of course, it would have lined up with the greatest threat -- not that it would have had any warm feelings for Britain anyway, as it was the Anglo-French who attempted to destroy Turkey utterly (using Greece, Bulgaria and the fledgling USSR) after the First World War.

SeaMonkey

Yes, there was a confused Anglo-American foray into the Arctic Sea region of Russia, troops landed at Archangel and Murmansk to guard the stockpiles of weapons and ammunition there that had been sent to help Alexander Karensky's government fight the Central Powers. A similar cache was sitting at Vladivostok on the Pacific coast and American/Japanese troops went there to perform a similar function.

There were occasional skirmishes but nothing major. Neither Britain nor the United States had any intention of sending those troops inland. At most there were only a few infantry batallions; the important thing was the stockpile, not the troops that had been sent to protect them.

In the end, they returned home, the last American troops to be recalled from The Great War. I don't know what happened to the ammunition they were guarding but I believe it was left behind and taken by the Bolsheviks.

-- An even odder group was the Czech Legion consisting of Austro-Hunarian POWs sent to Asiatic Russia. With the downfall of the Czar they were released and armed by the White Russians to fight the Bolsheviks. They fought their way westward to and across the Urals and, eventually, most of them made it back to their homelands which were independent countries by that time. Along the way they figured into the campaigns conducted by Cossacks and others against the Bolsheviks, but were never really part of the concerted effort to destroy them!

It was their approach to the Urals that led to the execution of Czar Nicholas and his family in 1917; the local soviets were fearful that the Czechs might liberate them.

Ed & SeaMonkey,

Regarding the scenario idea:

I don't think Germany would have ceded any of that territory to the Soviets.

They couldn't give them Finland because the northern mines were Germany's only source of nickel, zink and other vital war materials. -- I may be wrong regarding the specifics, but I know Hitler always worried that one of the Murmansk convoys would turn out to be an invasion force that would land in Northern Finland, behind the Finnish-German troops on Soviet territory, and that it would move inland to grab those mines. He felt such a move would immediately cripple German war production. So, naturally, he wasn't about to entrust it to Stalin's custodianship.

It's a similar situation with Rumania, as it was the primary source of Axis oil. If Russia had it, they would have had a stranglehold on Germany.

I also doubt that the Dardenelles would have been offered because, if Germany and Italy won in the Mediteranean, they'd have held Gibraltar and the Suez Canal, making access to the Mediteranean problematical. And, of course, if the USSR were at war with Britain and those places weren't lost to the Axis, they'd still have been closed to Soviet shipping.

I believe it's most likely that Germany would have given the USSR a 99 year lease on a rail line traversing Northern Finland-Sweden-Norway, taking it to either Narvik or some other reliable warm water Norwegian port, which would have been part of the lease arrangement. Payment to the Axis would have taken the form of wheat, minerals and oil.

As part of the Axis, Russia would have been conceded a zone going from Central Asia to Northwestern India. In other words, they'd have gotten another warm water port and it's surrounding region, this one on the Indian Ocean, and it would have been Russia's outright, no lease.

That would have left approximately 90% of India to be used as Japanese protectorate. I don't think Japan actually thought it could conquer and occupy both China and India.

In the Middle East, if Germany had triumphed, they'd have replaced Britain as the controlling party for Iraqi and Iranian oil.

-- Interestingly, in this view, that Soviet strip acts as a buffer between direct land contact between Japan and the European Axis.

And here's another scenario. It's 1946, Britain sues for peace, India is part Soviet and part Japanese protectorate, the United States never entered the war. And Germany, without distractions, decides it's time to invade European Russia. How does everyone line up?

-- Does the USSR suddenly become the rallying cry for the United States to try and do something about German facism? Does Japan side with Russia, looking to pick up some influence in the Indian Ocean, such as Madagascar and Ethiopia? Etc ...

Politically it would be interesting too because FDR would no longer be president and Hitler might very well have either been dead of natural causes, or so menatlly crippled as to be nothing more than figurehead used for photo ops while Goering and Himmler conducted the actual running of the Third Reich.

I don't know if this would make an interesting game scenario, but I think it's an interesting topic all the same.

[SeaMonkey]

Alright JJ, maybe I was a little out there, I was assuming a fully cooperative alliance, something akin to Germany and Italy. Come to think of it, that wasn't all that cozy either.

Finland's nickel was very important, as well as Sweden's iron, no doubt about it. Most of my ideas came from the supposed conversation of Ribbentrop and Molotov at his(Ribbentrop's) home concrete shelter during an air raid and later reflected to Hitler. Again the historical reflections I have read indicated a candor not previously witnessed from Molotov. Perhaps he was acting on his own without Stalin's acquiescence.

Now John, I'm not trying to get your redblooded American temper up, for I admire your explanation of the USA incursion into the USSR civil war. But I respectfully disagree.

I've read Woodroe Wilson's famous "aide-memoire" of 7-17-1918 and I know you would agree with its ambiguity, it is confusing. Let's face it, together, as Americans, there was ulterior motivation, it was an anti-Bolshevik expedition, simple, yet unofficial.

They landed in Aug. 1918 and didn't leave, General Graves and his staff, till April 1920, kind of along time after the end of the war to hang around and protect supplies.....don't you think? I won't mention the Tulgas, Shenkursk, and Romanovka battles, as you are right, a few battalions, a few hundred American casualties, but 200 miles inland...protecting the supplies, right? I'm refering to the Siberian incursion, not the Vladivostok one, that's a whole different can to open. What a lost opportunity.

[JerseyJohn]

SeaMonkey,

Interesting conversation. To me the answer regarding Wilson and sending those American troops to Archangel is he didn't understand what was actually happening in Russia. Few people did, including the Russians themselves.

Sure, those troops did fan out, mainly they went into empty space and conducted preemptive actions to prevent bands of Bolsheviks from organizing for later attacks on the stockpile. The fact that they moved so far from their base only indicates that there was so much unoccupied land. In truth, if they had wandered too far, there would have been a tremendous danger of Bolshevik cavalry moving north and cutting them off from the port. In that case, the stockpiles would have fallen and the troops would have been stranded, failing in every sense of the word.

As for objective, what could it have been? They weren't strong enough to take Petersburg and, even if they had been, it would have meant nothing at all other than having a city filled with starving people that suddenly had to be fed.

If Wilson, or the British and French really wanted to do something to influence the situation, they'd have packed some of their armies up and transported them through the Baltic (WWI having been over but the armies still being intact) and landed them at Petersburg. From there they could have fought their way inland to wrest Smolensk and Moscow from the Bolsheviks. That might have made some sense and it might have restored the White Russians to power. So why didn't they do it?

British and French troops would most certainly have mutinied. They already had a bad case of war weariness and none of them would have been willing to make that trip to be killed or crippled by Bolshevik bullets instead of German.

The Americans had a lot of troops in France, organized into two large armies, The A. E. F. and the First American Army. They fought well in the closing months of the war but also had a disturbing tendancy toward very high casualties. If the war had lasted longer, it's a certainty that American losses would have been proportionally as great as those of any of the major participants.

So, let's say the United States could have moved it's two armies to Russia without having them mutiny. What then?

At home we'd have had Woodrow Wilson, pushing for a League of Nations and trying to explain all of this to a congress and public that no doubt would have been up in arms. Wilson had, after all, been reelected on the promise of keeping the United States not only out of The Great [European] War, but also completely removed from all foreign military entanglements. Now he'd have been telling them that approximately 1,000,000 American troops who'd gone out eagerly to fight the Germans, were now fighting their way across Russia in some sort of Civil War where no one knew who the players were because the scorecards had never been printed.

The Arctic action reminds me of Wilson's other great fiasco committed a couple of years prior to U. S. involvment in the war. He sent Blackjack Pershing across the Mexican border with about 10,000 men to track down and destroy Pancho Villa, who'd raided an American town (in which he'd lost a huge number of his own men and accomplished nothing at all other than to kill a few American citizens). Wilson had to do something, of course, but his action was all but a blatant act of war. Even worse, they never did track down Villa or his bandits turned revolutionaries.

What they did do was move dangerously close to Mexico City, with Villa safely hidden north of their position, between themselves and Texas! Pershing, frustrated at his impossible task, sent this message back to D. C., "We've got Villa surrounded on one side." Implying he'd no doubt choose to slip out one of the other three.

The result was a near war with Mexico that would most likely have been similar to Vietnam, unwinnable. And our involvement in WWI because it was this absurd situation that prompted the ill advised Zimmermann Telegram, intended to let Mexico know Germany would eagerly support them if both countries found themselves at war with the U. S. -- a much different message from the one that was blown out of proportion by the hysterical press of the time.

So, having meandered around, while we may not have cut to the heart of the matter, we've at least gotten to it's nature.

-- Regarding the west and Bolshevism, the communist takeover of Russia was really made possible by the vacuum created by Germany's defeat. If peace had been made and Imperial Germany left with it's Brest-Litovsk settlement, there would have been support for the indepenent nation of Ukrania and also for Turkey, which still clung to it's holdings in the Caucasus. I don't blame Britain and France for this, Germany could easily have agreed to peace terms in early 1918, before the Ludendorff offensive, and entered the 1920s as the most powerful nation in Europe, perhaps the world.

A bizarre footnote is that during the 1920s, there was a covert Anglo-French plan to raise a German army and send it to Russia, supposedly to knock the Bolsheviks out of power. Naturally, by then it was way too late. Also, minor details were never worked out, such as how large it would have been, how they'd have gotten it there since there was an undeclared war along the new German/Polish frontier and the most trivial of all, why on earth would any German have joined in such a ridiculous adventure.

I don't think anyone can make much sense of this period. There are too many contradictions, too many hidden agendas that have been lost to history and, near the top of the world somewhere, a few battalians of American soldiers freezing their asses off, wondering why they they'd ever left Ohio.

[SeaMonkey]

Well John, of course I can see your perspective, as the condition was chaotic, who could really tell?

The objective? I believe Wilson intervened with the ideology of creating a democratic Russia. In any case at least to overthrow the tyrranical regime of the Bolsheviks and make the world safe for democracy. Now Wilson was not objectional to the use of military force to affect the outcomes of revolutions, I'll site Mexico, Haiti, Dominican Republic, and of course Cuba.

Funny thing you mentioned the Czech Legion earlier as I believe the success of that formation in capturing the Trans-Siberian Railway in the face of the Bolsheviks was the catalyst for Wilson's foray.

Well I'll guess we'll never know what a 2 or 3 divisional(armies? not necessary) landing in Archangel would have accomplished given a specific order to march to Moscow. With Admiral Kolchak's 100,000 man army of White Russians and General Denikin's Ukrainians pushing to link up with the Czech Legion, just a little nudge from those American divisions might have toppled the Bolsheviks.

And what with those 70,000 Japanese being dissuaded by General Grave's troops in the Sunchan Valley(Vladivostok) from fighting the Bolsheviks, only speculation exists to what they could have accomplished.

Perhaps no Communist take overs in China or Eastern Europe, no Stalinist terror campaign, no Cold War, and maybe, just maybe, no Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, hence no World War II.

OMG :eek: does that mean no SC?

[JerseyJohn]

Oh no, SeaMonkey, in our hypothetical time machine, we'd be asked to trade off SC in order to save the lives of what? Sixty or so million people? Hmmmm, decsions, decisions.

I don't know what it would have taken, on America's part, to topple the Bolsheviks. This was before they'd shown themselves to be a murderous bunch of inepts. Whether they were worse than the murderous bunch of inepts they replaced is hard to tell. The average Russian may well have rallied around the Bolsheviks and, determined foreign intervention might actually have made the communists stronger. I mean, many of the White Russians represented nothing more than a return to the old regime. If Nicholas and all his close relatives had been killed it would only have meant finding another czar.

So, something better than what had fallen would have needed to be created before intervention, American or otherwise, had a real chance of succeeding.

Wilson, by the time all of this came a boil, was already having severe health problems and also riding the rails across America in an unsuccessful attempt to achieve U. S. participation in The League of Nations -- his own creation and one that United States didn't join!

It might have been wise to send a couple of divisions to Archangel to secure those munitions and, ultimately, to move them south to either Petersburg or Moscow, but I think the real move, if the United States were truly to become involved, would have needed to be the landing of an army at Petersburg. As I said, the United States had two of them in France and, really I believe both would have been needed to guarantee success in defeating the Bolsheviks.

The problem, of course, is it would have been political suicide for Wilson. Assuming of course that he could have gotten Congress to approve of the action, which I think is highly doubtful.

It might just be that the best Wilson could have done was those paltry few batallions. The fact that he sent a general to command them, instead of a colonel, may mean he anticipated expanding it to a much larger force.

Your mentioning of the Japanese is very ingeresting. I think they'd have grabbed Vladivostok and, later, Manchuria. Japan already had a history of moving inland, taking Korea and (and Taiwan) during the 1880s in a war with China, then grabbing more territory (Manchuria at first, but later that was adjusted to Port Arthur and limited Manchuria claims duing the peace negotions) as a result of the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. No doubt the west realized this and that's why they dissuaded them from fighting the Bolsheviks. In exchange, Japan digested the German Pacific/Chinese colonies with Western blessings.

If it hasn't been written yet, a lot of this would make the basis for a very good book. Too bad the late Barbara Tuchmann hadn't written it, this would have been right up her alley.

And now we've got another interesting what if. Or, perhaps several.

[SeaMonkey]

Good points JJ. And that book would be indeed welcomed, maybe there is one out there we're not aware of. In any case, a great discussion, most entertaining and enlightening.

We will see what the SC2 editor can conjure up.

Much appreciated, till our next....goodnight, my friend .

[JerseyJohn]

Thank you, SeaMonkey, and Good Night to you also my friend.*

-- *Speaking of books, I hope you'll soon be in the mood to read one.