Stalin’s Role in World War II

I personally think the Russians are given way too much credit for winning WWII. They did suffer the most serious casualties but losing a lot of men does not win wars.

A lot of people cite Stalingrad or Kursk, but the German defeat and subsequent surrender in N. Africa was every bit as costly to the Germans.

Of course the entire Russian transport was provided by the U.S. as was most of their food. Also many P-39 aircraft, and probably huge amounts of other supplies. I wonder just how well the Ruskies would have done if facing the Germans alone, and by that I mean the Germans didn't have to fight in N. Africa or face bombing from England etc.

German general officers were playing games and evading the Treaty of Versailles in the '20's. Even as there were street battles between Reds (communists) & Brownshirts (fascists) in major German cities, German officers were training on Soviet territory for a future war (they probably imagined it would be against France). When Hitler came to power he abrogated the Treaty -- a move that put him in good stead with the German Army. I suppose if it hadn't been Hitler it would have been somebody else.

It may have been the plan, but if that was the plan, it was the desperate imaginings of men without honor.

The United States was simply not going to stab its allies, including Russia, in the back. The US had honor. The American people did not love the Communists at all, but they certainly considered the Russians allies in World War II. The German Generals might have been living in a fantasyland that this was some Diplomacy game, in which alliances forged in blood were going to be tossed away to allow Germans to go and beat back our Russian ALLIES, but there was no way in hell that the Americans, or the British for that matter, were going to countenance such a deal.
The problem, in 1944 and 1945, was not the Russians or the Communists. Oh yes, they would BECOME a problem, and most people knew that. But the mega-problem, the worse problem, the bloodthirsty-savages-who-burnt-down-London problem was the Nazi Germans. The Americans and the British were not interested in cutting a "deal" with the Germans that would somehow pull the German bacon out of the fire and let Germany save some honor and territory by shifting Nazi forces from the West to the East to fight the "real" enemy. Germans were the real enemy. Germans burnt down London and Coventry, Birmingham and Southampton. Russians didn't. Germans torpedoed ships full of American men and goods even before the US was in the war. Russians didn't. Germans machine-gunned American soldiers at Malmedy. Russians didn't. And perhaps most crucially, once the Americans liberated places like Buchenwald, the Germans were the untermenschen that set up the death camps that had American anger utterly ablaze. Eisenhower didn't want to be bothered with a visit, but when he was importuned by his junior staff, he went. And when he was done with his tour, his eyes bulging out and neck muscles straining with fury, he wheeled on his staff and SCREAMED at them: "STILL HAVE TROUBLE HATING THEM?"

So, the German Generals may have nursed some sort of romantic notion that they were, after all, "Westerners" in some sense, and that surely "Westerners", good "Germanic" people (in their idiot mental-patient racist philosophy) would side with them to let them go turn back the "real" menace of those Communist Russians. But the fact of the matter was that the Germans were the savages that the British and Americans and Russians all wanted to beat down.
When the Russians surged into Poland and Central Europe, it was not much of a liberation, but it was still better than the Nazis by a damned sight.

The German Generals were delusive. THEY and their country, Germany, needed to be dead, destroyed, flattened, humiliated, disgraced, carved up and dismembered much, much more than the Russians needed to be stopped in Eastern Europe. The Russian Communists were bad guys. The Germans were subhuman savages who needed to be stripped of their honor and their nation, completely and humiliated forever, so that they would never get up like that again. Letting Russia have half of Europe for a time was well worth that price.
Germany, old Prussian Germany, was the threat to civilization. It had to go down, completely. Russia was a smaller threat than Germany. And most importantly, the Russians hadn't killed half a million Americans and millions of Englishmen and Frenchmen. The Germans did.

So maybe that was the German Generals' plan. Had they assassinated Hitler, their overture of peace would have been ignored. The terms would have remained unconditional surrender. If the Germans wanted to lay down all of their arms in front of the Westerners, but keep fighting the Russians until the Americans, British and Free French allies surged to Berlin and further, fine. But those German Generals were still going to prison, and they were going to get no help fighting our allies, the Russians.

The German mind might think in terms of turning on a dime and stabbing allies in the back. But the Western mind, and certainly the Americans don't. America wanted peace with Russia after the war, and there was disappointment that Stalin was as obstreperous as he was. There was no way in hell that Americans and British and Free French were going to give up on bombing and killing Germans so that Germans would be free to go and kill our Russian allies. German idiocy may have believed that, but it was an utter fantasy of desperate men who still believed their rhetoric about race and blood. Truth is, Teutons are militarily inferior to Slavs and mongrelized Westerners. How so? Because truth is determined by FACT. And the facts are that the British, all alone, triumphed over the Luftwaffe, and the Russian Army crushed the Wehrmacht. And the mongrelized Westerners were no more likely to cut the hated German bastards any slack than the Slavs were. Germany was the problem, and nothing - no diplomacy, no anything - was going to save Germany from unconditional surrender and utter destruction at the hands of the Allies. Nothing was going to prevent the Russians from being given a big piece of Germany at the end of the war either. They earned it. Poland might have been saved from occupation, but the Russians were still going to have Brandenburg and Prussia. We were going to give it to them no matter what.

Perhaps the only real regret we ought to have is that we did not give Bavaria to the Jews and drive all ethnic Germans out of that land, instead of Palestine.

The fact that 6 out of 10 German soldiers died on the Russian front and all the best units were there and were crushed lends them that credit.

I don't agree that the best units were on the Eastern Front. Many of them were but many were not.

Of course before the invasion of Normandy most of the fighting was on the Russian front.

My point is Stalin helped bring on the War, and is partially at fault for helping Hitler in the early days of the war.

If Germany had not secured the Non Agression Pact with Stalin, then Poland may not have been invaded.

Stalin thought of himself as a partner with Hitler, and did not suspect otherwise till Barbarossa was launched.

"Germany was the problem, and nothing - no diplomacy, no anything - was going to save Germany from unconditional surrender and utter destruction at the hands of the Allies."

You bring up good points. Some historians believe that if Hitler had been assasinated, there would have been a civil war in Germany for control of the country between the hardcor Nazis and the Generals.

I doubt frankly that civil war would have been a problem since, by 1944 the Generals didn't trust the Nazi leadership, like Goebbels and Goering at all. Without Hitler the Nazi leadership would have been powerless against the Generals, since the Generals controlled the military, and the Nazi leadership only got it's power from Hitler.

Obviously the ideal situation from the Generals perspective would be for Germany to get the Western Allies to agree to an armistice by agreeing to purge Germany of the high Nazi leadership and a German withdrawal from Western europe in exchange for the allies letting the Generals keep the military and control of Germany and fight on against the USSR.

But this obviously would have been unacceptable to Churchill and Roosevelt since nobody wanted to let the German military escape to fight again 30 years later.

But I still think Roosevelt and Churchill would have agreed to an armistice after a Hitler assasination if:

A) The Generals agreed to order all their troops to lay down their arms against the Western allies, and withdraw from Eastern Europe.

B) Hand over the hardcore Nazi leadership for trial.

C) Agree to let the Allies ocuppy all of Germany and have Germany completely disarm.

in exchange for the Western Allies agreeing to:

A) Giving an amnesty to most of the military high commanders.

B) Agree to prevent any Soviet Forces from attacking any part of occupied Germany.

Though the Generals wouldn't like giving up control of Germany to the US and Britain, all the Generals knew Germany was going to lose, and they probably would have agreed to the above just to save Germany from total destruction at the hands of Stalin.

Many Generals in fact knew of the plot but did nothing to stop it, like Manstein, and even possibly Rommel.

Churchill and Roosevelt may well have agreed to the above, because a deal like that would have saved potentially millions of lives on all sides.

The idea of surrendering in the West and fighting in the East was actually used by Goebbles to convince Germans to keep fighting into 1945. Goebles claimed in propaganda that an Armistice with the US and Great Britain was imminent and that afterwards the Western allies would fight together to keep the Soviets out of Germany, an obvious lie but it did in fact help keep ordinary Germans fighting right up until the end.

Overall, I don't think historians have explored this alternate scenario enough and I for one would love to see a book that would have analyzed what would have happened if the Hitler was succesfully killed in 1944.

I don't imagine any one in Russia is nostalgic about the Soviet past.

I have a business colleague of mine who is also a personal friend who lives and works in Germany. He is in his early Forties and can't stand his father who is STILL an old unreconstructed Nazi.

In fact, I have met a person here in Cincinnati who expressed admiration for Hitler's performance prior to the war. (No, it wasn't Marge Schott).

So I would expect there are still pro-Stalinists in Russia, just as there are a few on some of our University campuses.

D'ay Out D'are!!

Fascinating stuff.

I think that had Hitler been assassinated and the Generals took over, they might have pressed for what you said.

But I think that Churchill and Roosevelt would have responded with "Unconditional Surrender". Those were the terms of the war. The Americans were going to invade Japan. Everyone knew it was going to cost millions of lives, but the Americans were going to do it. Unconditional Surrender of all of the Axis was the order of the day, and the Americans were prepared to go to the mattresses to kill their hated foes so they never got up again.
The atomic bomb prevented the orgy of bloodletting that would have been a US invasion of Japan.

Germany was spared the atomic bomb because the Germans collapsed before it was ready.

So, the real question is: would the Generals have accepted unconditional surrender after killing Hitler. Nobody can know, really. That the Generals didn't simply stand up and throttle him in a staff meeting, however, instead of relying upon the cheesy indirect bomb technique tells me that they were gutless bastards.

I note that at the end of the day after Hitler's death Germany was taken over and commanded by ...an Admiral... who ultimately agreed to the surrender instruments.

The rest of what you say is interesting. Had there been an unconditional surrender in early 1945, would the Western Allies have occupied all of Germany and given Stalin nothing? I doubt it. I think that the Russians would have been given East Prussia and at least part of Brandenburg, along with a sector in Berlin. It is hard not to view history through the eyes of the Cold War, but we have to try. In 1945, Russia was an ally of the US, not an enemy, and the American people expected that there would be peace with Russia, or at least hoped it. Churchill wanted to play geopolitics and start resisting the Russians, no doubt, but Truman and the Americans were not interested in that game until the Russians themselves proved extremely aggressive.

OK, who knows?