If the USSR had decided to invade all of Europe in 1945, would the Allies have been able to defeat them without atomic power?

There’s a little known fact the Soviet Union lost 1–2 million people in 1946–47.

Soviet famine of 1946-47

This really shouldn’t be too surprising, the USSR spent the better part of the last four years fighting the most brutal war in history and the Nazis occupied the bulk of best Soviet farmland. The mass mobilization and subsequent grotesque personnel losses also created an epic labor shortage, compounded by the absolutely massive military production. During the war there was American food coming in, but once this stopped the domestic production was nowhere near sufficient and people died as a result.

USSR actually mobilized some 16-year olds into the Red Army in 1945. They were at the end of manpower, the only way they could replace losses were either child soldiers or mobilization of millions of factory laborers, which would leave them without industrial capacity to replace losses.

Another bit of an issue that is frequently forgotten is that Ukraine, Baltics and Poland weren’t excactly friendly to the Soviets and had viable resistance movements doing damage and inflicing casualties. There were also resistance forces in Georgia and elsewhere, the USSR itself wasn’t fully pacified, their soon to be western satelites weren’t keen on being ruled by Russians and the former axis countries (Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria) would also form their own reistance movements. Some were already active, but if given a chance others would follow too.

So you have a hungry army that can’t replace its losses and has to deal with insurrectionists across 1000 km of their supply lines taking on the combined forces of Britain and USA, who can be quickly supplanted by several million recently freed French POWs, as well as German POWs for good measure. Allies had those and they would fight against the Soviets if it meant Germany would live. You could reasonably count on Italians as well at this point.

The only reason why the Soviets were able to advance past Poland was because Lufwaffe was deployed to defend against Allied bombers coming in from the west. Now these same bombers would do damage to Russian supply lines instead and unlike the Luftwaffe, they have uniformly good pilots and don’t lack fuel.

If USSR attacks Allies in 1945, Moscow falls in 1946 and Stalin is hanged upside down from a petrol station. It was this bad.

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Holocaust victim

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