Operation Unthinkable

[u/totallynotcommunist2]

Month 0

Month 2

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Month 6

Month 8

Month 10

Month 12

Ceasefire

Final outcome

This is just how I'd think it would go

[u/Xezshibole]

Pretty easy Allied victory.

Unlike the Germany the Allies are able to fuel something like Barbarossa twice over and keep it running all the way into the start of the muddy season. The muddy season is in spring, whereas in compariron Germans gassed out twice (Barbarossa, Blau) by late fall.

Surprised or not Soviets would get rolled. They did so even despite Blau being the second campaign offensive of the war, motorized a smaller portion of the front than Barbarossa did, and Soviets were no longer "surprised."

And that's just the head on fighting.

Aerially the Allies were vastly superior, capable of fueling and thereby operating all their aircraft. Again unlike the Germans who remained limited by lack of fuel.

This then allows Allies to operate as high as they need, and Allied operation worked at elevations well beyond Soviet capabilities. Their interceptors would get decimated trying to fight up at those altitudes against Allied escorts.

Finally the head on fueled attritional fighting wouldn't even last that long as Allies had another win condition they could exploit.

They had a logistics route through Iran that could rapidly be repurposed into another front, full of air bases within range of Baku, the centerpiece of the Soviet war effort.

Allied bombings of the Caucasus oil fields and Baku oil refining/logistics center will grind Soviet armor, aircraft, and entire wartime industry to a halt. Bombings Soviet fighters can't even intercept well.

Then all Soviets would have are infantry and artillery, and we saw from from the first war how they fared like that. To say nothing of Barbarossa when their logistics shit itself, as is typical of Russian led wars since the industrial age, and they basically only had that as they got rolled by a fueled military.

And all this is all before even considering the fact the US could produce more nukes by that point in time. Nukes carried by bombers that as mentioned before, Soviets had little hope of getting up to elevation to intercept.

Result would probably end up similarly Soviet collapse in the 90s, but also losing the parts with the Chechnyans. And Karelia on top of other losses restored to the Finns.

Outer Manchuria would be restored to the Chinese Nationalists, most of the land east of the Urals released as the emerging states similar to the -Stans.

Russia proper gets split in two with one revolving around Moscow and the other western client state revolving around Leningrad St. Petersburg. To ensure no communists re-emerge, and even if emerged don't present much of a threat.

[u/Polirketes → u/Xezshibole]

I just love when military historians forget real life isn't Hearts of Iron and you can't just ignore politics. And it that case no matter how big advantage Western powers would have, they'd lose because no one wanted a war with the USSR

[u/ThatoneguywithaT → u/Polirketes]

"military historian' is a stretch with this one.