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Discussion Question: Did We Need to Ally with Stalin?
There’s a line you get all the time in debates: “After all, we allied with Stalin to beat Hitler.” I don’t like it much as an argument because the implication is that anyone who isn’t worse than Stalin is fair game, and there are very few people who can’t clear that bar. But never mind that, what about it as a historical question; should we have allied with Stalin?
Take the same history right up until June 22, 1941. The Wehrmacht rolls Panzers into the Soviet Union. Roosevelt cables Churchill, “The important thing is to beat Hitler, but do we really need to supply the communists?” Churchill cables back, “If Hitler invaded hell, I wouldn’t invite the devil to tea.”
What happens from there? How do you think history would run? Do the allies still win the war? Spin out your own alternate history and let me know what you think.
Published in History
Then why even bring it up?
Japan was special in some very odd ways. The army, the navy, and the civilian government each tended to behave according to their own preferences. The US was the major supplier of petroleum in Asia and that petroleum had served Japan well in their long and vicious invasions of China and Korea. The American petroleum available to Japan dropped, and most of the top Japanese brass were sure that the loudly pacifist Americans would quickly come to terms deprived of their major Aircraft Carriers docked at Pearl Harbor. The Americans would sue for terms, the Japanese would be oil rich again, and the demoralized pacifist Americans would sit the rest of the war out. A plan so cunning you could slap a tail on it and call it a weasel.
The three carriers were away from Pearl on maneuvers, the battleships that were destroyed or disabled at Pearl were ill configured for the second Great War but Fortress America geared up and cranked out a different kind of navy better suited to the great carrier battles of the Pacific. No one believes in a sleeping giant until it awakes.
Doubtful that Midway happens the way it did regardless. Some days you just give thanks for what you are given.
You mean, the one he came from?
I say no. And the world would be a much better place if we did not.
I’m going to focus on just the European aspects of World War II and not the Pacific, because while there are geopolitical connections, and I like examining things in a wider lens, it really is a separate issue. And I’m going to shift your Butterfly Effect date from 1941 to 1939 because alternate history doesn’t work without looking at the causes.
The approved history version of World War II makes no sense. Hollywood helped with this. Spielberg. Captain America. Nazi death machines. Ashtrays made of human bones. Canines that had poison implanted in their fangs. It’s goofy, super-villain stuff, but it’s swallowed wholesale. Hitler’s body count was in the hundreds by 1939, while Stalin’s was already in the tens of millions. But the United States were fighting for “the free world” just like we say we do today. We were fighting for the democratic integrity of nations like interwar-era Poland, who were engaging in ethnic cleansing, just like Germany.
There’s also an accepted narrative that Germany was suicidal to attack Russia. This also plays into the “Hitler was an idiot” narrative. Well, the war was always going to be between Germany and Russia. Poland happened to be in the way, but fascist Poland was not innocent, and unfortunately these geopolitical inconveniences were not unique in Polish history. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was not a treaty. You don’t sign non-aggression pacts with your friends, you sign them with your enemies. Germany did not break some vague “international code” by attacking the Soviets. The Soviets were always going to attempt to swallow up Germany in accordance with their global Marxist-Leninist vision. Germany’s only alternative was to lie down and die.
There are so many documents that have been unearthed within the past decade or so that reveal the extent of how involved Stalin truly was in the Spanish Civil War, and I wish conservatives would read them. Because then fascism will make sense. European integrity will make sense. The entire 20th century will make sense. The Stalin/Trotsky divide over international vs. at-home communism was a lie. They were both expansionists. Funny how all those disillusioned Trotskyiites eventually became NeoCons. Funny how they wrote the history.
Fascism was the bulwark against spreading Bolshevism. “National” socialism vs. “global” communism. 1917 cast a shadow over all of Europe. Spain, Italy, Poland and Germany all had communist uprisings that were put down by “nationalists” aka, fascists. Fascism was always going to come in many flavors due to the national element. You cannot simply switch out Salazar for Il Duce. But you can swap any Marxist/Leninist, because they do not believe in nationality. We can disagree with their economics, but the fascists felt they had to hyper-industrialize their economies via their states to fight Bolshevism, the true global threat.
So, this is where fascist German imperial ambitions come in. The United States had no interests in Europe, and they were never under the threat of mythical “Nazi occupation.” Germany had a miniscule navy that could barely get out of the Baltic. When Hitler went to Paris, he made no Middle Eastern oil demands or anything of the sort. He posed for a photo op and that was pretty much it. Yet, this was the international super-villain that the United States had to extinguish. While helping Stalin, who clearly had imperial ambitions.
In my opinion, Stalin was the most powerful man that ever lived. Not just due to the fact that he ruled over nearly 1/4 of the planet, or the fact that he had atomic weapons, but due to the fact that the psychological terror he wielded over an entire nation was unprecedented in human history. Hitler forced resignations from his disobedient officers, Stalin forced his officers to confess to crimes they did not commit, with the full realization that they would be executed as a result of said confessions. Stalin was a once-in-a-millennia evil, while Hitler wasn’t much different than the occasional backwards prince that we would get in Middle Ages Germanic city-states.
Yes, I do think we were wrong to help Stalin. I do not have a time machine and I cannot say with certainty what the various European fascist states would have done if left to their own devices. We may have seen several 1990’s Yugoslavia’s, or we may have seen Velvet Revolutions. But I do not think we see the catastrophic global consequences we see today.
Most importantly, Eastern Europe is left to their own devices, and not swallowed up by one of the most barbaric regimes in human history. I firmly believe Hitler was no danger to Romania, or Latvia, Hungary, etc. The Soviets absolutely were, as evidenced by the entire latter half of the 20th century.
And we also do not get the Global American Empire if the US stays out. It is my opinion that the United States wanted to fill the void that the failed British Empire left. While it wasn’t a linear transition, the US overtook the UK’s global hegemony as a result of WWII.
If Germany and Russia fight it out, communism potentially dies in 1941. Millions of victims of communist crimes are spared. America never engages in supporting money laundering operations masquerading as countries. America never engages in empire. That’s a beautiful alternate history and a world I would want to be a part of.
Thank you, yes. My intention was to assume that Hitler goes to war with Stalin on schedule but then the US and Britain don’t ally with the Soviet Union, preferring to let the Eastern Front be its own war. I suppose I could have made that more clear.
There’s a bit of a fantasy element in this thread, and there’s nothing wrong with some counterfactual speculation. But the obvious fact is we didn’t choose to ally ourselves with Stalin; Hitler did the job himself. He attacked the USSR on June 22, 1941; then, four days after his allies supposedly decapitated our Pacific Fleet, he declared war on us. He never asked our opinions on the matter.
So we were both Hitler’s enemies. That didn’t necessarily make us allies, but since Stalin had a hundred German divisions on his front, keeping the Soviets in the war is what kept us from losing it.
I’m baffled by comments about how we trusted or liked Stalin. Neither is true, of FDR or of America generally. The Soviets did not like us either. We were stuck with each other.
Germany was much stronger than the USSR at the start of the war. As each year passed, the Germans got weaker and the USSR got stronger. So much for Hitler’s so-called strategic genius.
Stalin was gearing up to invade, himself. That’s one of the reasons the German attack was so effective (in the early days): the Russians had switched from a defensive to an offensive posture. Or so the argument goes.
Gary,
I’d like you to address the point I made about non-aggression pacts not being treaties, when you claim “Hitler did the job himself.” And what made Hitler defending himself against Bolshevism our “mutual enemy?”
Not being provocative. I’m always interested in your takes.
There was the German declaration of war immediately following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
James, I appreciate your politeness. I don’t get your point here. Hitler broke “sacred” treaties, formal pacts, informal ones, and anything that got in his way. He and Stalin were both savage tyrants and mass murderers. But I’ve seen no credible evidence–none–that the USSR was gearing up to attack Germany, which would have been suicidal in 1941. Stalin had killed off much of the Soviet armed forces’ leadership in 1937-38.
Hitler attacked, like Putin did 81 years later. Both were mistakes. Let’s see if Putin’s ends the same way as Hitler’s.
Stalin may have been planning on it, but trains carrying iron and other commodities were still running west when Operation Barbarossa was launched.
Thanks Gary.
Hitler tried to be diplomatic. He idolized Britain, in some ways because of their naval superiority, but in other ways because pre-Churchill Britain was something for the Euro (not necessarily Anglo) sphere to idolize. Warts and all, the British Empire worked.
Hitler signed no treaties with the Soviets. He did not break any sacred international guidelines. He acted when Churchill (through Chamberlain) promised a war over Danzig, a tiny port that meant nothing to Britain. Because the walls were closing in on him. And yes, Stalin killed so many of his own. But he had so many more. The “beauty” of communism was the absolute disregard for human capital. Need more industry? Discard farmers. Need more food? Measure metal by sheet instead of pound.
Let’s leave Putin out of this, because we probably don’t agree and I think it obfuscates the point that I’m (and presumably you) are trying to make. (cont)
If Churchill had not supported the Soviets he would have been replaced.
The Labour party would have pulled out of the coalition government. New election new leader.
Lets remember the Unions would work overtime if they new the tanks they were working on were destined for the Soviet Union but not for the tanks heading for Monty and 8th Army.
Please go read some history on the subject. I have read and speculated a lot on WW2 alternatives. But this one is really silly.
The Russians had performed so poorly against Finland that they forced the Fins to surrender and give them all the territorial concessions they demanded.
People talk about blood in the snow a lot. They forget how Timoshenko showed up in 40 reorganized the army and crushed the Fins.
I’d recommend reading Hitler’s Second Book instead of Mein Kampf. Mein Kampf was a promo, not unlike the soft-IQ coffee table books that come out every presidential cycle, to make you read embellished stories about candidates. The Second Book really frames the pre-WW2 mindset.
I’ll say that the USSR didn’t view any action as suicidal. Because they were real. Communism wasn’t just a hat they wore. They believed in it, and they died for it.
Not sure who you’re throwing shade at here, Tory?
A sidenote: When I’m not reading posts like this about world history, I’m a car history nut. One very minor, but weirdly persistent anti-American myth claims that the US did not stop passenger car production during WWII, but merely claimed to, because supposedly the idle rich were well supplied with luxuries like new Cadillacs. Aside from the fact that there’s no evidence of this, my rejoinder was, what about the auto worker’s unions? They would have raised holy hell before they built those cars, because aside from their win-the-war patriotism, it would have come out of arms production, which the highly left union leadership wanted to continue for both America’s and the USSR’s sake.
Stalin wanted the whole enchilada. He settled for a little less than 10% and called it a victory. At the end, there were five to six times as many dead Russians as there were dead Finns.
My own read on how history would have unfolded is like this:
The change does nothing to prevent Pearl Harbor and the US enters the war on schedule. The Soviets, lacking the west’s supplies, aren’t able to hold on. It’s still a near run thing. But having formally conquered the Soviet Union the Germans find they’ve got more and more problems.
The retreating Russians remember Napoleon and burn Moscow on their way out. Stalin himself isn’t captured; he leads what’s left of his forces further and further east into Siberia to continue the fight. He’s not nothing but he’s also no longer a serious threat to the Wehrmacht. He’s eventually shot by a subordinate who then sues for peace, but other than requiring fewer troops to garrison the populated parts of the old Soviet Union there’s not much difference there.
Having conquered all the way to the oil fields at Baku the Germans find that them to be scorched. Much of the Soviet industrialization gets that treatment. The people themselves fall into two camps; the Slavic fatalists shrug their shoulders and trudge their feet for a new set of bosses, and the vodka-soaked partizans. More fall into the former group than the latter, but enough are in that group to be really annoying. Between the partizans and the scorched Earth Hitler’s occupation is never so secure and never so profitable as he would like. But we’re a couple years ahead of the Western front at this point.
The Africa campaign, the invasion of Italy, go pretty much the same. Is there a Normandy invasion? Without a Stalin to demand one Roosevelt and Churchill are deadlocked on the question, eventually launching an invasion of Norway instead. By this point the Wehrmacht is being stiffened by veterans and supplies returning from Russia, so if the allies are able to make any progress at all in Norway or Italy it’s a hard, grueling fight. Roosevelt wins reelection, and is succeeded by Truman. The American people are still gung-ho for revenge but if the war lasts until ’48 a peacenik opposition might gain traction.
The war would devolve into a stalemate there, with Hitler sending V2s one way across the channel and us sending four engine bombers the other way. In the Pacific we’d fight Japan back to containment but be unwilling to commit enough forces to dig them out of their home islands while war in Europ yet raged. Then the Trinity test detonates. Though the Germans put up a valiant defense with their jet fighters the atom bombs can’t be stopped entirely. I don’t know if Berlin gets nuked. I do know that thanks to the efficacious tactic of “blow a hole a mile wide in the German lines and drive an army through it” a good number of veterans are going to have lingering health concerns in the years to come.
Final verdict: We win, they lose, but at the cost of an even longer war, more lives lost, and more of Europe devastated. I don’t know what becomes of conquered and then liberated Russia; I imagine the west tries to build a true republic there. I doubt it ends well.
Sounds good, Hank. Some side notes: FDR didn’t pick Truman as VP until the current VP, Henry Wallace, made a thorough pandering fool of himself on a war solidarity tour of Siberia in the late spring of 1944. If Wallace had become president, we would have had a president far, far to the left of any we’ve actually had. How that would have affected the war, and the postwar world, I don’t know, and I’m glad we didn’t find out.
In one sense, there wasn’t much of a secret to the atomic bomb. (I’m being rhetorical here; Hank knows about this stuff better than any of the rest of us on Ricochet.) All of the major powers knew it was a possibility. Only the British–not us–came up with a practical plan to make a bomb. The basic outline of the UK plan was accurate, though it was vastly more expensive than expected. Vastly. That’s why no one else did it; not only did it look prohibitively expensive, but no one knew for sure if all that expense would be for nothing. So every other power in the war except the UK and the US figured that not only couldn’t they afford it but nobody else could either.
Get bent.
Recently I skimmed Churchill’s magnificent 6 volume opus on the Second World War. It took me 7 hours do write up the entire review of this series. See https://ricochet.com/1360747/book-review-the-second-world-war-by-winston-churchill/. I am not going to cut and paste everything I wrote about the Soviet Union, but instead I will give you my bottom line impression.
At first, it was critical that the U.S. and England help the Soviet Union stay alive. It was essential that the Germans lose the battle of Stalingrad, which a book on the most important battles in the history of world, says is the third most crucial battle of all time, second only to Yorktown, where we beat the British and won the Revolutionary War, and the Battle of Hastings in 1066, where England was successfully invaded for the last time. If the German’s had won in Stalingrad, they could have accessed Soviet oil fields, and that could have prolonged the war until the Germany had perfected their work on creating the Atom Bomb. That would have been an existential crisis for London, and a massive danger to England and US.
As the Soviets were slowly marching westward and recovering their land, there was a meeting of Churchill, Stalin and FDR in Tehran. Stalin made many promises to respect pluralism, especially in Poland. Twenty-twenty hindsight is always helpful. In retrospect, as the Soviet Union started to violate these promises, it would have been better if England and the United States had incrementally started to cut back on aid to the Soviet Union. We warned Stalin in writing that he was breaking his promises. We needed action instead of words.
At Yalta, FDR was a dying man. He was incredibly weakened. He wanted to believe Stalin’s renewed promises. Perhaps that can be forgiven in light of his frailty. It was incredibly hard for the U.S. and England to switch from being full partners with the Soviet Union to having reservations about its behavior.
One hero in Churchill’s book, was, of course, Churchill. (This is a value of writing history.) Churchill had the presence of mind to send British troops to help liberate Greece, and so when the war ended, the Soviet Union was not in the sole position of occupying Greece alone, as they were occupying Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. Good for Churchill. He saved Greece.
Ike knew that the Soviet Union really wanted to take Berlin. German troops were coming to the the United States Army and asking to surrender to them, instead of the Soviets. This greatly upset the Soviets. In retrospect, we should have let German troops surrender to us instead of the Soviet Union and we should have taken Berlin.
One other point from Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties. World War Two started on September 1, 1939. The US population was 131 million. We had military losses of 407,000 people, and an additional civilian losses of 12,000, for a total of 419,000, or .32% of our 1939 population. One American out of every 312 died in WWII.
On September 1, 1939, the UK had a population of 48 million. They had military losses of 384,000 people and civilian losses of 67,000, for a total of 451,000, or .94% of their population. One Brit out of every 106 died in WWII.
On September 1, 1939, the Soviet Union had a population of 189 million people. They had military losses of 10,600,000, civilian losses of 10,000,000 and finally 6,000,000 dead due to famine, for a total of 26,600,000, or 13.7% of their population. One Soviet out of every 7.3 people died in WWII. This is a staggeringly huge number, and helps explain Stalin’s insistence for buffer states in Eastern Europe.
Sorry @garyrobbins, I can’t quote you in full due to character limits, but I’ll do my best. I don’t think Churchill was a hero. Churchill wanted war. He was a horrible human being, the original NeoCon, and his rhetoric was full of this stuff. I’ve also read Churchill’s own six volumes on “himself” and find it bizarre that you reached such a different conclusion.
The definitive summary:
Hitler was a monster. Stalin was a monster. At their level of monstrousness there is no way to compare between them, or to compare them to anyone else (in WW2).
Churchill was a great man. He was also a flawed man. (He was a man.) Often his virtues and his flaws are intimately connected.
FDR was pretty awful in lots of ways that still bedevil the republic, but the republic still stands (more or less).
Using body-count to estimate contributions to the war effort is a bit weird: you shouldn’t rack up ‘points’ because you are bad at war and feeding people.
When interesting questions about alternate history change from an amusing divertissement into a proxy conflict for current affairs it is time to check out.
To me, this is really about the current war.
The opportunity to destroy an enemy using proxies is highly attractive. America values our people more than we value hardware. So if we can – and did – trade tanks for dead Germans, it was a winning deal.
Similarly if we can end the totalitarian hell of Putin’s Russia by sending weapons and $$ to Ukraine – all without losing our own servicemen – then it is a no-brainer.
Kissinger wants Russia to remain, to maintain power balance. I say to hell with that. I am interested in freedom, and that requires evil dictators to lose their forces. Defeating Russia indirectly? It is a slam dunk every day and twice on Sundays.
We should be promoting freedom. It is an ideological war. The more free people there are in the world, the better everything is.
Gary, I think that we did choose to ally with Stalin. We could have been co-belligerents without being allies.
We also provoked both Japan and Germany into war with us, but that’s another issue. I don’t know if we’re certain about this, but there’s a good argument that FDR’s primary goal in provoking Japan was to draw the US into the European war with Germany.
I pretty much agree about Japan, but disagree about Germany. This strikes me as a cartoon version of Hitler.
As detailed in some of the other comments, there were plenty of reasons for Hitler to believe that he could defeat Stalin. The Soviets fought very poorly in Finland. The officer corps of the Red Army had been purged. The Germans had badly beaten the Russians in WWI. Much of the land that the Germans actually wanted — mainly Ukraine and the oilfields in the Caucasus — contained minority populations not particularly fond of Russian rule in general, or Stalin’s rule in particular. France had collapsed under the German onslaught, and Soviet Russia might have done so as well.
Remember the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, also, when the fledgling Soviet government gave up vast territories to Imperial Germany during WWI. Faced with military disaster and internal unrest, the Soviets had traded land for peace. It doesn’t strike me as crazy for Hitler to think that they might do so again.
Finally, about the “inferior peoples” thing — man for man, the Germans beat the living daylights out of the Russians. The Germans had good reason to think of themselves as superior. They were technologically advanced, well trained, and ferocious. Maybe that superiority is genetic, in part, maybe not — there’s actually a great deal of evidence for such genetic differences, though not so much between Germans and Russians as between various larger racial groups.