this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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Ehhh....maybe yes, maybe no. It's not clear to me that the Allies lose, even if it's just the UK and USSR as the major powers.
The US provided aid prior to, but didn't enter the war directly until after Pearl Harbor (and in Nazi Germany's case, the direct factor was the German declaration of war on the US a few days later). At that point:
Nazi Germany's attempt to reach the preconditions for Operation Sea Lion, the invasion of the UK, had already failed, as it had lost the Battle of Britain, the air war over the UK. Forcing the UK into a surrender would then require winning the Battle of the Atlantic, successfully blockading the UK.
Nazi Germany's attempt to knock out the USSR at one go, Operation Barbarossa, had also failed immediately before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Time was not on Hitler's side, as his advantage was earlier preparation. The Soviet Union had been hurt, yes, but wasn't out of the fight. An additional problem for Nazi Germany was that Operation Barbarossa had caused the Soviet Union to stop permitting supplies to Germany through; prior to that, the Soviet Union had been a route to circumvent the Blockade of Germany.
Had the Allies won, it would have been a considerably-more-unpleasant-for-them fight than was the case in our own timeline, but it's possible that the Axis had already bit off more than it could chew by mid-1941.
I'd think that a larger issue might be whether the Soviet Union winds up taking control of Western Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Union_(alliance)
Interesting thesis, however, you can't expect people not to notice that you buried the lede here:
Here are thoughts on that from people who know an awful lot more about the USSR's war effort than anyone alive does. My italics:
– Nikita Khrushchev
And:
—Georgy Zhukov
The military commissar and the Marshal of the Soviet Union are not mincing words here, they unequivocally confirm that the United States bankrolled their ability to continue to be at war and that the USSR would have been fucked without Lend-Lease. That scenario ends one way: with an Axis victory.
I agree with you that most probably without the US the Allies would have lost the war, but to the press secretary's point about how they would be speaking German right now if it were not for them, I highly doubt that Germany could have held control over the entirety of Europe after the war. They would most probably collapse from revolutions/rebelions, but who knows what would have happened.
Fine, but I wasn't addressing what you refuted. Most likely the perpetual-war economies of the Axis would have turned on each other during the course of competitive colonization, and lead to a series of Balkanized fascist states fighting for control. I doubt that even Germany would have remained intact, or that non-Prussian Germans would have had civil rights even by Nazi standards. The various rogue states controlling the general area of Vichy France would undoubtedly still speak French. I was addressing your thesis:
If it's just the UK and USSR as the major powers, they lose.