this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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[–] tal@lemmy.today 19 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

“Absolutely not. My advice to that unnamed low-level French politician would be to remind them that it’s only because of the United States of America that the French are not speaking German right now,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt in a press briefing Monday, likely referencing an American-French allyship during World War II that snuffed out Nazi Germany. “They should be grateful.”

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)

The Western Union (WU), also referred to as the Brussels Treaty Organisation (BTO),[1] was the European military alliance established between France, the United Kingdom (UK) and the three Benelux countries in September 1948 in order to implement the Treaty of Brussels signed in March the same year.[Note 1] Under this treaty the signatories, referred to as the five powers, agreed to collaborate in the defence field as well as in the political, economic and cultural fields.

When the division of Europe into two opposing camps became unavoidable, the threat of the Soviet Union became much more important than the threat of German rearmament.[8] Western Europe, therefore, sought a new mutual defence pact involving the United States, a powerful military force for such an alliance. The United States, concerned with containing the influence of the Soviet Union, was responsive.[9] Secret meetings began by the end of March 1949 between American, Canadian and British officials to initiate the negotiations that led to the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on 4 April 1949 in Washington, D.C.[10]

The need to back up the commitments of the North Atlantic Treaty with appropriate political and military structures led to the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). On 20 December 1950 the Consultative Council of the Brussels Treaty Powers decided to merge the military organisation of the Western Union into NATO.

[–] pimento64@sopuli.xyz 6 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Interesting thesis, however, you can't expect people not to notice that you buried the lede here:

The US provided aid

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:

I would like to express my candid opinion about Stalin's views on whether the Red Army and the Soviet Union could have coped with Nazi Germany and survived the war without aid from the United States and Britain. First, I would like to tell about some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were "discussing freely" among ourselves. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany's pressure, and we would have lost the war. No one ever discussed this subject officially, and I don't think Stalin left any written evidence of his opinion, but I will state here that several times in conversations with me he noted that these were the actual circumstances. He never made a special point of holding a conversation on the subject, but when we were engaged in some kind of relaxed conversation, going over international questions of the past and present, and when we would return to the subject of the path we had traveled during the war, that is what he said. When I listened to his remarks, I was fully in agreement with him, and today I am even more so.

– Nikita Khrushchev

And:

Today [1963] some say the Allies didn't really help us ... But listen, one cannot deny that the Americans shipped over to us material without which we could not have equipped our armies held in reserve or been able to continue the war.

—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.

[–] Redex68@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] pimento64@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 hours ago

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:

It's not clear to me that the Allies lose, even if it's just the UK and USSR as the major powers.

If it's just the UK and USSR as the major powers, they lose.