Was the Philippines Invasion (1944) necessary?

LOL.

One way to think about this subject is in terms of bargaining power. An unconditional German surrender eliminates all German bargaining power. That would leave the Soviet Union and the Western democracies with all the bargaining power, and also in a position to collectively determine what to do with postwar Germany.

It’s also worth considering the level of negotiating determination, and negotiating objectives in the first place. Churchill was interested in a democratic postwar Europe. FDR’s interest in spreading democracy or resisting communism was much weaker than Churchill’s. On the other hand, a Soviet-American postwar alliance was very important to FDR. There is little reason to suppose that FDR would raise strong objections to the Soviets getting about half of Germany’s prewar land territory. (Which was about what they received under Yalta.)

If things went badly for Stalin at the negotiating table, he could always point out that the Red Army had the ability to take what it wanted by force. Between the power of that threat and FDR’s intrinsic lack of interest in stopping the spread of communism, I think it would be very unlikely that the Soviet Union would come away from an unconditional surrender with anything less than half of prewar Germany under its control.

@abworsham4

We’ll say that magic happens-the Japanese would have surrendered by regular bombing before the planned invasion, even without the atomic bomb. So I’ll say that five nuclear bombs would be ready for tactical use.

I think the Allies would have lost 1.5 million men, including naval losses, radiation poisoning after entering area attacked by atomic bombs, and regular land fighting. Countless more would have been wounded. This also includes Soviet losses from the planned Soviet invasion of Hokkaido.

The Japanese would have lost at least 12 million men killed, due to the enormous losses fighting, from the nuclear bomb, and the mass of Kamikaze attacks. This total includes PCFC losses. 1 million more might have died in guerrilla warfare after the war.

20 million would have been wounded, if not more.

It could have made a difference I think, the brits could still not beat the blitzkrieg then.

And their army was 10x smaller then the italian, whose moral would raise by the arrival of the germans/first defeats of the british.

But of course, malta should be taken first.

@CWO:

@Hobbes:

@RedArmySoldier:

So it’s either ‘join together vs Russkieland’, or ‘fall together’.

Isn’t this what happened in real life?

Not really. In the last days of the war in Europe, the Nazis entertained all kinds of fantasies that the Anglo-Americans would come to their senses and would team up with them to fight the barbarous Soviet hordes, but it never happened.  The Soviet/Anglo-American alliance held together until the surrender of Germany, and indeed until the surrender of Japan: Stalin fulfilled his prior commitment to go to war against Japan three months after Germany surrendered (the time which had been allocated for him to shift some of his forces from Europe to the Far East).  Germany surrendered on May 7, and the USSR invaded Manchuria almost exactly on schedule on August 9.  In Europe, the Soviet, American and British armies all settled into the occupation zones which had been defined ahead of time for each power.  The predefined occupation zones were even respected where the fighting had taken the Americans into areas assigned to the Russians (such as Leipzig) and the Russians into areas assigned to the Anglo-Americans (such as parts of Austria, and of course the western half of Berlin).

Yeah, but afterwards the West set up the ‘denazification’ because they needed the former Nazis to run West Germany, while taking a blind eye to both the fascist regimes of Portugal and Spain since they were anti-communist as well, and had no problems in supporting dictatorships everywhere to prevent the communists from taking power.

Wierdly Norway did provide a safe hiding spot for the Triptz and other ships to hide for a few years  :-D

George Tweed is buried at Eagle Point National Cemetery about 15 miles from my house and this time of the year the local press helps remind of his story. 2 links to his story.

http://www.guampedia.com/category/124-world-war-ii/entry/371-george-tweed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Ray_Tweed

I haven’t gotten to “Day of Battle” yet, I am just finishing up “An Army at Dawn.”  With the template he uses, he gathers a lot of personal journal entries and witness accounts. So I think it would be fair to say that there will be a high probability that he will shed some light on Italian battle plans he may have had.  I know he goes in depth about Operation Husky which would be a given. Even if there is not that much substantial info about that specific topic, I would still suggest buying and reading the books.  Its probably one of the best historical war narratives I have ever read.