US military budget: How would you change it?

[Al B. Sure!]

Umm... the US did not 'prop up' Franco or Salazar. Mussolini and Hitler did that.

[Asher]

Umm... the US did not 'prop up' Franco or Salazar. Mussolini and Hitler did that.

God, you're ****ing hopeless, Alby.

The US has propped up many dictators, I never said they propped up Franco and Salazar. It was YOU, however, that claimed the US protected them.

[Al B. Sure!]

I'm smart enough to recognize that the USSR could not control France, Spain, Italy, Portgual, etc in addition to the small, insignificant countries they did have under their umbrella. I'm afraid you're a victim of the propaganda of the ultimate USSR boggeymen. In 1945, the USSR wasn't powerful enough to take and control Western Europe in addition to Eastern.

Small insignificant countries? There are human beings in those countries. Human beings who were oppressed by Soviet oppression for 80+ years!

The USSR wasn't powerful enough to take control of Western Europe because the US stood in its way! Do you think France had a military in 1945?

Holy ****. The USSR was a military superpower. You think the devastated remains of Western Europe could have stopped them?

I don't think the US could have even stopped them in a conventional war. Dave?

[David Floyd]

At the very least, there is 0 doubt the Soviets would have taken all of Germany, if they could, and then funneled support into the French, Greek, and Italian Communist parties, all of which were somewhat strong at the time, to create Communist puppet states.

[Al B. Sure!]

Churchill sure was worried about a Soviet invasion of Western Europe and the British Isles:

[Asher]

Small insignificant countries? There are human beings in those countries. Human beings who were oppressed by Soviet oppression for 80+ years!

Tell me Belarus is a significant country internationally. Go ahead...

The USSR wasn't powerful enough to take control of Western Europe because the US stood in its way! Do you think France had a military in 1945?

Holy ****. The USSR was a military superpower. You think the devastated remains of Western Europe could have stopped them?

I don't think the US could have even stopped them in a conventional war. Dave?

Why the **** do you seem to think the USSR was incredibly powerful in 1945? They were devastated by the war as well.

There's more than just conventional militaries as well, the USSR would need to devote tons of military just to control the PEOPLE...military they would not have and could not organize in such a rapid fashion over so many different countries without opposition from other nations.

I'm not even going to argue this anymore. You guys are seriously simply brainwashed. USA! USA! USA!

[Al B. Sure!]

I saw this on wikipedia under the Red Army but it was not cited. I have no reason to doubt it considering what I know about the Second World War (maybe Dave can confirm?):

At the end of the Second World War (1939–45), the Red Army was the largest army in history, possessing more tanks and artillery, and experienced soldiers, commanders, and staff than all other participant forces combined.

As for their numbers in 1945:

Of this total of 34,401,807 it lost 6,329,600 KIA, 555,400 deaths by disease and 4,559,000 MIA (most captured). Of these 11,444,000, however, 939,700 rejoined the ranks in the subsequently liberated Soviet territory, and a further 1,836,000 returned from German captivity. Thus the grand total of losses amounted to 8,668,400.

So 26 million troops or so?

What were the combined Anglo-American numbers in 1945?

[David Floyd]

Al, do me a favor and leave the military side of the argument to me. Whether or not Churchill was worried about a Soviet invasion of Britain didn't make such an invasion possible, and making the argument in the way you are making it only serves to discredit the entire argument. WW2 military history is a specialty of mine, and trust me, as soon as Asher says something incorrect, I'll call him on it.

But at this point, he is right - the Red Army did NOT have the logistical or human capability to conquer Western Europe in 1945. An unopposed march to the Atlantic, perhaps. A ground war in Europe? No.

[David Floyd]

Also, there is very little doubt the US could have stopped the Soviets in a conventional war in 1945. The United States had 69 of the world's most motorized/mechanized, well supplied divisions in place in Germany and Italy, with the most powerful air force the world had ever seen. The Red Air Force might have been larger, but it was leap years behind in terms of capability. The US Army was far more mobile, and far more easily supplied, than the Red Army, especially a Red Army on the offensive. Add to that the fact that the Red Army was bled white - Zhukov was told by Stalin prior to storming Berlin that no replacements were currently available.

The Soviets would have been stopped somewhere in Western Germany, and then ground to pieces when the USAAF and RAF completely destroyed what logistical train the Red Army did possess.

[Al B. Sure!]

Al, do me a favor and leave the military side of the argument to me. Whether or not Churchill was worried about a Soviet invasion of Britain didn't make such an invasion possible, and making the argument in the way you are making it only serves to discredit the entire argument. WW2 military history is a specialty of mine, and trust me, as soon as Asher says something incorrect, I'll call him on it.

But at this point, he is right - the Red Army did NOT have the logistical or human capability to conquer Western Europe in 1945. An unopposed march to the Atlantic, perhaps. A ground war in Europe? No.

But against whom? Asher is assuming no US. What capability did France which would've been the biggest nation in Western Europe left have to stop the Soviets?

[Asher]

@ Alby

You've no comprehension how the logistics of occupation works, do you?

[David Floyd]

Without the US, the Soviets wouldn't have been in a position to do so, as Lend Lease was critical in giving them the mobility and food they needed to crush the Germans. I think the more realistic argument is what if the US became isolationist immediately after WW2, and withdrew all troops from Europe?

In such a case, the Soviets had the capability to walk to the Atlantic if unopposed, and to deal with some measure of opposition, but not much, for the reasons I stated in my last post - specifically, no manpower for replacements and a strained supply line, along with a complete shut off of Lend Lease.

[giblets]

Without the US, the Soviets wouldn't have been in a position to do so, as Lend Lease was critical in giving them the mobility and food they needed to crush the Germans. I think the more realistic argument is what if the US became isolationist immediately after WW2, and withdrew all troops from Europe?

So you're asking what would have happened if the US intervened in the Soviet Union's favor but after that didn't intervene against the Soviet Union? Yeah, that would have helped them.

[David Floyd]

I'm just trying to come up with a vaguely plausible situation. If you ISOT the United States into another universe, the Soviet Union won't be able to defeat Nazi Germany, much less all of Western Europe. The only way to create a scenario in which the Soviets conquer Eastern Europe as they historically did in 1945, and then have an opportunity to roll into Western Europe, is to assume that the US did everything as they historically did, up until the end of WW2, at which point they just decided to go 100% isolationist.

[Lonestar]

Our military cuts strategy is totally retarded. But that still isn't anywhere close to true.

In 10 years we will actually have a functional carrier with a proper fixed wing air wing on board for the first time in a very long time.

*snort*

The UK government is already shopping around for someone to buy one of the carriers at LOW LOW PRICES, and the RN will have gone a decade without a strike carrier(as the QE as commissioned won't be a fixed-wing carrier), so it doesn't strike me as particularly unlikely that someone in HMG will go "you know...we went 10 years without fixed wing naval aviation...do we REALLY need this carrier?".