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bacharelando t1_j63qmef wrote

Reply to comment by 1958showtime in ELI5: How is donating equipment to participate in war, not considered going to war? by lloyd705

When the US joined the Soviet Union was already fighting. Britain wasn't on the verge of defeat at all. They're being bombed, sure, but they were under no risk of a naval invasion. The USSR on the other hand was getting brutally attacked in its own soil.

In 4 years of war (for the USSR) they have lost about 25 million lives. 6,25 million deaths per year.

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1958showtime t1_j63wz6t wrote

Even if the UK could continue to hold out, they could barely afford to counterattack, which effectively means they're a non factor and Hitler can focus all of his forces east, and those soviet casualties would be MUCH higher.

Point is, is if Hitler didn't declare war on the US, those few extra weeks/months could have resulted in a significantly different outcome. But as it is, Hitler did, and the rest is history. Literally.

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bacharelando t1_j65zis3 wrote

Yeah, there's a lot of factors and variables to calculate. We can never know what could have happened, only speculate on it. Personally I think that Germany could never capitulate the UK nor the US. Maybe they could try something on the UK if they did develop nukes earlier than the yankees and capitulated the USSR...

But even then, knowing very well what nazis do to communists and Slavs, the USSR would fight to the last person to win. I don't think Germany would ever be a par with USSR's manpower, industry and military genius (of course they got beaten hard in the first two years of war, but they managed to comeback). I think even on a 1v1 Germany would eventually lose. Idk.

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