Rachel is pointing out that the Soviets did defeat the Nazis

[MillennialDem]

69. During Napoleon's time, Moscow was not the capital of Russia, St Petersburg was which he failed to

take.

So let's dispel that common myth because it's so common I want to scream when I hear it.

Defeating Moscow probably would have had the Soviets capitulate, but I can't be certain of this. It certainly would have really crushed their ability to fight and resupply as virtually all rail traffic went through Moscow.

As for a knocked out USSR in 1941 but England and the US fight on, far too many uncertainties. As for naval power though, that's pretty irrelevant except for the perspective of Germany not being able to invade the US or UK any time relatively soon. On the other hand though, it also doesn't help the US and UK much as far as taking on Europe's superior ground forces. A battleship is useless for a fight in Budapest :p Also, you don't think the Axis would have switched to naval production if the US and UK refuse to agree to an armistice? And a naval blockade doesn't really deprive the Axis of anything. They have plenty of food in Ukraine and elsewhere and probably would have insisted on Baku as part of a peace treaty with Stalin for oil - plus of course Romania and synthetic gasoline from coal (my grandfather was both an early war German tanker and later Holocaust survivor who worked on this. He got booted from the army in 1940 for being half Jewish, but was sent to Luena-Werke in late 1943).

As for nukes, it would take a lot more than just the two used against Japan, unless large portions of the Nazi government or OKW/OKH were taken out by one of them. The Axis lost 5,500,000 soldiers in the USSR. That's 55 nukes :p but ok, maybe they lose 1.5 million in a quick defeat over the USSR, so we'll cut it down to 40 nukes. And yes, delivery method is another issue, without the Eastern Front, I'm not sure the US and UK could have established air superiority over hostile territory. They lost the late 1943-early 1944 air Battle of Berlin, and that's of course after the Eastern Front had already turned very sour. Also I think we start to get into way too many what ifs once we start looking at Summer of 1945 and later in Germany. One of the main reasons the Germans didn't put much development into a bomb, is again..... the problems on the Eastern Front and because they correctly assumed the war (in Europe) would be over before the bomb was produced. Maybe by the time the US and UK finally establish air superiority in 1946 Germany has their own bombs? Like I said, a lot of what ifs here, the A bomb is not an automatic win the war card.

As for production capacity, we always look at German vs US industrial capacity. I have no problem believing the US could have outproduced and eventually even defeated Germany.... but Germany was only 1/3 of the manpower of the Axis! They were just the big player, the most well trained, and most technologically advanced.

But when you add up the main separate alliances you essentially get:

Germany + Italy + others manpower (Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria, Slovakia, Finland, Romania, Bulgaria): about 200 million. Not counting Japan, who was basically a separate entity all their own.
The Soviet Union: about 200 million
The US and UK combined: about 200 million (not counting India)

All 3 of these groups had similar industrial output. No USSR would mean a slug it out, nasty war in the West I think between two similarly matched alliances. It may have become an Iran-Iraq war style stalemate or an armistice and Cold War.