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elxaime -> RE: Any evidence Stalin would have allowed UK/USA units in USSR? (9/4/2011 2:52:51 AM)
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There are two separate questions here:
1. Whether the UK/US could have deployed substantial ground forces into the USSR if asked
2. Whether Stalin would have ever made such a request
The answer to #1 seems no, at least in 1941-1944. The UK was hard pressed to defend its empire. The US needed to gear up its war machine from scratch. They could send materiel, which they did.
The answer to #2 is unknowable. Every argument about Stalin's intentions is based on the the historic situation. The Soviet Union, although in desperate straits in late 1941 and again to a much lesser extent in late 1942, never reached the point where a total collapse loomed. Unlike 1812, Moscow never fell. Leningrad held on by the barest margins. The likelihood of total Soviet defeat- which was probably the trigger point if Stalin was going to ask for ground help - evaporated when the Red Army launched their winter 1941 counteroffensive. By 1942, although they awaited the German offensive with trepidation, the Red Army was in a much better position to resist. The success of the German invasion, increasingly revealed as a desperate gamble that had failed, now rested on Hitler's wildly ambitious 1942 plans. Stalingrad put an end to any reasonable notion the USSR might lose (assuming no Nazi nuclear weapons). Now the only question was how long it would take to win. Seen in retrospect, if there was a window for Stalin to grasp at any help he could, it was a very narrow one that had closed by 1943. How the USSR treated the Doolittle Raiders, British sailors in Murmansk, B-17 air bases in 1944 in Ukraine, etc. doesn't provide a solid guide for answering question two - the circumstances of all those are explicable in other terms and/or occurred when the Soviets were no longer desperate.
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