Operation Unthinkable: Britain's Secret Plan to Invade Russia in 1945

Consider that with the exception of America, everyone on the continent had done this time and time before. And again. One war France is the enemy, next war, Germany, etc. So "jumping from one war into another" was not foreign to the average European. This is why the Cold War is lauded on the continent as the longest period of peacetime the area has had. In fact, France pissed Stalin off by being a little too quick to restore relations with Germany post-WW2.

If this plan existed at all, it was a hypothetical “what if”, not an actual planned operation. All of the American generals went home unaware of such a plan. Gen. Patton, who loved war and wished to continue onward to take out Stalin, died in Nov. 1945 a broken man, hurt in an automobile accident, convinced that war was done in Europe for he had even volunteered to command a division against Japan.

Yes - by all means it was a what-if. Oft-mentioned prior to the official declassifications in the 1970's. The bean-counters sat Winston down and let him know which parts of the empire to break up and which to keep and sadly, the majority of it centered around India. In a reverse-Dunkirk, Britain had to funnel a sh*t-load of weaponry to Asia as "insurance" all the while playing the poor-card to FDR. UK had USA convinced for the longest time that their ships couldn't operate in the far East.

What is also scary interesting is that the special relationship between Britain and America did not exist in 1941. In fact, most of military America was anglo-phobe. So Churchill was faced with the prospect of defending their empire on his own. The initial plans for Dieppe would have knocked Italy out of the war in a week, France out forever and by Christmas 1941, Russia and Germany would be locked in an attrition war on German soil. Had Japan done nothing except attack America, Britain would not have declared war on Japan and her far Eastern fleet would have been "on hand" to take part in Dieppe.