Yes, in addition to the Americans, English, French and Germans, there were Belgians and Dutch in significant force (wither of them have very much use for armies, otherwise).
Contrex, you seem to ignore the stipulation of a non-nuclear battlefield.
If you take nukes out of the equation, the question should posed as when would such a war have taken place.
In 1944, the Soviets were running the largest army in Europe. Trotsky had declared (in 1919, i believe) that the proletariat are not cannon-fodder, and had established a principle that Soviet infantry should have the best weapons available. America and its allies suffered a terrible disadvantage when attacking the Germans in defensive positions, because the German infantry divisions customarily deployed ten times as many or more machine guns than the Allied infantry, and had begun to widely equip their troops with submachine guns. But that was because of the Russians, and not the Allies in the west, although it affected the Allies in the west. In the Soviet Union, the Germans initially were at a disadvantage, because in the beginning they did not routinely equip their infantry with lots of submachine guns. The Russians did--they provided as many machine guns and submachine guns as they could, because Trotsky, the "Father of the Red Army," had established that as a principle which the Red Army maintained. German veterans of the Eastern Front often discarded their own rifles and picked up Russian submachine guns on the battlefield when they could get one undamaged with a good supply of ammunition. That was what lead the rapid development and distribution of submachine gun by the Germans. The Germans already put more light and heavy machine guns in their infantry units than anyone than the Russians. (It should be noted here that the Russians could not always supply all of the line infantry as well as they would have liked with submachine guns, although they matched German distribution in light and heavy machine guns. The Russians relied upon Guards Divisions as elite attack forces, and these were almost always equipped with lots of submachine guns, along with the usually large distribution of light and heavy machine guns.)
In the air, the Germans were long superior, until the deployment of the North American P51 Mustang. The Spitfire could perform with the Me109 and the FW190, but as the American "Ace" and test pilot Chuck Yeager observed, "What the Spitfire could do for 40 minutes, the Mustang could do for eight hours." Spitfires could defend England, but they couldn't realistically escort bombers to Germany. The American high-altitude escort, the Lockheed P38 Lightening was good, but not quite as good as the Messerschmidt or Focke-Wulf. It also lacked the range to escort bombers to Germany, and were used more in the Mediterranean than over France and Germany. The Republic P47 Thunderbolt could not perform with the German fighters, but was almost indestructible (one pilot successfully returned to base, unharmed, with more than 300 "flak" holes in his aircraft)--but it also didn't have the range to escort bombers to Germany. The English relied heavily for battlefield combat air patrol and close air support on the Hawker Hurricane and Typhoon (the later was very effective in close air support with rocket arrays mounted under the wings), but these also could not escort bombers to Germany. Anyway, the English did not try that, they sent their bombers in at night, until the Americans achieved almost complete air superiority, and it became safe. Most English bombers were just not safe in the daytime, and suffered heavy losses even at night. The Americans' Boeing B17 was heavily armored and heavily armed, but still suffered heavy losses due to a lack of escort. Still, it was an extremely tough plane--it could take amazing punishment and still fly home. There is a famous photograph of a B17 returning to a North Africa from a mission over Italy, and the only thing holding the tail section in place is the catwalk the tail gunner crawled over to get to his guns--the plane landed safely, with all its crew, although it lost the tail on touch-down.
The North American B25 Mitchell bomber was also a fine machine, with heavy fire-power, good armor, and above all else, very high speed for a bomber, reaching 275 mph in the last production models. But it was a medium bomber, and could not carry the heavy bomb loads of the B17 and the B24. But it was used effectively in Europe, and was used in the Pacific to very great effect, even being used as a ground support aircraft, and "skip bombing" (bouncing a bomb on the water at a target, usually a ship, just as boys skip stones on the water). The Consolidated B24 Liberator was a much more modern plane, and was produced in greater numbers than any other Allied plane. It had greater speed and range than the B17, and had the same bomb load and the same heavy armament. Aircrew tended to prefer the B17, though, because the B24 was not as heavily armored, and no bomber was as rugged and "survivable" as the B17.
So when the English suggested that the Americans put a Rolls Royce, fuel-injected Merlin engine into the P51, and the Americans took them up on it, the Mustang fighter became the "Cadillac of the Sky" (which refers to the fact that pre-war Cadillacs were seen as high performance cars, not the luxury cars we think of). Asked when he knew the war was lost, Goering said: "When i saw the first Mustang over Berlin." Previously, Hawker Hurricanes or Republic Thunderbolts had escorted the American bombers to Aachen on the German border, and then had to turn back for home. American casualties were so heavy that they serious considered abandoning daylight bombing.
But the P51, which was originally designed as a close air support fighter (something it was so good at, it was still being used in that role in Korea, after jet fighters were introduced), when combined with the Rolls Royce Merlin, produced a fighter with greater range than any other aircraft in the war. It was well-armored, second only to the Republic Thunderbolt. It could perform with, and with a good pilot, outperform the German fighters. Now American bombers were escorted to Aachen in the normal manner, but when the Hurricanes and Thunderbolts turned back, the Mustangs, which had taken often an hour or more after the bombers, would catch up, slow down to match the speed of the bomber plan, and just shoot the Germans full of holes. They would escort the bombers to the target, escort them back to Aachen, where the re-fueled and re-armed Hurricanes and Thunderbolts would pick them up to escort them to their airfields. The Mustangs still had hours more they could spend in the air, and would peel off to shoot up anything that moved in Germany. Adolf Galland, head of the German fighter service then, wrote in his war memoir that the Mustangs would follow German fighters who were running out of fuel back to their airbases, and after shooting up the fighter as it landed, they'd shoot up the airfield. By the end of the war, the Germans were hiding their remaining fighters--even the jets--on logging roads in the forests, hoping the Mustangs wouldn't find them.
The Russians simply did not keep up in aircraft design and deployment. Although almost 30,000 Allied aircraft were shipped to them, only about 20,000 to 25,000 made it (it's hard to know from what Russian records have been released). This included Bell's P39 Cobra series, the Curtiss P40 Kittyhawk and Warhawk, some P51s and a few Thuderbolts. They also got Supermarine Spitfires and Hawker Hurricanes. Their own aircraft were a pretty sorry bunch. Russian aircraft design, however, got a real boost from a program started before the war, in which design teams were established, and competed for resources, leading, eventually (after the war) to real design excellence. MiG, for example, stands for Mikoyan and Gurevich. But the MiG 1 and 2 were so bad, even the desperate Soviets would not send up against German aircraft. The MiG3 was a painfully obvious rip-off of the Hawker Hurricane. Park one of each side by side without insignia, and you'd be hard pressed to tell them apart. Like the earlier models of the Hawker Hurricane, the MiG3 had sheet metal and armor on the front of the plane, but covered the tail boom with aircraft strut covered by "doped" canvas.
The Yak fighter series was the most successful (Yak stands for Yakovlev, the name of the design team leader) of the war. The earliest models could not perform with the German fighters, but were still excellent fighters--but never good enough. The series went through nine models, to the Yak9, which itself was modified many times. Yakovlev's design team always listened to the pilots, and incorporated many design features which were responses to the pilots' combat experience. The Yak9 was the most widely produced and deployed Soviet fighter. In the hands of a good pilot, it could challenge the Me109 and the FW190. Increasingly, the Yak9 could establish air superiority, as more and more front-line fighter groups were transferred back to Germany to defend against the American daylight bombers. (Throughout the war, the Americans tended to underestimate the damage they were doing, which is why they nearly abandoned the effort. Even before the P51 began to escort the bombers, they were devastating German industry. After the P51 came along, the bombers just flattened any target of military value, and the P51s shot German transport systems to Hell.)
In addition to the Yaks, the Russians produced the Il Sturmovik (Ilyushin design bureau), which was a good ground support fighter, with a two-man cockpit, having a rear gunner. The Soviet used many female pilots, and one of the most famous, Anna Yegorova, was an ace, who flew well over 250 missions in Il Sturmoviks, being frequently decorated and declared a "Hero [sic] of the Soviet Union," the highest honor. Many of the female pilots liked to fly at night, and without a rear gunner, to reduce weight and improve performance. They did pretty well against the Germans, who were usually not expecting the Sturmoviks to perform as well as did, especially as the women were only attacking the ground targets in the hope of "suckering" the German pilots. They often got on the same radio frequency as the Germans, and taunted them. The Germans came to refer to them as the "Hexen," the Witches.
Although the Su2 was deployed (Sukhoi design bureau), it was a plane too light to realistically use as a fighter, and most served as a scout plane. Several award winning designs were produced, but none actually made it into production for the war. Sukhoi was to make its name in jets after the war. The Tu2 bomber series were good, all-metal, high-altitude heavy bombers, as good as or better than German models, but inferior to American designs. Their designs (Tupolev bureau) were improved after 4 American Boeing B29 Superfortresses landed in the Soviet Union after a bombing raid over Japan, and were quickly impounded and pulled apart in order to do a "back-engineering" study on the design. They quickly produced the Tu4, which was about the last time the Soviets had a heavy bomber to match western models. Tupolev was years ahead of his time, and the designs incorporated many advanced features in the 1920s and -30s. But thanks to the war, his method became "quick and dirty"--get it into the air, and tinker with it afterward to make up for design deficiencies. He was also politically astute, which helped remain in favor with the government. But his designs could not keep up with the western allies, and so Ilyushin gradually became the prominent bomber design bureau.
All Russian aircraft were required to meet a requirement to operate in very low temperatures ("Siberian winter" was what the design teams called the requirement), and must be able to take off and land on ice or snow, and on unimproved airfields (your basic cow pasture), as well as to have a short take-off and landing distance. This was followed throughout the post-war Soviet era, reaching the point at which the MiG29 Fulcrum of the early 1980s could virtually "stand on its tail," climbing to it's stall angle, and hanging in the air briefly before falling off to one side or the other. (The Germans came to the conclusion in the 1980s that the MiG29 was superior to American F15s and F16s in "within visual range" dogfights.)
This design requirement usually meant a reduction in performance design parameters. However, it was from the same ideal as Trotsky's "the proletariat are not cannon fodder" dictum--the VVS, or Soviet Air Force was under the direct control of the Red Army. They were required to operate immediately behind the front lines, and their primary mission was to support and protect the Red Army, even if the choice was between supporting the army or defending cities being bombed. Therefore, all aircraft must be able to take-off and land in a very short space, must be able to land on unimproved surfaces, including ice and snow, and must be able to operate in any winer conditions. For whatever they gave up in performance, they more than made up for by large production runs, and vindicated their operational doctrine by giving first class support to and defense for the infantry on the ground.
It was in armored fighting vehicles (AFVs) that the Russians really excelled. The T34 medium tank was a pre-war design which became outmoded by 1942. The T43, which was intended to replace it was also not able to deal effectively with the new German Tiger and Panther tanks, so, effectively, the two were combined. The improved T43 turret was redesigned and fitted with an 85mm gun which could penetrate German armor, and then was fitted on the superior T34 lower hull and chassis, creating the T34-85, which became the main production model. The old T34 had been able, with its 76mm gun, to make mincemeat of the German Pzkw (Panzerkampfwagen) IIs and IIIs which the Germans used in the invasion, although still not yet produced in large numbers. But the vehicle had superior armor, and a superior survivability design, and the German panzer officers were impressed. When German panzer design teams arrived in Russia to speak to panzer officers, the excited officers would drag them over to see a captured T34, and tell them: "Give us this tank, with a better turret and a bigger gun!" (Which, of course, was what the Soviets were soon doing--after the battle of Kursk, the Russians realized that the vehicle's survivability would be enhanced with a better turret and a bigger gun, and that the heavy armor of the T43 just slowed it down and made it more vulnerable).
But the German designers were contemptuous of the Russian design, and instead produced the Tiger and Panther tank series. The Tiger I wasn't that good against Russian armor, but the Tiger II was very effective--until it met the T34-85. The Panther and Jagdpanther were better still. But their problems started before the even left the assembly line. They were slow and expensive to manufacture, they could drive fast, but needed lots of scarce fuel, and required almost daily maintenance, and often needed weekly heavy maintenance. By contrast, the Russians could, and often did drive their tanks into the ground. The T34 and T43, and the T34-85 were so rugged, that it the gunner told the tank commander he was running out of armor piercing rounds (AP), they would frequently put it fifth gear, run up to top speed and ram the German tanks. If Germans couldn't knock them out before they rammed, not only did the Russian crew have a good chance to survive, but the tank might survive too, it the Germans didn't make a point of destroying it. In fact, the Russians developed a low-lying, turretless armored tank recovery tank which they used to tow damaged tanks out of battle while still under fire.
The biggest factor was the manufacturing limitation. For all the superiority of German AFVs, they produced a few thousands of the Tiger and Panther series. By contrast, the Russians produced 70,000 T34s, T43s and T34-85s beginning in 1940. The American Sherman tank was also inferior, but we produced 50,000 of them. Basically, the German armor was eventually overwhelmed, and in the case of the T34-85, it had met its match. The Americans developed the M26 Pershing tank in response to the new German tanks, but it was not deployed until 1945, and only saw a few months service before the European war ended. Tanks were of little use in the Pacific War, although many were used. The first Pershing which was hit by German Panther was knocked out, but it was recovered and was back in service within days. The first Pershing kills came when a Pershing came up on the flank of two Tiger IIs and a Pzkw VI, and knocked out all three at the range of one kilometer. However, most observers thought it was not superior to, and might not be as good as a Tiger II. A later production model was fitted with a 90mm/70 caliber gun, but only one was ever known to take on German armor, when it took out a German "King Panther," and one other tank. It is uncertain if the new model was superior to German armor, and there is no way to say whether or not it was superior to the Russian T34-85, although it probably was. But even with the great American manufacturing capacity, it is doubtful if enough Pershings could have been put into Europe by late 1945 or by 1946 to match the surviving Russian supply of T34-85s.
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So, the question becomes if western Allied infantry could match Russian infantry--to which i would say probably, but a close run thing, because, once again, the Russians had superior automatic fire power resources. But that would only have been really devastating on defense, and since the Allies weren't going to attack them, you basically have stalemate there. If we had attacked them, the Red Army would have been a tough nut to crack.
In terms of armor, we would probably have been in trouble--the English could have come up with nothing to match the Russian T tanks, and although the Pershing might have been superior, the Sherman probably was not. And we had to bring everything we used more than 3000 miles over the Atlantic to use it.
On the subject of air superiority, no contest. The Russians would have had to sacrifice thousands of aircraft and aircrew just to stay in the air--but, we know they were prepared to do that.
The main problem would have been manpower. The Soviet Union is said to have lost 25,000,000 citizens in that war (military and civilian), but they were prepared to make that sacrifice (at least Stalin was) in their "Great Patriotic War." But were the United States and England? France was pretty much out of the equation. Willingness aside, the country was in no position to raise a large army, and in 1944 and 1945, French communists frequently took over newly liberated towns--it was not until the war was ended that the non-communist French were to unite to suppress the vigorous communist movement which was so active in the underground resistance.
The United States began transferring troops and equipment to the Pacific even before the Germans surrendered. Our major effort was there, with most of the Navy, virtually the entire Marine Corps (which expanded to keep more than a quarter of a million Marines on the firing line at all times), and United States army divisions equal to the European commitment. There were more United States Army Air Forces employed in the Pacific than in Europe. Almost all naval aviation was used in the Pacific. Even if we had the resources to challenge the Russians on the battlefield, we weren't placed or prepared to do it, and without even considering the political impossibility, we were always, as a nation, focused on putting the Japanese out of business, and figuratively dropped Europe like a hot rock as soon as the Germans were beaten. Oh sure, we left troops there, but our major resources were already in the Pacific, and we increased them at the expense of our European commitment.
As for the English, definitely not. They were exhausted, and very unhappy. The ink was barely dry on the German surrender instrument before a "throw the bum out" movement started in England, and Winston Churchill was buried in a Labour landslide in July, 1945. Clement Atlee's government was only popular because they responded to the "bring the boys home" mood of the nation. Churchill briefly came back from 1951 to 1955, but his day was basically over. The English no longer needed him, and in 1945, they no longer wanted him.
By 1944, the most of the English middle class, and just about all of the working class and poor were sick of war, and sick of empire. Among Territorial divisions (roughly the equivalent of an American National Guard divisions), there were many small mutinies before the war ended, and in 1944, in Normandy, an entire Territorial division mutinied, and refused to go into the firing line. (I don't want no insult anyone, but i believe it was the Territorial division from London.) With the war fairly won, no one would have agreed to fight the Russians, and the English began the process of shedding its empire pretty damned quickly.
Interesting question--i don't know that you can get a reliable answer. In the post war period of the 1950s, -60s and -70s, you'd need comparison such i have made, and about ten times longer than what i've just written.
Yes, it's an interesting question, and ultimately unanswerable.
Well, that's all the time i'm going to spend on that. Time to feed the dogs anyway. What i recall is that i read about the incident in the book Beyond the Beachhead: The 29th Division in Normandy, Joseph Balkoski, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, 1999.
Now if i'm incorect in that recollection, it's also no skin off my nose. Because the basic point remains. In 1945, the English people were sick of war, were sick of empire, and there was no way you could have gotten them to go along with an invasion of Russia.
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