During WW2 my grandmother lived in the eastern part of Kazakhstan (back then part of USSR), and she tells that the only thing that kept her family alive was potato trims made by shovels, that were left over i the soil after the potato had been gathered. They were searhing fields for those potato trims after the crops were gathered (and shipped elsewhere).
@@TheImperatorKnight I remembered other stories related to soviet economy. My grandmother, her sisters and many mre women were voluntarily making (by hand) tobacco pouches for soldiers at front. Those pouches would be collected by the authorities and then distributed in the army. Also my grandmother started working at state farm when she was 11 old (she was born at 1931). One of our relatives was traveling to distant villages (in North Kazakhstan) bringing them some pelts so that he could collect winter jackets made by the locals (also for soldiers at front) when he visited them again few months later. By the way, that was the only adult male in our family that was not sent to the front (he had polio as a child).
Gathered by machines or hand? The potato harvesters in the US would leave the under sized potatoes, which would have probably been sufficient. Perhaps this was deliberate because supermarkets want the larger ones.
@@joechang8696 By hand. So if you you use a shovel to dig out potatoes, you sometimes slice the potato that still is in the soil with a shovel. Big slices are collected right away, but sometimes there are small slices (which I called trims in my previous comment), that are hard to find and pick. So my grandmoter was looking for those ones. Also one has to remember that usually it was a very severe penalty (Gulag) for taking food from the farm field (all of which was the state property).
@@nickdanger3802 fair point. But a lot of Americans think the Civil War mainly impacted the soldiers and forget what happened to the Shenandoah Valley and Georgia unless somebody points it out. Lots of cities were burned - not just Atlanta. Large parts of Pennsylvania, Kansas, Missouri, Mississippi, and South Carolina were devastated. Some of the worst atrocities of the war were committed by Jubal Early in Chambersburg PA, and by Quantrill's Raiders in Kansas. Sherman and Sheridan were unleashed in part to take revenge on the South. Not many people today know the backstory.
@@GeographyCzar According to National Pornographic Atlanta was burned to destroy it as a hub of Confederate infrastructure, only slightly different from the RAF dropping incendiary's on any city in Germany and vice versa. www.nationalgeographic.org/thisday/nov15/burning-atlanta/
@@KnightofAges It was Bengal famine not Indian famine. That would be quite bigger problem for whole war effort. It would probably delayed whole D day and western front, maybe for another year. Soviet and Indian situation weren’t really comparable. Out of 170 million people in Soviet union around 30-35 million served in military. Plus another bunch who were pushed to military industry. Number of people in agriculture went from 50 million in 1940 to 25 million in 1942. British India that had combined population of 380 million had to lose productivity of “just” 2,5 million people who served in war effort. Agricultural base was largely intact. Outside of course Burma and Bengal region that were on front line. India wasn’t going to collapse.
@@stafer3 Bengal in 1943 was 100% part of India (the British Raj), so I said there was a famine in India. And nobody in this thread is talking about a 'collapse', just remembering that other peoples starved more in WW2 than the Russians.
Now about starvation during the war. My father at that time was about 18 or so . He never liked to talk about that time. However, once he mentioned that "he was lucky to have a hunting rifle, unlike many other families". He would shoot everything that flew around to feed his family. Also, they would go out to the wheat fields next to them to pick up whatever left after the harvest. And still, he said that they lived much better then other people up north in Siberia and in Ukraine - We lived in the southern part of Kazakhstan. My father was drafted to the war in 1944 and later stormed Berlin. He also, often mentioned about Lendlease too. The best things he liked were American can food and Studebaker truck!
@Caliban777 The US Red Army will come to throw out the Russian Bandits and Plutocracy, bleeding the Russian workers. The USSA is coming soon for all the America's!
My father as a child of 10 and 11 lived in one of the cities under strong attack during World War 2. In the late 1970s he and I were in a grocery store in the US and I happened to see rabbit meat packaged in the meat section. I pointed it out and he was visibly disturbed, noting you cannot tell cat meat from rabbit. He later explained it during the war he ate a whole lot of rabbit that in fact actually should have been purring. He wasn't in Moscow. He was in London.
No one talks about how many people starved in western Europe even after the Nazi's had been defeated. Suffice to say the moment Hitler started that war probably ten million people were going to be dead from starvation in just a few years time.
@@pietersteenkamp5241 from what my dad says there was no outright starvation in London. I think his parents were worried more about dietary issues and not enough protein. He also describes the neighborhood kids building slingshots and eating pigeon. Yes, City pigeons.
@@1jimmarch The hunger was somewhat exported to the colonies if at all but people in the cities did whatever they could to augment their food intake with the poor of course being most at risk of not having family in he countryside. :)
My grandma, Nina Alexeevna Loginova, was 14 in 1941, living in a village in Ivanovo oblast. She had to work at a collective farm, replacing men left for the front, while still attending school, that is, from morning till night, all four years till 1945, without holidays (not sure, maybe on 1 May and 7 November they had holidays). She would say the food situation was generally alright for them (probably alright by her standards of the day, not ours) during the first years, but it worsened by 1945. Then, she would say, things were starting to look grim: they weren't exactly starving, but were not very far away from that. The hardest thing, however, she said (and it adds another dimension to the discussion about the fall in agricultural productivity) was the lack of horses and tractors: all were taken for the needs of the front, they had to rely on oxen. I remember her talking about it: "A horse is a clever animal", she would say, "you tell it to go somewhere, it goes there. But an ox is stupid and stubborn: you need it to pull the plough, and it just lies there on the field and refuses to stand up. You beat it with a stick, but it just doesn't care" (and we're talking a teenage girl beating an ox with a stick, mind you) "Then you fall down on your knees, hug its neck and start begging: come on, dear, please, stand up, please, just stand up now - and it still doesn't". And in many places they didn't even have oxen and the peasant women had to pull the plough themselves. She's still alive btw, 93 years old now. This was a tough year for her though: she had her arm broken, but it's getting better now. P. S.: I, as a Russian, am deeply insulted for your disdain for rye bread. I honestly don't understand what your problem with rye bread is, how is it any worse than wheat bread? Puzzles me.
as a Dane i can tell you we eat rye bread with cold cut meat ,pates, smoked fish, boiled eggs, and luke warm meatballs on ,, we call it the cold table , and its done even on holy days like easter ,,, rye bread is very good and healty
Maybe rye bread is not as tasty for everyone. Matter of taste really. Wouldn't be my first choice but I would still eat it if I don't have anything else.
I always suspected the Soviet Union was much harder pressed in 1942 than many historians realized. The defeats in 1941 had been so staggering, and so much agricultural land had been lost, and the idea that industry had been neatly picked up and planted beyond the Urals sounded so unlikely, that the idea that it held fast and resumed with vigour in 1942 seemed off.
I agree to an extent. Yes, the Soviets were very bad off, but I suspect that Stalin held enough internal power to paper it over for another year or two in order to repel the Germans, even if it meant just letting everyone he considered useless to the war effort starve. After all, the Germans did want to kill and/or enslave them whether they surrendered or not, and the Soviets knew it, so what was the alternative? However, after that, there probably would have been a total collapse of the Soviet economy and government. The losses would have been too great to salvage.
Rye bred is quite good. In Finland the deault bred is Rye Bred. Bark bread, which is made from mixture of Rye and phloem of pine tree on the other hand is anti-starvation method. The "edible" portion of pine tree is about 4kg per cubic meter of wood. And Finnish sources, tell that it has been used in Finland, Scandinavia and Northern Russia historically in famine situations. And the people who make said bread on modern days tell that traditional 40% pine and 60% rye, however to avoid side effects modern use is limited to 25% or below. And to have acceptable taste it is limited to about 10-12% . Just like some mushrooms need processing before becoming edible so does the phloem of pine tree. And by processed I don't mean modern processing but methods used more than 1000 years.
yeah i love black bread and rye as well, white bread is boring. Probably TIK is thinking of SAWDUST bread which did in fact exist that's what near famine and outright famine do. Nice belt. You gonna eat that?
Jouni Osmala - In the wartime Soviet Union - or at least Leningrad during the seige - "bread" often contained substantial quantities of sawdust to make the portions a little more substantial than would have been possible if unadulterated bread were used. I remember that clearly from an episode of The World At War.
The Leningrad siege featured literal cannibalism; people eating belts and shoes; people eating rats; and people literally sifting through shit looking for anything edible in it. This is not a myth, it's all well documented facts.
@@jessnellaf2401 I hear you. However, TIK is the best history channel regardless of historic period covered. This level of dedication and research and, at the same time, absence of any bias is astonishing. A true gem.
@@airpaprika i agree... i said my bias however, the best part for me is... this is were i got this... this is where i got that... these three good authors disagree.. first let me tell you what they said, then ill give you my opinion. Thats some priceless commentary for a buff like me. Usually there is some ego BS
The only other channel (or group of channels) that's in the same league is TheGreatWar/WW2 channel The week by week format covers more, but at the same time, it's less "dense" I guess ?
@@airpaprika He's extremely biased towards the soviet union and the allies and he's acknowledged his bias, I like his videos but he's still probably the most biased historian in youtube-
The word you are trying to pronounce is actually pronounced as "SevUralLag". The "lag" part of it is a short for Russian word "lager" which means "camp". The whole word is a contraction and consists of three words: Severniy (Northen) Yralskiy (Ural) and Lager (Camp). In a nutshell, it was named so since the camp was located in the northern part of the Ural Mounten region. Many, if not all of the Gulag camp names, usually ended with "lag", for instance, KarLag (a camp in Karaganda region of Kazakhstan with about one million inmates) and so on. I was born in the former USSR and lived there for more than 35 years before immigrating to the US in 1992. I would be happy to help you guys with any Russian translations/explanations etc. John
That depends on the type of collapse. If we are talking about "just" extreme food shortages across all of USSR to the same tune as in Leningrad or during Holodomor, there would not have been an outright collapse. Leningrad had not collapsed either, after all. Soldiers and the administration in Leningrad were not subject to starvation. Non-essentials were. Army, bureaucracy and most important workers would still be fed to survive and fight on. And don't let the averages mentioned in the video fool you. 2400 calories seem not that bad. But one can not work 12-hour shifts on physically demanding work with such ration. And the army was marching on foot - 40+ kilometers per day. You need ~2500 calorie *surplus* to make that distance (assuming light gear). You have to provide active combat troops and industry workers with enough food - intense physical work can not be done on a force of will alone (not for long anyway). So any further shortages would not have affected army and such right away. Instead there would have been "peripheral degradation". More and more less important civilians would receive less and less food. Basically, everyone, not directly involved in the war effort would receive rations at or below starvation level. And, since the system is far from perfect, some would receive even less. And people would start to die. In Leningrad, peak starvation deaths were at 100,000 per month. For the whole of USSR it would have been a couple of millions per month. Propaganda would limit the morale effect from this. So, the war efforts could continue for quite some time. But between deaths from starvation, rampant diseases, deterioration of workforce - the front would receive less and less resources and breakdowns of the supply chain would happen more and more often. This would lead first to inability to attack on strategic level, than to inability to react to enemy's actions. It would have been a total collapse and defeat, if not for the germans being also at the end of their supply leash. But it would all take time to severely affect RKKA capabilities. Even with germans holding Astrakhan-Voronezh line in 1942, the food situation for USSR would not had been significantly different up until the second half of 1943. More immediate effect would have had the oil situation. And there is too many 'what ifs'.
We saw it happen on the German side. I remember an anecdote from a German soldier’s book. He said the last order they received was “every man for himself”. The soldiers discussed it for a time, looked at their compasses, and either went west or went home
Interesting, the Soviet farming industry had a great reduction in output after the Nazi invasion, but as TIK pointed out in his previous video there was also a very large reduction in population in Soviet territories so much so that their population fell below the overall Axis population. Giving agricultural production as a percentage of prewar figures is only half the story as there was less mouths to feed.
TIK knows what he is talking about 90% of the time and he is right here. In Soviet Union there were several regions that were able to export grain (like South Russia, Ukraine, Western Siberia) to other regions. Now, those very regions were under occupation yet Soviet Union needed more industrial workers and more soldiers, as well as horses and tractors, putting even worse strain on peasentry. Yet, Soviet Union didn't collapse like Empire did in 1916-1918, neither did over-strain on peasentry resulted in multi-million dead famine like in 1931-1933. Shortages of food and starvation were present in countryside, but not in the industrial centers nor the army (except in cases when there were severe logistical issues such as Stalingrad and Leningrad). State declared who gets to eat and in poorer areas and special settlments (exiled people, neither free citizens but not Gulag inmates) working or putting on a uniform meant that your children and elderly will get some thin soup and bread every day which is better than nothing.
@@brankodrljaca1313 i Will add that if the nazis weren't nazi, treathing Better the occupied population and make clear that the only enemy was stalin and not the entire soviet population could had lessen the strenght of the soviets and make more probaly revolts in distant regions
"The overwhelming majority of those remaining in the gulag were ill, EMANCIPATED, and infirm." lol That little slip changes the whole feel the gulag segment in morbidly funny ways.
@@haroldfiedler6549 They actually were emancipated in the sense that they were released from the camps, in the hope they might be able to feed themselves outside.
After watching your review of this collapse topic I’m even more mystified at the will of the Soviet people to keep fighting. The shortages and starvation didn’t break the common soldiers fighting spirit. Much is said about “not one step back” crap but how did the morale not break down completely? Who were these people who stood at such a precipice and didn’t break? This goes deeper than fear of the state or enemy. Something unique occurred and may never happen again.
The citizens kept fighting for 2 reasons. If they surrendered they would have been exterminated or put to work as slaves by the Axis. Or if they directly disobeyed to fight, their generals would have them executed. Death on both sides of you makes fighting the only real option. Plus there would be nowhere to run away to on your own or with your family except deeper into russia where there is less food.
I imagine it’s because the Nazis planned to exterminate and/or enslave those soldiers and their families, one way or the other. The Soviet soldiers had also heard about the sub-human treatment of Russian soldiers in WWI (even though the Russians returned the favor), and correctly assumed that the same fate awaited them if they surrendered. (And then of course there were GRU death squads there to shoot them if they retreated or tried to surrender.) If WWII had just been a war to depose Stalin and the communists, or an aggressive war for territory, then I suspect the Soviet soldiers and citizens wouldn’t have tolerated the hardships when things were going badly on the battlefield. That’s one reason Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will fail in the long run.
The Nazi's planned to kill and enslave all the Slav people. That would motivate anyone! Even the Ukrainians who thought Capitalism was like a Doris Day Movie!
@Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicolvocanoconiosis No Im refering to how most english think that thou, thy, ... sounds formal, but in fact you, your, ... is the formal one.
You joke, but that's how socialism works. Take from those who have and give to those who don't. So if some people are hungry, some other people must die, and their food can be redistributed to the others. This is the problem of socialist economics: the economy is fixed, they can't grow it, so the only way for some to have more than others must because they've stolen ('exploited') more resources off the others. Therefore they justify the killing of those who have more. Utter stupidity.
@@TheImperatorKnight "This is the problem of socialist economics: the economy is fixed, they can't grow it." There was no economic growth in the Soviet Union? Where are you getting this information?
I didn't say there was no economic growth. I said that socialist economics doesn't factor that in, since in their ideology, economics is a zero-sum game.
@@xkiroxX In North Korea, those in favor with the powers-that-be get to eat. When they fall, the next group in favor with the powers-that-be pick up the food and get to eat. In Scandinavia, everybody gets to eat. Weirdos.
the 59% productivity of UK agricultural workers vs industrial workers can be explained by the government taking over farms and ensuring they were being run efficiently. Every plot of fallow land had to be sewn with crops or you lost your farm. UK farmers worked extremely hard to feed people. There's a great series called Wartime Farm from the BBC where historians live as farmers during WWII and have other historians guest star as government inspectors and stuff. Incredible.
Upvoted but also not entirely true. The UK had a low proportion of agricultural workers because prior to the war because much of the countries food supply was imported. This was not true in the USA. In the UK there was plenty of slack in the agricultural system which allowed for the potential of greater production in wartime under Government direction and with higher prices which gave an incentive to higher productivity.
WW2 and invasion of Nazi Germany along with its allies brought unimaginable suffering and misery upon USSR. That event changed whole Soviet society and all of its people for centuries to come.
@Crystal Dreams There is no doubt that the dictatorial reign of Joseph Stalin was oppressive, cruel, and often evil. I certainly do not find much to like about the totalitarianism & form of communism that existed in the U.S.S.R. . However, I will suggest that life under the Czars was pretty awful for virtually all Russians, and I will note that both Russia & Ukraine had been rather under-developed & 'backwards' nations prior to the Russian Revolution.. So, while the environment in the U.S.S.R. was not good at all,, it still represented an improvement over Czarist Russia for a great number of Soviets. Most certainly, the U.S.S.R. made great strides in science, technology, literacy & education in a remarkably short period of time... progress that may not have occurred if the Czars had stayed in power.
@@strikerswheelchair2809 Fascism is Communism in its opposite. Stalin refused to bring Socialism to Europe since he wanted to protect the USSR with his policy of Socialism in one country and no other. He wanted Finlandisation of the countries where the Red Army had forced out Fascism. He was a Socialist Nationalist he represented the insipid Bureaucrasy. Which replaced the Bolshevik Party he murdered. Putins Kleptocrasy, refuses to allow the US IMF . To take over Nationalist Russia. Hence the US's hatred of Russia, China and any country refusing the IMF.
I'm from Lithuania, my neighbour with his family was exiled in gulag, he said they were very lucky, because that was fishing gulag, they were caching and gutting fish, it was harsh and of course all fish was taken away, but they were left with heads and tails, so they could actually cook that and have healthy fish diet. Others were not that lucky, the worse were mining gulags, some of materials would be toxic and there were no work safety or protection equipment.
@@lovepeace9727 No, thousands of innocents, including hundreds of Orthodox priests singled out for especially tortuous treatment, worked, starved and died there.
Most people getting ready to work out: "Ah, play the pop tunes." Me: "Oh hey a video about the collapse of the Soviet Union. Perfect jogging material!"
My grand grandparents went through WW2 in the eastern front and they lived right on the battlefield and it is crazy how they survived and when the war ended, they were sent to a gulag in Siberia for a few years and than they were sent back when Stalin died.
Russian history can be summed up as " Then it got worse". Incompetent tsar, civil war bought by lenin's revolution, stalin and the german invasion, Mr K almost ending the world, brezhnev's stability or stagnation(take your pick), weak leader gorbachev, dissolution of the USSR by the traitor Yeltsin and his disastrous reign and now putin who is forcing russia into a confrontation with the west. Russia lost the cold war and should just accept it instead of trying to build the new soviet empire.
@@GenocideWesterners The Cold War is not over. Polling by the Levada Center suggest Stalin's popularity has grown since 2015, with 46% of Russians expressing a favourable view of him in 2017 and 51% in 2019.[925] The Center, in 2019, reports that around 70% of Russians believe that Stalin played a positive role in their homeland[926] and in May 2021, a survey finds that Stalin is the most important personality in Russian public opinion, followed by Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Pushkin.[927] \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// General Assembly Seventy-fifth session 46th plenary meeting Wednesday, 16 December 2020, 10 a.m. New York document address page 10 RUclips does not skip the link.
Draft resolution I is entitled “Combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance”. A recorded vote has been requested. A recorded vote was taken. In favour: Algeria, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia (Plurinational State of), Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Qatar, Republic of Moldova, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, South Africa, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Syrian Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United Republic of Tanzania, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of), Viet Nam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe Against: Ukraine, United States of America Abstaining: Afghanistan, Albania, Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kiribati, Latvia, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Palau, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Romania, Samoa, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tonga, Turkey, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland See you on the battlefield.
@@GenocideWesterners "Putin, who is forcing Russia into a confrontation with the west." I think you've got it twisted; the West is forcing Russia into a confrontation, despite Putin's best efforts to avoid it.
Hi, love the show. The Soviet lost a lot of there food production capabilities at this point, but also it no longer needed too feed the same amount of people as in 1937 as a lot of the population was in German occupied areas, under siege or dead. So using the 1937 production quota of food doset mean they where eating 50% less. What do you think about that?
The people that were dying due to lack of food and from diseases that come out of starvation conditions were the Soviet version of "useless eaters". The soldiers and factory workers were relatively well cared for as they were critical for the war effort. The rest of the population, not so much. The troops were also good at foraging and "requisitioning" food supplies and animals from vlllagers and townspeople. Add to that the Lend-Lease supplies that were flowing in and I dont think the Soviet Union was anywhere near the point of collapse. Certainly, the fact that people in the Gulags were dropping dead at a high rate, as well as the increase in deaths among those not critical to the war effort, has virtually no relation to the Soviet warfighting capabilities. At least not in a time horizon of less than five years.
Superb Video! Very interesting. One can clearly see that you're putting a lot of effort in them and i especially like how you talk about your sources and how you evaluate their reliability! Best ww2 history channel in YT. Greetings from Berlin.
I remember looking up the stats and listed for all the causes was 2.5 to 3.2 million civilian deaths in non occupied territory as result of "wartime shortages". Additionally a further 1 million died in 1946 as a result of starvation. Between 1914 to 1946 Russia/Soviet Union lost between 40 million to 60 million of it's population. Roughly 20-30% of it's 1910 census. How a country can continue to function let alone become a super power after all that is beyond incomprehensible.
@@Live4This Well I'm an American, so it's not something I can take advantage off. Though I have a feeling that they wouldn't see it as a positive and would probably reply with something akin to "When the Muslims outnumber the Germans" Perhaps you mean well but I'm sure most Russians would take offense to your statement.
Neon Noir Your statement is interesting to say the least. I don’t think “the west” used them as a sacrificial lamb. We did help support the soviets before we were even in the war with resource, tanks etc. The Germans were fighting a losing war since 1942 and they did a pretty damn good job with tactical retreats. Although the siege of Budapest was the same outcome as Stalingrad which to my surprise they didn’t learn. Regardless the soviets fought their own battles and took massive casualties.
My mom and dad talked about starving in the soviet union at that time. I have often herd it being said that in that time the soviet union only existed on paper.
Best channel on RUclips. Spam did not win the war, but it kept the allies in the war. American trucks and shipping were the offensive item that was their most important contribution to the war.
From what I understand, American "lend lease" food fed at least half the Soviet Army, (perhaps 17 million out of 34 million men) taking a huge burden off the civilian population.
I understand that the "lend lease" with the UK gave the US the use of some ports in Canada and elsewhere. What did the US get from the "lend lease" with the Soviet Union?
The US got 35 milliom soviet soldiers that fought for it. Lets say the USSR surrenders and starts supporting the Nazis. You would have a powerful Germany. Good luck beating it. In other words. The US got a few million of its soldiers not being killed. Is that a good deal?
@5:45 The stunning productivity of American (Canadian too) agriculture. With much less of their population involved with farming yet still able to grow large surpluses to export.
The economic losses to the Soviet Union as a result of the German 1942 campaign were considerable. There was the loss of food, industry and war materials in Ukraine. But worse yet were the impacts when 6th Army reached and blocked the Volga. The blocking of the Volga created a true economic and military crisis. The Soviet Union was cut off entirely from the oil and oil products made in the Baku area. They lost perhaps 76% of their oil production. They lost 85% of their refined aviation fuel production. And by September 1942, the inability to ship out oil products from Baku started to limit production. There storage was completely full. They had back-up plans to try and use Krasnovodsk on the other side of the Caspian as a point of delivery for Baku's oil production, but given the limited infrastucture and greater rail distances, how well that might have worked is anyone's guess. The planning for the 1942 campaign in the Soviet Union by Germany was right for the wrong reasons. While trying to take over the resources of the Caucassus to fuel the german war effort wasn't really practical, destroying those resources and denying them to the Soviet economy was extremely practical. Taking the Ukraine, blocking the Volga and destroying the soviet oil industry was in military terms probably the most effective sort of warfare the Germans could undertake against the Soviet Union in 1942.
I've been wondering this for a while. Nothing better than watching one of your videos with my morning cup of coffee. Thank you for your videos - they certainly will stand the test of time.
I always made the argument that the Germans should never have gone into stalingrad. Instead, had a smaller force to protect the flank while the caucus operation went full steam.
Silly me. I certainly do not need to make my comment private. What I wanted to say that thank you for your excellent work (included some of your biases) . Your videos have had an unexpectedly profound effect on my life. In early November, I had a total hip replacement surgery to deal with severe arthritic hip pain. After I returned home, I started to re-listen to many of your videos just distract myself. I noticed that they had an unusual effect on me-my pain experiences was reduced. So, I decide to just set "autoplay" in all your videos so they were playing in the background even while I was asleep and I was comforted just by listening to them. As a former research psychologist, I have no explanation for this, however--your video s are awesome.
I read an article about the issue of lend lease to the Soviet Union during World War - it said the cans of Spam (and wheat, etc.) from the United States did as much to keep the USSR population alive and in the fight as the weapons that were sent via convoy.
In “Stalin’s War”, McMeekin says the USSR would probably have had to sue for peace in late 1942. but for the flood of Lend-Lease aid. Long after the war, Krushchev said they could not have won without Lend-Lease Spam.
Probably lots of canned fruit, vegetables, evaporated milk, canned meat, C rations, from the central valley of California. With the decline of popularity of canned stuff, those canneries are now closed. The powdered eggs will probably not be missed.
"Now they say that the allies never helped us, but it can't be denied that the Americans gave us so many goods without which we wouldn't have been able to form our reserves and continue the war," Soviet General Georgy Zhukov said after the end of WWII.
from even more generals..... it did not even matter if the supplies were useful (I am thinking we was talking about the Cromwell tanks in 41 and the p39's) The fact we were not in it alone... that some where ppl were helping was more important to moral than anything!
@@korneliusparker536 deliveries represented about 20 percent of the total number of armored vehicles produced by Russia during the war.Specifically, this was 16 per cent of Russian main battle tanks, 12 per cent of Russian self-propelled gun carriages and tank destroyers, and 100 per cent of Russian infantry fighting vehicles. The USA alone supplied the Russians with 501,660 tactical wheeled and tracked vehicles, including 77,972 Jeeps, 151,053 1.5 t trucks and 200,622 2.5 t trucks. those 151k 1.5 ton trucks far out weighed their numbers as they were 6 wheel drive in a land with few roads.. In addition, 15,631 guns and 131,633 sub machine guns were supplied to Russia by the Allies. Russian aircraft production 1942-1944 was 42,427 fighters and 11,797 bombers (additional 30,506 ground attack planes), which results that approximately 20 per cent of the fighters and 30 per cent of the bombers of the Red Air Force were American-built and approx. 10 per cent of the fighters were British-built. The timing is important in any conversation about the impact these suplies had such as British having a very small contribution in total... but the squadrons of hawkers hurricanes and over 450 Matilda 2 delivered in 41 had much more impact than much larger supplies of better equipment later on in the war. The 152k 1,5 ton six wheel drive trucks where more important than the 200k 2.5 ton trucks by an order of magnitude. So this topic can be a rabbit hole of death.. never ending and complex... From all that ive researched you can say the following and be reasonably correct if not 100% accurate. 1. the USA, Canada and Briton supplied @20% of all war materials to the soviets in world war2.... about 1.2% to 2% more was sent but lost at sea or interdicted in various ways. 2. the most important supplies far exceeding all others was a subset of 152k trucks, 2000 locomotives, 11000 rail cars and all the food. 3. the cold war following so close to the closing of ww2 was muddled the questions of effectiveness of these lend lease supplies however, virtual all soviet generals agree that these massive quantities of materials had more impact on the moral and mental ability to "hang on. we have help coming" than their actual tactical significance. That is to say... no matter how much the supplies helped we probably would have collapsed in hopelessness if not for the moral given by lend lease. A better perspective in valuating the significance of lend lease is that of the placebo effect,. there was enough material delivered to give hope. That hope effected the war much more than the actual medicine (supplies) could ever achieve. TIK and I have a disagreement about man power... he said the numbers do not lie... my argument is the supplies (specifically food and transport) gave the Soviets the will and hope that far and away exceeded the man power numbers used.
@@АлександрНевельский-л2з just google lend lease... there is very little dispute over numbers however, like i said the significance of these numbers is augured over insistently. If you have a specific thing that you cant find ill be happy to help
I tend to totally agree with your appraisal of the situation. The Soviets were in a far worse situation with their economy than most people realized at the time.
The problem with studying history is that people read a few textbooks on a subject and perhaps watch a few films and take what is said as gospel and don’t challenge or question the facts. I am an avid researcher of the Titanic and I have read/seen some interesting challenges from an amateur historian who takes survivors accounts and challenges the historians accepted view of the sinking, and gives quite a decent alternative view. All his views have been ignored and ridiculed because they don’t conform with the established story. Human beings are that - human. They aren’t infallible. They make mistakes. They see things in a jaded way and remember them with bias. With regards to this video, I think your research is very credible. It shows how the Soviet Union was in a dire situation at the time. I’d imagine that had the Nazis not enacted a policy of absolute destruction in their wake that they may very well have won the war - I’m sure that many Soviet satellite countries being oppressed by Stalin’s regime would have joined forces with them. Instead Hitler ordered his men to exterminate everything in their way - it was a war of annihilation. I imagine it was also due to this that the Soviet people endured such food shortages as they saw the cruelty and imminent death invading their country. Must have been a horrible time to live.
Man, you're stretching my brain-- it kinda hurts. The Soviet economy wasn't that productive before the war, riddled with inefficiency and corruption. I recall one story I read where, lacking proper grain railway cars, local officials put a grain harvest on flatbed cars, which meant most of it had blown away by the time it reached its destination. It makes sense that the Soviets would struggle under Hitler's invasion. The thing about programs like Lend-Lease is that they rarely are the sole factor in victory, or in keeping a country fighting. Their effects tend to be incremental rather wholesale. But, if you can reasonably feed 1 to 2 million more people with Lend-Lease than without it, that's not insignificant. BTW, I have an ever increasing list of books I need to read thanks to your recommendations. Thanks. Good video.
Also, raw agricultural production is never classified by monetary value, it's done in a standardized yield unit. Tons of grain, gallons of milk etc. Do you ever read of a dairy farmer saying his cows produced $1M worth of milk? No, they produce X number of gallons of milk. From that we can determine how efficient / inefficient agricultural production is relative to another region or country.
As I already said, I think on the long run Germans would won against Soviets if Americans didn't stepped in, especially after 1943. I don't think the Soviet counter-offensive in late 1942 help much in terms of supply, because Ukraine and the west of USSR were in ruins. Georgy Zhukov pretty much admitted they wouldn't survived without US help, which could be a reason why he was censored after the war.
Major battles which were won without lend-lease: Battle of Moscow, Battle of Stalingrad Battles which were won together with first lend-lease shipments: Battle of Kursk, Battle of Leningrad Soviets practically won the main battles of the war without any LL. LL kicked in when soviets blitzkrieged the Germans back to and in Berlin. The same way as Germans did when they surprise attacked SU in July 1941. Care to elaborate how you came to that conclusion?
@@cccpredarmy Yes. When I say "Americans stepped in", I don't mean only on LL, which was crucial for Soviet survival, I mean on strengthening pressure on the Reich coming from the west. Huge German war effort after 1942 went on the west as well, which wasn't the case in 1941/42. By 1943 German war machine wasn't in full swing. The height of German war production will happened during 1944 (take into account this was the year with the strongest strategic air campaign by the Western allies, and which wasn't possible without US Army Air Force), which was dramatic increase compared with 1941/42. In 1942 the Reich produced about 4 thousand tanks; in 1944 about 11 thousand. Soviets didn't significantly increase its own war production after 1942, saying the disparity (in which Soviets had massive advantage in 1942) will starts decreasing dramatically after the battle of Stalingrad, not other way around. The overall population was on the Axis side. In interwar period the Soviets collected grain for the Red Army. This probably had big effect for surviving 1941/42, but on the long run this would drain out. The battle of Stalingrad was marked as a "turning point", the reason why is because at that time the Axis starts declining on all fronts, because the pressure starts coming from all sides. For example, during the last strategic operation, the Operation Citadel, the Western allies invaded Italy, established control over Atlantic, and British launched air operation over Hamburg which killed over 40 thousand people in a single operation. The counter-offensive in late 1942 wouldn't be a decisive success. For example, during WWI the Brusilov offensive in 1916 had a huge success, but 1,5 year later the Russian empire collapsed. In my opinion, if the West didn't send LL and didn't put a massive pressure on the West, the front on the East would probably stall during 1943/44, but, the Reich, unlike Soviets, didn't suffer major destruction, meaning Soviet production of weapon and grain wasn't sustainable on the long run, to keep war effort rolling. The Reich not just keep its war effort rolling, but they increased production dramatically, with better tanks, better weapon, better planes. No, the Soviets never blitzkrieged the Germans. It was a long, attritional bloodshed. They partly "blitzkrieged" the Germans during the Operation Bagration, which coincide with the landing in France.
@@stef1896 red army blitzkrieged germans constantly after Kursk. If didn't on one front then they did it on the other. Just follow the data of SU land gain after 1943. Until very late preparation of Kursk SU didn't recieve ANYTHING significant from the LL. LL made the soviet blitzkrieg faster and with less losses of manpower, no doubt in that. Why do put so much significance on the Allies regains of a prior lost territories to the germans? I mean the germans already put a handful of their divisions in Africa like e.g. the soviets put their divisions to the far East borders to hold back Japanese. In other words why do we never hear from the americans being thankful to the soviets to hold back another 600000+ japanese soldiers, which, if put on the Pacific Islabds would cause a shitton of problems to the USA battling the Japanese there. The counting of soldiers on secondairy frontlines is useless imo. A country is always surounded by neighbors and has to put soldiers on the borders no matter what. Just for security reasons.
@@cccpredarmy But you don't understand how warfare functioning: Japanese couldn't supply neither soldiers they have in the Pacific. For example in Philippines' island, the Layte, Japanese soldiers lived on the land, eat roots and raised potato. How they would feed more soldiers? Not to mention Japanese navy was totally outgun from 1943. Second, Eisenhower and Zukhov deeply respected each other, something which is alien for today's keyboard warriors, stuck in their stupid and useless identity politics. During Hungarian revolution, on request from foreign secretary to support Hungarians uprising, Eisenhower respond, "Soviets earn it with their blood." The Reich wouldn't be defeated in 1945, nor in 1946 and probably neither in 1947 if allies, both from the East and the West, didn't combined their effort, unless US starts dropping atomic bombs on German cities, but we can agree that would be an awful solution. And I will give you another stunning figures why Soviets would have problems with Germans without pressure from the West: during 1944 Soviets reach 7:1 ration on the sky at some portions of the front, total air superiority, but in 1944 the Reich produced 25 thousand fighters, more than 1940/41/42/43 combined; Soviets produced about 18 thousand fighters, but still had ratio massively on their side. Where these German fighters ends? Mostly destroyed by Western allies. In 1943/44 the Reich produced about 3 times more steel then the USSR. Where this steel end? Well huge chunk of this steel went on, for example, building submarines. Only with this steel the Reich could build about 30 thousand tanks. All I'm trying to say is, the Axis were arguably stronger than the USSR, and without combined effort, the Reich would stood even in 1947. By that time, I think the USSR would collapse without Western assistants. Thinking that somehow the Red Army become magical force after the Battle of Stalingrad is rather naive.
I'd like to see how the angels of USA are going keep their economy strong when their major food producing land is occupied,all of their major industry is either destroyed or under bombardment and a lot of men had to be drafted to the frontline.
@@elbucho8867 Perhaps we're about to "cut our teeth". In WW2 it was North Africa. I'll let someone else make a remark based on current events. www.pix11.com/news/local-news/nypd-city-hall-deny-police-brass-shake-up-talk
10:15 "-all [inflation] will do is flood into the capital goods industries" Correction: Inflation will flood into those industries in which the new money is spent first. In a semi-capitalist economy with fractional reserve banking, that is the capital goods sector. In the Soviet economy, that would be wherever the commissars spend their fresh rubles.
Hey, you mentioned lend lease, and the Soviet Union has stated it was helpful but not critical. Ok! Can you make a video on two aspects of lend lease (or point me to them if you have already : 1. trucks, and lots of them. Soviets did not make many trucks? 2. timing. I read, goodness knows where, that 50 English tanks turned up at Moscow just in time for the last defence. Germans and Russians had a dozen or so left each, so 50 Brit tanks (of even indifferent qualities) would have made a difference. Perhaps i am wrong, mistaken or just confused. It did seem that lend lease was like 50 hulls (four stack destroyers) arriving when every single one was critical. thanks Ian
From what you're saying, the agricultural output was 44 percent of prewar by the end of 1942. And workers were half of prewar levels. This was probably due to the large number of civilians in occupied territory.
I recommend Stakhanovites--and Others: The Story of a Worker in the Soviet Union, 1939-1946 as an anecdotal evidence of the harshness of life in Soviet Union during the war. He had a story about working as a turner in Kazakhstan and he was always hungry, he won some worker award and spent all the money on food that made him sick and went back to being hungry
Lend Lease was basically a precursor Marshall plan for the Soviets. The reason they ended up as a superpower by the end of the war and not just another devastated nation.
Being a superpower in 1945/46 had more to do with massive militaries & supporting industries/resources. In that sense, the Soviets deserve the credit for their superpower status....at an incredible cost, but they earned it. In terms of being an economic & political superpower, they were far less imposing.
Hey Tik great episode as always. I was wondering if you will eventually get to operation Bagration, I know its really late in the war and thus probably would not be covered for some time. Also do you know of any good books to read about this coming from somebody who is a beginner interested in WW2.
TIK, I often see you mention that talk between Molotov and Roosevelt. First time I heard you mentioning it you were skeptical about its authenticity. Now you call it a primary source. Soo, can you please state where we can find the source for this story? Aka a transcript of a conversation or something?
@The Colonel As I understand it It is not a secret Stalin wanted a second front and every thing the USA could produce and both right now even though the USA and Britain didn't have the ships. You may find this interesting. Food and other strategic deliveries to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease Act, 1941-1945 histrf.ru/uploads/media/default/0001/12/df78d3da0fe55d965333035cd9d4ee2770550653.pdf
@@daarksideyt There were many reasons why an invasion of France wasn't possible until 1944. But you're right in suggesting that even if it had been possible it would have been a bad decision to proceed with it if the cost had been a decline in the ability of the Soviet Army to kill Germans.
Just a small thought in regards to all comments claiming that theory of economic collapse in 1942 is impossible: In 90's Soviet Union collapsed just because of arms race with NATO, without war, casualties or destruction. In proces of self-salvation SU drained and destroyed economies of East Germany, Poland and Baltic republics. Economies od Albania and country formerly known as Yugoslavia become collateral damage as well. Us who lived at that time in east block can easily imagine how SU would look in 1942 without L&L program.
Great video, and great analysis - I really enjoyed watching this! That said, just a few minor remarks: - The low effectiveness of women workers engaged in farming is somewhat overstated. The pre-war Soviet Union went to great lenghths to introduce women to various jobs previously mostly dominated by men, and historically, Russian households would typically feed "off the earth" - backyards were (and in rural areas, are to this day) traditionally a place for growing food rather than lawnmoving, BBQ and fun pastime. On top of that, most of the farming was typically manual labor that could be easily mastered, and rarely required technically advanced skills, such as operating and maintaining machinery, etc. I would presume that this fact even has a minor role in how many people were involved in the farming industry at the time - a job for one person was oftentimes a job for three, due to lack of proper or advanced tools. - Low worker motivation for due to collectivization is a nonfactor during that period - wars have always had a polarizing and unifying efect on populaton, magnified tenfold by the effective propaganda machine that existed at the time, as well as the sheer magnitude and homelandnature of the conflict. Furthermore, the majority of the population was ready to support the war effort even at the cost of enduring sever hardship. A great example here is the siege of Leningrad, where people were most literally starved to death, and on rare occasions some, sadly, went way beyond just eating cats and dogs. - All of the calculation presented seem to stress that food production declined drastically by 1942/43 (almost half!), however it is worth mentioning that at the same time with loss of control over territory, as well as staggering losses in population (dead and captured soldiers/civilians), the food consumpton by population that was still under soviet control also declined significantly. - GULAGs are hardly indicative of anything on the broader scale of the country-wide economy, as at times of war, especially one of the WW2 magnitude, they were hardly a high priority for the state. We may or may not agree with Soviet policies of the time (I'm not trying to justify neglect for human life, don't get me wrong), however the fact remains that people who ended up in GULAG were at the time considered as criminals, traitors, enemies of the state, etc.
If we assume that the soviet economy would have collapsed in 1943 if the germans held on to the terretories captured in case blue then the whole "there was no way that germany could win ww2" theory falls apart pretty quickly. However as you mentioned tik it is impossible to say if the the soviet economy would have collapsed. Great video as always!
Very good. People always want to discredit something to make themselves feel taller. Lend-Lease was NOT a waste. They had the trucks to follow up a German retreat when they needed. American Trucks.
For real, watching TIKs vids and lectures while also reading ww2 books and researching ww2 really shows you how much most people who act like they know about the second world war don't know shit.
Why do you say rye bread is bad? It's just a staple in some countries and as nutritious. Good work as usual. You can make ersatz bread by introducing usually non-edible things like sawdust in the flour or certain ground roots etc. Maybe substandard refers to this.
I think the infamous "Not a step back" order by Stalin is what actually points to how dire the economic situation of the USSR was. They were running of fumes and had colossal food shortages, the Communist party admitted it in their orders to the front and diplomatic correspondence.
Wrong. The "not a step back" order is not a dire call but a disciplinairy one in the first place. Imagine you're in the leading staff of a state which faces an overwhelming force. You have sleepless nights of constant work of planing and concentrating enough material on crucial areas on the frontline. You planed everything, checked all possibilities and prepared to the best you could. You wake up the next day and see that everything collapsed and the germans just went through. You now, hopelessly try to fogure out what caused it and see clearly that you actually really had enough aces to use against the enemy but soldiers simply ran from the battlefield in fear without using any of them... Imagine you have it multiple times in a row and germans now literally have one leg through the door of your home. I guarantee you you'll crawl to the staff members above begging to initiate an order to get the soldiers to not leave their positions!
@The Colonel Utter BS. Order #270 which you are referring to applied only to families of commanders and political officers who removed their insignia and surrendered or deserted. Big Difference dont you think ??
@The Colonel I would say there is huge difference between losing a Commanding Officer and a Conscript soldier. The reason why it was issued because of instances of commanding officers instead of organizing a defence were surrendering without a fight or abandoning their posts and running off to the rear (With insignia removed to blend in with the crowd). P.S. At least 2 of my great uncles were POWs and my family were not punished in any way that i'm aware of.
@The Colonel If it wasn't necessary it would not come into existence. It was issued for the same reasons Order 227 was, to keep morale and order in the Red Army from disintegrating.
The fact that molotov said to delay 2nd front they need the supplies NOW indicates to me that they was in a bad way and prone to fall if things had gone even slightly different.
Very informative video, thank you. I have heard it before that it was difficult to calculate the price of a german tank compared to a soviet but I never really got a proper explanation as to why in terms of economic.
While I don't remember the source book, I remember a chart showing the #'s of combat aircraft and tanks in the Soviet Army on VE day. Both #'s were within a few points of the #'s supplied by the UK/USA via Lend Lease! So I magine that Lend Lease was absolutely vital to Soviet victory. The Red Army marched on US Leather, Rode in US Trucks, and lived on US food!!!
English Wikipedia address en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease#Repayment The Lend-Lease policy, formally titled An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States During the war the USSR provided an unknown number of shipments of rare minerals to the US Treasury as a form of cashless repayment of Lend-Lease. This was agreed upon before the signing of the first protocol on October 1, 1941, and extension of credit. Some of these shipments were intercepted by the Germans. In May 1942, HMS Edinburgh was sunk while carrying 4.5 tonnes of Soviet gold intended for the U.S. Treasury. This gold was salvaged in 1981 and 1986.[81] In June 1942, SS Port Nicholson was sunk en route from Halifax, Nova Scotia to New York, allegedly with Soviet platinum, gold, and diamonds aboard; the wreck was discovered in 2008.[82] However, none of this cargo has been salvaged, and no documentation of its treasure has been produced.[83]
@@КолтуновСерёга I know it wasn't a one way street. IMO the USA/UK would have supplied the USSR regardless! Why do I say that? Because the Western Allies were prepared to fight to the last Russian. 2/3's of all German troops lost were lost on the Eastern front! Imagine the additional US/UK casualties if we had had to kill those Germans! I'm not saying we would have quit but think how the World would be different if the War in Europe had continued into 1946. How different if it had been Berlin that was nuked.
Lend Lease saved them, it's amazing the communists would take supplies from the "Bourgeois" countries they used as an example of an enemy of capitalism at their borders. By 1946 the real feelings the Soviet Union had came out, but it should have been no surprise. So much for being allies.
That's a good point. The Russians lost SO much in '41. Yet even by 1942 the Germans never got close to Moscow. Their offensives didn't have the potential to end the war. The Russians just got stronger and stronger and stronger. I'm wondering if the Germans ever had a chance?
It seems to me that some see that pointing out the problems the USSR and its people faced as an attack on their contribution to defeating the Axis. In my view it only makes their achievements more extraordinary.
It's a testament to how ruthless the Soviets were, at the very least, that their people having food to eat was less important to them than being the ones to take Berlin for the sake of political bullshit.
Hmm, did I say something wrong? I was talking about the people and their tenacity and bravery fighting the Axis, not about the oppressive regime they also had to endure.
@@uncleJan1 it is a little easier to continue the heroic charge... when you know there are political officers maning machine guns... just waiting for someone to turn around.that "oppressive regime" and the "bravery fighting" are not as separated as you espouse. 😎
There are two primary reasons the "economy" didn't collapse: primarily the Communist Party was acceptable as a ruling authority and compared to the Fascist invaders it was much preferred, and secondly the soviet citizens were defending their homeland. These are the bare bones. And by the end of 1942 the tide had turned in favour of the RKKA.
2500 calories for Soviet soldiers and farmers seems quite normal, until you realize the amount of physical labor involved (infantry soldiers had to walk).
how do you propose america defeat germany without britain or russia? bearing in mind that d-day launched from britain against a heavily worn down Wehrmacht nearly failed as it is.
yes there are a ridiculous amounts of variables in such simple statements lol. Though I guess with such simple statements we are perhaps saying Germany vs soviet union in 1939 with both soviet union and germany allowed to battle in polish territory ? xD
@@AFGuidesHD July 1945 USA tests first A bomb. WWII cost the USA more than Britain, Canada and USSR combined including 21 Billion in free "Lend Lease" to British Empire and 11 Billion to USSR.
Where can I find a source that says Molotov wanted lend lease to continue instead of opening a second front? I tried looking everywhere and couldn't find anything.
Now you begin to understand why they are still festivities on the 9 of may in russia, and why it's still a thing. Thanks for what you doing. In our dark days of lies, a ray of light of objectivity is to noticed and thanked.
this was a problem all over. I remember reading that civilians in France had to figure our if the calories in going to get some food in the countryside (where there was a small black market) would be more than the calories from the food they would purchase. Or even as modern scuba diving was being invented, diving and hunting down fish to spear, was found to expend more calories than could be recovered from the fish. The French citizen had to think before almost any action, as movement meant calories lost.
The agricultural sector of Germany wasn't really mechanised either. Most farmers relied on horses, while tractors didn't became the standard until the 1950's. I think the reason for the low productivity of the soviet agricultural sector is the collectivisation and the overall totalitarian structure of stalinist society and economy. (See: Stalin biography by D. Volkogonov)
Excellent segment! Thank you TIK for sharing the uncomfortable evidence re: the tragic & disturbing conditions in the unoccupied parts of the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1943. I am no pro-Communist or pro-Stalin fanboy, but I do want to point out that (IMHO) the unimaginable suffering & sacrifice of the Soviet people during WWII probably goes a long way towards explaining the very secretive, ultra-cautious, and even paranoid political posture of the Kremlin throughout the Cold War & beyond. Yes, some of this was politically motivated posturing, however I will suggest that the roots of the secretive & mistrusting face of the U.S.S.R. extended down to the millions of Soviet peasants during the post-war period. I would think that its fair to suggest that not one Soviet man, woman, or child would have escaped directly or indirectly experiencing some of the horrific impacts brought on by Nazi aggression. I doubt that there are many individuals of Russian, Ukrainian descent today who don't have at least one ancestor who died during the Great Patriotic War, either in combat, as victims of Nazi bombing or executions, or because of malnutrition & disease. I am sure that if I had been in their shoes, the western baby boomers' mantra of "Trust No-one" would have have been mine as well, both in terms of domestic politics (thanks to Stalin's brutal dictatorship) & in-terms of foreign relations. Yes, having a culture of fear also worked in the Kremlin's favour, but IMHO the events of 1941 to 1945 could be considered the primary source of the political 'personality' (*) of all Soviets, from the farmers & industrial workers, all the way up to (and including) the Kremlin. (*) Russians & Ukrainians are very friendly, outgoing, and generous peoples. I am referring only to their 'political personas', if that makes sense.
I was lucky enough to have a chance to listen to some personal accounts of the hardships the older generation of my family experienced during the first years of the war. At one point the evacuated to the Urals family survived on worms infested malt the babooshka accidently found near a kvas factory. At the same time there was an interesting class difference. Cities starved, but old traditional sussistence economy countryside somehow survived, being used to endless wars, it was even common to leave your children with relatives in the country, at least they have some food.
Russia deserves an apology from the world. What a tragic fate for a country which had so much potential. Imagine if WW1, WW2, Soviet union had never happened. Russia would have probably held on the "republics" and have a population of at least 400 million .
I think, that there are first hand estimations of the Reich's Military Espionage /Fremde Heere Ost/, which provides an assumption to the food question in 1942-1943 as well. They noted, in their two 1930s foreign economic reports (not a FHO report) and the last one just prior Barbarossa, that the Food production is heavily reliant on mechanization (labor resources were moved to the industry), i.e. Oil, while per-hectare output still lagged behind thus of the Third Reichs, by a factor of at least 2. So, holding the Ukraine (concentration of Grain production) + minimizing Oil deliveries (which was a fact in 1942) due to hold on to Northern Caucasus and Volga should result at least in an food delivery collapse, before the remaining economy fails. I think that Glanz has mentioned such thoughts too in his books.
Collectivation of farms has alot of initial downsides too it. Take Zimbabwe in recent time as an example, which is quite similar to some of the issues seen in the Soviet union. It is more complex than this, but basically you take land from productive landowners, who spend generations expanding and developing their farms to be as productive as possible. Then you distribute it out to alot of people, some of which have no experience running a farm at all. This creates a huge drop in production output, since the experienced farmers now have limited options in terms of production.
Not close at all. This doesn't mean the Soviet people were not literally being exterminated by war and starvation. But Stalin had a lock on all his internal enemies since at least 1937 and they were alllllll dead or in the camps. I know Stalin thought about evacuating Moscow and sent his staff out. But the grand moustache didn't budge.
Well yeah. The likelyhood of an actual political change was pretty unlikely. But that's not to say that USSR wasn't on the brink of being severely neutered in it's ability to wage offensive war if it lost the Caucassus.
had the Caucasus fallen the Anglo-Americans would have doubled down on lend lease. Moscow and even Leningrad were not occupied. If necessary the Anglo-American might even have sent soldiers to Murmansk like they did in the first world war.
@@Blazo_Djurovic yeah but the anglo americans would absolutely have doubled down on lend lease and maybe even sent soldiers to the arctic. EVERY attempt by the NS regime to conclude a separate peace or to rope the anglos into a war against the USSR failed and failed again. XAXAXA! cmepm. X_X
It’s funny how on one hand, the 1937 purges were unequivocally terrible, yet on the other hand, there’s and argument to be made they saved the world from Nazism in a roundabout way.
You need to reread Churchill. Even if the USSR were completely occupied and the slavs entirely exterminated and enslaved the war would continue and the nazis would have lost.
One of my favorite channels on RUclips ever, thanks a lot! I know this one, as many other videos on the topic, are few years old, but I hope in 2024 TIK already knows no one says “THE Ukraine”. You don’t say “the England”, right?
4,478,116 tons of food to the Soviet Union from the USA. Nincompoops: "That's not that much!" Me: "Yes, it is a lot." It was all concentrated, dehydrated, and canned food. Meaning, that each ton of food had a lot more calories than a ton of fresh food. You can fit a hellavalot more instant potatoes and powdered milk in one ton than if you use whole potatoes. Get it? Starting to understand just how valuable the food aid was? Yeah, and because it was dehydrated, concentrated, and canned, it didn't need refrigeration and could be in the distribution system for quite some time without worrying about spoilage. And of course, lets not mention the 1,911 steam locomotive and 9,920 flat cars sent to the Soviet Union to transport it from the ports to the population. So to all those who say, "the Soviet Union beat the Germans all by themselves.", suck on the facts.
That's a lot of food and other stuff. I assume it was much needed and greatly appreciated. I'm sure those were tough times having been attacked shortly after multiple social upheavals. I'm not sure throwing resources at someone in need means that you get a slice of the glory. I mean, nobody tries to diminish the involvement of the U.K. They relied on the Lend/Lease program and lost far fewer people than the U.S.S.R. Does France get to claim some glory from the American revolution since they sent resources to the U.S.? It seems like the Soviets defeated the German army alone. There were no other armies in Stalingrad. There were no other armies chasing the Germans out of Eastern Europe. Yeah, they had help but no one else was doing the dieing. While they really did bear the full force of the German army and survive, by themselves. Please don't take this as an apology for Communism. Let's suck on the facts together and give those people a little bit of credit.
@@notsure7939 I wish I could be gracious about your comment, because I'm used to people instantly launching into personal attacks if they read something they don't like. And of course, you were respectful and courteous. Unfortunately, I find your comment absolutely ridiculous. You've made so many false equivalencies and logical fallacies that I hardly know where to begin. Firstly, my point about the food aid was to support TIK's idea that the SU was close to economic collapse, and my claim that Lend Lease prevented it. I have long held that view and I am tired of the very partisan and deliberate characterization of America's aid to the SU as being inconsequential. Which is exactly what you are arguing. The other reason I made the post is to poke a finger in the eye of the biased ideologues who refuse to acknowledge the facts and their implications.Your characterization of US aid as "throwing resources at someone" is fallacious and scornful. Speaking of robbing someone of their glory, right? So the US deserves no credit? Not to mention that is a - deliberate - misrepresentation of what US aid the Russia was about. I think it's clear that you're biased and trying to drag this into personal politics because it is you who don't want to give credit where it's due. The idea that the SU would have been able to continue fighting without the mountain of war material and aid given to the SU is ludicrous in my opinion. I believe I can make a cogent argument for that belief, but I won't be making it with you. I'd be wasting my breath. Oh, and your damned right the French deserve credit. No one who knows anything about the American revolution would dispute that French aid was critical and that without it, the surrender of Cornwallis in Virginia would have been impossible.
@@juliancate7089 you make good points. Perhaps I downplayed the value of the aid. I suppose the point I'm trying to make is that, to my knowledge, France isn't interested in making sure everyone knows that they contributed to the revolution because citizens of the U.S. did the fighting and dieing. Think of the amount of wars the U.S. has funded in one way or another. Do they want credit for the various South American wars that they put money and resources toward? It's very likely that without assistance from the U.S., the S.U. and possibly even the U.K. (to a much lesser extent) would not have survived. But none of the aid would have mattered if the S.U. hadn't been able to field millions of soldiers. Therefore I feel they deserve a little credit and just like most laymen in the U.S. they deserve to feel like they defeated their enemy. I mean you no disrespect. Please assume that my beliefs are at least as complicated as your own and I have no desire to insult.
@@notsure7939 You are offering a false choice that if I say American aid made the difference for the SU during the war and especially at specific moments, that therefore I am taking credit away from the Russian soldiers. The answer is that it is both. it was a combination of aid and guts. So, please point to any post I have made on this thread or at anytime on this forum where I have said that Russian soldiers deserve no recognition. You keep trying to move the point onto these false equivalencies and emotional arguments. The real point is economics. No one has suggested that the Russians didn't fight. Again, anyone who knows anything about the war knows that the Russians put up valiant efforts, but to turn a phrase back on you, it doesn't matter how many soldiers you have if they're all starving to death. No insult taken. I never thought you were trying to be deliberately insulting. Hyperbolic and ideological, but not insulting.
@@juliancate7089 in your first post in this thread, you ended your post by saying that the S.U. cannot claim that they defeated the Germans alone. I am arguing that they can. Your argument to that is that the U.S. contributed so much that S.U. would surely have lost without it. I don't disagree with that, but you seem to feel like the U.S. isn't getting enough credit for that aid. My argument is that nobody else does that. Countries fund wars all the time and when history looks at that war the people who actually fought are the ones who get the credit. Sure the sources of funding might get an honorable mention but history will refer to that war as a war between the sides that fought and died. Why is the war involving S.U. and Germany different? Contributing aid doesn't make you part of the war otherwise the American revolution would have involved England, the colonies and France. We all know France didn't fight so we don't consider them involved in the war. They were not combatants. Can you give me examples of non combatant countries that history considers part of a war because they contributed supplies?
Ok, I am Russian, and here are my comments on this. 1) There was a major lack of food in 1942 because we lost Ukraine- our primary bread basket. However, our people soon adapted to that dire situation by making adhoc farms everywhere possible, planting rye instead of wheat, and other such substitutes. This is like planting potatoes everywhere around your country-house instead of flowers and greenhouse vegetables. 2) Yes, our people subsisted on a survival minima, but they endured never the less. This situation is when Stalin mobilization economy was at its best! 3) Your numbers of 5.5 million gulag inmates in 1941 alone are grossly exaggerated. As far as I know, there were 3.5 million gulag inmates total from 1930 to 1953.
@TIK 1) Have you read Trotksy's book "The Revolution Betrayed"? A good portion of it goes about the Soviet economy in the 30'ies, so it gives some ideas of what the state of the USSR was when Germany pounded on it in 1941. I believe you could find this book interesting. 2a) Farmer's low productivity in Russia is also historical. In Western Europe, farmers learned to generate a superior amount of food for buying markets in the cities. In Russia, this started a lot later. In 1914, about 85% of the Russians lived in the countryside, nearly all food-producers, the highest percentage of all the major powers in WW1. Post-WW1, in the 20ies, Russian farmers also had less access to investment capital (for buying tractors and the like), reducing productivity as well. 2b) The forced collectivization and the reduced incentive to produce played a role, certainly, but there is more to it. There is a historical debt too. That is what I am trying to say. 3) There existed a large black market with prices more reflective of the real market prices. However, these weren't officially recorded. 4) Have you tried to make a comparison with WW1? Russia's economy was under lot of strain then too. Huge refugees swelled the cities leading to enormous housing problems and food shortages in those cities. Yet there was not great revolution in WW2 like there was in WW1. Don't forget the February Revolution was the workers in Petrograd going on strike and onto the streets, and after 5 days the Petrograd garrisons joined the workers. There was some fighting in Moscow. But the most pertinent to me is that the rest of the country accepted the overthrowing of the monarchy. Wether the other cities, the villages or the front: no one felt inclined to go out and fight for the Tsar's continued rule. This low had the authority of the Tsar fallen. I have the feeling it is totally different with Stalin and the USSR in WW2. I don't have the impression that a similar revolt in one large city would have led to a similar collapse of the whole system. What is your view on this, TIK? 5) Great Vid TIK! This was an excellent vid of the Soviet Economy in 1942-1943.
Ukrainians welcomed germans till those started to kill people. Also Caucas people sided with Germany. Stalin sent Chechens in Gulag for this. It was some defetism in soviet side. But Stalin know how to handle revolution, and nazi behavior to kill or enslave what is non arian, didn't help either
Lewis at 16:20 says the number of USSR agricultural workers dropped from 50 million to 25 million. At the same time the USA only had 11 million agricultural workers but were feeding much of the world. Were the US agricultural workers that much more productive? Yes!
![Megan Thee Stallion - Roc Steady (feat. Flo Milli) [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/HozPPyqW0dY/mqdefault.jpg)
During WW2 my grandmother lived in the eastern part of Kazakhstan (back then part of USSR), and she tells that the only thing that kept her family alive was potato trims made by shovels, that were left over i the soil after the potato had been gathered. They were searhing fields for those potato trims after the crops were gathered (and shipped elsewhere).
Thank you for sharing. It's anecdotal evidence, but important nonetheless
@@TheImperatorKnight I remembered other stories related to soviet economy.
My grandmother, her sisters and many mre women were voluntarily making (by hand) tobacco pouches for soldiers at front. Those pouches would be collected by the authorities and then distributed in the army.
Also my grandmother started working at state farm when she was 11 old (she was born at 1931).
One of our relatives was traveling to distant villages (in North Kazakhstan) bringing them some pelts so that he could collect winter jackets made by the locals (also for soldiers at front) when he visited them again few months later. By the way, that was the only adult male in our family that was not sent to the front (he had polio as a child).
It is easy to underestimate toughness of Russian people. Even now west is still doing it.
Gathered by machines or hand? The potato harvesters in the US would leave the under sized potatoes, which would have probably been sufficient. Perhaps this was deliberate because supermarkets want the larger ones.
@@joechang8696 By hand. So if you you use a shovel to dig out potatoes, you sometimes slice the potato that still is in the soil with a shovel. Big slices are collected right away, but sometimes there are small slices (which I called trims in my previous comment), that are hard to find and pick. So my grandmoter was looking for those ones. Also one has to remember that usually it was a very severe penalty (Gulag) for taking food from the farm field (all of which was the state property).
It sucks to fight a war on your own soil - a fact most Americans have forgotten.
We have not forgotten the Civil War.
@@nickdanger3802 fair point. But a lot of Americans think the Civil War mainly impacted the soldiers and forget what happened to the Shenandoah Valley and Georgia unless somebody points it out. Lots of cities were burned - not just Atlanta. Large parts of Pennsylvania, Kansas, Missouri, Mississippi, and South Carolina were devastated. Some of the worst atrocities of the war were committed by Jubal Early in Chambersburg PA, and by Quantrill's Raiders in Kansas. Sherman and Sheridan were unleashed in part to take revenge on the South. Not many people today know the backstory.
@@GeographyCzar According to National Pornographic Atlanta was burned to destroy it as a hub of Confederate infrastructure, only slightly different from the RAF dropping incendiary's on any city in Germany and vice versa.
www.nationalgeographic.org/thisday/nov15/burning-atlanta/
@@nickdanger3802 "National Pornographic" LMAO
Nope, we never really did it at all.
12:45 "The Soviets survived on far less food than all of the combatant nations except the Japanese..."
*ghostly wails in Chinese and Bengali*
Everyone forgets the great Famine of 1943 in India... guess nobody wants to blame the British Empire.
@@KnightofAges It was Bengal famine not Indian famine. That would be quite bigger problem for whole war effort. It would probably delayed whole D day and western front, maybe for another year.
Soviet and Indian situation weren’t really comparable.
Out of 170 million people in Soviet union around 30-35 million served in military. Plus another bunch who were pushed to military industry. Number of people in agriculture went from 50 million in 1940 to 25 million in 1942.
British India that had combined population of 380 million had to lose productivity of “just” 2,5 million people who served in war effort. Agricultural base was largely intact. Outside of course Burma and Bengal region that were on front line.
India wasn’t going to collapse.
@@KnightofAges Bengal was a frontline province in WW2 and the Japanese were employing scorched earth tactics in the region...
@@stafer3 Bengal in 1943 was 100% part of India (the British Raj), so I said there was a famine in India.
And nobody in this thread is talking about a 'collapse', just remembering that other peoples starved more in WW2 than the Russians.
@@adamdesouza6153 Sorry to spoil it, but the famine took place in 1943, while the Japanese Army only set foot in the area in late 1944...
Now about starvation during the war. My father at that time was about 18 or so . He never liked to talk about that time. However, once he mentioned that "he was lucky to have a hunting rifle, unlike many other families". He would shoot everything that flew around to feed his family. Also, they would go out to the wheat fields next to them to pick up whatever left after the harvest.
And still, he said that they lived much better then other people up north in Siberia and in Ukraine - We lived in the southern part of Kazakhstan. My father was drafted to the war in 1944 and later stormed Berlin. He also, often mentioned about Lendlease too. The best things he liked were American can food and Studebaker truck!
In Soviet Russia, economy collapses you.
In Soviet Russia, road forks you
(ref: Family Guy)
@@TheImperatorKnight in Soviet russia, video releases another TIK
hahaha.
Comments don't often make me laugh but that one did!
@@TheImperatorKnight In Soviet Russia, television watches you!
@Caliban777 The US Red Army will come to throw out the Russian Bandits and Plutocracy, bleeding the Russian workers.
The USSA is coming soon for all the America's!
My father as a child of 10 and 11 lived in one of the cities under strong attack during World War 2. In the late 1970s he and I were in a grocery store in the US and I happened to see rabbit meat packaged in the meat section. I pointed it out and he was visibly disturbed, noting you cannot tell cat meat from rabbit. He later explained it during the war he ate a whole lot of rabbit that in fact actually should have been purring.
He wasn't in Moscow. He was in London.
No one talks about how many people starved in western Europe even after the Nazi's had been defeated. Suffice to say the moment Hitler started that war probably ten million people were going to be dead from starvation in just a few years time.
@@pietersteenkamp5241 from what my dad says there was no outright starvation in London. I think his parents were worried more about dietary issues and not enough protein.
He also describes the neighborhood kids building slingshots and eating pigeon.
Yes, City pigeons.
@@1jimmarch The hunger was somewhat exported to the colonies if at all but people in the cities did whatever they could to augment their food intake with the poor of course being most at risk of not having family in he countryside. :)
@@pietersteenkamp5241 correct. At least a million people starved in India to make sure London didn't.
Jim March Simpson Incorrect. A million died in India because of drought and failure of crops.
My grandma, Nina Alexeevna Loginova, was 14 in 1941, living in a village in Ivanovo oblast. She had to work at a collective farm, replacing men left for the front, while still attending school, that is, from morning till night, all four years till 1945, without holidays (not sure, maybe on 1 May and 7 November they had holidays). She would say the food situation was generally alright for them (probably alright by her standards of the day, not ours) during the first years, but it worsened by 1945. Then, she would say, things were starting to look grim: they weren't exactly starving, but were not very far away from that. The hardest thing, however, she said (and it adds another dimension to the discussion about the fall in agricultural productivity) was the lack of horses and tractors: all were taken for the needs of the front, they had to rely on oxen. I remember her talking about it: "A horse is a clever animal", she would say, "you tell it to go somewhere, it goes there. But an ox is stupid and stubborn: you need it to pull the plough, and it just lies there on the field and refuses to stand up. You beat it with a stick, but it just doesn't care" (and we're talking a teenage girl beating an ox with a stick, mind you) "Then you fall down on your knees, hug its neck and start begging: come on, dear, please, stand up, please, just stand up now - and it still doesn't". And in many places they didn't even have oxen and the peasant women had to pull the plough themselves.
She's still alive btw, 93 years old now. This was a tough year for her though: she had her arm broken, but it's getting better now.
P. S.: I, as a Russian, am deeply insulted for your disdain for rye bread. I honestly don't understand what your problem with rye bread is, how is it any worse than wheat bread? Puzzles me.
nothing wrong with rye bread as far as I'm concerned
The eestern Soviet Union, ie Ukraine and the Kuban, suffered terrible famines, some deliberately inflicted, since the 1920s. The last was in 1947.
as a Dane i can tell you we eat rye bread with cold cut meat ,pates, smoked fish, boiled eggs, and luke warm meatballs on ,, we call it the cold table , and its done even on holy days like easter ,,,
rye bread is very good and healty
Rye bread is a yum tasty.
Maybe rye bread is not as tasty for everyone. Matter of taste really. Wouldn't be my first choice but I would still eat it if I don't have anything else.
1942: "they were starving, eating 1000 calories less than americans"
2019: "they were morbidly obese, eating 1000 calories less than americans"
Nobody loves food more than us Yanks lol.
Thin may be in, but.....FAT is where it's AT!!!!!
Mate 1942 ,100%Oganic food in ,2019 no more organic ,forget about calories
@@750suzuki Not in your head, though, bro.
@Belagerungsmörser the Sheep I didnt say we ate good food, just a lot. Were morbidly obese.
I always suspected the Soviet Union was much harder pressed in 1942 than many historians realized. The defeats in 1941 had been so staggering, and so much agricultural land had been lost, and the idea that industry had been neatly picked up and planted beyond the Urals sounded so unlikely, that the idea that it held fast and resumed with vigour in 1942 seemed off.
I agree to an extent. Yes, the Soviets were very bad off, but I suspect that Stalin held enough internal power to paper it over for another year or two in order to repel the Germans, even if it meant just letting everyone he considered useless to the war effort starve. After all, the Germans did want to kill and/or enslave them whether they surrendered or not, and the Soviets knew it, so what was the alternative? However, after that, there probably would have been a total collapse of the Soviet economy and government. The losses would have been too great to salvage.
@@bluemarlin8138 Exactly. The germans lost the war because of their blind chauvinism.
@@bluemarlin8138 They started getting food stuffs and vehicles from The USA and UK in 43. I'd think 42 would have been pretty bad.
@@MikeyMike-fb5hx two million Indians in a famine during ww2 died cuz the brits diverted food to the UK
Rye bred is quite good. In Finland the deault bred is Rye Bred. Bark bread, which is made from mixture of Rye and phloem of pine tree on the other hand is anti-starvation method. The "edible" portion of pine tree is about 4kg per cubic meter of wood. And Finnish sources, tell that it has been used in Finland, Scandinavia and Northern Russia historically in famine situations. And the people who make said bread on modern days tell that traditional 40% pine and 60% rye, however to avoid side effects modern use is limited to 25% or below. And to have acceptable taste it is limited to about 10-12% . Just like some mushrooms need processing before becoming edible so does the phloem of pine tree. And by processed I don't mean modern processing but methods used more than 1000 years.
yeah i love black bread and rye as well, white bread is boring.
Probably TIK is thinking of SAWDUST bread which did in fact exist that's what near famine and outright famine do.
Nice belt. You gonna eat that?
Pine needles are also completely edible and a very high source of vitamin C
@@MatoroTBS but as a Finnish communist you are already a traitor so I would molchat
Jouni Osmala - In the wartime Soviet Union - or at least Leningrad during the seige - "bread" often contained substantial quantities of sawdust to make the portions a little more substantial than would have been possible if unadulterated bread were used. I remember that clearly from an episode of The World At War.
The Leningrad siege featured literal cannibalism; people eating belts and shoes; people eating rats; and people literally sifting through shit looking for anything edible in it.
This is not a myth, it's all well documented facts.
this is the best history channel on RUclips
i agree but I am biased regarding ww2 content 😁
@@jessnellaf2401 I hear you. However, TIK is the best history channel regardless of historic period covered. This level of dedication and research and, at the same time, absence of any bias is astonishing. A true gem.
@@airpaprika i agree... i said my bias however, the best part for me is... this is were i got this... this is where i got that... these three good authors disagree.. first let me tell you what they said, then ill give you my opinion. Thats some priceless commentary for a buff like me. Usually there is some ego BS
The only other channel (or group of channels) that's in the same league is TheGreatWar/WW2 channel
The week by week format covers more, but at the same time, it's less "dense" I guess ?
@@airpaprika He's extremely biased towards the soviet union and the allies and he's acknowledged his bias, I like his videos but he's still probably the most biased historian in youtube-
The word you are trying to pronounce is actually pronounced as "SevUralLag". The "lag" part of it is a short for Russian word "lager" which means "camp". The whole word is a contraction and consists of three words: Severniy (Northen) Yralskiy (Ural) and Lager (Camp). In a nutshell, it was named so since the camp was located in the northern part of the Ural Mounten region. Many, if not all of the Gulag camp names, usually ended with "lag", for instance, KarLag (a camp in Karaganda region of Kazakhstan with about one million inmates) and so on.
I was born in the former USSR and lived there for more than 35 years before immigrating to the US in 1992. I would be happy to help you guys with any Russian translations/explanations etc. John
What are the implications of a economic collapse ? All the soldiers just pack their bags and go home?
What would it actually look like ?
They wouldn't have been able to feed the troops, therefore they can't fight.
@@andrewpestotnik5495
Napoleon's ghost nods.
That depends on the type of collapse. If we are talking about "just" extreme food shortages across all of USSR to the same tune as in Leningrad or during Holodomor, there would not have been an outright collapse. Leningrad had not collapsed either, after all. Soldiers and the administration in Leningrad were not subject to starvation. Non-essentials were. Army, bureaucracy and most important workers would still be fed to survive and fight on. And don't let the averages mentioned in the video fool you. 2400 calories seem not that bad. But one can not work 12-hour shifts on physically demanding work with such ration. And the army was marching on foot - 40+ kilometers per day. You need ~2500 calorie *surplus* to make that distance (assuming light gear). You have to provide active combat troops and industry workers with enough food - intense physical work can not be done on a force of will alone (not for long anyway). So any further shortages would not have affected army and such right away. Instead there would have been "peripheral degradation". More and more less important civilians would receive less and less food. Basically, everyone, not directly involved in the war effort would receive rations at or below starvation level. And, since the system is far from perfect, some would receive even less. And people would start to die. In Leningrad, peak starvation deaths were at 100,000 per month. For the whole of USSR it would have been a couple of millions per month. Propaganda would limit the morale effect from this. So, the war efforts could continue for quite some time. But between deaths from starvation, rampant diseases, deterioration of workforce - the front would receive less and less resources and breakdowns of the supply chain would happen more and more often. This would lead first to inability to attack on strategic level, than to inability to react to enemy's actions. It would have been a total collapse and defeat, if not for the germans being also at the end of their supply leash.
But it would all take time to severely affect RKKA capabilities. Even with germans holding Astrakhan-Voronezh line in 1942, the food situation for USSR would not had been significantly different up until the second half of 1943. More immediate effect would have had the oil situation. And there is too many 'what ifs'.
@@KidoKoin well thanks for the detailed reply
We saw it happen on the German side. I remember an anecdote from a German soldier’s book. He said the last order they received was “every man for himself”. The soldiers discussed it for a time, looked at their compasses, and either went west or went home
Interesting, the Soviet farming industry had a great reduction in output after the Nazi invasion, but as TIK pointed out in his previous video there was also a very large reduction in population in Soviet territories so much so that their population fell below the overall Axis population. Giving agricultural production as a percentage of prewar figures is only half the story as there was less mouths to feed.
TIK knows what he is talking about 90% of the time and he is right here. In Soviet Union there were several regions that were able to export grain (like South Russia, Ukraine, Western Siberia) to other regions. Now, those very regions were under occupation yet Soviet Union needed more industrial workers and more soldiers, as well as horses and tractors, putting even worse strain on peasentry. Yet, Soviet Union didn't collapse like Empire did in 1916-1918, neither did over-strain on peasentry resulted in multi-million dead famine like in 1931-1933. Shortages of food and starvation were present in countryside, but not in the industrial centers nor the army (except in cases when there were severe logistical issues such as Stalingrad and Leningrad). State declared who gets to eat and in poorer areas and special settlments (exiled people, neither free citizens but not Gulag inmates) working or putting on a uniform meant that your children and elderly will get some thin soup and bread every day which is better than nothing.
@@brankodrljaca1313 i Will add that if the nazis weren't nazi, treathing Better the occupied population and make clear that the only enemy was stalin and not the entire soviet population could had lessen the strenght of the soviets and make more probaly revolts in distant regions
@@brankodrljaca1313 Western Siberia was never occupied by German forces
"The overwhelming majority of those remaining in the gulag were ill, EMANCIPATED, and infirm." lol That little slip changes the whole feel the gulag segment in morbidly funny ways.
They were emancipated from human rights and decency.
Haha, yes I heard it too.
I thought I was the only one to hear that slip up. There are many more. But how do you mistake the 2 words. It's not even a malapropism.
@@haroldfiedler6549
They actually were emancipated in the sense that they were released from the camps, in the hope they might be able to feed themselves outside.
@@jamestheotherone742 maybe because they were criminals?
my grandmother said, that at some point during the war food shortage was so severe, they (civilians) had one potato per person per day
Sad:(
@@flying0possum : there is a whole series of dark jokes about Latvians starving during the war, and potatoes by the way.
LolCats are bastards.
After watching your review of this collapse topic I’m even more mystified at the will of the Soviet people to keep fighting. The shortages and starvation didn’t break the common soldiers fighting spirit. Much is said about “not one step back” crap but how did the morale not break down completely? Who were these people who stood at such a precipice and didn’t break? This goes deeper than fear of the state or enemy. Something unique occurred and may never happen again.
The citizens kept fighting for 2 reasons. If they surrendered they would have been exterminated or put to work as slaves by the Axis. Or if they directly disobeyed to fight, their generals would have them executed. Death on both sides of you makes fighting the only real option. Plus there would be nowhere to run away to on your own or with your family except deeper into russia where there is less food.
Because the N*z* plan was to enslave and kill them all.
I imagine it’s because the Nazis planned to exterminate and/or enslave those soldiers and their families, one way or the other. The Soviet soldiers had also heard about the sub-human treatment of Russian soldiers in WWI (even though the Russians returned the favor), and correctly assumed that the same fate awaited them if they surrendered. (And then of course there were GRU death squads there to shoot them if they retreated or tried to surrender.) If WWII had just been a war to depose Stalin and the communists, or an aggressive war for territory, then I suspect the Soviet soldiers and citizens wouldn’t have tolerated the hardships when things were going badly on the battlefield. That’s one reason Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will fail in the long run.
The Nazi's planned to kill and enslave all the Slav people. That would motivate anyone! Even the Ukrainians who thought Capitalism was like a Doris Day Movie!
@@bluemarlin8138 Germans basically dug their own grave here with their racism.
“They were eating rye bread, yeah.”
...thee have made an enemy today.
White bread has a lot less calories and is harder to grow.
@Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicolvocanoconiosis Do you find it funny how the english dont know that thou is informal and you are formal?
@Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicolvocanoconiosis No Im refering to how most english think that thou, thy, ... sounds formal, but in fact you, your, ... is the formal one.
You see comrade, right now there are too many mouths to feed. But what if! there were only half as many mouths to feed?!
You joke, but that's how socialism works. Take from those who have and give to those who don't. So if some people are hungry, some other people must die, and their food can be redistributed to the others. This is the problem of socialist economics: the economy is fixed, they can't grow it, so the only way for some to have more than others must because they've stolen ('exploited') more resources off the others. Therefore they justify the killing of those who have more. Utter stupidity.
@@TheImperatorKnight socialism isn't just one thing though. North Korean Communism isn't the same as Scandinavian socialism.
@@TheImperatorKnight "This is the problem of socialist economics: the economy is fixed, they can't grow it." There was no economic growth in the Soviet Union? Where are you getting this information?
I didn't say there was no economic growth. I said that socialist economics doesn't factor that in, since in their ideology, economics is a zero-sum game.
@@xkiroxX In North Korea, those in favor with the powers-that-be get to eat. When they fall, the next group in favor with the powers-that-be pick up the food and get to eat.
In Scandinavia, everybody gets to eat. Weirdos.
the 59% productivity of UK agricultural workers vs industrial workers can be explained by the government taking over farms and ensuring they were being run efficiently. Every plot of fallow land had to be sewn with crops or you lost your farm. UK farmers worked extremely hard to feed people. There's a great series called Wartime Farm from the BBC where historians live as farmers during WWII and have other historians guest star as government inspectors and stuff. Incredible.
Upvoted but also not entirely true. The UK had a low proportion of agricultural workers because prior to the war because much of the countries food supply was imported. This was not true in the USA. In the UK there was plenty of slack in the agricultural system which allowed for the potential of greater production in wartime under Government direction and with higher prices which gave an incentive to higher productivity.
1:30 *SAD HOI 4 NOISES*
WW2 and invasion of Nazi Germany along with its allies brought unimaginable suffering and misery upon USSR. That event changed whole Soviet society and all of its people for centuries to come.
@Crystal Dreams There is no doubt that the dictatorial reign of Joseph Stalin was oppressive, cruel, and often evil. I certainly do not find much to like about the totalitarianism & form of communism that existed in the U.S.S.R. . However, I will suggest that life under the Czars was pretty awful for virtually all Russians, and I will note that both Russia & Ukraine had been rather under-developed & 'backwards' nations prior to the Russian Revolution.. So, while the environment in the U.S.S.R. was not good at all,, it still represented an improvement over Czarist Russia for a great number of Soviets. Most certainly, the U.S.S.R. made great strides in science, technology, literacy & education in a remarkably short period of time... progress that may not have occurred if the Czars had stayed in power.
The end of the Soviet Union means endless suffering under the psychotic IMF!
@@strikerswheelchair2809 Fascism is Communism in its opposite. Stalin refused to bring Socialism to Europe since he wanted to protect the USSR with his policy of Socialism in one country and no other. He wanted Finlandisation of the countries where the Red Army had forced out Fascism. He was a Socialist Nationalist he represented the insipid Bureaucrasy. Which replaced the Bolshevik Party he murdered.
Putins Kleptocrasy, refuses to allow the US IMF . To take over Nationalist Russia.
Hence the US's hatred of Russia, China and any country refusing the IMF.
Ussr had Jewish dictatorship. Do not put it all on Uncle Joe.
A century is 100 years
I'm from Lithuania, my neighbour with his family was exiled in gulag, he said they were very lucky, because that was fishing gulag, they were caching and gutting fish, it was harsh and of course all fish was taken away, but they were left with heads and tails, so they could actually cook that and have healthy fish diet. Others were not that lucky, the worse were mining gulags, some of materials would be toxic and there were no work safety or protection equipment.
Only killers and robbers worked in mining gulags.
Maybe you got the fish for working for the Nazi's!
The very worst were mines in The Arctic.
The ones around Magadan most infamously.
@@lovepeace9727 No, thousands of innocents, including hundreds of Orthodox priests singled out for especially tortuous treatment, worked, starved and died there.
@@MarktheMole jails are full of innocent people. Every single one has his own story ...
Most people getting ready to work out: "Ah, play the pop tunes."
Me: "Oh hey a video about the collapse of the Soviet Union. Perfect jogging material!"
Thought it was only me who did this lol
My grand grandparents went through WW2 in the eastern front and they lived right on the battlefield and it is crazy how they survived and when the war ended, they were sent to a gulag in Siberia for a few years and than they were sent back when Stalin died.
Russian history can be summed up as " Then it got worse". Incompetent tsar, civil war bought by lenin's revolution, stalin and the german invasion, Mr K almost ending the world, brezhnev's stability or stagnation(take your pick), weak leader gorbachev, dissolution of the USSR by the traitor Yeltsin and his disastrous reign and now putin who is forcing russia into a confrontation with the west. Russia lost the cold war and should just accept it instead of trying to build the new soviet empire.
@@GenocideWesterners The Cold War is not over.
Polling by the Levada Center suggest Stalin's popularity has grown since 2015, with 46% of Russians expressing a favourable view of him in 2017 and 51% in 2019.[925] The Center, in 2019, reports that around 70% of Russians believe that Stalin played a positive role in their homeland[926] and in May 2021, a survey finds that Stalin is the most important personality in Russian public opinion, followed by Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Pushkin.[927]
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General Assembly
Seventy-fifth session
46th plenary meeting
Wednesday, 16 December 2020, 10 a.m.
New York
document address page 10 RUclips does not skip the link.
Draft resolution I is entitled “Combating
glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices
that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of
racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related
intolerance”.
A recorded vote has been requested.
A recorded vote was taken.
In favour:
Algeria, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina,
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain,
Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Benin,
Bhutan, Bolivia (Plurinational State of), Bosnia
and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei
Darussalam, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde,
Cambodia, Cameroon, Central African Republic,
Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Congo,
Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea, Djibouti, Dominica,
Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El
Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Eswatini,
Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Grenada,
Guatemala, Guinea, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras,
India, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Jamaica, Jordan,
Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lao
People’s Democratic Republic, Lebanon, Lesotho,
Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives,
Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Mongolia,
Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia,
Nauru, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Oman,
Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay,
Peru, Philippines, Qatar, Republic of Moldova,
Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis,
Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Sao
Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia,
Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, South Africa,
South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Syrian
Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste,
Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkmenistan,
Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United Republic
of Tanzania, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela
(Bolivarian Republic of), Viet Nam, Yemen,
Zambia, Zimbabwe
Against:
Ukraine, United States of America
Abstaining:
Afghanistan, Albania, Andorra, Australia, Austria,
Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus,
Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland,
France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary,
Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kiribati, Latvia,
Liberia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg,
Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, New
Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Palau, Poland,
Portugal, Republic of Korea, Romania, Samoa,
San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden,
Switzerland, Tonga, Turkey, United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Northern Ireland
See you on the battlefield.
@@GenocideWesterners "Putin, who is forcing Russia into a confrontation with the west." I think you've got it twisted; the West is forcing Russia into a confrontation, despite Putin's best efforts to avoid it.
Hi, love the show.
The Soviet lost a lot of there food production capabilities at this point, but also it no longer needed too feed the same amount of people as in 1937 as a lot of the population was in German occupied areas, under siege or dead. So using the 1937 production quota of food doset mean they where eating 50% less. What do you think about that?
Good point.
their*
Noname it sounds Petty but it drives me nuts too
The people that were dying due to lack of food and from diseases that come out of starvation conditions were the Soviet version of "useless eaters". The soldiers and factory workers were relatively well cared for as they were critical for the war effort. The rest of the population, not so much. The troops were also good at foraging and "requisitioning" food supplies and animals from vlllagers and townspeople. Add to that the Lend-Lease supplies that were flowing in and I dont think the Soviet Union was anywhere near the point of collapse. Certainly, the fact that people in the Gulags were dropping dead at a high rate, as well as the increase in deaths among those not critical to the war effort, has virtually no relation to the Soviet warfighting capabilities. At least not in a time horizon of less than five years.
Nobody except the Bourgeois eats well in War. The Military did since they needed the strength to kill their fellow man.
Superb Video! Very interesting. One can clearly see that you're putting a lot of effort in them and i especially like how you talk about your sources and how you evaluate their reliability!
Best ww2 history channel in YT. Greetings from Berlin.
I remember looking up the stats and listed for all the causes was 2.5 to 3.2 million civilian deaths in non occupied territory as result of "wartime shortages".
Additionally a further 1 million died in 1946 as a result of starvation. Between 1914 to 1946 Russia/Soviet Union lost between 40 million to 60 million of it's population.
Roughly 20-30% of it's 1910 census. How a country can continue to function let alone become a super power after all that is beyond incomprehensible.
Rebel Scum well when Russian women still outnumber the men 10-1. You can thank the Germans for that :)
@@Live4This Well I'm an American, so it's not something I can take advantage off. Though I have a feeling that they wouldn't see it as a positive and would probably reply with something akin to "When the Muslims outnumber the Germans" Perhaps you mean well but I'm sure most Russians would take offense to your statement.
@@robertalaverdov8147 Im American as well :P idk they might be happy lol.
Neon Noir Please provide your sources. Without that your comment comes across as a trolling rant.
Neon Noir Your statement is interesting to say the least. I don’t think “the west” used them as a sacrificial lamb. We did help support the soviets before we were even in the war with resource, tanks etc. The Germans were fighting a losing war since 1942 and they did a pretty damn good job with tactical retreats. Although the siege of Budapest was the same outcome as Stalingrad which to my surprise they didn’t learn. Regardless the soviets fought their own battles and took massive casualties.
My mom and dad talked about starving in the soviet union at that time. I have often herd it being said that in that time the soviet union only existed on paper.
Best channel on RUclips. Spam did not win the war, but it kept the allies in the war.
American trucks and shipping were the offensive item that was their most important contribution to the war.
From what I understand, American "lend lease" food fed at least half the Soviet Army, (perhaps 17 million out of 34 million men) taking a huge burden off the civilian population.
I understand that the "lend lease" with the UK gave the US the use of some ports in Canada and elsewhere. What did the US get from the "lend lease" with the Soviet Union?
The US got 35 milliom soviet soldiers that fought for it. Lets say the USSR surrenders and starts supporting the Nazis. You would have a powerful Germany. Good luck beating it. In other words. The US got a few million of its soldiers not being killed. Is that a good deal?
@@hanaluong2672 Winning the war maybe? U think those +25M soviets deaths didnt matter for the war effort?😂
@@hanaluong2672 Fewer battle deaths. Total losses were well under a million. Pft, the Soviets suffered that on single operations.
@5:45 The stunning productivity of American (Canadian too) agriculture. With much less of their population involved with farming yet still able to grow large surpluses to export.
That wont be true for much longer....
@@dwwolf4636 You are all kinds of massive stupid
The economic losses to the Soviet Union as a result of the German 1942 campaign were considerable. There was the loss of food, industry and war materials in Ukraine. But worse yet were the impacts when 6th Army reached and blocked the Volga. The blocking of the Volga created a true economic and military crisis. The Soviet Union was cut off entirely from the oil and oil products made in the Baku area. They lost perhaps 76% of their oil production. They lost 85% of their refined aviation fuel production. And by September 1942, the inability to ship out oil products from Baku started to limit production. There storage was completely full.
They had back-up plans to try and use Krasnovodsk on the other side of the Caspian as a point of delivery for Baku's oil production, but given the limited infrastucture and greater rail distances, how well that might have worked is anyone's guess.
The planning for the 1942 campaign in the Soviet Union by Germany was right for the wrong reasons. While trying to take over the resources of the Caucassus to fuel the german war effort wasn't really practical, destroying those resources and denying them to the Soviet economy was extremely practical. Taking the Ukraine, blocking the Volga and destroying the soviet oil industry was in military terms probably the most effective sort of warfare the Germans could undertake against the Soviet Union in 1942.
I've been wondering this for a while. Nothing better than watching one of your videos with my morning cup of coffee. Thank you for your videos - they certainly will stand the test of time.
Happy Monday Tik!
Thanks Vass, Happy Monday to you too!
TIK Thanks! I don’t think I have any Eastern Front related material to comment on. Trying to get some research done for a review on the Movie Midway.
I've been binging on your videos about the Eastern Front for over a week now. Amazing content.
I always made the argument that the Germans should never have gone into stalingrad. Instead, had a smaller force to protect the flank while the caucus operation went full steam.
Ken McD I aways made the argument the Germans should have stayed in Germany.
Silly me. I certainly do not need to make my comment private. What I wanted to say that thank you for your excellent work (included some of your biases) . Your videos have had an unexpectedly profound effect on my life. In early November, I had a total hip replacement surgery to deal with severe arthritic hip pain. After I returned home, I started to re-listen to many of your videos just distract myself. I noticed that they had an unusual effect on me-my pain experiences was reduced. So, I decide to just set "autoplay" in all your videos so they were playing in the background even while I was asleep and I was comforted just by listening to them. As a former research psychologist, I have no explanation for this, however--your video s are awesome.
I read an article about the issue of lend lease to the Soviet Union during World War - it said the cans of Spam (and wheat, etc.) from the United States did as much to keep the USSR population alive and in the fight as the weapons that were sent via convoy.
The weapons were probably the least valuable Lend Lease shipments, behind spam, trucks and communications equipment.
and zillions of cans of orange juice.
@@MarktheMole - Sorry, are you referring literally to cans of orange juice shipped to the Soviets in WW2? I had not come across that fact.
In “Stalin’s War”, McMeekin says the USSR would probably have had to sue for peace in late 1942. but for the flood of Lend-Lease aid. Long after the war, Krushchev said they could not have won without Lend-Lease Spam.
So, a new treaty of Brest-Litovsk, just like in 1918?
The US was shipping a massive amount of goods to the Soviets, from boots to aircraft
any mcdonalds? lol
yep and according to Major Jordan's diaries, we shipped plenty of uranium over to boot!
Probably lots of canned fruit, vegetables, evaporated milk, canned meat, C rations, from the central valley of California. With the decline of popularity of canned stuff, those canneries are now closed. The powdered eggs will probably not be missed.
they was supplying all sides. something which no so called history and truth channel likes covering lol
"Now they say that the allies never helped us, but it can't be denied that the Americans gave us so many goods without which we wouldn't have been able to form our reserves and continue the war," Soviet General Georgy Zhukov said after the end of WWII.
Could you name the source, please?
from even more generals..... it did not even matter if the supplies were useful (I am thinking we was talking about the Cromwell tanks in 41 and the p39's) The fact we were not in it alone... that some where ppl were helping was more important to moral than anything!
Did the Americans provide military weapons as well? Or did the Soviet Union purely rely on their own manufacturing?
@@korneliusparker536 deliveries represented about 20 percent of the total number of armored vehicles produced by Russia during the war.Specifically, this was 16 per cent of Russian main battle tanks, 12 per cent of Russian self-propelled gun carriages and tank destroyers, and 100 per cent of Russian infantry fighting vehicles. The USA alone supplied the Russians with 501,660 tactical wheeled and tracked vehicles, including 77,972 Jeeps, 151,053 1.5 t trucks and 200,622 2.5 t trucks. those 151k 1.5 ton trucks far out weighed their numbers as they were 6 wheel drive in a land with few roads.. In addition, 15,631 guns and 131,633 sub machine guns were supplied to Russia by the Allies.
Russian aircraft production 1942-1944 was 42,427 fighters and 11,797 bombers (additional 30,506 ground attack planes), which results that approximately 20 per cent of the fighters and 30 per cent of the bombers of the Red Air Force were American-built and approx. 10 per cent of the fighters were British-built.
The timing is important in any conversation about the impact these suplies had such as British having a very small contribution in total... but the squadrons of hawkers hurricanes and over 450 Matilda 2 delivered in 41 had much more impact than much larger supplies of better equipment later on in the war. The 152k 1,5 ton six wheel drive trucks where more important than the 200k 2.5 ton trucks by an order of magnitude. So this topic can be a rabbit hole of death.. never ending and complex... From all that ive researched you can say the following and be reasonably correct if not 100% accurate.
1. the USA, Canada and Briton supplied @20% of all war materials to the soviets in world war2.... about 1.2% to 2% more was sent but lost at sea or interdicted in various ways.
2. the most important supplies far exceeding all others was a subset of 152k trucks, 2000 locomotives, 11000 rail cars and all the food.
3. the cold war following so close to the closing of ww2 was muddled the questions of effectiveness of these lend lease supplies however, virtual all soviet generals agree that these massive quantities of materials had more impact on the moral and mental ability to "hang on. we have help coming" than their actual tactical significance. That is to say... no matter how much the supplies helped we probably would have collapsed in hopelessness if not for the moral given by lend lease.
A better perspective in valuating the significance of lend lease is that of the placebo effect,. there was enough material delivered to give hope. That hope effected the war much more than the actual medicine (supplies) could ever achieve.
TIK and I have a disagreement about man power... he said the numbers do not lie... my argument is the supplies (specifically food and transport) gave the Soviets the will and hope that far and away exceeded the man power numbers used.
@@АлександрНевельский-л2з just google lend lease... there is very little dispute over numbers however, like i said the significance of these numbers is augured over insistently. If you have a specific thing that you cant find ill be happy to help
I tend to totally agree with your appraisal of the situation. The Soviets were in a far worse situation with their economy than most people realized at the time.
The problem with studying history is that people read a few textbooks on a subject and perhaps watch a few films and take what is said as gospel and don’t challenge or question the facts.
I am an avid researcher of the Titanic and I have read/seen some interesting challenges from an amateur historian who takes survivors accounts and challenges the historians accepted view of the sinking, and gives quite a decent alternative view. All his views have been ignored and ridiculed because they don’t conform with the established story.
Human beings are that - human. They aren’t infallible. They make mistakes. They see things in a jaded way and remember them with bias.
With regards to this video, I think your research is very credible. It shows how the Soviet Union was in a dire situation at the time. I’d imagine that had the Nazis not enacted a policy of absolute destruction in their wake that they may very well have won the war - I’m sure that many Soviet satellite countries being oppressed by Stalin’s regime would have joined forces with them. Instead Hitler ordered his men to exterminate everything in their way - it was a war of annihilation. I imagine it was also due to this that the Soviet people endured such food shortages as they saw the cruelty and imminent death invading their country. Must have been a horrible time to live.
Rye bread is excellent! Also bear in mind that outside of the 'bread backet' rye is one of the few grains that can be grown in the Russian climate.
It's funny. Rye used to be considered substandard, but now sourdough rye bread is considered a delicacy.
Man, you're stretching my brain-- it kinda hurts.
The Soviet economy wasn't that productive before the war, riddled with inefficiency and corruption. I recall one story I read where, lacking proper grain railway cars, local officials put a grain harvest on flatbed cars, which meant most of it had blown away by the time it reached its destination. It makes sense that the Soviets would struggle under Hitler's invasion.
The thing about programs like Lend-Lease is that they rarely are the sole factor in victory, or in keeping a country fighting. Their effects tend to be incremental rather wholesale. But, if you can reasonably feed 1 to 2 million more people with Lend-Lease than without it, that's not insignificant.
BTW, I have an ever increasing list of books I need to read thanks to your recommendations. Thanks.
Good video.
Heck yeah the death rates in Gulags was high. 90% didnt survive their first year, especially the winters.
Also, raw agricultural production is never classified by monetary value, it's done in a standardized yield unit. Tons of grain, gallons of milk etc. Do you ever read of a dairy farmer saying his cows produced $1M worth of milk? No, they produce X number of gallons of milk. From that we can determine how efficient / inefficient agricultural production is relative to another region or country.
I doubt that the soviet union could have collapsed anytime soon. They would have fought till the last person.
How would it be a union if it was the last person?
As I already said, I think on the long run Germans would won against Soviets if Americans didn't stepped in, especially after 1943. I don't think the Soviet counter-offensive in late 1942 help much in terms of supply, because Ukraine and the west of USSR were in ruins. Georgy Zhukov pretty much admitted they wouldn't survived without US help, which could be a reason why he was censored after the war.
Major battles which were won without lend-lease: Battle of Moscow, Battle of Stalingrad
Battles which were won together with first lend-lease shipments: Battle of Kursk, Battle of Leningrad
Soviets practically won the main battles of the war without any LL. LL kicked in when soviets blitzkrieged the Germans back to and in Berlin. The same way as Germans did when they surprise attacked SU in July 1941.
Care to elaborate how you came to that conclusion?
@@cccpredarmy Yes. When I say "Americans stepped in", I don't mean only on LL, which was crucial for Soviet survival, I mean on strengthening pressure on the Reich coming from the west. Huge German war effort after 1942 went on the west as well, which wasn't the case in 1941/42.
By 1943 German war machine wasn't in full swing. The height of German war production will happened during 1944 (take into account this was the year with the strongest strategic air campaign by the Western allies, and which wasn't possible without US Army Air Force), which was dramatic increase compared with 1941/42. In 1942 the Reich produced about 4 thousand tanks; in 1944 about 11 thousand. Soviets didn't significantly increase its own war production after 1942, saying the disparity (in which Soviets had massive advantage in 1942) will starts decreasing dramatically after the battle of Stalingrad, not other way around.
The overall population was on the Axis side.
In interwar period the Soviets collected grain for the Red Army. This probably had big effect for surviving 1941/42, but on the long run this would drain out.
The battle of Stalingrad was marked as a "turning point", the reason why is because at that time the Axis starts declining on all fronts, because the pressure starts coming from all sides. For example, during the last strategic operation, the Operation Citadel, the Western allies invaded Italy, established control over Atlantic, and British launched air operation over Hamburg which killed over 40 thousand people in a single operation.
The counter-offensive in late 1942 wouldn't be a decisive success. For example, during WWI the Brusilov offensive in 1916 had a huge success, but 1,5 year later the Russian empire collapsed.
In my opinion, if the West didn't send LL and didn't put a massive pressure on the West, the front on the East would probably stall during 1943/44, but, the Reich, unlike Soviets, didn't suffer major destruction, meaning Soviet production of weapon and grain wasn't sustainable on the long run, to keep war effort rolling.
The Reich not just keep its war effort rolling, but they increased production dramatically, with better tanks, better weapon, better planes.
No, the Soviets never blitzkrieged the Germans. It was a long, attritional bloodshed. They partly "blitzkrieged" the Germans during the Operation Bagration, which coincide with the landing in France.
@@stef1896 red army blitzkrieged germans constantly after Kursk. If didn't on one front then they did it on the other. Just follow the data of SU land gain after 1943.
Until very late preparation of Kursk SU didn't recieve ANYTHING significant from the LL.
LL made the soviet blitzkrieg faster and with less losses of manpower, no doubt in that.
Why do put so much significance on the Allies regains of a prior lost territories to the germans? I mean the germans already put a handful of their divisions in Africa like e.g. the soviets put their divisions to the far East borders to hold back Japanese.
In other words why do we never hear from the americans being thankful to the soviets to hold back another 600000+ japanese soldiers, which, if put on the Pacific Islabds would cause a shitton of problems to the USA battling the Japanese there.
The counting of soldiers on secondairy frontlines is useless imo. A country is always surounded by neighbors and has to put soldiers on the borders no matter what. Just for security reasons.
@@cccpredarmy But you don't understand how warfare functioning: Japanese couldn't supply neither soldiers they have in the Pacific. For example in Philippines' island, the Layte, Japanese soldiers lived on the land, eat roots and raised potato. How they would feed more soldiers? Not to mention Japanese navy was totally outgun from 1943.
Second, Eisenhower and Zukhov deeply respected each other, something which is alien for today's keyboard warriors, stuck in their stupid and useless identity politics. During Hungarian revolution, on request from foreign secretary to support Hungarians uprising, Eisenhower respond, "Soviets earn it with their blood."
The Reich wouldn't be defeated in 1945, nor in 1946 and probably neither in 1947 if allies, both from the East and the West, didn't combined their effort, unless US starts dropping atomic bombs on German cities, but we can agree that would be an awful solution.
And I will give you another stunning figures why Soviets would have problems with Germans without pressure from the West: during 1944 Soviets reach 7:1 ration on the sky at some portions of the front, total air superiority, but in 1944 the Reich produced 25 thousand fighters, more than 1940/41/42/43 combined; Soviets produced about 18 thousand fighters, but still had ratio massively on their side. Where these German fighters ends? Mostly destroyed by Western allies. In 1943/44 the Reich produced about 3 times more steel then the USSR. Where this steel end? Well huge chunk of this steel went on, for example, building submarines. Only with this steel the Reich could build about 30 thousand tanks.
All I'm trying to say is, the Axis were arguably stronger than the USSR, and without combined effort, the Reich would stood even in 1947. By that time, I think the USSR would collapse without Western assistants. Thinking that somehow the Red Army become magical force after the Battle of Stalingrad is rather naive.
This is the interesting minutiae that never gets talked about. The devil, or Stalin, is in the details.
I'd like to see how the angels of USA are going keep their economy strong when their major food producing land is occupied,all of their major industry is either destroyed or under bombardment and a lot of men had to be drafted to the frontline.
Van Tuz it will NEVER happen but if it did, I don’t think Americans today would have the stomach for any of it.
@@elbucho8867 Perhaps we're about to "cut our teeth". In WW2 it was North Africa. I'll let someone else make a remark based on current events.
www.pix11.com/news/local-news/nypd-city-hall-deny-police-brass-shake-up-talk
In other words: The Soviet Union almost lost by starvation
10:15 "-all [inflation] will do is flood into the capital goods industries"
Correction: Inflation will flood into those industries in which the new money is spent first. In a semi-capitalist economy with fractional reserve banking, that is the capital goods sector. In the Soviet economy, that would be wherever the commissars spend their fresh rubles.
i.e. food.
Hey, you mentioned lend lease, and the Soviet Union has stated it was helpful but not critical. Ok!
Can you make a video on two aspects of lend lease (or point me to them if you have already :
1. trucks, and lots of them. Soviets did not make many trucks?
2. timing. I read, goodness knows where, that 50 English tanks turned up at Moscow just in time for the last defence. Germans and Russians had a dozen or so left each, so 50 Brit tanks (of even indifferent qualities) would have made a difference.
Perhaps i am wrong, mistaken or just confused. It did seem that lend lease was like 50 hulls (four stack destroyers) arriving when every single one was critical.
thanks Ian
From what you're saying, the agricultural output was 44 percent of prewar by the end of 1942. And workers were half of prewar levels. This was probably due to the large number of civilians in occupied territory.
I recommend Stakhanovites--and Others: The Story of a Worker in the Soviet Union, 1939-1946 as an anecdotal evidence of the harshness of life in Soviet Union during the war. He had a story about working as a turner in Kazakhstan and he was always hungry, he won some worker award and spent all the money on food that made him sick and went back to being hungry
mentions dire straits *money for nothing, guitar solo starts playing*
Lend Lease was basically a precursor Marshall plan for the Soviets. The reason they ended up as a superpower by the end of the war and not just another devastated nation.
Being a superpower in 1945/46 had more to do with massive militaries & supporting industries/resources. In that sense, the Soviets deserve the credit for their superpower status....at an incredible cost, but they earned it.
In terms of being an economic & political superpower, they were far less imposing.
10:39
Peasants are starving
Lie down
Try not to cry
Cry a lot
How dare you Tik, rye bread is delicious!
Hey Tik great episode as always. I was wondering if you will eventually get to operation Bagration, I know its really late in the war and thus probably would not be covered for some time. Also do you know of any good books to read about this coming from somebody who is a beginner interested in WW2.
TIK, I often see you mention that talk between Molotov and Roosevelt. First time I heard you mentioning it you were skeptical about its authenticity. Now you call it a primary source. Soo, can you please state where we can find the source for this story? Aka a transcript of a conversation or something?
@The Colonel "There was no 'quid pro quo' !"
@The Colonel As I understand it It is not a secret Stalin wanted a second front and every thing the USA could produce and both right now even though the USA and Britain didn't have the ships. You may find this interesting.
Food and other strategic deliveries to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease Act, 1941-1945
histrf.ru/uploads/media/default/0001/12/df78d3da0fe55d965333035cd9d4ee2770550653.pdf
@@daarksideyt
There were many reasons why an invasion of France wasn't possible until 1944.
But you're right in suggesting that even if it had been possible it would have been a bad decision to proceed with it if the cost had been a decline in the ability of the Soviet Army to kill Germans.
Just a small thought in regards to all comments claiming that theory of economic collapse in 1942 is impossible:
In 90's Soviet Union collapsed just because of arms race with NATO, without war, casualties or destruction. In proces of self-salvation SU drained and destroyed economies of East Germany, Poland and Baltic republics. Economies od Albania and country formerly known as Yugoslavia become collateral damage as well. Us who lived at that time in east block can easily imagine how SU would look in 1942 without L&L program.
Great video, and great analysis - I really enjoyed watching this!
That said, just a few minor remarks:
- The low effectiveness of women workers engaged in farming is somewhat overstated. The pre-war Soviet Union went to great lenghths to introduce women to various jobs previously mostly dominated by men, and historically, Russian households would typically feed "off the earth" - backyards were (and in rural areas, are to this day) traditionally a place for growing food rather than lawnmoving, BBQ and fun pastime. On top of that, most of the farming was typically manual labor that could be easily mastered, and rarely required technically advanced skills, such as operating and maintaining machinery, etc. I would presume that this fact even has a minor role in how many people were involved in the farming industry at the time - a job for one person was oftentimes a job for three, due to lack of proper or advanced tools.
- Low worker motivation for due to collectivization is a nonfactor during that period - wars have always had a polarizing and unifying efect on populaton, magnified tenfold by the effective propaganda machine that existed at the time, as well as the sheer magnitude and homelandnature of the conflict. Furthermore, the majority of the population was ready to support the war effort even at the cost of enduring sever hardship. A great example here is the siege of Leningrad, where people were most literally starved to death, and on rare occasions some, sadly, went way beyond just eating cats and dogs.
- All of the calculation presented seem to stress that food production declined drastically by 1942/43 (almost half!), however it is worth mentioning that at the same time with loss of control over territory, as well as staggering losses in population (dead and captured soldiers/civilians), the food consumpton by population that was still under soviet control also declined significantly.
- GULAGs are hardly indicative of anything on the broader scale of the country-wide economy, as at times of war, especially one of the WW2 magnitude, they were hardly a high priority for the state. We may or may not agree with Soviet policies of the time (I'm not trying to justify neglect for human life, don't get me wrong), however the fact remains that people who ended up in GULAG were at the time considered as criminals, traitors, enemies of the state, etc.
If we assume that the soviet economy would have collapsed in 1943 if the germans held on to the terretories captured in case blue then the whole "there was no way that germany could win ww2" theory falls apart pretty quickly. However as you mentioned tik it is impossible to say if the the soviet economy would have collapsed. Great video as always!
Why, the germans would probably still lost the race to thd atomic bomb. The Manhattan project had a massive head start
Very good. People always want to discredit something to make themselves feel taller. Lend-Lease was NOT a waste. They had the trucks to follow up a German retreat when they needed. American Trucks.
Hitler's stand fast strategy in general now makes more sense! TIK this is one of your best vids so far! WELL BLOODY DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
For real, watching TIKs vids and lectures while also reading ww2 books and researching ww2 really shows you how much most people who act like they know about the second world war don't know shit.
the trucks alone made a difference,,,, the amount of materiel recived from lend lease was staggering
Thank you for bringing such a wonderful humanity to such a horrifying period of history. Really appreciate your channel.
Zhukov stated that lend lease was worth 70 soviet divisions. That is a fair pile of equipment, food, and raw materials
Why do you say rye bread is bad? It's just a staple in some countries and as nutritious. Good work as usual. You can make ersatz bread by introducing usually non-edible things like sawdust in the flour or certain ground roots etc. Maybe substandard refers to this.
Its because it is less caloric
I think the infamous "Not a step back" order by Stalin is what actually points to how dire the economic situation of the USSR was.
They were running of fumes and had colossal food shortages, the Communist party admitted it in their orders to the front and diplomatic correspondence.
Wrong. The "not a step back" order is not a dire call but a disciplinairy one in the first place. Imagine you're in the leading staff of a state which faces an overwhelming force. You have sleepless nights of constant work of planing and concentrating enough material on crucial areas on the frontline. You planed everything, checked all possibilities and prepared to the best you could. You wake up the next day and see that everything collapsed and the germans just went through. You now, hopelessly try to fogure out what caused it and see clearly that you actually really had enough aces to use against the enemy but soldiers simply ran from the battlefield in fear without using any of them... Imagine you have it multiple times in a row and germans now literally have one leg through the door of your home.
I guarantee you you'll crawl to the staff members above begging to initiate an order to get the soldiers to not leave their positions!
@The Colonel Utter BS.
Order #270 which you are referring to applied only to families of commanders and political officers who removed their insignia and surrendered or deserted.
Big Difference dont you think ??
@The Colonel I would say there is huge difference between losing a Commanding Officer and a Conscript soldier.
The reason why it was issued because of instances of commanding officers instead of organizing a defence were surrendering without a fight or abandoning their posts and running off to the rear (With insignia removed to blend in with the crowd).
P.S.
At least 2 of my great uncles were POWs and my family were not punished in any way that i'm aware of.
@The Colonel If it wasn't necessary it would not come into existence. It was issued for the same reasons Order 227 was, to keep morale and order in the Red Army from disintegrating.
The fact that molotov said to delay 2nd front they need the supplies NOW indicates to me that they was in a bad way and prone to fall if things had gone even slightly different.
Define “fall”
Very informative video, thank you. I have heard it before that it was difficult to calculate the price of a german tank compared to a soviet but I never really got a proper explanation as to why in terms of economic.
While I don't remember the source book, I remember a chart showing the #'s of combat aircraft and tanks in the Soviet Army on VE day. Both #'s were within a few points of the #'s supplied by the UK/USA via Lend Lease! So I magine that Lend Lease was absolutely vital to Soviet victory. The Red Army marched on US Leather, Rode in US Trucks, and lived on US food!!!
English Wikipedia address en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease#Repayment
The Lend-Lease policy, formally titled An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States
During the war the USSR provided an unknown number of shipments of rare minerals to the US Treasury as a form of cashless repayment of Lend-Lease. This was agreed upon before the signing of the first protocol on October 1, 1941, and extension of credit. Some of these shipments were intercepted by the Germans. In May 1942, HMS Edinburgh was sunk while carrying 4.5 tonnes of Soviet gold intended for the U.S. Treasury. This gold was salvaged in 1981 and 1986.[81] In June 1942, SS Port Nicholson was sunk en route from Halifax, Nova Scotia to New York, allegedly with Soviet platinum, gold, and diamonds aboard; the wreck was discovered in 2008.[82] However, none of this cargo has been salvaged, and no documentation of its treasure has been produced.[83]
@@КолтуновСерёга I know it wasn't a one way street. IMO the USA/UK would have supplied the USSR regardless! Why do I say that? Because the Western Allies were prepared to fight to the last Russian. 2/3's of all German troops lost were lost on the Eastern front! Imagine the additional US/UK casualties if we had had to kill those Germans! I'm not saying we would have quit but think how the World would be different if the War in Europe had continued into 1946. How different if it had been Berlin that was nuked.
@@ethanperks372 Not 2/3rds (67%), it was closer to 85%.
@@alexwood5425 Thank you! And of course the War in the East had a ferocity not seen in the West.
Even we Brits owe much to the USA, and the empire nations
Lend Lease saved them, it's amazing the communists would take supplies from the "Bourgeois" countries they used as an example of an enemy of capitalism at their borders.
By 1946 the real feelings the Soviet Union had came out, but it should have been no surprise. So much for being allies.
The Soviets allied with the most hardcore fascist state in history in 1939-41. Stalin always put pragmatism over ideology. That's why he won.
The weird thing is that according to the way you describe things it seems impossible that the USSR won
Not too impossible when you're subsidized by the biggest industrial economy on earth
That's a good point. The Russians lost SO much in '41. Yet even by 1942 the Germans never got close to Moscow. Their offensives didn't have the potential to end the war. The Russians just got stronger and stronger and stronger.
I'm wondering if the Germans ever had a chance?
@@jimuren2388 Lets not forget that Germany had an oil and food crisis of its own
@@AFGuidesHD to the gulag pro American capitalist. Russia stronk.
@KOBRA It helped, but I doubt that saved them. They crushed Germany after all, and not with western tanks
It seems to me that some see that pointing out the problems the USSR and its people faced as an attack on their contribution to defeating the Axis. In my view it only makes their achievements more extraordinary.
Yeah yeah... The song about how soviet people beated the best army on the planet despite of their incompetent leaders...
the tankers had enough fuel to keep warm and enough Montana caned beef to stay full were happy.... who can say that nowadays?
It's a testament to how ruthless the Soviets were, at the very least, that their people having food to eat was less important to them than being the ones to take Berlin for the sake of political bullshit.
Hmm, did I say something wrong?
I was talking about the people and their tenacity and bravery fighting the Axis, not about the oppressive regime they also had to endure.
@@uncleJan1 it is a little easier to continue the heroic charge... when you know there are political officers maning machine guns... just waiting for someone to turn around.that "oppressive regime" and the "bravery fighting" are not as separated as you espouse. 😎
Have you read
Deathride: Hitler vs. Stalin - The Eastern Front, 1941-1945
by John Mosier
There are two primary reasons the "economy" didn't collapse: primarily the Communist Party was acceptable as a ruling authority and compared to the Fascist invaders it was much preferred, and secondly the soviet citizens were defending their homeland. These are the bare bones. And by the end of 1942 the tide had turned in favour of the RKKA.
2500 calories for Soviet soldiers and farmers seems quite normal, until you realize the amount of physical labor involved (infantry soldiers had to walk).
Think about how during winter a soldier needs over 6000 calories a day to fight.
Substandard is a really nice way of saying it was thickened with wood shavings.
Neither the Russians, British or Americans could have defeated Germany alone. All three supported one another.
how do you propose america defeat germany without britain or russia?
bearing in mind that d-day launched from britain against a heavily worn down Wehrmacht nearly failed as it is.
yes there are a ridiculous amounts of variables in such simple statements lol. Though I guess with such simple statements we are perhaps saying Germany vs soviet union in 1939 with both soviet union and germany allowed to battle in polish territory ? xD
@@AFGuidesHD July 1945 USA tests first A bomb.
WWII cost the USA more than Britain, Canada and USSR combined including 21 Billion in free "Lend Lease" to British Empire and 11 Billion to USSR.
One has to be a fast klicker.
First! (and yes, you sure do)
@@TheImperatorKnight Haha, thanks for the heart.
who else is watching this while eating a nice meal?
Where can I find a source that says Molotov wanted lend lease to continue instead of opening a second front? I tried looking everywhere and couldn't find anything.
@TIKhistory source please
Now you begin to understand why they are still festivities on the 9 of may in russia, and why it's still a thing. Thanks for what you doing. In our dark days of lies, a ray of light of objectivity is to noticed and thanked.
this was a problem all over. I remember reading that civilians in France had to figure our if the calories in going to get some food in the countryside (where there was a small black market) would be more than the calories from the food they would purchase. Or even as modern scuba diving was being invented, diving and hunting down fish to spear, was found to expend more calories than could be recovered from the fish. The French citizen had to think before almost any action, as movement meant calories lost.
*Sees TIK notification*
*Clicks TIK...*
Meh. You get it by now. :P
It's a good habit to have :)
The agricultural sector of Germany wasn't really mechanised either. Most farmers relied on horses, while tractors didn't became the standard until the 1950's. I think the reason for the low productivity of the soviet agricultural sector is the collectivisation and the overall totalitarian structure of stalinist society and economy. (See: Stalin biography by D. Volkogonov)
Excellent segment! Thank you TIK for sharing the uncomfortable evidence re: the tragic & disturbing conditions in the unoccupied parts of the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1943.
I am no pro-Communist or pro-Stalin fanboy, but I do want to point out that (IMHO) the unimaginable suffering & sacrifice of the Soviet people during WWII probably goes a long way towards explaining the very secretive, ultra-cautious, and even paranoid political posture of the Kremlin throughout the Cold War & beyond. Yes, some of this was politically motivated posturing, however I will suggest that the roots of the secretive & mistrusting face of the U.S.S.R. extended down to the millions of Soviet peasants during the post-war period. I would think that its fair to suggest that not one Soviet man, woman, or child would have escaped directly or indirectly experiencing some of the horrific impacts brought on by Nazi aggression. I doubt that there are many individuals of Russian, Ukrainian descent today who don't have at least one ancestor who died during the Great Patriotic War, either in combat, as victims of Nazi bombing or executions, or because of malnutrition & disease. I am sure that if I had been in their shoes, the western baby boomers' mantra of "Trust No-one" would have have been mine as well, both in terms of domestic politics (thanks to Stalin's brutal dictatorship) & in-terms of foreign relations. Yes, having a culture of fear also worked in the Kremlin's favour, but IMHO the events of 1941 to 1945 could be considered the primary source of the political 'personality' (*) of all Soviets, from the farmers & industrial workers, all the way up to (and including) the Kremlin.
(*) Russians & Ukrainians are very friendly, outgoing, and generous peoples. I am referring only to their 'political personas', if that makes sense.
I was lucky enough to have a chance to listen to some personal accounts of the hardships the older generation of my family experienced during the first years of the war. At one point the evacuated to the Urals family survived on worms infested malt the babooshka accidently found near a kvas factory. At the same time there was an interesting class difference. Cities starved, but old traditional sussistence economy countryside somehow survived, being used to endless wars, it was even common to leave your children with relatives in the country, at least they have some food.
Russia deserves an apology from the world. What a tragic fate for a country which had so much potential. Imagine if WW1, WW2, Soviet union had never happened. Russia would have probably held on the "republics" and have a population of at least 400 million .
I think, that there are first hand estimations of the Reich's Military Espionage /Fremde Heere Ost/, which provides an assumption to the food question in 1942-1943 as well.
They noted, in their two 1930s foreign economic reports (not a FHO report) and the last one just prior Barbarossa, that the Food production is heavily reliant on mechanization (labor resources were moved to the industry), i.e. Oil, while per-hectare output still lagged behind thus of the Third Reichs, by a factor of at least 2. So, holding the Ukraine (concentration of Grain production) + minimizing Oil deliveries (which was a fact in 1942) due to hold on to Northern Caucasus and Volga should result at least in an food delivery collapse, before the remaining economy fails. I think that Glanz has mentioned such thoughts too in his books.
Collectivation of farms has alot of initial downsides too it. Take Zimbabwe in recent time as an example, which is quite similar to some of the issues seen in the Soviet union. It is more complex than this, but basically you take land from productive landowners, who spend generations expanding and developing their farms to be as productive as possible. Then you distribute it out to alot of people, some of which have no experience running a farm at all. This creates a huge drop in production output, since the experienced farmers now have limited options in terms of production.
Not close at all. This doesn't mean the Soviet people were not literally being exterminated by war and starvation. But Stalin had a lock on all his internal enemies since at least 1937 and they were alllllll dead or in the camps.
I know Stalin thought about evacuating Moscow and sent his staff out.
But the grand moustache didn't budge.
Well yeah. The likelyhood of an actual political change was pretty unlikely. But that's not to say that USSR wasn't on the brink of being severely neutered in it's ability to wage offensive war if it lost the Caucassus.
had the Caucasus fallen the Anglo-Americans would have doubled down on lend lease. Moscow and even Leningrad were not occupied. If necessary the Anglo-American might even have sent soldiers to Murmansk like they did in the first world war.
@@Blazo_Djurovic yeah but the anglo americans would absolutely have doubled down on lend lease and maybe even sent soldiers to the arctic. EVERY attempt by the NS regime to conclude a separate peace or to rope the anglos into a war against the USSR failed and failed again. XAXAXA! cmepm. X_X
It’s funny how on one hand, the 1937 purges were unequivocally terrible, yet on the other hand, there’s and argument to be made they saved the world from Nazism in a roundabout way.
You need to reread Churchill. Even if the USSR were completely occupied and the slavs entirely exterminated and enslaved the war would continue and the nazis would have lost.
One of my favorite channels on RUclips ever, thanks a lot!
I know this one, as many other videos on the topic, are few years old, but I hope in 2024 TIK already knows no one says “THE Ukraine”. You don’t say “the England”, right?
4,478,116 tons of food to the Soviet Union from the USA. Nincompoops: "That's not that much!" Me: "Yes, it is a lot." It was all concentrated, dehydrated, and canned food. Meaning, that each ton of food had a lot more calories than a ton of fresh food. You can fit a hellavalot more instant potatoes and powdered milk in one ton than if you use whole potatoes. Get it? Starting to understand just how valuable the food aid was? Yeah, and because it was dehydrated, concentrated, and canned, it didn't need refrigeration and could be in the distribution system for quite some time without worrying about spoilage. And of course, lets not mention the 1,911 steam locomotive and 9,920 flat cars sent to the Soviet Union to transport it from the ports to the population. So to all those who say, "the Soviet Union beat the Germans all by themselves.", suck on the facts.
That's a lot of food and other stuff. I assume it was much needed and greatly appreciated. I'm sure those were tough times having been attacked shortly after multiple social upheavals.
I'm not sure throwing resources at someone in need means that you get a slice of the glory. I mean, nobody tries to diminish the involvement of the U.K. They relied on the Lend/Lease program and lost far fewer people than the U.S.S.R.
Does France get to claim some glory from the American revolution since they sent resources to the U.S.?
It seems like the Soviets defeated the German army alone. There were no other armies in Stalingrad. There were no other armies chasing the Germans out of Eastern Europe. Yeah, they had help but no one else was doing the dieing. While they really did bear the full force of the German army and survive, by themselves.
Please don't take this as an apology for Communism.
Let's suck on the facts together and give those people a little bit of credit.
@@notsure7939 I wish I could be gracious about your comment, because I'm used to people instantly launching into personal attacks if they read something they don't like. And of course, you were respectful and courteous. Unfortunately, I find your comment absolutely ridiculous. You've made so many false equivalencies and logical fallacies that I hardly know where to begin. Firstly, my point about the food aid was to support TIK's idea that the SU was close to economic collapse, and my claim that Lend Lease prevented it. I have long held that view and I am tired of the very partisan and deliberate characterization of America's aid to the SU as being inconsequential. Which is exactly what you are arguing. The other reason I made the post is to poke a finger in the eye of the biased ideologues who refuse to acknowledge the facts and their implications.Your characterization of US aid as "throwing resources at someone" is fallacious and scornful. Speaking of robbing someone of their glory, right? So the US deserves no credit? Not to mention that is a - deliberate - misrepresentation of what US aid the Russia was about. I think it's clear that you're biased and trying to drag this into personal politics because it is you who don't want to give credit where it's due. The idea that the SU would have been able to continue fighting without the mountain of war material and aid given to the SU is ludicrous in my opinion. I believe I can make a cogent argument for that belief, but I won't be making it with you. I'd be wasting my breath. Oh, and your damned right the French deserve credit. No one who knows anything about the American revolution would dispute that French aid was critical and that without it, the surrender of Cornwallis in Virginia would have been impossible.
@@juliancate7089 you make good points. Perhaps I downplayed the value of the aid. I suppose the point I'm trying to make is that, to my knowledge, France isn't interested in making sure everyone knows that they contributed to the revolution because citizens of the U.S. did the fighting and dieing. Think of the amount of wars the U.S. has funded in one way or another. Do they want credit for the various South American wars that they put money and resources toward?
It's very likely that without assistance from the U.S., the S.U. and possibly even the U.K. (to a much lesser extent) would not have survived. But none of the aid would have mattered if the S.U. hadn't been able to field millions of soldiers. Therefore I feel they deserve a little credit and just like most laymen in the U.S. they deserve to feel like they defeated their enemy.
I mean you no disrespect. Please assume that my beliefs are at least as complicated as your own and I have no desire to insult.
@@notsure7939 You are offering a false choice that if I say American aid made the difference for the SU during the war and especially at specific moments, that therefore I am taking credit away from the Russian soldiers. The answer is that it is both. it was a combination of aid and guts. So, please point to any post I have made on this thread or at anytime on this forum where I have said that Russian soldiers deserve no recognition. You keep trying to move the point onto these false equivalencies and emotional arguments. The real point is economics. No one has suggested that the Russians didn't fight. Again, anyone who knows anything about the war knows that the Russians put up valiant efforts, but to turn a phrase back on you, it doesn't matter how many soldiers you have if they're all starving to death. No insult taken. I never thought you were trying to be deliberately insulting. Hyperbolic and ideological, but not insulting.
@@juliancate7089 in your first post in this thread, you ended your post by saying that the S.U. cannot claim that they defeated the Germans alone. I am arguing that they can. Your argument to that is that the U.S. contributed so much that S.U. would surely have lost without it. I don't disagree with that, but you seem to feel like the U.S. isn't getting enough credit for that aid. My argument is that nobody else does that. Countries fund wars all the time and when history looks at that war the people who actually fought are the ones who get the credit. Sure the sources of funding might get an honorable mention but history will refer to that war as a war between the sides that fought and died. Why is the war involving S.U. and Germany different?
Contributing aid doesn't make you part of the war otherwise the American revolution would have involved England, the colonies and France. We all know France didn't fight so we don't consider them involved in the war. They were not combatants.
Can you give me examples of non combatant countries that history considers part of a war because they contributed supplies?
Ok, I am Russian, and here are my comments on this. 1) There was a major lack of food in 1942 because we lost Ukraine- our primary bread basket. However, our people soon adapted to that dire situation by making adhoc farms everywhere possible, planting rye instead of wheat, and other such substitutes. This is like planting potatoes everywhere around your country-house instead of flowers and greenhouse vegetables. 2) Yes, our people subsisted on a survival minima, but they endured never the less. This situation is when Stalin mobilization economy was at its best! 3) Your numbers of 5.5 million gulag inmates in 1941 alone are grossly exaggerated. As far as I know, there were 3.5 million gulag inmates total from 1930 to 1953.
If nobody else says it, thank you for your important point of view.
The Soviet Union was dependent on the US for food
@TIK
1) Have you read Trotksy's book "The Revolution Betrayed"? A good portion of it goes about the Soviet economy in the 30'ies, so it gives some ideas of what the state of the USSR was when Germany pounded on it in 1941. I believe you could find this book interesting.
2a) Farmer's low productivity in Russia is also historical. In Western Europe, farmers learned to generate a superior amount of food for buying markets in the cities. In Russia, this started a lot later. In 1914, about 85% of the Russians lived in the countryside, nearly all food-producers, the highest percentage of all the major powers in WW1. Post-WW1, in the 20ies, Russian farmers also had less access to investment capital (for buying tractors and the like), reducing productivity as well.
2b) The forced collectivization and the reduced incentive to produce played a role, certainly, but there is more to it. There is a historical debt too. That is what I am trying to say.
3) There existed a large black market with prices more reflective of the real market prices. However, these weren't officially recorded.
4) Have you tried to make a comparison with WW1? Russia's economy was under lot of strain then too. Huge refugees swelled the cities leading to enormous housing problems and food shortages in those cities. Yet there was not great revolution in WW2 like there was in WW1. Don't forget the February Revolution was the workers in Petrograd going on strike and onto the streets, and after 5 days the Petrograd garrisons joined the workers. There was some fighting in Moscow. But the most pertinent to me is that the rest of the country accepted the overthrowing of the monarchy. Wether the other cities, the villages or the front: no one felt inclined to go out and fight for the Tsar's continued rule. This low had the authority of the Tsar fallen. I have the feeling it is totally different with Stalin and the USSR in WW2. I don't have the impression that a similar revolt in one large city would have led to a similar collapse of the whole system. What is your view on this, TIK?
5) Great Vid TIK! This was an excellent vid of the Soviet Economy in 1942-1943.
Ukrainians welcomed germans till those started to kill people. Also Caucas people sided with Germany. Stalin sent Chechens in Gulag for this. It was some defetism in soviet side. But Stalin know how to handle revolution, and nazi behavior to kill or enslave what is non arian, didn't help either
Lewis at 16:20 says the number of USSR agricultural workers dropped from 50 million to 25 million. At the same time the USA only had 11 million agricultural workers but were feeding much of the world. Were the US agricultural workers that much more productive? Yes!