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The trucks and jeeps sent as lend lease represented roughly 1/3 of the USSR's military wheeled vehicles. How many of those trucks were turned into rocket launchers? It was key.
Would love for you to compear the Soviet lend-lease to that of the UK from my understanding the UK recived 2x what Russia did, yet it wasn't even half the size of the Russian armed force's. As an example of the top of my head Russia about 11,000 tanks over half were America made the rest were Canadian and brittish built. The UK recived about 22,000 tanks from America. Russia almost 20,000 aircraft yet the UK recived about 40,000 aircraft. And then again with jeeps and half tracks. If the Russians recived 12 to 15% of there ww2 needs from Lend-lease then wouldn't the UK be near 30% to 40% as it was a lot smaller? I know somthing like 70% of British grain, Fats and maybe soap for the top of my head and many other thing's were sent from Canada to the UK. But a lot of people seam to have the idear the UK was self sufficient and out produced Germany in everything.
Add to that that american arms production had been revived in the 1930's when Britain and France purchased as much equipment as they could to rebuild their military on the run up to WW2.
From an historiographical point of view, it is important to remember the pressing need for academics to say something new... we will likely swing to and fro on this issue, like so many others, many times over the next 50 years.
@@sheboyganshovel5920 don't get me wrong, I am not trying to discredit legitimate research, but there is a long way to go on this issue. Far too many variables and not enough information widely avaiable in English sadly...
There is a cliche in academia "Publish or Perish" ... because of which there are entire academic journals whose prime function is - to give academics a place they can be published. The only people who - might - read those journals are - other academics if anyone. Then there are those guys out to sell their book. Of course - they have to make out like they've made all these revelations that no one else before has done before. .
I think you have a good point on economy balance. Soviets specifically ordered equipment and materials they could not produce much like aluminium, high octane fuel or explosives, also radios and electronics, while refusing to take other equipment like some tanks or planes because they could simply do it better using available facilities. Also, lendlease locomotives and wagons allowed USSR to mobilize locomotive plants to produce tanks and other needed equipment.
@@nottoday3817 That is not a real problem for the manufacturers of locomotives considering that Locomotives form the US were shipped to other nations before the war, that used different rail gauge, they would build to what the customer wanted.
Lend -Lease was a function of the Soviet war effort. Lend-Lease made it possible for the Soviets to request all the things that they didn't make or made only at high costs: High quality aircraft fuel, trucks, spam(!), foodstuffs, boots etc. Lots of "soft" stuff. Lend-lease was worth far more to Soviets than normally recognized because Lend-Lease covered for the Soviets on their weak spots. And they were many.
@@simplicius11 You are stating the obvious that the majority of Lend-lease arrived in the last two years. There is a long way from Kursk to Berlin though without lend-lease. And without Lend-lease to the Soviets US and Britain will much more stuff. That changes the equation too. Something like 30 % of US lend-lease was shipped to the Soviet Union before Kursk according to wikipedia. That is hardly insignificant.
@R Hopzing No. I was only talking about Lend-Lease to the Soviets. The Soviet Union was lashed unto the existing Lend-Lease programme with Britain after June 22 1941.
I'm not a soldier, nor a scholar, nor a historian, but I am a gamer. I can tell you then when teams are evenly powerful, both sides tend to lose forces evenly. But if one team is weaker, it becomes an avalanche. A small advantage turns into a moderate advantage, and that turns into a large advantage, and that turns into an insurmountable advantage. It's best to identify disparities in force strength early and try to do something about it ASAP. In online matches I've played, the first side to lose a single player tends to be the one that loses. If the Soviets fielded 15% fewer planes, that means there will be some battles where they are outnumbered. When a force is outnumbered, they will take more losses. If they go flying again the next day, they are starting in a relatively worse state than the day before, so they'll take even more losses. Eventually the side that outnumbered their enemy will dominate the sky. Suddenly the ground battle swings heavily in that side's favor because they have air superiority, allowing them to perform recon, bombing, resupply, rescue, and paratrooper missions without much risk. This is to say nothing for the higher quality fuel that the Soviet planes and vehicles would be missing, or the ammunition that would be more scarce, or the hunger that would weaken and distract some of them. Basically, even if the USA and Britain only increased Russia's military material by 10%-15%, that still might have been enough to allow German aggression to snowball out of control.
@@konstantinkelekhsaev302 Of course it did. War production on all sides was highest in 44 and 45. You could twist that fact to also read this way: "Since Soviet production was much lower in 1942 and 1943 than 44 and 45, they needed the Lend Lease much more." But they said in the video that a significant amount of material was already coming in 42 and 43. We were also supplying the Chinese, just as Russia and even Germany had been earlier on. Thanks to many factors, China did not fall. If it had, Japan may have broken its white peace with Russia and attacked from the other direction. Although mainland Japan is a small country, they still fielded millions of troops. And if they had been able to recruit from the Chinese population, things might have gotten pretty bad. Or maybe they would have focused on India afterward instead. Who knows?
Very true. I play Company of Heroes 2 and Age of Empires II DE. In both games I tend to play team games. Whenever I lose a match, I always go back and watch the replay to understand exactly how and why we lost. In 99.99% of cases, what I find is that one or more players on my team were hopelessly incompetent (sometimes this is immediately obvious from the post-game kills/losses screens). Essentially, their failure to hold their part of the front has a cascading effect, spilling over into failure on the next player, and eventually I'm forced to pull back my forces from the front (where I was winning), and transfer my units to defence on the other side of the map, where my ally is getting absolutely steamrolled. Eventually, the game evolves into a 4v2 situation, where all four enemy players are pushing forward but due to the utter failure of one or more of the players on my team, I'm now fighting a two front war against unfavourable odds. Eventually, the enemy advantage becomes so large it's insurmountable, and no matter how skillfully I manage my units, it becomes irrelevant because of the failure of other players on my team to pull their weight. This happens so frequently, I can understand why a lot of people would simply refuse to play these games using the automatch, but instead only play with their Steam friends who they know are competent. Automatch pretty much guarantees the situation I described above, about 50% of the games I play. The other 50%, I'm able to use my superior skill to actually win the game, even many times against overwhelming odds. A lot of times I look back at the replay and realise that I won the game by successfully fighting even though I was being 2v1ed the entire game, I still managed to win in my sector, allowing the other weaker players on my team to basically fight 3v2 on the other side of the map and win. It's ridiculous. Anyway relevance of this to lend lease: Yes, absolutely, I agree with your point.
This analogy is limited. Most video games must be transparent and responsive in feedback, so it's far easier to assess advantage than a real life theater of war. So while I agree overall, the fog of war extends out the time axis by potentially orders of magnitude.
One thing that most people fail to take in to account is the strategic value of Lend lease ( beyond just the raw numbers- which can be interpreted in 40 different ways) and this is specifically true for 1942- lend lease thru the Persian corrider was a vital life line for soviet troops fighting in the caucasus ( remember these guys were cut off during the first 2 phrases of case blue) not only did they keep the germans away from Baku ( 70% of soviet oil supply) they're resistance helped to overstretch the germans at critical point of the war and thus helped to set the stage for the success of operation Uranus.
It's simple, really, lend-lease had a compounding effect: troop morale, more liberty to focus on total war production, better logistics. Knowing that your children have something to eat while you fight with your allies across the globe keeps a soldier motivated. It also helps if you can actually get to the enemy, because you have trucks to do so.
from "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 After Stalingrad, the Nazis systematically destroyed the Soviet railroad tracks, transport equipment, locomotives. The products of Soviet enterprises could not make up for the resulting loss. By November 1944, we provided the USSR with 1,045 locomotives, 7,164 wagons, 1,000 loading platforms and 100 tanks. The number of supplies peaked in November 1944: only during this month we delivered 1,367 cars to the USSR. The problem of replacing rails was one of the major. By November 1944, the USSR was supplied with 2,120,000 tons of steel, of which 478,000 tons were allocated for rails replacement, and 110,000 tons of railway wheels and axles.
The Spitfire not so much, ironically. Then again, the Soviets tended to operate under harsher conditions than the Spitfire was likely meant to operate under. I've also heard that the tankers who were given Shermans actually quite liked them.
@@stanklepoot And they got brand new aircobras, but they got worn out spitfires (Logically given that brand new spitfires could not be spared even for the RAF units outside ETO until quite late in the war)
@@stanklepoot spitfires are high and mid altitude fighter, and soviets were given mark vi, long wing high altitude version. Of course they liked low altitude cobras much better
All comes down to how you use it. The US and UK generally operated at high altitudes, where the P-39 wasn't as helpful. While it could operate at lower altitudes, the airspace had to be secured. Once done, aircraft like Hurricanes, Typhoons, or Thunderbolts equipped with bombs and rockets worked just fine due to the terrain and targets (among other factors). Further, concentrated AA was sometimes a problem, so the faster a plane could get in and get out the better. But for the USSR, they generally operated at lower altitudes, and due to the size of the front air supremacy was not feasible, local air superiority for the period of time needed was good enough. Further, AA could not be as concentrated, so more time on target was useful.
I think even more important is his second thought about compounding. It’s like, sure we were able to supply 5 more men with food out of 1000. So instead of 995, we could start battle with 1000. But it also means that, enemy had higher casualties, because instead of 995 defenders, they faced 1000. So in the next battle, Germans put 995 people, because they lost 5 more previously. And Russians put 1010 because they have 5 more from previous battle, 5 more less killed by Germans since they faced stronger defenders, and new food supply came to defenders, so yet another 5 Russians didn’t starve to death. So we are heading to third battle. Where Germans put 980 soldiers, because previously they lost more soldiers than they would without that change, and faced more soldiers than without that change, and same goes for defenders with 1030 soldiers. What would be 1000 to 1000 fight to deplete resources on both sides, became tipping point to one side, until one collapsed. With each battle having more and more, and enemy having less and less.
@@stafer3 maybe in hand to hand combat, but battles at the more modern levels tend to be more one sided based on a number of factors. Although youre not wrong, in a war you basically dwindle down the enemies resources..
@@ElMayo31 Sure, it was example with random numbers from me just to show concept. I didn’t want to make it more realistic because I thought people would focus on specifics instead of the point. There would be battling between “we would win anyways” and “see, we saved your assess” camps instead. And it’s kind of hard to guess outcomes based on these changes. I mean maybe soldiers who would be saved from starvation would just step on mine and blow up not changing anything. Or they could be instrumental in changing course of whole campaign. So I went with inoffensive compounding of -5 +5.
Really? To be the devil's advocate here: Because he was the leader, he had all the facts to the point where he could have accurately foreseen alternative strands of history?
@@DagarCoH No because of the Psychological pressure and Paranoia could have lead to depression and the fact that Russians drank like fish could lead to a "weak" moment where Stalin would admit such.
@@simplicius11 As frequently mentioned on this channel, all sources have their place. One definately has be be careful with memoirs, but they do illustrate very important points. Even secondary sources written many years later have their value. It is all in the putting it together.
Trucks food and fuel were important to lend lease. The German logistics made it harder to resupply troops in the field. The Russians could resupply faster and before the Germans could replace losses. The Germans could only mount delaying actions and minor counter offensives.
Food, clothes, medicine, wires, explosives, etc. The Soviets have lost their agricultural land, they had no civilian economy, everyone was either on the front, or working to produce military equipment. The army would have starved without Spam, and the economy would have collapsed without the materials the Americans sent.
Without the food and trucks they would simply starve. Most of the farmland was occupied by Germany and even before war there were food shortages. Anyone saying otherwise has to have a massive bias. It seems to be the rage today to think soviet victory was inevitable but when you look on a map and see what was occupied and realize what areas are farmable it is obvious there was no way to fight on.
@Вук Тодић You harvest food once a year, so there is no need for aid at all until at least late 1942 you already have enough stored from before. And millions of people did starve to death. If it got any worse they would have to turn to cannibalism, and some reports say they did in isolated instances. They also didn't have any boots for their new recruits without US aid. That was the first thing they sent and sent them in the millions. You can guess how well the winter fighting would go without that. Stalin also sent about 5 million to die around moscow-rhzev area in winter of 1941, would not be surprised if it were to decrease supply needs.
My Grandpa told me that when Soviets walked into his town in 1945 all of the trucks were american GM trucks and every can of food he found had iscription "Made in USA". He said, from what he have seen then, in his opinion maybe Soviets produced enough of T-34's to overwhelm the Germans but without Land Lease they would all just starve to death.
@@AlexanderSeven to be honest after the colectivisation Russia have became food importer instead of exporter and after a great hunger I highly doubt if USSR could feed itself, especially knowing that in 1941 after initial attack situation with food was dramatic, far worse than with tanks which production you can move behind Ural but grain will not raise in matter of few weeks and in such a climat
Long story short, cold war made both sides over and under emphasize it's role. Long story long; lend lease did not keep the USSR from losing the war or stopped it from winning. The amount's provided in 1941 to 1942 did not turn the tides of battle. However post mid 1943 to 1945 onward the Red Army would not have been as successful without it. Millions more would have died and the war would have dragged on until 1946 with Germany getting nuked first. Keep in mind that US and British forces would have also suffered higher casualties as a slower and more methodical Soviet advance would have freed up more Wehrmacht mobile formations to face allied landings in Italy and France.
In battle of Moscow in 1941 big part of tanks used in offensive by Soviets were british Matilda and Churchill. The same situation was in 1942. LL provide much help in 1941 and 1942. Not that much like in 1944-45, but crucial numbers for soviet surviving in 1941. That was a important for Red Army strike capibility.
@@horatio8213 About 8% of the overall tank fleet and 15% of the medium tanks available. But the soviets didn't use tanks effectively during the battle of Moscow or the early stages of Stalingrad. And in many ways they couldn't due to the weather. Despite the myth of Russian equipment being cold proof. It was plain old infantry that achieved the majority of the breakthroughs in both battles. This was cited as such by German Army leadership.
@@robertalaverdov8147 In case of tanks you should remeber that in this time most soviet tanks were ligth models. In this case even Churchill and Matilda were quite good. It is typical that in soviet sources British help was dissmised.
@@horatio8213 I'm not disputing the number of tanks provided, in fact I gave the breakdown. And they weren't bad tanks, guns were mediocre but they had decent armor and most came with radios. I just think people grip too firmly the idea of tanks being the only thing that won ww2 battles. If you look at casualties, you'll come to realize that ww2 was actually very similar to ww1. Roughly 70% of casualties in WW2 were from artillery, they were 80% in ww1. What the soviets produced in absolute butt loads that was most effective against the Germans was artillery. Because contrary to propaganda footage the vast majority of the German army was made up of infantry. German artillery was actually better in many ways but in typical German fashion they didn't produce enough of them because each piece was an art project or something.
This is an old video, so I'm a bit late. ;) Perhaps the best take on this difficult historical debate is to look at how much GDP the US transferred to the Soviet Union. It was roughly 2-3 % per year, being USA the biggest economy in 1939 in the world already (roughly 3x times bigger than both Germany or Soviet Union, by the way). So, an annual US 3% translates roughly to Soviet +10 % GDP, right? This is a lot, especially when your industry gets crushed and needs 1-2 years to recover. As we all know from 2020, where a GDP loss of 5 % results in millions of unemployed, this is a bigger issue than it seems.The concept of GDP is known since the 17th century. We know that the Russian GDP decreased in 1942 by 25-35 %. We also know that the total tonnage and net worth of the Lend-Lease deliveries to Russia increased even in 1945, so the Soviet Union was until the very last day dependent on it. But here comes the biggest issue: Stalin refused to publicly acknowledge and admit Lend-Lease, or its large extent at least. After 1945, he even ignored American requests for repayment, which eventually led to a staggering legal debate that was solved in the 1970s. Until today most Russians do not know much about Lend-Lease, by the way. I think that it was Yeltsin who was the first Russian president or first secretary who finally admitted that is has some bigger role for the Soviet Union during WW2. This is important as Putin himself refuses year after year, latest a few months ago, to acknowledge even any collaborations between Hitler and Stalin. It means, for some reason Putin actively supports Stalin and orthodox Soviet historical positions on WW2 for 20 years. So, overall, I think that if you are anti-Western or anti-American in some way, you will likely jump on the Soviet and Stalin train. Because for Stalin during the Cold War the importance of the Lend-Lease for the Soviet Union, the archenemy of the USA, was way beyond bad PR. It would mean that capitalism saved the Stalin communism. And, if we look at the numbers of Lend-Lease that was delivered to the Soviet Union, the equipment numbers alone are insane. A quote from Wikipedia: "over 400,000 jeeps and trucks; 12,000 armored vehicles (including 7,000 tanks, about 1,386[55] of which were M3 Lees and 4,102 M4 Shermans);[56] 11,400 aircraft (4,719 of which were Bell P-39 Airacobras)". Especially the trucks are important, as those were important for Katushyas exist, but more importantly to why the Russian logistics was ahead of the Germans because this delivery alone was roughly what the Wehrmacht had at hand at the beginning of Barbarossa, if I recall it correctly (I would need to check that), with rubber supply problems that could not be replaced even with the biggest success in Russia -- and here the Soviets got it for free from the Americans. As one history professor of mine put it once: Lend-Lease is the single biggest underestimation of Hitler, and his biggest miscalculation. It was understandable that in the same way the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 was unthinkable and a shock to the world public (Nazis vs Stalinists), Hitler fell for the same ideological misjudgment regarding the USA, believing that the US would never support the communist and Stalinist Soviet Union at such large scale, or at all, and that he would have been able to conquer the Soviet Union eventually. And this is the success of Lend-Lease: That it gave the Soviet Union time to breath and recover, much like any other major economical program, say, the Greece recovery program a few years ago, or the Marshall-Plan in the years after 1945. It's easy to underestimate such programs.
The most beautiful, well-thought out comment I’ve ever read. Wow, wish there was a way I could copy this comment so I can use it in some future debate, it’s perfect!🤯
judging from memoires of both sides I'd say for guys on the ground the most important factors were food, medicine, trucks, tanks, half tracks, jeeps, then radios, aircraft, especially transport aircraft, and trains. Because all that is how YOU get around, how long you can fight and what helps you fight. For the higher ups I'd guess the most important was food, oil, steel, rubber, chemicals, radios and then all that other stuff.
Christ try even discussing Lend-Lease with a Red Army fan boy on a discussion thread. LOOK it was TRUCKS. The Soviets were only able to produce enough trucks to match their losses and sustain their original degree of motorization. The addition of just shy of 950k American trucks provided them with OPERATIONAL mobility they lacked prior to mid-late 43. Von Manstein and others became used to waiting for Red Army attacks to spend themselves and then counter-attack with limited German resources. The massive input of the trucks meant there WAS NO PAUSE. The Soviets were finally able to execute their "Deep Battle" concept. The other important tactical resource provided was over a million miles of copper phone lines, switch boards and handsets. Gen Gehlen who headed German East Front intelligence was limited to radio intercept which the Red Army exploited ruthlessly. If the Germans heard it.. it was a lie. The Soviets were using hard lines we provided. Aluminum for engines was just as important. Well over half of ALL aluminum the Soviets used after mid-43 came from Lend Lease. Without American Lend Lease they MIGHT have hung on.. But it would have been American and Allied troops in Berlin at the end.. NOT Red Army. Edit: Apparently the source I used for the number of trucks took the total of ALL Lend Lease vehicle exports and attributed them to Russia. The actual number, sources vary, seem to be around 400k +\- 15k which essentially doubled total Soviet war production. Because of losses however.. By late 43 roughly 35-40% of Soviet tactical logistics rolled on American wheels. By mid 44 that number would top 50% and by wars end 60%+. As an aside by mid 44 wherever they were built they were rolling on American rubber with American belts and hoses. All carried by the way, on American built ships and railed to the front with help from over 400+ locomotives built to Russian gauge and if NOT actually on one of the 1500 or so American flat cars sent for the purpose.. Almost certainly rolling on one of the 100s of thousands of railwheels cast and shipped as well. My basic point however STANDS. Without the operational mobility provided by American logistical transport Red Army deep penetration offensives like Bagration would have been impossible.The eventual defeat of the Wehrmacht was inevitable; without Lend Lease it would have taken FAR longer and at FAR greater cost. A cost that by 1944 the Red Army could ill afford.
We trade material, they trade their lives. If the Soviets were exhausted and stop their advance. We will be entering Berlin with millions of loses instead, hell the German could put most of their effort fighting us instead of the Soviets when the Soviet felt is not worth it. Think about it, if we didn't support the Soviets, they would not willing to fight for us. Yes those times the Soviets is fighting for us. The Cold War is not in effect yet, defeating Germany is our priority, and letting the Soviets fighting alone definitely not a good idea. Using Cold War mentality was a reason why the Soviets were portrayed as evil, tyrannical yet weak and incapable. Two doesn't add up when they were fighting against German war of destruction.
The problem is when the Freeaboos come out of the woodworks to try and argue why the Soviet Union would've been steamrolled by Germany without Lend Lease. Of course they are completely unaware that Lend Lease to the SU was barely existing when they pushed Germany back before Moscow, was a minuscule factor when they won at Stalingrad and still negligible when they completely stopped them at Kursk.
@@Tepid24 EXCEPT.. Over half the medium tanks used in the Soviet counter offensive in front of Moscow were BRITISH. Were they as effective as the 200 or so T-34s?? No, but to quote a certain Soviet mass murderer "Quantity has a quality of it;s own." Spare us the "Noble Great Patriotic War" BS. In 39 Stalin gobbled up 1/3 of Poland and ALL of Estonia, Latvia and 1/2 of Lithuania. In 1940 they attacked Finland and grabbed Bessobarabia from the Rumanians.. ALL while providing Germany with oil, wheat, tungsten and chromium to fuel the Wehrmacht's war machine. During that same time they were slaughtering 50,000 Polish police, politicians, students, professors and anyone associated with the old Polish government down to postal clerks; and God only knows how many tens of thousands from the Baltic States died in the gulags... Stalin KILLED as many Russians and Ukranians civilians BEFORE WW2 as died during it. So just STOP.
@@treyriver5676 And not at ALL when you lose the Bauxite mines in the Donetz at the start of the war. You can move factories to the Urals.. Ore deposits; not so much.
One thing everyone forgets is the fact that Lend Lease said "You are not alone" which must have at least given the troops hope, they knew that until a european invasion came, supplies would flow. Also the aircraft, submarines and troops diverted to combat the Convoys were not able to be used in Russia.
Go through the extensive list of US aid to the Soviet Union and then explain how it couldn't have been a major factor in the success of the USSR in defeating the German forces. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease#US_deliveries_to_the_Soviet_Union Bernhard makes an important point that when history is revised it is often taken an extreme at first. I agree.
''Go through the extensive list of US aid to the Soviet Union and then explain how it couldn't have been a major factor in the success of the USSR in defeating the German forces. '' If you had any brains, you would understand that much of the equipment was useless and was already produced by the Soviets themselves. If you simply look at the numbers, like an idiot, of COURSE you won't understand anything. ''Bernhard makes an important point that when history is revised it is often taken an extreme at first. I agree. '' Indeed, US history is so terribly distorted.
@@fegelfly7877 you're everywhere in this comment section, the facts are the USSR would have been steamrolled in WW2 if not for the US, this isnt a matter of debate this is just an objective historical fact, without the US giving the USSR billions of dollars worth of guns, ammo, tanks, planes, trucks, jeeps, tractors, trains and locomotives, boxcars, train rail tracks, tires, steel, explosives, aluminum, wire, rubber, gun powder, fuel, food, clothes, blankets, cotton, army boots, radios, and other crucial military and logistical equipment through US Lend Lease then the USSR would have been steamrolled by Germany, during the 1920s and 1930s the USSR relied on the US to help industrialize the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union relied on American engineers, American industrialists, and American architects to build the Soviet factories and build the Soviet industry in the 1920s and 1930s which the Soviets later used in WW2 to fight with Germany, if not for the American aid to help build the Soviet industry the Soviet Union wouldnt even have anything to produce tanks, vehicles, weapons, ammo or any other important military equipment and they would have been steamrolled by Germany, Russia had to rely on American industrial engineer Frederick W. Taylor's industrial methods to succeed in creating an industrial power, without the US building the Soviet industry in the 1920s and 1930s the Soviet industry would have been a joke during WW2, the reason why the Soviets could even produce anything domestically was thanks to the US building their industry in the 1920s and 1930s, so if we combine Lend Lease in the 1940s plus the US building the Soviet industry in the 1920s and 1930s, the conclusion is simple, the USSR gets rolled over by the Germans in WW2 and its not even close, the Soviet leaders them selves Khrushchev, Zhukov, and even Stalin himself all admit that the USSR would have lost WW2 if it wasnt for the US, i think ill take their word for it over yours, you know the men who ACTUALLY fought the war in person
I believe it was more important to the Soviets than they were willing to let on. The US through lend lease provided over 8 million pairs of boots and all of the meat consumed by the troops. Literally food for thought. While lend lease didn’t really kick in to effect until after the red army had already stopped the Wehrmacht it did allow them to focus on what they could readily produce as they marched to Berlin
Yeah,this is something important to note.I personally believe that without the lend-lease soviet union could kicck out germany out of soviet union,but without they would never reach berlin.
the Wehrmacht was stopped in February 1943, the Soviets didnt start gaining ground against the Germans until 1943, Lend Lease was coming into the USSR in large amounts in 1942, without Lend Lease and not just Lend Lease but many other factors of WW2, the USSR would have undeniably lost
@@Vierzehn014 wrong, without the US giving the USSR billions of dollars worth of guns, ammo, tanks, planes, trucks, jeeps, tractors, trains and locomotives, boxcars, train rail tracks, steel, explosives, aluminum, wire, rubber, gun powder, fuel, food, clothes, blankets, cotton, army boots, radios, and other crucial military and logistical equipment through US Lend Lease then the USSR would have been steamrolled by Germany
Okay, lets switch this around a bit. What do you think would have happened if the Germans had received 240,000 trucks, 2500 locomotives, 30,000 aircraft, oil, high octane fuel, food, tanks, ammo, coal, steel radios etc etc. I suspect the outcome on all fronts would have been different.
In what year? What people don't usually get is the time-scale of Lend-Lease. In the first year of the war on the Eastern front Soviets received mostly British equipment and in few numbers. In 1942 there was an improved situation, but still daring. The bulk of what USSR received was after mid 1943 when the Sea-lanes were finally cleared and supplies could arrive in major numbers
yeah, the USSR simply had better allies: USA, UK (the British Empire back then)...whereas Nazi Germany had Italy (hindered more than helped), Romania (which gave a lot of oil though) , Hungary, etc
@Infectious Legume Well, they somehow managed to beat Wermacht in 1941-42 before Lend-lease started to play a major role in Soviet war effort. By 1943 the germans lost their most experienced troops (those who fought in France and had months of uninterrupted training afterwards before the start of Barbarossa). Considering that the quality of german troops continued to decline in 1943 while the quality of soviet troops continued to increase, it is highly unlikely that the Germans would be able to achieve victory. There is no doubt that without Lend-lease (especially, toluol shipments), Soviet advance would have been much slower and much more costly. However, by 1943 it is highly unlikely that the germans would be able to turn the tide of the war. They have lost their most important resource - experienced, well-trained troops of 1941. And they werent able to resupply this resource ever again.
Well said. That is why I wrote that the Soviet advance would be slower. For how long you would the germans survive a war of attrition? Considering that their industry already worked at its maximum capacity while the Soviet industry kept increasing its output every year? Considering this dynamics, the soviets would have reached sufficient offensive capabilities sooner or later, if not in 1944, then in 1945. I just do not see what the germans could do at that point to reverse this dynamics. It is practically deterministic
@@nikitosnu they tied in 41-42 the German army stood in USSR not the the other way around. would they have held in late 42 with out aid ? maybe, but would there have been an offensive in '43 and if not.. how long can the political structure survive in USSR ?
Not sure if this was mentioned in here or not (the video or comments). Among a million other points I can make (and I'm sure others already have), I'll ask, who here has Amazon Prime? It's amazing, isn't it?!? Not only getting whatever you want, but the free delivery part. Cough. Meaning... You have to consider the ripple effects of it all. If you say for example "The West provided the Soviets with X, in the following numbers", you're ignoring the benefit of the Soviets: 1. Not having to build X itself. 2. Go and pick X up. Meaning how many Soviet men (and women) were freed up to do more important tasks (like fighting) because they didn't have to make boots. Or grow food. Etc etc How many Soviet war machines were made from products that otherwise would have been needed to build merchant shipping to go and pick up X from the West? (Amazon Prime). How many more tank factories were the Soviets able to build because they didn't need to diverse factories for boring items, like truck factories, radio shops, etc etc
Minor criticism: "mixing high octance fuel with their low octance fuel" I'm no expert, but as far as i understood it, that just gives you more fuel with basically the lower rating. (It would just work if the lower octane fuel makes up for let's say 1-3% of the overall fuel you get by mixing)
This is true but it doesn't mean the Soviets didn't do it. Knowing them they'd attribute any damage done by their mixing process to defective equipment or sabotage or whatever.
Lend lease filled all the gaps in the Soviet economy. Tinned food, radios, copper wire for telephones, half their explosives, half their aircraft fuel (maybe more). And don't forget that Wallie help included industrial experts to make their economy more efficient. This had two effects: 1) It made the Sovs far more EFFECTIVE in the battles they fought, because the Western aid filled critical gaps 2) it allowed the Sovs to put far more soldiers in the field (QUANTITY) than their economy would otherwise been able to support. Sadly, Sov EFFICIENCY remained pretty low, so they paid for their victory in rivers of blood. Without Lend Lease and Western aid, could the Sovs ended up in Berlin? I think it's 50, 50 Without the many "second fronts" - Battle of the Atlantic, Combined Bomber Offensive, North African battles, Blokade of Germany... Without all that and just Sovs (even with lend lease) versus the Axis... Reckon the Sovs lose in 45, maybe 46.
What about tires? Didn't synthetic rubber from the USA have an enormous effect, since most of the natural rubber in the world was in Japanese hands after 1941? Neither trucks nor aircraft are much use without tires. Since Soviet tanks used all steel tracks, that suggests rubber was relatively scarce for them. Of course the USSR could import rubber from Japan before they invaded, but Japan would have received preference and Allied sea power had cleared that part of the ocean by then of merchant shipping after 1943, so where would the USSR get alternative supplies without the USA?
We got 16,000 wonderful vehicles. We got all the steel that we make our tanks out of. Of course, we couldn't have done without Western aid. Georgy Zhukov
@Вук Тодић "Marshal Zhukov gave an assessment of metal supply in the USSR. His remarks given in 1963, which were stored in the Central Archives of the Russian Defense Ministry, are listed below: «Right now they say that the Allies never helped us... But you cannot deny that Americans drove many materials, without which we would not be able to form our reserves and could not continue the war ... And how much steel they supplied! Could we quickly establish the production of tanks, if not for American aid? And now they show it in a way that we had plenty of sources.» " Ryzhkov and Kumanev "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
I believe the Soviets ended up admitting to lend-lease making up around 10% of war materiel, but they downplayed it as ONLY around 10%. Now, to me, 10% seems like a lot when one considers how massive WWII was. Furthermore, I believe that 10% figure covers the entire war effort (at least since the start of lend-lease). So, the truth is likely that it was massively important earlier in the program, but became less so after the Soviets were able to get their factories up and running at full capacity for a while.
Pretty sure the Soviets admitted that lend lease in the early days of Barbarossa had basically saved them. MHV uploaded a video about it, which is the video that this video is following up from.
@@enriqueouro9 As MHV said you have to look at the context. Sure, the numbers are small if you compare it to the overall Soviet war production but you have the remember that during the early days of Barabarossa, Soviet factories were relocated and the rich farmlands were lost. Lend lease equipment and food filled the gap during this critical phase for the Soviets. It was when the factories are up and running and food supplies have stabilised that lend lease aid has become negligible. But, the import of American trucks undoubtedly made the most positive impact for the Soviets for the whole duration of the entire conflict because it made them focus producing more offensive vehicles such as tanks rather than trucks. The Soviet T34 tanks were the most produced tanks in history after all.
What does that even mean, 10% of what? What is included in the other 90%? When, how where did these 10% come about? What count's as war effort? Such a number on it's own doesn't tell you anything without context. It's literally completely meaningless.
It is very simple.......without lend/lease, the USSR would have starved. Food stocks were so low, that the USSR was very close to collapse in 1942. In fact overall, the USSR never really recovered from WW2.
Why this emphasis on Soviet logistics? I thought those trucks were most useful for motorizing infantry and artillery. The Soviet Union didn't have a paved road network in the 1980s, and wartime conditions would have been much worse. So rail served the Soviet logistical needs, but trucks were probably most useful in combat, allowing units to move forward faster and even from previously threatened sector to newly threatened sector, right?
Indeed, if the Soviets needed trucks, they would have produced them themselves. The Soviets relied on horse-drawn vehicles and it was just as efficient.
@@fegelfly7877 Wow what a dunce. The germans used horses more than the soviets, but that is not what the trucks were used for they were used for TRANSPORT especially in food production which let the russians go from 47% of their workers being in agriculture to freeing up almost everyone. And most important for doing what their trains would have done. And in addition to the endless rolling stock. Liars and idiots, those are the only people who make this crap up. The supply situation was the problem for the germans, and this would also have been a huge problem for the russians except america send over magic almost instant solutions to all these problems.
@@LTPottenger We have a seriously idiotic dullard here. Horse-drawn vehicles were not used as transport, it appears. What a complete fucking moron! The SU can produce 100,000+ of trucks a year in peacetime, they choose to produce light tanks and rely on horses instead. Not to mention, the Soviets had already built upwards of 300,000 trucks. ''except america send over magic almost instant solutions to all these problems.'' Except, America barely contributed at all, and the Soviet Union won the war for them. Without Lend-Lease aid, more Soviet troops would have died, but the war would have been won nonetheless. Suck it up, buttercup.
@@fegelfly7877 utterly delusional, without the US giving the USSR billions of dollars worth of guns, ammo, tanks, planes, trucks, jeeps, tractors, trains and locomotives, boxcars, train rail tracks, tires, steel, explosives, aluminum, wire, rubber, gun powder, fuel, food, clothes, blankets, cotton, army boots, radios, and other crucial military and logistical equipment through US Lend Lease then the USSR would have been steamrolled by Germany, In total, 92.7% of the wartime production of railroad equipment by the USSR was supplied by Lend-Lease, including 1,911 locomotives and 11,225 railcars which augmented the existing stocks of at least 20,000 American locomotives and half a million railcars. Much of the logistical assistance of the Soviet military was provided by hundreds of thousands of U.S.-made trucks, 1/3rd of the truck strength of the Red Army was U.S.-built. Trucks such as the Dodge 3/4th ton and Studebaker 2+1/2 ton were easily the best trucks available in their class on either side on the Eastern Front. American shipments of telephone cable, aluminum, canned rations and clothing were also critical. Lend-Lease also supplied significant amounts of weapons and ammunition. The Soviet air force received 18,200 aircraft, which amounted to about 30 percent of Soviet wartime fighter and bomber production (mid 1941-45). About 13,000 Lend-Lease tanks were provided to the Soviet Union. A particular critical aspect of Lend-Lease was the supply of food. The invasion had cost the USSR a huge amount of its agricultural base, during the initial Axis offensive of 1941-42, the total sown area of the USSR fell by 41.9% and the number of collective and state farms by 40%. The Soviets lost a substantial number of draft and farm animals as they were not able to relocate all the animals in an area before it was captured and of those areas in which the Axis forces would occupy, the Soviets had lost 7 million of out of 11.6 million horses, 17 million out of 31 million cows, 20 million of 23.6 million pigs and 27 million out of 43 million sheep and goats. Tens of thousands of agricultural machines, such as tractors and threshers, were destroyed or captured. Agriculture also suffered a loss of labor, between 1941 and 1945, 19.5 million working-age men had to leave their farms to work in the military and industry. Agricultural issues were also compounded when the Soviets were on the offensive, areas taken back from the Axis had been devastated and contained millions of people who needed to be fed. Lend-Lease thus provided a massive number of foodstuffs and agricultural products. The Soviets couldnt even produce enough high octane aviation fuel for their planes so they had to rely on Lend Leased fuel, the US contributed more to winning WW2 than the Soviets did, the US defeated the Germans in Western Europe and Italy while also defeating the Japanese empire in the Pacific at the same time while also bailing the USSR out of the eastern front through Lend Lease all at the same time, the US won WW2 for the Soviets, without the US defeating the Japanese empire in the Pacific then the Japanese would have invaded the USSR from the east and together with Germany would have utterly crushed the USSR from 2 sides but thanks to the US that didnt happen, after seeing how badly the USSR was losing in 1941 and 1942 with the constant German advances, imagine if the Japanese empire also invade the USSR from the east, plus without Lend Lease, no other fronts in Italy and Western Europe diverting German torops away from the eastern front, the USSR collapses like a house of cards, the Soviet leaders them selves Khrushchev, Zhukov, and even Stalin himself all admit that the USSR would have lost WW2 if it wasnt for the US, i think ill take their word for it over yours, you know the men who ACTUALLY fought the war in person
This is pretty much what I always thought. If the Soviets didn't have lend lease the war would have dragged on or might have slogged into a stalemate. I had advocated that Lend Lease didn't win the war but it did free up Soviet industry to concentrate on warfighting equipment at the expense of some combat support and combat service support equipment. Factories that would have made trucks can now concentrate on tanks and food was much less of a concern, especially after Hitler took the major food growing regions of the Soviet Union. One thing that I don't think is emphasized was the importance of high octane aviation fuel to the Soviet effort. From what I have read the Soviets produced very little of this before the war or even during the war and almost all of the 100 octane fuel was provided by the United States. Soviet aircraft, like any other aircraft, would have had a serious performance issue with low test fuel and a significant advantage over their German counterparts with it. If I remember right some of the issues with early lend lease aircraft was this lack of high octane fuel-Western aircraft performed poorly without it. Being faster and accelerating more quickly probably saved Soviet pilot lives, which increased the knowledge base and led to the depletion of the German advantage in experience and technical superiority.
So you think: • The entire North Africa campaign, denying Italy’s new oil production in Libya from ‘39 onwards • The Anglo-Iraqi War • The joint Anglo-Soviet Invasion of Iran • The battle for the Atlantic • The operation to funnel nearly half of all Soviet equipment and supplies through the Persian gulf, including Iranian Oil. Was all just unnecessary and WWII was just German and Russian tanks playing bumper cars for a few more months?
@@-John-Doe- How the hell did you draw that conclusion from my comments? I never said that any of those things were unnecessary. I struggle to figure out how you came to a conclusion like that from what I wrote.
@@tcofield1967 Because you don’t seem to understand the jurisprudence or philosophy behind why Africans weren’t considered Rhodesian Citizens. Your perspective is quite frankly an irredentist argument - that’s fine, the Germans fell for it, the Arabs fell for it, most people fell for it. You’re turning a law issue into a racial issue and admitting you don’t care about law. If I have land, and I build homes on that land for my descendants, and that property is a part of a trust... it doesn’t mean that other people have a right to it. Your heart is in the right place in regards to treating people as individuals, but you’re buying into broad ethnic politics where it doesn’t exist.
The Russian got to Berlin walking on American made boots, eating American made food, brought to them American made trucks repaired by American made tools, from rail head supplied by US supplied railroad equipment. The Allies motorized the Red Army. If the Russian don't not get Lend Lease, the Russian war effort stalls in Western Russia and does not reach Berlin. That would of been very bad for the West because the other Allies would of taken a lot more casualties getting to Berlin. WW2 was a JOINT victory from all the Allies that has been obscured by Cold War Propaganda. It is real sad there are modern Historian incapable of seeing beyond the Cold War propaganda.
Very often it is forgotten that the lend lease 15 percent were not static through all the war, the main stream of production lend leased came to Soviet Union after the Stalingrad, before the Stalingrad it was rather small, before the Moscow battle there were any at all
US loans to Britain and France during WW1 was actually responsible for the US becoming involved in that conflict, because at one point it looked like the allies might lose and US banks would lose repayments of their "investment". The old saying: If you owe the bank 1 million you're in trouble, if you owe them 100 million they're in trouble lol.
The impact was growing over time. During the battle of Moscow in 1941, Lend-Lease was minimal. During operation Bagration, lend lease equipment was omnipresent, but by that time the war had already be decided
So its not the stretching logistics of the Wehrmacht, the casualties they have suffered capturing the previous cities, the sheer underestimation of the Soviet Union?
@@ungeimpfterrusslandtroll7155 Simple Russia could do it all by herself, that is what he is saying. I wonder if Hitler had not declared war on the US, and America and the Empire of Japan had a race war by them selves how Europe and Russia would have fared in the end? Briton and its empire broken and broke, France in ashes and Germany destroyed, The Soviet Union on its knees in exhaustion most likely, with millions more dead than what happened.
The germans of course knew that Lend-Lease existed, so not only did the materials that arrived helped the soviets but it also forced Germany to bring up a certain effort to try to suppress it, which were then units or resources that could not be used elsewhere.
As well as allowing the USA to maximise production over the course of the war, by giving away what they couldn't use yet because of the time lag to train troops to expand the peacetime US Army and airforces, and building the production efficiency gains you mentioned, it also allowed the Allies to make the best use of their available manpower, by putting weapons into Russian and British hands, as well as transferring British production to the Russian front, especially Matilda tanks and Bren gun carriers, but also Hurricane fighters. From the American point of view, enabling Russians and British to do their fighting for them while they built up their war industries and drew in capital through arms sales, before achieving maximum US military strength towards the end of the war when it would be most useful diplomatically for dictating the shape of the post war world.
This is a tough question. Hard to 'measure success' in this case. Lend Lease supplies helped the Soviets concentrate their production on their own weapons, which in many cases (tanks, artillery, etc.) were superior to the Western Allies.
So basically there are two schools of thought. The Lend Lease was unimportant, had no impact on the soviet war effort OR the Soviets would have lost without it. I suspect the truth lies somewhere in between. By the time Lend Lease really started having an effect, the Soviets had already stopped and in many areas of the front, pushed back the Germans. Where Lend Lease becomes vital is in the final 2-3 years of the war as the Soviet Steam roller is picking up steam, the supplies sent to the Soviets helped ease the logistical burdens on the USSR. One historian I read stated that "had there been no lend lease, the Soviet offensives would have stalled out about halfway through Belarus". If you compare the amount of war materials produced in the USSR to what they received via Lend Lease, its easy to conclude that such quantities made very little difference. But at the same time, Lend Lease was injecting fresh resources into a war torn country. I guess you could argue that while the Soviets would not have lost, Lend Lease is what allowed them to achieve a decisive victory over the Germans. At the very least, it could be argued that Lend Lease shaved a year or two off the war.
Actually, the aid the Brits send was quite essential when it arrived because,,,your factories build ZERO tanks/planes when they are being packed up and moved. And they needed to move them out of arms reach of the German army or loose them at the time. A LOT of people keep forgetting that saying 4% or 10%of USSR production over the whole war does not look at the year to year numbers. At one point the British tanks, despite being worse then KV1’s or T34’s they are still better then the other 80% of the Soviet available armour just to place that in context again..., came up to roughly 60% of the new tanks received by the Red Army at the time of arrival. Think about that for a second, they were not the top tier tanks but they were better then the outdated crap a lot of the Soviet armour divisions was still using and they were there when production was stifled because of the necessity to move the heavy industry. Another thing is essentials such rubber or rubber compounds for trucks wheels and tons of other applications, aluminium for building planes and other essentials, fighter planes to replace the losses (again not the best planes available but better then most of the available planes and at a point where productions was impacted severely...). Getting the stuff you need to tie you over for half a year or a bit less does have a massive impact. In other words it gave them a chance to move that industry without getting hammered even worse because the Brits took up a bit of of the load for them just when they needed it.
Lend Lease was 1 of many factors, the US gave the USSR billions of dollars worth of guns, ammo, tanks, planes, trucks, jeeps, tractors, trains and locomotives, boxcars, train rail tracks, steel, explosives, gun powder, fuel, food, clothes, blankets, army boots, radios, and other crucial military and logistical equipment, In total, 92.7% of the wartime production of railroad equipment by the USSR was supplied by Lend-Lease, including 1,911 locomotives and 11,225 railcars which augmented the existing stocks of at least 20,000 American locomotives and half a million railcars. Much of the logistical assistance of the Soviet military was provided by hundreds of thousands of U.S.-made trucks, 1/3rd of the truck strength of the Red Army was U.S.-built. Trucks such as the Dodge 3/4th ton and Studebaker 2+1/2 ton were easily the best trucks available in their class on either side on the Eastern Front. American shipments of telephone cable, aluminum, canned rations and clothing were also critical. Lend-Lease also supplied significant amounts of weapons and ammunition. The Soviet air force received 18,200 aircraft, which amounted to about 30 percent of Soviet wartime fighter and bomber production (mid 1941-45). About 13,000 Lend-Lease tanks were provided to the Soviet Union. A particular critical aspect of Lend-Lease was the supply of food. The invasion had cost the USSR a huge amount of its agricultural base, during the initial Axis offensive of 1941-42, the total sown area of the USSR fell by 41.9% and the number of collective and state farms by 40%. The Soviets lost a substantial number of draft and farm animals as they were not able to relocate all the animals in an area before it was captured and of those areas in which the Axis forces would occupy, the Soviets had lost 7 million of out of 11.6 million horses, 17 million out of 31 million cows, 20 million of 23.6 million pigs and 27 million out of 43 million sheep and goats. Tens of thousands of agricultural machines, such as tractors and threshers, were destroyed or captured. Agriculture also suffered a loss of labor, between 1941 and 1945, 19.5 million working-age men had to leave their farms to work in the military and industry. Agricultural issues were also compounded when the Soviets were on the offensive, areas taken back from the Axis had been devastated and contained millions of people who needed to be fed. Lend-Lease thus provided a massive number of foodstuffs and agricultural products. The Soviets also werent able to produce enough high octane aviation fuel for their planes so they had to rely on Lend Leased fuel, 40-50% of the tanks the Soviets used at the battle of Moscow came from the west, another factor is the US and allied bombing campaigns of Germany destroying Germanys industrial infrastructure and production manufacturing which was vital to slowing down the German advance in 1942, another factor is the western allies diverting German troops away from the eastern front defeating the Germans in Western Europe, Italy, and North Africa, as well as the fact that if it wasnt for the US defeating the Japanese empire in the Pacific, then the Japanese would have invaded the USSR from the east with Operation Kantokuen and since the USSR was losing to Germany in 1941 and 1942, on top of that no Lend Lease, no US and allies fighting the Germans on Western Europe, Italy, North Africa, and the Japanese empire invades the USSR from the east, the USSR would have undoubtedly lost, the Soviet leaders them selves Khrushchev, Zhukov, and even Stalin himself all admit that the USSR would have lost the war without the US
Lendlease supplies were growing with a time, at critical battles of Moscow in 1941 and in Stalingrad in 1942 soviets won by themselves. So lendlease was not critical for survival of Soviet Union, but really helped to speed up offensive operations in 1943-45 and drastically reduced casualties of the Red Army. The most important thing that lendlease were not trucks, as many people think, but explosive materials, almost half of soviet shells were made of lendlease explosion.
You mean Ammunition, yes half of the ammunition that the USSR used are from the US. Trucks is probably more important, how in the world do you get the food, people, fuel and ammo from A to B without trucks. Remember what Napoleon said about a general learning about Tactic vs Logistic. In protracted war Logistics is king.
@@inisipisTV Soviets produced a big number of trucks before the war and even during a war. The biggest percentage according to Main Automobile and Tank Department (GABTU in rissian) was in the beginning of 1945 - 25%, only a quarter, american trucks were bigger and had better offroad capabilities though.
50% of the tanks the Soviets used at the battle of Moscow came from the west, and the Soviets were not pushing the Germans back until 1943, the Germans were still gaining ground on the eastern front up until 1943, Lend Lease was coming to the USSR in large amounts in 1942, In total, 92.7% of the wartime production of railroad equipment by the USSR was supplied by Lend-Lease, including 1,911 locomotives and 11,225 railcars which augmented the existing stocks of at least 20,000 American locomotives and half a million railcars. Much of the logistical assistance of the Soviet military was provided by hundreds of thousands of U.S.-made trucks, 1/3rd of the truck strength of the Red Army was U.S.-built. Trucks such as the Dodge 3/4th ton and Studebaker 2+1/2 ton were easily the best trucks available in their class on either side on the Eastern Front. American shipments of telephone cable, aluminum, canned rations and clothing were also critical. Lend-Lease also supplied significant amounts of weapons and ammunition. The Soviet air force received 18,200 aircraft, which amounted to about 30 percent of Soviet wartime fighter and bomber production (mid 1941-45). About 13,000 Lend-Lease tanks were provided to the Soviet Union. A particular critical aspect of Lend-Lease was the supply of food. The invasion had cost the USSR a huge amount of its agricultural base, during the initial Axis offensive of 1941-42, the total sown area of the USSR fell by 41.9% and the number of collective and state farms by 40%. The Soviets lost a substantial number of draft and farm animals as they were not able to relocate all the animals in an area before it was captured and of those areas in which the Axis forces would occupy, the Soviets had lost 7 million of out of 11.6 million horses, 17 million out of 31 million cows, 20 million of 23.6 million pigs and 27 million out of 43 million sheep and goats. Tens of thousands of agricultural machines, such as tractors and threshers, were destroyed or captured. Agriculture also suffered a loss of labor, between 1941 and 1945, 19.5 million working-age men had to leave their farms to work in the military and industry. Agricultural issues were also compounded when the Soviets were on the offensive, areas taken back from the Axis had been devastated and contained millions of people who needed to be fed. Lend-Lease thus provided a massive number of foodstuffs and agricultural products. The Soviets couldnt even produce enough high octane aviation fuel for their planes so they had to rely on Lend Leased fuel
Locomotives. The Soviet system had plenty at the beginning. Baldwin provided many of the replacements to keep the rails running. A bit of corroboration and a bit of rebuttal: forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=132150 An excerpt from the discussion: "...according to that list, the Heer had captured a remarkably modest 2,237 rail cars and 231 locomotives from the Soviets as of November 1 1941. There might be some captured stock not evident in the list - for example rail stock captured by the Finns and the Rumanians, and of course rail stock captured after November 1st has to be added. Captured Soviet stock was only of limited use to the Germans anyway (which may also be implicitly evident in the small numbers), for they re-gauged the Soviet 1520 mm system to continental 1435 mm gauge. Still, just counting Lend-Lease supplied rail cars and locomotives and holding them against Soviet stocks may not tell the whole story - if we count production rather than existing stock, it's clear that LL accounted for the majority of new Soviet rolling stock and, particularly, rails. See this table from Sturmvogel. Soviet locomotive production vanishes to almost nothing from 1942 on."
Some interesting features about lend lease that is not commonly addressed is that when Roosevelt was thinking about implementing lend lease, this thinking in the 1930s, he knew he would have something of a tough sell to congress to get it passed. He initially introduced the program as cash and carry---that is weapons sent to allied nations would be required to pay back the received aid in terms in cash. This was interesting because lend lease thus starts out as essentially a capitalist policy and action. But as the war starts really going bad for a lot of the European countries---Poland and the Czechs along with Frances collapse in 1940, lend lease's expanded operation becomes dire and necessary. At this point is where it gets interesting. Roosevelt says to hell with cash and carry in general spirit, we can produce these items, that is trucks, armaments and the like, in massive continuous production. The capitalist model of requiring cash is just a needless ghost like self sabotaging shackle to place on the lend lease program's function. It was ironic the Soviet Union was a major recipient of the items from lend lease. And their communist ideology was expressive of the inadequacy of capitalism. And here the initial capitalist structure of lend lease's operation was abandoned because of its inadequacy. Roosevelt essentially abandoned the strict confines of capitalism to characterize lend lease's economic operation. Thus the communist Soviet Union immersed in its Marxist principles, receives massive amounts of AID from the US when the US conducts a non capitalist policy for defining and characterizing lend lease's essence and eventual economic function. A non capitalist country, the USSR is, gets aid for it success as a nation embattled directly with the Nazis from Capitalist USA, only in program that functions in full fruition, when the capitalist guidelines are discarded as inadequate, to run lend lease effectively. Especially in terms of manufacturing production. Thus such, the USA comes to terms with the fact that capitalist functions and guidelines are useless in order to meet the economic objectives of manufacturing production of lend lease into the latter stages of WW2. And the USSR benefited greatly with large quanities of goods from the USA through the USA's lend lease operation. The USSR never paid back the goods that it received from the USA at and after war's end. Roosevelt most likjely could have cared less to receive adequate payment. The war was won, that was the most important result of the American war effort. And lease played a substantial part in achieving such an allied victory. Cash and Carry was essentially non important at war's end.
My two cents is that Russian offensives would have stalled without lend-lease. However, Russia would probably have pushed harder on their nuclear program.
Too many focus on the direct impact of US and British war equipment, Tanks, Airplanes and Trucks. But as many have pointed out it was strategic materials which where scarce what helped the most. Radio's, Rubber, lubricants , Aluminum, chemicals and most of all food stuffs whether wheat or spam it keep the Soviet Nation fighting.
Without lend lease Russia would have literally starved to death within a year of losing Ukraine which provided the overwhelming majority of the Soviet food supply before it was lost during Barbarossa. An army marches on its stomach and without lend lease there simply wouldn't have been a red army.
@@tylerdurden4080 , I know it is bad source of nutrition but if you have nothing it is better than just using limited amount of grain. Exactly what article says plus I have learned previously. There is actually post-WWII improved understanding how to use trees as source of emergency food which would allow slightly better nutrition in modern times. But that doesn't apply to era in question.
Your assessment is correct, lend lease had eased and shortened the war. Though, it was not crucial to the war. It came too late to make any deciding impact and all that lend lease delayed allies own offensive up to an year. Without lend-lease to Soviet Union, allies own offensives would had came many months earlier. Furthermore, due to pressure on Eastern front, allies might had launched Normandy invasion in 43-44. Historical ifs are so vague that they are often pointless to discuss. Though, I'm surprised that this question is not an easy one for most people. I had made my research many years ago and had figured out definitive answer to it. Just go by amount of resources sent by date. Plius add half an year for raw resources to take effect and few months for ready to use equipment to be useful. Furthermore, you have to understand that Soviets were better not being able to do vast offenses for their own good. Their attacks often ended up in encirclement and disaster and they could manage large scale, successful operations in 44.
wrong, without the US giving the USSR billions of dollars worth of guns, ammo, tanks, planes, trucks, jeeps, tractors, trains and locomotives, boxcars, train rail tracks, steel, explosives, gun powder, fuel, food, clothes, blankets, army boots, radios, and other crucial military and logistical equipment through US Lend Lease then the USSR would have been steamrolled by Germany, without the US and western allies defeating the Germans in Western Europe, Italy, and North Africa, and the US and western allies bombing Germanys industrial infrastructure and production manufacturing, the USSR wouldnt have stood a chance
I never hear anyone talk about the oil...the fact that of the 7 billion barrels of oil used by the Allies from December 1941 to the end of the war, 6 billion barrels of it came from the continental US. Has anyone researched the amount of American oil products that went to the USSR during the war? How would the Red Army have done without American fuel?
Lend-lease was like horses for travelling. Would you travel the distance between to far away towns by foot? Of course you could and would if needed. But it's much faster on a horse. But if the horse is a bad horse, then you will actually lose in some aspects. It's that simple. If no Lend lease, the soviets would have found a way to deal with the situation. Perhaps they could have pulled something like the 1919 counter, where they denounced the Brest-Litovsk and, taking advantage of the German defeat by the Anglo-French, they took back most of the lands they lost. Of course, there were independence claims backed by England and France which they did not manage to accomplish, but still. And this would have been a much different situation. USSR now had a tank industry. An airplane industry. Most of the losses came during early stages of Barbarossa. Fixing organisational mistakes, rebuilding the stock and advancing at once, not piece-meal as they were forced to and perhaps taking advantage of a redeployment of forces to fight the Western Allies, the Soviets would have recovered their stolen land and perhaps even head for Germany. Would that mean USSR might have survived without the Lend-Lease? Yes. Would it have cost them much, much more? HELL YES.
this is wrong, without Lend Lease the USSR would have outright lost WW2, In total, 92.7% of the wartime production of railroad equipment by the USSR was supplied by Lend-Lease, including 1,911 locomotives and 11,225 railcars which augmented the existing stocks of at least 20,000 American locomotives and half a million railcars. Much of the logistical assistance of the Soviet military was provided by hundreds of thousands of U.S.-made trucks, 1/3rd of the truck strength of the Red Army was U.S.-built. Trucks such as the Dodge 3/4th ton and Studebaker 2+1/2 ton were easily the best trucks available in their class on either side on the Eastern Front. American shipments of telephone cable, aluminum, canned rations and clothing were also critical. Lend-Lease also supplied significant amounts of weapons and ammunition. The Soviet air force received 18,200 aircraft, which amounted to about 30 percent of Soviet wartime fighter and bomber production (mid 1941-45). About 13,000 Lend-Lease tanks were provided to the Soviet Union. A particular critical aspect of Lend-Lease was the supply of food. The invasion had cost the USSR a huge amount of its agricultural base, during the initial Axis offensive of 1941-42, the total sown area of the USSR fell by 41.9% and the number of collective and state farms by 40%. The Soviets lost a substantial number of draft and farm animals as they were not able to relocate all the animals in an area before it was captured and of those areas in which the Axis forces would occupy, the Soviets had lost 7 million of out of 11.6 million horses, 17 million out of 31 million cows, 20 million of 23.6 million pigs and 27 million out of 43 million sheep and goats. Tens of thousands of agricultural machines, such as tractors and threshers, were destroyed or captured. Agriculture also suffered a loss of labor, between 1941 and 1945, 19.5 million working-age men had to leave their farms to work in the military and industry. Agricultural issues were also compounded when the Soviets were on the offensive, areas taken back from the Axis had been devastated and contained millions of people who needed to be fed. Lend-Lease thus provided a massive number of foodstuffs and agricultural products. The Soviets couldnt even produce enough high octane aviation fuel for their planes so they had to rely on Lend Leased fuel, 40-50% of the tanks the Soviets used at the battle of Moscow came from the west, the Soviet leaders them selves Khrushchev, Zhukov, and even Stalin himself all admit that the USSR would have lost WW2 if it wasnt for the US, i think ill take their word for it over yours, you know the men who ACTUALLY fought the war in person, removing lend lease means that many of the Soviet losses incurred in material and equipment during Barbarossa physically can't be replaced due to lack of readily available raw materials. Without foreign assistance, the battles of Moscow and Stalingrad would have bled the Soviet army dry and those losses would have never been rebuilt by 43. The reduced Soviet output would have been a unmitigated disasters for the Soviets since the sheer loss of Soviet lives and military equipment wasnt something they could shrug off. Without lend lease, Russia wasn't capable of withstanding those kinds of losses and maintaining an offensive.
Imagine Germany receiving lend-lease supplies in 1944-45. In time of crisis such supplies are especially valuable. The world did not have high thoughts of the Soviet industrial capabilities, the psychology of having to fight the Russian soldiers equipped by American workers must've been a daunting setback. And also surprising, there were German hopes that even Churchill wouldn't ally with Stalin. This is like the Spartans getting economic support from the Persians in the Peloponnesian war (And surely politicians in the mid 1900s were educated to think in such terms, as is actually Boris Johnson today who is a classicist.)
They would have been trounced. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. But these Russia fan boys and the condescending Brits want to downplay the roll America played in WW2. I've said it before, give it 50 years and the US won't even have participated in the war.
There can be a bit of a tendency for academics to sensationalise findings in order to get impact, 'cos impact can mean the difference between your department surviving and not.
"Significant food supplies from the United States began in October 1942, when the enemy seized a rich agricultural region of the North Caucasus, and stood at the walls of Stalingrad. The increase in these deliveries grew rapidly, and in December they were given priority over other strategic industrial products14." page 109 Food and other strategic deliveries to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease Act, 1941-1945 pdf
Stalin himself said it would be impossible to win without it. The weapons and resources could probably be done without, but the food and communications equipment and trucks made it possible to keep fighting otherwise it would be over. The trucks also made it possible to collect food. Without that and food half the country would starve to death. You can't grow food on tundra and most of the farmland was occupied.
@@wassaspielt In 1963, In an interview with the Soviet wartime correspondent Konstantin Simonov, a KGB monitoring recorded Soviet Field Marshal Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov stating: "People say that the allies didn't help us. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. And how much steel! Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? We didn’t have explosives, gunpowder. We didn’t have anything to charge our rifle cartridges with. The Americans really saved us with their gunpowder and explosives. And how much sheet steel they gave us! How could we have produced our tanks without American steel? Without American trucks we wouldn’t have had anything to pull our artillery with." and then a quote from the leader of the Soviet Union Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin: "I want to tell you what, from the Russian point of view, the president and the United States have done for victory in this war," Stalin said. "The most important things in this war are the machines.... The United States is a country of machines. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war." Nikita Khrushchev offered the same opinion. Nikita Khrushchevs Memoirs also state that the USSR would have lost WW2 without the US, a quote from the Premier of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev: "I would like to express my candid opinion about Stalin's views on whether the Red Army and the Soviet Union could have coped with Nazi Germany and survived the war without aid from the United States. 1st, I would like to tell about some remarks StaIin made and repeated several times when we were "discussing freely" among ourselves. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany's pressure, and we would have lost the war. I will state here that several times in conversations with me he noted that these were the actual circumstances. When we were engaged in some kind of relaxed conversation, going over international questions of the past and present, and when we would return to the subject of the path we had traveled during the war, that is what he said. When I listened to his remarks, I was fully in agreement with him, and today I am even more so."
Fun Fact The Americans sent something like 500,000 Thompson SMG's to Russia under Lend Lease. The British also sent 2,500,000 Sten Guns to the Russians! Holy shit that's enough for multiple armies!
You cannot deny that there was a change. Food for both civilians and military; War Material for weapon production. Katusha rockets and their Studebaker Trucks to give one weapon system that would not exisi.
This leads to an interesting alternate history. Suppose there had been no Soviet lend-lease, leading to a stalemate on Germany's eastern front. Meanwhile, increased material in the west leads to no French surrender, or a Normandy one year sooner, and the British and US invade western Germany sooner, all the way to Germany's eastern border, while the Germans and Soviets are still stalemated near Moscow. At that point, you'd have a German army without Germany, having relocated their factories and some population east into Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, as the Soviets had moved their factories east of the Urals. What a weird situation that would be! I wonder what the US and Britain would have done? Would the US and Britain have accepted a German surrender or even cease-fire in the west? What would happen to the old half-depopulated Germany under US/British occupation? Would there have been a stalemate on both German fronts if US and British voters had left clear election messages that they were tired of war and did not want to keep pushing east into Poland? Would a German occupation zone, with a military and some part of their population migrated to Poland/Belarus/Ukraine, have survived for long? Would Stalin have survived such a stalemate?
I wonder if it would possible to game out what would happen if Germany got the equivalent boost of the Russian lend lease. Would it be enough to swing the Eastern front? Especially if the Russians were deny their lend lease. Seems to me if lend lease at nominal effect the war end same way. If it swings the outcome, then lend lease was a major influence.
You wouldn't even need to go that far to swing the pendulum. Even just removing lend lease means that many of the losses incurred in material and equipment during Barbarossa and by red army victories (where often losses were higher than they were for the Germans) physically can't be replaced due to lack of readily available raw materials. Without foreign assistance, the battles of Moscow and Stalingrad would have bled the Soviet army white and those losses would have never been rebuilt by 43. If they were rebuilt at all (assuming that the Russians could find and exploit resources in Siberia for example) the replenishment of losses would have been a fraction of what it was and would have taken much longer. So operation citadel and the battle of kursk, if they had happened at all with the theoretically reduced Soviet output, would have been a unmitigated disasters for the Soviets since the loss of roughly 8 thousand tanks and assault guns and nearly 3 thousand planes compared to the german loss of a thousand tanks and assault guns and 900 planes wouldn't be something they could shrug off. Without lend lease, Russia wasn't apable of withstanding those kinds of losses and maintaining an offensive.
A total of $50.1 billion (equivalent to $565 billion in 2018) worth of supplies was shipped, or 17% of the total war expenditures of the U.S.[2] In all, $31.4 billion went to Britain, $11.3 billion to the Soviet Union, $3.2 billion to France, $1.6 billion to China, and the remaining $2.6 billion to the other Allies. Reverse Lend-Lease policies comprised services such as rent on air bases that went to the U.S., and totaled $7.8 billion; of this, $6.8 billion came from the British and the Commonwealth. The terms of the agreement provided that the materiel was to be used until returned or destroyed. In practice very little equipment was returned. Supplies that arrived after the termination date were sold to Britain at a large discount for £1.075 billion, using long-term loans from the United States. Canada's Mutual Aid program sent a loan of $1 billion and $3.4 billion in supplies and services to Britain and other Allies.
If you don't know what was actually shipped and lend lease you could draw a conclusion that it wasn't that important. The reality is we sent more than airplanes trucks and tanks. We send everything from buttons to ingots of aluminum to plasma foodstuffs and cigarettes. Not to mention tankers with fuel yeah and fuel being sent from Persia.
People tend to overlook temporal dimension when talking about lend-lease. The amount of goods shipped to USSR changed greatly over the years. It started very slowly and the shipments started to play a significant role in Soviet war effort only after 1942. So, Soviet Union won the most crucial battles of the Eastern Front (The battles of Moscow and Stalingrad) largely on its own resources (soviet trucks, tanks and artillery). Lend-lease started to play more significant role from 1943 and onwards. From what I have read the most crucial shipments were actually high quality powder components for heavy artillery (soviet chemical industry could not produce such powders in sufficient amounts). All in all, Lend-lease has definitely speeded-up the Soviet advance to the West starting 1943. However, it had little effect on Soviet war effort during the crucial battles of 1941-42.
There is truth to that, the Soviets did manage to contain the Germans in 1941 with a minimum of support. Support started to tick up in the second half of 1942 but it still probably wasn't enough to substantially change the war outcome, either way. Where Lend Lease did factor in was in the period from 1943-1945 where the Soviets went from a defensive position to an offensive one. Offensive operations almost always require much larger logistic stores and depletion can occur quite quickly. Even the relatively small Soviet counter attacks in the first couple years of the war tended to bog down due to a lack of logistical support. Without the food and transport equipment available from mid 1943 onward Soviet attacks would have been less sweeping and probably less significant. Simply put, the ability to create tools of war without having to burden your economy with creating the equipment needed to maintain those tools would have limited the capability of the Soviet Army.
@@tcofield1967 Actually, the soviets conducted a lot of offensives in 1941-42. And I would not call them small. Plus, conducting offensives against Wermacht at its peak strength in 1941 is not the same as against 1943 Wermacht. So, it is hard to make direct comparisons. I think that people tend to underestimate the capabilities of Soviet industry. It kept increasing its output every year, while the German industry already worked at its maximum capacity. On top of that, the Red Army kept improving its structural organization, soldiers and officers were getting more and more experienced. On the contrary, the german army lost its best troops in 1941-42 and the replacements were of much lower quality. The overall dynamics was not favoring the germans in the long run. After 1942 they simply had no means to reverse this dynamics. They would have lost on the Eastern front, no matter what. Lend-lease simply made their fall faster
@@nikitosnu I didn't mean they weren't significant. What I mean is that they lacked the strategic ability to exploit gains and destroy entire German units before 1943 (the 6th Army being an exception), and even there logistical issues kept the Soviets from exploiting that to a greater extent. It meant that Soviet successes in 1941 and 1942 couldn't be built upon and often the German could either worm their way out of trouble or plug gaps because the Soviets couldn't move as fast. And to be honest, I'm not that overly hot on the German Army in 1941. Yes, it was better trained, better equipped (overall) and better supplied than their Soviet counterparts at the start but that changed rather quickly. I would dare to say that the average German soldier in July 1943 had more combat experience than his June 1941 counterpart. In reality German troop strength only really started to decline in early-mid 1944. But the massive improvement was more in the ability of the Soviet soldier, and the leadership of Soviet commanders in those years. By 1943 the Soviet soldier was better, man for man, than the average German soldier of 1941 or 1942. This also coincided with the massive encirclements of Army Group Center and the trapping of Army Group North. At that point the Soviets had the ability to not only push through German defenses, which they had been able to do in the past but also exploit them due to the ability to keep mobile forces, well mobile. I do believe that the Soviets might have been able to do this a year earlier, if they had the supplies and transport available to do it. They still pushed the Germans back several hundred miles during the summer of 1943 but had to stop several times due to logistical problems. By early 1944 this problem was solved and the Soviet Army slaughtered the Germans. They did in 1944 was equal to what the Germans did in 1941 and, unlike the Wehrmacht, they had the ability to finish the war.
@@tcofield1967 Thanks for the detailed response! I think that Soviet issues with exploiting the breakthroughs were more due to: 1 - lack of experience in freshly formed units (who conducted the offensive in 1941-42), 2 - availability of well-trained mechanized reserves on the german side (if you look at Stalingrad, lack of such reserve at a crucial moment was the reason the germans failed to prevent the encirclement), 3 - stronger artillery support on the german side (a lot of soviet offensives failed because they could not win the artillery duel. Rhev would be a prime example of that). I do not disregard the logistical issues the Red Army experienced, I just think that the availability and strength of german reserves (in particular in mechanized units) and superior artillery support were the main factors in limiting the success of soviet offensives early in war. But thats just my opinion based on the sources I have read. Also, the what I meant by "experienced troops" mostly refers to the elite - mechanized units (tankmen and panzergrenadiers). And the quality of these units, crucial for the success of mobile warfare, did decrease significantly. I think that a lot of the Soviet actions in 1941 were aimed specifically at reducing the strength of these elite units. Which paid off in the long run
The red army lost virtually all of its armor and artillery during Barbarossa and without lend lease those losses simply never would have been replaced due to lack of materials. Russia would have fallen and that would have been that. All the Russians were able to do until 43 was basically not get completely crushed. Lend lease was the reason Soviet counter offensives were possible at all.
How important was allied food aid to the Soviets? The Soviet food supply appears to have been at best marginal through the interwar period, and even with food aid there are accounts of dire food shortages in the USSR during WWII.
@@Mentol_ it's also documented that the Soviet Union lost almost half of it's arable land in the first year of Barbarossa. So your documentation is questionable at best.
A few points. The oddity of saying the hurricane was poor, of course misses the contrast of a flight of hurricanes vs a flight of nothing, would the port Murmansk and the rail way from it been as well off with or with out the Hawkers ? Would loss of 67th, 429th, 438th, 488th, and 736th IAP around the capital have been noticed ? I think so. Would Stalingrad have been better off with or with out Hurricane regiments ? Soviet pilots seem (from some readings ) to have found the 12 x .303 not a great fit.. true it was not but it shot down HE-111 and JU-88 in 1940 The USSR modified many to have 2x 12.7 mg and 2x 20mm cannon which was better suited to the war at that point, but again with out the aircraft to put the 12.7 and 20mm on what good will they do ? The quotes from the era are dramatic.. and given war time publishing standards not surprising either. The 1000 Hurican MkIIC with 4x20mm and hard points for bombs were not great but I doubt the soviet ground forces that saw them above cursed tthe brits for sending them
@Вук Тодић it was made by mixing high octane lend-lease fuel with low octane russian fuel to make decent fuel. Russian fuel was only fit for diesel bombers or training aircraft
An extra 2000+ valentines and M3 Lee/Grants to north africa in 1941/42 plus fuel trucks etc and you knock months if not years off that campaign. Include the shipping capacity and DDay/Husky etc have additional capacity. The war could have ended at a similar time, but 500km further east.
Well Germany of course supported its smaller allies (e.g. Romania) with weapons deliveries. Until Germany attacked the Soviet Union it received a lot of raw materials and food from the Soviets in exchange for weapons technology etc.
Well, according to Soviet apologists on RUclips, the Red Army had already defeated the Third Reich in 1941. So I guess the western allies shouldn't have bothered. The march to Berlin must have just been a formality.
@@ITyapkin Nah, without the eastern front we wouldn't have landed in '44. The war would have probably ended in '46 or '47 with the destruction of Germany by nuclear bombardment.
its funny because the Soviets in reality would have been steamrolled by Germany if not for the western allies, 40-50% of the tanks the Soviets used in the battle of Moscow came from the west, and the Germans werent getting pushed back until 1943, in 1941 and 1942 the Germans were advancing into the USSR rapidly, without the US giving the USSR billions of dollars worth of guns, ammo, tanks, planes, trucks, jeeps, tractors, trains and locomotives, boxcars, train rail tracks, tires, steel, explosives, aluminum, wire, rubber, gun powder, fuel, food, clothes, blankets, cotton, army boots, radios, and other crucial military and logistical equipment through US Lend Lease then the USSR would have been steamrolled by Germany
I would say there are certain comedies that proved vital. The half million tons of steel rail line to replace the tracks destroyed as the Germans retreated must have been vital for the huge Soviet advances. US and Canadian supplied 40% of the aluminum use to build soviet aircraft. Canadian brass, for bullet cartridges and shell cases, replace production lost in the occupied territories. US machine tools for soviet factories. Many Soviet tanks were made from US steel.
Seems many have forgotten that the US military was a mess following the great depression. The army / army airforce were poorly equipped with obsolete weapons from tanks to aircraft. Easy to convert automobile assembly lines to produce trucks to aid the Rissian army, no so easy to upgrade, produce and share other equpment that your own military despertly needs. Trucks ,food, some raw materials were at the time the best they had available. The rest was basically cannon fodder regardless of the nationality of the operators. By the time better equipment became available the US was heavily engaged in the far east, the Russians thanks to Germanys lack of strategic bombing vs Russian factories were holding their own and the US was planning their own srategic bombing campaign against Germany which would lead to Germany having to relocate fighter groups from the Russian front. Pretty good deal in my opinion.
4:52 maybe the US is 100% neutral during the AU and does give any country lend-lease or maybe the US has a fascist leader and gives lend lease to the axis giving them an edge though I do wonder would the axis had won if the US was on their side? I really don't see any scenario where FDR would even consider being an axis so the US would have to have a different president maybe FDR lost one of his elections, though the US would probably still be in an isolation state so if the US officially joined it would have to be attacked by an allied country maybe Britain sent Canada to attack US to keep the Americans busy, though the bulk of Canadain army would have been busy in Europe and I think Britain would have wanted to keep the US out of the war and not provoked them, especially if the US decides to get revenge on Britain for using its colony as a pawn against it. not to mention there the whole moral aspect of it with Hitler and nazi being genocidal maniacs and a lot of Germans left Nazi Germany because they were "undesirable" aka "Jewish" or were anti-Nazi Germans who hated Hitler and wanted him defeated and many Americans even those of German descent did not like the Nazis or Hitler, sure there were pro-nazi and pro-Hitler Americans and Germans who moved to the US who were fans but they were just a minority that really dispanded into obscurity when the US officially entered the war on the allied side during our timeline I wonder if during this AU the US was nice "following the geneva convention" to soviet pow like they were with german pows and I wonder if Germany would give the US soviet and another allied pow like when the UK did during our timeline, there are so many what-ifs but I'm glad the US was an Allied and not an Axis cause honestly fuck Hitler and Nazis,
I was surprised that some moscovian historians acknowledge the crucial role of Lens-Lease, because it contradicts the official ideology (e.g "saving Europe", "russia would have won the war without Ukrainians" etc). I'd like to point at other issue though: in fact, Americans had built up the majority of soviet industrial power during the preceding decades. Despite the Great Depression and all the horrific atrocities of communists: the Purge, the Holodomor etc. Thus the foundation of the Cold War was laid well in advance by the short-sighted Western world by systematic empowering of its eventual foe. PS - Somewhat this post was removed yesterday automatically, so I retyped it in slightly alternate form.
Lend Lease was extremly important to Russians and proof to my point is when Churchill ask Stalin to choose between 2nd front openings in 1942 and 1943 with ending Lend Lease Stalin choose Lend Lease over 2nd front in the West!!
@@ITyapkin Dieppe landing was not important becouse Churchill plan for 2nd front was to land in Greece or Yugoslavia heading North and stop Red Army at 1941 border. Stalin was angry at Churchill for not alowing spreading communism over Europe so LL was much better deal for him!!!
In my opinion, sources tend to try to be political by either overstating or understating the contributions of lend lease. I don't think lend-lease to the USSR was a cause for victory over defeat, but it wasn't immaterial like some act. As a very rough guesstimate, without it, perhaps the war lasts another year and casualties potentially double.
@@Shatnerpossum hum, double casualties...yeah, they would have lost, think about it...how much troops did they loose and how much troops did they have at each time point... Stalingrad... double the Soviet losses and the city is lost due all defenders being wiped out... Kursk.... you double casualties and that would have meant the battle would have been won by the Germans due to wiping out the opposing armies. Substantial more casualties ok but double is a lot. There is not an infinite number of Soviet people, they don’t pop out of the ground overnight fully grown you know :). Just think about this way, double the civilian casualties on the Soviet side and try and work out what that would mean for the industry or the farmers food production. It would be a nightmare to try and work out how things would be if that happened.
@@yannichudziak9942 In the first place, no that's not how troop numbers work. In the second... You're trying to take a strategic consideration and make that tactical, which is also not how it works. Having an overall higher number of wartime casualties dispersed across an entire country geographically is not the same as arbitrarily saying "IMMA DOUBLE THE NUMBER FROM A BATTLE." Lend lease was never tactical, it was about logistical and food improvements. The outcome of the war was not about to change. It's not as if Germany's deficiencies in securing the initial gains were somehow going to be corrected by inflicting more casualties from 1943 on.
@@Shatnerpossum ok, then let’s double them without allocating them anywhere, all of these 15 million extra dead happen in limbo with zero impact on ANYTHING. civilian casualties doubled also...still ZERO impact of course because reasons. Double casualties is huge, you say I cannot attach the casualties to specific battles, you are saying double casualties from nowhere with zero impact on zero tactical, economic, social or cultural and when people say that if it really was doubled not even the Soviet Union could have survived. Saying these are dispersed over the entire geography especially in places where historically there were limited or no casualties, there were actual regions where there were none to few. If casualty ratings double the logical effect is that there is going to a massive increase in those places where historically there were casualties, they will not just happen elsewhere for no apparent reason as the Germans are not going to be fighting in other places suddenly without these casualties starting somewhere and leave the battle results completely the same as before. To get to your double casualties these have to start somewhere, that place will change the way the battles flow, the war will change and the losses to total up to double the losses suffered by the Soviet Union would be insane, you are looking at 24 million plus dead before doubling.... afterwards that is 48 millions of which 28 million would be civilians and 20 millions would be military.
That is roughly 1 in 4 people dead in the Soviet Union, there is no way they would have been able to sustain that, economically alone loosing another 14 million civilians would cripple the economy. Saying there would be more death fine but doubling it would not be sustainable at all, people would revolt at that point.
this would have been better explained not with compounding benefits but by avoiding the compounding collapse that can be avoided when you have a joker to fill the gap and prevent emergency. Compounding collapse is as true materially as it is politically, psicologically.
I am no soldier or historian. I do, however, take great interest in history, especially WWI and WWII. To summarise my opinion, before I go into a bit more detail: Germany, with the defeat at Stalingrad and Moscow, could not win WWII. The Soviets would of won. With the Lend Lease, it just allowed them to win sooner or more comfortably. Without it, it would of gone to another army (Probably Britain or Free France, or China), or stockpile in case of War with Japan (which a number of people were preparing for already, before Pearl Harbour) Now, a bit more of why I think this: The Soviet Industry grew massively as the war went on, and I believe that by the time of the Lend Lease, the Russians were able to keep up with losses, but couldn't get a stockpile. Once their industry grew and rebuilt, they would of produced what they lacked. It would of just probably meant less T34s, IS2s, guns and planes. So you don't get Operation Bagration or anything like that for quite some time. And you have more losses. Yet, the losses of the Germans were already fatal. They had lost WAY too many men already by the time of the Lend Lease, to sustain a single front that wide. Add in that, regardless of the Lend Lease, D-Day would happen, Africa would be lost and Italy would be invaded. More fronts to deal with. The additional arms and resources allowed the Soviets to have more leeway to make risky decisions. Otherwise they would of been more reserved. The war on the East probably would of been more of a grind that it already was
Lend lease had taken affect in 1941, after the Germans had taken most of the Soviet industry and agricultural lands starving the Soviets, so where do they get their food? From the USA of course. The USSR would never even have an industry without US materials nor a logistics line, 92.7% of all railway tracks provided by lend lease. This would make the Soviet army immobile, and allowing the German army to build up after 1941.
In total, 92.7% of the wartime production of railroad equipment by the USSR was supplied by Lend-Lease, including 1,911 locomotives and 11,225 railcars which augmented the existing stocks of at least 20,000 American locomotives and half a million railcars. Much of the logistical assistance of the Soviet military was provided by hundreds of thousands of U.S.-made trucks, 1/3rd of the truck strength of the Red Army was U.S.-built. Trucks such as the Dodge 3/4th ton and Studebaker 2+1/2 ton were easily the best trucks available in their class on either side on the Eastern Front. American shipments of telephone cable, aluminum, canned rations and clothing were also critical. Lend-Lease also supplied significant amounts of weapons and ammunition. The Soviet air force received 18,200 aircraft, which amounted to about 30 percent of Soviet wartime fighter and bomber production (mid 1941-45). About 13,000 Lend-Lease tanks were provided to the Soviet Union. A particular critical aspect of Lend-Lease was the supply of food. The invasion had cost the USSR a huge amount of its agricultural base, during the initial Axis offensive of 1941-42, the total sown area of the USSR fell by 41.9% and the number of collective and state farms by 40%. The Soviets lost a substantial number of draft and farm animals as they were not able to relocate all the animals in an area before it was captured and of those areas in which the Axis forces would occupy, the Soviets had lost 7 million of out of 11.6 million horses, 17 million out of 31 million cows, 20 million of 23.6 million pigs and 27 million out of 43 million sheep and goats. Tens of thousands of agricultural machines, such as tractors and threshers, were destroyed or captured. Agriculture also suffered a loss of labor, between 1941 and 1945, 19.5 million working-age men had to leave their farms to work in the military and industry. Agricultural issues were also compounded when the Soviets were on the offensive, areas taken back from the Axis had been devastated and contained millions of people who needed to be fed. Lend-Lease thus provided a massive number of foodstuffs and agricultural products. The Soviets couldnt even produce enough high octane aviation fuel for their planes so they had to rely on Lend Leased fuel, 40-50% of the tanks the Soviets used at the battle of Moscow came from the west, in conclusion if not for Lend Lease, the USSR would have lost WW2 badly
If lend lease was unimportant to the Soviets; they wouldn't have spent the time and money to remove pictures of Us and Uk vehicles from Soviet historical publishd history.
Let's think of this in terms of deep logistics and politics (stay with me for a minute). The US war industry was also in need of recovery after down sizing after WW1. Roosevelt, playing the long game, knows that the only sane thing to do is to stop Hitler; for cultural, pollical, economic, and moral reasons. But he had to get involved slowly as there are various groups opposed to intervention; ethnic German-Americans, Irish-Americans, Pacifists, etc. were all opposed to the war. He had to get the US psychologically and politically ready for war. Ramping up industries was needed, in WW1 the US could no equip its own troops. So by becoming Great Britain’s, and later the USSRs, supplier it gave him the means to build up the US war capacity. Factories needed to be built. Equipment for factories needed to be designed and built. Skilled workers needed to be trained, engineers had to be trained, etc. Lend lease allowed this to happen. It also allowed him to use Great Britain as a shield. While Roosevelt was using GB + Common Wealth + Allies as a shield he was preparing the US and using political persuasion to get the US into the war. Pearl Harbor solved that problem for him, it got the US into the war. Also, from a totally cold blooded point of view, if you can protect your nation using the blood of another nation, that is what a national leader should do. So if we think about it from a different point of view, we can see another reason Lend Lease was valuable. Even if the equipment, food, fuel, etc. was small compared to the other nations’ production; the impact on the deep logistics was important.
If there are lines piercing any portion of this text, disregard the lines. Read such pierced text as normal text. What is mysterious about lend lease, is that when the late 1930s and first years of the 1940s the United States begins approaching a myriad of nations, with treaties and diplomatic liasons that were not existent before the late 1930s. These numerous treaties were made with primarily lend lease in mind. The US was poised to send armaments and military aid to these numerous countries in mass in order to repel the Nazi aggression and expansion. If need be. Thus all these numerous treaties and diplomatic contacts were created to fufill the objectives and goals of lend leases contractual conditions. So all of this is happening and coming into being from the late 1930s into the early 1940s. What is interesting and mysterious about the numerous treaties the US made with these other nations is the fact that in the last months of the war----that being 1945, the atom bomb became fully developed and was used against Japan at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With that event, the nuclear era was born and the instruments of mass destruction, that is the atom bomb, now born into being, would eventually give way to the Cold War. The Soviet Union and on the opposite side the USA in alliance with the west, would be enemies to each other. So by the time the mid to late 1940s appeared, all these treaties and diplomatic contacts the USA made with other countries became favorable for extending American influence with these nations in order to control any possible Soviet influence with such nations. And with that possible occurrence freedom and world security was bolstered, strengthened and expanded. Even though the Warsaw Pact countries, China and North Korea became communist strongholds during the immediate years following WW2's conclusion. Thus the mystery. Its unusual that America embarked on all of these connections with numerous treaties with other nations in the late 1930s and early 1940s, resulting in creation of highly favorable international conditions for controlling the potentially devastating effects on an out of control nuclear bomb war with the USSR. The numerous treaties and outgoing diplomatic ties the US made with these other nations created a "balance of power favorable environment" for the US to strengthen in nuclear position in the world, and thus prevent any nuclear war emergence.I doubt any of the political leaders, military generals, academics and some of the laymen, ever expected lend leases creation and implementation in the late 1930s and early 1940s would gain more powerful life and continuance at war's end. That is all of the early formulated lend lease conditions and functions would be substantially active and continued after war's end into the future decades ahead during the cold war era. Its almost as if the planning, creation and execution of lend lease and its operations that were made in the late 1930s and early 1940s was primarily established for creating favorable balance of power conditions for the US with the emergence of the nuclear era, the atom bomb, and our adversarial position against the USSR and its nuclear arsenal. Yet no one had nuclear bombs on their minds in the late 1930s and early 1940s when lend lease was going into creation and subsequent implementation. Yet lend lease's activity created the favorable diplomatic environment for forwarding US foreign policy and balance of power goals during the nuclear era. I.E. the Cold War. The Neutrality Act by the US is the 1930s expressed the US isolation position that predominate in the US before world War 2. Yet by war's end, American Isolationism had clearly ended and was replaced by a robust policy of extending US goals ahead into and within numerous other countries. This all brought about by the nuclear bomb's inception into existence.
Even if lend lease had not happened the Germans would have lost. The Soviets made 80 thousand t-34s alone. The most produced german tank was the panzer iv with 8000 but that counts the models with the short 75mm that was useless against soviet tanks. Germany was always outnumbered in the land and in the air but won because it had superior weapons and soldiers. Once the allies realized they didn't need to defeat germany in the field but destroy the transportation, factories and fuel production the germans simply couldn't fight.
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The trucks and jeeps sent as lend lease represented roughly 1/3 of the USSR's military wheeled vehicles. How many of those trucks were turned into rocket launchers? It was key.
Would love for you to compear the Soviet lend-lease to that of the UK from my understanding the UK recived 2x what Russia did, yet it wasn't even half the size of the Russian armed force's.
As an example of the top of my head
Russia about 11,000 tanks over half were America made the rest were Canadian and brittish built.
The UK recived about 22,000 tanks from America.
Russia almost 20,000 aircraft yet the UK recived about 40,000 aircraft.
And then again with jeeps and half tracks.
If the Russians recived 12 to 15% of there ww2 needs from Lend-lease then wouldn't the UK be near 30% to 40% as it was a lot smaller?
I know somthing like 70% of British grain, Fats and maybe soap for the top of my head and many other thing's were sent from Canada to the UK.
But a lot of people seam to have the idear the UK was self sufficient and out produced Germany in everything.
One thing about Lend-Lease is it jump started American production by at least a year, compared to if the US had waited until after Pearl Harbor.
Good point.
Add to that that american arms production had been revived in the 1930's when Britain and France purchased as much equipment as they could to rebuild their military on the run up to WW2.
From an historiographical point of view, it is important to remember the pressing need for academics to say something new... we will likely swing to and fro on this issue, like so many others, many times over the next 50 years.
Sadly true. You can't publish papers agreeing with other papers.
@@sheboyganshovel5920 don't get me wrong, I am not trying to discredit legitimate research, but there is a long way to go on this issue. Far too many variables and not enough information widely avaiable in English sadly...
If Stalin and later Khrushchev officially said they wouldn't have survived without Lend/Lease , why is there doubt about it ?
There is a cliche in academia "Publish or Perish" ... because of which there are entire academic journals whose prime function is - to give academics a place they can be published. The only people who - might - read those journals are - other academics if anyone.
Then there are those guys out to sell their book. Of course - they have to make out like they've made all these revelations that no one else before has done before.
.
@@scratchy996 Zhukov also said that the USSR would have lost WW2 without the US
I think you have a good point on economy balance. Soviets specifically ordered equipment and materials they could not produce much like aluminium, high octane fuel or explosives, also radios and electronics, while refusing to take other equipment like some tanks or planes because they could simply do it better using available facilities.
Also, lendlease locomotives and wagons allowed USSR to mobilize locomotive plants to produce tanks and other needed equipment.
well, that's an interesting point, considering USSR rails had a whole different gauge
Soviets didn't refuse to take tanks. Sherman's and Matilda's fight in eastern front too. But mass shipment of tanks started only in 43.
@@nottoday3817 That is not a real problem for the manufacturers of locomotives considering that Locomotives form the US were shipped to other nations before the war, that used different rail gauge, they would build to what the customer wanted.
Никита Стариченков not true see PQ convoys of 1941-1942
Hundreds and hundreds of tanks (maybe thousands can’t remember all of them)
Who the heck would want Sherman?
My great grandmother told me about russians that sold her canned food (with U.S.A. written on them) for homemade alcohol. Southern Poland 1944 ;)
Lend -Lease was a function of the Soviet war effort. Lend-Lease made it possible for the Soviets to request all the things that they didn't make or made only at high costs: High quality aircraft fuel, trucks, spam(!), foodstuffs, boots etc. Lots of "soft" stuff. Lend-lease was worth far more to Soviets than normally recognized because Lend-Lease covered for the Soviets on their weak spots. And they were many.
@@simplicius11 You are stating the obvious that the majority of Lend-lease arrived in the last two years. There is a long way from Kursk to Berlin though without lend-lease.
And without Lend-lease to the Soviets US and Britain will much more stuff. That changes the equation too.
Something like 30 % of US lend-lease was shipped to the Soviet Union before Kursk according to wikipedia. That is hardly insignificant.
@@simplicius11 That we can agree on.
If you’re one of the soldiers whose life was spared because Lend Lease helped shorten the war, then said Lend Lease’s value is incalculable.
@R Hopzing No. I was only talking about Lend-Lease to the Soviets. The Soviet Union was lashed unto the existing Lend-Lease programme with Britain after June 22 1941.
Русское море no, after the war the Soviets decided to NOT pay back the USA for LL. The British paid though.
I'm not a soldier, nor a scholar, nor a historian, but I am a gamer. I can tell you then when teams are evenly powerful, both sides tend to lose forces evenly. But if one team is weaker, it becomes an avalanche. A small advantage turns into a moderate advantage, and that turns into a large advantage, and that turns into an insurmountable advantage. It's best to identify disparities in force strength early and try to do something about it ASAP. In online matches I've played, the first side to lose a single player tends to be the one that loses.
If the Soviets fielded 15% fewer planes, that means there will be some battles where they are outnumbered. When a force is outnumbered, they will take more losses. If they go flying again the next day, they are starting in a relatively worse state than the day before, so they'll take even more losses. Eventually the side that outnumbered their enemy will dominate the sky. Suddenly the ground battle swings heavily in that side's favor because they have air superiority, allowing them to perform recon, bombing, resupply, rescue, and paratrooper missions without much risk. This is to say nothing for the higher quality fuel that the Soviet planes and vehicles would be missing, or the ammunition that would be more scarce, or the hunger that would weaken and distract some of them.
Basically, even if the USA and Britain only increased Russia's military material by 10%-15%, that still might have been enough to allow German aggression to snowball out of control.
Except most of that material came in 1944-45 when Germans were done for.
@@konstantinkelekhsaev302 Of course it did. War production on all sides was highest in 44 and 45. You could twist that fact to also read this way: "Since Soviet production was much lower in 1942 and 1943 than 44 and 45, they needed the Lend Lease much more." But they said in the video that a significant amount of material was already coming in 42 and 43.
We were also supplying the Chinese, just as Russia and even Germany had been earlier on. Thanks to many factors, China did not fall. If it had, Japan may have broken its white peace with Russia and attacked from the other direction. Although mainland Japan is a small country, they still fielded millions of troops. And if they had been able to recruit from the Chinese population, things might have gotten pretty bad. Or maybe they would have focused on India afterward instead. Who knows?
Very true. I play Company of Heroes 2 and Age of Empires II DE. In both games I tend to play team games. Whenever I lose a match, I always go back and watch the replay to understand exactly how and why we lost. In 99.99% of cases, what I find is that one or more players on my team were hopelessly incompetent (sometimes this is immediately obvious from the post-game kills/losses screens). Essentially, their failure to hold their part of the front has a cascading effect, spilling over into failure on the next player, and eventually I'm forced to pull back my forces from the front (where I was winning), and transfer my units to defence on the other side of the map, where my ally is getting absolutely steamrolled.
Eventually, the game evolves into a 4v2 situation, where all four enemy players are pushing forward but due to the utter failure of one or more of the players on my team, I'm now fighting a two front war against unfavourable odds. Eventually, the enemy advantage becomes so large it's insurmountable, and no matter how skillfully I manage my units, it becomes irrelevant because of the failure of other players on my team to pull their weight.
This happens so frequently, I can understand why a lot of people would simply refuse to play these games using the automatch, but instead only play with their Steam friends who they know are competent. Automatch pretty much guarantees the situation I described above, about 50% of the games I play. The other 50%, I'm able to use my superior skill to actually win the game, even many times against overwhelming odds. A lot of times I look back at the replay and realise that I won the game by successfully fighting even though I was being 2v1ed the entire game, I still managed to win in my sector, allowing the other weaker players on my team to basically fight 3v2 on the other side of the map and win. It's ridiculous. Anyway relevance of this to lend lease: Yes, absolutely, I agree with your point.
@The Last Crusader Thanks! :)
This analogy is limited. Most video games must be transparent and responsive in feedback, so it's far easier to assess advantage than a real life theater of war. So while I agree overall, the fog of war extends out the time axis by potentially orders of magnitude.
One thing that most people fail to take in to account is the strategic value of Lend lease ( beyond just the raw numbers- which can be interpreted in 40 different ways) and this is specifically true for 1942- lend lease thru the Persian corrider was a vital life line for soviet troops fighting in the caucasus ( remember these guys were cut off during the first 2 phrases of case blue) not only did they keep the germans away from Baku ( 70% of soviet oil supply) they're resistance helped to overstretch the germans at critical point of the war and thus helped to set the stage for the success of operation Uranus.
It's simple, really, lend-lease had a compounding effect: troop morale, more liberty to focus on total war production, better logistics. Knowing that your children have something to eat while you fight with your allies across the globe keeps a soldier motivated. It also helps if you can actually get to the enemy, because you have trucks to do so.
from "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
After Stalingrad, the Nazis systematically destroyed the
Soviet railroad tracks, transport equipment, locomotives. The products of
Soviet enterprises could not make up for the resulting loss. By November 1944,
we provided the USSR with 1,045 locomotives, 7,164 wagons, 1,000 loading
platforms and 100 tanks. The number of supplies peaked in November 1944:
only during this month we delivered 1,367 cars to the USSR. The problem
of replacing rails was one of the major. By November 1944, the USSR was
supplied with 2,120,000 tons of steel, of which 478,000 tons were allocated for
rails replacement, and 110,000 tons of railway wheels and axles.
@@treyriver5676 also, how old are you that you were part of the people supplying the USSR during ww2?
They loved the P-39. The USSR had the most success with it.
The Spitfire not so much, ironically. Then again, the Soviets tended to operate under harsher conditions than the Spitfire was likely meant to operate under. I've also heard that the tankers who were given Shermans actually quite liked them.
@@stanklepoot And they got brand new aircobras, but they got worn out spitfires (Logically given that brand new spitfires could not be spared even for the RAF units outside ETO until quite late in the war)
Michal Soukup brand spanking new. New Spits were supplied at the same time some RAF units were still flying Hurricanes in combat.
@@stanklepoot spitfires are high and mid altitude fighter, and soviets were given mark vi, long wing high altitude version. Of course they liked low altitude cobras much better
All comes down to how you use it. The US and UK generally operated at high altitudes, where the P-39 wasn't as helpful. While it could operate at lower altitudes, the airspace had to be secured. Once done, aircraft like Hurricanes, Typhoons, or Thunderbolts equipped with bombs and rockets worked just fine due to the terrain and targets (among other factors). Further, concentrated AA was sometimes a problem, so the faster a plane could get in and get out the better.
But for the USSR, they generally operated at lower altitudes, and due to the size of the front air supremacy was not feasible, local air superiority for the period of time needed was good enough. Further, AA could not be as concentrated, so more time on target was useful.
I like how the thumbnail pretty much sums up the soviet view on this :P
I loved your "stack bonus" idea ; it is a good way of thinking of Lend Lease. SPAM [lunch meat] helped to win the war.
I think even more important is his second thought about compounding.
It’s like, sure we were able to supply 5 more men with food out of 1000. So instead of 995, we could start battle with 1000. But it also means that, enemy had higher casualties, because instead of 995 defenders, they faced 1000.
So in the next battle, Germans put 995 people, because they lost 5 more previously. And Russians put 1010 because they have 5 more from previous battle, 5 more less killed by Germans since they faced stronger defenders, and new food supply came to defenders, so yet another 5 Russians didn’t starve to death.
So we are heading to third battle. Where Germans put 980 soldiers, because previously they lost more soldiers than they would without that change, and faced more soldiers than without that change, and same goes for defenders with 1030 soldiers.
What would be 1000 to 1000 fight to deplete resources on both sides, became tipping point to one side, until one collapsed. With each battle having more and more, and enemy having less and less.
@@stafer3 Not sure but more important, but a good point. More men more likely to win.
Helped to quicken the war.
@@stafer3 maybe in hand to hand combat, but battles at the more modern levels tend to be more one sided based on a number of factors. Although youre not wrong, in a war you basically dwindle down the enemies resources..
@@ElMayo31 Sure, it was example with random numbers from me just to show concept. I didn’t want to make it more realistic because I thought people would focus on specifics instead of the point. There would be battling between “we would win anyways” and “see, we saved your assess” camps instead.
And it’s kind of hard to guess outcomes based on these changes. I mean maybe soldiers who would be saved from starvation would just step on mine and blow up not changing anything. Or they could be instrumental in changing course of whole campaign. So I went with inoffensive compounding of -5 +5.
Didn't Stalin himself admit in private, according to Khruschev's memoirs, that they'd have lost without lend-lease ? One would assume he'd know.
Really? To be the devil's advocate here: Because he was the leader, he had all the facts to the point where he could have accurately foreseen alternative strands of history?
@@DagarCoH No because of the Psychological pressure and Paranoia could have lead to depression and the fact that Russians drank like fish could lead to a "weak" moment where Stalin would admit such.
@@Delgen1951 And that makes it fact? Sorry, I am not sure I understood your comment, not a native english speaker.
www.nytimes.com/1970/11/30/archives/khrushchev-memoir-praises-allies-role-in-world-war-ii.html
Article on the subject
@@simplicius11 As frequently mentioned on this channel, all sources have their place. One definately has be be careful with memoirs, but they do illustrate very important points. Even secondary sources written many years later have their value. It is all in the putting it together.
Trucks food and fuel were important to lend lease. The German logistics made it harder to resupply troops in the field. The Russians could resupply faster and before the Germans could replace losses. The Germans could only mount delaying actions and minor counter offensives.
Food, clothes, medicine, wires, explosives, etc. The Soviets have lost their agricultural land, they had no civilian economy, everyone was either on the front, or working to produce military equipment. The army would have starved without Spam, and the economy would have collapsed without the materials the Americans sent.
Without the food and trucks they would simply starve. Most of the farmland was occupied by Germany and even before war there were food shortages. Anyone saying otherwise has to have a massive bias. It seems to be the rage today to think soviet victory was inevitable but when you look on a map and see what was occupied and realize what areas are farmable it is obvious there was no way to fight on.
@Вук Тодић You harvest food once a year, so there is no need for aid at all until at least late 1942 you already have enough stored from before. And millions of people did starve to death. If it got any worse they would have to turn to cannibalism, and some reports say they did in isolated instances. They also didn't have any boots for their new recruits without US aid. That was the first thing they sent and sent them in the millions. You can guess how well the winter fighting would go without that. Stalin also sent about 5 million to die around moscow-rhzev area in winter of 1941, would not be surprised if it were to decrease supply needs.
@@LTPottenger You should probably look at the numbers.
My Grandpa told me that when Soviets walked into his town in 1945 all of the trucks were american GM trucks and every can of food he found had iscription "Made in USA". He said, from what he have seen then, in his opinion maybe Soviets produced enough of T-34's to overwhelm the Germans but without Land Lease they would all just starve to death.
There was enough food to feed army, but lendlease greatly improved the quality of food.
@@AlexanderSeven to be honest after the colectivisation Russia have became food importer instead of exporter and after a great hunger I highly doubt if USSR could feed itself, especially knowing that in 1941 after initial attack situation with food was dramatic, far worse than with tanks which production you can move behind Ural but grain will not raise in matter of few weeks and in such a climat
@@emperorjulian2159 there's a lot of grain produced in Urals and even Siberia, it's not arctic climate or dead land.
@@AlexanderSeven this action was conducted during Chrushchev period, many years after WWII
@@emperorjulian2159 When Stolypin was sending people in Siberia in 1906, the grain was already grown there.
Long story short, cold war made both sides over and under emphasize it's role. Long story long; lend lease did not keep the USSR from losing the war or stopped it from winning. The amount's provided in 1941 to 1942 did not turn the tides of battle. However post mid 1943 to 1945 onward the Red Army would not have been as successful without it. Millions more would have died and the war would have dragged on until 1946 with Germany getting nuked first. Keep in mind that US and British forces would have also suffered higher casualties as a slower and more methodical Soviet advance would have freed up more Wehrmacht mobile formations to face allied landings in Italy and France.
In battle of Moscow in 1941 big part of tanks used in offensive by Soviets were british Matilda and Churchill. The same situation was in 1942. LL provide much help in 1941 and 1942. Not that much like in 1944-45, but crucial numbers for soviet surviving in 1941. That was a important for Red Army strike capibility.
@@horatio8213 About 8% of the overall tank fleet and 15% of the medium tanks available. But the soviets didn't use tanks effectively during the battle of Moscow or the early stages of Stalingrad. And in many ways they couldn't due to the weather. Despite the myth of Russian equipment being cold proof. It was plain old infantry that achieved the majority of the breakthroughs in both battles. This was cited as such by German Army leadership.
@@robertalaverdov8147 In case of tanks you should remeber that in this time most soviet tanks were ligth models. In this case even Churchill and Matilda were quite good. It is typical that in soviet sources British help was dissmised.
@@horatio8213 I'm not disputing the number of tanks provided, in fact I gave the breakdown. And they weren't bad tanks, guns were mediocre but they had decent armor and most came with radios. I just think people grip too firmly the idea of tanks being the only thing that won ww2 battles. If you look at casualties, you'll come to realize that ww2 was actually very similar to ww1. Roughly 70% of casualties in WW2 were from artillery, they were 80% in ww1. What the soviets produced in absolute butt loads that was most effective against the Germans was artillery. Because contrary to propaganda footage the vast majority of the German army was made up of infantry. German artillery was actually better in many ways but in typical German fashion they didn't produce enough of them because each piece was an art project or something.
THANK YOU
All the Lend-Lease stuff got distributed to the USSR and other countries by ship.
Salute the Merchant Marine!
SS Lane Victory
thelanevictory.org/
This is an old video, so I'm a bit late. ;) Perhaps the best take on this difficult historical debate is to look at how much GDP the US transferred to the Soviet Union. It was roughly 2-3 % per year, being USA the biggest economy in 1939 in the world already (roughly 3x times bigger than both Germany or Soviet Union, by the way). So, an annual US 3% translates roughly to Soviet +10 % GDP, right? This is a lot, especially when your industry gets crushed and needs 1-2 years to recover. As we all know from 2020, where a GDP loss of 5 % results in millions of unemployed, this is a bigger issue than it seems.The concept of GDP is known since the 17th century. We know that the Russian GDP decreased in 1942 by 25-35 %. We also know that the total tonnage and net worth of the Lend-Lease deliveries to Russia increased even in 1945, so the Soviet Union was until the very last day dependent on it. But here comes the biggest issue: Stalin refused to publicly acknowledge and admit Lend-Lease, or its large extent at least. After 1945, he even ignored American requests for repayment, which eventually led to a staggering legal debate that was solved in the 1970s. Until today most Russians do not know much about Lend-Lease, by the way. I think that it was Yeltsin who was the first Russian president or first secretary who finally admitted that is has some bigger role for the Soviet Union during WW2. This is important as Putin himself refuses year after year, latest a few months ago, to acknowledge even any collaborations between Hitler and Stalin. It means, for some reason Putin actively supports Stalin and orthodox Soviet historical positions on WW2 for 20 years. So, overall, I think that if you are anti-Western or anti-American in some way, you will likely jump on the Soviet and Stalin train. Because for Stalin during the Cold War the importance of the Lend-Lease for the Soviet Union, the archenemy of the USA, was way beyond bad PR. It would mean that capitalism saved the Stalin communism. And, if we look at the numbers of Lend-Lease that was delivered to the Soviet Union, the equipment numbers alone are insane. A quote from Wikipedia: "over 400,000 jeeps and trucks; 12,000 armored vehicles (including 7,000 tanks, about 1,386[55] of which were M3 Lees and 4,102 M4 Shermans);[56] 11,400 aircraft (4,719 of which were Bell P-39 Airacobras)". Especially the trucks are important, as those were important for Katushyas exist, but more importantly to why the Russian logistics was ahead of the Germans because this delivery alone was roughly what the Wehrmacht had at hand at the beginning of Barbarossa, if I recall it correctly (I would need to check that), with rubber supply problems that could not be replaced even with the biggest success in Russia -- and here the Soviets got it for free from the Americans. As one history professor of mine put it once: Lend-Lease is the single biggest underestimation of Hitler, and his biggest miscalculation. It was understandable that in the same way the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 was unthinkable and a shock to the world public (Nazis vs Stalinists), Hitler fell for the same ideological misjudgment regarding the USA, believing that the US would never support the communist and Stalinist Soviet Union at such large scale, or at all, and that he would have been able to conquer the Soviet Union eventually. And this is the success of Lend-Lease: That it gave the Soviet Union time to breath and recover, much like any other major economical program, say, the Greece recovery program a few years ago, or the Marshall-Plan in the years after 1945. It's easy to underestimate such programs.
The most beautiful, well-thought out comment I’ve ever read. Wow, wish there was a way I could copy this comment so I can use it in some future debate, it’s perfect!🤯
Yes those trucks were the weapon that won the war allowing allied armies effective rapid logistical movement at a capacity the axis could not match.
Remember what Napoleon said about a General learning Tactic vs Logistic
judging from memoires of both sides I'd say for guys on the ground the most important factors were food, medicine, trucks, tanks, half tracks, jeeps, then radios, aircraft, especially transport aircraft, and trains. Because all that is how YOU get around, how long you can fight and what helps you fight.
For the higher ups I'd guess the most important was food, oil, steel, rubber, chemicals, radios and then all that other stuff.
Christ try even discussing Lend-Lease with a Red Army fan boy on a discussion thread. LOOK it was TRUCKS. The Soviets were only able to produce enough trucks to match their losses and sustain their original degree of motorization. The addition of just shy of 950k American trucks provided them with OPERATIONAL mobility they lacked prior to mid-late 43. Von Manstein and others became used to waiting for Red Army attacks to spend themselves and then counter-attack with limited German resources. The massive input of the trucks meant there WAS NO PAUSE. The Soviets were finally able to execute their "Deep Battle" concept. The other important tactical resource provided was over a million miles of copper phone lines, switch boards and handsets. Gen Gehlen who headed German East Front intelligence was limited to radio intercept which the Red Army exploited ruthlessly. If the Germans heard it.. it was a lie. The Soviets were using hard lines we provided. Aluminum for engines was just as important. Well over half of ALL aluminum the Soviets used after mid-43 came from Lend Lease. Without American Lend Lease they MIGHT have hung on.. But it would have been American and Allied troops in Berlin at the end.. NOT Red Army.
Edit: Apparently the source I used for the number of trucks took the total of ALL Lend Lease vehicle exports and attributed them to Russia. The actual number, sources vary, seem to be around 400k +\- 15k which essentially doubled total Soviet war production. Because of losses however.. By late 43 roughly 35-40% of Soviet tactical logistics rolled on American wheels. By mid 44 that number would top 50% and by wars end 60%+. As an aside by mid 44 wherever they were built they were rolling on American rubber with American belts and hoses. All carried by the way, on American built ships and railed to the front with help from over 400+ locomotives built to Russian gauge and if NOT actually on one of the 1500 or so American flat cars sent for the purpose.. Almost certainly rolling on one of the 100s of thousands of railwheels cast and shipped as well.
My basic point however STANDS. Without the operational mobility provided by American logistical transport Red Army deep penetration offensives like Bagration would have been impossible.The eventual defeat of the Wehrmacht was inevitable; without Lend Lease it would have taken FAR longer and at FAR greater cost. A cost that by 1944 the Red Army could ill afford.
and that Aluminum... that is the engines of the Soviet Tanks and Soviet Aircraft. It is not easily replaceable.
We trade material, they trade their lives. If the Soviets were exhausted and stop their advance. We will be entering Berlin with millions of loses instead, hell the German could put most of their effort fighting us instead of the Soviets when the Soviet felt is not worth it.
Think about it, if we didn't support the Soviets, they would not willing to fight for us. Yes those times the Soviets is fighting for us. The Cold War is not in effect yet, defeating Germany is our priority, and letting the Soviets fighting alone definitely not a good idea.
Using Cold War mentality was a reason why the Soviets were portrayed as evil, tyrannical yet weak and incapable. Two doesn't add up when they were fighting against German war of destruction.
The problem is when the Freeaboos come out of the woodworks to try and argue why the Soviet Union would've been steamrolled by Germany without Lend Lease. Of course they are completely unaware that Lend Lease to the SU was barely existing when they pushed Germany back before Moscow, was a minuscule factor when they won at Stalingrad and still negligible when they completely stopped them at Kursk.
@@Tepid24 EXCEPT.. Over half the medium tanks used in the Soviet counter offensive in front of Moscow were BRITISH. Were they as effective as the 200 or so T-34s?? No, but to quote a certain Soviet mass murderer "Quantity has a quality of it;s own." Spare us the "Noble Great Patriotic War" BS. In 39 Stalin gobbled up 1/3 of Poland and ALL of Estonia, Latvia and 1/2 of Lithuania. In 1940 they attacked Finland and grabbed Bessobarabia from the Rumanians.. ALL while providing Germany with oil, wheat, tungsten and chromium to fuel the Wehrmacht's war machine. During that same time they were slaughtering 50,000 Polish police, politicians, students, professors and anyone associated with the old Polish government down to postal clerks; and God only knows how many tens of thousands from the Baltic States died in the gulags... Stalin KILLED as many Russians and Ukranians civilians BEFORE WW2 as died during it. So just STOP.
@@treyriver5676 And not at ALL when you lose the Bauxite mines in the Donetz at the start of the war. You can move factories to the Urals.. Ore deposits; not so much.
One thing everyone forgets is the fact that Lend Lease said "You are not alone" which must have at least given the troops hope, they knew that until a european invasion came, supplies would flow. Also the aircraft, submarines and troops diverted to combat the Convoys were not able to be used in Russia.
Really enjoy your different spin on WWII Military History.
Zukov and Stalin both said they would have lost the war without Lend Lease. They would have starved.
on top of that, Khrushchev also admitted the USSR would have lost without Lend Lease
Go through the extensive list of US aid to the Soviet Union and then explain how it couldn't have been a major factor in the success of the USSR in defeating the German forces.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease#US_deliveries_to_the_Soviet_Union
Bernhard makes an important point that when history is revised it is often taken an extreme at first. I agree.
''Go through the extensive list of US aid to the Soviet Union and then explain how it couldn't have been a major factor in the success of the USSR in defeating the German forces.
''
If you had any brains, you would understand that much of the equipment was useless and was already produced by the Soviets themselves. If you simply look at the numbers, like an idiot, of COURSE you won't understand anything.
''Bernhard makes an important point that when history is revised it is often taken an extreme at first. I agree.
''
Indeed, US history is so terribly distorted.
@@fegelfly7877 you're everywhere in this comment section, the facts are the USSR would have been steamrolled in WW2 if not for the US, this isnt a matter of debate this is just an objective historical fact, without the US giving the USSR billions of dollars worth of guns, ammo, tanks, planes, trucks, jeeps, tractors, trains and locomotives, boxcars, train rail tracks, tires, steel, explosives, aluminum, wire, rubber, gun powder, fuel, food, clothes, blankets, cotton, army boots, radios, and other crucial military and logistical equipment through US Lend Lease then the USSR would have been steamrolled by Germany, during the 1920s and 1930s the USSR relied on the US to help industrialize the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union relied on American engineers, American industrialists, and American architects to build the Soviet factories and build the Soviet industry in the 1920s and 1930s which the Soviets later used in WW2 to fight with Germany, if not for the American aid to help build the Soviet industry the Soviet Union wouldnt even have anything to produce tanks, vehicles, weapons, ammo or any other important military equipment and they would have been steamrolled by Germany, Russia had to rely on American industrial engineer Frederick W. Taylor's industrial methods to succeed in creating an industrial power, without the US building the Soviet industry in the 1920s and 1930s the Soviet industry would have been a joke during WW2, the reason why the Soviets could even produce anything domestically was thanks to the US building their industry in the 1920s and 1930s, so if we combine Lend Lease in the 1940s plus the US building the Soviet industry in the 1920s and 1930s, the conclusion is simple, the USSR gets rolled over by the Germans in WW2 and its not even close, the Soviet leaders them selves Khrushchev, Zhukov, and even Stalin himself all admit that the USSR would have lost WW2 if it wasnt for the US, i think ill take their word for it over yours, you know the men who ACTUALLY fought the war in person
I believe it was more important to the Soviets than they were willing to let on. The US through lend lease provided over 8 million pairs of boots and all of the meat consumed by the troops. Literally food for thought. While lend lease didn’t really kick in to effect until after the red army had already stopped the Wehrmacht it did allow them to focus on what they could readily produce as they marched to Berlin
I believe it was less important to the soviets then the US is willing to let on
@@Vierzehn014 why?
Yeah,this is something important to note.I personally believe that without the lend-lease soviet union could kicck out germany out of soviet union,but without they would never reach berlin.
the Wehrmacht was stopped in February 1943, the Soviets didnt start gaining ground against the Germans until 1943, Lend Lease was coming into the USSR in large amounts in 1942, without Lend Lease and not just Lend Lease but many other factors of WW2, the USSR would have undeniably lost
@@Vierzehn014 wrong, without the US giving the USSR billions of dollars worth of guns, ammo, tanks, planes, trucks, jeeps, tractors, trains and locomotives, boxcars, train rail tracks, steel, explosives, aluminum, wire, rubber, gun powder, fuel, food, clothes, blankets, cotton, army boots, radios, and other crucial military and logistical equipment through US Lend Lease then the USSR would have been steamrolled by Germany
Is Bismark ok?? Either he is under a very yellow light or I have a concern that he is yellowing (liver problems???) - I hope he is ok...
It's probably just the camera color settings.
Okay, lets switch this around a bit. What do you think would have happened if the Germans had received 240,000 trucks, 2500 locomotives, 30,000 aircraft, oil, high octane fuel, food, tanks, ammo, coal, steel radios etc etc. I suspect the outcome on all fronts would have been different.
In what year? What people don't usually get is the time-scale of Lend-Lease. In the first year of the war on the Eastern front Soviets received mostly British equipment and in few numbers. In 1942 there was an improved situation, but still daring. The bulk of what USSR received was after mid 1943 when the Sea-lanes were finally cleared and supplies could arrive in major numbers
yeah, the USSR simply had better allies: USA, UK (the British Empire back then)...whereas Nazi Germany had Italy (hindered more than helped), Romania (which gave a lot of oil though) , Hungary, etc
@Infectious Legume Well, they somehow managed to beat Wermacht in 1941-42 before Lend-lease started to play a major role in Soviet war effort. By 1943 the germans lost their most experienced troops (those who fought in France and had months of uninterrupted training afterwards before the start of Barbarossa). Considering that the quality of german troops continued to decline in 1943 while the quality of soviet troops continued to increase, it is highly unlikely that the Germans would be able to achieve victory. There is no doubt that without Lend-lease (especially, toluol shipments), Soviet advance would have been much slower and much more costly. However, by 1943 it is highly unlikely that the germans would be able to turn the tide of the war. They have lost their most important resource - experienced, well-trained troops of 1941. And they werent able to resupply this resource ever again.
Well said. That is why I wrote that the Soviet advance would be slower. For how long you would the germans survive a war of attrition? Considering that their industry already worked at its maximum capacity while the Soviet industry kept increasing its output every year? Considering this dynamics, the soviets would have reached sufficient offensive capabilities sooner or later, if not in 1944, then in 1945. I just do not see what the germans could do at that point to reverse this dynamics. It is practically deterministic
@@nikitosnu they tied in 41-42 the German army stood in USSR not the the other way around.
would they have held in late 42 with out aid ? maybe, but would there have been an offensive in '43 and if not.. how long can the political structure survive in USSR ?
Not sure if this was mentioned in here or not (the video or comments).
Among a million other points I can make (and I'm sure others already have), I'll ask, who here has Amazon Prime?
It's amazing, isn't it?!? Not only getting whatever you want, but the free delivery part.
Cough.
Meaning...
You have to consider the ripple effects of it all. If you say for example "The West provided the Soviets with X, in the following numbers", you're ignoring the benefit of the Soviets:
1. Not having to build X itself.
2. Go and pick X up.
Meaning how many Soviet men (and women) were freed up to do more important tasks (like fighting) because they didn't have to make boots. Or grow food. Etc etc
How many Soviet war machines were made from products that otherwise would have been needed to build merchant shipping to go and pick up X from the West? (Amazon Prime).
How many more tank factories were the Soviets able to build because they didn't need to diverse factories for boring items, like truck factories, radio shops, etc etc
Minor criticism: "mixing high octance fuel with their low octance fuel" I'm no expert, but as far as i understood it, that just gives you more fuel with basically the lower rating. (It would just work if the lower octane fuel makes up for let's say 1-3% of the overall fuel you get by mixing)
This is true but it doesn't mean the Soviets didn't do it. Knowing them they'd attribute any damage done by their mixing process to defective equipment or sabotage or whatever.
@@CedarHunt very good point!
Lend lease filled all the gaps in the Soviet economy. Tinned food, radios, copper wire for telephones, half their explosives, half their aircraft fuel (maybe more). And don't forget that Wallie help included industrial experts to make their economy more efficient.
This had two effects:
1) It made the Sovs far more EFFECTIVE in the battles they fought, because the Western aid filled critical gaps
2) it allowed the Sovs to put far more soldiers in the field (QUANTITY) than their economy would otherwise been able to support.
Sadly, Sov EFFICIENCY remained pretty low, so they paid for their victory in rivers of blood.
Without Lend Lease and Western aid, could the Sovs ended up in Berlin? I think it's 50, 50
Without the many "second fronts" - Battle of the Atlantic, Combined Bomber Offensive, North African battles, Blokade of Germany... Without all that and just Sovs (even with lend lease) versus the Axis... Reckon the Sovs lose in 45, maybe 46.
What about tires? Didn't synthetic rubber from the USA have an enormous effect, since most of the natural rubber in the world was in Japanese hands after 1941? Neither trucks nor aircraft are much use without tires. Since Soviet tanks used all steel tracks, that suggests rubber was relatively scarce for them. Of course the USSR could import rubber from Japan before they invaded, but Japan would have received preference and Allied sea power had cleared that part of the ocean by then of merchant shipping after 1943, so where would the USSR get alternative supplies without the USA?
We got 16,000 wonderful vehicles. We got all the steel that we make our tanks out of. Of course, we couldn't have done without Western aid.
Georgy Zhukov
But, but, but my Russian bias?!
@Вук Тодић "Marshal Zhukov gave an assessment of metal supply in the USSR. His remarks given in 1963, which were stored in the Central Archives of the Russian Defense Ministry, are listed below: «Right now they say that the Allies never helped us... But you cannot deny that Americans drove many materials, without which we would not be able to form our reserves and could not continue the war ... And how much steel they supplied! Could we quickly establish the production of tanks, if not for American aid? And now they show it in a way that we had plenty of sources.» " Ryzhkov and Kumanev "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
@@tylerdurden4080 But, but, but your Russian bias indeed:
forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=206117
I believe the Soviets ended up admitting to lend-lease making up around 10% of war materiel, but they downplayed it as ONLY around 10%. Now, to me, 10% seems like a lot when one considers how massive WWII was. Furthermore, I believe that 10% figure covers the entire war effort (at least since the start of lend-lease). So, the truth is likely that it was massively important earlier in the program, but became less so after the Soviets were able to get their factories up and running at full capacity for a while.
Pretty sure the Soviets admitted that lend lease in the early days of Barbarossa had basically saved them. MHV uploaded a video about it, which is the video that this video is following up from.
@@impalabeeper By looking at tonnage numbers, this cannot be the case, lend lease in barbarossa was basically nothing.
@@enriqueouro9 As MHV said you have to look at the context. Sure, the numbers are small if you compare it to the overall Soviet war production but you have the remember that during the early days of Barabarossa, Soviet factories were relocated and the rich farmlands were lost. Lend lease equipment and food filled the gap during this critical phase for the Soviets. It was when the factories are up and running and food supplies have stabilised that lend lease aid has become negligible. But, the import of American trucks undoubtedly made the most positive impact for the Soviets for the whole duration of the entire conflict because it made them focus producing more offensive vehicles such as tanks rather than trucks. The Soviet T34 tanks were the most produced tanks in history after all.
What does that even mean, 10% of what? What is included in the other 90%? When, how where did these 10% come about? What count's as war effort?
Such a number on it's own doesn't tell you anything without context. It's literally completely meaningless.
@@simplicius11 That's just plain wrong if you consider British lend lease already underway via Iran and Arctic convoy.
It is very simple.......without lend/lease, the USSR would have starved. Food stocks were so low, that the USSR was very close to collapse in 1942. In fact overall, the USSR never really recovered from WW2.
Why this emphasis on Soviet logistics? I thought those trucks were most useful for motorizing infantry and artillery. The Soviet Union didn't have a paved road network in the 1980s, and wartime conditions would have been much worse. So rail served the Soviet logistical needs, but trucks were probably most useful in combat, allowing units to move forward faster and even from previously threatened sector to newly threatened sector, right?
Farming and food distribution
Indeed, if the Soviets needed trucks, they would have produced them themselves. The Soviets relied on horse-drawn vehicles and it was just as efficient.
@@fegelfly7877 Wow what a dunce. The germans used horses more than the soviets, but that is not what the trucks were used for they were used for TRANSPORT especially in food production which let the russians go from 47% of their workers being in agriculture to freeing up almost everyone. And most important for doing what their trains would have done. And in addition to the endless rolling stock. Liars and idiots, those are the only people who make this crap up. The supply situation was the problem for the germans, and this would also have been a huge problem for the russians except america send over magic almost instant solutions to all these problems.
@@LTPottenger We have a seriously idiotic dullard here. Horse-drawn vehicles were not used as transport, it appears. What a complete fucking moron! The SU can produce 100,000+ of trucks a year in peacetime, they choose to produce light tanks and rely on horses instead. Not to mention, the Soviets had already built upwards of 300,000 trucks.
''except america send over magic almost instant solutions to all these problems.''
Except, America barely contributed at all, and the Soviet Union won the war for them. Without Lend-Lease aid, more Soviet troops would have died, but the war would have been won nonetheless. Suck it up, buttercup.
@@fegelfly7877 utterly delusional, without the US giving the USSR billions of dollars worth of guns, ammo, tanks, planes, trucks, jeeps, tractors, trains and locomotives, boxcars, train rail tracks, tires, steel, explosives, aluminum, wire, rubber, gun powder, fuel, food, clothes, blankets, cotton, army boots, radios, and other crucial military and logistical equipment through US Lend Lease then the USSR would have been steamrolled by Germany, In total, 92.7% of the wartime production of railroad equipment by the USSR was supplied by Lend-Lease, including 1,911 locomotives and 11,225 railcars which augmented the existing stocks of at least 20,000 American locomotives and half a million railcars. Much of the logistical assistance of the Soviet military was provided by hundreds of thousands of U.S.-made trucks, 1/3rd of the truck strength of the Red Army was U.S.-built. Trucks such as the Dodge 3/4th ton and Studebaker 2+1/2 ton were easily the best trucks available in their class on either side on the Eastern Front. American shipments of telephone cable, aluminum, canned rations and clothing were also critical. Lend-Lease also supplied significant amounts of weapons and ammunition. The Soviet air force received 18,200 aircraft, which amounted to about 30 percent of Soviet wartime fighter and bomber production (mid 1941-45). About 13,000 Lend-Lease tanks were provided to the Soviet Union. A particular critical aspect of Lend-Lease was the supply of food. The invasion had cost the USSR a huge amount of its agricultural base, during the initial Axis offensive of 1941-42, the total sown area of the USSR fell by 41.9% and the number of collective and state farms by 40%. The Soviets lost a substantial number of draft and farm animals as they were not able to relocate all the animals in an area before it was captured and of those areas in which the Axis forces would occupy, the Soviets had lost 7 million of out of 11.6 million horses, 17 million out of 31 million cows, 20 million of 23.6 million pigs and 27 million out of 43 million sheep and goats. Tens of thousands of agricultural machines, such as tractors and threshers, were destroyed or captured. Agriculture also suffered a loss of labor, between 1941 and 1945, 19.5 million working-age men had to leave their farms to work in the military and industry. Agricultural issues were also compounded when the Soviets were on the offensive, areas taken back from the Axis had been devastated and contained millions of people who needed to be fed. Lend-Lease thus provided a massive number of foodstuffs and agricultural products. The Soviets couldnt even produce enough high octane aviation fuel for their planes so they had to rely on Lend Leased fuel, the US contributed more to winning WW2 than the Soviets did, the US defeated the Germans in Western Europe and Italy while also defeating the Japanese empire in the Pacific at the same time while also bailing the USSR out of the eastern front through Lend Lease all at the same time, the US won WW2 for the Soviets, without the US defeating the Japanese empire in the Pacific then the Japanese would have invaded the USSR from the east and together with Germany would have utterly crushed the USSR from 2 sides but thanks to the US that didnt happen, after seeing how badly the USSR was losing in 1941 and 1942 with the constant German advances, imagine if the Japanese empire also invade the USSR from the east, plus without Lend Lease, no other fronts in Italy and Western Europe diverting German torops away from the eastern front, the USSR collapses like a house of cards, the Soviet leaders them selves Khrushchev, Zhukov, and even Stalin himself all admit that the USSR would have lost WW2 if it wasnt for the US, i think ill take their word for it over yours, you know the men who ACTUALLY fought the war in person
This is pretty much what I always thought. If the Soviets didn't have lend lease the war would have dragged on or might have slogged into a stalemate. I had advocated that Lend Lease didn't win the war but it did free up Soviet industry to concentrate on warfighting equipment at the expense of some combat support and combat service support equipment. Factories that would have made trucks can now concentrate on tanks and food was much less of a concern, especially after Hitler took the major food growing regions of the Soviet Union.
One thing that I don't think is emphasized was the importance of high octane aviation fuel to the Soviet effort. From what I have read the Soviets produced very little of this before the war or even during the war and almost all of the 100 octane fuel was provided by the United States. Soviet aircraft, like any other aircraft, would have had a serious performance issue with low test fuel and a significant advantage over their German counterparts with it. If I remember right some of the issues with early lend lease aircraft was this lack of high octane fuel-Western aircraft performed poorly without it. Being faster and accelerating more quickly probably saved Soviet pilot lives, which increased the knowledge base and led to the depletion of the German advantage in experience and technical superiority.
So you think:
• The entire North Africa campaign, denying Italy’s new oil production in Libya from ‘39 onwards
• The Anglo-Iraqi War
• The joint Anglo-Soviet Invasion of Iran
• The battle for the Atlantic
• The operation to funnel nearly half of all Soviet equipment and supplies through the Persian gulf, including Iranian Oil.
Was all just unnecessary and WWII was just German and Russian tanks playing bumper cars for a few more months?
@@-John-Doe- How the hell did you draw that conclusion from my comments? I never said that any of those things were unnecessary. I struggle to figure out how you came to a conclusion like that from what I wrote.
@@tcofield1967 Because you don’t seem to understand the jurisprudence or philosophy behind why Africans weren’t considered Rhodesian Citizens.
Your perspective is quite frankly an irredentist argument - that’s fine, the Germans fell for it, the Arabs fell for it, most people fell for it.
You’re turning a law issue into a racial issue and admitting you don’t care about law.
If I have land, and I build homes on that land for my descendants, and that property is a part of a trust... it doesn’t mean that other people have a right to it.
Your heart is in the right place in regards to treating people as individuals, but you’re buying into broad ethnic politics where it doesn’t exist.
Great discussion
The Russian got to Berlin walking on American made boots, eating American made food, brought to them American made trucks repaired by American made tools, from rail head supplied by US supplied railroad equipment. The Allies motorized the Red Army. If the Russian don't not get Lend Lease, the Russian war effort stalls in Western Russia and does not reach Berlin. That would of been very bad for the West because the other Allies would of taken a lot more casualties getting to Berlin. WW2 was a JOINT victory from all the Allies that has been obscured by Cold War Propaganda. It is real sad there are modern Historian incapable of seeing beyond the Cold War propaganda.
Very apt assessment.
Very often it is forgotten that the lend lease 15 percent were not static through all the war, the main stream of production lend leased came to Soviet Union after the Stalingrad, before the Stalingrad it was rather small, before the Moscow battle there were any at all
US loans to Britain and France during WW1 was actually responsible for the US becoming involved in that conflict, because at one point it looked like the allies might lose and US banks would lose repayments of their "investment".
The old saying: If you owe the bank 1 million you're in trouble, if you owe them 100 million they're in trouble lol.
Sounds like a pretty American thing to me
The impact was growing over time. During the battle of Moscow in 1941, Lend-Lease was minimal. During operation Bagration, lend lease equipment was omnipresent, but by that time the war had already be decided
So its not the stretching logistics of the Wehrmacht, the casualties they have suffered capturing the previous cities, the sheer underestimation of the Soviet Union?
Nope. It was men on long pieces of wood.
There are literally 3 year's of Lend-Lease inbetween? What exaclty are you trying to express with your comment?
@@ungeimpfterrusslandtroll7155 Simple Russia could do it all by herself, that is what he is saying.
I wonder if Hitler had not declared war on the US, and America and the Empire of Japan had a race war by them selves how Europe and Russia would have fared in the end? Briton and its empire broken and broke, France in ashes and Germany destroyed, The Soviet Union on its knees in exhaustion most likely, with millions more dead than what happened.
About half of heavy and medium tanks in the moskow battle were lend-lease british matildas and valentines
The germans of course knew that Lend-Lease existed, so not only did the materials that arrived helped the soviets but it also forced Germany to bring up a certain effort to try to suppress it, which were then units or resources that could not be used elsewhere.
As well as allowing the USA to maximise production over the course of the war, by giving away what they couldn't use yet because of the time lag to train troops to expand the peacetime US Army and airforces, and building the production efficiency gains you mentioned, it also allowed the Allies to make the best use of their available manpower, by putting weapons into Russian and British hands, as well as transferring British production to the Russian front, especially Matilda tanks and Bren gun carriers, but also Hurricane fighters. From the American point of view, enabling Russians and British to do their fighting for them while they built up their war industries and drew in capital through arms sales, before achieving maximum US military strength towards the end of the war when it would be most useful diplomatically for dictating the shape of the post war world.
This is a tough question. Hard to 'measure success' in this case.
Lend Lease supplies helped the Soviets concentrate their production on their own weapons, which in many cases (tanks, artillery, etc.) were superior to the Western Allies.
I believe Lend-lease was crucial to the development of the war.
Because that is what I want to believe.
Impact of LL? Easy, imagine the Germans received it instead of the Soviets. How'd that work out?
So basically there are two schools of thought. The Lend Lease was unimportant, had no impact on the soviet war effort OR the Soviets would have lost without it. I suspect the truth lies somewhere in between. By the time Lend Lease really started having an effect, the Soviets had already stopped and in many areas of the front, pushed back the Germans. Where Lend Lease becomes vital is in the final 2-3 years of the war as the Soviet Steam roller is picking up steam, the supplies sent to the Soviets helped ease the logistical burdens on the USSR. One historian I read stated that "had there been no lend lease, the Soviet offensives would have stalled out about halfway through Belarus". If you compare the amount of war materials produced in the USSR to what they received via Lend Lease, its easy to conclude that such quantities made very little difference. But at the same time, Lend Lease was injecting fresh resources into a war torn country. I guess you could argue that while the Soviets would not have lost, Lend Lease is what allowed them to achieve a decisive victory over the Germans. At the very least, it could be argued that Lend Lease shaved a year or two off the war.
Actually, the aid the Brits send was quite essential when it arrived because,,,your factories build ZERO tanks/planes when they are being packed up and moved. And they needed to move them out of arms reach of the German army or loose them at the time. A LOT of people keep forgetting that saying 4% or 10%of USSR production over the whole war does not look at the year to year numbers. At one point the British tanks, despite being worse then KV1’s or T34’s they are still better then the other 80% of the Soviet available armour just to place that in context again..., came up to roughly 60% of the new tanks received by the Red Army at the time of arrival. Think about that for a second, they were not the top tier tanks but they were better then the outdated crap a lot of the Soviet armour divisions was still using and they were there when production was stifled because of the necessity to move the heavy industry. Another thing is essentials such rubber or rubber compounds for trucks wheels and tons of other applications, aluminium for building planes and other essentials, fighter planes to replace the losses (again not the best planes available but better then most of the available planes and at a point where productions was impacted severely...). Getting the stuff you need to tie you over for half a year or a bit less does have a massive impact. In other words it gave them a chance to move that industry without getting hammered even worse because the Brits took up a bit of of the load for them just when they needed it.
Lend Lease was 1 of many factors, the US gave the USSR billions of dollars worth of guns, ammo, tanks, planes, trucks, jeeps, tractors, trains and locomotives, boxcars, train rail tracks, steel, explosives, gun powder, fuel, food, clothes, blankets, army boots, radios, and other crucial military and logistical equipment, In total, 92.7% of the wartime production of railroad equipment by the USSR was supplied by Lend-Lease, including 1,911 locomotives and 11,225 railcars which augmented the existing stocks of at least 20,000 American locomotives and half a million railcars. Much of the logistical assistance of the Soviet military was provided by hundreds of thousands of U.S.-made trucks, 1/3rd of the truck strength of the Red Army was U.S.-built. Trucks such as the Dodge 3/4th ton and Studebaker 2+1/2 ton were easily the best trucks available in their class on either side on the Eastern Front. American shipments of telephone cable, aluminum, canned rations and clothing were also critical. Lend-Lease also supplied significant amounts of weapons and ammunition. The Soviet air force received 18,200 aircraft, which amounted to about 30 percent of Soviet wartime fighter and bomber production (mid 1941-45). About 13,000 Lend-Lease tanks were provided to the Soviet Union. A particular critical aspect of Lend-Lease was the supply of food. The invasion had cost the USSR a huge amount of its agricultural base, during the initial Axis offensive of 1941-42, the total sown area of the USSR fell by 41.9% and the number of collective and state farms by 40%. The Soviets lost a substantial number of draft and farm animals as they were not able to relocate all the animals in an area before it was captured and of those areas in which the Axis forces would occupy, the Soviets had lost 7 million of out of 11.6 million horses, 17 million out of 31 million cows, 20 million of 23.6 million pigs and 27 million out of 43 million sheep and goats. Tens of thousands of agricultural machines, such as tractors and threshers, were destroyed or captured. Agriculture also suffered a loss of labor, between 1941 and 1945, 19.5 million working-age men had to leave their farms to work in the military and industry. Agricultural issues were also compounded when the Soviets were on the offensive, areas taken back from the Axis had been devastated and contained millions of people who needed to be fed. Lend-Lease thus provided a massive number of foodstuffs and agricultural products. The Soviets also werent able to produce enough high octane aviation fuel for their planes so they had to rely on Lend Leased fuel, 40-50% of the tanks the Soviets used at the battle of Moscow came from the west, another factor is the US and allied bombing campaigns of Germany destroying Germanys industrial infrastructure and production manufacturing which was vital to slowing down the German advance in 1942, another factor is the western allies diverting German troops away from the eastern front defeating the Germans in Western Europe, Italy, and North Africa, as well as the fact that if it wasnt for the US defeating the Japanese empire in the Pacific, then the Japanese would have invaded the USSR from the east with Operation Kantokuen and since the USSR was losing to Germany in 1941 and 1942, on top of that no Lend Lease, no US and allies fighting the Germans on Western Europe, Italy, North Africa, and the Japanese empire invades the USSR from the east, the USSR would have undoubtedly lost, the Soviet leaders them selves Khrushchev, Zhukov, and even Stalin himself all admit that the USSR would have lost the war without the US
Lendlease supplies were growing with a time, at critical battles of Moscow in 1941 and in Stalingrad in 1942 soviets won by themselves. So lendlease was not critical for survival of Soviet Union, but really helped to speed up offensive operations in 1943-45 and drastically reduced casualties of the Red Army. The most important thing that lendlease were not trucks, as many people think, but explosive materials, almost half of soviet shells were made of lendlease explosion.
You mean Ammunition, yes half of the ammunition that the USSR used are from the US. Trucks is probably more important, how in the world do you get the food, people, fuel and ammo from A to B without trucks. Remember what Napoleon said about a general learning about Tactic vs Logistic. In protracted war Logistics is king.
@@inisipisTV Soviets produced a big number of trucks before the war and even during a war. The biggest percentage according to Main Automobile and Tank Department (GABTU in rissian) was in the beginning of 1945 - 25%, only a quarter, american trucks were bigger and had better offroad capabilities though.
50% of the tanks the Soviets used at the battle of Moscow came from the west, and the Soviets were not pushing the Germans back until 1943, the Germans were still gaining ground on the eastern front up until 1943, Lend Lease was coming to the USSR in large amounts in 1942, In total, 92.7% of the wartime production of railroad equipment by the USSR was supplied by Lend-Lease, including 1,911 locomotives and 11,225 railcars which augmented the existing stocks of at least 20,000 American locomotives and half a million railcars. Much of the logistical assistance of the Soviet military was provided by hundreds of thousands of U.S.-made trucks, 1/3rd of the truck strength of the Red Army was U.S.-built. Trucks such as the Dodge 3/4th ton and Studebaker 2+1/2 ton were easily the best trucks available in their class on either side on the Eastern Front. American shipments of telephone cable, aluminum, canned rations and clothing were also critical. Lend-Lease also supplied significant amounts of weapons and ammunition. The Soviet air force received 18,200 aircraft, which amounted to about 30 percent of Soviet wartime fighter and bomber production (mid 1941-45). About 13,000 Lend-Lease tanks were provided to the Soviet Union. A particular critical aspect of Lend-Lease was the supply of food. The invasion had cost the USSR a huge amount of its agricultural base, during the initial Axis offensive of 1941-42, the total sown area of the USSR fell by 41.9% and the number of collective and state farms by 40%. The Soviets lost a substantial number of draft and farm animals as they were not able to relocate all the animals in an area before it was captured and of those areas in which the Axis forces would occupy, the Soviets had lost 7 million of out of 11.6 million horses, 17 million out of 31 million cows, 20 million of 23.6 million pigs and 27 million out of 43 million sheep and goats. Tens of thousands of agricultural machines, such as tractors and threshers, were destroyed or captured. Agriculture also suffered a loss of labor, between 1941 and 1945, 19.5 million working-age men had to leave their farms to work in the military and industry. Agricultural issues were also compounded when the Soviets were on the offensive, areas taken back from the Axis had been devastated and contained millions of people who needed to be fed. Lend-Lease thus provided a massive number of foodstuffs and agricultural products. The Soviets couldnt even produce enough high octane aviation fuel for their planes so they had to rely on Lend Leased fuel
Locomotives. The Soviet system had plenty at the beginning. Baldwin provided many of the replacements to keep the rails running. A bit of corroboration and a bit of rebuttal: forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=132150
An excerpt from the discussion:
"...according to that list, the Heer had captured a remarkably modest 2,237 rail cars and 231 locomotives from the Soviets as of November 1 1941. There might be some captured stock not evident in the list - for example rail stock captured by the Finns and the Rumanians, and of course rail stock captured after November 1st has to be added. Captured Soviet stock was only of limited use to the Germans anyway (which may also be implicitly evident in the small numbers), for they re-gauged the Soviet 1520 mm system to continental 1435 mm gauge.
Still, just counting Lend-Lease supplied rail cars and locomotives and holding them against Soviet stocks may not tell the whole story - if we count production rather than existing stock, it's clear that LL accounted for the majority of new Soviet rolling stock and, particularly, rails. See this table from Sturmvogel. Soviet locomotive production vanishes to almost nothing from 1942 on."
"Everything you can send us" -I Ctalin
@@simplicius11 as did the rails ? what did those locomotives do in Iran.. just sit there ?
Some interesting features about lend lease that is not commonly addressed is that when Roosevelt was thinking about implementing lend lease, this thinking in the 1930s, he knew he would have something of a tough sell to congress to get it passed. He initially introduced the program as cash and carry---that is weapons sent to allied nations would be required to pay back the received aid in terms in cash. This was interesting because lend lease thus starts out as essentially a capitalist policy and action. But as the war starts really going bad for a lot of the European countries---Poland and the Czechs along with Frances collapse in 1940, lend lease's expanded operation becomes dire and necessary. At this point is where it gets interesting. Roosevelt says to hell with cash and carry in general spirit, we can produce these items, that is trucks, armaments and the like, in massive continuous production. The capitalist model of requiring cash is just a needless ghost like self sabotaging shackle to place on the lend lease program's function. It was ironic the Soviet Union was a major recipient of the items from lend lease. And their communist ideology was expressive of the inadequacy of capitalism. And here the initial capitalist structure of lend lease's operation was abandoned because of its inadequacy. Roosevelt essentially abandoned the strict confines of capitalism to characterize lend lease's economic operation. Thus the communist Soviet Union immersed in its Marxist principles, receives massive amounts of AID from the US when the US conducts a non capitalist policy for defining and characterizing lend lease's essence and eventual economic function. A non capitalist country, the USSR is, gets aid for it success as a nation embattled directly with the Nazis from Capitalist USA, only in program that functions in full fruition, when the capitalist guidelines are discarded as inadequate, to run lend lease effectively. Especially in terms of manufacturing production. Thus such, the USA comes to terms with the fact that capitalist functions and guidelines are useless in order to meet the economic objectives of manufacturing production of lend lease into the latter stages of WW2. And the USSR benefited greatly with large quanities of goods from the USA through the USA's lend lease operation. The USSR never paid back the goods that it received from the USA at and after war's end. Roosevelt most likjely could have cared less to receive adequate payment. The war was won, that was the most important result of the American war effort. And lease played a substantial part in achieving such an allied victory. Cash and Carry was essentially non important at war's end.
My two cents is that Russian offensives would have stalled without lend-lease. However, Russia would probably have pushed harder on their nuclear program.
Too many focus on the direct impact of US and British war equipment, Tanks, Airplanes and Trucks. But as many have pointed out it was strategic materials which where scarce what helped the most. Radio's, Rubber, lubricants , Aluminum, chemicals and most of all food stuffs whether wheat or spam it keep the Soviet Nation fighting.
Whatever man, I did two extensive videos on my main channel.
The truth on lend lease falls in the middle so far as the Russians are concerned.. As for the Brits it was crucial.
Without lend lease Russia would have literally starved to death within a year of losing Ukraine which provided the overwhelming majority of the Soviet food supply before it was lost during Barbarossa. An army marches on its stomach and without lend lease there simply wouldn't have been a red army.
@@CedarHunt don't talk facts to these people, they believe that Soviet Russia is stronk and can survive on sawdust and vodka.
@@tylerdurden4080 , You can survive on "sawdust": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bark_bread
@@suokkos did you even read the article you posted? It actually supports my case that you can't live off of sawdust. What an idiot.
@@tylerdurden4080 , I know it is bad source of nutrition but if you have nothing it is better than just using limited amount of grain. Exactly what article says plus I have learned previously.
There is actually post-WWII improved understanding how to use trees as source of emergency food which would allow slightly better nutrition in modern times. But that doesn't apply to era in question.
Your assessment is correct, lend lease had eased and shortened the war. Though, it was not crucial to the war. It came too late to make any deciding impact and all that lend lease delayed allies own offensive up to an year. Without lend-lease to Soviet Union, allies own offensives would had came many months earlier. Furthermore, due to pressure on Eastern front, allies might had launched Normandy invasion in 43-44. Historical ifs are so vague that they are often pointless to discuss.
Though, I'm surprised that this question is not an easy one for most people. I had made my research many years ago and had figured out definitive answer to it. Just go by amount of resources sent by date. Plius add half an year for raw resources to take effect and few months for ready to use equipment to be useful. Furthermore, you have to understand that Soviets were better not being able to do vast offenses for their own good. Their attacks often ended up in encirclement and disaster and they could manage large scale, successful operations in 44.
wrong, without the US giving the USSR billions of dollars worth of guns, ammo, tanks, planes, trucks, jeeps, tractors, trains and locomotives, boxcars, train rail tracks, steel, explosives, gun powder, fuel, food, clothes, blankets, army boots, radios, and other crucial military and logistical equipment through US Lend Lease then the USSR would have been steamrolled by Germany, without the US and western allies defeating the Germans in Western Europe, Italy, and North Africa, and the US and western allies bombing Germanys industrial infrastructure and production manufacturing, the USSR wouldnt have stood a chance
Without trucks no swift pursuit after the breakthrough in bagattron
Please make a video about the (5) biggest controversy’s Historians debate about in regards of WW2 :)
I wanna know where the historians clash.
I never hear anyone talk about the oil...the fact that of the 7 billion barrels of oil used by the Allies from December 1941 to the end of the war, 6 billion barrels of it came from the continental US. Has anyone researched the amount of American oil products that went to the USSR during the war? How would the Red Army have done without American fuel?
Lend-lease was like horses for travelling. Would you travel the distance between to far away towns by foot? Of course you could and would if needed. But it's much faster on a horse. But if the horse is a bad horse, then you will actually lose in some aspects. It's that simple. If no Lend lease, the soviets would have found a way to deal with the situation. Perhaps they could have pulled something like the 1919 counter, where they denounced the Brest-Litovsk and, taking advantage of the German defeat by the Anglo-French, they took back most of the lands they lost. Of course, there were independence claims backed by England and France which they did not manage to accomplish, but still. And this would have been a much different situation. USSR now had a tank industry. An airplane industry. Most of the losses came during early stages of Barbarossa. Fixing organisational mistakes, rebuilding the stock and advancing at once, not piece-meal as they were forced to and perhaps taking advantage of a redeployment of forces to fight the Western Allies, the Soviets would have recovered their stolen land and perhaps even head for Germany. Would that mean USSR might have survived without the Lend-Lease? Yes. Would it have cost them much, much more? HELL YES.
this is wrong, without Lend Lease the USSR would have outright lost WW2, In total, 92.7% of the wartime production of railroad equipment by the USSR was supplied by Lend-Lease, including 1,911 locomotives and 11,225 railcars which augmented the existing stocks of at least 20,000 American locomotives and half a million railcars. Much of the logistical assistance of the Soviet military was provided by hundreds of thousands of U.S.-made trucks, 1/3rd of the truck strength of the Red Army was U.S.-built. Trucks such as the Dodge 3/4th ton and Studebaker 2+1/2 ton were easily the best trucks available in their class on either side on the Eastern Front. American shipments of telephone cable, aluminum, canned rations and clothing were also critical. Lend-Lease also supplied significant amounts of weapons and ammunition. The Soviet air force received 18,200 aircraft, which amounted to about 30 percent of Soviet wartime fighter and bomber production (mid 1941-45). About 13,000 Lend-Lease tanks were provided to the Soviet Union. A particular critical aspect of Lend-Lease was the supply of food. The invasion had cost the USSR a huge amount of its agricultural base, during the initial Axis offensive of 1941-42, the total sown area of the USSR fell by 41.9% and the number of collective and state farms by 40%. The Soviets lost a substantial number of draft and farm animals as they were not able to relocate all the animals in an area before it was captured and of those areas in which the Axis forces would occupy, the Soviets had lost 7 million of out of 11.6 million horses, 17 million out of 31 million cows, 20 million of 23.6 million pigs and 27 million out of 43 million sheep and goats. Tens of thousands of agricultural machines, such as tractors and threshers, were destroyed or captured. Agriculture also suffered a loss of labor, between 1941 and 1945, 19.5 million working-age men had to leave their farms to work in the military and industry. Agricultural issues were also compounded when the Soviets were on the offensive, areas taken back from the Axis had been devastated and contained millions of people who needed to be fed. Lend-Lease thus provided a massive number of foodstuffs and agricultural products. The Soviets couldnt even produce enough high octane aviation fuel for their planes so they had to rely on Lend Leased fuel, 40-50% of the tanks the Soviets used at the battle of Moscow came from the west, the Soviet leaders them selves Khrushchev, Zhukov, and even Stalin himself all admit that the USSR would have lost WW2 if it wasnt for the US, i think ill take their word for it over yours, you know the men who ACTUALLY fought the war in person, removing lend lease means that many of the Soviet losses incurred in material and equipment during Barbarossa physically can't be replaced due to lack of readily available raw materials. Without foreign assistance, the battles of Moscow and Stalingrad would have bled the Soviet army dry and those losses would have never been rebuilt by 43. The reduced Soviet output would have been a unmitigated disasters for the Soviets since the sheer loss of Soviet lives and military equipment wasnt something they could shrug off. Without lend lease, Russia wasn't capable of withstanding those kinds of losses and maintaining an offensive.
Imagine Germany receiving lend-lease supplies in 1944-45. In time of crisis such supplies are especially valuable. The world did not have high thoughts of the Soviet industrial capabilities, the psychology of having to fight the Russian soldiers equipped by American workers must've been a daunting setback. And also surprising, there were German hopes that even Churchill wouldn't ally with Stalin. This is like the Spartans getting economic support from the Persians in the Peloponnesian war (And surely politicians in the mid 1900s were educated to think in such terms, as is actually Boris Johnson today who is a classicist.)
Ive got a question: How do you think the UK and the USSR would have fared if the US never entered the war nor sent over material aid?
They would have been trounced. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it. But these Russia fan boys and the condescending Brits want to downplay the roll America played in WW2. I've said it before, give it 50 years and the US won't even have participated in the war.
All that being said great question
WW2 would have ended in a German-Japanese victory if it wasnt for the US, the UK and USSR would have been conquered by the axis if not for the US
There can be a bit of a tendency for academics to sensationalise findings in order to get impact, 'cos impact can mean the difference between your department surviving and not.
"Significant food supplies from the United States began in October 1942, when the enemy seized a rich agricultural region of the North Caucasus, and stood at the walls of Stalingrad. The increase in these deliveries grew rapidly, and in December they were given priority over other strategic industrial products14."
page 109
Food and other strategic deliveries to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease Act, 1941-1945 pdf
When aré you going to do a full Avengers video including Dr Töppell, Bismarck, Hans and Chieftain ay the same Time?
Stalin himself said it would be impossible to win without it. The weapons and resources could probably be done without, but the food and communications equipment and trucks made it possible to keep fighting otherwise it would be over. The trucks also made it possible to collect food. Without that and food half the country would starve to death. You can't grow food on tundra and most of the farmland was occupied.
no, it's only a old legend from Perestroika time
@@wassaspielt It's documented, look it up.
@@LTPottenger Ok. Source?
@@wassaspielt In 1963, In an interview with the Soviet wartime correspondent Konstantin Simonov, a KGB monitoring recorded Soviet Field Marshal Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov stating: "People say that the allies didn't help us. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. And how much steel! Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? We didn’t have explosives, gunpowder. We didn’t have anything to charge our rifle cartridges with. The Americans really saved us with their gunpowder and explosives. And how much sheet steel they gave us! How could we have produced our tanks without American steel? Without American trucks we wouldn’t have had anything to pull our artillery with." and then a quote from the leader of the Soviet Union Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin: "I want to tell you what, from the Russian point of view, the president and the United States have done for victory in this war," Stalin said. "The most important things in this war are the machines.... The United States is a country of machines. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war." Nikita Khrushchev offered the same opinion. Nikita Khrushchevs Memoirs also state that the USSR would have lost WW2 without the US, a quote from the Premier of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev: "I would like to express my candid opinion about Stalin's views on whether the Red Army and the Soviet Union could have coped with Nazi Germany and survived the war without aid from the United States. 1st, I would like to tell about some remarks StaIin made and repeated several times when we were "discussing freely" among ourselves. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany's pressure, and we would have lost the war. I will state here that several times in conversations with me he noted that these were the actual circumstances. When we were engaged in some kind of relaxed conversation, going over international questions of the past and present, and when we would return to the subject of the path we had traveled during the war, that is what he said. When I listened to his remarks, I was fully in agreement with him, and today I am even more so."
Check out Soviets and the P39 on youtube . You'll see Russians saying how it and other Lend lease aircraft were significant. Ironic.
Fun Fact The Americans sent something like 500,000 Thompson SMG's to Russia under Lend Lease.
The British also sent 2,500,000 Sten Guns to the Russians! Holy shit that's enough for multiple armies!
You cannot deny that there was a change. Food for both civilians and military; War Material for weapon production. Katusha rockets and their Studebaker Trucks to give one weapon system that would not exisi.
This leads to an interesting alternate history. Suppose there had been no Soviet lend-lease, leading to a stalemate on Germany's eastern front. Meanwhile, increased material in the west leads to no French surrender, or a Normandy one year sooner, and the British and US invade western Germany sooner, all the way to Germany's eastern border, while the Germans and Soviets are still stalemated near Moscow.
At that point, you'd have a German army without Germany, having relocated their factories and some population east into Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, as the Soviets had moved their factories east of the Urals.
What a weird situation that would be! I wonder what the US and Britain would have done? Would the US and Britain have accepted a German surrender or even cease-fire in the west? What would happen to the old half-depopulated Germany under US/British occupation? Would there have been a stalemate on both German fronts if US and British voters had left clear election messages that they were tired of war and did not want to keep pushing east into Poland? Would a German occupation zone, with a military and some part of their population migrated to Poland/Belarus/Ukraine, have survived for long? Would Stalin have survived such a stalemate?
I wonder if it would possible to game out what would happen if Germany got the equivalent boost of the Russian lend lease. Would it be enough to swing the Eastern front? Especially if the Russians were deny their lend lease. Seems to me if lend lease at nominal effect the war end same way. If it swings the outcome, then lend lease was a major influence.
You wouldn't even need to go that far to swing the pendulum. Even just removing lend lease means that many of the losses incurred in material and equipment during Barbarossa and by red army victories (where often losses were higher than they were for the Germans) physically can't be replaced due to lack of readily available raw materials. Without foreign assistance, the battles of Moscow and Stalingrad would have bled the Soviet army white and those losses would have never been rebuilt by 43. If they were rebuilt at all (assuming that the Russians could find and exploit resources in Siberia for example) the replenishment of losses would have been a fraction of what it was and would have taken much longer. So operation citadel and the battle of kursk, if they had happened at all with the theoretically reduced Soviet output, would have been a unmitigated disasters for the Soviets since the loss of roughly 8 thousand tanks and assault guns and nearly 3 thousand planes compared to the german loss of a thousand tanks and assault guns and 900 planes wouldn't be something they could shrug off. Without lend lease, Russia wasn't apable of withstanding those kinds of losses and maintaining an offensive.
A total of $50.1 billion (equivalent to $565 billion in 2018) worth of supplies was shipped, or 17% of the total war expenditures of the U.S.[2] In all, $31.4 billion went to Britain, $11.3 billion to the Soviet Union, $3.2 billion to France, $1.6 billion to China, and the remaining $2.6 billion to the other Allies. Reverse Lend-Lease policies comprised services such as rent on air bases that went to the U.S., and totaled $7.8 billion; of this, $6.8 billion came from the British and the Commonwealth. The terms of the agreement provided that the materiel was to be used until returned or destroyed. In practice very little equipment was returned. Supplies that arrived after the termination date were sold to Britain at a large discount for £1.075 billion, using long-term loans from the United States. Canada's Mutual Aid program sent a loan of $1 billion and $3.4 billion in supplies and services to Britain and other Allies.
If you don't know what was actually shipped and lend lease you could draw a conclusion that it wasn't that important. The reality is we sent more than airplanes trucks and tanks. We send everything from buttons to ingots of aluminum to plasma foodstuffs and cigarettes. Not to mention tankers with fuel yeah and fuel being sent from Persia.
Lend Lease was incredibly important, without it the USSR would have lost WW2
Did they lend lease bog roll?
Do you know where to get loo roll?
Lend lease was trading millions of dead against some stuff. This made the Anglosaxians very angry.
Support from Bismarck that’s funny 😁
People tend to overlook temporal dimension when talking about lend-lease. The amount of goods shipped to USSR changed greatly over the years. It started very slowly and the shipments started to play a significant role in Soviet war effort only after 1942. So, Soviet Union won the most crucial battles of the Eastern Front (The battles of Moscow and Stalingrad) largely on its own resources (soviet trucks, tanks and artillery). Lend-lease started to play more significant role from 1943 and onwards. From what I have read the most crucial shipments were actually high quality powder components for heavy artillery (soviet chemical industry could not produce such powders in sufficient amounts). All in all, Lend-lease has definitely speeded-up the Soviet advance to the West starting 1943. However, it had little effect on Soviet war effort during the crucial battles of 1941-42.
There is truth to that, the Soviets did manage to contain the Germans in 1941 with a minimum of support. Support started to tick up in the second half of 1942 but it still probably wasn't enough to substantially change the war outcome, either way. Where Lend Lease did factor in was in the period from 1943-1945 where the Soviets went from a defensive position to an offensive one. Offensive operations almost always require much larger logistic stores and depletion can occur quite quickly. Even the relatively small Soviet counter attacks in the first couple years of the war tended to bog down due to a lack of logistical support. Without the food and transport equipment available from mid 1943 onward Soviet attacks would have been less sweeping and probably less significant. Simply put, the ability to create tools of war without having to burden your economy with creating the equipment needed to maintain those tools would have limited the capability of the Soviet Army.
@@tcofield1967 Actually, the soviets conducted a lot of offensives in 1941-42. And I would not call them small. Plus, conducting offensives against Wermacht at its peak strength in 1941 is not the same as against 1943 Wermacht. So, it is hard to make direct comparisons.
I think that people tend to underestimate the capabilities of Soviet industry. It kept increasing its output every year, while the German industry already worked at its maximum capacity. On top of that, the Red Army kept improving its structural organization, soldiers and officers were getting more and more experienced. On the contrary, the german army lost its best troops in 1941-42 and the replacements were of much lower quality. The overall dynamics was not favoring the germans in the long run. After 1942 they simply had no means to reverse this dynamics. They would have lost on the Eastern front, no matter what. Lend-lease simply made their fall faster
@@nikitosnu I didn't mean they weren't significant. What I mean is that they lacked the strategic ability to exploit gains and destroy entire German units before 1943 (the 6th Army being an exception), and even there logistical issues kept the Soviets from exploiting that to a greater extent.
It meant that Soviet successes in 1941 and 1942 couldn't be built upon and often the German could either worm their way out of trouble or plug gaps because the Soviets couldn't move as fast.
And to be honest, I'm not that overly hot on the German Army in 1941. Yes, it was better trained, better equipped (overall) and better supplied than their Soviet counterparts at the start but that changed rather quickly. I would dare to say that the average German soldier in July 1943 had more combat experience than his June 1941 counterpart. In reality German troop strength only really started to decline in early-mid 1944. But the massive improvement was more in the ability of the Soviet soldier, and the leadership of Soviet commanders in those years. By 1943 the Soviet soldier was better, man for man, than the average German soldier of 1941 or 1942.
This also coincided with the massive encirclements of Army Group Center and the trapping of Army Group North. At that point the Soviets had the ability to not only push through German defenses, which they had been able to do in the past but also exploit them due to the ability to keep mobile forces, well mobile.
I do believe that the Soviets might have been able to do this a year earlier, if they had the supplies and transport available to do it. They still pushed the Germans back several hundred miles during the summer of 1943 but had to stop several times due to logistical problems. By early 1944 this problem was solved and the Soviet Army slaughtered the Germans. They did in 1944 was equal to what the Germans did in 1941 and, unlike the Wehrmacht, they had the ability to finish the war.
@@tcofield1967 Thanks for the detailed response!
I think that Soviet issues with exploiting the breakthroughs were more due to:
1 - lack of experience in freshly formed units (who conducted the offensive in 1941-42),
2 - availability of well-trained mechanized reserves on the german side (if you look at Stalingrad, lack of such reserve at a crucial moment was the reason the germans failed to prevent the encirclement),
3 - stronger artillery support on the german side (a lot of soviet offensives failed because they could not win the artillery duel. Rhev would be a prime example of that).
I do not disregard the logistical issues the Red Army experienced, I just think that the availability and strength of german reserves (in particular in mechanized units) and superior artillery support were the main factors in limiting the success of soviet offensives early in war.
But thats just my opinion based on the sources I have read.
Also, the what I meant by "experienced troops" mostly refers to the elite - mechanized units (tankmen and panzergrenadiers). And the quality of these units, crucial for the success of mobile warfare, did decrease significantly. I think that a lot of the Soviet actions in 1941 were aimed specifically at reducing the strength of these elite units. Which paid off in the long run
The red army lost virtually all of its armor and artillery during Barbarossa and without lend lease those losses simply never would have been replaced due to lack of materials. Russia would have fallen and that would have been that. All the Russians were able to do until 43 was basically not get completely crushed. Lend lease was the reason Soviet counter offensives were possible at all.
How important was allied food aid to the Soviets? The Soviet food supply appears to have been at best marginal through the interwar period, and even with food aid there are accounts of dire food shortages in the USSR during WWII.
But Russian's don't need food, didn't you know.
If you count calories, then the allies supplied the USSR with about 6% of the total gross grain production.
@@Mentol_ yeah Russia stronk.
This is documentary data.
@@Mentol_ it's also documented that the Soviet Union lost almost half of it's arable land in the first year of Barbarossa. So your documentation is questionable at best.
A few points.
The oddity of saying the hurricane was poor, of course misses the contrast of a flight of hurricanes vs a flight of nothing, would the port Murmansk and the rail way from it been as well off with or with out the Hawkers ?
Would loss of 67th, 429th, 438th, 488th, and 736th IAP around the capital have been noticed ? I think so.
Would Stalingrad have been better off with or with out Hurricane regiments ?
Soviet pilots seem (from some readings ) to have found the 12 x .303 not a great fit.. true it was not but it shot down HE-111 and JU-88 in 1940 The USSR modified many to have 2x 12.7 mg and 2x 20mm cannon which was better suited to the war at that point, but again with out the aircraft to put the 12.7 and 20mm on what good will they do ? The quotes from the era are dramatic.. and given war time publishing standards not surprising either.
The 1000 Hurican MkIIC with 4x20mm and hard points for bombs were not great but I doubt the soviet ground forces that saw them above cursed tthe brits for sending them
All of soviet aviation fuel was made with american petrol. Maximum octane number soviets were able to produce was 73, and a very small amount of it.
@Вук Тодић it was made by mixing high octane lend-lease fuel with low octane russian fuel to make decent fuel. Russian fuel was only fit for diesel bombers or training aircraft
An extra 2000+ valentines and M3 Lee/Grants to north africa in 1941/42 plus fuel trucks etc and you knock months if not years off that campaign. Include the shipping capacity and DDay/Husky etc have additional capacity. The war could have ended at a similar time, but 500km further east.
To answer the Question it's complicated
Did the Axis do any form of a “Lend Lease” with their counterparts?
They had a hard time equipping their own troops as it was.
Well Germany of course supported its smaller allies (e.g. Romania) with weapons deliveries.
Until Germany attacked the Soviet Union it received a lot of raw materials and food from the Soviets in exchange for weapons technology etc.
Germany sent a lot of weapons and equipment to Finland, for example.
Well, according to Soviet apologists on RUclips, the Red Army had already defeated the Third Reich in 1941. So I guess the western allies shouldn't have bothered. The march to Berlin must have just been a formality.
@@ITyapkin Nah, without the eastern front we wouldn't have landed in '44. The war would have probably ended in '46 or '47 with the destruction of Germany by nuclear bombardment.
its funny because the Soviets in reality would have been steamrolled by Germany if not for the western allies, 40-50% of the tanks the Soviets used in the battle of Moscow came from the west, and the Germans werent getting pushed back until 1943, in 1941 and 1942 the Germans were advancing into the USSR rapidly, without the US giving the USSR billions of dollars worth of guns, ammo, tanks, planes, trucks, jeeps, tractors, trains and locomotives, boxcars, train rail tracks, tires, steel, explosives, aluminum, wire, rubber, gun powder, fuel, food, clothes, blankets, cotton, army boots, radios, and other crucial military and logistical equipment through US Lend Lease then the USSR would have been steamrolled by Germany
The Russians liked the Matilda for its heavy armour but otherwise didn't care for Lend Lease
I would say there are certain comedies that proved vital. The half million tons of steel rail line to replace the tracks destroyed as the Germans retreated must have been vital for the huge Soviet advances. US and Canadian supplied 40% of the aluminum use to build soviet aircraft. Canadian brass, for bullet cartridges and shell cases, replace production lost in the occupied territories. US machine tools for soviet factories. Many Soviet tanks were made from US steel.
Seems many have forgotten that the US military was a mess following the great depression. The army / army airforce were poorly equipped with obsolete weapons from tanks to aircraft. Easy to convert automobile assembly lines to produce trucks to aid the Rissian army, no so easy to upgrade, produce and share other equpment that your own military despertly needs. Trucks ,food, some raw materials were at the time the best they had available. The rest was basically cannon fodder regardless of the nationality of the operators. By the time better equipment became available the US was heavily engaged in the far east, the Russians thanks to Germanys lack of strategic bombing vs Russian factories were holding their own and the US was planning their own srategic bombing campaign against Germany which would lead to Germany having to relocate fighter groups from the Russian front. Pretty good deal in my opinion.
My attitude to those who say lend lease had little effect is why then were its recipients so desperate for it?
They weren't.
Countries didn't get lend lease if they didn't ask for it and they never got more of a thing than they asked for.
@@fegelfly7877 they were incredibly desperate for it, without the US then the USSR would have been steamrolled in WW2
4:52 maybe the US is 100% neutral during the AU and does give any country lend-lease or maybe the US has a fascist leader and gives lend lease to the axis giving them an edge
though I do wonder would the axis had won if the US was on their side? I really don't see any scenario where FDR would even consider being an axis so the US would have to have a different president maybe FDR lost one of his elections, though the US would probably still be in an isolation state so if the US officially joined it would have to be attacked by an allied country maybe Britain sent Canada to attack US to keep the Americans busy, though the bulk of Canadain army would have been busy in Europe and I think Britain would have wanted to keep the US out of the war and not provoked them, especially if the US decides to get revenge on Britain for using its colony as a pawn against it.
not to mention there the whole moral aspect of it with Hitler and nazi being genocidal maniacs and a lot of Germans left Nazi Germany because they were "undesirable" aka "Jewish" or were anti-Nazi Germans who hated Hitler and wanted him defeated and many Americans even those of German descent did not like the Nazis or Hitler, sure there were pro-nazi and pro-Hitler Americans and Germans who moved to the US who were fans but they were just a minority that really dispanded into obscurity when the US officially entered the war on the allied side during our timeline
I wonder if during this AU the US was nice "following the geneva convention" to soviet pow like they were with german pows and I wonder if Germany would give the US soviet and another allied pow like when the UK did during our timeline,
there are so many what-ifs but I'm glad the US was an Allied and not an Axis cause honestly fuck Hitler and Nazis,
I was surprised that some moscovian historians acknowledge the crucial role of Lens-Lease, because it contradicts the official ideology (e.g "saving Europe", "russia would have won the war without Ukrainians" etc).
I'd like to point at other issue though: in fact, Americans had built up the majority of soviet industrial power during the preceding decades. Despite the Great Depression and all the horrific atrocities of communists: the Purge, the Holodomor etc. Thus the foundation of the Cold War was laid well in advance by the short-sighted Western world by systematic empowering of its eventual foe.
PS - Somewhat this post was removed yesterday automatically, so I retyped it in slightly alternate form.
USSR used American and German specialists to create industry, but they did not create it, but Soviet people.
Excellent! ✝️🇺🇸✝️
Lend Lease was extremly important to Russians and proof to my point is when Churchill ask Stalin to choose between 2nd front openings in 1942 and 1943 with ending Lend Lease Stalin choose Lend Lease over 2nd front in the West!!
@@ITyapkin Dieppe landing was not important becouse Churchill plan for 2nd front was to land in Greece or Yugoslavia heading North and stop Red Army at 1941 border. Stalin was angry at Churchill for not alowing spreading communism over Europe so LL was much better deal for him!!!
In my opinion, sources tend to try to be political by either overstating or understating the contributions of lend lease. I don't think lend-lease to the USSR was a cause for victory over defeat, but it wasn't immaterial like some act. As a very rough guesstimate, without it, perhaps the war lasts another year and casualties potentially double.
@Samuel Brown You really have no idea about the population base of the USSR if you think that.
@@Shatnerpossum hum, double casualties...yeah, they would have lost, think about it...how much troops did they loose and how much troops did they have at each time point...
Stalingrad... double the Soviet losses and the city is lost due all defenders being wiped out...
Kursk.... you double casualties and that would have meant the battle would have been won by the Germans due to wiping out the opposing armies.
Substantial more casualties ok but double is a lot.
There is not an infinite number of Soviet people, they don’t pop out of the ground overnight fully grown you know :).
Just think about this way, double the civilian casualties on the Soviet side and try and work out what that would mean for the industry or the farmers food production.
It would be a nightmare to try and work out how things would be if that happened.
@@yannichudziak9942 In the first place, no that's not how troop numbers work. In the second... You're trying to take a strategic consideration and make that tactical, which is also not how it works. Having an overall higher number of wartime casualties dispersed across an entire country geographically is not the same as arbitrarily saying "IMMA DOUBLE THE NUMBER FROM A BATTLE." Lend lease was never tactical, it was about logistical and food improvements.
The outcome of the war was not about to change. It's not as if Germany's deficiencies in securing the initial gains were somehow going to be corrected by inflicting more casualties from 1943 on.
@@Shatnerpossum ok, then let’s double them without allocating them anywhere, all of these 15 million extra dead happen in limbo with zero impact on ANYTHING. civilian casualties doubled also...still ZERO impact of course because reasons. Double casualties is huge, you say I cannot attach the casualties to specific battles, you are saying double casualties from nowhere with zero impact on zero tactical, economic, social or cultural and when people say that if it really was doubled not even the Soviet Union could have survived. Saying these are dispersed over the entire geography especially in places where historically there were limited or no casualties, there were actual regions where there were none to few. If casualty ratings double the logical effect is that there is going to a massive increase in those places where historically there were casualties, they will not just happen elsewhere for no apparent reason as the Germans are not going to be fighting in other places suddenly without these casualties starting somewhere and leave the battle results completely the same as before. To get to your double casualties these have to start somewhere, that place will change the way the battles flow, the war will change and the losses to total up to double the losses suffered by the Soviet Union would be insane, you are looking at 24 million plus dead before doubling.... afterwards that is 48 millions of which 28 million would be civilians and 20 millions would be military.
That is roughly 1 in 4 people dead in the Soviet Union, there is no way they would have been able to sustain that, economically alone loosing another 14 million civilians would cripple the economy. Saying there would be more death fine but doubling it would not be sustainable at all, people would revolt at that point.
These guys definetly play HOI4
this would have been better explained not with compounding benefits but by avoiding the compounding collapse that can be avoided when you have a joker to fill the gap and prevent emergency.
Compounding collapse is as true materially as it is politically, psicologically.
I am no soldier or historian. I do, however, take great interest in history, especially WWI and WWII.
To summarise my opinion, before I go into a bit more detail: Germany, with the defeat at Stalingrad and Moscow, could not win WWII. The Soviets would of won. With the Lend Lease, it just allowed them to win sooner or more comfortably. Without it, it would of gone to another army (Probably Britain or Free France, or China), or stockpile in case of War with Japan (which a number of people were preparing for already, before Pearl Harbour)
Now, a bit more of why I think this: The Soviet Industry grew massively as the war went on, and I believe that by the time of the Lend Lease, the Russians were able to keep up with losses, but couldn't get a stockpile. Once their industry grew and rebuilt, they would of produced what they lacked. It would of just probably meant less T34s, IS2s, guns and planes. So you don't get Operation Bagration or anything like that for quite some time. And you have more losses.
Yet, the losses of the Germans were already fatal. They had lost WAY too many men already by the time of the Lend Lease, to sustain a single front that wide. Add in that, regardless of the Lend Lease, D-Day would happen, Africa would be lost and Italy would be invaded. More fronts to deal with.
The additional arms and resources allowed the Soviets to have more leeway to make risky decisions. Otherwise they would of been more reserved. The war on the East probably would of been more of a grind that it already was
Lend lease had taken affect in 1941, after the Germans had taken most of the Soviet industry and agricultural lands starving the Soviets, so where do they get their food? From the USA of course. The USSR would never even have an industry without US materials nor a logistics line, 92.7% of all railway tracks provided by lend lease. This would make the Soviet army immobile, and allowing the German army to build up after 1941.
In total, 92.7% of the wartime production of railroad equipment by the USSR was supplied by Lend-Lease, including 1,911 locomotives and 11,225 railcars which augmented the existing stocks of at least 20,000 American locomotives and half a million railcars. Much of the logistical assistance of the Soviet military was provided by hundreds of thousands of U.S.-made trucks, 1/3rd of the truck strength of the Red Army was U.S.-built. Trucks such as the Dodge 3/4th ton and Studebaker 2+1/2 ton were easily the best trucks available in their class on either side on the Eastern Front. American shipments of telephone cable, aluminum, canned rations and clothing were also critical. Lend-Lease also supplied significant amounts of weapons and ammunition. The Soviet air force received 18,200 aircraft, which amounted to about 30 percent of Soviet wartime fighter and bomber production (mid 1941-45). About 13,000 Lend-Lease tanks were provided to the Soviet Union. A particular critical aspect of Lend-Lease was the supply of food. The invasion had cost the USSR a huge amount of its agricultural base, during the initial Axis offensive of 1941-42, the total sown area of the USSR fell by 41.9% and the number of collective and state farms by 40%. The Soviets lost a substantial number of draft and farm animals as they were not able to relocate all the animals in an area before it was captured and of those areas in which the Axis forces would occupy, the Soviets had lost 7 million of out of 11.6 million horses, 17 million out of 31 million cows, 20 million of 23.6 million pigs and 27 million out of 43 million sheep and goats. Tens of thousands of agricultural machines, such as tractors and threshers, were destroyed or captured. Agriculture also suffered a loss of labor, between 1941 and 1945, 19.5 million working-age men had to leave their farms to work in the military and industry. Agricultural issues were also compounded when the Soviets were on the offensive, areas taken back from the Axis had been devastated and contained millions of people who needed to be fed. Lend-Lease thus provided a massive number of foodstuffs and agricultural products. The Soviets couldnt even produce enough high octane aviation fuel for their planes so they had to rely on Lend Leased fuel, 40-50% of the tanks the Soviets used at the battle of Moscow came from the west, in conclusion if not for Lend Lease, the USSR would have lost WW2 badly
If lend lease was unimportant to the Soviets; they wouldn't have spent the time and money to remove pictures of Us and Uk vehicles from Soviet historical publishd history.
Let's think of this in terms of deep logistics and politics (stay with me for a minute). The US war industry was also in need of recovery after down sizing after WW1. Roosevelt, playing the long game, knows that the only sane thing to do is to stop Hitler; for cultural, pollical, economic, and moral reasons. But he had to get involved slowly as there are various groups opposed to intervention; ethnic German-Americans, Irish-Americans, Pacifists, etc. were all opposed to the war. He had to get the US psychologically and politically ready for war.
Ramping up industries was needed, in WW1 the US could no equip its own troops. So by becoming Great Britain’s, and later the USSRs, supplier it gave him the means to build up the US war capacity. Factories needed to be built. Equipment for factories needed to be designed and built. Skilled workers needed to be trained, engineers had to be trained, etc. Lend lease allowed this to happen.
It also allowed him to use Great Britain as a shield. While Roosevelt was using GB + Common Wealth + Allies as a shield he was preparing the US and using political persuasion to get the US into the war. Pearl Harbor solved that problem for him, it got the US into the war. Also, from a totally cold blooded point of view, if you can protect your nation using the blood of another nation, that is what a national leader should do.
So if we think about it from a different point of view, we can see another reason Lend Lease was valuable. Even if the equipment, food, fuel, etc. was small compared to the other nations’ production; the impact on the deep logistics was important.
If there are lines piercing any portion of this text, disregard the lines. Read such pierced text as normal text. What is mysterious about lend lease, is that when the late 1930s and first years of the 1940s the United States begins approaching a myriad of nations, with treaties and diplomatic liasons that were not existent before the late 1930s. These numerous treaties were made with primarily lend lease in mind. The US was poised to send armaments and military aid to these numerous countries in mass in order to repel the Nazi aggression and expansion. If need be. Thus all these numerous treaties and diplomatic contacts were created to fufill the objectives and goals of lend leases contractual conditions. So all of this is happening and coming into being from the late 1930s into the early 1940s. What is interesting and mysterious about the numerous treaties the US made with these other nations is the fact that in the last months of the war----that being 1945, the atom bomb became fully developed and was used against Japan at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With that event, the nuclear era was born and the instruments of mass destruction, that is the atom bomb, now born into being, would eventually give way to the Cold War. The Soviet Union and on the opposite side the USA in alliance with the west, would be enemies to each other. So by the time the mid to late 1940s appeared, all these treaties and diplomatic contacts the USA made with other countries became favorable for extending American influence with these nations in order to control any possible Soviet influence with such nations. And with that possible occurrence freedom and world security was bolstered, strengthened and expanded. Even though the Warsaw Pact countries, China and North Korea became communist strongholds during the immediate years following WW2's conclusion. Thus the mystery. Its unusual that America embarked on all of these connections with numerous treaties with other nations in the late 1930s and early 1940s, resulting in creation of highly favorable international conditions for controlling the potentially devastating effects on an out of control nuclear bomb war with the USSR. The numerous treaties and outgoing diplomatic ties the US made with these other nations created a "balance of power favorable environment" for the US to strengthen in nuclear position in the world, and thus prevent any nuclear war emergence.I doubt any of the political leaders, military generals, academics and some of the laymen, ever expected lend leases creation and implementation in the late 1930s and early 1940s would gain more powerful life and continuance at war's end. That is all of the early formulated lend lease conditions and functions would be substantially active and continued after war's end into the future decades ahead during the cold war era. Its almost as if the planning, creation and execution of lend lease and its operations that were made in the late 1930s and early 1940s was primarily established for creating favorable balance of power conditions for the US with the emergence of the nuclear era, the atom bomb, and our adversarial position against the USSR and its nuclear arsenal. Yet no one had nuclear bombs on their minds in the late 1930s and early 1940s when lend lease was going into creation and subsequent implementation. Yet lend lease's activity created the favorable diplomatic environment for forwarding US foreign policy and balance of power goals during the nuclear era. I.E. the Cold War. The Neutrality Act by the US is the 1930s expressed the US isolation position that predominate in the US before world War 2. Yet by war's end, American Isolationism had clearly ended and was replaced by a robust policy of extending US goals ahead into and within numerous other countries. This all brought about by the nuclear bomb's inception into existence.
Even if lend lease had not happened the Germans would have lost. The Soviets made 80 thousand t-34s alone. The most produced german tank was the panzer iv with 8000 but that counts the models with the short 75mm that was useless against soviet tanks. Germany was always outnumbered in the land and in the air but won because it had superior weapons and soldiers. Once the allies realized they didn't need to defeat germany in the field but destroy the transportation, factories and fuel production the germans simply couldn't fight.
If it wasn’t necessary they wouldn’t do it.
You don’t invade Iran, have the Anglo-Iraqi war, and send all of that equipment for no reason whatsoever.