The narrative of the USSR winning the fight against the Third Reich is powerful but there are many sources which drone on about how the US financed them. I've seen only a couple of sources dispute the giant Lend-Lease programme's effectiveness and I can't remember where the one about the swelling of the Soviet budget was. It's been on my mind for a while and I would like to see some discussion about it; I will return later.
Lend-Lease
Nolan Parker
Other urls found in this thread:
zhihu.com
orientalreview.org
reddit.com
iremember.ru
izmerov.narod.ru
twitter.com
Connor Ward
Lend-Lease saved many lives and likely shortened the war, but by the time it had really kicked in (in 1943) the Nazis were already on the back foot. The defeat in Moscow in 41-42 effectively ended Hitler's attempts to end the war on the terms he originally wanted, and defeat at Stalingrad in 42-43 ended Hitler's attempts to win the war at all.
Jack Lee
Basically read David Glantz.
He has written a fuckton of books but that's the guy I'd go to.
Jacob Gonzalez
Wyatt King
1) Lend-lease was a compensation for the Allies refusing to open a Western front in 1941. If they had done it, lend-lease would not have been necessary. It was not a selfless act but capitalists trying to be as little useful as possible.
2) If you look at the numbers per year and the protocols, lend-lease only began in earnest after the Battle of Stalingrad, when the USSR was already winning on its own.
3) Soviet command incl. Zhukov recognized that land-lease was impactful. But the most important part of it were food, raw resources and automobiles. It saved lives, but in military material the USSR was self-sufficient. Anastas Mikoyan, the Soviet Trade Commissar who handled land-lease approximated that the Great Patriotic War would have lasted another year without lend-lease but would've still be won.
Easton Turner
I would argue that Soviet lend-lease was far more important. You see, the Soviets were the only ones who supported Republican Spain, which prolonged the war enough to make Fascist Spain obsolete. Otherwise it could have would have joined the Axis. Similarly, Soviets supported China for many years which kept Japan busy and helped saved American lives.
Lastly, if not the Americans there would be no need for lend-lease to begin with. They weakened the Soviet Union by invading it during the civil war and financed the rise of Nazis in Germany.
Jack Bailey
Not to mention things like the tanks the US were shipping to the SU were borderline useless, with Shermans described as rolling tinder boxes and that the thousands of men that died in them were literally murdered because of their objective inferiority. Meanwhile, the T-34 was described as "the finest tank in the world" by Heinz Guderian.
Evan Long
Thank you for your honesty.
Isaac Butler
Western Lend-lease was a drop of water in a bucket with even the highest estimates putting it at around 10% of the over-all Soviet war-effort with the accepted percentage being just over 4%. The idea that Lend-lease was in any way crucial to the Eastern Front is a delusion.
1) It is an undeniable fact that the USSR only started to regularly receive Lend-Lease in 1943, AFTER the tide-turning battle of Stalingrad, (and the victory at Moscow and the countless battles before that). Britain, meanwhile, recieved a lend-lease of 3x larger an amount.
On June 1st 1941 USSR had 25932 tanks and howitzers, 6060 were produced by 31st of December, 1941. 31992 vehicles total. Approximately 20,5K was lost by the end of the year. That means 11,5K tanks left. In 1941 the USSR received 361 tanks, all from Britain, this was approximately 1% of the soviet tank forces on the eve of the battle of Moscow, and none of them took part in the battle.
2) The majority of initial Lend-Lease was made up of stock-excess of the US and the UK army, with old M3s Grants, M3 Stewarts, British Matilda's and older model Spitfires and Hurricanes. These were poorly received by Soviet troops, Matildas did not come with any instruction and thus their different mechanical nature made it hard to even operate, and repairing them was next to impossible. Their guns, whilst powerful in 1939, were harmless to German tanks unless at close ranges, and it's armor no longer could take the hits of German tank guns. The complex track system and narrow tracks made it impossible to use in snow or mud. The M-3 Grant, (the older cousin of the M4 Sherman), was better in mobility and simplicity but at the cost of being a completely obsolete garbage can of a tank and the soviet troops hated them.
From Stephen Zaloga's "Red Army Handbook": "One of the less popular lend-lease designs provided to the USSR was the M3 Lee medium tank, the ancestor of the better and more successful M4 Sherman. Its archaic design and turreted 37mm gun and its thin armor led to its caustic Russian nickname, which translates as "a coffin for seven brothers".
compare the goods USSR received from the Lend Lease to the goods they manufactured on their own:
Lend Lease / Russian product (1941–1945)
aircrafts: 14,795/134,100
tanks: 7,056/102,800
artillery cannons: 8,218/825,200
oil: 2,670,000/110,600,000 (tons)
steel: 1,500,000/39,680,000 (tons)
food: 733,000/64,121,000 (tons)
source: zhihu.com
That's just a taste of the real numbers.
Blake Brown
i'm surprised by the quality of the posts
good thread
Sebastian Campbell
Alright, I'm back.
Wrong board. Go back.
Any books in particular that I should consult?
Thanks for the name of the book, already archived the webpage. I remember an unsourced source ( orientalreview.org
Jaxson Brooks
I thought that Soviet tankers had a bit of a liking for the Sherman?
Cooper Edwards
Lend Lease wasn't responsible for Stalingrad but it enabled the counter-offensives from 1943 onward.
Daniel Ramirez
The Sherman's tinderbox fame comes from the fact that the original dry-storage of the ammunition as well as the thing side-armor made it blow up easily. The soviets got Diesel engine Shermans that the US army didn't want. The M4 had a relatively good gun, even if its armor was comparatively shit, and it had a lot of creature comforts that soviet T-34's couldn't afford, (leather seats and the like).
Aiden Foster
Yes, the sherman was a good tank, see this Red Army tanker's thoughts: iremember.ru
Also, the Sherman was better armored than the T-34. T-34 had 45mm hull and 60mm turret front. Sherman had 50mm hull and 75mm turret front. The sloping of the armor was comparable between the two tanks.
Luke Wood
The best piece of U.S. equipment provided to the Soviets was the P-39 Aircobra.
The U.S. didn't like them very much actually. They were only really good at low altitudes and the Western allies were often flying high-altitude missions, but that didn't matter on the Eastern Front so much where the air war was closely linked to supporting ground maneuver. A tough little plane and useful for escorting ground-attack aircraft like the IL-2. Soviets digged 'em.
Parker Russell
Uhhh no that's false, I'm sick of hearing the same old Loza fellating shit
Loza never used a T-34 thus his memoirs are only applicable to the Sherman on its own.
The Sherman's frontal plate was sloped less than the T-34's and had a mantlet, while the T-34 did not.
Hudson Perez
Lend-lease was particularly useful in providing material for reconstructing the shattered Soviet air force and logistical equipment & engines. In the air the Allies severely blunted production and later their efforts became absolutely devastating once they finally wisened up and started targeting German oil for real. By 1944 they were also engaging the majority of the Luftwaffe. They also diverted millions of troops from the East and inflicted hundreds of thousands of casualties.
But even still, the war effort in the West when it came to all three of their major contributions in the air, lend-lease, and ground forces really only ramped up in 1944. By then Kursk had already sealed the fate of the Reich. I'm with Glantz that without Western aid the CCCP would've achieved total victory 12-18 months later.
Christopher Watson
More like the entire design and war doctrine was all about supporting ground maneuvers and protecting CAS.
Jackson Phillips
There was never a plan to open up another western front in 1941. The earliest calls for further western intervention were slotted for 1942. Stop making shit up.
Blake Morris
...
Asher Thomas
...
Caleb Gutierrez
How it should be IMO
Leo Martinez
Connor Ward
This shit again
Lend lease sent to the USSR:
Aircraft - 7.411 (CW) + 14.795 (US) = 22.206
Automotive:
— 1.5 ton trucks 151.053 (US)
— 2.5 ton trucks 200.662 (US)
— Willys Jeeps 77.972 (US)
Bren Gun Carriers - 2.560 (CW)
Boots - 15 million pairs (US)
Communications equipment:
— Field phones - 380.135 (US)
— Radios - 40.000 (US)
— Telephone cable - 1.25 million miles (US)
Cotton cloth - 107 million square yards (US)
Foodstuffs - 4.5 million tons (US)
Leather - 49.000 tons (US)
Motorcycles - 35.170 (US)
Locomotives - 1.981 units (US)
Rolling stock - 11.155 units (US)
Tanks - 5.218 (CW) + 7.537 (US) = 12.755
Tractors - 8.701 (US)
Trucks - 4.020 (CW) + 357.883 (US) = 361.903
That's the entirety of Allied Lend Lease to the Soviet Union. We did a good job, that's a lot of stuff to produce and bring to a country on the other side of the world during a maritime war effort; but that's barely 10% of Soviet production*, and it most certainly did not win the war.
*(The war was decided in the winter of 1941, before the first American trade arrived.)
For more precise numbers:
Aircraft Production
Soviet Union:
1942: 18,251 plus 4,042 lend-lease
1943: 34,637 plus 9,206 lend-lease
1943: 33,210 plus 6,459 lend-lease
Germany:
1942: 17,400
1943: 25,200
1944: 34,300
Tank Production
Soviet Union:
1942: 20,727 plus 4,582 lend-lease
1943: 28,608 plus 3,798 lend-lease
1943: 28,963 plus 3,223 lend-lease
Germany:
1942: 4,800
1943: 11,800
1944: 17,800
(Source: M Harrison, Soviet Planning in Peace and War 1938-45, Cambridge 1985)
At its peak in 1944, Allied aid to the USSR accounted for about 10% of the Soviet GNP.
Even the famed trucks are over-exaggerated
01/01/42
Domestic russian trucks in service: 317,100
Lend lease trucks: 0
—
01/01/43
Domestic Russian trucks in service: 378,800
Lend lease trucks: 22,000
—
01/01/44
Domestic Russian trucks in service: 387,000
Lend lease trucks: 94,100
—
01/01/45
Domestic Russian trucks in service: 395,200
Lend lease trucks: 191,300
—
05/01/45
Domestic russian trucks in service: 385,700
Lend lease trucks: 218,100
—
A) Note: "trucks" cover any kind of military transport vehicles.
B) Note: By 1944 was 4-6% of the trucks in Russian service were captured from the Germans.
IF you take the time to decipher the numbers posted above, you will see that although there is no doubt the LL trucks helped a lot, they were in no way decisive in the outcome of the war (by decisive I mean their absence would have meant a German victory). The Soviets also purposely tailored their production to complement LL materiel deliveries, thus the reduced Soviet truck output from '42 onwards was not a result of their plant being maxed out, it was a conscious decision once it was clear LL trucks would become available in quantity so as to allow domestic production to focus on other areas of industry. On a side note, another little known fact about LL trucks is that about a third of them (119,000 mv) were actually assembled in Soviet factories.
All info on trucks from "Journal of Slavic Military Studies" Vol. 10, June 1997, "Motor Vehicle Transport Deliveries through Lend-Lease" by V.F. Vorsin.
Nicholas Wilson
Arn't these important?
Ian Ortiz
Yes but the number must be put in perspective:
1,900 locomotives could be nice if they came earlier but it was sort of pissing in the ocean anyway
Sauce: izmerov.narod.ru
Jonathan Sanders
Eli Bennett
The tank the soviets (and the Brits) REALLY hated was the M3 Lee, which was complete garbage.
Mason Brown
The Sherman was a good tank in the same way that the T-34 was a good tank: not objectively an amazing tank, but the simplicity of production meant that even if they had loss ratios of 2-1 (neither tank was -that- bad) they would still be producing ten of them for every le ebin dank Tiger or Panther. In real life, the technical superiority of a vehicle always has to be weighed against its production costs.
Sebastian Reed
Not really, while it had some usefulness it wouldn't have changed the war's timeline in any meaningful sense. The war still would have ended in '45 and the Soviets got a small share of lend lease, the British received far more than the Soviets ever got.
All the vital parts of the war were over by the time lend lease kicked off, so there wasn't any threat of the Soviets falling
Xavier Lopez
To be fair, Guderain would call a cardboard box the finest tank in the world if it meant he could blame his fuck ups on something else.
Jose Clark
More importantly both the Sherman and T-34 were able to move unlike tanks like the Qwop Tiger.
Robert Cook
Guderian was not the only one who said this, not to mention that the T-34 and KV-1 were the reason the Panther and Tiger tanks were developed.
Lincoln Lewis
I didn't mean it as anything bad against the tanks just that Guderian is always full of shit.