Lend Lease, how accurate is this?

This is the crux of the LL 'debate'. Too many concentrate on the 2 trucks and act like those 2 won the war. The 99 existing trucks are assumed to be of no value and all the credit goes to the extra 2. It can just as easily be said the 2 extra trucks were completely useless on their own and without the other 99 not worth anything.
This is a simplification I know but in it lies the root of the arguments over LL

 

Pretty good summary of a lot of the LL arguments. I'd point out that the vallue of the 2 or the 99 vary with mission. If you are on the defensive the addition of 2 extra probably don't contribute all that much to the overall effect. On the offensive on the other hand they may be crucial. Claiming the 2 won the war is wrong in any case but it may well be that the two were of some import indeed may even have been critical in winning the battle and or the war. IMO LL had an impact is so many areas that I'd call it very important to the overall Soviet success. Did it win the war no but it was very important to both the Soviets and the West.

 

Or if your 99 are two wheel drive units and they are immobile in either snow or mud the 2 6x6 units are of much more value.

 

It seems IMHO that LL made it's most important ,other then raw materials, contribution from early '44 onwards. Pleae correct me if I'm wrong but the German army still occupied quite a bit of Soviet territory from early to mid '44 right? I also understand that the Soviets were starting then to have manpower problems right? So if they don't have the extra logistical assets aquired from the Western Allies to conduct offensives in order to liberate more Soviet territory to secure more manpower then their manpower issue are going to be more paramount right?
I also don't see the Soviets having 60% less aviation fuel, 1/3 less explosives, 50%+ less copper, and 50%+ less aluminum and still arriving in Berlin. Even loosing 10% less food could be very devastating considering the plight of the Soviet people in WW2.
Now all this is not to say IMHO the Soviets would loose but I just don't see them in Berlin by mid to late 45,if ever. Furthermore one could almost consider the Germans the winner even if the Soviets are just able to manage to clear Soviet territory since the Germans have already devastated what Soviet territory they had occupied.

 

This may all be true but the Germans too were suffering from all the same shortages which Russia was and in far greater numbers.

After Bagration, Germany simply had no more men to place in front of the Soviet Advance. So these 1/3 less explosives, 50% less aluminum etc. might not have been as significant as they would have been in say 42?

 

What is not mentioned here is that Russian factories could turn out a few designs in LARGE QUANTITY. Without Lend-Lease, Russian production figures would have been severely watered down to accomodate all the other material that Soviet factory space did not produce. Supply of strategic METALS for this sad production was also a decisive factor, and fully two thirds of their crude oil consumption was supplied directly by Lend Lease.

Let us not forget the financial contributon of the West. Without extension of credit , Russia would have been economically a spent force. The "Great War" was also fought by Russia with mainly British money, just as in WW2.

So, Lend Lease becomes THE vital factor in propping up the sordid Soviets, whether they like to admit this or not. They would NOT have been able,for instance, to rig their factories to turn out tanks in the numbers that were produced without this assistance, and no mass production would have meant that the decision may well have come down to pure quality of manufacture, a by no means sure scenario for the Soviets.

Theres a great "What if"...."What if Red Army tactical doctrine had been forced to fight a war of QUALITY rather than the same old Czarist steamroller?"....They would have missed Tuchachevsky a whole lot more.....

 

But just when did they get all of that raw material? Did most of it arrive after Bragration or before? Furthermore when re-captured some of their Homeland back from the Germans I imagine alot of that LL may have/could have been/ was critical to rebuilding infrastructure to support their offensives.
As I've said I don't see the Russians loosing but I don't see them pushing the Germans all the way to Berlin either.

 

I want to add one thing we are debating all the LL sent however I don't think we can compare 13K tanks & 14K aircraft ,500K trucks and whatever else to the fact the Soviets lost between 20,000,000 & 28,000,000 people in the war so about anywhere from 55-80 Soviets died for every American who died during the war while 30-50 Soviets died for every British who died. However to say either the UK,the SU or the US won the war all by themselves or could win it by themselves is almost ludicrous IMHO.
I wonder how many more tanks/aircraft the Germans could build and what manpower could be applied if not for the German Sub Camapaign against the West,the V Weapons development, no garrisoning the Atlantic Wall and the Strategic Bombing Campaign ?

 

And here was me thinking you might have a valid point. Omce you use this language then you lose all credibility.

 

Take away Lend Lease, and the financial contribution thereof, and you have COMPROMISE PEACE.

Lack of money and oil will do it every time...

THAT is why it's the decisive factor. And as for the many millions of Soviet dead, who can say what it would have been like for them if they were not a totalitarian state?

The Russian Army couldn't run a cake stall at the local fete without incurring thousands of casualties....

 

You really ought to review the basic literature of the Holocaust. The Russians might as well die with their boots on, as it would have done them no good had they surrendered.

Militarily, Russia would be no better served if it was led by a democratic government. France, Czechoslovakia, Poland were all democracies.

Or is it your contention that the US/UK should let the Nazis win and then had millions of their own citizens killed assaulting fortress Europe?

 

Many modern Russians see Stalinism as completely justified on the grounds of their victory over Nazi Germany. The facts are that without this criminal in control of the Party (he held no other government post), we may well have experienced less paranoia and more out-right trust of all things Russian. Certainly the transfer of power after Lenin died need not have been such a traumatic trial for the Soviet people as a whole.

National Socialist barbarism was the one and only factor that prevented widespread order behind German lines. Large numbers of perfectly willing and able bodies were prepared to die in the cause of toppling the Stalin regime. The Nazis shot themselves in the foot, and bemoaned the anarchy that resulted from their frightful policy toward all things Slavic.

A lack of arrogance would have made a very big difference to the conduct of the campaign for Russia in general.

Stalin lingered on, and it was Hitler that fell.

 

And while on the subject of holocausts, lets just say that the Soviet people and the ethnic minorities that were gobbled up in the chaos suffered a holocaust of their own. All in the name of "internal enemies"

No racial theory needed for Uncle "Joe" to achieve the same result....piles of corpses....

 

LL amounted to 8-12% of all of which SU needed. I have stumbled upon sources which claimed that as much as 80% of this help arrived in the middle to late 43'.

As for reaching not reaching Berlin with out LL.... The Germans reached Moscow with horses why wouldnt the Red Army be able to do the same if need be? Especially when considering that Germany by this time isnt able to field an army adequate to stop the advance...

 

They might be able to do it without the trucks,tanks and aircraft the Allies provided but IMHO the SU couldn't have done it without the Aluminum,copper,rubber ,explosives and fuel. Again IMHO without the SU getting all of that I don't see the German armies in the East in near as bad of shape so they the Germans may have enough of an army to stop them.
We may just have to agree to disagree.

 

Because they are not going to be able to move as fast as they did historically and in the process are likely to take more casualties and the Germans are likely to take less. By the time the Soviets reached Berlin historically they were not in good shape. They didn't have much in the way of manpower reserves and their food situation even with LL was getting critical. IMO they just couldn't afford the extra time and casualties that the absence of LL would entail.

 

LL supplied 2 million tons of raw steel.
Domestic production was 40 million.
LL supplied 400,000 tons of non-ferous metals
Domestic production was 6.5 million tons
LL supplied 740,000 tons of POL 1942-43.
Domestic production was 17.5 million tons
LL supplied 215,00 tons of finished explosives
Domestic production of was 600,000 tons
The total of foodstuffs provided by April 43 was enough for 3 months rations for the entire Soviet Army (9%).

 

But what percentage of that domestic production was dependent on other chemicals supplied by LL?

 

What is the sourceof this? Mark Harrison's "Accounting for War" on page 117 says the Soviets imported the following as a % of their total production..
Iron, Steel 1942 5% 1943 5% 1944 7%
nonferrous metals 1942 20% 1943 38% 1944 59%
fabricated metal products 1942 18% 1943 41% 1944 53%
Chemicals 1942 7% 1943 24% 1944 31%
In 1944 on page 150 of the same book he states 40% of lead,28.6% of tin, 52% of tungsten, 81% of molybdenum,a very high % of chemicals like Phenol,dibutyl-phthalate,and menthanol were imported. Further 1/3 of the meat eaten was imported.

 

On truck production/availiiabilityit seems the following...
On 1/1/43 there were 404,500 trucks in the Soviet park with just 22,000 imported & 378,800 domestic

On 1/1/44 there were 496,000 in the Soviet park with 94,000 imported & 387,000 domestic

On 1/1/45 there were 621,000 in the Soviet park with 191,000 imported & 385,700 domestic..

The total park increased from 404,500 on 1/1/43 to 621,000 on 1/1/45 with imports rising from 22,000 to 194,000 with domestic supply rising just from 378,800 to 385,700 . IMHO it seems the domestic supply seems awful constant while the real increase was faciliated by LL assets.