Who was the most powerful nation: USSR or USA?

that article was very helpful thanks!

but US supply wasnt as valuable as you make it out to be
from what i gather the Allies suppled 22,800 tanks to the USSR in WWII and 14,000 aircraft, 1.75 million tons of food

the Soviets themselves produced 100,000 tanks, 500,000 artillery pieces with their own materials... and 40,000 IL-2 sturmoviks alone,
thats more sturmoviks than you can shake a stick at, let alone American supplied aircraft, i'd hate to think how big the Soviet airforce was in 1945. they also produced 5.2 million tons of meat and 7.2 million tons of fish

USA's best contribution was in supplying 30% of all soviet supply-vehices


most historians agree that US land lease contributed approximately 10% to the soviet war effort. thats a hell of alot, but nevertheless i think that given the strenght of the Red Army in 1945, they probably would have been able to make do with 90% capacity

 

In some areas the Russians surely could have done without Lend-Lease vehicles, but in others they could not. American trucks allowed them to focus on tank production and to motorize their infantry and artillery, a crucial edge over the horse-drawn German armies. American boots pretty much allowed the Russian conscripts to function. Besides, there were definitely times at which those 10% will have made the vital difference.

Also you have to realize that Britain and the US provided all this aid while sustaining their own armies, navies and air forces. By the end of the war, American armed forces counted more than ten million men IIRC.

 

American forces we're alot better trained and equiped (I can spell worth crap)

 

Yup... i guess so

"the first man takes the rifle! the second man takes the ammunition!"
"when the first man dies, the second man picks up the rifle, and shoots"

 

That's what you get when manpower is more readily available than industrial power, as is common in Asia and in Communism, in this case both.

 

It might appear that way if one doesn't understand the logistical requirements of a mechanized army. Tanks aren't much use without fuel or lubricating oil. Without railroad rolling stock and locomotives as well as trucks huge armies aren't going to be venturing very far from home.
Avation fuel, explosives, aluminum, tires, radio equipment...the list goes on.

You are probably right that we are overestimating the contribution of the US: This guy doesn't think so but then what does he know?

How could Zhukov possibly know more about it than some anonymous guy posting on an internet forum?

 

Well ya see Grieg... theres this thing called diplomacy
when your ally sends aid you thank them no matter how useful

even so I think the U.S. Govt was largely dissatisfied with the lack of acknowlegment and thanks the Russians gave them after WW2...
see here: http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/wwii/s ... pter13.htm

as for oil and fuel product, the U.S shipped over 2.7 million tons in ww2
the USSR produced 110.6 million tons

 

That was not the way of the Russians during WW2. It is quite possible that Zhukov made his comments purely to make friends because they seem to be at least exaggerated, but this makes him quite the exception rather than the rule.

 

If you think that then you are ignorant of American Soviet relations of the time.

That is an understatement.

If one only knows enough about the subject to consult Wikkipedia or Google that fact might seem significant. What it fails to reveal is that the 110 million tons was crude oil (US produced nearly eight times as much in the same period).
Have you ever attempted to put crude oil in a high performance aircraft? The fact you missed is that the US was the sole supplier of high octane aviation fuel for the USSR.

 

please stop implying that i am ignorant

you have great american patriotism, but do not allow it to subdue the facts of history. consult your sources (which, as you have stipulated, are clearly not wikipedia or google :roll and you should know that lend lease to Russia only began arriving in 1943... after stalingrad, after Moscow after ural factory relocation and after the Russians had singlehandedly ascertained the upper-hand.

as for aviation fuel i think you are mistaken... you have overlooked the fact that soviet aircraft were designed to run off the lower-octane petrols produced and stored in surplus by the soviets. While American planes usully ran off 100 octane of 150 octane fuel, soviet Yaks operated on cheap Russian 70 octane fuel quite nicely. American fuel did increase performance of soviet planes, but it is silly to think that without it the Red airforce would have been grounded; why would they produce planes with fuel requirements that they could not meet?? for the Russians, high-octane fuel was more of a 'luxury' than a necessity.

 

Just a cautionary note, please do not slip into attacking each other rather than each other's arguments.

Interesting discussion though - keep it up!

 

"Stupid" would be an insult. "Ignorant" is a state of being for all of us at one time or another (some more often than others).

My patriotism or lack of isn't an issue in this debate. If I use facts to counter your incorrect assertions (which some might describe as anti-American) then my motivation for providing factual information shouldn't matter.
I don't know why I should know that lend lease only began arriving in Russia in 1943 inasmuch as that clearly isn't true. Aid to the Soviets was authorized in November of 1941 however even before that date urgently needed supplies were sent to the Soviets with the help of 50 million dollars credit advanced by the US government. The first convoy of aid pulled into Murmansk while the Germans were still hammering at the gates of Moscow(August '41). Convoys continued throughout 1942 and
in 1943 as the US armament industries went into high gear the aid escalated dramatically to all those receiving it.

If I stated that the US supplied all the high octane aircraft fuel that the Soviets used and the Soviets also used low octane fuel then I would not be mistaken to point out that the US was the sole supplier of high octane aviation fuel. If I had stated that the US was the sole supplier of all aviation fuel then I would be incorrect.
What you might consider a "luxury" sitting in your safe and secure home a Soviet pilot might consider a necessity, sitting in his cockpit facing a high performance German aircraft (running on high octane fuel)with his life on the line.
In any case you missed the point. The 110 million tons of production by the Soviets that you mentioned refers to unrefined crude oil. Without refined fuels aircraft don't fly and tanks and trucks and locomotives don't roll. The Soviets did refine fuel from crude oil however their capacity to do so was limited.

 

I'd like to offer a middle road, one I found in this article:

http://www.oilru.com/or/26/466/

It says that almost all of the crude oil produced in the USSR in 1940 could be refined in the country itself. However the quality of the resulting gasoline was lower than that of the high-octane fuel the US produced. Also, if the article is correct, the entire technology needed to refine oil at all was bought from the US by the USSR, so the latter does indeed owe the former for the meeting of its gasoline requirements.

 

1941 accounted for less than 2% of all US-USSR lend lease, Murmansk was relatively insignificant; most of its shipments ended up at the bottom of the sea: if i remember it was 11 out of 34 ships arrived at port?

by June 1942, only 10% of all wartime lease shipments of petroleum had arrived, along with 10% of all vehicles supplied, mostly tanks (~2500 tanks and 35,000 non combat vehicles)

lend lease did not begin to arrive in significant numbers until early 1943: all US supply locomotives arrived in or after 1943

i agree lend lease did help, but not decisively. how is that anti-american?

 

It is not helpful to compare these figures with those of Soviet production during the entire war. As has been mentioned above, much of the Lend Lease aid came to the Soviet Union at a time when it needed every ounce of help it could get (most notably late 1941 and all of 1942). Get rid of the material factor, and include the psychological aspect of the USSR recieving aid from countries ideolocially oppossed it. Although it wasn't a tide turner, it nevertheless lifted the spirits of both Russian officers and soldiers. Knowing that not only do you have an ally, but that ally is also helping supply you is surely going to add much to your willingness to fight.

And from what I can figure out, 1.75 million tons of food is a lot of food.

 

Thats true, that supplies came when the USSR most needed it. But i wouldnt say they were critical in ensuring Russia's survival. Were the sparse deliveries of 1941-1942 substantial enough to change the outcome of epic battles like stalingrad? would the war have been lost against Germany without it?

Remember, when Napoleon invaded Russia they razed Moscow themselves to overextend his forces, i'm sure they'd have been willing to do so again, given their track record in scorched earth warfare. If worse came to worse the caucasus oil fields themselves would have been razed and the German Army would be defeated again, only perhaps it wouldn't be the red flag flying over Berlin.

i found some stats on how much Lend Lease arrived per year of the war

1941: 360,778t,
of which 13,502t Persian Gulf, 193,229t Soviet Far East, 153,977t North Russia.

1942: 2,453,097t
of which 705,259t Persian Gulf, 734,020 Soviet Far East, 949,711 North Russia, 64,107 Soviet Artic.

1943: 4,794,545t
of which 1,606,979 Persian Gulf, 2,388,577 Soviet Far East, 681,043 North Russia, 117,946 Soviet Artic.

1944: 6,217,622t
of which 1,788,864 Persian Gulf, 2,848,181 Soviet Far East, 1,452,775 North Russia, 127,802 Soviet Artic.

1945 : 3,673,819t (last shipments 20 Sept)
of which: 44,513 Persian Gulf, 2,079,320 Soviet Far East, 726,725 North Russia, 680,723 Black Sea, 142,538 Soviet Artic.

as you can see, the alarming majority arrived post-1942. Now consider the time it must have taken for those supplies delivered in the Soviet Far East to reach the front and to be deployed/assembled, and a large portion of LL 'arrival' is delayed further by several months

 

Most likely not, but Lend Lease aid may very well have gotten the Russians to the point where they could launch Operation Uranus. I'm not saying that the overwhelming number of Russian soldiers came second to Lend Lease, but I am certain that the Allie's aid- such as ammunition, communications wire, fuel, and trucks to haul it all -played a rather large part in the smashing success of Uranus and other Soviet victories. As far as I recall, the Soviets relied on Lend-Leased telephone wire throughout the war, mainly because Russian communications wire wasn't produced with the highest of quality in mind.

I believe the Russians could have eventually won the war without much of the aid sent to them by the Allies, but it would have been an undoubtedly longer and bloodier process. Had the Russians not had the US/UK equipment to serve as stop gaps for the fledging Soviet industry and the initial decimation of both Soviet tank and air arms, things may have gone far worse in the first year and a half of the war.

To quell my curiosity, does anyone have any information on Lend-Lease aid used by the Soviets during Operation Uranus?

 

the british were in ww2...are u sure?....i know read they fought valiently at singapoor and tobruk...but had to surrender because their knees were getting really sunburned[those giant sized kakie shorts were later found to be the problem]...later when proper long trousers were sent lend lease from uncle sam,the brits were able to resume the fight...who sent them the berets with the furry balls on top...i dont think those were made in america[ damm good idea tho...hard for jerry to squeeze one off when he,s got the helpless giggles]

 

Ah - I really hope that was just a rather ill-considered joke...

Writing similar things about America has resulted in several members getting a rap on the knuckles for attacking other countries without basis.