Could the Western Allies Win Without the USSR?

You people are considerating all the Lend-Lease that went to the USSR in Allied hands? IIRC there were more than 2000 planes and tanks, only from the British, in Russia by 1942.

 

Please,don't open this can of worms
But,whatever,the total number of British aircraft that was sent (NOT ARRIVING) to the SU was :4613 (of which 2952 Hurricanes),for the tanks :3100

 

I should advice caution and to wear gloves,if one likes to open cans of worms .
To evaluate (more ) correctly the importance of LL,in this case :for 1942,it is IMHO,indicated to consider the following
a) what was the Soviet tank and aircraft production in 1942 ?
b) what were the chances of the WM in 1942? IMHO,they were insignifiant
c)in contrast with the conviction of a lot of people ,there was no Desert War in 1942:no mobile armies ,no decisive importance of tanks and aircraft .The outcome was decided by the party who had more infantry and artillery,and,this was the SU,who committed in 1942 12 million men,against Germany 4 million
d)there also is the point of the quality of the aircraft:were the Hurricanes not outdated in 1941 ?

 

LJAd, I don't understand you. This thread this about the Western Allies against Germany without the USSR. All the Lend-Lease sent to the Soviets would have improved the Allied performance significantly.

 

I think we are disagreeing about the significance of significantly :while it is true that LL was helping the Soviets,it is (IMHO) also true that the indirect aid by the Wallies (the fact that there was already a second front on 22 june 1941)was more important than the LL deliveries .
There is a tendency in the West (even/especially today) that the war in the east was outfought by primitive Russian moezjiks and goose-stepping Germans,and that the outcome was decided by the supply of a limited amount of sophisticated western weapons .(the Studebakers being of course much better than the Soviet trucks : primitive moezjiks only can produce primitive weapons,etc.....),while the truth is that the war in the east was decided by the quantity of manpower and weapons that was committed(the quality being ,generally,aequal,the Soviet soldiers and weapons were NOT inferior to the German soldiers and weapons).
But,the present generation in the West has been educated with D.Brown and C.Cussler stories ,produced by Hollywood ,and,we know that lazy/young people prefer movies to books .
Lasr point :as such ,the presence in 1942 of 2000 British aircraft/tanks is not indicating a significant aid to the SU.

 

The question of the Lend-Lease is not simple as just arms, as Zhukov himself told:

"Speaking about our readiness for war from the point of view of the economy and
economics, one cannot be silent about such a factor as the subsequent help from
the Allies. First of all, certainly, from the American side, because in that
respect the English helped us minimally. In an analysis of all facets of the
war, one must not leave this out of one's reckoning. We would have been in a
serious condition without American gunpowder, and could not have turned out the
quantity of ammunition which we needed. Without American `Studebekkers' [sic],
we could have dragged our artillery nowhere. Yes, in general, to a considerable
degree they provided ourfront transport. The output of special steel, necessary
for the most diverse necessities of war, were also connected to a series of
American deliveries."

Moreover, Zhukov underscored that `we entered war while still continuing to be a
backward country in an industrial sense in comparison with Germany. Simonov's
truthful recounting of these meetings with Zhukov, which took place in 1965 and
1966, are corraborated by the utterances of G. Zhukov, recorded as a result of
eavesdropping by security organs in 1963:
"It is now said that the Allies never helped us . . . However, one cannot deny
that the Americans gave us so much material, without which we could not have
formed our reserves and ***could not have continued the war*** . . . we had no
explosives and powder. There was none to equip rifle bullets. The Americans
actually came to our assistance with powder and explosives. And how much sheet
steel did they give us. We really could not have quickly put right our
production of tanks if the Americans had not helped with steel. And today it
seems as though we had all this ourselves in abundance."

There's controversy regarding the importance of the Lend-Lease, as not all archives are avaliable. However I tend to rely in people like Zhukov and Kruschev. New evidence of the Lend-Lease already confirmed it was significantly more important than was belived, so it appears that those men in the Soviet military and political elite can be speaking the truth.

Anyway, you are still OFF-topic. I'm telling that according to the thread's tittle, the LL sent to the Soviets would have improved the Allied situation significantly if the USSR didn't taked part in the war, as everything would have been avaliable to the Allies.

 

I'm not so sure that the equipment and material's that would have been available to the Allies seeing as they would not have been sent to the USSR would have made much of a difference noticeably.

The Allies them selves were in no short supply of materials or military equipment. There factories never seemed to suffer from down time due to lack of material's for construction so I don't see how more resources would make a difference if they couldn't actually turn what they had into product's before they were restocked.

On another note, Should the extra equipment be fielded then more personnel would have to be trained in the use of that equipment.

 

two other points :
1) if the 2000 British aircraft/tanks were not sent to the SU,the only way for Britain to use them,was to send them to Egypt ,and to transport 1000 tanks/aircraft more to Egypt (some 15000 miles away) would result in a heavy burden for the British merchant navy
2) saying that they would available ,if they were not sent to the SU,is to imply that they would be produced :why would they be produced,if there was no need to send them to the SU ?

 

I don't see a problem in this. The Allies would have reserve equipment, while the same cannot be said about the Axis and their poor logistics network in Africa/Middle East.

Already answered above.

 

It would likely make a more signifcant difference early in the war. The material GB sent to the USSR in 41 for instance could have been used in North Africa or to raise more Indian units. Later in the war it would allow the allies to replace old equipment faster and shut down production lines of marginal equipment sooner. The P-39 line would have been shut down much sooner for instance and the follow on P-63 probably never built. The question then becomes how they would use this potential. That's not an easy one to answer. I can see a number of possibilities but would they at the time?

 

It's impossible to claim what would happen. I also can see several options. The one I would beat is the possibility of a Soviet intervention. The Germans would need to keep a large contingent to defend their Eastern borders; that would consume a lot of money they already didn't have. With the time, Germany and occupied Europe would simply not have resources to continue the war, because the blockade and constant drain of money from the need of massive armed forces in the East and West. The German historical production of 1943 and specially 1944, would simply not exist without the raw materials they pillaged from the USSR, while the Germans would not be able to buy raw materials from the Soviets in such a quantity to arrive in a industrial ouput similar as they had historically (insufficient anyway). The Allies were aware of the difficult German economic situation, and the German-Soviet relations, and so were the Germans, and this was a major reason for their attack in the USSR.

 

You are forgetting that the transport of tanks and aircraft to the ME was demanding much more time (some 3 months) and thus much more GRT than the transport of tanks and aircraft to the SU via the arctic route(some 3 weeks)
And,if the 8th Army had more tanks and aircaft,that would not result automatically in a stronger 8th Army ne could argue that it would result in more logistic difficulties for the 8th Army.

 

I will post the view of a friend of mine from other forum about this scenario, he listed the following possibilities:

1) the Russians eventually join the Axis as an active partner. In that scenario, if nothing else, the vast natural resources of the USSR support the rest of the Axis economies, the vast manpower resources place the Axis in an unassailable military position. The Allies will be forced to capitulate under that scenario.

2) The Rusians start out in cahoots with the Axis, but remain neutral, suggesting the Rusians continue to follw their own foreign policy agenda. Eventually the Axis inability to pay the Russians for their resources ( as you know Axis economies were technically insolvent for most of the war, and needed the constant injection of "conquest money" to stay afloat. Without continual conquest, and the graduall pillaging of the European economies generally, and no access to international markets, the Axis economies are headed south in this scenario.

With Russia pursuing its own agenda, and gradual drift away from economic support by the Russians, there has to be a gradual buildup of tension along the eastern front. Ties down a gradually weakening Germany to a large garrison on the eastern front.....a kind of Fascist "Cold War" if you like

3) The Russians do not sign the pact with the Germans and in fact retain a collective security stance in 1939. Maybe they go to war against the germans in 1939, maybe they dont, but either way, in this scenario the German demise is going to be rapid and complete. They have no economic access, and a hostile neighbour on their eaastern border. In this scenario, I doubt if the Germans would even be abale to take out France..

And if the Germans resolve to direct their total efforts to the south, that means no U-Boat war, no blitz, no threat of invasion, no attempts at tonnage war by the surface fleet, no defences over the Reich, no defences along the Coast. Even allowing for some rationalization of that statement...ie maintaining the minimum necesary for defence in the western hemisphere, will still decrease the pressure on the brits in western europe and enable a response to be formulated. Greater committment to the South by the germans will take time to develop, because of the poor levels of infrastructure there, no involvement in the east will cause a rethink of strategic priorities for Britain. For every action there will be an equal and opposite reaction. The grand offensive to the south will not achieve german access to oil, and is unlikely to achieve much more than was ever achieved historically, except with a massive and radical adjstment in German production. as soon as that is assumed, one has to also assume a similar radical and corresponding adjustment to british/allied production priorities.

His view just has details to what I have already wrote.

 

I have to disagree on the statement that the German war production of 1943/1944 was depending on the amount of raw materials they were stealing in the SU .
The trade with the SU always was marginal:
The German import from the SU was in 1940 12 % from its total imports (550 million of RM on a total of 4.7 billion
for 1941:325 million on a total of 6.2 billion =5%
for 1942:480 on 6.8 billion =6 %
for 1943:240 on 8.2 billion =3 %
for 1944:there are no figures available,but the imports(without the SU) were 6.6 billion,and,as on 1 january 1944,only a small part of the SU still was occupied,it is obvious that the imports for 1944 were marginal .
In 1943,the imports from France were 3 X higher than these from the SU,for 1944,the ratio was almost 7.
In 1943,Germany imported almost 3 X more from Belgium than from the SU .
I don't also see what raw materials from the SU were indispensable for Germany,and,how much of them Germany was obtaining .
Source =the legacy of fortress Europe

 

What you must also realize Jenisch is that while the Eastern front only provided access to a very small resource pool (Could possibly have been larger had Hitler allowed more friendly treatment to the occupied people, But that's a whole other matter i wont go into on this thread) while at the same time opening Germany up to there biggest drain on resources, man power and equipment.

On any given year they lost more men and equipment then they gained from there occupied territories in the SU.

The need to base troop's at the Russian border is certain, But not the need to base there entire force there continuously and even if they had to the resources they used would be far lower as it would before the time being a static army mostly. No vast sum's of resources needed to keep them advancing, Just sitting tight ready to perform a delaying action when the SU attacked.

As for the German economy, I'm not an expert on it but i did find this chart Military production during World War II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Look at first part relating to the GDP) and seems to actually show there economy growing, Not shrinking and this is at a time when they have a man power shortage and are under bombing raids by the Allies. Actually there economy only began to really suffer as the Russians got closer, There elite force's were slowly stretched thin and the bombing raids increased in size. But none of this actually stopped the civilian economy entirely, They were still producing wall paper up to the the very end. So if anything there economy and industry still had plenty of room to maneuver. (Though a large part of there economy can probably be linked to there ability to set the exchange rate in conquered countries.)

 

Wages of Destruction, Adam Tooze, page 400:

Germany's strategic dilemma in the summer of 1940 was not merelyhow to defeat Britain. The problem was how to neutralize Britain beforeAmerica could intervene decisively on its side. Unleashing the U-boatsagainst the Anglo-American umbilical cord was certainly the most directapproach to this problem. But it was not quick-acting and it was thestrategy that bore the highest risk of bringing down upon Germany thefull weight of American power
Page 403 of the same book:

Alarmed by Germany's bid to overturnthe balance of power in Europe, the Roosevelt administration, backedby a bi-partisan majority in Congress, took urgent steps to transformthe United States into the pre-eminent military superpower that itremains today. The sequence of events was rapid. On 16 May 1940,three days after Kleist's Panzer Group A had broken through on river Maas, President Roosevelt put before Congress the proposal toconstruct the world's largest military-industrial complex, a manufactur-ing base capable of supplying the United States with no less than 50,000aircraft per year. Roosevelt picked this number out of the air and itwas unclear how it would be put into practice. But he made his point.The Luftwaffe and the RAF, even in their wildest moments, had neverconceived of aircraft production on this scale. 'Fifty thousand per year'was less a planning target than a statement of American industrialsupremacy. Only a few weeks later, Congress approved the Two OceansNavy Expansion Act, which laid the foundations for the vast carrier-fleets with which the United States still projects force into every cornerof the globe. There followed over the summer the unprecedented intro-duction of a peacetime draft, designed to raise a trained force of 1.4 million men. By 1941, America, a nation still at peace, was produc-ing almost as much weaponry as either Germany or Britain and wasdoing so whilst at the same time enjoying the first sustained increase incivilian consumption since the late 1920s. What was ominous from the German point of view was that thisenormous accumulation of force was ultimately directed across theAtlantic, in support of Britain and its war against Hitler. Britain'swillingness to go on resisting Germany depended critically on theassumption that the United States would provide it with massive materialaid. At first, of course, Britain would have to pay. Britain, unlike Ger-many, was not bankrupt. In 1939 it was still a large internationalcreditor with foreign assets estimated at c. $5 billion (15-20 billionReichsmarks), enough to match an entire year of German armamentsoutput with purchases from abroad. But to defeat Germany, Britainwould clearly need far more. The premise of British strategy wastherefore, as Churchill put it to Roosevelt, that Britain would pay for asmuch as it could, but that 'when we can pay no more you will give usthe stuff all the same'. Perhaps not surprisingly, Roosevelt did not replyto this bold statement of British dependence. The tortured politics of World War I war debts were still fresh in the memory. Britain was tobe driven to the point of financial exhaustion before Congress openedthe floodgates of lend-lease in the spring of 1941. London, therefore,had every reason to be nervous. But Churchill's gamble was clearlybased on a fundamentally correct strategic assessment. Roosevelt hadhad his heart set on a major American contribution to the air effort

Page 668:

By any reasonable estimation, Hitler's declaration of war on theUnited States sealed the fate of Germany. The economic and militaryforces arrayed against the Third Reich by early 1942 were overwhelm-ing. As we have shown, this fatalistic view was shared by all those mostclosely involved with the management of the German war effort up tothe Moscow crisis. Udet of the Luftwaffe, Fromm of the army, Thomasof the Wehrmacht high command, Todt in the Armaments Ministry,Canaris in intelligence, Rohland and his colleagues in the Ruhr, all cameto the same conclusion. All these men had thrown in their lot. But they were not ignorant of the basic trends of earlytwentieth-century history. They were as convinced as the vast majorityof their contemporaries of the pivotal importance of the United Stateseconomy. None of them doubted that once American industrial capacitywas mobilized - and they were fully aware of the measures that hadalready been taken in 1940 and 1941 - Germany's situation would beworse than that of 1918.

More info, page 410:

On 12 February 1941 the Luftwaffe finally got its deal. France agreedto produce 3,000 aircraft under licence as well as 13,500 aero-engines.So anxious was the Reich Air Ministry to get production started, that itabandoned its demand for ownership of the French factories. But ahighly significant sticking point remained. To make the aircraft, Francewould need aluminium and, though France had bauxite and smeltingcapacity, it lacked the coal necessary to generate electricity. The Frenchcalculated that to meet the German demands they would need a deliveryof 120,000 tons of coal per month. Germany could promise only 4,000tons.
A few weeks later, on the other side of the Atlantic, the long-awaited Lend-Lease Act passed through its final stages. On 11 March1941 Congress made an immediate appropriation of $8.3 billion forBritish war supplies. At between 25 and 33 billion Reichsmarks, de-pending on exchange rates, this was equivalent to two years of Germanarmaments output. Two billion dollars alone were earmarked for animmediate order of 11,800 military aircraft, doubling the number of planes that Britain already had under contract. At the same moment,the combined total of all Wehrmacht orders in occupied Europe cameto 3 billion Reichsmarks, or roughly $750 million.
By the end of 1941,whereas Britain had taken delivery of 5,012 complete aircraft from theUnited States, Germany had received a grand total of 78 aircraft fromFrance and the Netherlands.
In 1942, with the bulk of United Statesoutput being retained for its own use and British deliveries restricted to7,775 planes, the Luftwaffe received 743 aircraft from the occupiedWestern territories. In total, during the entire war, the Luftwaffe, theWehrmacht's most adventurous sub-contractor, took delivery of only2,517 aircraft from France and 947 from Holland. The Luftwaffe soondespaired of contracting out entire aircraft to the occupied territories.Labour productivity in the French aircraft factories was so low that ittook four times as many workers to produce a German aircraft in Franceas it did to produce the same plane in Germany. Not surprisingly, inlight of these figures, the main contribution made by the occupiedterritories directly towards armaments production for the Reich was theconscription of millions of foreign workers for labour in Germany.


The territories that Germany had conquered in 1940, though they pro-vided substantial booty and a crucial source of labour did not bearcomparison with the abundance provided to Britain by America.
Theaerial arms race was the distinctive Anglo-American contribution to thewar and it played directly to America's dominance in manufacturing.But though the disparity in aircraft deliveries was extreme it was notuntypical. A similarly vast gulf was also evident in relation to energysupplies, the most basic driver of modern urban and industrial society.Whereas the Anglo-American alliance was energy rich, Germany and itsWestern European Grossraum were starved of food, coal and oil.The disparity with respect to oil was most serious. Between 1940 and1943 the mobility of Germany's army, navy and air force, not to mentionits domestic economy, depended on annual imports of 1.5 million tonsof oil, mainly from Romania.
In addition, German synthetic fuel fac-tories, at huge expense, produced a flow of petrol that rose from 4 milliontons in 1940 to a maximum of 6.5 million tons in 1943. Seizing thefuel stocks of France as booty in no way resolved this fundamentaldependency. In fact, the victories of 1940 had the reverse effect. Theyadded a number of heavy oil consumers to Germany's own fuel deficit.From its annual fuel flow of at most 8 million tons, Germany now hadto supply not only its own needs, but those of the rest of Western Europeas well. Before the war, the French economy had consumed at least5.4 million tons per annum, at a per capita rate 60 per cent higher thanGermany's.

The effect of the German occupation was to throw Franceback into an era before motorization. From the summer of 1940 Francewas reduced to a mere 8 per cent of its pre-war supply of petrol. In aneconomy adjusted to a high level of oil consumption the effects weredramatic. To give just one example, thousands of litres of milk went towaste in the French countryside every day, because no petrol was avail-able to ensure regular collections.

If the Western Allies would certainly won alone, I can't confirm. But I do know they were much more economically stronger than Germany, and would not be certainly in a hopeless situation without the USSR, like some people have pointed here. They had the necessary conditions to win.

 

How about steel, non-ferrous metal, oil, rubber, and grain? Raw resources do not compare to the finished product in monetary value, but what percentage of the essential material were actually of Soviet extraction in tonnage?

 

This is my point. Those guys are trying to say the Germans didn't had material shortages, and could compete with the US and Britain industrially. With all respect, it's a joke.

 

I also asked the question :what raw materials were indispensable and how much did the Germans obtain ?
Oil :nothing
Coal :from what I have read,the Germans had to use their own coal to use their trains in Russia
Steel :I would be surprised if any significant amount of steel was produced in the occupied part of the SU by the Germans
Rubber :was there any rubber in western Russia?
Chroom ore came from Turkey
IMHO,there were few raw marerials,and,due to the destructions of the war (scorched earth policy),the Germans were unable to transport significant amount of things to Germany .
If they had won,they would have needed enormous investments during a generation to make European Russia usefull for Germany

 

That's a wrong interpretation
I am saying
1)Germany had material shortages
2) It could not compete with the US;Britain and the SU
3)There was no way that during the war/in a short term,it could make the occupied part of the SU usefull for the German war production
4)What it obtained during the war from abroad,came from a lot of countries,and what it obtained from the SU was not essential,IMHO,it was marginal .