Thread 17974307

The lend-lease aid acted as the logistical backbone of the Red Army and it kept home front consumer goods production in the USSR alive.

Russian nationalists and Tankies will scream lend-lease mostly did not come until 1943, but it still prevented a Soviet economic collapse in 1942 and the USSR stayed overwhelmingly on the defensive until 1943 kek.

Despite a lot of the LL getting to the soviets after summer 1943, the supplies that did in fact get there in 1942 from the British were sufficient enough to make a big difference. I also think a lot of American LL would get the the USSR by proxy through the UK.

I've heard there was significant British aid to the Soviets at that time, but can't find direct sources online. Anyone got sources for that?

Also...

You can't even weigh the value of LL in pure tonnage either. In the battle of France, the French had more tanks, and they were better armed as well, but the German tanks had radios which allowed for effective tactics. You can't weigh the impact this had on the battle using raw tonnage of the radios, so it requires more in depth analysis.

And let's not forget there was a famine in the USSR in 1946 that killed millions. Had the war extended beyond spring of '45, the impact this would have had on the eastern front is significant.

I think that with no direct USA LL for the USSR there would have been some sort of stalemate after the 6th Army surrendered at Stalingrad. This all assumes America still goes to war with Germany in Dec 1941, but decides to use their industry for their own military.

Kursk may have unfolded differently if it hadn't been postponed because of American landings in Siclily, but I still think Citadel fails. Bagration definitely doesn't happen without all those trucks from USA. By the beginning of 1944 the Germans don't have the ability to take offensive initative in the East, and the US/UK having all those LL supplies for themselves means D-Day probably happens in 1943. Soviets can't really push east until the Wehrmacht moves resources west to counter the US/UK, and even then it wouldn't be effective anyway.

So 2 years from 1943 D-Day to an atomic bomb is available in 1945 means 2 years of meat grinders in the west. USSR border probably looks pretty similar to what it did in June 1941, with everything else going to the Allies

Soviets would still win, nazis did not have enough men and logistics to conquer everything to the AA line, USSR having a bit less tanks or soldiers in 1942 wouldn't change anything
Consensus among profesional historians is that Barbarossa goals were physically impossible to achive

>>17974307 (OP)
>how badly
USSR lost to japan a tiny island
that is how bad
>kek

>>17974307 (OP)
You see the 41-42 debacle?
One more year of than and then a parade in Moscow.

>>17974386
They didn't need to conquer right to the AA line to convince the Soviets to stop fighting.

I don't think it was ever possible to capture Moscow as it was too dug in and fortified, so not enough men would be available to protect German flanks while capturing it.

I do wonder what '42 would be like if they had managed to capture Leningrad in '41. Being able to cut-off Murmansk-Moscow lines and free up all the forces used to beseige Leningrad would have led to an interesting campaign in Ukraine in '42. Plus the psychlogical effect on the Soviets of not having Leningrad/Minsk/Kiev would have weighed on them heavily going into 42.

The raw materials, Studebakers, and food were all really important for operations like Operation Bagration, and it's possible the Soviets could have failed some of these operations without the lend-lease. Undoubtedly, the Nazis would have still lost, but Hitler would probably be able to hold out for a little longer, possibly until 1947 even.

>>17974351
>You can't even weigh the value of LL in pure tonnage either.
I hope this doesn't mean you're accepting the pro-soviet
>muh %
argument? Reminder that it was an entirely unsourced and unbacked claim provided as dogma by soviet propagandists, that they felt the need should tip us off as to hard how they totally would have won anyway

>>17974307 (OP)
They would have lost the war without lend lease, as the americans had built their nascent industry to be bottlenecked in the 30's and agreed to resolve it in lend lease as well as directly gifting the soviets an entire modern if not cutting edge logistical system

>>17974307 (OP)
Way worse than our current reality, but would still climb on top

>>17974307 (OP)

Bad enough that Stalin would likely have sued for a separate peace (secret diplomatic talks between the USSR and Nazi Germany were still being held right up until the Battle of Kursk)

>>17976235
>the americans had built their nascent industry to be bottlenecked in the 30's

Reminder that the entire Soviet car industry was built by Ford. Yes, that Henry "the Soviet Union is being run by an international Jewish conspiracy" Ford.

>>17974307 (OP)
They would’ve lost, Stalin and Khruschev admitted this.

>>17976235
I'm not accepting the pro-soviet argument. I'm acknowledging that certain things provided to the Red Army had a higher impact on their survival than raw tonnage would indicate. Something as simple as boots provided to them may not be a large weight, but the combat effectiveness of their soldiers is greatly enhanced with high quality american boots as opposed to whatever the Soviets could provide them, along with the industrial benefit of not having to manufacture boots themselves.

>>17974307 (OP)
The Red Army won its most important victories and crushed the German war machine before 85% of the LL came in. Everything else was just there to expedite the fall of the Nazis. Given the state of the Red Army after Kursk and the general attitudes on display from high command, do you seriously imagine that the lack of one tank in ten would stop them from forcing an assault at every opportunity? The biggest thing that kept the Soviets going was food shipments, I've read several memoirs of Red Army grunts who say that Spam and bread from the USA kept them fed during very hungry months following the destruction of the 6th army. Given the general attitudes in high command, even this wouldn't stop them. Soviet tactics simply did not give a shit if you were starving or underequipped. They had objectives handed down by Stalin himself and if you failed, you were being executed, so that starving conscript is gonna get thrown at the enemy lines whether or not he has the strength to stand. Analysis from British historians say LL shortened the war by a single year. The Soviets were self sufficient on most things, (oil, raw materials, weapons, etc), and most of the tonnage was logistical in nature like Jeeps or trains, all things the USSR was producing in droves as a nation geared up for total war. It helped, certainly, but ultimately the victory in Europe falls upon the shoulders of the Soviet war machine and that curiously Russian strategy of "take casualties in stride and destroy the enemy at all costs"

>>17974351
This.
Problem is more that Lend-Lease is mistakenly measured in quantity when it was quality that made the difference.
Scopes, radios and range finders are very small parts of a tank, but it essentially makes every difference in its potential, far more than it's armor or turret in most cases. This makes Lend-Lease significant
The food provided was in small quantity but protein rich conserved meat that was far more nutritious and portable then domestic products.
Nearly 100% of Soviet source of aluminum came through Lend lease, which means it 100% affected Soviet domestic airplane production

But allied contribution wasn't mainly through Lend-Lease, it was the fact that the allies managed to tie down the majority of German munition.
Again, another mistake people make is that they only look at boots on the ground to determine where the war was decided. They don't look at where German munitions were dedicated, and it's disproportionately used to fight the western allies. Nearly 50% of German entire munition production was single engine aircrafts, of which the overwhelming majority of the luftwaffe was used to defend German airspace.
Likewise, over 15% of German munitions were anti-air guns, again dedicated to fend German airspace. This is in stark contrast to AFV(panzers) production which only constituted 5-10% of German munition. Even the German navy had a larger offset of munition production, and the navy was exclusively used against the allies.
Bombing campaign also disrputed roughly 30% of German production, so in a sense, the allies destroyed more German material on the assembly line than the soviets did on the field

Finally, some allied battles are heavily neglected even though they were almost equal in scope to Soviet battles. The battle for Tunis occurred roughly the same time as Stalingrad and was pretty much equal in term of Wehrmacht losses (300.000 surrendered, 500 tanks and 3000(!) aircrafts).
Not to mention, allies were fighting a 2-front war

>>17977349
>The Red Army won its most important victories and crushed the German war machine before 85% of the LL came in.
This is true, but even operation Uranus relied on Lend-Lease, even if the vast quantities did not arrive until late 1943.
Economic historian Mark Harrison concludes that without Lend-Lease, the Germans would still likely not have won, but neither would the Soviets.
The eastern front would have taken an entirely different characteristics of sluggish and consequently more bloody war, while the wehrmacht would be in a better position to release more divisions to defend against the western allies, making the war there also more problematic, longer and bloody.

>Soviet tactics simply did not give a shit if you were starving or underequipped.
This is not true and it's also retarded. You're just fueling one of the most blatant myths of ww2.

>They had objectives handed down by Stalin himself and if you failed, you were being executed.
Ok then name generals who got executed for failing their objectives? Except Pavlov who in the opening stage of Barbarossa was scapegoated. You're not even talking about 1941, you're talking about 1942.

>USSR was producing in droves as a nation geared up for total war.
Lend-Lease provided mountains of war material. Again it was often small but technical and extremely vital parts like radios and range finders, which was critical in a tanks capability. It also gave the soviets huge quantities of explosives which they needed to even make munitions, as well as their entire supply of rubber and aluminum etc, which completely affected their domestic production.

>that curiously Russian strategy of "take casualties in stride and destroy the enemy at all costs"
Eh no and again you're just parroting brain dead myths of "human waves". The soviets won because they learned how to fight as a sophisticated army.

>>17977438
>This is not true and it's also retarded. You're just fueling one of the most blatant myths of ww2.
Russian doctrine in general doesn't give a fuck about casualties. You can see this on display in the current conflict in Ukraine and most of their major conflicts within the Soviet era. I'm not talking about human waves or whatever. Zhukov outright said if they attack an area with minefields they attack precisely as if they weren't there. Based generalship, yes, but its no secret that their doctrine was wasteful.

>What leaders were executed for failure?
I can't recall any by name but honestly just the fear of it was enough to motivate.

>>17977562
>I can't recall any by name but honestly just the fear of it was enough to motivate.
Ok so you straight up acknowledge that you're just parroting a myth. Good job moron.

>Russian doctrine in general doesn't give a fuck about casualties.
There is no doctrine that ignores casualties. You're just parroting one of the most absurd and oldest myths about ww2.
One which you already acknowledged was bullshit.

>You can see this on display in the current conflict in Ukraine
Could also be because Ukraine has better equiptment and are on the defensive.
We also don't actually know the numbers of casualties, but you just blatantly assumes it's overwhelmingly one-sided, and that it's due to 'doctrine'.

>and most of their major conflicts within the Soviet era.
Really? Which conflicts?
The Soviet-Afghan war where they took significantly less casualties than thrir Afghan enemies and allies?
The Soviet-Polish war when casualties were roughly equal?
The Soviet-Japanese war of 1945 when they inflicted twice the casualties?

All you have is ww2, which is where the entire myth comes from that it was part of their "doctrine" to take casualties.
Again, you're just fueling the myth.

>but its no secret that their doctrine was wasteful.
Do you even know what doctrine means? I don't think you do.
And what doctrine are you referring to?
And if you're not insinuating the "human wave" myth, then what exactly are you talking about?

The Soviets took roughly 10 million military casualties in ww2, as opposed to the roughly 5 million Axis military casualties sustained on the eastern front.
That's a roughly 2:1 ratio which actually undermines your bulkshit about losses being a "doctrine".
Especially since the majority of those losses were sustained in 1941 during the chaotic invasion, and the fact that nearly 3 million Soviet military casualties occurred in German captivity

A country doesn't win by disregarding losses even if they are superior in material. They win by capability

>>17977613
>Only Marshals were executed
Anon if youre gonna disregard the terror that Stalin inflicted that the officers explicitly said they felt then I really can't reason with you can I?

>le human waves
Didn't say they did. But they did explain the use of reconnaissance in force, pushing on a broad front to probe for weak points before striking with spearheads. Even Zhukov himself elaborated with his minefield comment. I'm not saying they werent coordinated or whatever the fuck. I'm telling you, words from the horses' mouth, that they accepted the notion that casualties would be severe and didnt care. Even when they attacked the Reichstag, they sent conscripts first, watched them die, then geared up for another assault and targeted the weak points in defense. Its not a myth that the red army suffered insane casualties, and its not a myth that it was directly due to the commanders throwing them into the fight. Memoirs of dudes on the ground say as much, they were hungry, tired, and low on supply, yet they had orders to take that hill or bunker and they soldiered on. You CAN win if you lose more men than the enemy while driving them from their positions. Grant proved that when he beat Lee. If you leverage your manpower advantage, you can win. Its better not to, but when youre stonewalled against the Axis forces who are trying to recover from being on the strategic back foot, there's not a lot of other options. Fuckups happen and people die, assaults fail, but if the overall objectives can be completed, then you win.
>Muh kdr
Anon the death tolls in Afghanistan and Chechnya aren't the issue. Its how the dudes on the ground KNEW they were being thrown into it and how blase the command was about sending dudes to get burned alive in BMPs until the sheer scale of it forced a re evaluation or strategic pivot. Yeah, no shit, insurgents take more casualties than the professional army. They also inflicted pretty disproportionate casualties and thats bad.

>>17977409

It's also hard to really gauge how close the Red Army was to collapse. Sure, a major collapse somewhere is unlikely, but smallish losses in several places can have a real cascading affect that ripples elsewhere when you're already on thin ice.

If their soldiers in 1942/1943 are subsisting off only low quality kazakh grains, and don't have access to the valuable SPAM protein provided by the USA, there could have been a real loss of operational effectiveness of their soldiers. Poor nutrition means disease spreads easier. Even moreso without good clothing.

If Soviet planes don't have the higher quality aviation fuel provided to them, then German planes might have been able to perform a few extra valuable recon sorties, or supply runs to the field.

I can't imagine that Leningrad could have hung on for much of 1942 if it weren't for the lake-traversed supplies that probably came straight down from Murmansk, and if that collapses in mid-late 1942, then that frees up at least 500k Germans and other resources in the North, making the loss at Stalingrad less of a tactical and propoganda loss.

Again, none of this excuses obvious strategic failures by the Germans, or the fact that almost everything needed to go right for them in the first place to beat the Soviets at all. Still, I can't imagine the Soviets had the ability to come out of 1942 in any better shape than they did at the end of 1941 with economic support for the USA.

>>17977642
>But they did explain the use of reconnaissance in force, pushing on a broad front to probe for weak points before striking with spearheads
Deep Operation was an actual Soviet doctrine which is probably what you're referring to, and no it did not include "sending starving and unarmed soldiers because you don't give a fuck about casualties" as you put it, in your earlier posts. In fact Deep Operation emphasize on tactical sophistication. You literally mentioned a few points, yet you believe in the myth of mass-casualties being a Soviet "doctrine"

It honestly sounds like you actually went to read a little bit, and now you're just contradicting yourself

>Even Zhukov himself elaborated with his minefield comment
I'm really not interested in anecdotes because I could pull anecdotes from the German side too which ultimately proves nothing. It's the broader picture that counts, and you're the one who needs to prove that mass-casualties was an established doctrine

>Casualties would be severe and didnt care
Curious, I can remember Hitler saying similar things when the German situation was desperate, but one anecdote isn't enough to fundamentally prove that this was an established Wehrmacht doctrine because it wasn't.
All you're doing is cherrypicking for narrative. We don't even know the context of your anecdote. The Germans were for example themselves using penal battalions for clearing minefields under fire. It still doesn't prove anything about German doctrine

You're just showing your idiocy because you can't comprehend the point I'm making with this

>Its not a myth that the red army suffered insane casualties
It's not a myth that they suffered heavy casualties and were tactically inferior to the wehrmacht, no.
What is a myth is that casualties was *emphasized* to achieve victory. You're literally saying it was a fucking doctrine. Do you realize how absurd that is? And you're low-key trying to backpeddle on the fact that you proclaimed it to be a doctrine

>>17977642
>Anon the death tolls in Afghanistan and Chechnya aren't the issue. Its how the dudes on the ground KNEW they were being thrown into it and how blase the command was about sending dudes to get burned alive in BMPs until the sheer scale of it forced a re evaluation or strategic pivot. Yeah, no shit, insurgents take more casualties than the professional army. They also inflicted pretty disproportionate casualties and thats bad.
Meaning you were proven wrong about "complete disregard for losses was a doctrine". Because if that was true then their casualties would have been far higher, more akin to their disproportionate losses in Finland in 1939 despite the soviets being overwhelmingly superior in equiptment and material.
Yet neither of the conflicts I named, this never happened.
In other words, you were wrong.

>>17974351
>let's not forget there was a famine in the USSR in 1946 that killed millions.
The BIGGEST Lend Lease contribution by FAR was the precanned ready to cook food. That cannot be measured by weight either- the ability to ship canned food directly into Russian ports and to the Russian Front meant that huge, vast numbers of laborers (farmers, transporters, canners, food line preparers) could be moved out of civilian life and into thebmilitary. This impact was absolutely enormous. I think without the food contribution, the USSR may still have won, but it would have been a Pyrrhic Victory; it would have resembled its defeaed enemies.

I predict without food aid in WWII, the USSR wins the war but crumbles and balkanizes in The immediate aftermath. A new Europe is born, new nations arise out of communist groups and all the Germans in Europe are exterminated down to a soul. In the late 1950s, Europe stabilizes under direct American military domination.

>>17976249
I wonder if Ford was a Goldstein (1984)?

>>17977751
Like I said, I find Mark Harrisons conclusion to be the most logical, and that is that without Lend-Lease, the Germans would *most likely* not have won anyway, but the Soviets would *most likely* not have won either. The war would just have been far more sluggish.

The German failure is mostly owed to the fact that Barbarossa was never designed, planned or prepared against a fighting resistance. Barbarossa timetable was for 6 weeks which is quite astonishing and really goes to show how firmly the Germans believed that the Red Army would be destroyed in the opening blow and the Soviet state would collapse. The overconfidence from France and the red army humiliation in Finland, plus ideological belief of race and communism added to this.

The Germans knew they were in trouble just 2 months into Barbarossa because Red Army divisions kept showing up. They couldn't capture any grain or oilfields intact against a fighting resistance.
Most historians are in agreement that even if the germans somehow captured Moscow by the last breath of their strength, it still wouldn't have been enough to tilt a Soviet collapse.
As for Case Blue, it was simply the *best* option out of virtually only bad options, but the entire plan was flawed because Army Group A did not have the means to advance all the way to Grozny by logistical means or to capture the oilfields intact (Maikop was captured by the fields were destroyed).
Army Group B did not recieve enough men and material to capture the entire Volga, they literally only made it halfway before Army A had to be stripped for Army B to capture Stalingrad, meaning A wasn't able to advance to Grozny.

Again, the failure of Barbarossa left them in an impossible position. That's when failure begins, and while no Lend-Lease will not improve the Red Army capacity, it's omitting doesn't improve the Wehrmacht capability either.

>>17977771
While everything you say about food quality bring correct, it should probably be said that Lend-Lease food was only 1-2% of Soviet domestic food production, so you might want to slow down a little bit with your "USSR will collapse without it".
It's also the fact that the food was often scavenged by hungry Soviet personnel as it was being transported by rail from Vladivistok to the frontline.

I find it highly probable the Soviet Union would have lost without Lend-Lease looking specifically at the chemicals industry. The Soviet Union actually did have enough of a chemical industry to sustain an industrial war in 1941 but most of it was captured by the Germans and the consequent lack of ammunition and low rate of artillery fire explains much of why Soviet casualties were so high even in 1942 when they weren't getting encircled. If that had kept on for years instead of getting fixed by Lend-Lease you would have seen even higher Red Army casualties and collapsing fertilizer consumption and this would bring the long-term viability of the Soviet war effort into serious question and make the attritional strategy the Wehrmacht adopted in 1943 much more plausible than it was OTL

>>17976699
>Khruschev
clown