Germany vs SU WW2 (But no B-17s, etc))

[futon]

If US and GB strategic bombing capability was not what it was, even if they were able to win in the air battles over Britain and in the Mediterranean, the air dominance would not open up the path for strategic bombing of German industries. 

Would the Soviet Union still be able to push the German armies back to Berlin? 

On the one hand, no bombed German industries, then naturally tank, etc production facilities go unhampered. Less strain on oil supply. 

On the other hand, by 1945, fighting age men was running low for Germany. So causalties inflicted may still be a determining factor. 

Could the Germans have halted the Soviet counter offensive in places like Hungary or the Ukraine where those countries also fought against the Soviet Union? 

[Detonable]

  Well, if Great Britain was not in the war, then the US would not be in the war, and your scenario would be possible.

 

  German tanks weren't too formidable by 1944, so I don't see them doing enormously better. T-34/85 probably considerably more effective than MK IV.

 

  The Luftwaffe would be much stronger, though.

[futon]

1 hour ago, Detonable said:

  Well, if Great Britain was not in the war, then the US would not be in the war, and your scenario would be possible.

 

  German tanks weren't too formidable by 1944, so I don't see them doing enormously better. T-34/85 probably considerably more effective than MK IV.

 

  The Luftwaffe would be much stronger, though.

At first I was thinking about starting the thread as a UK/US not in the war scenerio. But when thinking about the Mediterranean, even if Germany was try and not trigger the UK into greater involvement and not carry out the Battle of Britain air battle, I think German and Italian interests in the Mediterranean would still draw the UK into full involvement. 

Of course the only realistic way to factor out US/UK strategic bombing is to minipulate the events to whete they are not in the war to begin with.

So I guess, another way of asking is could the SU still have pushed back Germany back to Berlin without UK/US contributions? Three major combat contributions were the destruction of the Luftwaffe, the strategic bombing, and denying the Mediterranean region and Middle East from the Axis.

Edited June 10, 2024 by futon

[old_goat]

You mean also no Lend Lease? If that is the case, no way the soviets could have won. Actually, its not the tanks, aircrafts, weapons, not even trucks were the deciding factor. Raw materials were far more important.

Even with LL, it could have been probably end in a rather bloody stalemate, with front line around in the middle of ukraine.

6 hours ago, Detonable said:

German tanks weren't too formidable by 1944, so I don't see them doing enormously better. T-34/85 probably considerably more effective than MK IV.

Problem is, that in 1944, majority was already the Panther, which was far superior to T-34/85.

[Rick]

My opinion is that the Soviet Union would defeat Germany without Great Britain or the U.S. It would have taken longer and with more casualties. 

[Perun]

46 minutes ago, Rick said:

My opinion is that the Soviet Union would defeat Germany without Great Britain or the U.S. It would have taken longer and with more casualties. 

I agree on that

Edited June 10, 2024 by Perun

[Stuart Galbraith]

4 hours ago, Rick said:

My opinion is that the Soviet Union would defeat Germany without Great Britain or the U.S. It would have taken longer and with more casualties. 

By 1944, they were Ive read, running out of manpower in a hurry. There is a case for saying much of the reason why they outfought the Nazi's from that point on, is because they had no means of throwing large amounts of infantry  at offensives. They had to fully adopt Deep Battle doctrine. And to be fair to them, Bagration was a fairly impressive demonstration of how well it worked when they got it right, as was Vistular Oder. But at least one historian has pointed out that Bagration wouldnt have worked the same without all terrain trucks like the Studebaker. They might have won, but it would ahve been at greater cost, and the returns nowhere near so great.

Bear in mind also, no Britain and America, means no battle in North Africa. 300000 men dont go in the bag. Thats another Army group at least that can go East. Then there is the troops on the atlantic wall. All this would have been there in late 1942/early 1943. One can only imagine what kind of impact that would have had on the Caucasus operation, and the Stalingrad operation.

I think the most the Soviets could realistically have hoped for would be a draw. And I think that was too much to hope for because as I said, they were starting to reach the bottom of their manpower reserves. Alternatively  Soviets could have hoped was developing the atomic bomb first, which was theoretically possible, assuming the Americans persisted with theirs. The problem then was they had no strategic airforce without B29's dropping in their lap to deliver it.

 

Edited June 10, 2024 by Stuart Galbraith

[Perun]

25 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

By 1944, they were Ive read, running out of manpower in a hurry. There is a case for saying much of the reason why they outfought the Nazi's from that point on, is because they had no means of throwing large amounts of infantry  at offensives. They had to fully adopt Deep Battle doctrine. And to be fair to them, Bagration was a fairly impressive demonstration of how well it worked when they got it right, as was Vistular Oder. But at least one historian has pointed out that Bagration wouldnt have worked the same without all terrain trucks like the Studebaker. They might have won, but it would ahve been at greater cost, and the returns nowhere near so great.

Bear in mind also, no Britain and America, means no battle in North Africa. 300000 men dont go in the bag. Thats another Army group at least that can go East. Then there is the troops on the atlantic wall. All this would have been there in late 1942/early 1943. One can only imagine what kind of impact that would have had on the Caucasus operation, and the Stalingrad operation.

I think the most the Soviets could realistically have hoped for would be a draw. And I think that was too much to hope for because as I said, they were starting to reach the bottom of their manpower reserves. Alternatively  Soviets could have hoped was developing the atomic bomb first, which was theoretically possible, assuming the Americans persisted with theirs. The problem then was they had no strategic airforce without B29's dropping in their lap to deliver it.

 

I read memoires of Soviet general Popel where he stated that LL tracks wasnt good offroad and that Soviet trucks were more useful in bad terrain conditions.

And for troops on Atlantic wall - they were 3rd rate soldiers at best, there wouldnt be much use of them on the Eastern front other than cannon fodder. 

Main diference for war whitout west front would be only Soviet and French flags in free Paris and rest of France

Edited June 10, 2024 by Perun

[Stuart Galbraith]

Not really. There was 21st Panzer Divison rebuilding on the West Wall, along with a number of Jagdpanzer formations built out of french armour.  There was also a LARGE amount of flak units. Like 2 or 3 Corps worth, which would have been the devils own uncle if use as part of an antitank defence. There was a large number of infantry Divisions. Truth, by 1944 they were  to a large extent equipped with Russian Soldiers rather unwillingly impressed on the german side. But there was still a number of Divisions with well disciplined troops. They proved that on  Omaha and managing to hold the allies up for a month and a half under near total airpower domination.

And its not just France. There were troops in Sicily preparing to hold back the allies. There was troops garrisoning Norway. If all those go away (because ultimately there is no need to invade Norway if Britain is no longer a problem) all those are freed up. As are all the man equipping the Kriegsmarine. The steel that went into building U boats can go into destroyers for fire support roles or just build more tanks.

Frankly, I dont think a Ford AA truck built by the Soviets is going to remotely compare with a Sudebaker truck. if they did, the US Army would have been building them too.

 

[txtree99]

This being something I've written on before, I'll repost an earlier essay for you.

In the immediate pre-war period and during the conflict, the US certainly had the larger overall capacity, but that doesn't mean they outperformed the USSR in all categories. But neither does USSR outperformance necessarily point to their dominance!

Raw Materials/Food Percentage World Production in 1937 (Ellis)

Production    |US    |USSR    |Germany1    |World Total (million metric tons)    
Coal    |34.2    |9.3    |15.3    |1,247.4    
Oil    |60.4    |10.6    |0.2    |272.0    
Iron Ore    |38.0    |4.0    |4.1    |98.0    
Copper Ore    |32.4    |3.3    |1.3    |2.3    
Manganese Ore    |0.7    |40.5    |8.4    |3.0    
Chrome Ore    |0.2    |15.3    |-    |0.6    
Magnesite    |10.6    |27.2    |27.9    |1.8    
Wheat    |15.2    |26.5    |4.7    |167.0    
Maize    |55.2    |2.4    |0.6    |117.4    
Beets    |15.7    |22.7    |24.7    |9.7    1: Includes Austria and Czechoslovakia

That isn't all of the categories, in fact I left out 13 raw material categories, and 3 food, all of which the United States was superior to the USSR in (Lead, Tin, Rice, Meat, etc.). What I'm showing here is the that the US was clearly far superior to the USSR in most of the major categories for raw materials, with the USSR having higher production in only a small number of things - all of the ones they were higher are shown here - and not ones that are most vital, like coal.

Also keep in mind that these numbers are from 1937, so represent pre-war production, so the US would be unaffected, while the USSR would suffer setbacks in losing a large chunk of territory. For instance, in 1941, producing 151.4 million metric tons of coal, the USSR would drop to only 75.5 in 1942, and still didn't hit pre-war numbers by 1945 (149.3), while the US remained steady around 525 mmt through the war.

As for overall industrial capacity, again the US is just far and away beyond the USSR.

1937 National Income and Percent on Defense (Kennedy)

Power    |National Income in billions of dollars    |Percent spent on defense    
USA    |68    |1.5    
USSR    |19    |26.4    
Germany    |17    |23.5    First, here is a look at pre-war income and defense spending. The USSR had higher defense spending, being in the midst of modernizing a large standing army (while the US maintained a very small military force), but in doing so was spending 1/4 of their total income in the late '30s! In terms of world manufacturing, while the USSR had improved markedly over the decade before the war, they still trailed far behind the US.

Percent shares of World Manufacturing Output, 1929-1939 (Kennedy)

xxx    |1929    |1932    |1937    |1939    
USA    |43.3    |31.8    |35.1    |28.7    
USSR    |5.0    |11.5    |14.1    |17.6    
Germany    |11.1    |10.6    |11.4    |13.2    So the USSR was certainly improving their manufacturing capacity relative to the US but they were still a far ways off, and as Kennedy notes:

The key fact about the American economy in the late 1930s was that it was greatly underutilized.

As he goes on to point out by way of example, while the US was producing 26.4 million tons of steel in 1938, itself a notable amount above the USSR's 16.5 million, by that point the USSR was working at maximum capacity, while the US was outproducing them with fully 2/3 of steel plants idle! Additionally, with unemployment running at ~10 million still in 1939, the US was able to both mobilize for war, inducting over 16 million men and women into uniform during WWII, and still push production into massive overdrive vis-a-vis peacetime production. Agricultural output, for instance, reached 280 percent of pre-war yield!

Overall Kennedy rates the 1938 relative "war potential" (a metric of comparative strength he admits is somewhat imprecise) of the seven leading powers thus:

**"War Potential" in 1938

Country    |Percent "War Potential"    
United States    |41.7%    
Germany    |14.4%    
USSR    |14.0%    
U.K.    |10.2%    
France    |4.2%    
Japan    |3.5%    
Italy    |2.5%    The US dwarfs not only the USSR, but any given nation 3 times over.

So now let's look at what this meant once war broke out.

Total wartime production numbers in million metric tons (Ellis)

Item    |US    |USSR    |Germany    
Coal    |2,149.7    |590.8    |2,420.3    
Iron    |396.9    |71.3    |240.7    
Oil    |833.2    |110.6    |33.4 (+23.4 synthetic)    
Steel    |334.5    |57.7    |159.9    I think you get the point. The US was a head above everyone else. In all those categories the US makes up at least half of total allied production, and alone surpasses or near equal total Axis production. But enough with raw production, I'm sure you want the weaponry!

Total wartime production numbers for select weapons systems (Ellis)

Item    |US    |USSR    |Germany    
Tank/SPG    |88,410    |105,251    |46,857    
Artillery    |257,390    |516,648    |159,144    
MGs    |2,679,840    |1,477,400    |674,280    
Trucks    |2,382,311    |197,100    |345,914    
Planes (all types)    |324,750    |157,261    |189,307    
Fighters    |99,950    |63,087    |-    
Bombers    |97,810    |21,116    |-    
Merchant Shipping    |33,993,230 tons    |???    |???    Munitions production by year, in billions of 1944 dollars (Rockoff)

xxx    |1940    |1941    |1942    |1943    |1944    
USA    |1.5    |4.5    |20.0    |38.0    |42.0    
USSR    |5.0    |8.5    |11.5    |14.0    |16.0    
Germany    |12.0    |6.0    |6.0    |8.5    |13.5    I left out naval production, aside from merchant, as the USSR had negligible production (70), while the US built over 1000 combat ships and subs. While the USSR, as you notice, does have higher production in tanks and tubes, this is a bit deceptive. The US actually out produced the USSR in tanks in 1942 (24,997 to 24,446) and 1943 (29,497 to 24,089), but while production was ramped down by the US to only about half of peak in 1944 (17,565), the USSR continued to increase production through that year but never topped the US peak production (28,963).

So while they made more tanks, it doesn't necessarily represent higher capability exactly, but priorities of production. In fact, although Germany's surrender in spring of 1945 sped up the process - Ford's B-24 plant at Willow Run, for instance, being slated for shutdown on August 1, 1945 - the process for slowing down production and increasing non-war manufacturing was being planned by late-1944, when the War Production Board agreed that auto manufacturers, who had suspended commercial production by early 1942 to focus on war needs such as tanks, trucks, and planes (and accounting for 20 percent of total US production during the war!), could begin to plan return to their normal production, which resumed before the war was even over, with Ford alone producing just shy of 40,000 cars in 1945, beginning in July.

As you can see with the second table that breaks down by year there, once the US ramped up production, it really was the waking giant of so many pithy quips. That the USSR out-produced in a small number of categories looks considerably less remarkable when considering how much more, and how much more diverse, American production was (For instance the Manhattan project, which, while estimates are not exact, cost somewhere around $1.89 billion dollars, but was less that one percent of total defense spending during the war).

Additionally, one of the most important factors to not overlook is trucks. To quote David Glantz from "When Titans Clashed":

Lend-Lease trucks were particularly important to the Red Army, which was notoriously deficient in such equipment. By the end of the war, two out of every three Red Army trucks were foreign-built, including 409,000 cargo trucks and 47,000 Willys Jeeps. [Note, Glantz's 2/3 stat is a higher ratio than Ellis indicates, but Ellis still points to  2:1 import/production, and regardless there may be other caveats in play]

As for the domestic ones, almost all of those were licensed copies of Ford trucks anyways!

The importance of those trucks can't be underestimated. First, they were they of vital importance for the logistics of the Red Army as well as its motorization and increasing mobility. Glantz again:

Without the trucks, each Soviet offensive during 1943-1945 would have come to a halt after a shallower penetration, allowing the Germans time to reconstruct their defenses and force the Red Army to conduct yet another deliberate assault.

And while the core benefit of all those extra wheels was movement of men and materiel, while Soviet propaganda photos always showed them mounted on domestic built trucks, most of the fearsome Katyusha rockets also were mounted on American built examples.

Additionally, all those trucks the USSR didn't need to produce was a tank or artillery piece that they could focus on. Lend-Lease, principally from the US but from the UK as well, reduced what otherwise would have been a great strain on the USSR as they attempted to rebuild from the disaster of 1941 and ramp up production. I don't know if there is a formula to say how many trucks you produce to equal the effort it would take for a tank, but the USSR imported four times as many trucks as tanks that they built. Plenty more was sent over, including:

34 million uniforms, 14.5 million pairs of boots, 4.2 million tons of food, and 11,800 railroad locomotives and cars.

The aid with railroad especially was vital as the US was supplying 2.4x more locomotives (1,900) than were being produced domestically, and 11x electric locomotives (66) than the Soviets made during the war. They also supplied 10x as many rail cars as were produced from 1942-1945. As for the rails themselves, the US was producing 83.3 percent of non-narrow gauge rails (56.6 percent if we include Soviet narrow gauge production, which were not supplied via Lend-Lease). Domestic Soviet railroad industry was basically dead during the war, working at 5.4 percent of 1940 levels in 1944.

All in all, it came to roughly 12 billion in aid from the USA. Soviet claims are that Lend Lease represented only four to ten percent of their total production (the impact was seriously minimized in Soviet studies of the war), but even if they are not downplaying it, this is no small amount! Certainly not all of it was the best stuff. The boots especially were ill-suited for Russian winter, and the opinions of the thousands foreign tanks (16 percent of USSR production) and planes (11 percent of USSR production) were mixed, but the trucks and food can't be overstated enough, the latter quite possibly saving the USSR from famine level hunger in 1942, since they had lost 42 percent of cultivated land to the German offensive, losing 2/3 of grain production! Equalling 10 percent of Soviet production, two percent of US food production was sent off to the Soviets, which, to put in perspective:

It has been estimated that there was enough food sent to Russia via Lend-Lease to feed a 12,000,000-man army half pound of food per day for the duration of the war.

And of course, the raw material being sent over was necessary for Soviet production. 350,000 tons of aluminum was sent by the US to the USSR, who had minimal domestic production, and Soviet numbers admit that without the material, aircraft production would have been halved, and to keep them in the air, American aviation fuel imports topped at 150 percent higher than domestic production. Likewise copper imports were 3/4 of Soviet production totals, and three million tons of steel went into production of tanks and artillery. I could go on (1.5 million km of telephone cable!), but I think the point is clear. Imported raw material and supplies played an important role in keeping the Soviet factories running in the first place.

And getting back to production comparisons, when the war ended, while the USSR possessed a massive military, one that, nuclear capabilities aside could perhaps rival the United States on its face, it has been eviscerated economically, and what development occurred was single-mindedly focused on military-industrial production. Whereas the USSR was set back at least ten years in economic development, the USA was the lone country to come out of the war on a better footing than it entered (in no small part, of course, due to geography). GNP had soared from $88.6 billion in 1939 to $135 billion by war's end, and overall production capacity and output had both increased by 50 percent, without harm to the non-military production, as non-war good production actually increased as well! The US was well placed to be the greatest exporter in the immediate post-war environment, with:

more than half the total manufacturing production of the world [and] a third of the world production of goods of all types.

The US also finished the war wealthier, an accolade it alone could claim, with 2/3 of the world's $33 billion gold reserves in its possession.

So the simple fact is that the US outproduced the USSR to a ridiculous degree, and more importantly perhaps, did so without sacrificing too much balance to its overall economy. The inability of the Axis to bring war to the American shores shouldn't be ignored in facilitating the situation of the two nations, but it is beside the point in evaluating the reality of the situation.

So, to get back to the original point, generally speaking, the US was well ahead of the Soviet Union in production, and while the USSR out produced the USA in a small number of specific categories such s tanks and artillery, this doesn't represent greater industrial capacity, but rather industrial focus, eschewing other focuses that the US did for varying reasons. Naval development was simply unneeded for instance, while as noted, trucks could be imported from the US, and at better quality. Additionally, American imports not only allowed the Soviets to focus production, but it also was instrumental in boosting it, providing raw material necessary to mold into weapons of war, and foodstuffs to keep both the workers and soldiers fed in the face of depleted farmland and farm workers.

Now, of course whether Lend-Lease was the key between victory and defeat is the golden question, and it is not one that many people are willing to answer definitively one way or the other, so you won't find me doing it either! What I will say is that at the very least, the vital role played by Lend-Lease, even if not the fulcrum between victory and defeat for the Soviet Union, certainly gives the lie to the assertions by many that the Western Allies were a sideshow in World War II, since without their assistance even excluding the battlefield, the Soviet war machine would have been a very different, and categorically weaker, force.

 Works Cited:

Baime, A.J. "The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War"

Bellamy, Chris. "Absolute War"

Ellis, John. "World War II: Encyclopedia of Facts and Figures"

Glantz, David. "When Titans Clashed"

Glantz, David. "Colossus Reborn"

Kennedy, Paul. "Rise and Fall of the Great Powers"

Rockoff, Hugh. "America's Economic Way of War"

Sokolov, Boris V. (1994) The role of lend‐lease in Soviet military efforts, 1941–1945, The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 7:3, 567-586

Weeks, Albert L. . "Russia's Life-Saver: Lend-Lease Aid to the USSR in World War II"

Young, William H. and Nancy K. Young, "World War II and the Postwar Years in America (Volume 1)"

[Perun]

3 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Not really. There was 21st Panzer Divison rebuilding on the West Wall, along with a number of Jagdpanzer formations built out of french armour.  There was also a LARGE amount of flak units. Like 2 or 3 Corps worth, which would have been the devils own uncle if use as part of an antitank defence. There was a large number of infantry Divisions. Truth, by 1944 they were  to a large extent equipped with Russian Soldiers rather unwillingly impressed on the german side. But there was still a number of Divisions with well disciplined troops. They proved that on  Omaha and managing to hold the allies up for a month and a half under near total airpower domination.

And its not just France. There were troops in Sicily preparing to hold back the allies. There was troops garrisoning Norway. If all those go away (because ultimately there is no need to invade Norway if Britain is no longer a problem) all those are freed up. As are all the man equipping the Kriegsmarine. The steel that went into building U boats can go into destroyers for fire support roles or just build more tanks.

Frankly, I dont think a Ford AA truck built by the Soviets is going to remotely compare with a Sudebaker truck. if they did, the US Army would have been building them too.

 

As you said, they were REBUILDING panzer divison, jagdpanzer formations with french armour from 1930s (at best) against T-34-85, JS-2, SU-100... yea wright, flak divisions manpower and ships crew in infantry role, like we all dont know how they quickly were destroyed on East front.. frankly I am disapointed with your claimes, dont be ofended, it wasnt personal, I dont comment you but your claims. If you make analyse it should not be driven by russophobia. 

And I belive that Soviet general, and later marashal, with battlefield experiance from first day of war, know better than you how certain equipment works in field. 

[Perun]

30 minutes ago, txtree99 said:

This being something I've written on before, I'll repost an earlier essay for you.

In the immediate pre-war period and during the conflict, the US certainly had the larger overall capacity, but that doesn't mean they outperformed the USSR in all categories. But neither does USSR outperformance necessarily point to their dominance!

Raw Materials/Food Percentage World Production in 1937 (Ellis)

Production    |US    |USSR    |Germany1    |World Total (million metric tons)    
Coal    |34.2    |9.3    |15.3    |1,247.4    
Oil    |60.4    |10.6    |0.2    |272.0    
Iron Ore    |38.0    |4.0    |4.1    |98.0    
Copper Ore    |32.4    |3.3    |1.3    |2.3    
Manganese Ore    |0.7    |40.5    |8.4    |3.0    
Chrome Ore    |0.2    |15.3    |-    |0.6    
Magnesite    |10.6    |27.2    |27.9    |1.8    
Wheat    |15.2    |26.5    |4.7    |167.0    
Maize    |55.2    |2.4    |0.6    |117.4    
Beets    |15.7    |22.7    |24.7    |9.7    1: Includes Austria and Czechoslovakia

That isn't all of the categories, in fact I left out 13 raw material categories, and 3 food, all of which the United States was superior to the USSR in (Lead, Tin, Rice, Meat, etc.). What I'm showing here is the that the US was clearly far superior to the USSR in most of the major categories for raw materials, with the USSR having higher production in only a small number of things - all of the ones they were higher are shown here - and not ones that are most vital, like coal.

Also keep in mind that these numbers are from 1937, so represent pre-war production, so the US would be unaffected, while the USSR would suffer setbacks in losing a large chunk of territory. For instance, in 1941, producing 151.4 million metric tons of coal, the USSR would drop to only 75.5 in 1942, and still didn't hit pre-war numbers by 1945 (149.3), while the US remained steady around 525 mmt through the war.

As for overall industrial capacity, again the US is just far and away beyond the USSR.

1937 National Income and Percent on Defense (Kennedy)

Power    |National Income in billions of dollars    |Percent spent on defense    
USA    |68    |1.5    
USSR    |19    |26.4    
Germany    |17    |23.5    First, here is a look at pre-war income and defense spending. The USSR had higher defense spending, being in the midst of modernizing a large standing army (while the US maintained a very small military force), but in doing so was spending 1/4 of their total income in the late '30s! In terms of world manufacturing, while the USSR had improved markedly over the decade before the war, they still trailed far behind the US.

Percent shares of World Manufacturing Output, 1929-1939 (Kennedy)

xxx    |1929    |1932    |1937    |1939    
USA    |43.3    |31.8    |35.1    |28.7    
USSR    |5.0    |11.5    |14.1    |17.6    
Germany    |11.1    |10.6    |11.4    |13.2    So the USSR was certainly improving their manufacturing capacity relative to the US but they were still a far ways off, and as Kennedy notes:

The key fact about the American economy in the late 1930s was that it was greatly underutilized.

As he goes on to point out by way of example, while the US was producing 26.4 million tons of steel in 1938, itself a notable amount above the USSR's 16.5 million, by that point the USSR was working at maximum capacity, while the US was outproducing them with fully 2/3 of steel plants idle! Additionally, with unemployment running at ~10 million still in 1939, the US was able to both mobilize for war, inducting over 16 million men and women into uniform during WWII, and still push production into massive overdrive vis-a-vis peacetime production. Agricultural output, for instance, reached 280 percent of pre-war yield!

Overall Kennedy rates the 1938 relative "war potential" (a metric of comparative strength he admits is somewhat imprecise) of the seven leading powers thus:

**"War Potential" in 1938

Country    |Percent "War Potential"    
United States    |41.7%    
Germany    |14.4%    
USSR    |14.0%    
U.K.    |10.2%    
France    |4.2%    
Japan    |3.5%    
Italy    |2.5%    The US dwarfs not only the USSR, but any given nation 3 times over.

So now let's look at what this meant once war broke out.

Total wartime production numbers in million metric tons (Ellis)

Item    |US    |USSR    |Germany    
Coal    |2,149.7    |590.8    |2,420.3    
Iron    |396.9    |71.3    |240.7    
Oil    |833.2    |110.6    |33.4 (+23.4 synthetic)    
Steel    |334.5    |57.7    |159.9    I think you get the point. The US was a head above everyone else. In all those categories the US makes up at least half of total allied production, and alone surpasses or near equal total Axis production. But enough with raw production, I'm sure you want the weaponry!

Total wartime production numbers for select weapons systems (Ellis)

Item    |US    |USSR    |Germany    
Tank/SPG    |88,410    |105,251    |46,857    
Artillery    |257,390    |516,648    |159,144    
MGs    |2,679,840    |1,477,400    |674,280    
Trucks    |2,382,311    |197,100    |345,914    
Planes (all types)    |324,750    |157,261    |189,307    
Fighters    |99,950    |63,087    |-    
Bombers    |97,810    |21,116    |-    
Merchant Shipping    |33,993,230 tons    |???    |???    Munitions production by year, in billions of 1944 dollars (Rockoff)

xxx    |1940    |1941    |1942    |1943    |1944    
USA    |1.5    |4.5    |20.0    |38.0    |42.0    
USSR    |5.0    |8.5    |11.5    |14.0    |16.0    
Germany    |12.0    |6.0    |6.0    |8.5    |13.5    I left out naval production, aside from merchant, as the USSR had negligible production (70), while the US built over 1000 combat ships and subs. While the USSR, as you notice, does have higher production in tanks and tubes, this is a bit deceptive. The US actually out produced the USSR in tanks in 1942 (24,997 to 24,446) and 1943 (29,497 to 24,089), but while production was ramped down by the US to only about half of peak in 1944 (17,565), the USSR continued to increase production through that year but never topped the US peak production (28,963).

So while they made more tanks, it doesn't necessarily represent higher capability exactly, but priorities of production. In fact, although Germany's surrender in spring of 1945 sped up the process - Ford's B-24 plant at Willow Run, for instance, being slated for shutdown on August 1, 1945 - the process for slowing down production and increasing non-war manufacturing was being planned by late-1944, when the War Production Board agreed that auto manufacturers, who had suspended commercial production by early 1942 to focus on war needs such as tanks, trucks, and planes (and accounting for 20 percent of total US production during the war!), could begin to plan return to their normal production, which resumed before the war was even over, with Ford alone producing just shy of 40,000 cars in 1945, beginning in July.

As you can see with the second table that breaks down by year there, once the US ramped up production, it really was the waking giant of so many pithy quips. That the USSR out-produced in a small number of categories looks considerably less remarkable when considering how much more, and how much more diverse, American production was (For instance the Manhattan project, which, while estimates are not exact, cost somewhere around $1.89 billion dollars, but was less that one percent of total defense spending during the war).

Additionally, one of the most important factors to not overlook is trucks. To quote David Glantz from "When Titans Clashed":

Lend-Lease trucks were particularly important to the Red Army, which was notoriously deficient in such equipment. By the end of the war, two out of every three Red Army trucks were foreign-built, including 409,000 cargo trucks and 47,000 Willys Jeeps. [Note, Glantz's 2/3 stat is a higher ratio than Ellis indicates, but Ellis still points to  2:1 import/production, and regardless there may be other caveats in play]

As for the domestic ones, almost all of those were licensed copies of Ford trucks anyways!

The importance of those trucks can't be underestimated. First, they were they of vital importance for the logistics of the Red Army as well as its motorization and increasing mobility. Glantz again:

Without the trucks, each Soviet offensive during 1943-1945 would have come to a halt after a shallower penetration, allowing the Germans time to reconstruct their defenses and force the Red Army to conduct yet another deliberate assault.

And while the core benefit of all those extra wheels was movement of men and materiel, while Soviet propaganda photos always showed them mounted on domestic built trucks, most of the fearsome Katyusha rockets also were mounted on American built examples.

Additionally, all those trucks the USSR didn't need to produce was a tank or artillery piece that they could focus on. Lend-Lease, principally from the US but from the UK as well, reduced what otherwise would have been a great strain on the USSR as they attempted to rebuild from the disaster of 1941 and ramp up production. I don't know if there is a formula to say how many trucks you produce to equal the effort it would take for a tank, but the USSR imported four times as many trucks as tanks that they built. Plenty more was sent over, including:

34 million uniforms, 14.5 million pairs of boots, 4.2 million tons of food, and 11,800 railroad locomotives and cars.

The aid with railroad especially was vital as the US was supplying 2.4x more locomotives (1,900) than were being produced domestically, and 11x electric locomotives (66) than the Soviets made during the war. They also supplied 10x as many rail cars as were produced from 1942-1945. As for the rails themselves, the US was producing 83.3 percent of non-narrow gauge rails (56.6 percent if we include Soviet narrow gauge production, which were not supplied via Lend-Lease). Domestic Soviet railroad industry was basically dead during the war, working at 5.4 percent of 1940 levels in 1944.

All in all, it came to roughly 12 billion in aid from the USA. Soviet claims are that Lend Lease represented only four to ten percent of their total production (the impact was seriously minimized in Soviet studies of the war), but even if they are not downplaying it, this is no small amount! Certainly not all of it was the best stuff. The boots especially were ill-suited for Russian winter, and the opinions of the thousands foreign tanks (16 percent of USSR production) and planes (11 percent of USSR production) were mixed, but the trucks and food can't be overstated enough, the latter quite possibly saving the USSR from famine level hunger in 1942, since they had lost 42 percent of cultivated land to the German offensive, losing 2/3 of grain production! Equalling 10 percent of Soviet production, two percent of US food production was sent off to the Soviets, which, to put in perspective:

It has been estimated that there was enough food sent to Russia via Lend-Lease to feed a 12,000,000-man army half pound of food per day for the duration of the war.

And of course, the raw material being sent over was necessary for Soviet production. 350,000 tons of aluminum was sent by the US to the USSR, who had minimal domestic production, and Soviet numbers admit that without the material, aircraft production would have been halved, and to keep them in the air, American aviation fuel imports topped at 150 percent higher than domestic production. Likewise copper imports were 3/4 of Soviet production totals, and three million tons of steel went into production of tanks and artillery. I could go on (1.5 million km of telephone cable!), but I think the point is clear. Imported raw material and supplies played an important role in keeping the Soviet factories running in the first place.

And getting back to production comparisons, when the war ended, while the USSR possessed a massive military, one that, nuclear capabilities aside could perhaps rival the United States on its face, it has been eviscerated economically, and what development occurred was single-mindedly focused on military-industrial production. Whereas the USSR was set back at least ten years in economic development, the USA was the lone country to come out of the war on a better footing than it entered (in no small part, of course, due to geography). GNP had soared from $88.6 billion in 1939 to $135 billion by war's end, and overall production capacity and output had both increased by 50 percent, without harm to the non-military production, as non-war good production actually increased as well! The US was well placed to be the greatest exporter in the immediate post-war environment, with:

more than half the total manufacturing production of the world [and] a third of the world production of goods of all types.

The US also finished the war wealthier, an accolade it alone could claim, with 2/3 of the world's $33 billion gold reserves in its possession.

So the simple fact is that the US outproduced the USSR to a ridiculous degree, and more importantly perhaps, did so without sacrificing too much balance to its overall economy. The inability of the Axis to bring war to the American shores shouldn't be ignored in facilitating the situation of the two nations, but it is beside the point in evaluating the reality of the situation.

So, to get back to the original point, generally speaking, the US was well ahead of the Soviet Union in production, and while the USSR out produced the USA in a small number of specific categories such s tanks and artillery, this doesn't represent greater industrial capacity, but rather industrial focus, eschewing other focuses that the US did for varying reasons. Naval development was simply unneeded for instance, while as noted, trucks could be imported from the US, and at better quality. Additionally, American imports not only allowed the Soviets to focus production, but it also was instrumental in boosting it, providing raw material necessary to mold into weapons of war, and foodstuffs to keep both the workers and soldiers fed in the face of depleted farmland and farm workers.

Now, of course whether Lend-Lease was the key between victory and defeat is the golden question, and it is not one that many people are willing to answer definitively one way or the other, so you won't find me doing it either! What I will say is that at the very least, the vital role played by Lend-Lease, even if not the fulcrum between victory and defeat for the Soviet Union, certainly gives the lie to the assertions by many that the Western Allies were a sideshow in World War II, since without their assistance even excluding the battlefield, the Soviet war machine would have been a very different, and categorically weaker, force.

 Works Cited:

Baime, A.J. "The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War"

Bellamy, Chris. "Absolute War"

Ellis, John. "World War II: Encyclopedia of Facts and Figures"

Glantz, David. "When Titans Clashed"

Glantz, David. "Colossus Reborn"

Kennedy, Paul. "Rise and Fall of the Great Powers"

Rockoff, Hugh. "America's Economic Way of War"

Sokolov, Boris V. (1994) The role of lend‐lease in Soviet military efforts, 1941–1945, The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 7:3, 567-586

Weeks, Albert L. . "Russia's Life-Saver: Lend-Lease Aid to the USSR in World War II"

Young, William H. and Nancy K. Young, "World War II and the Postwar Years in America (Volume 1)"

Why did you compare USA with USSR, Germany was at war with Soviets not US. 

And major facts that no one mentions is TIME when did those resources arrived to Soviet ports and when it was distributed to first line units and how much was sinked by German U-boats. 

 

Edited June 10, 2024 by Perun

[Perun]

30 minutes ago, txtree99 said:

This being something I've written on before, I'll repost an earlier essay for you.

In the immediate pre-war period and during the conflict, the US certainly had the larger overall capacity, but that doesn't mean they outperformed the USSR in all categories. But neither does USSR outperformance necessarily point to their dominance!

Raw Materials/Food Percentage World Production in 1937 (Ellis)

Production    |US    |USSR    |Germany1    |World Total (million metric tons)    
Coal    |34.2    |9.3    |15.3    |1,247.4    
Oil    |60.4    |10.6    |0.2    |272.0    
Iron Ore    |38.0    |4.0    |4.1    |98.0    
Copper Ore    |32.4    |3.3    |1.3    |2.3    
Manganese Ore    |0.7    |40.5    |8.4    |3.0    
Chrome Ore    |0.2    |15.3    |-    |0.6    
Magnesite    |10.6    |27.2    |27.9    |1.8    
Wheat    |15.2    |26.5    |4.7    |167.0    
Maize    |55.2    |2.4    |0.6    |117.4    
Beets    |15.7    |22.7    |24.7    |9.7    1: Includes Austria and Czechoslovakia

That isn't all of the categories, in fact I left out 13 raw material categories, and 3 food, all of which the United States was superior to the USSR in (Lead, Tin, Rice, Meat, etc.). What I'm showing here is the that the US was clearly far superior to the USSR in most of the major categories for raw materials, with the USSR having higher production in only a small number of things - all of the ones they were higher are shown here - and not ones that are most vital, like coal.

Also keep in mind that these numbers are from 1937, so represent pre-war production, so the US would be unaffected, while the USSR would suffer setbacks in losing a large chunk of territory. For instance, in 1941, producing 151.4 million metric tons of coal, the USSR would drop to only 75.5 in 1942, and still didn't hit pre-war numbers by 1945 (149.3), while the US remained steady around 525 mmt through the war.

As for overall industrial capacity, again the US is just far and away beyond the USSR.

1937 National Income and Percent on Defense (Kennedy)

Power    |National Income in billions of dollars    |Percent spent on defense    
USA    |68    |1.5    
USSR    |19    |26.4    
Germany    |17    |23.5    First, here is a look at pre-war income and defense spending. The USSR had higher defense spending, being in the midst of modernizing a large standing army (while the US maintained a very small military force), but in doing so was spending 1/4 of their total income in the late '30s! In terms of world manufacturing, while the USSR had improved markedly over the decade before the war, they still trailed far behind the US.

Percent shares of World Manufacturing Output, 1929-1939 (Kennedy)

xxx    |1929    |1932    |1937    |1939    
USA    |43.3    |31.8    |35.1    |28.7    
USSR    |5.0    |11.5    |14.1    |17.6    
Germany    |11.1    |10.6    |11.4    |13.2    So the USSR was certainly improving their manufacturing capacity relative to the US but they were still a far ways off, and as Kennedy notes:

The key fact about the American economy in the late 1930s was that it was greatly underutilized.

As he goes on to point out by way of example, while the US was producing 26.4 million tons of steel in 1938, itself a notable amount above the USSR's 16.5 million, by that point the USSR was working at maximum capacity, while the US was outproducing them with fully 2/3 of steel plants idle! Additionally, with unemployment running at ~10 million still in 1939, the US was able to both mobilize for war, inducting over 16 million men and women into uniform during WWII, and still push production into massive overdrive vis-a-vis peacetime production. Agricultural output, for instance, reached 280 percent of pre-war yield!

Overall Kennedy rates the 1938 relative "war potential" (a metric of comparative strength he admits is somewhat imprecise) of the seven leading powers thus:

**"War Potential" in 1938

Country    |Percent "War Potential"    
United States    |41.7%    
Germany    |14.4%    
USSR    |14.0%    
U.K.    |10.2%    
France    |4.2%    
Japan    |3.5%    
Italy    |2.5%    The US dwarfs not only the USSR, but any given nation 3 times over.

So now let's look at what this meant once war broke out.

Total wartime production numbers in million metric tons (Ellis)

Item    |US    |USSR    |Germany    
Coal    |2,149.7    |590.8    |2,420.3    
Iron    |396.9    |71.3    |240.7    
Oil    |833.2    |110.6    |33.4 (+23.4 synthetic)    
Steel    |334.5    |57.7    |159.9    I think you get the point. The US was a head above everyone else. In all those categories the US makes up at least half of total allied production, and alone surpasses or near equal total Axis production. But enough with raw production, I'm sure you want the weaponry!

Total wartime production numbers for select weapons systems (Ellis)

Item    |US    |USSR    |Germany    
Tank/SPG    |88,410    |105,251    |46,857    
Artillery    |257,390    |516,648    |159,144    
MGs    |2,679,840    |1,477,400    |674,280    
Trucks    |2,382,311    |197,100    |345,914    
Planes (all types)    |324,750    |157,261    |189,307    
Fighters    |99,950    |63,087    |-    
Bombers    |97,810    |21,116    |-    
Merchant Shipping    |33,993,230 tons    |???    |???    Munitions production by year, in billions of 1944 dollars (Rockoff)

xxx    |1940    |1941    |1942    |1943    |1944    
USA    |1.5    |4.5    |20.0    |38.0    |42.0    
USSR    |5.0    |8.5    |11.5    |14.0    |16.0    
Germany    |12.0    |6.0    |6.0    |8.5    |13.5    I left out naval production, aside from merchant, as the USSR had negligible production (70), while the US built over 1000 combat ships and subs. While the USSR, as you notice, does have higher production in tanks and tubes, this is a bit deceptive. The US actually out produced the USSR in tanks in 1942 (24,997 to 24,446) and 1943 (29,497 to 24,089), but while production was ramped down by the US to only about half of peak in 1944 (17,565), the USSR continued to increase production through that year but never topped the US peak production (28,963).

So while they made more tanks, it doesn't necessarily represent higher capability exactly, but priorities of production. In fact, although Germany's surrender in spring of 1945 sped up the process - Ford's B-24 plant at Willow Run, for instance, being slated for shutdown on August 1, 1945 - the process for slowing down production and increasing non-war manufacturing was being planned by late-1944, when the War Production Board agreed that auto manufacturers, who had suspended commercial production by early 1942 to focus on war needs such as tanks, trucks, and planes (and accounting for 20 percent of total US production during the war!), could begin to plan return to their normal production, which resumed before the war was even over, with Ford alone producing just shy of 40,000 cars in 1945, beginning in July.

As you can see with the second table that breaks down by year there, once the US ramped up production, it really was the waking giant of so many pithy quips. That the USSR out-produced in a small number of categories looks considerably less remarkable when considering how much more, and how much more diverse, American production was (For instance the Manhattan project, which, while estimates are not exact, cost somewhere around $1.89 billion dollars, but was less that one percent of total defense spending during the war).

Additionally, one of the most important factors to not overlook is trucks. To quote David Glantz from "When Titans Clashed":

Lend-Lease trucks were particularly important to the Red Army, which was notoriously deficient in such equipment. By the end of the war, two out of every three Red Army trucks were foreign-built, including 409,000 cargo trucks and 47,000 Willys Jeeps. [Note, Glantz's 2/3 stat is a higher ratio than Ellis indicates, but Ellis still points to  2:1 import/production, and regardless there may be other caveats in play]

As for the domestic ones, almost all of those were licensed copies of Ford trucks anyways!

The importance of those trucks can't be underestimated. First, they were they of vital importance for the logistics of the Red Army as well as its motorization and increasing mobility. Glantz again:

Without the trucks, each Soviet offensive during 1943-1945 would have come to a halt after a shallower penetration, allowing the Germans time to reconstruct their defenses and force the Red Army to conduct yet another deliberate assault.

And while the core benefit of all those extra wheels was movement of men and materiel, while Soviet propaganda photos always showed them mounted on domestic built trucks, most of the fearsome Katyusha rockets also were mounted on American built examples.

Additionally, all those trucks the USSR didn't need to produce was a tank or artillery piece that they could focus on. Lend-Lease, principally from the US but from the UK as well, reduced what otherwise would have been a great strain on the USSR as they attempted to rebuild from the disaster of 1941 and ramp up production. I don't know if there is a formula to say how many trucks you produce to equal the effort it would take for a tank, but the USSR imported four times as many trucks as tanks that they built. Plenty more was sent over, including:

34 million uniforms, 14.5 million pairs of boots, 4.2 million tons of food, and 11,800 railroad locomotives and cars.

The aid with railroad especially was vital as the US was supplying 2.4x more locomotives (1,900) than were being produced domestically, and 11x electric locomotives (66) than the Soviets made during the war. They also supplied 10x as many rail cars as were produced from 1942-1945. As for the rails themselves, the US was producing 83.3 percent of non-narrow gauge rails (56.6 percent if we include Soviet narrow gauge production, which were not supplied via Lend-Lease). Domestic Soviet railroad industry was basically dead during the war, working at 5.4 percent of 1940 levels in 1944.

All in all, it came to roughly 12 billion in aid from the USA. Soviet claims are that Lend Lease represented only four to ten percent of their total production (the impact was seriously minimized in Soviet studies of the war), but even if they are not downplaying it, this is no small amount! Certainly not all of it was the best stuff. The boots especially were ill-suited for Russian winter, and the opinions of the thousands foreign tanks (16 percent of USSR production) and planes (11 percent of USSR production) were mixed, but the trucks and food can't be overstated enough, the latter quite possibly saving the USSR from famine level hunger in 1942, since they had lost 42 percent of cultivated land to the German offensive, losing 2/3 of grain production! Equalling 10 percent of Soviet production, two percent of US food production was sent off to the Soviets, which, to put in perspective:

It has been estimated that there was enough food sent to Russia via Lend-Lease to feed a 12,000,000-man army half pound of food per day for the duration of the war.

And of course, the raw material being sent over was necessary for Soviet production. 350,000 tons of aluminum was sent by the US to the USSR, who had minimal domestic production, and Soviet numbers admit that without the material, aircraft production would have been halved, and to keep them in the air, American aviation fuel imports topped at 150 percent higher than domestic production. Likewise copper imports were 3/4 of Soviet production totals, and three million tons of steel went into production of tanks and artillery. I could go on (1.5 million km of telephone cable!), but I think the point is clear. Imported raw material and supplies played an important role in keeping the Soviet factories running in the first place.

And getting back to production comparisons, when the war ended, while the USSR possessed a massive military, one that, nuclear capabilities aside could perhaps rival the United States on its face, it has been eviscerated economically, and what development occurred was single-mindedly focused on military-industrial production. Whereas the USSR was set back at least ten years in economic development, the USA was the lone country to come out of the war on a better footing than it entered (in no small part, of course, due to geography). GNP had soared from $88.6 billion in 1939 to $135 billion by war's end, and overall production capacity and output had both increased by 50 percent, without harm to the non-military production, as non-war good production actually increased as well! The US was well placed to be the greatest exporter in the immediate post-war environment, with:

more than half the total manufacturing production of the world [and] a third of the world production of goods of all types.

The US also finished the war wealthier, an accolade it alone could claim, with 2/3 of the world's $33 billion gold reserves in its possession.

So the simple fact is that the US outproduced the USSR to a ridiculous degree, and more importantly perhaps, did so without sacrificing too much balance to its overall economy. The inability of the Axis to bring war to the American shores shouldn't be ignored in facilitating the situation of the two nations, but it is beside the point in evaluating the reality of the situation.

So, to get back to the original point, generally speaking, the US was well ahead of the Soviet Union in production, and while the USSR out produced the USA in a small number of specific categories such s tanks and artillery, this doesn't represent greater industrial capacity, but rather industrial focus, eschewing other focuses that the US did for varying reasons. Naval development was simply unneeded for instance, while as noted, trucks could be imported from the US, and at better quality. Additionally, American imports not only allowed the Soviets to focus production, but it also was instrumental in boosting it, providing raw material necessary to mold into weapons of war, and foodstuffs to keep both the workers and soldiers fed in the face of depleted farmland and farm workers.

Now, of course whether Lend-Lease was the key between victory and defeat is the golden question, and it is not one that many people are willing to answer definitively one way or the other, so you won't find me doing it either! What I will say is that at the very least, the vital role played by Lend-Lease, even if not the fulcrum between victory and defeat for the Soviet Union, certainly gives the lie to the assertions by many that the Western Allies were a sideshow in World War II, since without their assistance even excluding the battlefield, the Soviet war machine would have been a very different, and categorically weaker, force.

 Works Cited:

Baime, A.J. "The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War"

Bellamy, Chris. "Absolute War"

Ellis, John. "World War II: Encyclopedia of Facts and Figures"

Glantz, David. "When Titans Clashed"

Glantz, David. "Colossus Reborn"

Kennedy, Paul. "Rise and Fall of the Great Powers"

Rockoff, Hugh. "America's Economic Way of War"

Sokolov, Boris V. (1994) The role of lend‐lease in Soviet military efforts, 1941–1945, The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 7:3, 567-586

Weeks, Albert L. . "Russia's Life-Saver: Lend-Lease Aid to the USSR in World War II"

Young, William H. and Nancy K. Young, "World War II and the Postwar Years in America (Volume 1)"

Do I see correctly that in 1937. Soviets produced 10.6 milion metric tons of oil? Only Azerbaijan produced 23.5 milion tons of oil during 1940. year.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_industry_in_Azerbaijan)

Do we need to check the rest of numbers?

Edited June 10, 2024 by Perun

[txtree99]

20 minutes ago, Perun said:

Why did you compare USA with USSR, Germany was at war with Soviets not US. 

And major facts that no one mentions is TIME when did those resources arrived to Soviet ports and when it was distributed to first line units and how much was sinked by German U-boats. 

 

Not.   Just showing what the ll provided.   You seem to think it was not relevant.  

[Perun]

Please could you show me how

[txtree99]

I provide a link that showed data…you can ignore or debate.   But I think the most relevant is on railroad stock, and raw supplies.  

[Perun]

Does it say when did cargo arrived

[txtree99]

No. Are you going to say that without the aid that the SU would have been able to produce all of the war material it needed?  

[R011]

About 50% of the aid was sent across the Pacific on Soviet flagged ships or by air.  Another 25% went via Persia.  Neither of those routes were at serious risk of interdiction by the Axis, especially the Pacific route - Japan being neutral in the war against the Soviets until August 1945 when they were unable to do anything about it anyway..  The rest went by the northern route around Norway.  Most of that got through in spite or serious German opposition.

For timer and quantities, see here:

https://history.army.mil/books/wwii/persian/appendix-a.htm

 

[glenn239]

3 hours ago, Perun said:

Do I see correctly that in 1937. Soviets produced 10.6 milion metric tons of oil?

Oil production 1900 onwards for different countries, bbl per day.  About 6.5 BBL per ton.  Soviet production in 1937 is way higher than 10.6 million tons,

 

[glenn239]

3 hours ago, Perun said:

Does it say when did cargo arrived

That information for Lend Lease to the Soviet Union is here,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease

1941    360,778    2.1%
1942    2,453,097    14%
1943    4,794,545    27.4%
1944    6,217,622    35.5%
1945    3,673,819    21%
Total    17,499,861    100

84% of Lend Lease arrived in the SU after the Germans had been decisively defeated at Stalingrad.  The US sent about 400,000 jeeps and trucks, while the Soviet Union itself produced 265,000.  

A quick google suggests that the Red Army exceeded 10 million soldiers under arms by the end of the war.  If so, then assuming a guess like 20lbs per man per day of supply, that would mean over 35 million tons of supply would be required required.  Lend Lease deliveries peaked at 6.2 million tons in 1944, (supply plus equipment).   

Edited June 11, 2024 by glenn239

[Perun]

7 hours ago, txtree99 said:

No. Are you going to say that without the aid that the SU would have been able to produce all of the war material it needed?  

Good question. My opinion is that they would and they could but it would take longer time. Maybe 1946.?

After all Ural region was out of Luftwaffe reach for whole time of war.

Edited June 11, 2024 by Perun

[Perun]

4 hours ago, glenn239 said:

That information for Lend Lease to the Soviet Union is here,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease

1941    360,778    2.1%
1942    2,453,097    14%
1943    4,794,545    27.4%
1944    6,217,622    35.5%
1945    3,673,819    21%
Total    17,499,861    100

84% of Lend Lease arrived in the SU after the Germans had been decisively defeated at Stalingrad.  The US sent about 400,000 jeeps and trucks, while the Soviet Union itself produced 265,000.  

A quick google suggests that the Red Army exceeded 10 million soldiers under arms by the end of the war.  If so, then assuming a guess like 20lbs per man per day of supply, that would mean over 35 million tons of supply would be required required.  Lend Lease deliveries peaked at 6.2 million tons in 1944, (supply plus equipment).   

Interesting data

[Stuart Galbraith]

7 hours ago, glenn239 said:

That information for Lend Lease to the Soviet Union is here,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease

1941    360,778    2.1%
1942    2,453,097    14%
1943    4,794,545    27.4%
1944    6,217,622    35.5%
1945    3,673,819    21%
Total    17,499,861    100

84% of Lend Lease arrived in the SU after the Germans had been decisively defeated at Stalingrad.  The US sent about 400,000 jeeps and trucks, while the Soviet Union itself produced 265,000.  

A quick google suggests that the Red Army exceeded 10 million soldiers under arms by the end of the war.  If so, then assuming a guess like 20lbs per man per day of supply, that would mean over 35 million tons of supply would be required required.  Lend Lease deliveries peaked at 6.2 million tons in 1944, (supply plus equipment).   

So 16 percent arrived before the battle of Stalingrad, and some of that even before the Battle of Moscow. I keep pointing out the British Valentine tanks that took part in that action, which keeps getting blown off as irrelevant. Not to mention 151 wing which arrived in September 1941, and trained up the Soviets on their Hurricanes to guard Murmansk.

The point is, its not the quantity that arrived. Its that anything arrived before the decisive action, after the huge losses the Soviets took, which is continually blown off. Which of course, it has to be, because it threatens the purity of the Soviet victory in those actions.

[Perun]

17 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

So 16 percent arrived before the battle of Stalingrad, and some of that even before the Battle of Moscow. I keep pointing out the British Valentine tanks that took part in that action, which keeps getting blown off as irrelevant. Not to mention 151 wing which arrived in September 1941, and trained up the Soviets on their Hurricanes to guard Murmansk.

The point is, its not the quantity that arrived. Its that anything arrived before the decisive action, after the huge losses the Soviets took, which is continually blown off. Which of course, it has to be, because it threatens the purity of the Soviet victory in those actions.

Soviet front in 1941. was long 2700 km to 3000 km (my roughly calculation), so how much could one wing help