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If you look at my posts #235 and #239 you would see that I'm quite aware of what the aid was and the impact it had as well as detailing the important parts. Also, your locomotive figures are dismissed in my post #239 after Liberator very correctly pointed out the reality of those stats and I researched it further.
My position is one of riding the middle. Your initial statement was not that it was "important" but that it was the sole reason the Soviets won. This is far from the truth. The other side purports that the aid was "nice" but not needed at all. This also isn't exactly true. Did Lend Lease help the Soviets win the war? Yes. Would they have won without it? Yes.
As for your historian list, Glantz and House both take the position that the aid was important, but its largest impact was in shortening the length of the war by 12-18 months versus if the Soviets relied solely on domestic production. Erickson places more importance on it, but all three would categorize the aid as "important" not "decisive". All of them (plus me and Liberator) would strongly disagree with your original statement which read:
It seems to me you have changed your position and determined that it was merely "important" not "decisive". Am I correct?
Any evidence to support that opinion? Certainly the increase in mobility of Soviet forces in 1943 was a direct result of the Lend-Lease trucks they were receiving. However, while that contribution was certainly important to their war effort, was it in and of itself decisive?
Decisive in this case would be defined as producing a definite result. Which would imply that without Lend-Lease the outcome would have not been a definite victory for the Soviets. That is just something I don't agree with and is not supported by the evidence. By the time Lend-Lease aid was really flowing the Soviets had already stopped the German advance and began to turn the tide back.
It was becoming a simple numbers game that the Soviets were winning, it was virtually impossible for the Germans to go on the offensive at that point and turn the Soviets back. Without LL I certainly agree that the war would have lasted much longer, perhaps another 12-18 months as suggested by Glantz and House, but to state that without it they would have lost is simply not supported by any evidence.
Any evidence to support that opinion? Certainly the increase in mobility of Soviet forces in 1943 was a direct result of the Lend-Lease trucks they were receiving. However, while that contribution was certainly important to their war effort, was it in and of itself decisive?
Decisive in this case would be defined as producing a definite result. Which would imply that without Lend-Lease the outcome would have not been a definite victory for the Soviets. That is just something I don't agree with and is not supported by the evidence. By the time Lend-Lease aid was really flowing the Soviets had already stopped the German advance and began to turn the tide back.
It was becoming a simple numbers game that the Soviets were winning, it was virtually impossible for the Germans to go on the offensive at that point and turn the Soviets back. Without LL I certainly agree that the war would have lasted much longer, perhaps another 12-18 months as suggested by Glantz and House, but to state that without it they would have lost is simply not supported by any evidence.
I don't think so. What you fail to realize is that an Army moves on logistics. Without lend lease the Soviets small gains would have eventually been lost. You fail to see the importance that logistics plays in a long drawn out war. The Americans supplied nearly 20,000 aircraft, 10,000 rail cars, and hundreds of thousands of trucks for transportation of ammunition, and fuel for the Red Army. By the end of 1944 nearly 75 percent of the trucks used by the Russians was supplied by the United States. I'm not going to even get into the number of canned foods and rations provided by the Americans. Without this critical help the Russians would have been screwed. Despite lower numbers the Germans were far superior in organization and tactics compared to the Russians.
For every truck, train, tank, and piece of equipment that allies provided to Russia meant that it could churn out extra weapons and ammunition for the war effort. I think you are seriously underestimating what a difference LL made for the Soviet Union. Without allied help the war on the eastern front would have been a stale mate at best.
The Americans supplied nearly 20,000 aircraft, 10,000 rail cars,
So the 600,000 Soviet railcars did nothing and the war was won by the 11,000 LL ones delivered in late 1944?
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Originally Posted by skihikeclimb
I'm not going to even get into the number of canned foods and rations provided by the Americans
Please do. Give the figures for the total amount of LL food consumed by the Soviet Army and then compare it to the total of all food consumed.
What was the %?
I suspect you do not know and thus are assuming quite a lot here.
Going from memory I believe the rations provided by LL were enough to supply the Red Army for 3 months of the war.
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Originally Posted by skihikeclimb
Without this critical help the Russians would have been screwed. Despite lower numbers the Germans were far superior in organization and tactics compared to the Russians.
So the German Army that relied mainly on horses to supply it was capable of winning but a Soviet army could not? Perish the thought an army not supplied with LL equipment could win any war!
Note this 'inferior' Soviet army had started winning battles long before any LL aid reached them.
I think 11 miliion pairs of boots were sent by LL.
Sounds a lot but if you have an army of some 13 million at any one time and over 25 million pass through the ranks then wear and tear means you need substantialy more than 11 million pairs for a 4 year war. In reality Soviet domestic production of boots dwarfed LL.
I don't think so. What you fail to realize is that an Army moves on logistics. Without lend lease the Soviets small gains would have eventually been lost. You fail to see the importance that logistics plays in a long drawn out war.
Rewind about 10 pages in this thread and you will see me vehemently arguing the role of logistics in war. In particular the logistic shortfalls that led to the German advance stopping east of Smolensk and the delay of Operation Typhoon. So, yes you are correct that logistics is essentially what wins and loses wars.
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The Americans supplied nearly 20,000 aircraft, 10,000 rail cars, and hundreds of thousands of trucks for transportation of ammunition, and fuel for the Red Army.
The numbers I have show 15,000 aircraft. Of course you need to place that against the numbers produced by the Soviets themselves, which numbered 157,000+. LL supplied less than 10% of Soviet aircraft. I will give you that a good chunk of those aircraft arrived early in the war and did have an impact, but were not decisive.
10,000 railcars from LL versus 600,000+ Soviet ones. On top of that most of the LL rail cars were used to supplement the Iranian and Vladivostok lines that were carrying the LL supplies. So, the LL rail cars were needed...to carry LL supplies.
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By the end of 1944 nearly 75 percent of the trucks used by the Russians was supplied by the United States.
That number is not correct, it was not 75% that were "used" by the Russians it's that 75% of all trucks built during the war were LL. The Soviets produced 150k of their own military trucks during the war and began with 270k at the outset. They also captured German units along the way.
There is also a big difference in what the trucks were used for versus what you seem to think they were used for. While many certainly carried supplies, the main use of LL trucks was to mobilize infantry units and in particular to mobilize anti-aircraft and anti-tank units. This allowed the Soviets to better exploit their "Deep Battle" strategy since the anti-tank and AA units could now keep up with the armor and forward infantry on advance. The LL trucks were used in this role and in critical sectors because they were either 4 or 6 wheel drive, something German and Russian trucks were not.
The LL trucks started to have an impact in late 1943 (at least that's when the Germans started noticing them). That means that we are looking at a timeframe post-Kursk when any hopes of a German victory were gone and it had become a number/time game for the Soviets.
On the logistics front, which is what we started talking about, the majority of Soviet supplies were still moved the way they had been moved since Ivan the Terrible...ox cart. Russian roads are crap, heck they're worse than crap. The Germans found this out the hard way and by the end of Barbarossa 60% of their supplies were being moved from the railheads by captured Russian ox carts. It was the same thing for the Soviets. They were readily available, they didn't get stuck, they were easy to produce.
Western folks, particularly Americans, have the image that succesful armies are fully motorized, just like the American one was. The truth is the Germans and Russians from 1939 to 1945 relied most heavily upon draft animals and carts to move supplies. Trucks were a great luxury and tactically useful, but they were not necessary.
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I'm not going to even get into the number of canned foods and rations provided by the Americans. Without this critical help the Russians would have been screwed.
Get into them. I posted some of the food numbers earlier:
Type: % of Total Used
Sugar: 30%
Meat: 15%
Grain: 25%
My guess is that the LL supplies helped keep a lot of the civilian population above starvation level, but I find it hard to believe the Soviet Army would have starved to death without those supplies.
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Despite lower numbers the Germans were far superior in organization and tactics compared to the Russians.
Yet despite that "superiority" they were stopped at the gates of Moscow, defeated at Stalingrad and suffered a major defeat at Kursk that marked the end of any initiative the Germans may have had, collapsed the Orel salient and forced them into a long retreat back to the Dnieper. All BEFORE LL equipment began to arrive in any significant numbers to influence the front. If you don't believe me, maybe you'll believe Heinz Guderian:
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With the failure of Zitadelle we have suffered a decisive defeat. The armoured formations, reformed and re-equipped with so much effort, had lost heavily in both men and equipment and would now be unemployable for a long time to come. It was problematical whether they could be rehabilitated in time to defend the Eastern Front... Needless to say the Russians exploited their victory to the full. There were to be no more periods of quiet on the Eastern Front. From now on, the enemy was in undisputed possession of the initiative.
Certainly the trucks had a large impact in stengthening the "Deep Battle" tactic the Russians employed and you can see their massive territorial gains through 1944. However, to suggest that no gainst would have happened without LL trucks is far-fetched. From mid-1943 on, the Germans were in retreat all the way back to Berlin.
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For every truck, train, tank, and piece of equipment that allies provided to Russia meant that it could churn out extra weapons and ammunition for the war effort. I think you are seriously underestimating what a difference LL made for the Soviet Union. Without allied help the war on the eastern front would have been a stale mate at best.
I don't feel I am underestimating, I feel you are overestimating. Certainly the LL aid had an impact, but as I have said all along it was not DECISIVE. The Eastern Front would NOT have been a stalemate as the Germans were already essentially beaten. Without LL aid the war may have drug on an extra year or so, but by the time it began to have an impact, the outcome had already been decided.
On the logistics front, which is what we started talking about, the majority of Soviet supplies were still moved the way they had been moved since Ivan the Terrible...ox cart. Russian roads are crap, heck they're worse than crap. The Germans found this out the hard way and by the end of Barbarossa 60% of their supplies were being moved from the railheads by captured Russian ox carts. It was the same thing for the Soviets. They were readily available, they didn't get stuck, they were easy to produce.
Western folks, particularly Americans, have the image that succesful armies are fully motorized, just like the American one was. The truth is the Germans and Russians from 1939 to 1945 relied most heavily upon draft animals and carts to move supplies. Trucks were a great luxury and tactically useful, but they were not necessary.
Thank you. I was waiting that someone would make this point, that with this kind of roads cars don't really speed up the process all that much. When you watch the war documentaries, you often see that Russian soldiers are pulling off the ammunition, loads, carts and what's not literally on their backs through the mud and cars/trucks are nowhere in sight, because under such conditions they most likely become worthless.
( and Jtur once said that truckdrivers in Soviet Union were all women - ha-ha.)
There is an interessting photo of Soviet Units lining a road on the way into Berlin.
There is a mix of vehicles. Some LL trucks, a couple of GAZ trucks and some horse drawn small carts.
They all got to Berlin and I refuse to believe the Gaz and carts were carried there on the back of LL trucks.
Any evidence to support that opinion? Certainly the increase in mobility of Soviet forces in 1943 was a direct result of the Lend-Lease trucks they were receiving. However, while that contribution was certainly important to their war effort, was it in and of itself decisive?
Decisive in this case would be defined as producing a definite result. Which would imply that without Lend-Lease the outcome would have not been a definite victory for the Soviets. That is just something I don't agree with and is not supported by the evidence. By the time Lend-Lease aid was really flowing the Soviets had already stopped the German advance and began to turn the tide back.
It was becoming a simple numbers game that the Soviets were winning, it was virtually impossible for the Germans to go on the offensive at that point and turn the Soviets back. Without LL I certainly agree that the war would have lasted much longer, perhaps another 12-18 months as suggested by Glantz and House, but to state that without it they would have lost is simply not supported by any evidence.
I've been very busy at work and didn't get a chance to respond to your statements. To make my point I will simply quote David Glantz in his book "The Battle of Kursk" that I am currently reading.
"Although Lend-Lease tanks did not play a substantial role at the time of the Kursk fighting, Lend-Lease trucks and jeeps made a major contribution. By June 1943, the Soviet Union had received over 17,000 jeeps and more than 90,000 trucks from the United States alone. These shipments were especially important since the Soviet automotive industry had been shifted over to light armored vehicle production and Soviet wartime vehicle production was inadequate. Furthermore, the U.S. vehicles were immeasurably surperior to existing Soviet trucks, which were mostly license-produced copies of mid-1930s U.S. commercial trucks. U.S. trucks and jeeps became the backbone of Soviet logistics, moving Soviet troops, guns, ammunition, and supplies. Without such transportation, the Red Army would had been hamstrung in its efforts to conduct a sustanied offensive, being forced to stop for lack of supplies after only a few days of battle. In a battle of attrition such as Kursk, this logistical support proved critical to victory. It is therefore not surprising that even today "Studebaker" and "Villies" are familiar words to Russian veterans of the "Great Patriotic War" and virtually synonymous to "truck" and "jeep".
Notice how he said CRITICAL and not just important?
I've been very busy at work and didn't get a chance to respond to your statements. To make my point I will simply quote David Glantz in his book "The Battle of Kursk" that I am currently reading.
"Although Lend-Lease tanks did not play a substantial role at the time of the Kursk fighting, Lend-Lease trucks and jeeps made a major contribution. By June 1943, the Soviet Union had received over 17,000 jeeps and more than 90,000 trucks from the United States alone. These shipments were especially important since the Soviet automotive industry had been shifted over to light armored vehicle production and Soviet wartime vehicle production was inadequate. Furthermore, the U.S. vehicles were immeasurably surperior to existing Soviet trucks, which were mostly license-produced copies of mid-1930s U.S. commercial trucks. U.S. trucks and jeeps became the backbone of Soviet logistics, moving Soviet troops, guns, ammunition, and supplies. Without such transportation, the Red Army would had been hamstrung in its efforts to conduct a sustanied offensive, being forced to stop for lack of supplies after only a few days of battle. In a battle of attrition such as Kursk, this logistical support proved critical to victory. It is therefore not surprising that even today "Studebaker" and "Villies" are familiar words to Russian veterans of the "Great Patriotic War" and virtually synonymous to "truck" and "jeep".
Notice how he said CRITICAL and not just important?
Is it not also Glantz, the author you are quoting, whose position it is that:
Quote:
"Lend-Lease aid did not arrive in sufficient quantities to make a difference between defeat and victory in 1941-1942, the years the war was decided. Had Stalin and his commanders been left to their own devices the war may have lasted another 12-18 months longer than it did. However, the ultimate result would have been the same, victory for the Soviet Union."
No one is arguing that the aid wasn't "critical" in determining the outcome of some battles or that it wasn't "important" or that the aid was of no consequence. The only point being argued was your insistence that the aid was "decisive" and that the Soviet's would have lost the war without it. If you want to read someone who shares that opinion in part, try Keegan.
Just a couple of points regarding your original post:
While the above point has been cited for decades in World War II history books as the reason Operation Barbarossa was delayed, it simply isn’t true.
To start with, Hitler’s decision to invade Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941 was in reaction to the overthrow of the pro-fascist government of Prince Paul and had nothing to do with Mussolini. Hitler had been in negotiations with Prince Paul to bring Yugoslavia into the Axis to bolster Germany’s southern flank in anticipation of Operation Barbarossa. On March 27th, just two days after formally joining the Axis, Prince Paul was deposed in a coup launched by anti-Fascist/pro-Serbian military officers. Hitler was infuriated by this turn of events and put into motion an invasion plan that had been prepared in case negotiations with Prince Paul had failed.
At the same time, the military situation in Greece had become one of stalemate with neither the Italians nor Greeks being able to make much headway against each other. The only way to swing the balance in Italy’s favor was for Germany to become directly involved. The necessity of this became more acute when the Greek government reached an agreement with the British which would allow British troops to operate and set up bases on Greek soil. Hitler was alarmed by this, primarily because British bombers launched from Greece could easily strike at the Romanian oil fields which Germany was so dependent upon. So Hitler decided to strike against Yugoslavia and Greece simultaneously.
The Yugoslavian portion of the operation was over by April 17th and the Greeks surrendered on April 24th. Units which were to participate in Barbarossa were being withdrawn from Yugoslavia for refit and resupply before all the fighting had even ended. In some cases, units were turned back to their Barbarossa staging areas while in route to Yugoslavia when the invasion was still underway because they were deemed unnecessary. In all, only three infantry divisions slated for the Barbarossa invasion force remained in Yugoslavia. This situation was repeated in Greece as well, where only two mountain divisions and one infantry division were left behind. Given the rapidity of victory and small number of troops left in each country, the impact on the timing and execution of Operation Barbarossa was non-existent.
The actual reason Operation Barbarossa was delayed was not in fact due to the Balkan sideshow but rather to something very basic; bad weather. The original launch date for Barbarossa was May 15th. However, spring arrived late in 1941 and heavy rain persisted well into early June. The rains in combination with the annual flooding caused by snow melt not only made rivers along significant portions of the invasion route impossible to cross, but also saturated the ground to the point where large scale, rapid movement of armor would be difficult at best. So really, the Germans had no choice other than to wait until these conditions cleared, which in the end turned out to be the latter part of June.
The idea of advancing on three fronts or using three army groups for the invasion of Russia did not originate with Hitler, but with General Friedrich Paulus of Stalingrad fame. Paulus became Quartermaster General of the German General Staff in early September 1940, and one of his first acts was to prepare a study regarding his thoughts on the Russian invasion plan currently being developed by the OKH. Paulus envisioned three army groups (North, Center, and South) advancing into Russia in direct axis toward Leningrad, Moscow, and Kiev, with the main weight of the attack resting with Army Group Center. This same basic idea was reiterated in a plan put together by Lieutenant Colonel Bernhard von Lossberg for the OKW in mid September 1940. Von Lossberg too placed the main objective as Moscow but he did call for a shift of some forces from the center to the north to bolster that army group should they run into difficultly on their drive toward Leningrad.
On December 5, 1940, General Halder presented his invasion plan to Hitler at a conference for the chiefs of the OKH and OKW. The employment of three army groups and the capture of Moscow were key elements in his plan as well. Although Hitler was in general agreement with Halder’s overall proposal, he would not commit to Moscow being the end goal of the operation. Instead, he thought the focus should be on the Baltic region, Leningrad, and the Ukraine. On December 18th, Hitler signed “Directive 21” which from that point forward would be referred to as Operation Barbarossa. Halder’s plan was left essentially intact but Hitler made one modification to it, namely allowing for a possible diversion of part of Army Group Center to help Army Group North take Leningrad. Halder and the OKH staff were not in agreement with this and insisted the operational objective should be Moscow. Hitler’s answer was to defer all final decisions on what the primary targets for Barbarossa were until the operation was underway. And this is how things remained until July 19, 1941 when Hitler issued “Directive 33” which halted Army Group Center and switched the emphasis of Operation Barbarossa to the north and south.
So while Hitler can be faulted for several decisions which had a negative impact on the chances of success of Operation Barbarossa, invading Russia on three fronts is not one of them. If anything, because of the size of the Soviet Union and the disposition of Russian forces along the western frontier, attacking at three different points was the only approach the Germans could take which made any sense. One need only look at what the Germans achieved in the first two weeks of Barbarossa to see the correctness of this decision. The real problem was in launching an operation before a specific objective had been settled on. Logically speaking, the primary target should have been Moscow since the strongest element of the German invasion force was Army Group Center. Had the OKH been able to persuade Hitler to their way of thinking, the campaign in the east may well have turned out differently or the end result might have been the same. Unfortunately, we will never know for sure.
Moscow should have been the do or die objective because Moscow was to the USSR what New York, Chicago and Washington combined is to America. Even today Russia has a hub and spoke transportation, electrical power and communications system and the hub is Moscow. Soviet central planning at its best makes for a vunerable nation.
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