"How Decisive was Lend Lease to Soviet War Effort: 1941-44?" Topic

Spurred on by a discussion with Basileus66 on the UM Board, I am fishing for opinions on the degree of importance of the Lend Lease aid programme to the USSR in resisting the Nazi juggernaut from 1941 until mid to late 1943. Could the USSR have survived the fascist onslaught and won the Great Patriotic War without the programme? I think most agree that the trucks and ammunition/shell casings were critical. But what about the tanks, aircraft, food and other resources? I must admit that after almost fifty years of reading and discussing the issue (but no systematic research) I have been unable to clearly decide how decisive it was for the USSR. Any thoughts, data or reading recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers and good gaming.
Rod Robertson.

And away we go!

The continuing appreciation shown to the surviving Arctic convoy survivors speaks volumes for the importance of Lend Lease to the Russians.

Personally, I think L/L allowed the Soviet industries to focus on AFV production to a much greater degree than otherwise, and the great advances made by Soviet forces from late 42 onwards may have been much harder without it.

But as ever, who really knows? It is what happened, and the Allies, thankfully, won!

The answers will sit somewhere between "It made no difference at all" and "Nazis in Moscow without it", with many of those opinions shaped by political views and nationalist bias 60 years later.

One of the most important factors seem to have been trucks and jeeps.
From what I've understood, lend-lease supply basically kept pace with battle losses, which meant that every locally-produced truck ADDED to the amount of motorization, which would be vital in the great offensives mid-to-late war.

Zaloga is of the opinion that lend lease tank deliveries enabled the Soviets to maintain tank strengths at acceptable levels during crucial periods, such as late '41 when they were moving tank factories which curtailed home production significantly. Even if they weren't used in front line service lend lease tanks were used for training which released Soviet vehicles for front line use. Deliveries of Valentines were particularly welcome late '41 as it had decent armour and a gun capable of tackling any German tank at the time.

Very. Neverminding the vehicles/weapons that were given, food alone was decisive.

If the aid wasn't important, then why did the Soviets accept it.

I think it was Kruschev who said that Stalin told him the war would have been unwinnable without the lend lease support.

That being said I really think it was more the essential materials like food, clothing, lubricants, aluminum and railway and railroad equipment that was the most important.

I don't have numbers in front of me but I would guess that Russia got around 7500 tanks and maybe 15,000 planes. This is a huge number but compared to the vast size of the Soviet union's armies it was only a small percentage of weapons that made up their forces.

Also trucks. I remember reading somewhere that the sheer number of Ford trucks they were given by the USA helped keep their forces mobile and supplied. Plus the ford trucks were reliable even in the cold.

15 million pairs of boots.
1900 locomotives.
375,000 trucks.

Without those three items alone, Russia never makes it to the German border, much less Berlin.

It isn't just WW II. The west, mostly the U.S. supported communist Russia for seventy years from its inception to its demise. We paid for both sides in the Korean and Vietnam war. Read the works of the late Antony Sutton.

As always, lots of results are possible. I'd say the most probable result, absent lend lease, is stalemate and possibly a separate peace--alternatively higher Western casualties as the US, British and possibly French take up the slack.
But where do the LL resources go in the alternate world? Are they poured into the Pacific War? Do we invade France in 1942?
And might the Russians, seeing no one would aid the Bolshevik state, have ditched the Communists? With what result?
This is why Harry Turtledove gets paid the big bucks.

All good points!

As Herkybird opined:

But as ever, who really knows?

Not me! That's why I asking all of you!

Weasel:
You make a great point. How much of the perceived decisiveness is the vestiges of propaganda and Allied cheerleading and how much is real nuts and bolts succor of the titanic Soviet war effort. I can't figure that out.

Fred Cartwright:
Excellent points and more than late 1941 the Lend Lease tanks were critical to the Soviets in 1942 when even more losses had them rummaging around for any tank they could get their hands on.

john lacour:
Processed food was very important indeed. Good point.

JasonAfrika:
No argument that it was important. But was it of decisive importance. Did it win the war (GPW)

Generalstoner49 wrote:

I think it was Kruschev who said that Stalin told him the war would have been unwinnable without the lend lease support.

That being said I really think it was more the essential materials like food, clothing, lubricants, aluminum and railway and railroad equipment that was the most important.

Two excellent points and I shall go searching for the Kruschev quote! Your reminder of the importance of railway material is very important.

Thanks to all who have contributed so far and I hope the observations keep coming.

Cheers and thanks.
Rod Robertson

Lucius:
Very good points. 990 million shell casings too and the HE to fill them. The railway and truck supplies are good arguments for the decisive end of the spectrum.

Panzerfaust:
You lost me around 1946 and I don't understand your point about Korea and Vietnam. Could you expand and explain?

robert piepenbrink:
Yup! You gotta love Turtledove.

Thanks again.
Cheers
Rod Robertson.

If the aid wasn't important, then why did the Soviets accept it.

"Important" and "Impossible to win without" aren't the same thing.

Found the quote which Generalstoner49 might have been referring to. Pretty persuasive evidence for the decisive end of the spectrum.

I would like to express my candid opinion about Stalin's views on whether the Red Army and the Soviet Union could have coped with Nazi Germany and survived the war without aid from the United States and Britain. First, I would like to tell about some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were "discussing freely" among ourselves. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany's pressure, and we would have lost the war. No one ever discussed this subject officially, and I don't think Stalin left any written evidence of his opinion, but I will state here that several times in conversations with me he noted that these were the actual circumstances. He never made a special point of holding a conversation on the subject, but when we were engaged in some kind of relaxed conversation, going over international questions of the past and present, and when we would return to the subject of the path we had traveled during the war, that is what he said. When I listened to his remarks, I was fully in agreement with him, and today I am even more so.

From here:
link

Cheers.
Rod Robertson.

Well, how important is this lot liable to be?

link

That's a lot of materials…

425,331,742 tons of Steel bars, cold finished as just one example…

The fact is, things like locally produced trucks can't be produced if you haven't got the materials to make them with.

'MUNITIONS $4,651,582,000 USD NON-MUNITIONS 4,826,084,000 ---------------- Total 9,477,666,000 Note: the figure of $11 USD billion includes services as well as goods furnished. '

I would say decisive, and mostly from the point of view of transport, food and munitions – not be mention as noted above things like aluminium. I think half of the Red Army's tanks in 1942 were built using American and Canadian aluminium and the Red Army was largely fed using British and American rations

Without Lend Lease things like Operation Uranus would have been much more iffy – what if the Russians had had 450 tanks instead of 900?

Part of the fictitious life of Captain Pug Henry in "War and Remembrance" has him on fact finding missions to the Soviet Union to determine this. (And a little romance too!")
His fictitious Soviet guests told him "Thank you and please send more."

One interesting thing is that Henry's mission is to counter isolationists in the Congress who think the Russkis weren't being gushing enough.

Very good novel and miniseries btw.

All those hundreds of thousands of trucks alone enabled the Red Army to maintain offensives and extend its supply lines in 1944-45.

The war goes on much longer if not for the Soviet capacity to launch and sustain decisive offensives produced by mechanization subsidized by the US.

Water-proof wire, which makes artillery divisions really work. Boots. Spam. Radios.

Yeah, trucks and everything else made a huge difference. Then again, they lost 12 million dead soldiers and even more civilians, we didn't. They also killed 3 of every 4 dead German soldiers.

Tires. Don't forget the tires.

15 million pairs of boots.
1900 locomotives.
375,000 trucks.

Without those three items alone, Russia never makes it to the German border, much less Berlin.

Lets see. An Army that at any one time had c 12 million men under arms was 'saved' by 15 million boots? Say they lasted 3 months, What did the Soviet soldiers wear for the other 55 months of the war?

1900 locos? How do they stack up against the Soviet pre-war stock of c 30,000 locomotives? The LL locos did not even start getting shipped until late 1943.

375,000 trucks? Impressive. But how may were delivered before May 1945? And how does that number compare to Russian domestic production.
Yes LL was important but LL food was never the main supply of food for the Soviets.

Everyone seem to forget what may have been the most important L/L item. Food the foodstuffs supplied by L/L feed the army. An permitted the Soviets to put more men in the field instead of trying to cultivate new areas not occupied by the Germans.

Everyone seem to forget what may have been the most important L/L item. Food the foodstuffs supplied the U.S> and Canada through L/L feed the army. An permitted the Soviets to put more men in the field instead of trying to cultivate new areas not occupied by the Germans.

I think the whole 'we saved your ass with LL' Argument is petty and just a way to try and take credit from the Soviet effort in WW2.
Say your house catches fire and the fire brigade turn up, enter your house and rescue your kids while losing 2 firemen to the flames.
Do you say to the survivors: 'Nice work men but without the people who made the fire engine you could not have done it. We owe all our thanks to the heroes who put the engine together.'
I think not.

If the oldtimers who survived Stalin said that they couldn't have won without Lend-Lease, I'm not going to argue.

I would have said the largest single contribution was the trucks (and food).

Never knew how much steel was shipped. Wow.

Clearly LL was significant, the trucks shipped represented approx one third of the truck holdings of the Red Army for the entire war (although they produced or acquired rather more than that themselves during the course of the war).

Could they have produced more trucks? of course, but at the expense of other things – like tanks and artillery.

15 million boots though, not enough for one pair for each soldier, and military boots don't least that long.

In terms of the overall effect, it is so coloured by our prejudices and hindsight, that we will never get to a consensus on an internet forum.

Personally I'm in the 'Russians would have won anyway, but at huge cost…' camp.

The observations of the wartime Russian commanders are always very interesting, but they will inevitably be coloured by their personal viewpoints of the situation at the time, and things always seem worse when you can't see the problems the enemy are having.

Lend lease was a significant material factor to the victory of rhe courageous soviet troops and their astute leaders in operational art.

Its effect was mostly with non sexy but vital stuff:

Trucks: 300000 plus receiced in time, vs 150000 locally produced ( plus 250000 captured and farming veh. incorporated).

Radios and parts.
Railroads equipments.
Shoes and raw material

Chewing gums : issue in doubt.

Logistics… Always logistics.

My son (studying history at Uni) looked into this for a detailed essay. As you can imagine there is no definitive answer, but his conclusion was that LL was the marginal extra that helped Russia defeat Germany absolutely, and if they hadn't had it both sides would have battled each other into some form od Pyrrhic mutual exhaustion.

I'd say it was utterly decisive in maintaining the USA's sense of self importance

Over 90pct of high octane aviation fuel used by the Soviet air force was supplied by Lend-Lease. I've forgotten the figures on motor fuel.

The tonnage of steel provided under Lend-Lease was equivalent to about 75,000 T34s by weight.

Half of the artillery propellant expended by the Soviets in the war was supplied by Lend-Lease.

The amount of food supplied under Lend-Lease was sufficient to feed the entire Soviet armed forces for four years.

I've forgotten the exact figures, but Lend-Lease provided most of the aluminum used in Soviet war industries.

The above barely begins to scratch the surface of the overall impact of the Lend-Lease program upon the USSR's war effort. Then there is the question of how many men, otherwise available for service at the front due to Lend-Lease support, would have been required as civilian labor to produce all those goods and materials domestically.

Lend-Lease saved the Soviet Union.

B

Mkenny,
Please read my post. I did not say that boots, trains, and trucks saved the Soviet Union. I said that they don't make it to Berlin without them. Most contemporary Soviets agreed.

I don't get the Soviet worship here. Two murderous dictatoships carved up Poland, then duked it out. One was mauled, the other died in 1991. The US played a key role in toppling both. Good riddance.

As Winston Smith has bought 'War and Remembrance' into it, I always enjoy the part where Pug is shown a Soviet soldier wearing LL uniform and boots, and he is very complimentary of their quality, but a Soviet general observes 'Russian body'.

For me that defines LL. It was incredibly useful in keeping the Soviets in the war and then going forward from Stalingrad, but it was Soviet bodies that paid the real price of victory.

Without Lend Lease, the Soviets may have made a separate peace.
It kept them in the war. Perhaps.
So, as a cynical and pragmatic way to keep the Germans from defending France as well as they could have, it worked.

The question is not about how many died on any side, it's about how important one aspect (LL) was to the Soviet effort.

Answer, very, as it meant that the Soviets were better able to fill their aims of killing Germans and defeating Germany. In the first war, the Russians had plenty of bodies but a shortage of guns. They lost. In WW2 they had plenty of bodies – and thanks to Allied help they had plenty of guns as well.

And more of other things as well.

Quick one on costs:

The Nominal National Products of the major powers in 1938, in current dollars:

(1) United States: 84.7 billion
(2) Germany: 46.0 billion*
(3) UK: 27.51 billion
(4) USSR: 23.02 billion
(5) France: 16.18 billion
(6) Italy: 8.68 billion
(7) Japan: 7.49 billion

From link

The German invasion of World War II inflicted punishing blows to the economy of the Soviet Union, with Soviet GDP falling 34% between 1940 and 1942.[39] Industrial output did not recover to its 1940 level for almost a decade.[18]

From link

'MUNITIONS $4,651,582,000.00 USD USD NON-MUNITIONS 4,826,084,000 ---------------- Total 9,477,666,000 Note: the figure of $11.00 USD USD billion includes services as well as goods furnished. ' – LL from my post above.

So if the Soviet Union GDP/GNP fell to about $15 USD billion and this represented an average for about 4 years, the total Soviet 'income' was about $60 USD billion. Over $9 USD billion of aid is about 15% of this…

Now, this is quite a bit anyway. THe important thing is, it's 15% extra on the whole budget. Some of that $60 USD billion are effectively fixed costs that would be spent anyway. Deduct that and what is left is the war budget. So in terms of 'adding value' to the Soviet war effort – whether by releasing 'funds' from elsewhere or directly – that 15% iis very low.

Real figure? If half the costs of the Soviets were 'fixed', then the added value would be 30%, etc.

Of course, actual figures are not known, but it's a working guesstimate, say a quarter of Russia's war paid for by the West.

The amount of food supplied under Lend-Lease was sufficient to feed the entire Soviet armed forces for four years.

Perhaps it would be better to contrast the tonnage of LL food sent with Soviet production.

I don't get the Soviet worship here.

There has been no 'worship' in the thread. Indeed I would say the real problem is those who think they don't get enough 'worship' .

In a nutshell:

I'd say it was utterly decisive in maintaining the USA's sense of self importance

Consensus on trucks and jeeps, also railway locos and stock, plus food and an immense amount of uniform cloth and boots…..tanks and aircraft ( transport planes especially ) and landing craft and coastal vessels -mtb/KGB all assisted the Soviet war effort.
More importantly to me is that for Stalin to have commented on it positively to Khrushchev is evidence enough of its importance.

Good discussion from both poles of the spectrum. Just a reminder that the OP's question was not whether Lend Lease was important but whether it was critical/decisive for the survival of the USSR between late 1941 and late 1943. No doubt the trucks and later deliveries of train stock were a boon for supplying the 1944-1945 offensive operations which expelled German forces from most of the USSR and crushed Germany, but that is beyond the scope of the question at hand. Feel free to make such comments but please also consider addressing the issue of early and mid war survival of the USSR as it relates to Lend Lease.

Thank you so much for this fascinating discussion. This is good stuff. I hope it continues a while longer and reveals more insights into a complex evaluation of Lend Lease for the USSR.

Cheers.
Rod Robertson.

Not answering the OP at all, but this guy has a bunch of interesting stats about lend lease:

o5m6.de/Numbers_Foreign.html

The USSR managed to defend Moscow and break the German win momenteum before lend lease could have much effect. Likewise Stalingrad was fought and won long before the masses of raw materials had been delivered.

Lets suppose we refuse lend lease to the Soviets but instead retained it for our own use. USSR doesn't collapse but advances much more slowly and ties up fewer German troops. So our slog in France/Italy becomes much harder.

Lend Lease represented a large part of the overall allied effort to defeat Germany but alone it was not decisive. Did we "save" UK with lend lease? No but we help keep the UK in the war and that contributed to overall victory just like helping the Soviet war effort. We needed all three countries max efforts to defeat Germany and lend lease was just a part of the huge effort. US contributed more industrial production – USSR more blood and UK more sacrifice (rationing in UK did not end until long after the war).

TomT

Just a reminder that the OP's question was not whether Lend Lease was important but whether it was critical/decisive for the survival of the USSR between late 1941 and late 1943.

If that's your question, then we're talking about the delivery of completed tanks and ammunition for the most part. Given the high % of Lend-Lease tanks in the Red Army during those years, I'd have to say it was absolutely critical in keeping the Soviets in the war.

(rationing in UK did not end until long after the war).

I was born 7 years after the war ended and had a ration book!

Stalingrad was fought and won long before the masses of raw materials had been delivered.

I propose that the key issue, the decisive point, was not the Soviet victory at Stalingrad, but rather the German failure to complete the Case Blue offensive that led to Stalingrad.

Case Blue was a plan to destroy the Soviet Union's capacity to wage a modern war, while at the same time greatly bolstering Germany's capacity to carry on their war efforts.

The three key objectives of Blue, Maikop, Grozny and Baku, provided 82% of the Soviet Union's crude oil. You think trucks are critical to later offensives? Well, yes, but … trucks are nothing but wasted metal and rubber if you don't have the petroleum.

To succeed in Case Blue, Von Kliest needed to drive 1,000km into the Caucasus. Seizing Stalingrad was but a secondary objective, to provide a flank defense to the real effort in the south.

The Soviets largely mis-read the German intentions. They were still focused on Moscow, and initially failed to grasp the danger of Panzer Armee 1 making a deep thrust into the Caucasus.

When 13 Panzer Division, 16 Infantry Division (Motorized) and SS Wiking converged on the first objective, Maikop, in early August 1942, the Soviet 12th Army had no tanks left to face them. Maikop fell, though most of the oil facilities were destroyed by the Soviets before the Germans could take possession. The Germans could never receive more than a trickle of oil from Maikop, but the Soviets lost about 6 – 7% of their oil production through the end of the war!

As Kliest pushed onwards towards Grozny and Baiku, the only tanks available to Malinovsky's 12th Army was the 52nd Tank Brigade. This unit had a total of about 60 tanks, a mix of T-34s, T-60, Valentines and Lees.

By late August 52nd Tank Brigade no longer had any T-34s left in service. Malinovsky had tankers … more than 4,500 trained tankers (retreating on foot from earlier battles). But he had no substantial logistics pipeline connecting him to the rest of the Soviet Union. He had only a single-track rail link eastward, and shipping oil out was critical. There were no tanks inbound. His link north to Moscow ran through Stalingrad. By that point no replacement T-34s were making it through to him from either path.

But he managed to assemble 3 new Tank Brigades using more than 100 Lend Lease tanks that came up through Persia. The total tank force that defended the Soviet's critical sources of petroleum at the critical moment consisted of little more than 40 Valentines and 60 Lees, plus a few T-60s.

Von Bodenhausen, commander of 23 Panzergrenadier Brigade, managed to push over the Terek River and reached the junction of the Baku-Astrakan rail lines on August 31. This effectively cut off the Soviet Union from Grozny (less than 30km away) as well as Baku (still almost 500km away).

At this point the Germans had the Soviet war machine by the throat. If they could have crossed the Terek in force, so that they could re-enforce and hold this position, they would have strangled the Soviet war machine. There would have been no Stalingrad, no Kursk, no Bagration. There was no path by which the US could supply enough petroleum to replace Russia's oil producing regions … there was not enough shipping in the world to carry what the Soviets needed, nor enough port facilities to on-load and off-load it, nor enough rail capacity to carry it from wherever it might make port.

But Malinovsky had just enough force. Von Bodenhausen's force was too weak to hold the position without panzers, and the panzers were busy on the other side of the Terek. So Bodenhausen fell back to the main force. By the time 13 Panzer Division managed to cross the Terek in force on September 6, Malinovsky had his forces in place, and there was no further advance. Eventually, of course, the whole army group scrammed back past Rostov when Stalingrad was encircled. (The under-appreciated German "Dunkirk" of 1942 was the evacuation of the Caucasus, where the Germans pulled back just quickly enough to avoid losing a whole army group, rather than just an army, to Operation Uranus.)

It was not all due to the Lend Lease tanks, of course. But they were the ONLY effective tanks available at the critical moment, at the critical place, where and when the Germans had the chance to win their war against Russia, and failed.

And up to that point, German panzers never failed to break through infantry-only positions. Having tanks was critical to the defense.

So if the question is "the degree of importance of the Lend Lease aid programme to the USSR in resisting the Nazi juggernaut from 1941 until mid to late 1943?" I would say we won't get the answer just by counting the totals. We need to look at the sharp end of the stick to see what was where, and when. It was close run in front of Moscow in the winter of 1941, and in front of Grozny in the summer of 1942. Having tanks, even a few tanks, at the right place at the right time made all the difference.

Or so I have read. Wasn't there at the time. Didn't count the tanks myself.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Spam.

just by itself the massive quantites of spam and other packaged food stuff ensured that Russia would not starve.
It's nice to talk about weapons and shells and tanks, but that forgets that the Russians are human beings and require calories every day to keep going. Without food your soldier will die in about 40 days. The successsfull development of canning allowed C and K rations to be produced in massive amounts and stored for YEARS! When I was in service in the early 1970's we were still eating them from 1945 sometimes. Not only that, the rations were nutritious and had been made to be tasty and at least edible unlike the salt pork hard tack and the poorly preserved and indifferently made Europen stuff.

Americans are largely a morbidly obese people now. We do not understand the real meaning of continuous, gnawing hunger. The peoples of Europe in the 30's and 40's understood it very well.

4 million tons of foodstuff by LL. I would guess Soviet food production dwarfed that total.

I don't know how accurate these numbers are but it's a listing of all the L/L from the US to Russia.

link