![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The United States DID win World War Two
Jul. 3rd, 2022 11:14 am"The effective employment of Lend-Lease equipment was compromised by the persistent objection of the Soviet side to allowing Western personnel access to help with training and repair or to supply information on how the aid was being utilized. By 1943 large stockpiles of material had accumulated in the Soviet Union but it was impossible to check why this was or to limit further deliveries without Soviet co-operation. Soviet secretiveness made it difficult at the time to counteract the regular criticism of combat failures, while despite promises Soviet officials released little information on the development of Soviet tanks and aircraft, apart from the one T-34 tank sent to the United States in 1942. ‘We still meet their requests to the limit of our ability,’ complained the head of the American military mission in Moscow, John Deane, to General Marshall, ‘and they meet ours to the minimum that will keep us sweet.’[116] Growing suspicion that Soviet requests for Lend-Lease supplies, which reached a peak in 1944 and 1945, included goods intended for Soviet post-war reconstruction led to political pressure in Washington to place limits on Soviet assistance. In August 1945, following the Japanese surrender, President Truman announced the immediate end of all Lend-Lease shipments without consulting either of the main recipients.
Tensions in the Lend-Lease relationship were inevitable given the nature of the geographical scope involved and the contending requirements for urgent supply, but in the end vast resources, chiefly from the American productive surplus, were shared between the Allies. Was this record, in the words of Edward Stettinius, the Lend-Lease administrator, a ‘weapon for victory’? The answer is more complicated than it seems. For years after the war the official Soviet line was to downplay or to ignore altogether the role of Lend-Lease in the Soviet war effort. This was a deliberate act of historical distortion. Shortly after the end of the war, informal guidelines were issued (which no sensible author could ignore under Stalin) that Lend-Lease ‘did not play a somewhat noticeable part in Russian victory’. The official line until the 1980s was to insist that Lend-Lease goods came late, were often of poor quality, and comprised only 4 per cent of the weapons produced by the Soviet Union’s own efforts. During the war, however, Soviet leaders privately admitted how important all the forms of aid were. In the taped interviews for his memoirs, Khrushchev revealed the importance Stalin attached to the aid, but the following passage was only published in the 1990s: ‘Several times I heard Stalin acknowledge [Lend-Lease] in the small circle of people around him. He said that . . . if we had had to deal with Germany one-to-one we would not have been able to cope.’ Marshal Zhukov, victor in Berlin, toed the Party line in his memoirs published in 1969, but in a bugged conversation six years earlier he was overheard to say that without foreign aid the Soviet Union ‘could not have continued the war’. The 4 per cent figure for Allied supplies as a percentage of Soviet output is not wrong, but it entirely masks what Lend-Lease actually achieved. In the early stages of the war, Lend-Lease tanks and aircraft supplied a higher percentage of Soviet equipment because of the exceptional losses in the first months of combat. As the war progressed, Soviet output revived, and Lend-Lease military equipment became correspondingly less significant. Up to the Battle of Stalingrad Lend-Lease tanks amounted to 19 per cent of Soviet production. But by the Battle of Kursk six months later, one of the largest tank engagements of the war, there were 3,495 Soviet-built tanks and only 396 Lend-Lease, around 11 per cent. Tanks, aircraft and weapons, however, were not the decisive factor in Allied deliveries. Of much greater significance was the transformation of the Soviet communications system, support for the strained railway network, and large supplies of raw materials, fuel and explosives without which the overall Soviet war effort and military campaigns would have been less than adequate for the defeat of the great bulk of the German army. One of the major deficiencies in conducting air and tank combat in the early years of the war was the lack of electronic equipment; it was also a major problem for commanders trying to manage a vast battlefield with poor or little communication. Under Lend-Lease the Western Allies together supplied 35,000 army radio sets, 389,000 field telephones and over 1.5 million kilometres of telephone cable. By early 1943 the Red Air Force was at last able to operate centralized control of air combat units, while the simple device of installing radios in tanks proved a force multiplier. Radio also came to play a part in the Red Army’s very effective use of deception and disinformation, which on numerous occasions left the German army unable to guess the size, the whereabouts or the intentions of enemy forces.
The supply position of the Red Army was above all transformed by the trucks and jeeps provided under Lend-Lease, which in the end amounted to more than 400,000, against domestic Soviet production of 205,000. By January 1945 one-third of Red Army vehicles were supplied by Lend-Lease. American aid also broadened the range of vehicles serving the Soviet war effort: scout cars, armoured personnel carriers, half-tracks, the Ford amphibians and 48,956 jeeps, also fitted with radios so that Red Army commanders could control their forces with greater efficiency. Shifting men and equipment by railway was also underpinned by the American provision of 1,900 locomotives (against Soviet output of just 92) and 56 per cent of all the rails used during the war. By late 1942 the Soviet rail system was able to supply front-line forces at Stalingrad with fifteen trains a day where German supply averaged twelve. Finally, Allied aid provided almost 58 per cent of all aviation fuel, 53 per cent of all explosives and half the requirements of aluminium, copper and synthetic rubber tyres. Allied supply on this scale was decisive. Soviet industry could concentrate on the mass production of weapons, leaving the supply of much else in the war economy to Allied assistance."
Richard Overy, Blood and Ruins
Tensions in the Lend-Lease relationship were inevitable given the nature of the geographical scope involved and the contending requirements for urgent supply, but in the end vast resources, chiefly from the American productive surplus, were shared between the Allies. Was this record, in the words of Edward Stettinius, the Lend-Lease administrator, a ‘weapon for victory’? The answer is more complicated than it seems. For years after the war the official Soviet line was to downplay or to ignore altogether the role of Lend-Lease in the Soviet war effort. This was a deliberate act of historical distortion. Shortly after the end of the war, informal guidelines were issued (which no sensible author could ignore under Stalin) that Lend-Lease ‘did not play a somewhat noticeable part in Russian victory’. The official line until the 1980s was to insist that Lend-Lease goods came late, were often of poor quality, and comprised only 4 per cent of the weapons produced by the Soviet Union’s own efforts. During the war, however, Soviet leaders privately admitted how important all the forms of aid were. In the taped interviews for his memoirs, Khrushchev revealed the importance Stalin attached to the aid, but the following passage was only published in the 1990s: ‘Several times I heard Stalin acknowledge [Lend-Lease] in the small circle of people around him. He said that . . . if we had had to deal with Germany one-to-one we would not have been able to cope.’ Marshal Zhukov, victor in Berlin, toed the Party line in his memoirs published in 1969, but in a bugged conversation six years earlier he was overheard to say that without foreign aid the Soviet Union ‘could not have continued the war’. The 4 per cent figure for Allied supplies as a percentage of Soviet output is not wrong, but it entirely masks what Lend-Lease actually achieved. In the early stages of the war, Lend-Lease tanks and aircraft supplied a higher percentage of Soviet equipment because of the exceptional losses in the first months of combat. As the war progressed, Soviet output revived, and Lend-Lease military equipment became correspondingly less significant. Up to the Battle of Stalingrad Lend-Lease tanks amounted to 19 per cent of Soviet production. But by the Battle of Kursk six months later, one of the largest tank engagements of the war, there were 3,495 Soviet-built tanks and only 396 Lend-Lease, around 11 per cent. Tanks, aircraft and weapons, however, were not the decisive factor in Allied deliveries. Of much greater significance was the transformation of the Soviet communications system, support for the strained railway network, and large supplies of raw materials, fuel and explosives without which the overall Soviet war effort and military campaigns would have been less than adequate for the defeat of the great bulk of the German army. One of the major deficiencies in conducting air and tank combat in the early years of the war was the lack of electronic equipment; it was also a major problem for commanders trying to manage a vast battlefield with poor or little communication. Under Lend-Lease the Western Allies together supplied 35,000 army radio sets, 389,000 field telephones and over 1.5 million kilometres of telephone cable. By early 1943 the Red Air Force was at last able to operate centralized control of air combat units, while the simple device of installing radios in tanks proved a force multiplier. Radio also came to play a part in the Red Army’s very effective use of deception and disinformation, which on numerous occasions left the German army unable to guess the size, the whereabouts or the intentions of enemy forces.
The supply position of the Red Army was above all transformed by the trucks and jeeps provided under Lend-Lease, which in the end amounted to more than 400,000, against domestic Soviet production of 205,000. By January 1945 one-third of Red Army vehicles were supplied by Lend-Lease. American aid also broadened the range of vehicles serving the Soviet war effort: scout cars, armoured personnel carriers, half-tracks, the Ford amphibians and 48,956 jeeps, also fitted with radios so that Red Army commanders could control their forces with greater efficiency. Shifting men and equipment by railway was also underpinned by the American provision of 1,900 locomotives (against Soviet output of just 92) and 56 per cent of all the rails used during the war. By late 1942 the Soviet rail system was able to supply front-line forces at Stalingrad with fifteen trains a day where German supply averaged twelve. Finally, Allied aid provided almost 58 per cent of all aviation fuel, 53 per cent of all explosives and half the requirements of aluminium, copper and synthetic rubber tyres. Allied supply on this scale was decisive. Soviet industry could concentrate on the mass production of weapons, leaving the supply of much else in the war economy to Allied assistance."
Richard Overy, Blood and Ruins
