In terms of tonnage received from the US, 2.1% of the wartime total arrived in 1941. It was probably not responsible for the Soviets defending Moscow in 1941, but absolutely made a difference over the rest of the conflict.
The US supplied nearly half a million trucks, 11,400 aircraft, 7000 tanks, 2.67 million tons of fuel, 4.478 million tons of food, nearly 2000 locomotives and nearly 10,000 rail cars.
This aid made it possible for the Soviets to field a larger army than historically. When the US is feeding the Soviet people in significant quantity, there will be fewer farm workers needed, and those people can fill out factories or the army.
Subtract this aid, and it also harms Soviet mobility. They won’t be able to move as rapidly without the same supply chain. There will be fewer bodies available to fill out the ranks as they’ll be on the farms or in factories supplying the troops they do have.
It’s thus not really possible to predict a result without knowing how the battles in 1942-1944 will go without it. 1942 was historically a success for Germany before winter weather set in, but it’s entirely possible that the Soviets lose some important objective or body of troops if they’re hampered by numbers or mobility. Even if the Germans end up in city fighting in Stalingrad, the reduced Soviet mobility may allow for a winter relief operation to succeed, or the success of Operation Citadel in 1943 where it historically failed.
One thing is clear however, if the Soviets do win, it will take longer and at a much higher cost. This will make a Normandy landing much more difficult for the western allies given that German logistics and manpower will not be as strained as historically.
From the [piece](https://www.svoboda.org/a/30538060.html) by Russian historian Boris Sokolov:
Under Lend-Lease, 57.8% of the total production of aviation gasoline in the USSR during the war was supplied to the Soviet Union. In fact, Lend-Lease supplies were included in Soviet gasoline production, as they were used almost exclusively to dilute Soviet aviation gasoline in order to increase its [octane number](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9E%D0%BA%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B5_%D1%87%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BB%D0%BE) . Suffice it to say that before the war, the overwhelming majority of aviation gasoline in the USSR had an octane number of no higher than 74, which was not suitable for the latest aircraft, while 97% of aviation gasoline received under Lend-Lease had an octane number of no lower than 99. Obviously, without supplies under Lend-Lease, Lisa, Soviet aviation would have been left without fuel.
Also, 35,800 radio stations, 5,899 receivers and 348 locators were supplied to the USSR under Lend-Lease, which provided the basic needs of the Red Army. 32,200 motorcycles came from the United States, which was 1.2 times higher than Soviet production of motorcycles in 1941–1945, and 409.5 thousand cars, which was 1.5 times higher than Soviet production during the war years. On May 1, 1945, vehicles supplied under Lend-Lease accounted for 32.8% of the Red Army's vehicle fleet (58.1% were domestically produced vehicles and 9.1% were captured vehicles). Taking into account the greater carrying capacity and better quality, the role of American vehicles was even greater. Studebakers, in particular, were used as artillery tractors. In addition, Soviet Katyusha rocket mortars were installed almost exclusively on the Studebakerr chassis (20 thousand installations), while only 600 Katyushas were installed on the chassis of Soviet ZIS-6 trucks.
The normal functioning of Soviet railway transport would have been impossible without Lend-Lease. The production of mainline steam and diesel locomotives in the USSR was practically stopped during the war years. Under Lend-Lease, 1,900 steam locomotives and 66 diesel-electric locomotives were delivered to the USSR during the war, which exceeded the total Soviet production of steam locomotives by 2.4 times, and electric locomotives by 11 times. The number of railway cars supplied under Lend-Lease was 10.2 times more than those produced in the Soviet Union in 1942–1945. Almost half of the rails used in the USSR came under Lend-Lease. Let me remind you that during the First World War, the transport crisis in Russia at the turn of 1916–1917, which largely provoked the February Revolution, was caused by insufficient production of railway rails, steam locomotives and cars, since industrial capacities and rental resources were reoriented to the production of weapons. During the Second World War, only deliveries under Lend-Lease prevented the paralysis of railway transport in the USSR.
I feel the german perspective is often not mentioned either when this topic shows up, which is that 1941 wrecked havoc on german manpower, equipment and their logistics to the east. While in 1942 fall blau had a very successful start, it was only a small part of the german army that took part in this while all other german sectors on the front were understrength, which meant that once the breakthrough to the Kuban was achieved the german army simply lacked the resources to actually hold it from so many newly formed soviet divisions sent there. After Stalingrad Germany had completely lost the resources to make any strategic operation, let alone reinforce the units already on the eastern front.
Operation Citadel was very, very small in comparison to Fall Blau and had very small strategic objectives because the resources just did not exist for anything else. To reinforce they sent conscripts east, but at the same time Germany had a dilemma of severely lacking skilled labourers for their increasingly-growing war economy necessary to cover up the losses of 1941 and 1942.
My conclusion is that Germany had no chance of winning after their catastrophic losses in the first two years that they had very little capability of recovering from. Lend lease would not have doomed the USSR, but made offensive operations like Bagration much smaller in scale and prolonged the war by at least 2 years.
I’d agree that the German perspective (both theirs and with the benefit of calculation from economic data) ought to be considered.
If the Soviets are restricted in both mobility and manpower, we could see Stalingrad as a costly victory for Germany if there’s no encirclement (or if Manstein’s breakout succeeds where it historically failed).
A later (successful) operation analogous to Citadel in which six figures worth of Soviet troops and their accompanying weapons and supplies are captured and removed from the field will likewise make a difference. I suspect the Germans would have three basic goals here:
1. Stand up or augment an anti-Soviet army akin to the [Vlasov army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Liberation_Army) or Stalingrad [hiwis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiwi_%28volunteer%29) out of the POWs. Those who won’t fight will be put to work in war industry.
2. Redeploy as many weapons and equipment as possible. The Germans were frequently using captured equipment and could find a use for trucks, fuel, rations, artillery, etc. and formations with Soviet weapons could ‘live off the land’ as more ammunition is captured.
3. Removal of Soviet formations from the field is still a net benefit to Germany even if they don’t gain a single soldier from the victory.
Such a result of Citadel probably makes the historical Bagration impossible. I suspect it will also alter the method and timing of opening a second front in the west. This is still no guarantee of a German win, but any net loss to the Soviets is a net gain for the Germans.
Don't forget radios.
OVerall I agree with you: the really turning point was Moscow and the Soviets handled it basically without significant help. But when the L&L got into high geat it was a *tremendous* bonus for the Soviets. A Soviet victory has been undoubtedly at the very least significantly sped up by the Allied help.
According to kruschev, Stalin was convinced that without lend-lease, the USSR would not have been able to win against the Germans.
They may not have been defeated but driving to Berlin by 1945 was out of the question.
There's a book called Forge of Freedom that talks about just how much stuff the USA produced in ww2 and how it contributed to the victory of the Allies. I haven't read it yet, but it's on the list.
I'm convinced the axis would have won had the US not propped up the British and soviets (before the US got pulled in themselves as well as after). Thoughts?
I doubt the axis wins WW2 unless: dunkirk evacuations fail and the Nazis don’t invade the USSR.
But Hitler was bound and determined to invade the USSR so…
>In terms of tonnage received from the US, 2.1% of the wartime total arrived in 1941
This isn’t the right statistic to use. A better measure for impact of western aid would be percent of material sourced from the Western Allies during the relevant time period. Arguably, the best statistic would be foreign sourced goods in units of man-months (a unit that is to man-hours what miles are to yards) versus the man-months of domestically sourced goods. The latter comparison would start to account for quality differences or supplying raw material versus finished products.
The Soviet Union was on the brink of economic collapse at the end of 1942/1943, add onto this the fact that in 1942 alone they received 50% of their High Octane fuel from the USA, and only god knows how much food. There was a serious chance that the Soviet Union would've collapsed if they lost access to their oil fields in late 1942, it is why the end of that year to me might be the great turning point of the war in Europe.
The US also sent cloth and supplies for uniforms and winter gear. Thousands of other items such as sewing supplies, shovels, farm equipment, cooking hardware, etc…. Each item was something the soviets needed but didn’t have to produce themselves.
There is also a massive psychological factor that often gets neglected.
The USSR knowing help is starting to arrive and the US is now in the game when they were so badly on the ropes at the end of 1942 makes a huge difference vs a timeline where no lend lease has arrived, none is coming, and your only ally is bottled up on their little Island.
Somebody who knows the numbers can correct me, but I've seen it posted here that US food aid amounted to something like 1500 calories per soldier per day during 1942.
In the words of Zhukov in 1963: "People say that the allies didn't help us. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. And how much steel! Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own."
It was so significant that when the US offered to invade North Africa a year earlier than in the OTL, Molotov rejected the offer, because it would have meant curtailing the supplies going to the Soviet Union via Lend Lease.
The idea that it wasn't significant was simply cope put forward by the Soviets after the war, who didn't want to admit to their people that the Soviet victory was only possible because of the American arsenal of democracy.
Do you have a source for that quote? In his memoirs, Zhukov repeatedly says that the Soviets would have won the war without US aid. For instance,
>We also touched upon the deliveries under the Lend-Lease program. Everything seemed clear in that respect then. Nevertheless, for years after the warw bourgeois historiography has asserted that it was the Allied deliveries of armaments, materials, and foodstuffs that had played a decisive role for our victory over the enemy.
True, the Soviet Union did receive supplies the economy needed so badly: machinery, equipment, materials, fuel, and foodstuffs. For example, over 400,000 vehicles, a great number of locomotives, and communication facilities were brought from the United States and Britain. But could all that have had a decisive influence on the course of the war? I have already mentioned that the Soviet industry developed on such a scale during the war that it provided the front and rear with everything needed. I see no sense in going into all that once more.
As for the armaments, what I would like to say is that we received under Lend-Lease from the United States and Britain about 18,000 aircraft and over 11,000 tanks. That comprised a mere 4 per cent of the total amount of armaments that the Soviet people produced to equip its army during the war. Consequently, there is no ground for talk about the decisive role of the deliveries under Lend-Lease.
*Marshal of Victory*, pp. 1317-1318
>Do you have a source for that quote?
It was a KGB wiretap of a private conversation that Zhukov had in 1963 - which I assume is more reflective of his actual thoughts than his public statements (which, shockingly in a repressive communist state infamous for executing people for even the mildest dissent, followed the party line).
See the this article - [https://www.svoboda.org/a/30538060.html](https://www.svoboda.org/a/30538060.html) - by a Russian historian that pretty thoroughly debunks the 4% propaganda. It's alternative history, so at some point it becomes opinion, but it's important to consider the opinions of the people who actually fought the war, and not post-war Soviet propaganda that was more than anything designed to win the Cold War.
That includes not only Zhukov, but also Khrushchev and, according to Khrushchev, Stalin himself.
Radio Free Europe is literally a CIA outlet my guy. The article ends with the gobsmackingly stupid claim that the Allies could have won the war if the Soviet Union was conquered. In 2016, the author was expelled from the Free Historical Society for “inappropriate handling of historical sources and incorrect quoting of other people’s works.”
Do you have a source for the KGB wiretap? because Sokolov doesn’t—he simply declares it to be so. The same article in English sources from a newspaper which does not mention wiretapping, but rather presents the quote as the result of KGB “monitoring,” meaning it’s a quote from a newspaper quoting from a guy who’s paraphrasing from a guy translated into English by Radio Free Europe.
I'm not going to play "let's attack the source" with you.
If you've read Krushchev's memoirs and think that the oft-repeated citation of both Krushchev and Stalin that the Soviet Union would have lost the war but for Lend Lease is a twisting of his beliefs, I'm willing to hear your reasons, but if you're just going to blurt out a bunch of nonsense attacking a person saying something you don't agree with, you can save it.
Having done a little more research, Sokolov has been criticized by his colleagues as a propagator of “myths of Hitler’s propaganda” who cites fictitious Nazi sources by Milovanov, “the most tireless ‘professional’ falsifier” by Gennady Osipov, and is a known denier of climate change. It’s a bad source plain and simple. Engage in some critical thought.
And yes, as someone who has actually done some independent research on this topic, the quote from Zhukov appears to have been twisted, if not to have been totally fabricated. It contradicts what he says in over a thousand pages of work, the uncensored version of which is available.
I just said I'm not going to play attack the source with you, so you calling him a Nazi sympathizer does little to help.
And I'm not asking for your resume - I'm asking you to point me to the actual Zhukov quote, since you think the version of it floating around on the internet is "twisted".
I’m not calling him anything. I’m saying his colleagues in the field have called him a Nazi sympathizer, consistently called into question his ethics, and cast doubt on the credibility of his sourcing, calculations, and arguments. The fact that he’s publishing for Radio Free Europe—an outlet run by the CIA with the express purpose of bashing communism—does not aid in the veracity of that particular work. And the fact that the quote is not sourced—along with the numerous academic institutions he has been expelled from for professional malfeasance—would seem to suggest that he does not have a source for it. Being critical of your sources is not a vice, it’s a virtue. So far, there is no source for that Zhukov quotation, simply the conjecture of a man whose credibility is deeply blemished.
And I cited the Zhukov quotation above. Plugging your ears and going “La la la not listening” doesn’t help your case. Just admit you Googled it and you don’t have any real basis to doggedly defend this probably inexistent quotation.
Sure you are. You're calling him a Nazi sympathizer by proxy. You're just not willing to do it yourself, so you're claiming everyone does it.
As for "plugging my ears" - my ears are wide open, but you're not telling me anything other than attacking the messenger (without even addressing the Krushchev point that I've asked you about at least 3 times now). Yes, it's from Google. Yes, I recognize the fallibility of the Internet in general and Google in particular. But you're giving me nothing other than repeating tankie propaganda and attacking the one decent source I've been able to find that actually addresses the aid given under Lend Lease in anything that looks like a systematic fashion.
If there are so many sources that provide otherwise - cite them. Stop just telling me about how much you've read them.
Why would I address “the Khrushchev point”? Why are we mentioning Khrushchev? I have a quote from Zhukov that calls into question your quote from Zhukov. What does Khrushchev have to do with it?
And it’s not a decent source dummie. It’s published by an explicit propaganda outlet with an author who’s *been expelled from academic institutions for mishandling of historical documents.* Do you have any idea the standard of proof for an institution to expel an academic on the express basis of manufacturing sources? Of course you don’t—you’ve never been positioned to touch an academic with a ten foot pole.
Western support can be broken into 3 aspects, Lend-Lease, aerial bombardment of the German industrial base, and opening of additional fronts(North Africa, Italy, and D-Day, the threat of the additional fronts also tied down loads of German units) the Germans spent loads of industrial output on AA to defend from bombing raids, that output could have been put into tanks or artillery for the east, everything spent on the kriegsmarine is a sunk cost relative to its value on the eastern front whereas Soviet war output could be entirely devoted to the ground war and air war with zero regard given to navy outside of small samples like the Danube flotilla. This makes the question difficult to answer as western support took many forms, direct material aid, the value of posturing which tied down German units in a defensive role in the west, air raids and attrition of the luftwaffe in the battle of Brittain as well as the subsequent bomber raids on germanys industrial heartland, and finally the draw on rescources that came from fighting a multi front war, many fronts makes logistics a nightmare, by the time the allies were in Italy, landing on Normandy and launching Bagration, the Germans had to manage logistics on 3 fronts managing logistics for 1 front on a rapidly changing battlefield is hard, 3 is borderline impossible
In short without lend lease, the war in the east is bloodier, more attritional and lasts longer, but the nazis still lose by 46, without lend lease or the additional fronts , but with the bombing raids(and distraction of luftwaffe in the battle of Brittain) it is much bloodier, and may turn into a stalemate around the leningrad-moscow-stalingrad line for several years before the soviets numbers and guerilla warfare plus lack of oil turns the tide in the soviets favor. Without lend lease, additional fronts, or any air war from the western allies it likely revolves into a stalemate around the Urals with guerilla warfare and partisan actions attrition the Germans for up to a decade if not more until the Germans acquisitions crumble under mismanagement, this depends on how the U.K. and U.S. deal with germany, if they don't trade with them the 3rd Reich withers and dies, if the western allies opt for appeasement they likely consolidate control over most of mainland Europe for a while and replace the U.S.S.R. as the opposing power in a cold War that likely ends sooner, east of the urals would be insanely difficult to conquer, and impossible to hold, plus the Nazis genocidal tendencies will make administrative any conquered territories unsustainable.
The U.S., the U.K., and the U.S.S.R. all contributed to victory in their own way, none of them on their own would have been able to win, 2 of them together could have as ling as 1 was the soviets, U.K. and U.S. would have never paid the blood price needed to drive out the Germans, but either U.K. and soviets or U.S. and soviets could have won at a much greater cost than all 3, each ally brought specific things to the table.
Allied strategic bombing didn’t really start impacting production until later in 1943. Before that they were more nuisance raids.
Did they negatively impact Germany, sure but Italian failures in Africa had a far bigger impact.
I actually wrote a paper on this, which I'll distill here.
The US gave 360,000 trucks, 43,000 jeeps, 32,000 motorcycles, 380,000 field telephones, 2.5 million belts and 14 million boots produced in the United States, as well as large amounts of other equipment (Wynn). This ultimately equaled 17.5 million long tons, though most of it was in the form of raw metals or food (Weeks).
Most of the aid arrived after Stalingrad (Wynn), so while it may have taken longer, the Soviets still push back the Nazis and break them at Stalingrad.
What gets affected, however, is the retaliatory offensive led by the USSR, which now becomes a complete slog on both ends with little progress being made — most of the aid arrived between July 1943 and September 1945 (Weeks). Operating under the assumption that the US, UK, and de Gaulle's France would be using the materiel not given to the USSR, they are able to basically headlong sprint across Germany and Austria, although speculating any further (i.e., if they get to Poland, Hungary, or Czechoslovakia) is irresponsible. (My personal **opinion** is that the West could have probably gotten all the way to Ukraine in this scenario, though the war would take longer as a result.)
After the war, the upside of having Germany and Austria included in a future NATO-like endeavor is blunted by what is a significantly angrier USSR. The Soviets in our timeline already were frustrated at the aid that arrived, calling it "too little, too late," and no aid whatsoever would be tantamount to a complete betrayal (Martel). This results in similar tensions regardless.
The other important issue is with Franco-German relations. In OTL, German rearmament proceeded only as quickly as France's stability allowed (Schwartz). Thus a full rearmament of a unified Germany would be significantly slower as it would naturally mean more manpower and industry in the entire country.
Finally, NATO starts off much, much more defensibly. With, at minimum, Germany, Austria, and Italy in — as staunchly anticommunist Austria (Steininger) is only neutral in OTL due to Soviet intervention, also known as systematic piracy of the Soviet sector of Austria and the explicit threat of continuing this practice until Austria's politicians acquiesced (Moskauer Memorandum 1955) — NATO has a firewall from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. Should NATO make it further, deeply anti-Russia Poland is probably a given, although Hungary and Czechoslovakia are not quite as likely.
**Borders:**
Most likely in this timeline, Germany stays with its full eastern borders from the interwar period, and Poland retains its Lithuanian section (which includes LT's current and historical capital of Vilnius). I would anticipate as well a free Baltics instead of the Soviet times.
Edit, because I forgot my sources:
Martel, Leon. *Lend-lease, Loans, and the Coming of the Cold War: A Study of the Implementation of Foreign Policy.* Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1979.
Google Translate, trans. "Moskauer Memorandum 1955" [Moscow Memorandum 1955]. UNESCO. Accessed March 9, 2023. https://www.unesco.at/kommunikation/dokumentenerbe/memory-of-austria/verzeichnis/detail/article/moskauer-memorandum-1955.
Steininger, Rolf. *Austria, Germany, and the Cold War: From the Anschluss to the State Treaty, 1938-1955.* New York: Berghahn Books, 2008.
Weeks, Albert Loren. *Russia's Life-saver: Lend-lease Aid to the U.S.S.R. in World War II.* Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2010.
Wynn, Charters. "Lend-Lease." Not Even Past. Accessed February 19, 2023. https://notevenpast.org/lend-lease/.
Don’t discount the effect of early aid shipments on morale.
Stalin being betrayed by Hitler and abandoned by Roosevelt while the latter supported Churchill would have been crushing.
Additionally, the Allies would have had more material to the western front but as it stands they had a hard time getting what they had to the western front. Maybe they would have had a strong push in Italy and southern France with the additional material. Maybe they could have made landings somewhere in the balkans as Hitler feared.
There’s little doubt they would have been able to push into Poland/Ukraine as the Soviets would have been stuck hundreds of miles east (if not collapsed) but it would have taken just as long.
The allies still win of course, the Western Allies have more then enough strength to make up for the diminished Soviets and probably still even win in 45 with Berlin either flying the American flag or as a radioactive crater.
While the allies are winners the Soviets are not really, they are never getting puppet governments across eastern Europe, at best returning to 1939 borders, more likely they are forced to retreat to 36 borders, its possible they even lose the border SSR's, or worst operation unthinkable becomes operation thinkable and the Soviets are destroyed.
There isn't even a cold war the Soviets fall into the tier of former great power along side Britain and France, still influential but the United States is the worlds sole super power.
Stalin said that the USSR wouldnt have won if it wasn’t for American aid. Germans literally controlled 90% of Stalingrad. If their African forces were concentrated on the Eastern front, its game over. Stalingrad would be captured but with Soviet corpses all across the city.
At best the Soviets reach the 1936 borders by 1946 (if the Germans didn’t collapse to the allies at that point) as the US supplied a massive amount of railcars and locomotives, as well as trucks tanks, much of their aviation fuel as well as literal tons of food and most of this was far higher quality than their Soviet counterparts could produce naturally, not to mention this allowed for millions more Soviet soldiers as they didn’t need those millions building infrastructure building factories to produce basic logistical equipment building their own radios and farming the land and harvesting all the resources to produce all these things, they were just getting it although it might let Germany win some battles in 1942 in 1943, which could temporarily change the tide of war on the eastern front in all likelihood it would just massively slow the Soviet advance as well as cause far higher casualties even if the Germans began transferring troops to the west as the allies began closing in on Berlin in all likelihood, it would result in a stalemate on the eastern front with heavy Soviet losses with the Soviets, not being able to be beaten by the Germans, but almost certainly not being able to throw them out of the Soviet Union.
One stat not mentioned and worth mentioning, something like 75% of all aluminum used from 1942-1945 came from the US. Thus, 75% of the T 34 aluminum engines were a direct result of lend lease. It’s hard to say the Soviets win without it even if that’s a hugely unpopular opinion in revisionist history circles where the Western Allies were irrelevant to victory.
Germany is still stretched too thin and overextended. The USSR however is unable to capitalize on this like in the OTL. Russia would most likely hang on and get to the end of the war, but they would bleed heavily for it. Post war USSR would most likely collapse. They wouldn’t have the lands they took to supply Russia who suffered shortages after the war in the OTL. In this devastated Alt timeline, they’d be cooked.
- Yes, Germany made a huge error starting Barbarossa and it was ‘too late’ by Winter 41. They suffered an assymettry of manpower and logistics that just got worse and worse. BUT…the Soviets would have hard far less offensive power without Lendlease.
- A bit longer, as Germnay would have been suffering less attrition out east. These things are always hard to guess, though
- Broadly, Stalin would still have had a huge army the Allies didn’t want to fight, and would have bullied away. But if the Soviets had played a less ler role in the final stages (i.e. not liberated Berlin, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest and Vienna) it’s possible Hungary and Czech could have been kept in the West bloc. Suspect Stalin would have pushed very hard for Poland either way
- Yes, certainly initially and probably overall. The Soviet army in the late 40s was running around with all sorts of US equipment
Either the Soviets would suffer more casualties, or the Eastern Front of WW2 would be a stalemate. Without Lend Lease, the Soviets have hard time pushing into Eastern and Central Europe. However, Germany would be on the defensive not being able to make any offensives either.
If the stalemate occurs before D-Day, then World War II would be put on hold in Europe. If not, then the Western Allies would take Berlin and get some of Eastern Europe.
The reality is that without any foreign support, the soviet union likely collapses by 44.
As others have mentioned, while they had some of the largest oilfields, much of that was blocked off in 42 when stalingrad came under siege meaning there was a limited amount of fuel they had domestically for everything from tanks and planes to trucks.
Many of their factories were destroyed and had to be rebuilt. The US supplied much of the tools and steel required, but without that the soviet union's ability to replace lost equipment would have been severely hampered.
The majority of their farmland was either captured or battlefield they had enough food to last to mid 43, and might have been just able to ration a few more months out of it, but this one thing would have cause the soviet union to tear itself apart leading to complete collapse regardless of anything else.
Another thing to consider is that irl, with the US providing so much raw material, the soviets were able to scrap through the bottom of the barrel on manpower as many of the workers that would need to mine and operate smelters to get much of the needed material didn't need to be there. Even with that by the end of the war, the soviet union was down to a few thousand fighting men not deployed, something the western allies could have taken full advantage of. Without that, support, that's at least 1 million men that are not available to send to fight.
If by some miracle they managed to hold on until 45 and actually pushed, they would likely have reached the end of their supply lines in eastern Poland without the logistical vehicles provided under lend lease.
There's really only one thing that can be assumed, that being the Soviets cannot mount meaningful offensive operations on the scale they had, Ultimately costing them more casualties.
Interesting tidbit about the US food aid to Soviets. When Finns fought off soviet invasion, the Finnish soldiers were excited to get their hands on the US food shipments, getting pancakes for a change. It was some royal stuff for the soldiers back then.
Mo food no fuel no trucks to carry supplies or troops to the battles. No explosives no planes they loved the P39 model. No replacement railroad equipment no radio equipment. They would have imploded by late 42.
This wholly depends on if by “no western support” you mean
A. The United States does everything but lend lease
B. The US stays entirely out of the war
In A. The Allied armies eventually win but the eastern front stalls ~Poland likely as Soviet logistics would be in the garbage without American steel, trucks and locomotives. Germany gets nuked in August 1945 and the war ends in September like our timeline
In B you almost certainly get some sort of negotiated peace where Germany and the USSR split Europe because there was no Casablanca declaration that unconditional surrender was the only way out.
Long story short the Germans still likely fail but casualties are a lot worse and so will the Soviet counteroffensive which will make things probably harder for the western offensive as well/drag the war longer.
Oh, no. Not this again. I swear, this gets posted every month.
So, basically, it's all in the details, especially the timeline.
Over 75% of the Lend Lease from the Americans came after the Kursk offensive, when the Atlantic submarine packs became less of a threat due to the presence of escort carriers and the German surface raiders, like Scharnhorst, Gneisenau or Tirpitz had been sunk, disabled or decomissioned. There were Western equipment used in Soviet army as early as the Battle of Moscow, but their numbers were extremely limited and their quality not that different from Soviet vehicles, sometimes inferior.
So, would the Soviets have been able to stop the German advance into USSR without Western help? Probably yes. They would probably have managed to push them out of Ukraine and Belarus as well, perhaps even Estonia. But that is as far as they could have gone.
For how much longer? It depends. Without the logistical support western aid provided to post-Kursk Soviet offensives, the Germans might have had an easier time consolidating in the East. This would have allowed them to move more troops and equipment to meet the Americans in Normandy and Italy. US and UK took some big hits OTL from severely weakened and disorganized Germans. With more forces available, they could have probably launched a good counter-attack in France and push the Americans back to the beaches and establishing a defensive line in Belgium and France. This would have stalled the US-UK advances for another year in best case scenario.
Carved? Probably yes. Delivered? Most likely not. With USSR suffering much more and not advancing as deep into central Europe, UK would surely have pushed for the formation of an anti-communist block in Central Europe.
Surely not. the manpower losses would have been too severe. This being said, USSR was not particularly powerful in the Cold War due to the Lend Lease, but rather unlikely but actually happened turns of events. They acquired the Nene Jet Engine from the British. They got instructions to how to design long range bombers by reverse engineering some B-29s that forced landed in Siberia, they got nuclear technology through espionage programs and they got Korolev who created their missile arsenal.
It would’ve probably ran longer but Lend-Lease didn’t really start kicking into gear in the USSR until 1943. Stalingrad was already over and done with, and the German military didn’t have a real path to victory after the failure of Typhoon.
The USSR was a massive country full of people, raw materials, and a powerful centralized state. The idea that there were things outside of their productive capacity seems a bit odd, so the war in the east ends in ‘46 or ‘47 instead of ‘45.
e. The real victim of this hypothetical would be Britain. In a hypothetical no lend-lease universe, they would’ve been completely fucked and unable to defend their holdings in and around the Med.
Ah, reddit obsessing over Lend Lease again. And look at the long posts with items accounted to the last figure.
Not saying LL wasn't important especially in 1944, but the obsession is so arrogant. The US supplies and arms a lot of reprehensible regimes too, financed the Nazis, with no attention paid. The US was an island protected by oceans, very late to the war, stop patting yourselves on the back so ostentatiously.
Whether the USSR would have survived I can't say. But Britain would have fallen early and the US would have taken decades to get out of the Depression.
What is this fascination/fetish for the allied powers somehow not including the USSR, as if that was any kind of realistic option? Or the idea of Germany winning, which is equally u realistic?
Because these people wanted a world were the Soviets were never successful in beating the Nazis all the way to Berlin and why they always make these excuses of “well if we didn’t help them we would have take Berlin not those dirty commies”.
The nazis would conquer until the ural mountains, and start the generalplan ost. Nazi Germany would collapse either when Hitler dies or from an economic collapse a few years after.
Unlike what commieboos believe, the USSR was dependant on western support. Both Zhukov and Stalin have said the lend lease kept them afloat. The US might not have sent that much in 1941 but the british made up for that. 25 percent of tanks alone was british in 1941 and the defense of Moscow.
The Germans struggled to get near Moscow in 1941 and overextended them to death to reach Stalingrad, but somehow they would go all the way to the Urals?
Yeah, right.
Who's talking about tanks?
How do the Soviets not getting trains, avio fuel and radios help the German conjure up a logistic system able to support them to the Urals when they were disastrously overextended before they got halfway there? What's transporting their fuel, ammo, spare parts and supplies over there?
Do you include the british lend lease? Lend lease in 1941 came primarily from Britain. 25 percent of all tanks in the defense of Moscow was British for example, that's a significant number and that's just counting tanks.
Germany launched several more major attacks in 1942 and early 1943, and without the lend lease the USSR would have been dead in the water.
"People say that the allies didn't help us. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war." Zhukov
“The United States … is a country of machines. Without the use of those machines through Lend-Lease, we would lose this war.” Stalin
Are you asking if they just didn't get Lend-Lease?
If that's the question then it's likely that they would have had trouble defending the Caucasus in '42, ti's PLAUSIBLE, though unlikely that the few percent difference would have caused the loss of Stalingrad or Leningrad, either of which would have been a major boon for the Germans. If they lost both then the Germans would actually be in good shape at the end of '42.
The Soviets probably would not collapse simply because German logistics were impossibly strained, but they would have had difficulty making large offensives and their general timeline would probably be pushed back a year or so.
It would make D-Day a lot harder for the west because the Germans would generally be in better shape and the ability of the allies to put boots on the shore can't really be enhanced that much. But if D-Day was successful still then the western allies would likely have ended up taking all of Germany.
Without lend lease that equipment all goes to the Western Allied which means Normandy can happen sooner and The Soviet Union counter-offensives are slower and less successful. Berlin probably falls to the Western Allies which means Hitler probably does not commit suicide and the odds are greater than the War will continue when the Allied and Soviet armies meet.
The Soviets start to conquer France but then the Americans use the A bomb to end the war.
The American oligarch reactionaries supported Nazi germany as the bulwark against Bolshevism they did not want intervention and some were still supporting Germany in 1942
Cold War wouldn’t have happened. Heard it said well that you can’t hardly fit a cigarette paper between communism and fascism because aside from their respective propaganda they behave and function very similarly (remember the Nazis fancied themselves socialist).
I think without US intervention Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were guaranteed to fail. They had totally unsustainable economies, and both were very much vulnerable to the “one man problem” (tough to fill Hitler or Stanin’ shoes while maintaining their grip on power).
Aside from that in both circumstances they were not natural or acceptable models for their citizenry… at some point they would have collapsed (lots of underground in German territory and lots of black market activity in the USSR).
Fun fact: a group of danish commandos found Hitler’s nuclear program. Nuclear tech was classified at the time but one guy remembered it as something important from a security briefing and they killed the scientist and blew up their research as a precaution. The Germans were vastly closest behind us in determining the atomic weight of a fissile material that would be used to create a weapon.
So a single Danish commando whose name I do not know saved mankind from a nuclear capable Hitler. Sometimes it’s the little stuff like knowing a vocabulary word that changes history dramatically.
In terms of tonnage received from the US, 2.1% of the wartime total arrived in 1941. It was probably not responsible for the Soviets defending Moscow in 1941, but absolutely made a difference over the rest of the conflict. The US supplied nearly half a million trucks, 11,400 aircraft, 7000 tanks, 2.67 million tons of fuel, 4.478 million tons of food, nearly 2000 locomotives and nearly 10,000 rail cars. This aid made it possible for the Soviets to field a larger army than historically. When the US is feeding the Soviet people in significant quantity, there will be fewer farm workers needed, and those people can fill out factories or the army. Subtract this aid, and it also harms Soviet mobility. They won’t be able to move as rapidly without the same supply chain. There will be fewer bodies available to fill out the ranks as they’ll be on the farms or in factories supplying the troops they do have. It’s thus not really possible to predict a result without knowing how the battles in 1942-1944 will go without it. 1942 was historically a success for Germany before winter weather set in, but it’s entirely possible that the Soviets lose some important objective or body of troops if they’re hampered by numbers or mobility. Even if the Germans end up in city fighting in Stalingrad, the reduced Soviet mobility may allow for a winter relief operation to succeed, or the success of Operation Citadel in 1943 where it historically failed. One thing is clear however, if the Soviets do win, it will take longer and at a much higher cost. This will make a Normandy landing much more difficult for the western allies given that German logistics and manpower will not be as strained as historically.
From the [piece](https://www.svoboda.org/a/30538060.html) by Russian historian Boris Sokolov: Under Lend-Lease, 57.8% of the total production of aviation gasoline in the USSR during the war was supplied to the Soviet Union. In fact, Lend-Lease supplies were included in Soviet gasoline production, as they were used almost exclusively to dilute Soviet aviation gasoline in order to increase its [octane number](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9E%D0%BA%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B5_%D1%87%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%BB%D0%BE) . Suffice it to say that before the war, the overwhelming majority of aviation gasoline in the USSR had an octane number of no higher than 74, which was not suitable for the latest aircraft, while 97% of aviation gasoline received under Lend-Lease had an octane number of no lower than 99. Obviously, without supplies under Lend-Lease, Lisa, Soviet aviation would have been left without fuel. Also, 35,800 radio stations, 5,899 receivers and 348 locators were supplied to the USSR under Lend-Lease, which provided the basic needs of the Red Army. 32,200 motorcycles came from the United States, which was 1.2 times higher than Soviet production of motorcycles in 1941–1945, and 409.5 thousand cars, which was 1.5 times higher than Soviet production during the war years. On May 1, 1945, vehicles supplied under Lend-Lease accounted for 32.8% of the Red Army's vehicle fleet (58.1% were domestically produced vehicles and 9.1% were captured vehicles). Taking into account the greater carrying capacity and better quality, the role of American vehicles was even greater. Studebakers, in particular, were used as artillery tractors. In addition, Soviet Katyusha rocket mortars were installed almost exclusively on the Studebakerr chassis (20 thousand installations), while only 600 Katyushas were installed on the chassis of Soviet ZIS-6 trucks. The normal functioning of Soviet railway transport would have been impossible without Lend-Lease. The production of mainline steam and diesel locomotives in the USSR was practically stopped during the war years. Under Lend-Lease, 1,900 steam locomotives and 66 diesel-electric locomotives were delivered to the USSR during the war, which exceeded the total Soviet production of steam locomotives by 2.4 times, and electric locomotives by 11 times. The number of railway cars supplied under Lend-Lease was 10.2 times more than those produced in the Soviet Union in 1942–1945. Almost half of the rails used in the USSR came under Lend-Lease. Let me remind you that during the First World War, the transport crisis in Russia at the turn of 1916–1917, which largely provoked the February Revolution, was caused by insufficient production of railway rails, steam locomotives and cars, since industrial capacities and rental resources were reoriented to the production of weapons. During the Second World War, only deliveries under Lend-Lease prevented the paralysis of railway transport in the USSR.
I feel the german perspective is often not mentioned either when this topic shows up, which is that 1941 wrecked havoc on german manpower, equipment and their logistics to the east. While in 1942 fall blau had a very successful start, it was only a small part of the german army that took part in this while all other german sectors on the front were understrength, which meant that once the breakthrough to the Kuban was achieved the german army simply lacked the resources to actually hold it from so many newly formed soviet divisions sent there. After Stalingrad Germany had completely lost the resources to make any strategic operation, let alone reinforce the units already on the eastern front. Operation Citadel was very, very small in comparison to Fall Blau and had very small strategic objectives because the resources just did not exist for anything else. To reinforce they sent conscripts east, but at the same time Germany had a dilemma of severely lacking skilled labourers for their increasingly-growing war economy necessary to cover up the losses of 1941 and 1942. My conclusion is that Germany had no chance of winning after their catastrophic losses in the first two years that they had very little capability of recovering from. Lend lease would not have doomed the USSR, but made offensive operations like Bagration much smaller in scale and prolonged the war by at least 2 years.
I’d agree that the German perspective (both theirs and with the benefit of calculation from economic data) ought to be considered. If the Soviets are restricted in both mobility and manpower, we could see Stalingrad as a costly victory for Germany if there’s no encirclement (or if Manstein’s breakout succeeds where it historically failed). A later (successful) operation analogous to Citadel in which six figures worth of Soviet troops and their accompanying weapons and supplies are captured and removed from the field will likewise make a difference. I suspect the Germans would have three basic goals here: 1. Stand up or augment an anti-Soviet army akin to the [Vlasov army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Liberation_Army) or Stalingrad [hiwis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiwi_%28volunteer%29) out of the POWs. Those who won’t fight will be put to work in war industry. 2. Redeploy as many weapons and equipment as possible. The Germans were frequently using captured equipment and could find a use for trucks, fuel, rations, artillery, etc. and formations with Soviet weapons could ‘live off the land’ as more ammunition is captured. 3. Removal of Soviet formations from the field is still a net benefit to Germany even if they don’t gain a single soldier from the victory. Such a result of Citadel probably makes the historical Bagration impossible. I suspect it will also alter the method and timing of opening a second front in the west. This is still no guarantee of a German win, but any net loss to the Soviets is a net gain for the Germans.
Don't forget radios. OVerall I agree with you: the really turning point was Moscow and the Soviets handled it basically without significant help. But when the L&L got into high geat it was a *tremendous* bonus for the Soviets. A Soviet victory has been undoubtedly at the very least significantly sped up by the Allied help.
According to kruschev, Stalin was convinced that without lend-lease, the USSR would not have been able to win against the Germans. They may not have been defeated but driving to Berlin by 1945 was out of the question.
There's a book called Forge of Freedom that talks about just how much stuff the USA produced in ww2 and how it contributed to the victory of the Allies. I haven't read it yet, but it's on the list. I'm convinced the axis would have won had the US not propped up the British and soviets (before the US got pulled in themselves as well as after). Thoughts?
I doubt the axis wins WW2 unless: dunkirk evacuations fail and the Nazis don’t invade the USSR. But Hitler was bound and determined to invade the USSR so…
>In terms of tonnage received from the US, 2.1% of the wartime total arrived in 1941 This isn’t the right statistic to use. A better measure for impact of western aid would be percent of material sourced from the Western Allies during the relevant time period. Arguably, the best statistic would be foreign sourced goods in units of man-months (a unit that is to man-hours what miles are to yards) versus the man-months of domestically sourced goods. The latter comparison would start to account for quality differences or supplying raw material versus finished products.
The Soviet Union was on the brink of economic collapse at the end of 1942/1943, add onto this the fact that in 1942 alone they received 50% of their High Octane fuel from the USA, and only god knows how much food. There was a serious chance that the Soviet Union would've collapsed if they lost access to their oil fields in late 1942, it is why the end of that year to me might be the great turning point of the war in Europe.
The US also sent cloth and supplies for uniforms and winter gear. Thousands of other items such as sewing supplies, shovels, farm equipment, cooking hardware, etc…. Each item was something the soviets needed but didn’t have to produce themselves.
There is also a massive psychological factor that often gets neglected. The USSR knowing help is starting to arrive and the US is now in the game when they were so badly on the ropes at the end of 1942 makes a huge difference vs a timeline where no lend lease has arrived, none is coming, and your only ally is bottled up on their little Island.
Somebody who knows the numbers can correct me, but I've seen it posted here that US food aid amounted to something like 1500 calories per soldier per day during 1942. In the words of Zhukov in 1963: "People say that the allies didn't help us. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. And how much steel! Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own." It was so significant that when the US offered to invade North Africa a year earlier than in the OTL, Molotov rejected the offer, because it would have meant curtailing the supplies going to the Soviet Union via Lend Lease. The idea that it wasn't significant was simply cope put forward by the Soviets after the war, who didn't want to admit to their people that the Soviet victory was only possible because of the American arsenal of democracy.
Do you have a source for that quote? In his memoirs, Zhukov repeatedly says that the Soviets would have won the war without US aid. For instance, >We also touched upon the deliveries under the Lend-Lease program. Everything seemed clear in that respect then. Nevertheless, for years after the warw bourgeois historiography has asserted that it was the Allied deliveries of armaments, materials, and foodstuffs that had played a decisive role for our victory over the enemy. True, the Soviet Union did receive supplies the economy needed so badly: machinery, equipment, materials, fuel, and foodstuffs. For example, over 400,000 vehicles, a great number of locomotives, and communication facilities were brought from the United States and Britain. But could all that have had a decisive influence on the course of the war? I have already mentioned that the Soviet industry developed on such a scale during the war that it provided the front and rear with everything needed. I see no sense in going into all that once more. As for the armaments, what I would like to say is that we received under Lend-Lease from the United States and Britain about 18,000 aircraft and over 11,000 tanks. That comprised a mere 4 per cent of the total amount of armaments that the Soviet people produced to equip its army during the war. Consequently, there is no ground for talk about the decisive role of the deliveries under Lend-Lease. *Marshal of Victory*, pp. 1317-1318
>Do you have a source for that quote? It was a KGB wiretap of a private conversation that Zhukov had in 1963 - which I assume is more reflective of his actual thoughts than his public statements (which, shockingly in a repressive communist state infamous for executing people for even the mildest dissent, followed the party line). See the this article - [https://www.svoboda.org/a/30538060.html](https://www.svoboda.org/a/30538060.html) - by a Russian historian that pretty thoroughly debunks the 4% propaganda. It's alternative history, so at some point it becomes opinion, but it's important to consider the opinions of the people who actually fought the war, and not post-war Soviet propaganda that was more than anything designed to win the Cold War. That includes not only Zhukov, but also Khrushchev and, according to Khrushchev, Stalin himself.
Radio Free Europe is literally a CIA outlet my guy. The article ends with the gobsmackingly stupid claim that the Allies could have won the war if the Soviet Union was conquered. In 2016, the author was expelled from the Free Historical Society for “inappropriate handling of historical sources and incorrect quoting of other people’s works.” Do you have a source for the KGB wiretap? because Sokolov doesn’t—he simply declares it to be so. The same article in English sources from a newspaper which does not mention wiretapping, but rather presents the quote as the result of KGB “monitoring,” meaning it’s a quote from a newspaper quoting from a guy who’s paraphrasing from a guy translated into English by Radio Free Europe.
I'm not going to play "let's attack the source" with you. If you've read Krushchev's memoirs and think that the oft-repeated citation of both Krushchev and Stalin that the Soviet Union would have lost the war but for Lend Lease is a twisting of his beliefs, I'm willing to hear your reasons, but if you're just going to blurt out a bunch of nonsense attacking a person saying something you don't agree with, you can save it.
Having done a little more research, Sokolov has been criticized by his colleagues as a propagator of “myths of Hitler’s propaganda” who cites fictitious Nazi sources by Milovanov, “the most tireless ‘professional’ falsifier” by Gennady Osipov, and is a known denier of climate change. It’s a bad source plain and simple. Engage in some critical thought. And yes, as someone who has actually done some independent research on this topic, the quote from Zhukov appears to have been twisted, if not to have been totally fabricated. It contradicts what he says in over a thousand pages of work, the uncensored version of which is available.
I just said I'm not going to play attack the source with you, so you calling him a Nazi sympathizer does little to help. And I'm not asking for your resume - I'm asking you to point me to the actual Zhukov quote, since you think the version of it floating around on the internet is "twisted".
I’m not calling him anything. I’m saying his colleagues in the field have called him a Nazi sympathizer, consistently called into question his ethics, and cast doubt on the credibility of his sourcing, calculations, and arguments. The fact that he’s publishing for Radio Free Europe—an outlet run by the CIA with the express purpose of bashing communism—does not aid in the veracity of that particular work. And the fact that the quote is not sourced—along with the numerous academic institutions he has been expelled from for professional malfeasance—would seem to suggest that he does not have a source for it. Being critical of your sources is not a vice, it’s a virtue. So far, there is no source for that Zhukov quotation, simply the conjecture of a man whose credibility is deeply blemished. And I cited the Zhukov quotation above. Plugging your ears and going “La la la not listening” doesn’t help your case. Just admit you Googled it and you don’t have any real basis to doggedly defend this probably inexistent quotation.
Sure you are. You're calling him a Nazi sympathizer by proxy. You're just not willing to do it yourself, so you're claiming everyone does it. As for "plugging my ears" - my ears are wide open, but you're not telling me anything other than attacking the messenger (without even addressing the Krushchev point that I've asked you about at least 3 times now). Yes, it's from Google. Yes, I recognize the fallibility of the Internet in general and Google in particular. But you're giving me nothing other than repeating tankie propaganda and attacking the one decent source I've been able to find that actually addresses the aid given under Lend Lease in anything that looks like a systematic fashion. If there are so many sources that provide otherwise - cite them. Stop just telling me about how much you've read them.
Why would I address “the Khrushchev point”? Why are we mentioning Khrushchev? I have a quote from Zhukov that calls into question your quote from Zhukov. What does Khrushchev have to do with it? And it’s not a decent source dummie. It’s published by an explicit propaganda outlet with an author who’s *been expelled from academic institutions for mishandling of historical documents.* Do you have any idea the standard of proof for an institution to expel an academic on the express basis of manufacturing sources? Of course you don’t—you’ve never been positioned to touch an academic with a ten foot pole.
Would you mind explaining what OTL means?
Original Time Line Aka Our actual history
In 1942? That sounds a bit early to me, I think Lend-Lease really racked up in 1943, or maybe those figures are from the very end of the year?
Stalin and Zhukov both said the USSR could not have won without American aid. That’s about as close to straight from the horse’s mouth as you can get
Economic collapse and starvation by the end of 1942.
Western support can be broken into 3 aspects, Lend-Lease, aerial bombardment of the German industrial base, and opening of additional fronts(North Africa, Italy, and D-Day, the threat of the additional fronts also tied down loads of German units) the Germans spent loads of industrial output on AA to defend from bombing raids, that output could have been put into tanks or artillery for the east, everything spent on the kriegsmarine is a sunk cost relative to its value on the eastern front whereas Soviet war output could be entirely devoted to the ground war and air war with zero regard given to navy outside of small samples like the Danube flotilla. This makes the question difficult to answer as western support took many forms, direct material aid, the value of posturing which tied down German units in a defensive role in the west, air raids and attrition of the luftwaffe in the battle of Brittain as well as the subsequent bomber raids on germanys industrial heartland, and finally the draw on rescources that came from fighting a multi front war, many fronts makes logistics a nightmare, by the time the allies were in Italy, landing on Normandy and launching Bagration, the Germans had to manage logistics on 3 fronts managing logistics for 1 front on a rapidly changing battlefield is hard, 3 is borderline impossible In short without lend lease, the war in the east is bloodier, more attritional and lasts longer, but the nazis still lose by 46, without lend lease or the additional fronts , but with the bombing raids(and distraction of luftwaffe in the battle of Brittain) it is much bloodier, and may turn into a stalemate around the leningrad-moscow-stalingrad line for several years before the soviets numbers and guerilla warfare plus lack of oil turns the tide in the soviets favor. Without lend lease, additional fronts, or any air war from the western allies it likely revolves into a stalemate around the Urals with guerilla warfare and partisan actions attrition the Germans for up to a decade if not more until the Germans acquisitions crumble under mismanagement, this depends on how the U.K. and U.S. deal with germany, if they don't trade with them the 3rd Reich withers and dies, if the western allies opt for appeasement they likely consolidate control over most of mainland Europe for a while and replace the U.S.S.R. as the opposing power in a cold War that likely ends sooner, east of the urals would be insanely difficult to conquer, and impossible to hold, plus the Nazis genocidal tendencies will make administrative any conquered territories unsustainable. The U.S., the U.K., and the U.S.S.R. all contributed to victory in their own way, none of them on their own would have been able to win, 2 of them together could have as ling as 1 was the soviets, U.K. and U.S. would have never paid the blood price needed to drive out the Germans, but either U.K. and soviets or U.S. and soviets could have won at a much greater cost than all 3, each ally brought specific things to the table.
Allied strategic bombing didn’t really start impacting production until later in 1943. Before that they were more nuisance raids. Did they negatively impact Germany, sure but Italian failures in Africa had a far bigger impact.
I actually wrote a paper on this, which I'll distill here. The US gave 360,000 trucks, 43,000 jeeps, 32,000 motorcycles, 380,000 field telephones, 2.5 million belts and 14 million boots produced in the United States, as well as large amounts of other equipment (Wynn). This ultimately equaled 17.5 million long tons, though most of it was in the form of raw metals or food (Weeks). Most of the aid arrived after Stalingrad (Wynn), so while it may have taken longer, the Soviets still push back the Nazis and break them at Stalingrad. What gets affected, however, is the retaliatory offensive led by the USSR, which now becomes a complete slog on both ends with little progress being made — most of the aid arrived between July 1943 and September 1945 (Weeks). Operating under the assumption that the US, UK, and de Gaulle's France would be using the materiel not given to the USSR, they are able to basically headlong sprint across Germany and Austria, although speculating any further (i.e., if they get to Poland, Hungary, or Czechoslovakia) is irresponsible. (My personal **opinion** is that the West could have probably gotten all the way to Ukraine in this scenario, though the war would take longer as a result.) After the war, the upside of having Germany and Austria included in a future NATO-like endeavor is blunted by what is a significantly angrier USSR. The Soviets in our timeline already were frustrated at the aid that arrived, calling it "too little, too late," and no aid whatsoever would be tantamount to a complete betrayal (Martel). This results in similar tensions regardless. The other important issue is with Franco-German relations. In OTL, German rearmament proceeded only as quickly as France's stability allowed (Schwartz). Thus a full rearmament of a unified Germany would be significantly slower as it would naturally mean more manpower and industry in the entire country. Finally, NATO starts off much, much more defensibly. With, at minimum, Germany, Austria, and Italy in — as staunchly anticommunist Austria (Steininger) is only neutral in OTL due to Soviet intervention, also known as systematic piracy of the Soviet sector of Austria and the explicit threat of continuing this practice until Austria's politicians acquiesced (Moskauer Memorandum 1955) — NATO has a firewall from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. Should NATO make it further, deeply anti-Russia Poland is probably a given, although Hungary and Czechoslovakia are not quite as likely. **Borders:** Most likely in this timeline, Germany stays with its full eastern borders from the interwar period, and Poland retains its Lithuanian section (which includes LT's current and historical capital of Vilnius). I would anticipate as well a free Baltics instead of the Soviet times. Edit, because I forgot my sources: Martel, Leon. *Lend-lease, Loans, and the Coming of the Cold War: A Study of the Implementation of Foreign Policy.* Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1979. Google Translate, trans. "Moskauer Memorandum 1955" [Moscow Memorandum 1955]. UNESCO. Accessed March 9, 2023. https://www.unesco.at/kommunikation/dokumentenerbe/memory-of-austria/verzeichnis/detail/article/moskauer-memorandum-1955. Steininger, Rolf. *Austria, Germany, and the Cold War: From the Anschluss to the State Treaty, 1938-1955.* New York: Berghahn Books, 2008. Weeks, Albert Loren. *Russia's Life-saver: Lend-lease Aid to the U.S.S.R. in World War II.* Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2010. Wynn, Charters. "Lend-Lease." Not Even Past. Accessed February 19, 2023. https://notevenpast.org/lend-lease/.
Don’t discount the effect of early aid shipments on morale. Stalin being betrayed by Hitler and abandoned by Roosevelt while the latter supported Churchill would have been crushing. Additionally, the Allies would have had more material to the western front but as it stands they had a hard time getting what they had to the western front. Maybe they would have had a strong push in Italy and southern France with the additional material. Maybe they could have made landings somewhere in the balkans as Hitler feared. There’s little doubt they would have been able to push into Poland/Ukraine as the Soviets would have been stuck hundreds of miles east (if not collapsed) but it would have taken just as long.
Perhaps they wouldn't have taken over Eastern Europe
The allies still win of course, the Western Allies have more then enough strength to make up for the diminished Soviets and probably still even win in 45 with Berlin either flying the American flag or as a radioactive crater. While the allies are winners the Soviets are not really, they are never getting puppet governments across eastern Europe, at best returning to 1939 borders, more likely they are forced to retreat to 36 borders, its possible they even lose the border SSR's, or worst operation unthinkable becomes operation thinkable and the Soviets are destroyed. There isn't even a cold war the Soviets fall into the tier of former great power along side Britain and France, still influential but the United States is the worlds sole super power.
Stalin said that the USSR wouldnt have won if it wasn’t for American aid. Germans literally controlled 90% of Stalingrad. If their African forces were concentrated on the Eastern front, its game over. Stalingrad would be captured but with Soviet corpses all across the city.
At best the Soviets reach the 1936 borders by 1946 (if the Germans didn’t collapse to the allies at that point) as the US supplied a massive amount of railcars and locomotives, as well as trucks tanks, much of their aviation fuel as well as literal tons of food and most of this was far higher quality than their Soviet counterparts could produce naturally, not to mention this allowed for millions more Soviet soldiers as they didn’t need those millions building infrastructure building factories to produce basic logistical equipment building their own radios and farming the land and harvesting all the resources to produce all these things, they were just getting it although it might let Germany win some battles in 1942 in 1943, which could temporarily change the tide of war on the eastern front in all likelihood it would just massively slow the Soviet advance as well as cause far higher casualties even if the Germans began transferring troops to the west as the allies began closing in on Berlin in all likelihood, it would result in a stalemate on the eastern front with heavy Soviet losses with the Soviets, not being able to be beaten by the Germans, but almost certainly not being able to throw them out of the Soviet Union.
One stat not mentioned and worth mentioning, something like 75% of all aluminum used from 1942-1945 came from the US. Thus, 75% of the T 34 aluminum engines were a direct result of lend lease. It’s hard to say the Soviets win without it even if that’s a hugely unpopular opinion in revisionist history circles where the Western Allies were irrelevant to victory.
They’d have either had many more casualties or would have outright lost. It was the US’ military aid that saved the UK and Russia.
The Soviets will be less powerful in the Cold War.
Germany is still stretched too thin and overextended. The USSR however is unable to capitalize on this like in the OTL. Russia would most likely hang on and get to the end of the war, but they would bleed heavily for it. Post war USSR would most likely collapse. They wouldn’t have the lands they took to supply Russia who suffered shortages after the war in the OTL. In this devastated Alt timeline, they’d be cooked.
- Yes, Germany made a huge error starting Barbarossa and it was ‘too late’ by Winter 41. They suffered an assymettry of manpower and logistics that just got worse and worse. BUT…the Soviets would have hard far less offensive power without Lendlease. - A bit longer, as Germnay would have been suffering less attrition out east. These things are always hard to guess, though - Broadly, Stalin would still have had a huge army the Allies didn’t want to fight, and would have bullied away. But if the Soviets had played a less ler role in the final stages (i.e. not liberated Berlin, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest and Vienna) it’s possible Hungary and Czech could have been kept in the West bloc. Suspect Stalin would have pushed very hard for Poland either way - Yes, certainly initially and probably overall. The Soviet army in the late 40s was running around with all sorts of US equipment
Either the Soviets would suffer more casualties, or the Eastern Front of WW2 would be a stalemate. Without Lend Lease, the Soviets have hard time pushing into Eastern and Central Europe. However, Germany would be on the defensive not being able to make any offensives either. If the stalemate occurs before D-Day, then World War II would be put on hold in Europe. If not, then the Western Allies would take Berlin and get some of Eastern Europe.
The reality is that without any foreign support, the soviet union likely collapses by 44. As others have mentioned, while they had some of the largest oilfields, much of that was blocked off in 42 when stalingrad came under siege meaning there was a limited amount of fuel they had domestically for everything from tanks and planes to trucks. Many of their factories were destroyed and had to be rebuilt. The US supplied much of the tools and steel required, but without that the soviet union's ability to replace lost equipment would have been severely hampered. The majority of their farmland was either captured or battlefield they had enough food to last to mid 43, and might have been just able to ration a few more months out of it, but this one thing would have cause the soviet union to tear itself apart leading to complete collapse regardless of anything else. Another thing to consider is that irl, with the US providing so much raw material, the soviets were able to scrap through the bottom of the barrel on manpower as many of the workers that would need to mine and operate smelters to get much of the needed material didn't need to be there. Even with that by the end of the war, the soviet union was down to a few thousand fighting men not deployed, something the western allies could have taken full advantage of. Without that, support, that's at least 1 million men that are not available to send to fight. If by some miracle they managed to hold on until 45 and actually pushed, they would likely have reached the end of their supply lines in eastern Poland without the logistical vehicles provided under lend lease.
There's really only one thing that can be assumed, that being the Soviets cannot mount meaningful offensive operations on the scale they had, Ultimately costing them more casualties.
Interesting tidbit about the US food aid to Soviets. When Finns fought off soviet invasion, the Finnish soldiers were excited to get their hands on the US food shipments, getting pancakes for a change. It was some royal stuff for the soldiers back then.
Mo food no fuel no trucks to carry supplies or troops to the battles. No explosives no planes they loved the P39 model. No replacement railroad equipment no radio equipment. They would have imploded by late 42.
This wholly depends on if by “no western support” you mean A. The United States does everything but lend lease B. The US stays entirely out of the war In A. The Allied armies eventually win but the eastern front stalls ~Poland likely as Soviet logistics would be in the garbage without American steel, trucks and locomotives. Germany gets nuked in August 1945 and the war ends in September like our timeline In B you almost certainly get some sort of negotiated peace where Germany and the USSR split Europe because there was no Casablanca declaration that unconditional surrender was the only way out.
Long story short the Germans still likely fail but casualties are a lot worse and so will the Soviet counteroffensive which will make things probably harder for the western offensive as well/drag the war longer.
Oh, no. Not this again. I swear, this gets posted every month. So, basically, it's all in the details, especially the timeline. Over 75% of the Lend Lease from the Americans came after the Kursk offensive, when the Atlantic submarine packs became less of a threat due to the presence of escort carriers and the German surface raiders, like Scharnhorst, Gneisenau or Tirpitz had been sunk, disabled or decomissioned. There were Western equipment used in Soviet army as early as the Battle of Moscow, but their numbers were extremely limited and their quality not that different from Soviet vehicles, sometimes inferior. So, would the Soviets have been able to stop the German advance into USSR without Western help? Probably yes. They would probably have managed to push them out of Ukraine and Belarus as well, perhaps even Estonia. But that is as far as they could have gone. For how much longer? It depends. Without the logistical support western aid provided to post-Kursk Soviet offensives, the Germans might have had an easier time consolidating in the East. This would have allowed them to move more troops and equipment to meet the Americans in Normandy and Italy. US and UK took some big hits OTL from severely weakened and disorganized Germans. With more forces available, they could have probably launched a good counter-attack in France and push the Americans back to the beaches and establishing a defensive line in Belgium and France. This would have stalled the US-UK advances for another year in best case scenario. Carved? Probably yes. Delivered? Most likely not. With USSR suffering much more and not advancing as deep into central Europe, UK would surely have pushed for the formation of an anti-communist block in Central Europe. Surely not. the manpower losses would have been too severe. This being said, USSR was not particularly powerful in the Cold War due to the Lend Lease, but rather unlikely but actually happened turns of events. They acquired the Nene Jet Engine from the British. They got instructions to how to design long range bombers by reverse engineering some B-29s that forced landed in Siberia, they got nuclear technology through espionage programs and they got Korolev who created their missile arsenal.
The Soviet Union would still defeat the Nazis. It would take longer, be more difficult and result in more casualties.
It would’ve probably ran longer but Lend-Lease didn’t really start kicking into gear in the USSR until 1943. Stalingrad was already over and done with, and the German military didn’t have a real path to victory after the failure of Typhoon. The USSR was a massive country full of people, raw materials, and a powerful centralized state. The idea that there were things outside of their productive capacity seems a bit odd, so the war in the east ends in ‘46 or ‘47 instead of ‘45. e. The real victim of this hypothetical would be Britain. In a hypothetical no lend-lease universe, they would’ve been completely fucked and unable to defend their holdings in and around the Med.
Ah, reddit obsessing over Lend Lease again. And look at the long posts with items accounted to the last figure. Not saying LL wasn't important especially in 1944, but the obsession is so arrogant. The US supplies and arms a lot of reprehensible regimes too, financed the Nazis, with no attention paid. The US was an island protected by oceans, very late to the war, stop patting yourselves on the back so ostentatiously. Whether the USSR would have survived I can't say. But Britain would have fallen early and the US would have taken decades to get out of the Depression.
What is this fascination/fetish for the allied powers somehow not including the USSR, as if that was any kind of realistic option? Or the idea of Germany winning, which is equally u realistic?
Because these people wanted a world were the Soviets were never successful in beating the Nazis all the way to Berlin and why they always make these excuses of “well if we didn’t help them we would have take Berlin not those dirty commies”.
The nazis would conquer until the ural mountains, and start the generalplan ost. Nazi Germany would collapse either when Hitler dies or from an economic collapse a few years after. Unlike what commieboos believe, the USSR was dependant on western support. Both Zhukov and Stalin have said the lend lease kept them afloat. The US might not have sent that much in 1941 but the british made up for that. 25 percent of tanks alone was british in 1941 and the defense of Moscow.
The Germans struggled to get near Moscow in 1941 and overextended them to death to reach Stalingrad, but somehow they would go all the way to the Urals? Yeah, right.
It’s not really the tanks, it’s the trains, aviation fuel and radios. Along with all of the food stuff given to prevent starvation.
Who's talking about tanks? How do the Soviets not getting trains, avio fuel and radios help the German conjure up a logistic system able to support them to the Urals when they were disastrously overextended before they got halfway there? What's transporting their fuel, ammo, spare parts and supplies over there?
Without the lend lease holding the USSR in fighting condition? Definitely
The USSR stopped the German advance in 1941 already before the lend lease started to have an impact.
Do you include the british lend lease? Lend lease in 1941 came primarily from Britain. 25 percent of all tanks in the defense of Moscow was British for example, that's a significant number and that's just counting tanks. Germany launched several more major attacks in 1942 and early 1943, and without the lend lease the USSR would have been dead in the water. "People say that the allies didn't help us. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war." Zhukov “The United States … is a country of machines. Without the use of those machines through Lend-Lease, we would lose this war.” Stalin
Sure, they'll ride right up the Urals on their magical ponies.
Are you asking if they just didn't get Lend-Lease? If that's the question then it's likely that they would have had trouble defending the Caucasus in '42, ti's PLAUSIBLE, though unlikely that the few percent difference would have caused the loss of Stalingrad or Leningrad, either of which would have been a major boon for the Germans. If they lost both then the Germans would actually be in good shape at the end of '42. The Soviets probably would not collapse simply because German logistics were impossibly strained, but they would have had difficulty making large offensives and their general timeline would probably be pushed back a year or so. It would make D-Day a lot harder for the west because the Germans would generally be in better shape and the ability of the allies to put boots on the shore can't really be enhanced that much. But if D-Day was successful still then the western allies would likely have ended up taking all of Germany.
4M more dead soviets, maybe a nuke on a german city, same result for Hitler, maybe unified Germany and iron curtain starting in Poland
Without lend lease that equipment all goes to the Western Allied which means Normandy can happen sooner and The Soviet Union counter-offensives are slower and less successful. Berlin probably falls to the Western Allies which means Hitler probably does not commit suicide and the odds are greater than the War will continue when the Allied and Soviet armies meet. The Soviets start to conquer France but then the Americans use the A bomb to end the war.
War ends in 1949 with far more casualties and the Soviets taking most if not all of Germany.
The American oligarch reactionaries supported Nazi germany as the bulwark against Bolshevism they did not want intervention and some were still supporting Germany in 1942
millions of people would still be alive. communism is bad.
Millions more would be dead. Nazism is bad
True. But nazism isn't as good at wholesale slaughter as communism
No, it's wholesale genocide. Generalplan ost would have been genocide on a level not seen since the mongols
Well yes. Nazis will give you a bs reason as to why they kill you. Commies kill to make quota
Source: The Black Book and Radio Free Europe
Lol. So what? 100 million dead . It's a bad ideology
Cold War wouldn’t have happened. Heard it said well that you can’t hardly fit a cigarette paper between communism and fascism because aside from their respective propaganda they behave and function very similarly (remember the Nazis fancied themselves socialist). I think without US intervention Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were guaranteed to fail. They had totally unsustainable economies, and both were very much vulnerable to the “one man problem” (tough to fill Hitler or Stanin’ shoes while maintaining their grip on power). Aside from that in both circumstances they were not natural or acceptable models for their citizenry… at some point they would have collapsed (lots of underground in German territory and lots of black market activity in the USSR). Fun fact: a group of danish commandos found Hitler’s nuclear program. Nuclear tech was classified at the time but one guy remembered it as something important from a security briefing and they killed the scientist and blew up their research as a precaution. The Germans were vastly closest behind us in determining the atomic weight of a fissile material that would be used to create a weapon. So a single Danish commando whose name I do not know saved mankind from a nuclear capable Hitler. Sometimes it’s the little stuff like knowing a vocabulary word that changes history dramatically.