I was wondering since we have so many Eastern European members on the Forum lately what they think of the US aid to the Soviet Union?
The US gave massive aid during the war in the form of food, uniforms, raw materials, fuel, trucks, jeeps etc.
Is it recognised today that so much aid was given?
Also would the Soviets still have been in the same position without this massive aid?
Here’s an example, a P-39 Aircobra:
It was sent to the Soviets while the American version was thought obsolete and relegated to duty in the Pacific theater, until newer aircraft could come online… The Red Air Force however saw its potential as a ground attack aircraft and tank buster, with a 37mm nose-mounted gun suitable for use against the first generation of Panzers…
More info: http://www.acepilots.com/planes/p39_airacobra.html
I had sincere hope that our Russian friends will answer first… but somewhat they are quiet… So, a few facts for start…
Below is the list of “goodies” supplied to soviet Russia by USA - excluding personal presents from Winston on behalf of UK.
Aircraft…14,795
Tanks…7,056
Jeeps…51,503
Trucks…375,883
Motorcycles…35,170
Tractors…8,071
Guns…8,218
Machine guns…131,633
Explosives…345,735 tons
Building equipment valued…$10,910,000
Railroad freight cars…11,155
Locomotives…1,981
Cargo ships…90
Submarine hunters…105
Torpedo boats…197
Ship engines…7,784
Food supplies…4,478,000 tons
Machines and equipment…$1,078,965,000
Noniron metals…802,000 tons
Petroleum products…2,670,000 tons
Chemicals…842,000 tons
Cotton…106,893,000 tons
Leather…49,860 tons
Tires…3,786,000
Army boots…15,417,000 pairs
List from Wikipedia is somewhat skewed. I think that instead of “guns” it should be “artillery pieces”. Also “machine guns” looks suspicious an probably includes machine guns of all types + submachine guns.
The list doesn’t include “a little bit” sent by Great Britain. I don’t have right now the full list of presents from Winston; (it is somwhere on a hard disc, but I cannot find it - I’ll keep looking as time permit.), below is very incomplete summary of major supplies. You can du some mathematic.
“To sum up the results of the lend-lease program as a whole, the Soviet Union received, over the war years, 21,795 planes, 12,056 tanks, 4,158 armored personnel carriers, 7,570 tractor trucks, 8,000 antiaircraft and 5,000 antitank guns, 132,000 machine-guns, 472 million artillery shells, 9,351 transceivers customized to Soviet-made fighter planes, 2.8 million tons of petroleum products, 102 ocean-going dry cargo vessels, 29 tankers, 23 sea tugboats and icebreakers, 433 combat ships and gunboats, as well as mobile bridges, railroad equipment, aircraft radar equipment, and many other items.”
http://www.oilru.com/or/23/390/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease
My comment to this list is simple. Do you know how many locomotives were produced in USSR between 22 of June 1941 and end of July 1945?
THE ANSWER IS “TWENTY” - just like that - 20. YES! - Two + Zero!
All soviet locomotive plants were converted and busily churning out T-34s and SUs. During Cold War all traces of Lend Lease and after UNRRA help were meticulously sanitized and removed; photos of soviet soldiers riding Shermans, Universal Carriers or manning AAA guns were excluded from books and never appeared in magazines. Students could learn about Lend Lease in two sentences in their textbooks.
Sentence number 1: “Imperialist Powers paid for the blood of Soviet soldiers with limited supplies of obsolete weapons, canned food and other war materiel which amounted to about 4% of total Soviet production during war”.
(I dont really know how to translate “Velikaya Otietshestviennaya Vojna” into English… sorry… it mean WWII, but starts in June 41 and finish May 45 - Japan doesn’t count…)
Sentence number 2. “Stavka and Stalin many times demanded opening of the second front in Western Europe, but Churchill stubbornly refused despite Roosevelt being symphatetic - supplies of “canned pork” - svinaya tuschonka - were the only support for Red Army until June 1944”.
It should be kept in mind that Russia was an ally of Japan throughout the war, that it had been the ally of Hitler during the first two years of the war, that its division of Poland with Germany started the war, that it was an agressive imperialist force that attacked Finland and subverted the Baltic states and Romanian Besarabia, that it had announced that it intended to take over the world and that most of the aid sent in 1945 was sent after Stalin’s February speech in which he said he would continue the war but against the United States.
I think that my post is becoming too large, than I will hold on with some other interesting facts until someone will answer. lol
Cheers,
Lancer44
Thats some nice info Lancer…thanks for the post.
The Brits also gave a lot of aid to the Soviet Union, convoys stsrted in 1941 and continued until 1945. There were even RAF aircraft sent to defend Murmansk.
Nice article here
http://lend-lease.airforce.ru/english/articles/sheppard/hurricanes/index.htm
It shoud be kept in mind Lancer, that you are great propaganda spreader.
USSR was not ally of Japan, it honored the non-aggression pact with Japan during the war.
USSR was not ally of Germany as well, it honored the non-aggression pact with Germany until Germany broke it 22 June 41.
About Bessarabia. It was part of Russian Empire 1812-1918. After WW1 Romania claimed it. In 1924 in Vienne talks Romania refused USSR offer of plebiscite in Bessarabia and later this year declared communist party out-of-the-law. Then so called ‘tatarburnar’ uprising came, which was dealt with by Romanian army using chemical weapons, several thousand people were killed. Bessarabia was Romanian until 1940, then it was Russian, then in 1941 it was Romanian again. In 41-43 there were number of atrocities made by Romanian army and police regiments which include burning 25,000 people, including children, alive in artillery warehouses in Odessa 19 October 1941. Romanian government admitted genocide in Bessarabia during the WW2, by the way.
Please quote the Stalin speech were he said he would continue the war against US, please.
Lend-lease. The truth, of course, is in between ‘lend-lease saved Russia’ and ‘lend-lease was nothing’.
It was help, but it was not any sort of generosity or something like that, as prof. Herring, american historian focused on lend-lease, clearly states. The only purpose of the lend-lease was to assist in the military defeat of Germany (only 24% of entire US aid was directed to USSR, BTW), and it was economically profitable for US. Of course it was not free - Russia still owe US what remained of the debt, 740 millions of dollars which USSR refused to pay in 70s and Russia is not going to pay either (and US don’t demand it), currently it’s suspended until 2030.
USSR supplied US as well during the war with raw materials, etc. Resources and industrial scale US aid was paid by USSR in gold during the war. Biggest help, i think, was food, esp. in 43-44.
OFF-TOPIC as a a reply:
Off-topic:
Comrade, it is not your fault but soviet/russian history books.
In the 15th century, the entire region was a part of the principality of Moldavia.
In 1484, the Turks invaded and captured Chilia and Cetatea Alba (Akkerman in Turkish), and annexed the shoreline southern part of Bessarabia, which was then divided into two sanjaks (districts) of the Ottoman Empire. In 1583, the central and northern parts of Bessarabia, as part of the principality of Moldavia was formally a vassal of the Ottoman Empire.
Map from aprox 1800.
Between 1711 and 1812, Russia occupied the region five times during wars between Ottoman Empire, Russia, and Austria. Between 1820 and 1846, the Gagauz tribes migrated to Russia via the Danube, after living many oppressive years under Ottoman rule, and settled in southern Bessarabia. Turkic-speaking tribes of the Nogai Horde also inhabited the Budjak Region of southern Bessarabia from the 16th to 18th centuries, but were totally driven out prior to 1812.
By the Treaty of Bucharest of 28th of May 1812 — concluding the Russo-Turkish War (1806-1812) — the Ottoman Empire ceded the Eastern half of the Principality of Moldavia to the Russian Empire. That region was then called Bessarabia. Prior to this year, the name was used only for approximately its southern one quarter, which as stated before was already under direct Ottoman control ever since 1484.
In 1859, Moldavia and Wallachia united as the Kingdom of Romania in 1866, including the Southern part of Bessarabia.
The Romanian War of Independence was fought in 1877-1878, with the help of the Russian allies. Although the treaty of alliance between Romania and Russia specified that Russia would respect the territorial integrity of Romania and not claim any part of Romania at the end of the war, by the Treaty of Berlin, the Southern part of Bessarabia was again annexed by Russia.
Incited by the Russian authorities, the Kishinev progrom took place in Bessarabia on 6th of April 1903. It was the first state-inspired action against Jews in the 20th century; 47 or 49 Jews were killed, 92 severely wounded and 700 houses destroyed.
After the Russian Revolution, a Romanian nationalist movement started to develop in Bessarabia. In the chaos brought by the Russian revolution of October 1917, a National Council (Sfatul Tarii) was established in Bessarabia, with 120 members elected from Bessarabia and 10 elected from Transnistria (the left shore of the river Dnister, inhabited by ethnic Moldavians/Romanians). On 24th of January 1918, Sfatul Ţării declared Bessarabia’s independence as the Moldavian Democratic Republic.
On 9th of April 1918: the Bessarabian legislature (Sfatul Ţării) voted in favor of unification with Romania with 86 votes in favor, 3 against and 36 abstentions. The union was confirmed by Romania’s Western allies in the Treaty of Paris (1920).
(As a passing-by Transylvania - “part” of the Austrian Empire - voted for union with Romania on 1st of December 1918. Also confirmed by the Treaty of Paris).
Romania between 1918-1940.
On 11th of May 1919, the Bessarabian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed as an autonomous part of Russian SFSR, but was abolished by the military forces of Poland and France in September 1919. After the victory of Bolshevist Russia in Russian Civil War, the Ukranian SSR was created in 1922, and in 1924, a strip of Ukrainian land on the left bank of the Dniester River was declared to be the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR).
The rest is known-history (Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, etc)
As for chemical weapons, it’s a big lie my friend. Posts will follows.
Since when Odessa is in Bessarabia???
Tatar-Bunar episode: http://depts.washington.edu/cartah/text_archive/clark/bc_28.shtml
More on Communist manouvers in Bessarabia: http://depts.washington.edu/cartah/text_archive/clark/bc_26.shtml
…chemical weapons, indeed…
I post it as I promised. Now back on topic. Sneaksie, what you think about US and British Empire aid to USSR?
Is there a list of British aid to Russia like the one lancer posted above? I have been looking but cant seem to find anything. Thanks for any help.
Found so far:
Britain supplied 5,800 planes, 4,292 tanks, and 12 minesweepers. Canada supplied 1,188 tanks, 842 armoured cars, nearly one million shells, and 208,000 tons of wheat and flour.
http://www.infoukes.com/history/ww2/page-09.html
I think it is pretty undisputable that the Soviets were supplied massively by the other Allies. But this is not the whole story.
Some key supplies were given that enabled the Soviets to concentrate their war production on other areas. For instance aircraft and avaition fuel in general was a decisive help. It provided the higher octane fuels that were required in higher performance engines.
Also trucks and railroad engines enabled them to concentrate production on armour, if this wasnt provided in massive qualntities as shown above the Soviets would have had to divert production to these.
Soviet operations such as bagration would have been near impossible without the transport provided and the Soviets would never have been as mobile, allowing the German forces to dance around them.
Another fundamental point here is that the Soviets could concentrate more manpower in their armed forces instead of having them in the production lines.
Logistics win modern wars and the Allies provided the logistic capability to the Soviets. I think this may put the theory that the Soviets could have defeated the Germans without aid to bed. It trully was an Allied effort all round.
Wow…you learn something new everyday, that’s a nice site with lots of good info. I never realized so many nations were involved in lend lease. Thanks for the post.
And the U.S. supplied a lot of Spam® , which I recall a Russian veteran extolling as a great ration, along with his bread and vodka…
What facts do you think are faulty in soviet/russian history books about Bessarabia?
The Romanian War of Independence was fought in 1877-1878, with the help of the Russian allies. Although the treaty of alliance between Romania and Russia specified that Russia would respect the territorial integrity of Romania and not claim any part of Romania at the end of the war, by the Treaty of Berlin, the Southern part of Bessarabia was again annexed by Russia.
What exactly do you call ‘Southern part of Bessarabia’ which was annexed by Russia? Borders are…?
Incited by the Russian authorities, the Kishinev progrom took place in Bessarabia on 6th of April 1903. It was the first state-inspired action against Jews in the 20th century; 47 or 49 Jews were killed, 92 severely wounded and 700 houses destroyed.
What sources make you think that Kishinev pogrom was incited by Russian authorities?
The rest of your post is informative but i don’t see where it contradicts whith mine so far. Bessarabia is a border region so it’s not surprising that it’s changed allegiance many times in history.
Since when Odessa is in Bessarabia???
These people were burned, in Bessarabia or outside it.
The rest of your post about more ancient history is informative but i don’t see where it contradicts whith mine so far. Bessarabia is a border region so it’s not surprising that it’s changed allegiance many times in history.
In production lines stayed women and children, only key specialists who were men were left - all others gone to front.
Logistics win modern wars and the Allies provided the logistic capability to the Soviets. I think this may put the theory that the Soviets could have defeated the Germans without aid to bed. It trully was an Allied effort all round.
You can put in bed anything you want, unless you impede others.
At no time was lend-lease food sufficient to feed more than 1.5% of the Soviet population, with the figure being 0.8% in 1942. I think it was a big help anyway.
I understand why you try to picture USSR as a stone age country populated by dumb people which were armed by good western friends to battle Germany, but it’s not the case. Lend-lease tanks were clearly inferior to home-made or to German tanks, for example. Biggest help was industrial-scale equipment, but for this equipment USSR paid in gold, it was not free (tanks and such were free, allied tanks which remained after war were delivered back to allies, as by contract), so the word ‘trade’ is much better than ‘aid’ in this case.
As i said before, truth is always lies in between two polar opinions. Your words ‘It trully was an Allied effort all round’ are one of them and they are laughable.
BTW, here is nice collection of documents concerning lend-lease:
http://lend-lease.airforce.ru/documents/index.htm
I think you missed my point Sneaksie. All soviet men could go to the front because the Soviets were massively supplied. Just as the British were massively supplied too. There is no need to avoid the facts just because the Soviets wanted to hide them.
What is wrong with recognising this? I freeley admit that the UK was given massive aid by the USA, which, unlike the Soviet Union, we repaid or in some cases are still repaying it.
Why doesnt Russia recognise this and try to hide the fact?
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/pearl/www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/lend.html
and here long reading but very interesting…
http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/wars/jordan/01.html
Cheers,
Lancer44
@Sneaksie
Reference: Bessarabia
Sneaksie, I am sick to open a new thread for all off-topic issues (even if are interesting for myself).
As for your off-topic questions regarding my off-topic post I’ll didn’t bother to answer you in this thread.
So if you like to have the last (and wrong) word be my guest.
It’s a pity that I didn’t learn anything new regarding Bessarabia from your post. I had only a deja-vu of an old communist conception.
What Really Happened? Well someone just set fire to their credibility here.
The Soviet Union did not “need” Lend-Lease to win, nor was it “saved” by Lend-lease any more than Britain was(which is at least more accurate).
Take a look at any objective source that details the production and industry of the Soviet Union in the years before the war. Check out how their production rose during the war.
Granted, Lend-lease was VERY helpful- but the Soviet victory simply did not hinge on it.
Sorry, I cant see the UK or USSR doing the same in ww2 without US aid.
I would be interested in why you think that either of these countries could have survived without US aid though. I find the discussions on this very interesting.
Participants in this discussion seem to ignore the positive impact of Lend Lease deliveries of industrial materials on the growth of military production of USSR.
Look here and think. Just take time to scroll and look at all positions.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/pe...6315/lend.html
Please do not look at LL delivered tanks and/or other weapons.
They vere inferior to best Germans and Soviet produced.
No one in a right sense will push opinion that delivery of Grant or Valentine tanks saved USSR.
They were “stop gap” measures - Allies gave USSR what they could at any time between September 1941 to late 1945.
In my honest opinion USSR would win in the long run without Lend Lease.
Even if Germans would be able to take Moscow and establish firm front on the Volga line they would not be able to harm industry behind Ural.
(On the other hand, I don’t think that Allies would be able to defeat Germany and Axis without USSR.)
There is no doubt that UK would not survive without deliveries from USA, Canada, Brasil and Argentina. Mainly food.
It is true that food deliveries to USSR amounted only to 0.8% or at most 1.2 percent needed to feed the biggest country in the world.
But how many civilians in USSR not starved because of it?
Not because they had been fed by America, but because Soviet troops had some food from Lend Lease and civilians did not need to send ALL their food to the front.
Questions of Lend Lease should concentrate on:
Lancer44