Not agianst the discussion of the roles played by various allies and their effect on the war, per se. I do dislike the idea of playing one off against another as if it were an international competition. There was enough of that nonsense going on during the war between various senior generals and politicians. Meanwhile, people were dying.
Agree 100%!
Not quite - just as there is more than one way to kill a cat than thumping it with blunt objects, there is more than one way to fight a war. In the UK - with it’s chronic manpower shortage - the priority was to substitute machinery and capital for manpower as much as possible. This led to the bomber offensive, and a heavy reliance on tactical airpower and artillery over infantry and tanks. That essay assumes for the purposes of arguament that all the manpower displaced became infantry, and calculates that manpower by calculating the amount of labour required to produce a certain amount of income. In a higher wage economy such as the UK, the amount of manpower freed up by this will be less than in a relatively low wage economy such as the Soviet Union of the time.
Reading through it I think that he is working from two sets of figures - the dollar value of the net imports to the USSR from Russian data (i.e. that proportion of the Lend-Lease and purchased goods that actually reached Russia) and the breakdown of what left the US by type of goods. If so, then he is not counting the sunk goods in his calculation.
Good catch. Thinking about it, the cruiser HMS Edinburgh had divers sent down to it in the late 1980s to recover the rather large amount of gold bullion on board which the Soviet Union had sent to pay at least in part for the aid it was receiving. There was also at least some reverse Lend-Lease, although this will mainly be technical stuff and I suspect there wasn’t very much.
Again, written rather opaquely. I think what he has done is take the original figure for the entire year (1.75 million people) and distribute them evenly over the remaining parts of the economy that aren’t being propped up by lend-lease giving a new number for those available to the military (1.4 million people). It then scales to allow for the fact that lend-lease ramped up over the course of 1942 giving a figure of 1.8 million people by the end of 1942.
A lot probably depends on what they are actually doing. If they are agricultural workers, they’re going to eat pretty much the same amount no matter what they are doing so can be transferred straight to the military pool with no second-order effects. If they’re in a tank factory you get the second order effects of reduced tank production in addition to the demand for tanks to put them in. It looks like he is at least partially allowing for it, but I suspect as well that he isn’t allowing for it enough and is probably also overcompensating for the ramp-up effect. Transport links within the Soviet Union weren’t great, which means there will be a rather large delay between shipping the stuff to the dockside in Murmansk and mobilizing the displaced workers.
Also to produce things that it was very inefficient at producing itself, or where US equipment was in some way superior. Studebacker trucks were IIRC one such example, being the only vehicle apart from T-34s that could move off paved roads during the spring thaw.
No problems with that. What I’m trying to say is that somehow saying that because a country contributed X amount of goods they contributed the equivalent to Y amount of lives is nonsense. You can work out some trade-off figures (as I have been attempting to do) but they don’t take into account Patton’s dictum about forcing the other guy to die for his country, and neither do they take into account the fact that equipment can be replaced but lives cannot. Discussions like this always degenerate into willy-waving contests about how “my country is better than yours”, and I think are inherently unproductive.
to pdf27:
From the article:
The breakdown of the $1.35 billion in goods shipped in 1942 is as follows:
ЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕ…1.35ЕЕЕЕ5.0%ЕЕЕЕЕ.GNP (billion rubles)
Military Goods
.Ordnance & AmmunitionЕЕ…15.8ЕЕЕ.0.79%ЕЕЕЕЕ.1.26
.AircraftЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕ…22.4ЕЕЕ.1.12%ЕЕЕЕЕ.1.78
.TanksЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕ13.1ЕЕЕ.0.66%ЕЕЕЕЕ.1.05
.Motor VehiclesЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕ.11.0ЕЕЕ…0.55%ЕЕЕЕЕ0.87
.WatercraftЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕ…0.8ЕЕЕ…0.04%ЕЕЕЕ…0.06
Industrial GoodsЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕЕ23.1ЕЕЕ…1.16%ЕЕЕЕЕ1.84
Agricultural GoodsЕЕЕЕЕЕЕ…13.7ЕЕЕ…0.69%ЕЕЕЕ…1.10
The first column in the above chart represents the % of the total goods shipped by America to the Soviet Union. Note that in 1942, 27% of shipping was intercepted and did not reach Soviet Ports. However, as noted before, the goods that did reach the Soviet Union accounted for a 5% addition to the Soviet GNP in that year as accounted for by Voznesensky. If we assume that the ships sunk carried goods in rough proportion to what was initially shipped by the US, the second column would thus represent the addition to the Soviet economy broken out by goods shipped. The third column represent the value of the shipped goods in terms of the of the ruble value to the Soviet economy. The total of this column equals the net imports shown in an earlier chart of 7.9 billion rubles.
Well, I don’t get his logic. 7.9 bil is what USSR received in all kind of imports. Largest part of it is likely to be Lend-Lease.
But why does he look into the lost shipment: “If we assume that the ships sunk carried goods in rough proportion to what was initially shipped by the US…”? As I read it, the second column has numbers including the lost shipment. The second column leads to the third, which in total gives 7,9 bil. But 7.9 bil is what USSR received, i.e. without lost shipment. Contradiction.
I have only one explanation for it. The author errorneously counted the lost shipment in, but it’s amount app. coinsided with the amount of import that was not part of Lend-Lease, thus he ended up at the total of 7.9 bill that was recorded in the Soviet stats. So Lend-Lease accounted roughly for 73%, and import for money for 27% of total. Does it make sence?
If I am right then the real received Lend-Lease is not 7.9 bil (5%), but 0.73*7.9 = 5.7 billion (3.64%)
The number of people killed battling the Germans/Austrians seems to be very heavily skewed towards the USSR in the second world war. American and British battle deaths and deaths in captivity were comparatively light.
However, Russian contribution in the first World War is not considered decisive.
But again the goods on 30 billions$ this is a GREAT part of Britain war economy.
That’s true they prefered to get the war and transport ship and the sure-expensive hard bombers like B-17.
But the starting point is the simular the lend lise let the Britain to free the enourmous manpower resources which in times were more than in USSR.
That essay assumes for the purposes of arguament that all the manpower displaced became infantry, and calculates that manpower by calculating the amount of labour required to produce a certain amount of income. In a higher wage economy such as the UK, the amount of manpower freed up by this will be less than in a relatively low wage economy such as the Soviet Union of the time.
Again this is rather speculative. The higher/lower wage economy is just suggestion.
The main characteristic of effectivity of industry is the so called manshour. Do you exactly know how many the manhour demand the production of one soviet tank like T-34 or figter like La-5?
And how many man*hour was needed for the production of one Crusarer or one Spitfire?
Only having this figures we could to conclude the contrubution of Lend lise ointo the war economy of USSR and Britain.
Cheers.
What I think he’s getting at there is from that set of statistics he’s getting the breakdown of how much of each type of goods the Soviets imported via lend-lease. After all, it is theoretically possible that all the finished aircraft and nothing else were sunk by the Germans in convoy, but hardly likely. Thus, he is making - and saying that he is making - the assumption that if 30% of the value of goods leaving the US were a certain type of material, then 30% of the value of goods arriving at Murmansk were also that type of material.
The value of goods shipped to the Soviets comes from the other table showing the value of the entire Soviet economy. What I think he is doing is breaking that up by fractions of goods shipped to say that 30% of the X billion roubles was made up of product Y.
As I said before, it really isn’t very clear however.
pdf27,
I get his idea. I think it is a viable approach for the estimation of the Lend-Lease impact.
But I am sure he counted the amount of the sent goods, not received ones. And the difference, as you know, was 27%. So the received Lend-Lease, according to the article, turns to be 3.64% of Soviet GNP.
So the question were these 3.64% vital and decisive in 1942? I hope you understand, that when people see such low number they might get in doubt, that Lend-Lease was decisive for USSR in 1942.
A lot depends on just how much pressure the USSR was under in 1942. Given that battles for the year included such stellar Soviet successes as Kharkov and Rzhev-Vyazma (spelling?) ending the year with Stalingrad in full swing then I suspect it wouldn’t take much additional help to have a decisive impact. The Soviet Union at the time was in rather desperate straits…
I think we need some illustrations:
Why all forget Greece ? Battle for Crete caused a 2 months delay of Barbarossa so that the Russian Winter caught Germans in front of Moscow … Moreover the elite German Paratroop Corps was destroyed [both in morale and numbers ] and never was used in Eastern Front as scheduled …
So…
Reconsider your thoughts … Without Greece the Germans could have more chances to achieve a major victory against USSR during 1941…
The Germans only when to Greece in order to achieve victiory because the Italians couldn’t do it… hehe…
But I have to agree, Crete was an embarressment for Hitler and Goering (More over Goering)
Giasas Alexander!
Greetings to our friend from Greece! I have been to Patmos and Samos! It was amazing! Great people and great food!
Barbarossa was not delayed by 2 months because of Crete. It started 29 days after the beginning of the Battle for Crete and 22 days after the end of it.
Germany lost app. 6.000 troops to KIA and MIA, plus app. 12.000 wounded. That is, if I am not mistaken, the size of roughly 1.5 German infantry division.
Greeks constituted 25% of the Allied forces on the island (11.000 out of 40.000).
Alexander, if you think that lack of 18.000 troops would make significant impact on 3.600.000 strong army, I would dissagree with you. Even if you say that one German paratrooper is worse of 3 normal ones it does not make a difference that has reasonable impact, IMHO.
I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss Alexander’s comments, Egorka, or to chuck statistics about. Greece and the Balcans were very much a contributing factor in delaying the launch of Barbarossa, as Hitler was concerned to secure his oil supplies. With that in mind, he had to secure his southern flank, which included Crete.
On the other hand, what would be your explanation for the delay?
yes there is a point of mistake in what i wrote and thanks for correcting ! But even the 30 days is a considerable amount of time . This delay i think was as crucial , as the Enigma decryption or the Ultra programme …
About the numbers … Yes the caualties of GERMAN WEHRMACHT were not very high , but i think that lack of such elite forces had an impact in morale i think… And i know [correct me if i am wrong] tha the Germans use Paras only in one occasion during the Battle of Bulge , late 1944… Although the fought superbly in Monte Cassino as ordinary infantry .
Hi,
I am not dismissing his comment at all. And since when is it considered to be bad taste to present statistical data describing the event?
Both Balkan and Crete were contributing factor. Lets make a short fact list:
[b] duration participated German
[u] start days German troops losses [/u][/b]
Battle of Yugoslavia 09-april 12 700.000 500
Battle of Crete 20-may 10 35.000 16.000
Barbarossa 22-june 180 3.600.000 830.000
Barbarossa was initially planned for middle of May and then postponed by 6 weeks.
I agree that Yugoslavia compain may have had delaying effect. Obviously, not because of the casualties inflicted to Germans (500 troops!), but because large number of troops was involved and had to be moved. Transfer time of 1 division from Yugoslavia to Poland was about 7 days.
As you see from the data the Battle for Crete alone could NOT have delaying effect on Barbarossa (Battle of Greece as whole - yes, Battle of Crete - no).
This is because the amount of troops involved was very low. The relative casualties inflicted to Germans were very high, no doubt! If you notice, in Russia Vermacht was loosing in average 4.600 troops a day. In Crete - 1.600, but the German army there was 102 times smaller. As you see the fighting on Crete was very intencive!
So in conclusion to Alexanders post, IMHO battle of Crete had practicaly no effect on Barbarossa. This is not ment in any way to deminish the sacrifice of the fallen Greeks!
N.B: Just a side note, the muddy season (the muddy durt roads due to melting snow) was extra lond in 1941 in Russia. So the initial middle of May attack day may have to be postponed anyway, with or without of Battle of Balkan.
N.N.B: Besides, both Germany and USA/UK, prior to Barbarossa, were no concidering USSR capable of lasting longer than 7-9 weeks. USSR was viewed as “collosus on clay feet” - big but easy to crush. So it is possible that Hitler was thinking that he does not loose anything by shifting Barbarossa.
Alexander Papagos:
About the numbers … Yes the caualties of GERMAN WEHRMACHT were not very high , but i think that lack of such elite forces had an impact in morale i think.
Moral impact - yes, I agree with you.
Who said it was?
Although the early-mid stages of WWII seem like a titanic battle in which states struggle desperately Germany failed to mobilize its industrial might for the war. Its as if the reich did not realize it was even at war.
Warfare is far more than just how many people are involved. Had the reich actually produced as many weapons as they were capable of they might have been far more formidable.
Thermopylae, is probably one of the greatest examples of it not being about numbers and, incidentally, probably what Churchill was referring to with his comments regarding ‘fighting like Greek Heroes’ - the result of a Classical education.
It’s how data is presented, or mis-represented, that matters when using it to back up an opinion. Even then there are always intangibles.