No Russians lend lease

Would russia be able to win against germany in ww2 without lend lease from England and U.S?

  • yes

  • no

  • maybe


Results are only viewable after voting.

Daniels

Banned
Except not..... So yeah, no effect there.
Ok - no matter with what evidence you are confronted with you allways dismiss it with a "yeah no effect here" so a further discussion is really pointless.

because even accepting your number is true, for some reason the Soviets have 10,000 tanks sitting around doing nothing (which is the main reason my eyebrows are going up at this number... it's basically claiming that the Soviets do not have the majority of their armor committed to the war. How does Krivosheev define "theater of operations"?),

1. Krivisheevs numbers not mine
2. Might it have occured to you that many tanks were on their way from the factories, many were beeing repaired and many were in the tank driving schools? If only 20% of all tanks fall into each category you get to 60% of the entire tank force which correlates quite well with the 12 000 out of 20 000 claimed by Krivosheev.
3. During Kursk the Soviets used "just" some 5000 tanks/sp guns - this indicates that they really had less than 10 000 avaliable or they would have used far more.

they could easily make up for the lack of lend-lease tanks by taking just 1/10th of that.
Then why did they not OTL? Why did they resort to using LL tanks most of which they saw as inferior? Answer: Because they had to.
 
Ok - no matter with what evidence you are confronted with you allways dismiss it with a "yeah no effect here" so a further discussion is really pointless.

I gave quite pointed reasoning for why it would ultimately have no effect.

1. Krivisheevs numbers not mine

Eh, you were using them, but fair enough.

2. Might it have occured to you that many tanks were on their way from the factories, many were being repaired and many were in the tank driving schools? If only 20% of all tanks fall into each category you get to 60% of the entire tank force which correlates quite well with the 12 000 out of 20 000 claimed by Krivosheev.

Except that would be an extraordinarily high proportion for any of the major combatants throughout the war. The Germans didn't have such a majority of their tanks off the frontlines. Nor did the Allied Expeditionary Force once they landed in Normandy. In particular the supposition that as much as 20% of Soviet tanks would still be en-route from the factories is particularly specious: it doesn't take so long to deliver armor from a factory as to be notable on a yearly count of tanks.

I can also note that your failing to apply that "50% not-operational" number to the lend-lease tanks themselves...

3. During Kursk the Soviets used "just" some 5000 tanks/sp guns - this indicates that they really had less than 10 000 avaliable or they would have used far more.

If one pretends the Kharkov-Kursk-Orel region was the entire Eastern Front and not just one section of it. The Soviets still had to have armor available to cover the regions near Smolensk, Leningrad, the Mius front, and near Velikie Luki, which all absorbed the rest of their armor.

I mean, back peddling too earlier, Mars and Uranus absorbed ~4,000 AFVs each. That's ~8,000 AFVs right there. That still leaves the armor deployed in the Caucasus, near Leningrad, around Staraya Russa, and the region between Kaluga and Voronezh.

Then why did they not OTL?

Because it was logistically convenient OTL to use lend-lease tanks at certain parts of the front. Pretty much all of the lend-lease tanks that arrived via Iran in 1942 wound up deployed in the Caucasus because... because, as one can tell by looking at a map, the arrival points for that armor was practically right on top of the frontline in strategic terms. If the Soviets have no other choice, though, they'll go through the trouble of bringing out armor from their stocks.

And, quite tellingly, for the big and important operations of the winter of 1942-43 (Mars and Uranus) they didn't use lend-lease tanks at all.
 
Last edited:

Daniels

Banned
Except that would be an extraordinarily high proportion for any of the major combatants throughout the war. The Germans didn't have such a majority of their tanks off the frontlines. Nor did the Allied Expeditionary Force once they landed in Normandy. In particular the supposition that as much as 20% of Soviet tanks would still be en-route from the factories is particularly specious: it doesn't take so long to deliver armor from a factory as to be notable on a yearly count of tanks. I can also note that your failing to apply that "50% not-operational" number to the lend-lease tanks themselves...

1.To transport tanks from the Urals to Kursk with one single rail line to Moscow takes more time than to transport tanks from Britain to France or from Germany to Byelorussia.

2. Who says that the Germans didnt have similar problems? Out of the 1500 tanks they had on the Eastern Front in March 1942 only 140 were servicable. Of 2500 tanks they had in April 1943 only 600 were servicable.

3. The Western Allies didnt have these problems because they had relatively short supply lines and the best ordonance system. The 3d Armored Division which entered combat in Normandy had 232 M4 Sherman tanks. During the European Campaign, the Division had some 648 Sherman tanks completely destroyed in combat and another 700 knocked out, repaired and put back into operation. This was a loss rate of 580 percent.Ordnance maintenance battalion compromised more than half of most Western divisions, while the Soviets had none. They had to ship the tanks back to the factories in the Urals which cost a lot of time.

4. Redgarding LL tanks - some 5000 reached the USSR in 1942, so if there were 1000 in Soviet tank units we can reasonably assume that these were operational. Especially considered that they were fresh from the factories and had a longer lifespan than Soviet tanks.

If one pretends the Kharkov-Kursk-Orel region was the entire Eastern Front and not just one section of it. The Soviets still had to have armor available to cover the regions near Smolensk, Leningrad, the Mius front, and near Velikie Luki, which all absorbed the rest of their armor.

The Germans had roughly 3000 tanks/spgs in the East in July 43 and over 2000 were used at Kursk - 2/3. If the Soviets really had some 20 000+ operational tanks then might you explain why they used only around 5000 or just 25% of their tank force there? I suspect that they had roughly 8000 to 10 000 as written by Krivosheev because then the 5000 tanks used at Kursk would represent 50-60% of their tank force - comparable to the German commitment.

I mean, back peddling too earlier, Mars and Uranus absorbed ~4,000 AFVs each. That's ~8,000 AFVs right there. That still leaves the armor deployed in the Caucasus, near Leningrad, around Staraya Russa, and the region between Kaluga and Voronezh.

According to Wiki Uranus used 900 tanks and Mars 1700= 2600. 4000 AFV´s were most likely used during both operations together but definitely not 8000.

Because it was logistically convenient OTL to use lend-lease tanks at certain parts of the front. If the Soviets have no other choice, though, they'll go through the trouble of bringing out armor from their stocks.

I disagree. To get more of their own tanks into the tank units they need time and energy to transport them and repair them. Time and energy which will be missing in other areas.

And, quite tellingly, for the big and important operations of the winter of 1942-43 (Mars and Uranus) they didn't use lend-lease tanks at all.

Unlikely - during the first 6 months of 43 the Soviets lost 5737 tanks of which 839 were LL models. Most of these tanks were lost during the first 3 months of 1943.
 
What bothers me in this thread is this: "Where do the extra supplies go?"

Someone accurately pointed out that almost _all_ the Lend Lease items were in primus: Excess to requirements of the British and US.

While accurate, it was because Britain didn't think about INDIA. And they starved during the War.

THERE is your POD. America feeds and equips India. Hell, add in the US gets wise to Japan in 1937, and begins preparing for war, and worst casing the situation, builds the Burma and then Ledo roads in 1938... so more LL to _China_ as well.
 

Deleted member 1487

How many divisions could lend lease create in allied countries maybe canada,Mexico with no Russia lend lease?
US lend-lease to the USSR IIRC was enough to equip 60 US divisions. So if you want to equip any nation's divisions to US standards, the answer is 60. Canada was tapped out for manpower, Mexico didn't really have enough trained men to equip, nor were they interested in sending more men than they did IOTL. Even equipping more Indian divisions would just mean being able to equip more to US standards quicker, rather than having more manpower to actually utilize. Frankly there was no place it made sense to send that equipment more than the USSR if that was an option.
 
By the time that the Germans have gotten to Moscow and Stalingrad they were massively extended over a very very very large front. The Germans armor going to get to the caucuses anytime soon.

The Soviets held with their backs to the wall, Stalin got a reprieve knowing help was on the way, planes, crap tanks are still tanks, tires, crap ton of trucks, food. Lend lease was quite important to not just moral but the actual war effort. Those tricks moved men and supplies.

Sure the Soviets still could do it on heir own, but it would cost more time and lives for a nation that was burning through both
 
About where extra resources go with no Russian I would expect that China would get a lot more (OTL they got a fraction of what wass assinged to them)
 
Top