Real history question- how did the Soviets benefit from German deliveries 1939-1941?

raharris1973

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I'm not asking about net benefit (most would agree the Germans benefitted more from trade under the M-R pact), but while trading, the Soviets were not giving away supplies for free. They were pretty much insisting on on-time payments from the Germans in terms of coal, military and industrial tech, at least through the fall of France.

The Germans didn't pay up on all their obligations through June 22nd, but they did have exports to the USSR.

What use did the USSR make of them during the war?
 
The USSR needed complex machines and technology. They didn't have the infrastructure to produce those themselves in large enough quantities, so German trade to them allowed them to build the things that needed those machines.
 
Besides, all those swaths of land the Soviets were allowed to occupy in Poland and elsewhere, were also considered payment.
 
I believe there was talk of factories in the USSR which the Soviets would get half ownership of and use to produce weapons or such for the Germans. While getting full rein with their patents and designs.
 
Besides, all those swaths of land the Soviets were allowed to occupy in Poland and elsewhere, were also considered payment.

Were they? Can you quote the relevant treaty or secret protocol provision?


The Trade Agreement of early 1940 is what really counts. The Germans obtained not just a remarkable increase in the volumes of the previous Credit and Trade Agreements, but even more importantly a delay in their own deliveries, on the basis of the fact that they needed the Soviet raw materials to actually build what they would paid them with: military equipment, but above all machinery, machine tools, especially for military production (for instance, for the production of gun barrels and ammunition); in Schnurre's words: "industrial products, industrial processes and installations as well as war materiel".
With the German invasion in June 1941, in the end the Germans delivered what they were expected to only for some five months; they could take 15 months to deliver the compensation of the first 12 months of Soviet deliveries. They began as late as possible and sent as little as possible.
 
Some chemicals & alloys as well, tho the quantities were probably lower than scheduled. As with a number of other nations the Soviets were finding the Germans a poor credit risk & trade partner.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German–Soviet_Credit_Agreement_(1939)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German–Soviet_Commercial_Agreement_(1940)

The wikipedia links provide some information but what stands out from them is Soviet bargaining for and getting some naval technology.

It seems the Soviets undermined themselves with a silly navalism much like the Germans did in the early months of 1939 with their Z-Plan.

The Soviets at least should have stressed gaining machines, processes and goods with application to land and air warfare rather than naval.
 
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