Soviets invade the allies during operation downfall.
- Thread starter Pauh the federalist
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- operation downfall
I know about the rationing but I never heard about "famine" in the SU circa 1944, especially "Famine" (if this implies people dying in the really big numbers from starvation). There was a famine in 1947 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droughts_and_famines_in_Russia_and_the_Soviet_Union#1940s).
The question is what happens when LL stops. Sure the USSR can produce most of the manufactured goods that LL supplied, though not all of them. The problem is capacity. If a facility starts making spare parts for Studebaker trucks, it is not making spare parts for T-34s, or aircraft or whatever else it was making. Very rapidly not only military items but factories themselves live on cannibalizing. If a machine tool made in the USA needs repairing, once the inventory of spare parts is used up, it now is cannibalized and out of service, reducing output. OTL this did not matter because factories were able to shift away from the volume and mix needed for active war fighting to a more peacetime and reconstruction mode.
By fall, 1945, demobilization was bringing workers back in to production/farming from the military. Also the unimpeded looting of Eastern Europe was going on and efforts had begun for significant reconstruction. If the USSR is fighting the USA/UK very little of that is going on "unimpeded". If there is fighting going on then food production in the USSR is going to be disrupted, and the stores of rations that accumulated until the stoppage of LL will be burned through pretty quickly.
By fall, 1945, demobilization was bringing workers back in to production/farming from the military. Also the unimpeded looting of Eastern Europe was going on and efforts had begun for significant reconstruction. If the USSR is fighting the USA/UK very little of that is going on "unimpeded". If there is fighting going on then food production in the USSR is going to be disrupted, and the stores of rations that accumulated until the stoppage of LL will be burned through pretty quickly.
History Learner
Banned
Agreed. I really wish Art had more stuff and honestly I'm surprised.
I know, I was disappointed as well.
I'd be interested in you sharing the results, although I do heavily caution against using google translate as the basis for that; it nearly led to me failing Spanish classes before. Make a thread on AHF and see if one of them can translate?
Two big caveats here:
1) Is this both low and high octane?
2) What is the monthly consumption rate? Expanding on that, when is the stockpile recorded?
Yes because the Germans had been stripped of armor units and had effectively no armored support.
Yes, because they had begun to hit POL in 1944 and at this time were already conducting the Post-War bomber survey so they will know their value. It's also not that hard to sabotage oil facilities; the Dutch were able to do it quite nicely in the NEI, as did the Soviets for their own in 1942.
No, it's specifically saying 1943-1944; this was the height of Lend Lease food aid and the dearth of Soviet production.
Agreed. Immediately going to back to war, however, would undue this progress.
In 1942 there's only 125,000 in the entirety of the USSR and in 1944 there's only 150,000 in Belarus, which was the point. This would mean the Partisan numbers would've had to shoot up by 375,000 in 1943 to achieve the 500,000 number over the same general area but the 1942 and 1944 numbers don't fit such an estimate.
Germany had inferior production, no doubt. The problem here is that, as a result of Lend Lease, the Soviets essentially were building very small amounts of their own logistical needs relative to what they were getting. For example, they were overwhelmingly reliant on American trucks. Here, they'd have to begin retooling factories to make up for this, which takes time, and means sacrifices in other areas of war production.Also, in the fall of 1944 something like 25% of the Soviet motorpool of trucks was down for needed repairs/lack of parts. Don't have the 1945 figures, but given they've just lost their main source of parts...
Downfall was scheduled for October, so about three months into the European demobilization. By that poin in 1945 the JCS had given up on maintaining unit cohesion/combat effectiveness and were essentially allowing a mad dash home for everyone. Given the war is still being waged, American factories are still going and divisions are being maintained. Yes, in the initial euphoria of victory standards had slipped, but the men were overwhelmingly combat vets and by July the units JCS expected to eventually rotate to the Pacific were back to regular training. This even extended to more veteran outfits, and Stephen Ambrose's works revealed with the 101st shows.
They had 44 fighters for air cover, no Armored divisions and rampant artillery shortages while AGC's sector was the longest on the Eastern Front. Increasingly they were made up off younger, less experienced cadres.
I'm going to concede on this just because after this week of classes I really don't feel like arguing over this amount of numbers.
BobTheBarbarian
Banned
Olympic, the first part of Downfall, was scheduled for 1 November 1945 but would have been pushed back 30 to 45 days on account of Typhoon Louise.
It does occur to me that the figures would exclude whatever production came from any captured and still-operational synthetic plants in Eastern Europe like we have been conversing about, but IDK what amount that would be. 1946 production figures would be more relevant for this specific discussion though, given that the Soviet assault would be coming practically at the end of 1945. Late-40's production would also give us some idea on how fast the Soviets got that Siberian Plan online, since we could expect a big jump in production for whatever year it managed to become operational.
My experience is that google translate can handle translation of individual words just fine, it just craps out when it comes to assembling those words into coherent sentences with actual grammar, tenses, punctuation, and all that stuff. Fortunately, tables of items don't require any complete sentences, numbers are pretty universal, and usually formats something like:
[Year] [Year] [Year]
[Item] [Number] [Number] [Number]
I can reasonably be sure that, for example the table which goes:
1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945
[Cattle (million heads)] [54.5] [31.4] [28.4] [33.9] [44.2] [47.4]
Is showing that the number of cattle in Soviet agriculture increased by 10.3 million heads from 1943-1944 and 3.2 million heads from 1944-45.
1. Total.
2. It seems to be recorded for End of Year.
The Soviet stockpile figures for avgas for end of 1944 and 1945 are 1.334 million and 947 thousand tons respectively, a fall of 387,000 tons. Production for 1945 is 1.017 million tons. One could possibly try to calculate consumption figures from that and modify that based on 1944 production if one wants to assume the Soviets keep production up (the table indicates that Soviet production in '45 was scaled back for some reason). There would be four remaining holes in such a calculation however: first, what was the supply of L-L avgas during the course of 1945? Secondly, how much production was derived from captured German plants? Thirdly, what proportion of avgas was high-quality vs low-quality? And fourthly, how fast could the Soviets repair/relocate German refining capacity if they accorded those programs with relevant priority, assuming that is possible?
The Germans disposed of more then twice as much armor against the Soviets as they had against the WAllies in both France and Italy.
They had begun to hit POL with strategic bombing as part of a coherent plan developed over the course of years of war. That's quite a bit of a different situation then several weeks or months of the chaos and surprise that would accompany a sudden Soviet assault. The possibility that in the first weeks of a massed Soviet assault, with Anglo-American staffs scrambling just to ensure their armies are able to retreat in a coherent manner, that they will suddenly take the time and effort to consider such long-term strategic considerations as resource denial isn't completely inconceivable, but it is far from guaranteed. Obviously it become more and more possible the longer the Soviets take to advance, but it still doesn't guarantee it. While I grant you the Soviets at Maikop, that had a year of planning and preparation behind it. The Dutch example however doesn't stand up at all because your claim that they did it quite nicely is untrue: their demolition of the oil facilities was carried out rather poorly and production in the DEI rebounded quite quickly as a result.
No. It quite clearly stays “1942, 1943, and early-1944” which clearly places the increase of Soviet food production in 1944, with the harvest of that year obviously only having an effect in late-1944 for what I hope is exceedingly obvious reasons, as being what relieved starvation.
The Soviets were still at war in 1944 and a large portion of 1945, with the Red Army remaining heavily mobilized right past the planting season for 1945, yet the progress was not undone.
So? What prevents the partisans during the course of 1942 and '43 from recruiting, training, and arming an additional 375,000 men and women, especially with the intensive support they started receiving from the Soviet government in terms of supplies and military advisors in this period?
Doesn't change the fact the Soviets still have those logistical assets at the start and it would take much longer for them to burn them off then a mere half-year. The Soviets were already domestically producing spare parts for American trucks by the end of '44, some of which they even went through the formality of doing so under license, and the quantities were enough to keep those models working for roughly the next decade so it's doubtful they'd get any worse like you'd claim... well, at least not for the first year of war.
Looking at history, Soviet motor vehicle production in 1945 was 74.7 thousand vehicles. Soviet motor vehicle irrecoverable losses during the war according to the Soviet Automobile Directorate were 351,600 vehicles broken down as follows:
1941: 159.0 thousand
1942: 66.2 thousand
1943: 67.6 thousand
1944: 32.5 thousand
1945 (to September 2nd): 27.5 thousand.
Given that truck loss rates against the WAllies for the first one-two years of the war will probably resemble 1943 at worst and 1944 at best, it's pretty clear that Soviet domestic production by 1945 will be more then enough to keep up with losses as far as motor vehicles are concerned.
As already pointed out, Downfall was scheduled for November, not October, and that's before the delay from the Typhoon which would likely push it back into December. American factories were switching back to consumer production as early as 1944, because frankly production in the '43-'44 was that excessive. The claim that all units would be maintained doesn't stand up to scrutiny: only the units that would be rotated to the Pacific, who would already be gone from Europe by the time this war begins, would expect to see further combat so I don't see why the JCS would bother trying to maintain cohesion and combat effectiveness among those units which aren't heading off to the Pacific given the lack of any apparent enemy for them to fight and the pushback they'd get from those men for trying would be damaging for morale. The number of combat vets was relatively small and they'd be the first to either go to the Pacific or get demobbed. And citing Stephen Ambrose's work on the 101st rather ignores that (A) the Airborne formations (and Ranger units) were the exceptionally above the average in terms of personnel quality even during the war and (B) Stephen Ambrose is known for severely embellishing his accounts...
The Axis forces on the Eastern Front had close to 3,000 aircraft (2,500 were German) in June of '44 of which 750 were fighters. In armored divisions, they had 20 divisions (16 German) . Fixating on AGC's part of the front ignores the fact that even in those locations where the Germans artillery, armor, and air were concentrated, like AGNU, the Soviets rolled their defenses in a matter of days and advanced hundreds of miles in weeks, achieving major encirclement in the process that decimated German forces.It's not like the Americans will have a lot of experienced manpower replacements on hand for the first year of war either, what with demobilization and transfers to the Pacific and all...
A very large proportion of Soviet soft skin vehicles were LL - jeeps, trucks etc. I don't know, and don't know if anyone knows, to what extent the USSR was making spare parts for LL vehicles as opposed to just making parts for Soviet vehicles. This is a huge issue. This is made worse by the fact that American (and any English) vehicles the USSR receives are in English not Metric units. It is not an easy thing for the USSR to begin cranking out lots and lots of different spare parts in non-metric units, especially with no blueprints or technical specifications for such spare parts - such manuals as they received (and then had to translate in to Russian) would be the various maintenance manuals. This means each part has to be reverse engineered, each bolt and screw measured for length and width, pitch of thread etc etc. Reverse engineering the B-29 was a huge task just because of this problem - no tech specs and non-metric. Producing stuff for the B-29 was just one item, how many different trucks (GM, Studebaker, etc) were there and while some parts might be common others were not.
Of the motor vehicles produced in that data, how many were things like general purpose trucks, jeeps (or jeep equivalents), sedans and so forth. I suspect most of the non-armored vehicles were more like artillery tow vehicles or other more specialized soft skin vehicle. Between the start of LL and June, 1944 the USA had sent the USSR at least 300,000 trucks and other non-armor vehicles - also 350 locomotives and over 1,600 rail cars as well as half a million tons of rails and other RR equipment. This shows that the US LL of soft skin military vehicles basically from start of LL through June, 1944 is equal to the entire output of the Soviet output from January, 1941 through half of 1944. - actually probably more as the 1945 production rate would be higher than 1941-44 with German occupation, moving factories etc. These numbers show that US LL basically covered 100% of the Soviet soft skin vehicle losses FOR THE ENTIRE WAR. This means, roughly, that on the day LL stops the supply of new soft skin vehicles drops hugely, and the attrition rate due to breakdown/cannibalization begins to go up. Don't forget that from January, 1945 until the end of the war the loss rate for vehicles was markedly lower than earlier with no Luftwaffe, and depleted German Army etc.
Just from being in combat, as well as Allied strikes against convoys etc, the loss rate for vehicles will spike well above the presented 1945 level. The Soviets may have a significant initial advantage, but they will have serious issues in anything more than a very short war. It should also be noted that while the Soviets may be able to operate some of the German refining and synthetic fuel facilities, it will neither be fast nor efficient. Many of the technicians and engineers will have fled, there will be damage between Allied bombings, sabotage, and simply equipment left without maintenance. Even if full schematics and all of the reams of technical manuals are all in place and neatly marked in a "library", they are in German - small problem.
Of the motor vehicles produced in that data, how many were things like general purpose trucks, jeeps (or jeep equivalents), sedans and so forth. I suspect most of the non-armored vehicles were more like artillery tow vehicles or other more specialized soft skin vehicle. Between the start of LL and June, 1944 the USA had sent the USSR at least 300,000 trucks and other non-armor vehicles - also 350 locomotives and over 1,600 rail cars as well as half a million tons of rails and other RR equipment. This shows that the US LL of soft skin military vehicles basically from start of LL through June, 1944 is equal to the entire output of the Soviet output from January, 1941 through half of 1944. - actually probably more as the 1945 production rate would be higher than 1941-44 with German occupation, moving factories etc. These numbers show that US LL basically covered 100% of the Soviet soft skin vehicle losses FOR THE ENTIRE WAR. This means, roughly, that on the day LL stops the supply of new soft skin vehicles drops hugely, and the attrition rate due to breakdown/cannibalization begins to go up. Don't forget that from January, 1945 until the end of the war the loss rate for vehicles was markedly lower than earlier with no Luftwaffe, and depleted German Army etc.
Just from being in combat, as well as Allied strikes against convoys etc, the loss rate for vehicles will spike well above the presented 1945 level. The Soviets may have a significant initial advantage, but they will have serious issues in anything more than a very short war. It should also be noted that while the Soviets may be able to operate some of the German refining and synthetic fuel facilities, it will neither be fast nor efficient. Many of the technicians and engineers will have fled, there will be damage between Allied bombings, sabotage, and simply equipment left without maintenance. Even if full schematics and all of the reams of technical manuals are all in place and neatly marked in a "library", they are in German - small problem.
You see, stuff like this is why I don't bother responding to you (well, that and the fact that addressing one person at a time is easier) since it clearly indicates you either do not actually read my posts or bother to try and understand them and just regurgitate the claims I have already debunked. Let me repeat myself: the data clearly shows that Soviet domestic production, that is without lend-lease, by 1945 was more then enough to supply softskin vehicles to sustain their supplies of motor vehicles even if losses tripled. The example of how the LL vehicles continued to be used for a decade before finally being replaced by newer models indicates Soviet domestic production of spares by '45 already could keep up with demand. I could say much the same about, for example, your unsubstantiated claims involving German synthetic oil industries, which in particular is in direct contradiction to the sources and data that far provided that the Soviets were able to quickly and efficiently operate all but one of the German synthetic oil facilities in their zone. The most egregious aspect of this is when you indicate that the technical manuals being in Germany would be some sort of massive difficulty, a claim which reeks of the "lol dumb backwords Russians" meme because it implies that the Soviets don't have people capable of understanding German. I mean, how the fuck do you think Soviet intelligence apparatus interrogated their masses of German prisoners if they didn't employ large numbers of people educated in German? It's a similar story for your earlier claim about English: the Soviets didn't have much difficulty in translating documents on atomic weapons facility design from English in 1945/46, why the hell would truck manuals that they've had laying since 1941 suddenly be harder? It's nonsensical.
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After having 26 million excess deaths from war and related consequences in 1941-45, the Soviets invade Western Europe fighting the Anglo-Americans? Be serious.
OK..I'm going to respond directly to you.
First I have a masters in Chemical Engineering and worked in the petroleum industry for a time. Running something like a synthetic oil plant requires a good amount of both expertise and experience in that facility. Certainly the Russians had intelligent folks who could do that, however the supply was limited - and folks with experience in the petroleum industry at all levels sent to Germany to work those plants are not working to restore/improve production at Soviet oil facilities that have suffered varying degrees of damage during the war. A certain percentage of the folks who worked in those oil plants which are now in the Soviet Zone are either going to be on the western side of the dividing line or elsewhere even in the Soviet Zone as refugees - those in the Soviet Zone need to be found and brought back to those plants. Sure the Soviets have people who speak German, although I will point out the level of expertise to ACCURATELY translate technical documents and manuals is different from that needed to interrogate POWs. This also goes for technical manuals in English as well. To the extent technical manuals are missing or incomplete, this represents a go slow for getting a plant back in operation. Trust me, when you play with the temperatures and pressures involved and on top of that have petroleum involved you do not want to make errors.
I would posit you do not know the difference between technical manuals used for manufacturing and technical manuals for maintenance. Sure the Russians have the manuals and specs for maintaining the vehicles. What they most likely DO NOT have are the tech specs and manuals for manufacturing the parts that make up those trucks. Those are the documents that tell you the length and diameter of a given screw or bolt, and the pitch of the threading. They give details of coil and leaf springs, what sort of steel, how it is to be treated and so forth. Can the Russians "reverse engineer" all those truck and jeep parts, of course they can they reverse engineered a B-29 but if you read about what a task that was because they first had to figure out the "qualities" of each part and also deal with English versus Metric, the problem becomes clear.
I will admit I don't know whether or not Soviet industry produced any GMskis, Studebakerskis, or jeepskis, however my impression is the Soviet vehicle industry produced vehicles of indigenous Soviet design (as they did with aircraft, tanks, and small arms). If they produced vehicles of indigenous design, they also produced spare parts for THOSE VEHICLES, spare parts for LL vehicles coming separately via LL or from cannibalization/salvage. According to your data, the USSR lost 352,800 vehicles (soft skin) during the war, including the 5 months between VE day and VJ day. From the commencement of Barbarossa until the end of your data is approximately 53 months. Assuming that production was equivalent to the 1945 level, which I believe is optimistic as there was a drop as factories were in the process of moving and some were overrun, but making that assumption, 53 months of production at that level is approximately 330,000 vehicles. Based on YOUR DATA this means that the USSR built, optimistically, 22,800 vehicles less than lost during the war and being even nicer lets say at the end of the war their production exactly equaled their losses during the war. Through June, 1944 the USA sent approximately 300,000 soft skin vehicles to the USSR and it is reasonable that another 50,000 to 100,000 were sent between June, 1944 and August/September 1945. Because there is really no way to be sure, since roughly the same number of Soviet built and LL vehicles were available in the USSR 1941-1945, and this total number is slightly over double the admitted losses, it is also reasonable to assume that 50% of the soft skin vehicles in the USSR in 1945 were LL. BTW don't forget there was no distinction between vehicles used by the government for the military, and those used for use not directly related to the military (including agriculture, industry, and so forth).
I won't even get in to the various raw materials that were sent from leather for boots to aluminum and much, much more (aluminum used to build aircraft among other things). If the USSR had not needed the particular manufactured goods and raw materials that they received via LL they would have asked for something different - what was sent to the USSR was what they asked for because they either did not have enough of it (raw materials/food/high octane gasoline), or their industry had very limited capacity to make it (such as certain categories of electronics), or they preferred to be using certain industrial capacity to make a preferred product - such as making tanks rather than locomotives in a given factory. The USSR had a significant LL/trade presence in the USA which presented requests according to what the USSR needed/wanted. The USA did not simply ship whatever they had lying around.
The point of all this is not the the Russians are глупый (gluppy=stupid). Not at all. The reality is that the Soviet Union had significant industrial deficits in 1941 in quantity, variety, and quality. These were not really improved between 1941 and 1945, yes there were production "miracles", moving factories etc, but their overall situation did not improve. The issue with a Soviet attack west in late fall 1945 is NOT the immediate correlation of forces but rather sustainability. Once the Soviets run through things like spare parts, certain raw materials and so forth their production will have to slow down (like the Israelites, even Pharoah can't make you make bricks without straw) at the same time US and other western production speeds up again.
If you don't have manufacturing technical documents, you can't translate them period, just saying.
First I have a masters in Chemical Engineering and worked in the petroleum industry for a time. Running something like a synthetic oil plant requires a good amount of both expertise and experience in that facility. Certainly the Russians had intelligent folks who could do that, however the supply was limited - and folks with experience in the petroleum industry at all levels sent to Germany to work those plants are not working to restore/improve production at Soviet oil facilities that have suffered varying degrees of damage during the war. A certain percentage of the folks who worked in those oil plants which are now in the Soviet Zone are either going to be on the western side of the dividing line or elsewhere even in the Soviet Zone as refugees - those in the Soviet Zone need to be found and brought back to those plants. Sure the Soviets have people who speak German, although I will point out the level of expertise to ACCURATELY translate technical documents and manuals is different from that needed to interrogate POWs. This also goes for technical manuals in English as well. To the extent technical manuals are missing or incomplete, this represents a go slow for getting a plant back in operation. Trust me, when you play with the temperatures and pressures involved and on top of that have petroleum involved you do not want to make errors.
I would posit you do not know the difference between technical manuals used for manufacturing and technical manuals for maintenance. Sure the Russians have the manuals and specs for maintaining the vehicles. What they most likely DO NOT have are the tech specs and manuals for manufacturing the parts that make up those trucks. Those are the documents that tell you the length and diameter of a given screw or bolt, and the pitch of the threading. They give details of coil and leaf springs, what sort of steel, how it is to be treated and so forth. Can the Russians "reverse engineer" all those truck and jeep parts, of course they can they reverse engineered a B-29 but if you read about what a task that was because they first had to figure out the "qualities" of each part and also deal with English versus Metric, the problem becomes clear.
I will admit I don't know whether or not Soviet industry produced any GMskis, Studebakerskis, or jeepskis, however my impression is the Soviet vehicle industry produced vehicles of indigenous Soviet design (as they did with aircraft, tanks, and small arms). If they produced vehicles of indigenous design, they also produced spare parts for THOSE VEHICLES, spare parts for LL vehicles coming separately via LL or from cannibalization/salvage. According to your data, the USSR lost 352,800 vehicles (soft skin) during the war, including the 5 months between VE day and VJ day. From the commencement of Barbarossa until the end of your data is approximately 53 months. Assuming that production was equivalent to the 1945 level, which I believe is optimistic as there was a drop as factories were in the process of moving and some were overrun, but making that assumption, 53 months of production at that level is approximately 330,000 vehicles. Based on YOUR DATA this means that the USSR built, optimistically, 22,800 vehicles less than lost during the war and being even nicer lets say at the end of the war their production exactly equaled their losses during the war. Through June, 1944 the USA sent approximately 300,000 soft skin vehicles to the USSR and it is reasonable that another 50,000 to 100,000 were sent between June, 1944 and August/September 1945. Because there is really no way to be sure, since roughly the same number of Soviet built and LL vehicles were available in the USSR 1941-1945, and this total number is slightly over double the admitted losses, it is also reasonable to assume that 50% of the soft skin vehicles in the USSR in 1945 were LL. BTW don't forget there was no distinction between vehicles used by the government for the military, and those used for use not directly related to the military (including agriculture, industry, and so forth).
I won't even get in to the various raw materials that were sent from leather for boots to aluminum and much, much more (aluminum used to build aircraft among other things). If the USSR had not needed the particular manufactured goods and raw materials that they received via LL they would have asked for something different - what was sent to the USSR was what they asked for because they either did not have enough of it (raw materials/food/high octane gasoline), or their industry had very limited capacity to make it (such as certain categories of electronics), or they preferred to be using certain industrial capacity to make a preferred product - such as making tanks rather than locomotives in a given factory. The USSR had a significant LL/trade presence in the USA which presented requests according to what the USSR needed/wanted. The USA did not simply ship whatever they had lying around.
The point of all this is not the the Russians are глупый (gluppy=stupid). Not at all. The reality is that the Soviet Union had significant industrial deficits in 1941 in quantity, variety, and quality. These were not really improved between 1941 and 1945, yes there were production "miracles", moving factories etc, but their overall situation did not improve. The issue with a Soviet attack west in late fall 1945 is NOT the immediate correlation of forces but rather sustainability. Once the Soviets run through things like spare parts, certain raw materials and so forth their production will have to slow down (like the Israelites, even Pharoah can't make you make bricks without straw) at the same time US and other western production speeds up again.
If you don't have manufacturing technical documents, you can't translate them period, just saying.
OK..I'm going to respond directly to you.
First I have a masters in Chemical Engineering and worked in the petroleum industry for a time. Running something like a synthetic oil plant requires a good amount of both expertise and experience in that facility. Certainly the Russians had intelligent folks who could do that, however the supply was limited - and folks with experience in the petroleum industry at all levels sent to Germany to work those plants are not working to restore/improve production at Soviet oil facilities that have suffered varying degrees of damage during the war. A certain percentage of the folks who worked in those oil plants which are now in the Soviet Zone are either going to be on the western side of the dividing line or elsewhere even in the Soviet Zone as refugees - those in the Soviet Zone need to be found and brought back to those plants. Sure the Soviets have people who speak German, although I will point out the level of expertise to ACCURATELY translate technical documents and manuals is different from that needed to interrogate POWs. This also goes for technical manuals in English as well. To the extent technical manuals are missing or incomplete, this represents a go slow for getting a plant back in operation. Trust me, when you play with the temperatures and pressures involved and on top of that have petroleum involved you do not want to make errors.
I would posit you do not know the difference between technical manuals used for manufacturing and technical manuals for maintenance. Sure the Russians have the manuals and specs for maintaining the vehicles. What they most likely DO NOT have are the tech specs and manuals for manufacturing the parts that make up those trucks. Those are the documents that tell you the length and diameter of a given screw or bolt, and the pitch of the threading. They give details of coil and leaf springs, what sort of steel, how it is to be treated and so forth. Can the Russians "reverse engineer" all those truck and jeep parts, of course they can they reverse engineered a B-29 but if you read about what a task that was because they first had to figure out the "qualities" of each part and also deal with English versus Metric, the problem becomes clear.
I will admit I don't know whether or not Soviet industry produced any GMskis, Studebakerskis, or jeepskis, however my impression is the Soviet vehicle industry produced vehicles of indigenous Soviet design (as they did with aircraft, tanks, and small arms). If they produced vehicles of indigenous design, they also produced spare parts for THOSE VEHICLES, spare parts for LL vehicles coming separately via LL or from cannibalization/salvage. According to your data, the USSR lost 352,800 vehicles (soft skin) during the war, including the 5 months between VE day and VJ day. From the commencement of Barbarossa until the end of your data is approximately 53 months. Assuming that production was equivalent to the 1945 level, which I believe is optimistic as there was a drop as factories were in the process of moving and some were overrun, but making that assumption, 53 months of production at that level is approximately 330,000 vehicles. Based on YOUR DATA this means that the USSR built, optimistically, 22,800 vehicles less than lost during the war and being even nicer lets say at the end of the war their production exactly equaled their losses during the war. Through June, 1944 the USA sent approximately 300,000 soft skin vehicles to the USSR and it is reasonable that another 50,000 to 100,000 were sent between June, 1944 and August/September 1945. Because there is really no way to be sure, since roughly the same number of Soviet built and LL vehicles were available in the USSR 1941-1945, and this total number is slightly over double the admitted losses, it is also reasonable to assume that 50% of the soft skin vehicles in the USSR in 1945 were LL. BTW don't forget there was no distinction between vehicles used by the government for the military, and those used for use not directly related to the military (including agriculture, industry, and so forth).
I won't even get in to the various raw materials that were sent from leather for boots to aluminum and much, much more (aluminum used to build aircraft among other things). If the USSR had not needed the particular manufactured goods and raw materials that they received via LL they would have asked for something different - what was sent to the USSR was what they asked for because they either did not have enough of it (raw materials/food/high octane gasoline), or their industry had very limited capacity to make it (such as certain categories of electronics), or they preferred to be using certain industrial capacity to make a preferred product - such as making tanks rather than locomotives in a given factory. The USSR had a significant LL/trade presence in the USA which presented requests according to what the USSR needed/wanted. The USA did not simply ship whatever they had lying around.
The point of all this is not the the Russians are глупый (gluppy=stupid). Not at all. The reality is that the Soviet Union had significant industrial deficits in 1941 in quantity, variety, and quality. These were not really improved between 1941 and 1945, yes there were production "miracles", moving factories etc, but their overall situation did not improve. The issue with a Soviet attack west in late fall 1945 is NOT the immediate correlation of forces but rather sustainability. Once the Soviets run through things like spare parts, certain raw materials and so forth their production will have to slow down (like the Israelites, even Pharoah can't make you make bricks without straw) at the same time US and other western production speeds up again.
If you don't have manufacturing technical documents, you can't translate them period, just saying.
First I have a masters in Chemical Engineering and worked in the petroleum industry for a time. Running something like a synthetic oil plant requires a good amount of both expertise and experience in that facility. Certainly the Russians had intelligent folks who could do that, however the supply was limited - and folks with experience in the petroleum industry at all levels sent to Germany to work those plants are not working to restore/improve production at Soviet oil facilities that have suffered varying degrees of damage during the war. A certain percentage of the folks who worked in those oil plants which are now in the Soviet Zone are either going to be on the western side of the dividing line or elsewhere even in the Soviet Zone as refugees - those in the Soviet Zone need to be found and brought back to those plants. Sure the Soviets have people who speak German, although I will point out the level of expertise to ACCURATELY translate technical documents and manuals is different from that needed to interrogate POWs. This also goes for technical manuals in English as well. To the extent technical manuals are missing or incomplete, this represents a go slow for getting a plant back in operation. Trust me, when you play with the temperatures and pressures involved and on top of that have petroleum involved you do not want to make errors.
I would posit you do not know the difference between technical manuals used for manufacturing and technical manuals for maintenance. Sure the Russians have the manuals and specs for maintaining the vehicles. What they most likely DO NOT have are the tech specs and manuals for manufacturing the parts that make up those trucks. Those are the documents that tell you the length and diameter of a given screw or bolt, and the pitch of the threading. They give details of coil and leaf springs, what sort of steel, how it is to be treated and so forth. Can the Russians "reverse engineer" all those truck and jeep parts, of course they can they reverse engineered a B-29 but if you read about what a task that was because they first had to figure out the "qualities" of each part and also deal with English versus Metric, the problem becomes clear.
I will admit I don't know whether or not Soviet industry produced any GMskis, Studebakerskis, or jeepskis, however my impression is the Soviet vehicle industry produced vehicles of indigenous Soviet design (as they did with aircraft, tanks, and small arms). If they produced vehicles of indigenous design, they also produced spare parts for THOSE VEHICLES, spare parts for LL vehicles coming separately via LL or from cannibalization/salvage. According to your data, the USSR lost 352,800 vehicles (soft skin) during the war, including the 5 months between VE day and VJ day. From the commencement of Barbarossa until the end of your data is approximately 53 months. Assuming that production was equivalent to the 1945 level, which I believe is optimistic as there was a drop as factories were in the process of moving and some were overrun, but making that assumption, 53 months of production at that level is approximately 330,000 vehicles. Based on YOUR DATA this means that the USSR built, optimistically, 22,800 vehicles less than lost during the war and being even nicer lets say at the end of the war their production exactly equaled their losses during the war. Through June, 1944 the USA sent approximately 300,000 soft skin vehicles to the USSR and it is reasonable that another 50,000 to 100,000 were sent between June, 1944 and August/September 1945. Because there is really no way to be sure, since roughly the same number of Soviet built and LL vehicles were available in the USSR 1941-1945, and this total number is slightly over double the admitted losses, it is also reasonable to assume that 50% of the soft skin vehicles in the USSR in 1945 were LL. BTW don't forget there was no distinction between vehicles used by the government for the military, and those used for use not directly related to the military (including agriculture, industry, and so forth).
I won't even get in to the various raw materials that were sent from leather for boots to aluminum and much, much more (aluminum used to build aircraft among other things). If the USSR had not needed the particular manufactured goods and raw materials that they received via LL they would have asked for something different - what was sent to the USSR was what they asked for because they either did not have enough of it (raw materials/food/high octane gasoline), or their industry had very limited capacity to make it (such as certain categories of electronics), or they preferred to be using certain industrial capacity to make a preferred product - such as making tanks rather than locomotives in a given factory. The USSR had a significant LL/trade presence in the USA which presented requests according to what the USSR needed/wanted. The USA did not simply ship whatever they had lying around.
The point of all this is not the the Russians are глупый (gluppy=stupid). Not at all. The reality is that the Soviet Union had significant industrial deficits in 1941 in quantity, variety, and quality. These were not really improved between 1941 and 1945, yes there were production "miracles", moving factories etc, but their overall situation did not improve. The issue with a Soviet attack west in late fall 1945 is NOT the immediate correlation of forces but rather sustainability. Once the Soviets run through things like spare parts, certain raw materials and so forth their production will have to slow down (like the Israelites, even Pharoah can't make you make bricks without straw) at the same time US and other western production speeds up again.
If you don't have manufacturing technical documents, you can't translate them period, just saying.
Next time you do, bring something more then unsubstantiated claims that the Soviets can’t do it. Because we have the actual historical record to show that they did. We have the historical record to show that they repaired and utilized German fuel industry, including using material from it to build a Siberian facility with massive output, and we have the historical record to show that the Soviets mass produced spare parts for their L-L vehicles. The US shipped entire factories over to the USSR for just that purpose. Similarly, your claim that Soviet industry did not make qualitative improvements during the war is in direct contradiction to a avalanche of historical studies that show they did. Claiming that “they can’t” despite the evidence indicating that “they did” is simply denying reality.
Claim like that is, indeed, strange. By 1944 they did have a lot of the domestically produced field radios, in 1943 T-34 got more powerful guns, they started producing powerful self-propelled guns (like ИСУ-122 and - 152) and seriously updated their aviation.
By quality I meant quality control, not improved designs which obviously occurred. My overall point was that there was significant Soviet dependency on LL, which would naturally cease once a conflict began. Simply looking at the volume of LL, and some of the specialized areas of raw materials and manufactured goods, there was not the capacity in the USSR and the conquered territories to make up for the cessation instantly, or even over a few years. Depending on the particular item, the stockpile of said item, and other circumstances these would have effects on Soviet combat ability. LL provided 57+% of all high octane gasoline used by the USSR through May, 1945 - how is that replaced overnight (one example).
If the USSR could do quite nicely without LL, at least by 1945, why did the Soviets insist upon continuing LL in anticipation of their planned declaration of war against Japan (planned for 90 days after German surrender). No matter what the Soviet plans for assisting against Japan, their needs for such a campaign would be far less than against the west, and do note that any amphibious/naval efforts were going to be highly dependent on US naval vessels and training to use them as per OTL Project Hula. Soviet GDP reached 1941 (pre-Barbarossa levels) in 1948-1950, although this is based on Soviet statistics which can be unreliable, and only relate to the overall economy not the distribution. It is considered reliable that the 1946 crop failures resulted in 1.5 million deaths.
Again the ability of the USSR to sustain a war against the western powers in late 1945 was severely restricted. Not having any demobilization, and in fact increasing incoming military enrollment will have an effect on industrial production and agriculture unless the war is over by Christmas (the traditional short war mantra).
The question is can the USSR eject the Western Allies from continental Europe before they run out of steam? This would include Italy, Norway, and Greece replicating the situation after HUSKY but before any Allied forces on the continent. If the USSR goes for this it is likely that the Allies would work with Spain as a continental base, despite many issues there. I doubt that the Soviets could do this. The political question is will the Allies accept the USSR on the English Channel, whether or not there are continental "bastions" left for the west (all or some of the countries named above). Unless we change the laws of physics, sooner or later the atomic bomb will arrive, if there have been failures in the US program a war with the USSR will ensure work will go on at a fast pace.
Even with war weariness, I don't see the USA and allies accepting a Soviet conquest in Europe, I doubt it would stop with Germany and Austria.
If the USSR could do quite nicely without LL, at least by 1945, why did the Soviets insist upon continuing LL in anticipation of their planned declaration of war against Japan (planned for 90 days after German surrender). No matter what the Soviet plans for assisting against Japan, their needs for such a campaign would be far less than against the west, and do note that any amphibious/naval efforts were going to be highly dependent on US naval vessels and training to use them as per OTL Project Hula. Soviet GDP reached 1941 (pre-Barbarossa levels) in 1948-1950, although this is based on Soviet statistics which can be unreliable, and only relate to the overall economy not the distribution. It is considered reliable that the 1946 crop failures resulted in 1.5 million deaths.
Again the ability of the USSR to sustain a war against the western powers in late 1945 was severely restricted. Not having any demobilization, and in fact increasing incoming military enrollment will have an effect on industrial production and agriculture unless the war is over by Christmas (the traditional short war mantra).
The question is can the USSR eject the Western Allies from continental Europe before they run out of steam? This would include Italy, Norway, and Greece replicating the situation after HUSKY but before any Allied forces on the continent. If the USSR goes for this it is likely that the Allies would work with Spain as a continental base, despite many issues there. I doubt that the Soviets could do this. The political question is will the Allies accept the USSR on the English Channel, whether or not there are continental "bastions" left for the west (all or some of the countries named above). Unless we change the laws of physics, sooner or later the atomic bomb will arrive, if there have been failures in the US program a war with the USSR will ensure work will go on at a fast pace.
Even with war weariness, I don't see the USA and allies accepting a Soviet conquest in Europe, I doubt it would stop with Germany and Austria.
BobTheBarbarian
Banned
Under Operation "Milepost," the US effort to help the Soviets prepare for their Manchurian Offensive, 42,599 trucks, 744 aircraft, 316 locomotives, 50,509 tons of explosives, 371,670 tons of petroleum products, and 235,607 tons of food were delivered between 12 May and 2 September 1945. All together 1.25 million long tons of American cargo was shipped in through Far Eastern ports alone, though I can't speak for the rest of Europe or the LL program in general.
And your wrong, at least for the timeframe discussed. By 1945, Soviet dependence on LL was in the past, not the present. Had it been otherwise, then the USSR would have crumbled in 1946 IOTL. Instead, it got stronger. That's the very opposite of a country dependent on a aid program.
"Why did the USSR manipulate the west into giving them high-quality free stuff?" I think the answer to that question is quite self-evident. The Milepost agreement figures also need to be put into context: the tonnage shipped for Manchuria is a fraction of that dispatched under the earlier L-L agreements and was dwarfed by what the USSR sent eastward down the TS-RR (it also will still occur under IATL, although it's interesting to speculate how the WAllies react when August rolls past and the Soviets haven't attacked Japan). I did the math sometime last year and from memory the Milepost shipments amounted to something like 1/8th to 1/12th of the supplies stockpiled in the Manchurian Operation. The fact that the USSR could ship so much over such a long distance over relatively think infrastructure is a powerful testament to the logistical capabilities they had built up and puts lie to the idea they'd struggle with the basic task of supplying their armies in Europe, which is both closer and richer in infrastructure then Manchuria.
They could probably drive them out of Greece and Norway. Italy's much more dubious, but as a barrier the Alps work both ways. It still leaves the WAllies with a daunting military challenge of grinding down the Red Army and driving across Europe to Moscow, but that's a challenge the Americans do have the physical resources to do... eventually.
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Is this possible to establish strong defensive line across the Pyrenees?
If the Spanish don't remain neutral, yes. Sloreck takes Spanish belligerence on the part of the WAllies as a given but it's really more of an open question then that.
Franco was known to be staunch anti-communist, so chances of Spain joining the allies are around 55/45. On other side, Franco also was careful bastard... And possibly, he would have kept his neutrality.