WI , no leand lease for the sovite union?

The Soviet Union did not "beat back" the Nazis in 1941. Hitler started Barbarossa too late and without enough petroleum reserves which led to many costly delays. He was beaten by the Russian winter. Even the destruction of the Sixth Army at the end of 1942 was due more to idiotic Nazi planning (i.e. extending a narrow finger of advancement in the south that was easy to encircle and cut off in the aforementioned brutal Russian winter) than anything the Red Army pulled off.

This sounds like the memoirs of German generals who claimed it was Hitler's bad decisions and the weather that caused their failure (the subtext being that the Slavic subhuman Mongol Bolshevik Jewish hordes had nothing to do with it). Such special pleading ignores the Soviet victory in the battle of Moscow (winter 41-42), and the fact that even when the Soviets were losing or retreating (both before and after that key battle) they were attriting German forces--and the Germans had a lot fewer reserves and also had to worry about other fronts. It also ignores the fact that time was on the Soviet side, as long as they could trade space for it, and that with every passing few months, Soviet military leadership got better, the troops got more hardened, the new factories in the Urals kept increasing output, the Soviet intelligence gathering and skill at deception operations improved, and the ability of Zhukov and other generals to coordinate the movement of tank armies increased exponentially to where they had the Germans outclassed.

Mention was made of the Soviet air force, but by 43 the Germans were having to pull their planes out of the USSR (or just not replace them) because of the necessity of dealing with the Allied air offensive in the West. The Soviets by late 43, early 44 probably had more warplanes than were really essential to their purposes.

One problem with this discussion is that it doesn't really focus on the question of Lend Lease but keeps bringing in other issues, like the U.S. not entering the war. I am assuming that the withholding of Lend Lease was the only change and that otherwise the U.S. and Brits were in the war to win.

But it was obvious to the U.S. and British leaders that the harder and more effectively the Soviets fought, the less the casualties that the U.S. and Britain would experience later on. Indeed, by mid-1944 the British had exhausted their reserves and U.S. leaders were worried about possible horrific combat losses and highly publicized defeats in one or more major battles that might weaken the American people's will to continue the war. So I think a decision by the Western Allies to withhold Lend Lease from the Soviets, even in 1941-42, would have been so foolish that it could only come about through Alien Space Bat intervention.

And IF there was no Lend Lease for them, the Soviets might have found ways to improvise and make up for it. For instance, if they couldn't produce or man as many T-34s, maybe they could decide to mount longer range guns on them. Or invented some new type of explosive. We really don't know.

One thing is sure, a slowed-down Soviet march west would have played havoc with the battle of Normany. For instance, there would have been no Operation Bagration--the largest offensive of the war--to tie down the Germans in the east. So the Soviets would indirectly have obtained their revenge for the denial of Lend Lease: The losses of U.S. and British troops in France would have been double or triple what they were in OTL.
 
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loughery111

Banned

Well, I see you've ignored the thrust of the arguments presented by Don Lardo, myself, and others, in addition to the evidence backing them. No one is saying the Soviets won't win without Lend-Lease. We're saying that it will require them to sacrifice immense quantities of things they produce IOTL and assign labor (combat-capable men) to agriculture. The end result will be a much harder, much slower war for the Soviets.

It will be a bit harder for the Western Allies, as well, but to a much smaller degree. Your assertion of two or three times the casualties is wildly overstated. What will actually happen is that the Germans will have to maintain OTL's force levels on the Eastern Front, but will be able to hold or at least retreat more slowly than IOTL. Which will leave the Western Front largely unaltered, except that the US and Commonwealth troops will have to cover an extra hundred miles and fight through Berlin at the end. I'd say an increase of 10% over OTL's casualty levels is immensely more realistic.
 
The problem with that objection, of course, being that we had nukes by war's end. That was why I said I suspect the Western Allies could have won without the USSR.

Well, it would be nice to liberate Europe as something other then a pile of cinders :p but yes, the Allies could have signed a peace treaty with a random Oberst they picked up somewhere, if it came to that. (props to whoever gets the book reference)
 

loughery111

Banned
Well, it would be nice to liberate Europe as something other then a pile of cinders :p but yes, the Allies could have signed a peace treaty with a random Oberst they picked up somewhere, if it came to that. (props to whoever gets the book reference)

I said they would probably still win, not that the result would be pretty. :(
 
What will actually happen is that the Germans will have to maintain OTL's force levels on the Eastern Front

How do you know this? Already there had been cases where Hitler had shifted large forces to the west to deal with the situation in North Africa (battle of Tunis) or to help stop the Allies in Italy--even though these forces were desperately needed in the East. Most of the German air force was eventually allocated to Germany itself to deal with the Allied air offensive, essentially conceding air superiority and then air supremacy to the Soviets. Also the German railway system allowed Hitler to shift troop concentrations back and forth relatively quickly. So if there had been no Operation Bagration, Hitler could and would have taken advantage of the lull to reinforce in Normandy. Allied casualities in the West would have been only 10 percent higher you say? I don't see that at all.

And please, read up on Operation Bagration. It was huge and it was awesome, and yes it tied down many divisions that might otherwise have been sent to the hedgerows. And it also ate up supplies, equipment and tanks that had to be allocated eastward rather than westward that summer.
 
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loughery111

Banned
How do you know this? Already there had been cases where Hitler had shifted large forces to the west to deal with the situation in North Africa (battle of Tunis) or to help stop the Allies in Italy--even though these forces were desperately needed in the East. Most of the German air force was eventually allocated to Germany itself to deal with the Allied air offensive, essentially conceding air superiority and then air supremacy to the Soviets. Also the German railway system allowed Hitler to shift troop concentrations back and forth relatively quickly. So if there had been no Operation Bagration, Hitler could and would have taken advantage of the lull to reinforce in Normandy. Allied casualities in the West would have been only 10 percent higher you say? I don't see that at all.

And please, read up on Operation Bagration. It was huge and it was awesome, and yes it tied down many divisions that might otherwise have been sent to the hedgerows. And it also ate up supplies, equipment and tanks that had to be allocated eastward rather than westward that summer.

I know what Bagration was, thanks. And my use of the word "will" is too strong. "Probably will" is a better estimation, in my opinion. And I'm well aware that the Allied air war over Europe drew off aircraft from the Eastern Front. What I don't see is how a smaller Luftwaffe commitment is going to change that. I find it unlikely that the Heer is going to be in a drastically better position to reinforce the Western Front than it was IOTL. It will just be performing a bit better in the East.
 
Lend and Leas to USSR... in numbers...

Bren Carriers - 2336
M3 Halftracks - 900
M3A1 Scout Cars - 3092
M3A1 Stuart - 1233
Valentine - 3487
Churchill - 258
M3A3 Lee/Grant - 1200
Matilda - 832
M4A2 75mm Sherman - 1750
M4A2 76mm Sherman - 1850
Half Tracks - 820
Light Trucks - 151,000
Heavy Trucks - 200,000
Jeeps - 51,000
Tractors - 8070

P-39 Airacobra single-engine fighters - 4719
P-40 single-engine fighters - 2397
P-47 - 195
Hurricane single-engine fighters - 2952
Spitfire single-engine fighters - 1331
A-20 twin-engine light attack bombers - 2908
B-25 twin-engine medium bombers - 862

37mm Anti-Tank 35
57mm Anti-Tank 375
37mm Anti-Aircraft 340
40mm Anti-Aircraft 5,400
90mm Anti-Aircraft 240

317 000 tons of explosives
991 million shell cartridges (to speed up production)

2.3 million tons of steel
229 000 tons of Aluminum
2.6 million tons of petrol
3.8 million tons of foodstuffs

56.445 field telephones
600 000km of telephone wire
15 million pairs of army boots

The total value of reverse lend-lease provided by the U.S.S.R. (compensation for material received from USA) has been valued at about $2,140,000 (1945 value) for the American $11.3 billion (1945 value) to the Soviet Union.

You know what I don't care to go through the documents any more than this.. go over to http://lend-lease.airforce.ru/english/documents/index.htm and get your own copies of the original documents on pdf.

Everything of this have to be manufactured, stolen or in any way else be replaced or USSR have to conduct the war whiteout it.



Hard to say exactly what kind of butterflies no lend and leas would create but it's at least easy to predict this butterfly that USSR war economy have to cope whiteout all of these things (and the loans etc).
 
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