World War 2 without lend lease for USSR

How much of a difference to the Western Allies would it make if they didnt have to supply the SU with LL? Would it allow them to have more impact on the Germans? Would the Germans being able to push further into the Soviet Union then make them MORE vulnerable to a stronger attack by the UK/US? Could we see D-Day in France in 1943, say, but with the same level of strength on the allied side as OTL 1944? Would the Nazis actually be weaker than 1944?
 

Deleted member 1487

And then the Soviets managed to recover, despite still having those holes until into 1943.
Thanks to Lend-Lease :)

More people die. Duh. Prove that enough more people die.
What is enough to you? Especially when it comes to morale the tipping point could be 1 million more, especially including soldiers if order breaks down, or many millions more if they get ruthless about supplying the military and specific labor forces and can't keep food riots in line. We are probably looking at several million more malnutrition related deaths without LL food (not necessarily starvation, but illness and susceptibility to work/military accidents and what not due to a foggy mind) plus of course food riot/disorder related issues.

Prove it. Your the one making the assertion that these holes were the absolutely vital ones the Soviet economy could not function without, it falls upon you to provide the evidence that was the case.
The food issue is pretty much the vital one. I have already posted a book about that:
https://www.amazon.com/Hunger-War-Provisioning-Soviet-during/dp/0253017122
I have a digital copy of the book, but I cannot copy and past because it comes out as gibberish code; there are very instructive quotes in here about the direness of the food situation. In early 1943 a Soviet internal report cited that workers were dying in the Kirov factory in early 1943 due to malnutrition and was citing the factory not giving workers their allotted time off as part of the reason. That is as the great victory at Stalingrad was being won and hundreds of thousands of tons of LL high calorie foods had already been received. Industrial workers were one of the groups of people in the USSR in this period that had the best allotment of foods too, because of their vital war work. Sure it wasn't as good as the army, but they got more than the general public and yet they were still dropped dead on the job as late as 1943. The book also says in 1943-44, when LL food and medicine shipments were higher than ever before, the single largest cause of non-child civilian deaths was starvation and TB. There was not enough food to feed both the military and civilians EVEN with LL food shipments. Apparently in 1943 the worst deaths among males 30-59 happened due to prolonged ongoing malnutrition and disease and malnutrition caused mass deaths. That was even with LL food BTW. Starvation or malnutrition related deaths remained the single greatest cause of death among the civilian population even in 1944, effecting all age groups, despite a dramatic improvement in food stocks. People were being re-fed, but they were still dying in large numbers.

The book even says that estimating numbers is impossible because outside the large cities there was not really a reporting system for these sorts of things until the 1950s, while within the cities the reporting system was limited. What is really surprising to me is how many factory workers were dying of malnutrition related issues; you'd think they'd need a healthy workforce, but even as late as 1944 the workforce in the Urals was suffering quite badly. Again despite the dramatic improvements in LL food shipments AND increased domestic production. Apparently there was a poor harvest in 1943 in the unoccupied USSR, which forced ration cuts, which proved to be a really fatal issue in winter in areas with a poor agricultural base, like the Ural industrial regions. Some crop was lost to blight too and the book specifically mentions how LL prevented the USSR from collapsing into mass famine and death in this period too. It seems now that the critical periods were in late 1942-1943 and once again in Autumn 1943-44. Plus then once LL ended there was a famine in 1946-47. Starvation during the war apparently peaked in 1943 when adult men finally started to succumb to years of malnutrition. It really took until Summer 1944 for the food situation to really improve...until the post-war famine.

In the end the book states that while the food situation in places like Leningrad or German occupied Soviet territory (where over 4 million people died of malnutrition related issues, not sure if that counts the PoWs taken in 1941-42) was absolutely worse, IOTL the Soviets faced famine proportion starvation throughout their territory. Without Lend-Lease food that means 'famine proportion' becomes just straight up full famine with the mass deaths and social breakdown that entails. The labor force is going to die in droves much earlier and the army will have to take a food cut or many millions more civilians would die in factories, in fields, or in the mines.

Oblast =! industrial regions.
So what is an official industrial region then? What cities were lost for an extended period of time in the Moscow region and what industry did it have?

With their industrial facilities annihilated.
Proof? The Germans got into Tula, but it's factories were fine and continued to function throughout the fighting.

Correct. It was shelled, bombed, and fought in. All of which damaged the cities industry quite severely. That it still nevertheless managed to output some weapons is really a testament to how big the Tula arsenal works was, not an indication that it didn't suffer from destruction.
Do you have any estimates of how much industry was lost and how much industry was there to be damaged that was war related? You're asserting it was damaged to some degree, but I have not seen that stated anywhere despite the fighting in the area, just that it converted to making weapons that supplied the armies in the area.

Yes they did. They destroyed everything they could as they retreated in December so as to deny it to the Soviets. Just as the Soviets did in October. Scorched earth was common practice for both sides throughout the war.
I haven't seen that given how fast they had to retreat. If you have any info on that I'm all ears. Certainly in the more deliberate retreats later in the war they did scorched earth when possible, but often, as was also the case with Soviet retreats, sometimes retreating happened faster than things could be destroyed.

And you honestly think the Soviet tank factory was the only factory in the entirety of Kharkov?
I didn't say that, but haven't seen any claims that industry in Kharkov was captured, what it's nature was, or if or how it would be related to war production.

Can you provide numbers/sourcing supporting that?
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewto...p=1785948&hilit=kharkov+tank+factory#p1785948
A quote from "The Soviet economy and the Red Army, 1930-1945" by Walter S Dunn:

On June 24, 1941, the Council for Evacuation was appointed. On July 4, 1941, the Council ordered Voznesenskii, director of five-year planning, to organise the movement of industry and workers to the east. Local committees used the five-year plan structure with 3,000 agents controlling the movement. Evacuation of industrial plants began in August 1941 and continued until the end of the year. But evidence shows evacuation began much earlier, or at least the transfer of machine tools and skilled workers to "shadow factories" in the east. The US military attache reported significant transfers of machines and men from the Moscow area to the east in late 1940 and early 1941. The rapid growth in production in early 1942 suggested that the evacuation had started in 1940. The tempo increased in August 1941.

Evacuation began with a recommendation from a local agency to the commissariat of the appropriate industry. After investigation, the recommendation was approved by the Evacuation Council and placed on a schedule giving the date, method of transport, and relocation site. In addition, unapproved evacuations took place on the initiative of local authorities.

Evacuation was well under way in the first week of August 1941. Sacrificing immediate production, many factories closed in August, packed up, and moved to the Ural Mountains. But because their products were needed, some plants remained in production until too late to be moved. Only 17 of the 64 iron and steel plants in the Donbas were evacuated between October and December 1941. The Kharkov tank factory was being dismantled when the Germans arrived.

The railroad made evacuation possible. As the railroads moved 2.5 million men to the front in June, July and August, they moved industrial machinery on their return. For example, on 7 August 1941, 3,000 rail cars per day evacuated iron and steel manufacturing equipment from the Dnieper area - 1,000 cars per day for the electrical industry, 400 cars per day for the chemical industry, and others. From August 8 to August 15, 1941, 26,000 rail cars evacuated industries in the Ukraine. In Moscow, 80,000 cars transported 498 factories, including 75,000 lathes, leaving only 21,000. Production by many factories resumed by December.......The operation was not always orderly. Other indications that planning was not complete and that turnaround time was longer than average were anecdotes of equipment having been dumped beside the tracks to empty the cars for a return journey. Of the 700 plants evacuated in the first months, only 270 arrived at planned destinations fully equipped, and 110 arrived with only part of their equipment....At times, inadequate planning resulted in trains having been loaded with materials and despatched with no destination to prevent capture by the Germans. These orphan trains moved around the country for long periods because there were no plans to use the equipment and no one knew what to do with them.....The evacuation of the factories was an immense undertaking. In the last three months of 1941, GOSPLAN moved 1,360 factories: 455 to the Urals, 210 to Western Siberia, and 250 to Central Asia and Kazahkstan. By the end of 1941, 1,523 large factories were moved. A few went to the Far East. The total was only a small proportion of the 32,000 factories captured by the Germans, but arms-related factories, representing 12% of the industrial potential in the occupied zone, were evacuated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malyshev_Factory#Tank_production
Shortly before the German invasion of the Soviet Union the KhPZ started series production of the T-34, the most-produced and arguably the best tank of World War II. Series production began in June 1940 in Kharkiv, and later in the Stalingrad Tractor Plant and Krasnoye Sormovo Shipbuilding Plant. In 1941, due to German advances, the factory and design shops were evacuated to the Ural mountains;[1] the plant was merged with Uralvagonzavod in Nizhny Tagil into one enterprise called Ural Tank Plant No. 183.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_Kharkov
In that time, however, most of Kharkov's industrial equipment had been evacuated or rendered useless by the Soviet authorities.

http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/weapons_t-34_production.html
First Factory No.183 - Charkovskiy Traktornyj Zawod (ChTZ), Kharkov

Production of the T-34 began at Factory No.183 at Kharkov, where the tank had been designed. On 5 June 1940 the Central Committee passed a resolution ordering the Kharkov plant to produce 600 tanks in 1940, with another 100 to be produced at Stalingrad. In fact only 183 T-34s were completed during 1940, all of them at Factory No.183. Production stepped up in the first half of 1940, when 553 tanks were produced at Kharkov, and reached a peak in the second half of the year, when despite the rapid approach of the Germans another 939 T-34s were completed. A total of 1,675 T-34s were produced at Kharkov.

By September 1941 it was clear that there was a real danger that Kkarkov would fall to the Germans. On 13 September 1941 the factory was ordered to evacuate to Nizhniy Tagil, east of the Urals. The first of 43 trains left on 17 September, the last on 19 October. Although much of the factory equipment reached the new site, only 10% of the work force and 20% of the engineers followed the machinery.

Production Summary
T-34-76: 1,675

Actually he gives no indication of that. Perhaps you confused it with the part where he noted that most of the industrial plants slated for evacuation specifically in the month of October managed to make it out. Even then, he qualifies by noting that "Others were probably still to be cleared for evacuation and not every factory was evacuated in full".

Now, probably the majority of defense industry in the entirety of the Soviet Union escaped destruction. I stated was the majority of defense industry in the areas occupied by the Germans in 1941 that were destroyed. Most stuff I've read stated this territory constituted 60% of Soviet defense industry, which obviously means that 40% of Soviet defense industry lay outside of that territory. Combine that with the percentage of industry successfully evacuated from the pre-war territory and you probably get a majority of the entire Soviet Unions defense industry.
I never said all of it was removed, but the vast majority of Soviet defense industry made it out. Perhaps it would be more helpful to discuss what was lost if we could find that out some how, but it seems losing the skilled workforce was an issue in the retreat. Again Lend-Lease to the rescue, replacing the parts of factories not evacuated and making the Soviets whole again with world class brand new high capacity machinery. The US made the most advanced machine tools in the world and the Soviets got them to enhance their production.

Soviet defense industry was recovering before the winter of 1941/42 even ended, before much of the lend-lease machinery for 1942 even arrived, much less the lend-lease machinery for the entire war. As I said, enough machinery was saved to ensure that the whole apparatus could continue to operate. It's just that "enough" isn't necessarily the same as "most".
It was reconstituting and mobilizing, but was well below capacity of what it would have done without invasion in the event of mobilization. So yes evacuated industry was able to get back into production relatively early on, but they started getting Lend-Lease machinery as early as late 1941.
http://www.historynet.com/did-russi...ase-helped-the-soviets-defeat-the-germans.htm
British and Commonwealth deliveries to the Soviet Union in late 1941 and early 1942 would not only assist in the Soviet defense of Moscow and subsequent counteroffensive, but also in increasing Soviet production for the next period of the war. Substantial quantities of machine tools and raw materials, such as aluminum and rubber, were supplied to help Soviet industry back on its feet: 312 metal-cutting machine tools were delivered by convoy PQ-12 alone, arriving in March 1942, along with a range of other items for Soviet factories such as machine presses and compressors.

Once again, raw figures do not tell the whole story. Although British shipments amounted to only a few percent of Soviet domestic production of machine tools, the Soviet Union could request specific items which it may not have been able to produce for itself. Additionally, many of the British tools arrived in early 1942, when Soviet tool production was still very low, resulting in a disproportionate impact. The handing over of forty imported machine tools to Aviation Factory No. 150 in July 1942, for example, was the critical factor in enabling the factory to reach projected capacity within two months.

http://www.o5m6.de/LL_Routes.html
According to this in the first protocol of LL some 30,000 tons of machinery was received from October 1st 1941-June 30th 1942. 16,000 tons were received with 'pre-LL' from June 1941-September 30th 1941. So in all roughly 46,000 tons of machinery was received from June 1941-June 1942. Lend-Lease/Western machinery was pretty important even in 1941-42, especially in the recovery period of industry being set up once again after evacuations.

Only specific thing with number I ever saw was in Keegan's book about the 2nd World War, where he states specifically that approximately 500 tractor factories of varying sizes which could have been used for AFV or motor-vehicle production were irrevocably lost to the Germans.
That's pretty vague and we have no idea what he was basing that on. I have no doubt that certainly some proportion of Soviet industry lost could have been turned to war work...but IOTL over 1 million tons of machine tools were sent to the USSR, including entire factories removed from the US, so it is more than safe to say what the Soviets got from Lend-Lease more than offset what the Soviets lost in 1941-42 given the much more advanced machinery the US had to offer the relatively backwards Soviet economy. I mean there was a reason that Stalin made huge deals for industrial equipment from Germany for raw materials in 1939-41. That said the loss of such industry and then no Lend-Lease would have been a HUGE problem for the Soviets.

Tractor factories, steel mills, chemical plants, aluminum processing, motor vehicle manufacturing, machine tool shops, and so-on and so forth.
Got a list of that stuff? We are just hypothesizing at this point. I mean yes of course the Stalino/Donbass and general Ukraine industrial area losses were quite heavy with all of that, we just don't know how much. In the end though that brings us back to how vital Lend-Lease was to making good Soviet economic losses...
 

Deleted member 1487

How much of a difference to the Western Allies would it make if they didnt have to supply the SU with LL? Would it allow them to have more impact on the Germans? Would the Germans being able to push further into the Soviet Union then make them MORE vulnerable to a stronger attack by the UK/US? Could we see D-Day in France in 1943, say, but with the same level of strength on the allied side as OTL 1944? Would the Nazis actually be weaker than 1944?
Based on the wikipedia article they could have built, equipped, and sustained 60 US style divisions in the field for the entire war just from the weapons and materials shipped to the USSR. Much of it really would mean they could deploy more men to the army, mobilize their own forces more quickly, save on shipping a lot more, but then would have to do a lot more fighting and dying themselves, rather than outsourcing most of the combat to the Soviets. 'Nuker and I can agree that it would be intensely stupid for the US not to offer LL to the Soviets, because then if the Soviets collapse and don't do their part of the war the US and Brits would suffer far heavier losses trying to do all that combat themselves. They certainly could kill German much more cost effectively than the Soviets could in terms of Allied lives, but they'd still have to suffer probably millions of casualties trying to defeat the Germans if the Soviets collapsed in say 1942. Sure the Allies could sit back and rely on strategic bombing to shatter the German economy first, but they'd really have to fight a bloody attrition war in the sky first and still have to invade the continent and roll back the Germans, which would not be cheap.

Depending on what happens with the Soviets though, it is theoretically possible that the Germans can overextend themselves in the East grabbing more territory than they can hold, but the Soviets can't really eject them from it, but nothing would equal the Soviet historical mangling of German forces and the losses they inflicted. The Allies could have invaded in 1943, but if the Soviets aren't really able to inflict a Stalingrad on the Germans and are on the verge of collapse themselves, then the Germans can transfer in reinforcements and in a situation in which the Allies do not yet have air superiority like they would in 1944 (in Summer 1943 the Luftwaffe was able to inflict grievous losses on the Allied air forces) then it is a nightmare scenario for the Allies in terms of attrition and casualties. As horrible as the German situation was in Summer 1944 they still managed to inflict equal losses on the Allies in combat to what they suffered before they ran out of men and material; in 1943 with a weak USSR unable to inflict much damage on the Germans that means the Allies have to fight Kursk in Normandy against the best of the German army not killed off in the East at Stalingrad, Kursk, Smolensk, or in Ukraine in 1943 (where the Soviets suffered well over 1 million deaths that year). Assuming that happens instead of Torch or Sicily (which would have to be the case probably given that once they set foot in North Africa they get sucked into an Italian campaign), the Germans have a lot more veteran divisions fully equipped in prime defensive terrain with heaps of materials, while the Allies lack the extra year of combat experience with training wheels, 1 year less training, less material superiority, and face a lot more experienced and well equipped Germans than in 1944 (where they were far weaker than they were in 1943 given the losses in 1942-44 on all fronts). Losing Soviet help is a very bad situation for the Wallies if they planned to invade in 1943 or 44.
 
"and without it, it certainly would be nearer". Yes, I can read. That is still not the same as declaring "it would have happened for sure". Even "it would have probable", if that was the implication, is not the absolutist statement that Wiking makes.

It is true that it isn't an absolutist statement, but is still worth noting in that it signifies that Harrison does place considerable importance on Lend-Lease in 1942. It is also not the absolutist statement on your part that "what arrived in 1942 was too small to massively effect the outcome."

And Stalin's word is not definitive, as the fact that Harisson still didn't believe that Soviet collapse is a certainty indicates.

He's as close to definitive as it is possible for any one person to be. He had access to the information placed in archives which, as wiking mentioned earlier, have still not been made public.

And what such pressure would that be?

The reduction of LL arriving through Vladivostok and having to fight the Japanese.

And if the Japanese fails to have any impact upon the Battle of Moscow, then that's pretty much it for the impact they'll have on the front against the Germans. After 1941, they'll have to cut back on operations as the inevitable US embargo (which, at the latest, would be imposed as a result of a Japanese attack on the USSR) means their strategic reserve will be too exhausted by summer of 1942 for any large-scale operations. By 1943, it will have been completely exhausted. So Coox still doesn't have a supportable point.

I don't see why this is a given. The embargo was historically imposed in response to the Japanese occupation of bases in Indochina which directly threatened Wallied positions in the Pacific. A Japanese move north wouldn't pose any such direct threat and if anything would lessen it in the short term given that Japan couldn't move both north and south at the same time.

The IJA was also not a heavily mechanized force.

Also, Japan plunging into Siberia would have meant no pressure on the British in South East Asia, so the British would have been able to commit additional forces from India against the Axis in the Mediterranean in 1942, so there's a tradeoff there.

While true, the additional British presence would need to be weighed against the lack of a direct US role due to no Pearl Harbor and subsequent German DOW.

Actually, I misplaced that parenthetical statement. It was supposed to be in the part where the Japanese were counting on the isolated condition and distance of the Soviet Far East to protect them from rapid Soviet reinforcement. They had already found out that this was quite wrong for several reasons.

Firstly they assumed a USSR caught by surprise, with the Japanese being able to steal a one month march of mobilization and preparations in secret. However Soviet's immediate detection of the "special maneuvers" in 1941 to strengthen the Kwangtung Army showed that the Japanese could not count on gaining this advantage. This would immediately have shaved up to a month off all the Japanese estimates.

Secondly, and specifically as regards the Hailar Plain, the Japanese underestimated the Soviet ability to concentrate and move forces through the region, while overestimating their own capacity to support their own forces. This posed serious problems for the western holding action - a problem that was clearly revealed by Nomonhan. The Japanese didn't really have any good solutions for this. The massive western offensive of Hachi-go Concept B would theoretically have solved this problem, cutting off the Soviet forces in the east, and then decisively defeating those in the west, but the Japanese never actually built the forces necessary to execute Concept B nor could they have until 1943 (by their own estimates).

Thirdly the Japanese likely underestimated the capacity of the Trans-Siberian railroad. They assumed that an offensive concentration of some 30 divisions in the west would take the Soviets about three months to gather. Yet the Soviets would ultimately show the ability to mass two to three times as many forces in only two months.

However, and the reason I intended to put the parenthetical statement down there, in the autumn of 1941 the Soviets were fighting for their life in the West and had no reinforcements to send East, which would influence things in the opposite direction, so if the Japanese went then, any mistakes they made in calculating the Soviet ability to send reinforcements would be academic because none would be coming in any event.

So it is agreed that the Japanese underestimation of Soviet reinforcement capacity is irrelevant to the scenario under discussion.

There is no example of the Japanese doing so over the distances they would have to advance in order to reach anything important to the Soviets other then Vladivostok, which measure in the thousands of kilometers. Furthermore, those examples were in climates and supply conditions (no sea supply in the Siberian interior and the railways would have been wrecked) that were actually far more favorable then those they would experience in Siberia in the autumn-winter of 1941. The Japanese would be in a even worse shoestring then they were over in those other examples. As it was, they only had supplies for three months (by their own, optimistic estimates) of combat by 20 divisions in Manchuria and pushing over the vast wastes of the Far East would have sorely taxed them.

Plus, it's not just my conclusion. It's also the IJA's. Coox himself also mentions it and it also pops up in Japanese Operational Planning Against the USSR.

Once the rail system would be repaired (which it is true would have taken some time), I don't see why the supply situation would be worse than across thousands of miles of submarine-infested ocean. As for Japanese planning, much is dependent on what they were considering they would face in those plans. I don't doubt that the Red Army would have been able to prevent the IJA from getting to the areas of economic importance, but in doing so it would have needed a substantial commitment of more than small blocking forces.
 
How much of a difference to the Western Allies would it make if they didnt have to supply the SU with LL? Would it allow them to have more impact on the Germans? Would the Germans being able to push further into the Soviet Union then make them MORE vulnerable to a stronger attack by the UK/US? Could we see D-Day in France in 1943, say, but with the same level of strength on the allied side as OTL 1944? Would the Nazis actually be weaker than 1944?

A partial answer to that question lies in the ship capacity used to deliver the LL. Hyperwar has some data on that for 1942-43 http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/ATO/Admin/WSA/MMatWar-44/index.html

This chart shows only US controled ships delivery. UK controled ships, including the Norwegian, Greek, Dutch, Polish, ect... cargo ships are not reflected in this. If nothing is sent to the USSR in US controled hulls then there is for 1942 a total of approx 2,735,000 tons cargo that can be delivered elsewhere. That is roughly 11% of the gross for 1942. For 1943 the nominal amt to the USSR is 4,362,000 or roughly 16% of the gross.

I should note at this point not everything in these categories was direct LL for the USSR. ie: In 1942 & part of 1943 the material sent to the Persian Gulf included that used to rebuild the Persian railway, or a truck final assembly plant used near the Abadan port, and material for improving the port.

2,735,000 tons cargo to the UK in 1942 increases delivery by some 41% in 1942. However the shorter transit time means more more tons material delivered per ship, so the potiential is higher than delivery to the USSR. If the capacity is redirected at the African/Med theatre in 1942 the increase is over 90%. Or if redirected to the UK & the Med together the aggregate increase is approx 28%.

For 1943 redirected Soviet LL material of increases:

To UK 45%

To Africa/East Med 140%

Combined 33%

There are different ways to massage these numbers, but I think the bottom line is the West Allies can deploy a lot more material, men, and combat power against the Axis in Africa & then Europe in 1943-43.


Screen shot 2016-12-09 at 10.25.04 PM.png
 
Top