Conscript wrote:You're not actually offering any counter-argument regarding my numbers and conclusions I drew from them, nor are you offering any stats to the contrary. You are just asserting your position, I think this conversation is pointless. What I cited already accounts for POWs using estimates, the kill count is still overwhelmingly skewed towards the red army, naturally because it was the only land army to stand toe to toe with the Germans in continental total war. Further, the red army had conventional superiority over the Western Allies and this defined the early cold war era. Also, lend lease aid didn't peak until after the battle of stalingrad, by which point more avenues of shipment were available and aid in tonnage more than doubled:
https://books.google.com/books?id=kJCRA ... &q&f=false
Nah, that's just the old Soviet propaganda line Stalin dreamed up in 1947. The Soviets wouldn't have been able to launch offensives at all without western aid, period, and the Allied armies did a much better job at killing and neutralizing Germans per soldier than the Soviets did. As for the weird argument re how much Lend-Lease arrived when, the early shipments were the most critical, even in the battles for Moscow Lend-Lease armor and equipment made the difference between stopping the Germans and defeat, and also in replacing the massive losses the Soviets took in retreating. The massive minefields certainly played a big role in the center and the Soviet anti-tank guns and bunkers as well in shutting down the German drives, but the Kursk pocket wouldn't have held without Lend-Lease munitions and the some 600 Lend-Lease armor units and trucks, and fuel, along with engineering supplies and trainers, Lend-Lease aircraft, etc. They certainly would never have been within 600 miles of Berlin by 1945 without it. The Germans also had to concede almost total air superiority on the Eastern front to the Soviets in order to attempt the Allied bombing campaigns over Germany.
Just because Stalin didn't give a crap about how many of his soldiers died throwing them against German weapons, resulting in truly massive casualties, doesn't make them grand winners; they weren't in the war without western supplies keeping them moving, much less winning.
Also:
It would be difficult and unconvincing to argue that 'Lend-Lease' aid saved the Soviet Union during 1941 or, indeed, at any point in the war. Axis forces were halted before Moscow with Soviet blood, and to a large extent with Soviet-manufactured arms and equipment. Soviet troops continued to fight largely with Soviet-produced arms, even if they were increasingly frequently ferried into battle, resupplied, and mounted on US-supplied lorries
Britain, on the other hand, was far more reliant on Lend-Lease.[/quote]
Utter gibberish, and again just old Soviet propaganda. Zhukov is on record himself, recorded in private, admitting how critical the western aid was. They were able to devote so much of their industry to producing arms because of the steel machine tools, technical advisers, locomotives and rail cars to move it all around on, special alloys, aviation imported along with thousands of aircraft to keep them in the war while they developed and modernized their own factories and steel making plants and techniques. Even the vaunted T-34 didn't become a great tank until after the Soviets began implementing the improvements suggested by American and British engineers in 1943, that didn't go online until the next winter and coming off the lines the following Spring.
Of course Hitler had been on the defensive since early 1943 anyway by that time, thanks to the Brits and Operation Torch leaving the entire underside of Europe exposed. The Soviets hadn't launched a single offensive by then; they were late to the game, and had to be carried by everybody else to stay in it.
Without western aid even Stalingrad wouldn't have been a decisive disaster; they could have easily held the Soviets inside the 1942 lines if it weren't for the massive western pressure from the Allies in the west and the Lend-Lease making the critical difference between launching offensives or merely holding on.