What 5 - 10% Lend Lease Meant to USSR in WWII

Mark Conley

Mark Conley

Active member
I could help noticing that when ever lend-lease and the soviet union keeps popping up in the posts on the forum..it mentions that 5-10% figure. Sounds kinda puny..until you really look at what 5-10% really was to the soviet union in WWII

The following link is to article written by of all things to the Russian on-line Pravda newspaper. It details in great length, the story of the Lend-lease actions given to the country by the United States and the other Allies during WWII. It really makes for some fascinating knowledge.

http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/90/363/9941_roosevelt.html

Now just to put a perspective on that 5-10%:

We gave the USSR the following number of ships (yes Ships!) “ 595 ships, including 28 frigates, 105 submarines, 77 trawlers, 22 torpedo boats, 140 anti-submarine vessels and others”

Planes. 4,952 Aerocobras, 2,410 Kingcobra fighter planes, 2,700 A-20 and 861 B-25 bomber planes.

Tanks: 7,056 tanks of all types.

Anti-aircraft guns: 8,218 anti-aircraft emplacements

Guns: 131,600 machine guns and other arms

During the WWII years, the USA delivered defense technology in the sum of $46 billion to the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition. The costs made up 13 percent of America's defense spending. The lion's share of deliveries was given to England - $30.3 billion. The Soviet Union received defense technology in the sum of $9.8 billion, France $1,4 billion and China $631 million. In total, the USA supplied arms to 42 countries

“ Back in those years, it was said that the Soviet Union had produced 30,000 tanks and 40,000 planes since the middle of 1943. Well, as a matter of fact, this was true. However, one has to take into consideration the fact that lend and lease deliveries were made to the USSR during the most difficult period of the war - during the second half of 1942. In addition, the USSR would not have been capable of producing its arms without the lend-lease agreement: The USA shipped 2.3 million tons of steel to the USSR during the WWII years. That volume of steel was enough for the production of 70,000 T-34 tanks. Aluminum was received in the volume of 229,000 tons, which helped the Soviet aviation and tank industries to run for two years. One has to mention food deliveries as well: 3.8 million tons of tinned pork, sausages, butter, chocolate, egg powder and so on. The lend-lease agreement provided orderlies with 423,000 telephones and tens of thousands of wireless stations. Deliveries also included oil distillation equipment, field bakeries, tents, parachutes, and so on and so forth. The Soviet Union also received 15 million pairs of army boots.”

This doesn't even take into account what went to the bottom of the ocean during the murmask run..nor the number of ships sunk and people lost trying to deliver it..this only represents what they actually got to do the job.

Its only 5-10% guys. You really want an eye opener..read the last paragraph of the article.

And this was one country out of 42 that participated in the lend lease program. Our american ancestors in WWII must have been workaholics.

:D
 
Yes Mark the Soviets do have a lot to thank the US for in war materials and food supplies ( as well as many other countries including Australia).

I suppose what we can thank the Soviets for is the slow grinding up of the best Germans Divisions. They paid for this in spilling alot more blood (20 million people approximately in total!!!) than the Western allies had too.
 
:cheers: heres to the defeat of the common enemy in WWII...it was a shame that the lat 60 years afterward were so painful for both countrys. :D
 
its a good question..to be honest, roosevelt never expected a penny back. Now i know that Britain paid painfully..they gave us the rights to naval bases, and a substantial amount of gold early on for the fifty destroyers we gave them (the neutrality act kept it from being a gift, in order not to provoke Germany into a premature war.)

There is a whole US government site on the amount of lend-lease and the countries given it: ill do some more research and post it. :D
 
Mr Conley I dont know how it was that I didnt notice this topic of yours.
I've been talking about how false a belief it was that the soviets owed nothing to the US for what the US gave to them during WW2 for years.
I just needed a set of info, data and evidences. The article is a supergreat source, man.
YOU KICK ASS.
I'm gonna show this to my housemate who 's got a USSR flag hanging on his wall ( I got an Italian and a huge US flag instead- along with a Canadian one ).
 
guy..some advice..

legends die hard. It might help your friend that its from a russian newspaper dedicated to the truth, but look at it this way. even urban legends die hard in my country...and they are fairy tales.

be gentle. :D
 
It would have meant alot but does it mean that the USSR would have been defeated by the Germans without it? The Eastern Front War may have dragged on longer but I think they would have pushed the Germans back eventually with even greater loss of life.

I have always wondered how the US would have handled an invasion in June 1941 by a force of the quality and professionalism of the German military. :?:
 
aussiejohn said:
...I have always wondered how the US would have handled an invasion in June 1941 by a force of the quality and professionalism of the German military. :?:
Click to expand...

Sounds like a darn good topic starter aussiejohn...why not go for it, the glory and the 10 milbucks? :D
 
Now, now......Lets not get too extreme with this. The Russians lost at least 20 million souls during that war, they fought fiercely and they made an enourmess donation to the war effort. They did recieve massive aid in hardware from the US, but they won the eastern front with their blood, and their efforts. If not for the enourmos grind on the German eastern front, the invasion of normandy might not have been possible.
 
naw we already fought that one out in another topic sherman..this one was in explanation to a person that PMed me saying that 10 percent help to the russian didnt mean anything.

:D
 
Mark Conley said:
I could help noticing that when ever lend-lease and the soviet union keeps popping up in the posts on the forum..it mentions that 5-10% figure. Sounds kinda puny..until you really look at what 5-10% really was to the soviet union in WWII

The following link is to article written by of all things to the Russian on-line Pravda newspaper. It details in great length, the story of the Lend-lease actions given to the country by the United States and the other Allies during WWII. It really makes for some fascinating knowledge.

http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/90/363/9941_roosevelt.html

Now just to put a perspective on that 5-10%:

We gave the USSR the following number of ships (yes Ships!) “ 595 ships, including 28 frigates, 105 submarines, 77 trawlers, 22 torpedo boats, 140 anti-submarine vessels and others”

Planes. 4,952 Aerocobras, 2,410 Kingcobra fighter planes, 2,700 A-20 and 861 B-25 bomber planes.

Tanks: 7,056 tanks of all types.

Anti-aircraft guns: 8,218 anti-aircraft emplacements

Guns: 131,600 machine guns and other arms

During the WWII years, the USA delivered defense technology in the sum of $46 billion to the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition. The costs made up 13 percent of America's defense spending. The lion's share of deliveries was given to England - $30.3 billion. The Soviet Union received defense technology in the sum of $9.8 billion, France $1,4 billion and China $631 million. In total, the USA supplied arms to 42 countries

“ Back in those years, it was said that the Soviet Union had produced 30,000 tanks and 40,000 planes since the middle of 1943. Well, as a matter of fact, this was true. However, one has to take into consideration the fact that lend and lease deliveries were made to the USSR during the most difficult period of the war - during the second half of 1942. In addition, the USSR would not have been capable of producing its arms without the lend-lease agreement: The USA shipped 2.3 million tons of steel to the USSR during the WWII years. That volume of steel was enough for the production of 70,000 T-34 tanks. Aluminum was received in the volume of 229,000 tons, which helped the Soviet aviation and tank industries to run for two years. One has to mention food deliveries as well: 3.8 million tons of tinned pork, sausages, butter, chocolate, egg powder and so on. The lend-lease agreement provided orderlies with 423,000 telephones and tens of thousands of wireless stations. Deliveries also included oil distillation equipment, field bakeries, tents, parachutes, and so on and so forth. The Soviet Union also received 15 million pairs of army boots.”

This doesn't even take into account what went to the bottom of the ocean during the murmask run..nor the number of ships sunk and people lost trying to deliver it..this only represents what they actually got to do the job.

Its only 5-10% guys. You really want an eye opener..read the last paragraph of the article.

And this was one country out of 42 that participated in the lend lease program. Our american ancestors in WWII must have been workaholics.

:D
Click to expand...


I took these bits of info out of my "antique" set of Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia (1969 Edition!!)

You may be interested Mark as they relate to your figures.

Expenditure by the US for the lend-lease program totaled about $48,000,000,000.

70% went to Great Britain and 25% to USSR.

The US received $6,000,000,000 in reverse lend-lease, mostly from the British Commonwealth.

Arrangements for the settlement of the debts incurred by the recipient nations under lend-lease were begun shortly after the wars end.
In December, 1946 President Truman announced that 70% of the total amount expended by the US was considered repaid; in actuality, this allowance constituted a recognition by the US of the enormous losses in men and material.

The British debt was repaid in July, 1948. Negotiations with the USSR were fruitless. In Feb, 1960 the US rejected a Soviet Proposal that the lend-lease settlement be a part of a plan for increased trade and long-term credits for the Soviet Union. The matter remained open.

Another set of interesting figures that you may have seen (I got these from an oldish book "The Illustrated History of the World Wars -Cathay Books).

They show the changes in gold reserves from 1938 to 1945, indicating that some nations did profit from the industrial demands of the war.

This is just a small list.

These nations gained.

United States: increased by 1422,000,000,000 pounds!!!!!!!! Wow!!!!!
Argentina: " " " 230,000,000,000 "
Sth Africa: " " " 174,000,000,000 "
Switzerland: " " " 160,000,000,000 "

These nations lost

France: decreased by 335,000,000,000 pounds.
Netherland: " " 182,000,000,000 "
Japan: " " 63,000,000,000 "
Canada: " " 46,000,000,000 "
Italy: " " 25,000,000,000 "
UK: " " 5,000,000,000 "

The US lost 406,000 people in WW2, but economically did rather well.
 
yep...the US could concentrate on industry and production. This was due to it non-involved status with the actual destructivness of the war on the home shores...with the exception of the ballon bombs, a few submarine shellings, and a lot of ships torpedoed just off shore within site of the beach goers, America was hardly touched by the actual carnage and such of war. It could actually be the power house that produced materials for the world.

Thanks for the information aussie.
 
The lend lease question comes up a lot as to whether it enabled Russia to survive or not, I think I agree with aussiejohn in that although helpful to Russia, they would have survived without it, especially after the Germans failed to knock them out before winter '41.

I found the following surfing...

_____________________________________________________________

lend-lease supplies accounted for:
> 80% of all canned meat.
Canned meat accounted for less then 10% of Soviet army food rations.

> 92% of all railroad locomotives, rolling stock and rails.
92% of all new locomotives and rails. USSR had plenty of locomotives before the war and a lot of locomotive park was left intact even after Barbarossa. Thus, production of new locomotives was not considered a strategic priority.

> 56% of all aluminum.
In this timeframe, Alcoa (US aluminium company) had a near-monopoly on aluminium production in the world due to lack of bauxites deposite discoveries in the rest of the world. So yes, aluminium was in short supply everywhere, and so USSR used to buy aluminium from the States for hard currency and would continue to do the same without lend-lease. BTW, in 1941 USA actually was behind on deliveries of materials ordered by USSR before the war. USSR did not have a lot of hard currency, but it had enough to buy strategic materials. Without lend-lease, USSR likely would have to raise some more currency ie by selling its gold reserves. Tough, but not devastating.

The main use of aluminium is in aircraft production, USSR partially fought aluminium shortages by designing equipment which used it in minimum amount. So most of USSR fighters were made mostly of wood (which is not necessarily bad - so was Mosquito - but it limited their tactical capabilities). So you see, aluminium shipments were important - but not to the point where there were absolutely no alternatives to imported aluminium.

> 53% of all copper.
Same here.

> 53% of all explosives.
This was largely a question of optimal division of labor between Allies. In 1941-42 US industry was not quite ready for war-time production yet - there was little engineering experience in producing tanks and combat aircraft. However, US chemical industry was the best in the world and production of explosives does not require all that much special expertise. So production of explosives was much easier for US to handle at the time then production of armored vehicles etc. E. Stettinius, whom I mentioned above, writes about it to the tune of "We could not do everything Soviets wanted, but we tried to do what we can".

> 57% of all aviation fuel.
I don't know how critical the situation with aviation fuel was. Lacking US supplies, Soviet aircraft would use lower-grade fuel, then. This would limit their speed and ceiling, but most of air combat on the Eastern front was low-altitude, ground-support combat. And air force was not as decisive in the Eastern front by a variety of reasons (poor weather, spread-out theater of operations, etc).

> 74% of all truck transport.
> 74% of all vehicle tires.
Given a correlation of these numbers, I suspect double-counting - trucks and their tires were counted separately Trucks, no doubt, were the most important of LL supplies. Studebakers appeared in quantity only in 1943 and thereafter but then became a staple of Soviet army. But, again, look at the German army - they were supplied by trucks even less then the Soviet army, and managed Ok. Unless you have seen a Russian road during Spring rains, you cannot really appreciate the value of a simple horse cart

> 12% of all armored vehicles.
> 14% of all combat aircraft.
Oh well. These two do not look all that crucial do they? They were a mixed bag, since many armored vehicles were not fit to use in Russian conditions.
The worst LL tank - a tie between Matilda (mud would get under its armored "skirt" and block tracks in no time, rendering an already slow tank unmovable) and M3 Lee (which got a nick "Brother's grave for seven").
The best - Valentines, Shermans. Shermans were appreciated for its exotic comforts - iirc it even had an air conditioner. Valentines were tough, hard to spot (low profile), and very reliable.

Of aircraft, according to memoirs, many pilots actually preferred I-16 to a Hurricane. Spitfires and A-20s were excellent, but they were not available in significant quantities. Airacobras and later Kingcobras were well liked, although it was a tough aircraft to fly. Soviet ace Pokryshkin, mentioned above in this thread, made 48 kills on Airacobra. He commented about it, though, that it's like a horse with an attitude. "A skillful pilot could ride it like a wind, but it will throw off an inexperienced rider in no time".
 
Ashes said:
The lend lease question comes up a lot as to whether it enabled Russia to survive or not, I think I agree with aussiejohn in that although helpful to Russia, they would have survived without it, especially after the Germans failed to knock them out before winter '41.

I found the following surfing...

its a really good post ash..lets look at your points and see if we can clarify some information as to some of the conditions that made them.. :D ____________________________________________________________

lend-lease supplies accounted for:
> 80% of all canned meat.
Canned meat accounted for less then 10% of Soviet army food rations.

i see. for a force of at least 2,500, 000, if it only ate 10% of its rations from LL meat, i guess would have starved pretty fast. good catch there!

> 92% of all railroad locomotives, rolling stock and rails.
92% of all new locomotives and rails. USSR had plenty of locomotives before the war and a lot of locomotive park was left intact even after Barbarossa. Thus, production of new locomotives was not considered a strategic priority.

well kinda true, unless you lose a few to low flying aircraft that strafe, shoot, or blow them up on a regular basis. one of the biggest reasons for importing so many american locomotives was the gauge, or wheel width of the tracks the trains rolled on. Most of the USSR gauge was believe it or not, in the american wide gauge standard. The 1938 Soviet five-year plan called for the Soviet rail line system to be expanded to approximately 62.000 miles (100.000km). For the most part, the Soviets were able meet their construction goals. When the German attack began, most of the Soviet rail lines (and all of the important ones) were in wide gauge. consequently, when you lost a locomotive beyond repair, its was easier to order an american replacement that would already fit the tracks than build one in war, when you needed the steel for tanks. Another killer of the locomotives were the harsh weather conditions: trains could and did freeze over night, bursting the parts and such due to expansion. one of the bad things about being a locomotive is you have to roll on a track, and that makes it fairly predictable to an aircraft pilot as to where he will find you. in the USSR, rolling stock was the most important way of getting mass amounts of supplies from one point to the next, as roads were pretty much non-existent at or about a certain point from the city centers. Shipping on the volga and other rivers were important, so were the clearwater ports, but it was rails that moved the bulk of the soviet army and soviet manufactured goods.

> 56% of all aluminum.
In this timeframe, Alcoa (US aluminium company) had a near-monopoly on aluminium production in the world due to lack of bauxites deposit discoveries in the rest of the world. So yes, aluminium was in short supply everywhere, and so USSR used to buy aluminium from the States for hard currency and would continue to do the same without lend-lease. BTW, in 1941 USA actually was behind on deliveries of materials ordered by USSR before the war. USSR did not have a lot of hard currency, but it had enough to buy strategic materials. Without lend-lease, USSR likely would have to raise some more currency ie by selling its gold reserves. Tough, but not devastating.

agree. big time monopoly on the manufacturing, but it was canada that had the largest resources as far as ore in the ground. Actually the former USSR has many tons of the strategic materials it needs buried in siberia and in the vast desert slopes of the mongolian tundra: it just hasn't developed the means and the manufacturing processes to get it out and use it.

The main use of aluminium is in aircraft production, USSR partially fought aluminium shortages by designing equipment which used it in minimum amount. So most of USSR fighters were made mostly of wood (which is not necessarily bad - so was Mosquito - but it limited their tactical capabilities). So you see, aluminium shipments were important - but not to the point where there were absolutely no alternatives to imported aluminium.

Wood is not a bad substitute if you have a large amount of trees to get it from. I guess if you have 50,000 wooden fighters, against 1000 metal ones, its still going to be a slaughter for the metal ones. So you change the tactics. P-40s were absolutely no good against Zeros in a dog fight: Chennault altered the tactic to use the weight and fast dive speeds to enable the p-40 pilots to hit and run to fight another day. And they killed 297 planes for the loss of about 12 planes in combat.

> 53% of all copper.
Same here.

yep. you have to be able to mine it to get it. they didn't have the mines, nor did they have the time to dig them, process the ore, smelt it, and process it into something useful.

> 53% of all explosives.
This was largely a question of optimal division of labor between Allies. In 1941-42 US industry was not quite ready for war-time production yet - there was little engineering experience in producing tanks and combat aircraft. However, US chemical industry was the best in the world and production of explosives does not require all that much special expertise. So production of explosives was much easier for US to handle at the time then production of armored vehicles etc. E. Stettinius, whom I mentioned above, writes about it to the tune of "We could not do everything Soviets wanted, but we tried to do what we can".

don't know about the US being best in the world with chemicals: actually the Germans were better at it (they had to produce synthetic oil during WWII because they gradually lost their petroleum oil base in romania and poland, for example) but the US had the key to any production: they had the most chemical plants of production. and they weren't being bombed out of existence.

> 57% of all aviation fuel.
I don't know how critical the situation with aviation fuel was. Lacking US supplies, Soviet aircraft would use lower-grade fuel, then. This would limit their speed and ceiling, but most of air combat on the Eastern front was low-altitude, ground-support combat. And air force was not as decisive in the Eastern front by a variety of reasons (poor weather, spread-out theater of operations, etc).

The USSR never had the oil production capability it needed to get the raw materials to support the production of aviation octane. Guess it was in a later 5 year plan. The use of planes was very critical on the eastern front however: almost half the tanks killed in action was from the air, using planes armed with cannon (the two lend lease aircraft, the aircobra and the king aircobra were actually desired and ordered by the soviets as they were superior ground support aircraft, because of that long cannon that fired through the nose was very effective against ground targets.) shoot, as far as poor weather conditions, look at what the US had to do to fight the Japanese in the alueitans.

> 74% of all truck transport.
> 74% of all vehicle tires.
Given a correlation of these numbers, I suspect double-counting - trucks and their tires were counted separately Trucks, no doubt, were the most important of LL supplies. Studebakers appeared in quantity only in 1943 and thereafter but then became a staple of Soviet army. But, again, look at the German army - they were supplied by trucks even less then the Soviet army, and managed Ok. Unless you have seen a Russian road during Spring rains, you cannot really appreciate the value of a simple horse cart

agree. maybe we should have sent carts.

> 12% of all armored vehicles.
> 14% of all combat aircraft.
Oh well. These two do not look all that crucial do they? They were a mixed bag, since many armored vehicles were not fit to use in Russian conditions.
The worst LL tank - a tie between Matilda (mud would get under its armored "skirt" and block tracks in no time, rendering an already slow tank unmovable) and M3 Lee (which got a nick "Brother's grave for seven").
The best - Valentines, Shermans. Shermans were appreciated for its exotic comforts - iirc it even had an air conditioner. Valentines were tough, hard to spot (low profile), and very reliable.

Well they got what we got when it was manufactured. matildas and lees were manufactured for the desert: not much mud out there i guess. when we cranked up on the other variants, then that was what they got.

Of aircraft, according to memoirs, many pilots actually preferred I-16 to a Hurricane. Spitfires and A-20s were excellent, but they were not available in significant quantities. Airacobras and later Kingcobras were well liked, although it was a tough aircraft to fly. Soviet ace Pokryshkin, mentioned above in this thread, made 48 kills on Airacobra. He commented about it, though, that it's like a horse with an attitude. "A skillful pilot could ride it like a wind, but it will throw off an inexperienced rider in no time".[/quote

For a plane not really liked by one soviet pilot, they sure ordered enough of them. Many P-63s were exported as Lend-Lease aircraft; the Soviet Union received 2,456. When P-39 production ended in August 1944, Bell had built 9,584 Airacobras, of which 4,773 had been allotted to the Soviet Union. Russian pilots particularly liked the cannon-armed P-39 for its ground attack capability. these planes weren't liked for their dog fighting skills: they were loved as ground support aircraft. BTW, any plane can be a widow maker to an inexperienced pilot.



Not bad for a post. you might want to include the links to the information, you post, but i guess when you are surfing, you just dont have time for it. as per your example, i have not posted mine either. make em work for it yeah.


:D
Click to expand...
 
It's my opinion that Lend-Lease was CRITICAL to the survival of the Soviet Union in WW2.

Without Lend-Lease the Soviet Railroad system would have collapsed, meaning it would have been very difficult for the Soviet Union to supply, mobolise and deploy her armies. One of the biggest impacts is that most of the Soviet motorised rifle divisions would have had to slog it on foot. Furthermore, the Red Army would not have been capable of moving enough supplies and equipment to conduct large scale operations such as the defense of Kursk or the Battle of Bagration. They would be limited to conducting rolling waves of localised attacks that would have easily been outflanked and out manuevered by the more mobile German divisions.

Taking that into consideration and also the fact that Lend-Lease delivered large supplies of extremely useful supplies such as tyres and machine tools, the Red Army would have been very hard pressed to wage war on anything like equal terms with the Wehrmacht and it's my opinion that they would have eventually collapsed. Even with Lend-Lease the Soviet-German casualty ratio was 7-1; it would have been much worse without.

Here's a useful link:

http://orbat.com/site/sturmvogel/SovLendLease.html
 
I tend to agree that the Soviets would have been hard-pressed to defeat the Wehrmacht without the Lend Lease. Things like railroad components and locomotives, trucks, fuel, commo wire, explosives, other consumables and transportation enhancements translated into faster Soviet recovery between offensive operations, and by the same token less time for Germans to recover their losses. You take away Lend Lease, and suddenly Soviet offensives take much longer to mount (if you don't have the trains and the trucks to assemble troops and supplies), fewer of them are launched each year, and each is met by a stronger German defense.
 
S ! all

Very interesting thread indeed.
Here’s what I read about some parts of lend lease to the USSR (will quote my sources later, haven’t got them at hand yet).

Lend leased armored vehicules and airplanes were not significant, more or less 10-15 % of Soviet production. In addition, lend leased aircrafts and tanks were not significantly better or better at all that their Russian counterparts, except for some aircrafts at the begining of lend lease program.

BUT, lend lease was very significant in at least 2 domains (+ other domains which I don’t know about, so I don’t say that these were the only 2 domains) :

- Motorized transport : this was a huge flaw of societ army, which was poorly motorized at the begining of Barbarossa and Soviet production alone could not rise in this domain because weapons were the priority. In this domain, the vehicules supplied thru lend lease equal in numbers the whole soviet production !!

- Radios. One Russian tank out of ten was equipped with radio of poor quality, aircraft were also poorly equipped. US supplied many many radios to the soviets, and these were way better than Soviet radios.

So at least in the motorized transport area we can say that lend lease was very very important, both in impact on operations and in relative numbers also (when compared to indigenous production)

of course, it didn’t changed the outcome of the war : just check the numbers or pure soviet tanks or aircraft produced, germans were far behind and eventualy had to be crushed . Russians won with Russian tactics, Russian hardware and, most of all, Russian manpower.
 
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