Awesome videos guys, keep up the great work!
Scott
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Well we have gone over the numbers before. It’s a lot of logistics, mobility, and added aircraft and some armor punch. they still provided the main firepower but by extending their logistics you can say we made each of their offensives last longer before they ran short and had to stop.
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Lend-lease did provide a fair bit of “firepower” in the way of tanks and planes, but the main impact of western support was the logistics and raw materials. You’ll rarely see British or American tanks or planes in Soviet newsreels, but they were needed and used until domestic production could catch up to the demand. Trucks and jeeps were so desperately needed that you do sometimes see them in the propaganda pieces because they were such a big part of the Red Army’s supply and support network.
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The Studebaker M2 truck too. Zhukov and Khruschev both stated post-war that Lend-Lease provied half of Soviet explosives. Those artillery barrage that the Red Army was famous for were courtesy of Lend-Lease.
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Military History Visualized did a good rundown of this issue.
Basically it’s near impossible to find an authoritative account of the impact of Lend-Lease on Soviet capabilities. The short answer is that it was politically inconvenient for both sides to admit the size of the impact.
The Soviets did not want to admit that they depended heavily of American Capitalist support to be the Nazis, and the US did not want to admit to how much support they gave to a Communist regime.
Authoritative data on the scale of US support sent to the Soviets will be hard to find.
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