Lobster
Posts: 3352
Joined: 8/8/2013
From: Third rock from the Sun.
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quote:
ORIGINAL: EwaldvonKleist
Yes land lease played a role you must not forget. Irrelevant in some areas, but super important in some special branches crucial for the Red Steamroller. Another question one can ask how many % a nation gave.
Total war is: reduce civil goods production to the level where the population nearly dies and all the rest goes to the army. People work 14 hours per day and eat meat once per half year.
I have not yet read that much about it but soviet union went more for total war than USA (also necessary through the Stalin purges and mismanagement).
Soviet union paid a very high price in population, weapons and nationwide mobilisation+civil population suffering.
USA paid high price in weapons and a low to intermediate price in population and nationwide mobilisation+very low civil population suffering.
Do you mean irrelevant as in the Soviet population would have starved if not for the BILLIONS of pounds of foodstuffs sent to them. BILLIONS OF POUNDS!!! If left to the Soviet population someone would have to work the fields, harvest, process, feed livestock, butcher, process and everything else that goes along with producing billions of pounds of food.
Then there are all of the completed products they got from Lend Lease. Everything they received, whether it was for photo processing or blowing things up, had to be made. Not just made. The raw materials had to be gotten. Then transported. Then processed. Then refined. Then transported. Then shaped into something useful. Then assembled. Then transported. Even making one screw, one nail, requires a multitude of steps and manpower. Lend Lease didn't simply move things from point A to the Soviet Union. It freed up billions of man hours. And freed up millions of people to fight the Axis. America was indeed the Allies arsenal.
Without Lend Lease I used to think the Soviets would have won anyway it just would have taken longer. Then I found this: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/pearl/www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/lend.html I got to thinking, OMG, all of that 'stuff' had to be started off as raw materials. Even the raw materials had to be 'harvested' in some way. And the equipment used to get the raw materials had to be produced and maintained and on and on. That changed my way of thinking and led me to believe that without Lend Lease the Soviets would have achieved stalemate at best. Without the Western Allies tying down Axis forces they would most certainly have lost everything west of the Urals.
< Message edited by Lobster -- 10/31/2016 5:41:22 PM >
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