Was Lend-Lease critical in the East?

[bf109 emil]

list of lend lease items showing lbs. sent along with the $$value placed upon these items i assume so payment could be recorded for a later date...http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/pearl/www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/lend.html

[Jon G.]

Hi again Zebedee. As promised, just a few more comments:

...
Just to pick up on Jon's point of stock levels and slaughtering, there is an interesting little snippet which may be of interest:

Net investment levels (million head).

Cows
1941 - -1.0
1942 - -0.1
1943 - -0.6
1944 - 0.5
1945 - 0.7

While it most certainly has my interest, I am not altogether sure if I understand the denominator used in this table. Is it the net fluctuation of the Soviet cattle population broken down by year, or is it the fluctuation of new cattle raised compared to the year before? In either case, I would have expected the largest dip in new cattle raised to have happened in 1942, apparently that wasn't the case. It is interesting that we can see recovery already from 1944 on - this might show gains from recaptured lands? That would seem congruent with Harrison's remark that Soviet GDP levels were intimately connected to loss and reconquest of land.

We see a similar pattern with other animals in terms of peaks and troughs. Will reproduce table in full when I get chance if there's interest.

By all means

...
eg p.6 here which lists locomotives received as part of lend lease. Let's contrast with Soviet production numbers.

Production of locomotive engines (total of steam, electric and diesel). Table C.1, Harrison, op.cit.

1940 - 928
1941 - 715
1942 - 9
1943 - 43
1944 - 32
1945 - 8

Of course, the lack of a breakdown by year means that definitive conclusions are reckless to make on the basis of that source, but it's an interesting fact that when lend lease kicked in, some Soviet production withered away.

Also see this thread
Impact of Lend-lease on Soviet railroads
viewtopic.php?f=66&t=132150

Yes, it is true that Soviet production of locomotives and other rolling stock withered to almost zero - but, on the other hand, you can also reasonably argue that from late 1941 and until well into 1943, the Soviet rail services had a much smaller net to operate than they had had before the German invasion. So maybe the situation was rather one of having much more rolling stock - to the point of congestion - per mile of railroad than had been the case in peacetime.

However, lend-lease created its own needs for rail transport, because LL of necessity was delivered to the fringes of the vast Soviet empire.

On the other hand, Soviet production of rolling stock does not appear to have caught up at the same speed as the Soviets recaptured lost lands, and eventually eastern European lands, too, so we might surmise that LL delivered rolling stock allowed the Soviets to use the industrial capacity which was devoted to building railroad stock pre-June 1941 for something else for longer than otherwise possible, probably also beyond 1945.

[Zebedee]

While it most certainly has my interest, I am not altogether sure if I understand the denominator used in this table. Is it the net fluctuation of the Soviet cattle population broken down by year, or is it the fluctuation of new cattle raised compared to the year before? In either case, I would have expected the largest dip in new cattle raised to have happened in 1942, apparently that wasn't the case. It is interesting that we can see recovery already from 1944 on - this might show gains from recaptured lands? That would seem congruent with Harrison's remark that Soviet GDP levels were intimately connected to loss and reconquest of land.

It's net fluctuation in cow population for each year. (Minor niggling thing about table - any idea what other long-horned beasties there were in the SU? There's more of them then cows and I don't think they're Russian unicorns! Yaks maybe?). Lots of caveats attached to the table (obviously). Tried to do photo to save some typing but digital camera is on the blink atm and it was unreadable. Excel it'll be over the weekend.

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To expand the point on territory influencing GNP. Another interesting measure is to look at overall resource allocations.

Table 3. The mobilization of net national product for war (per cent of national income)

USSR

Military spending as share of national product, irrespective of origin of resources.

1940 - 20
1942 - 75
1943 - 76
1944 - 69

Domestic funding of military spending as share of national product.

1940 - 20
1942 - 66
1943 - 58
1944 - 52

Harrison, Resource Mobilization for World War II: the USA, UK, USSR and Germany, 1938 - 1945. link

Harrison suggests in that paper that 1942 levels were unsustainable in the long term (the comparison with end of war Germany links back to the observations of Tooze on the subject) and that 1943 was a step towards something more sustainable. 1944 is interesting in that light - especially in comparison to Britain at the time where we don't see the resource allocations being shifted away from war production; although again the point of territory and relative burdens in sustaining populations can be made here too to an extent.