Context on quotes about lend-lease

Discussions on WW2 in Eastern Europe.
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krimsonglass51
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Context on quotes about lend-lease

#1

Post by krimsonglass51 » 14 Apr 2018, 06:03

From what I've seen, the general consensus about lend-lease is that while it was helpful, it was not a determining factor for Soviet victory in WWII. After all, the majority of lend-lease materials arrived in 1943, after the Battle of Stalingrad had ended. With that said, those who contend that lend-lease played a decisive role in Soviet victory use the following quotes as support:
I would like to express my candid opinion about Stalin’s views on whether the Red Army and the Soviet Union could have coped with Nazi Germany and survived the war without aid from the United States and Britain. First, I would like to tell about some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were "discussing freely" among ourselves. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany's pressure, and we would have lost the war. No one ever discussed this subject officially, and I don't think Stalin left any written evidence of his opinion, but I will state here that several times in conversations with me he noted that these were the actual circumstances. He never made a special point of holding a conversation on the subject, but when we were engaged in some kind of relaxed conversation, going over international questions of the past and present, and when we would return to the subject of the path we had traveled during the war, that is what he said. When I listened to his remarks, I was fully in agreement with him, and today I am even more so
Memoirs of Nikita Krushchev
Today [1963] some say the Allies didn’t really help us… But listen, one cannot deny that the Americans shipped over to us material without which we could not have equipped our armies held in reserve or been able to continue the war.
A quote attributed to General Zhukov according to Soviet war correspondent Konstantin Simonov.
Without American production the United Nations [the Allies] could never have won the war.
Stalin at the Tehran Conference.

Assuming that the Soviets could have won without lend-lease, what is the context for these quotes then?

Omeganian
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Re: Context on quotes about lend-lease

#2

Post by Omeganian » 17 Apr 2018, 05:03

The main issue during the early stage of war was food, but I have trouble finding year-by-year statistics on that.


Max Payload
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Re: Context on quotes about lend-lease

#3

Post by Max Payload » 18 Apr 2018, 00:47

krimsonglass51 wrote:Assuming that the Soviets could have won without lend-lease ....
The Soviets didn’t win, the United Nations won by stretching Germany’s resources beyond breaking point by forcing it to guard and fight on multiple fronts on land at sea and in the air. As for LL, without it, at the very least, the rate of westward advance of the Red Army would have been slower, maybe very much slower. But then a greater direct military burden would have been placed on the Western Allies in the effort to defeat Germany. Early in the war US strategists assumed America would need to raise 200 divisions. In the event it raised less than a hundred. LL in the East saved Allied lives in the West. And without getting into ATLs, it may also have resulted in millions more Eastern Europeans finding themselves under Soviet hegemony than might otherwise have been the case.

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stg 44
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Re: Context on quotes about lend-lease

#4

Post by stg 44 » 22 Apr 2018, 15:57

Omeganian wrote:The main issue during the early stage of war was food, but I have trouble finding year-by-year statistics on that.
Maybe this will help in terms of tonnage:
http://www.o5m6.de/redarmy/ll_routes.php

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