Was Lend-Lease critical in the East?

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LWD
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Re: Was Lend-Lease critical in the East?

#61

Post by LWD » 14 Feb 2012, 22:57

ljadw wrote:The flaw is that one is citing figures about LL food supplies,WITHOUT comparing them to the Soviet food production ;if one would compare these figures,one should notice that the LL food supplies were almost insignifiant .
The LL food supplies during the war were some 4.5 million ton :that's a fact .
The Soviet grain production (grain was the most important agriculture product,but,not the only) in 1944 was 46 million ton,for the whole war,this would be some 200 million of tons ,to this,we have to add the yield of the private agriculture:people's own gardens,allotments,etc..,people were breeding rabbits,....:the state was encouraging people to take care of their food-supply;the maximum the LL food supplies constituted,was some 2 % of the Soviet food production .
And,again,till the first food parcels were arriving,the Soviet population was surving on its own stocks .
IMHO,it is also very simplistic to say that the LL food was freeing agriculture workers to work in the factories and produce tanks,etc:more men for the factories does not mean more tanks,etc :you also need other thingsto produce tanks,etc
But you seem to be stating a ton of food is a ton of food. That's not quite true when you are looking at LL. For instance by the time you get to the a can Spam not only has all the waste already been subtracted, but it's been processed, and tinned. Your position that LL food supplies were "almost insiginificant" does not seem to be well founded. Even a few percent can be critical if the food supply is at or near the subsitance level. Furthermore averaging 4 years of of Soviet production with less than 3 years of LL is highly problematic as the greatest impact would have been during critical periods. Then there's also the predicatability of LL that allows for greater flexability in both the production and movement of internally generated food stuffs. I am not sure I would state positivly that it was critical but I know I wouldn't say it was insignificant.

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Re: Was Lend-Lease critical in the East?

#62

Post by bf109 emil » 14 Feb 2012, 23:25

But you seem to be stating a ton of food is a ton of food. That's not quite true when you are looking at LL. For instance by the time you get to the a can Spam not only has all the waste already been subtracted, but it's been processed, and tinned.
agreed as one has to look beyond just the volume of food, as a smelter need to make tins could now be used to make armaments, workers used to process, machines used to can, factories needed to produce where now free from this task and apt to make munitions instead.

The Soviet Union overpowered Germany for a better part by logistics, but would this ratio have been has great if Russia had to now make up the hundreds of locomotives, or railcars, hundreds of thousands of trucks herself, using resources, tools, factories, workers, etc. towards these items as opposed to armor, tanks, guns, etc...what lend lease did was free russia from numerous tasks/items and allow her to concentrate her factories on what won the war, being tanks, guns, planes...something she didn't have to divide her workforce from doing while lend lease provided various items the Soviets could now refrain from building and concentrating her efforts more so towards military munitions.


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Re: Was Lend-Lease critical in the East?

#63

Post by Zebedee » 15 Feb 2012, 03:48

Pulling some numbers from Harrison, Accounting for War, Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Table 6.4, Budget outlays of the defence commissariat, total and supplied from imports, 1941 - 1945 (billions rubles), p.138

Food.

1941 (July - Dec) - Total: 8.2
1942 - Total: 21.4
1943 - Total: 25.1, Imports: 4.2
1944 - Total: 25.3, Imports: 6.2
1945 (Jan. - June) - Total: 9.0, Imports: 3.7

Caveats: figures don't include naval expenditure, non-direct military spending also excluded

Table C1, Production figures, p.198


Production figures for meat (excluding kolkhoz, '000 tons)

1940 - 1501
1941 - 1172
1942 - 723
1943 - 614
1944 - 543
1945 - 663

Production figures for fish ('000 tons)

1940 - 1404
1941 - 1281
1942 - 962
1943 - 1208
1944 - 1235
1945 - 1125

Flour (million tons)

1940 - 29
1941 - 24
1942 - 16
1943 - 13
1944 - 13
1945 - 15

Table 5.1, Gross National Product by sector of origin, 1937 and 1940-5 (billion rubles at 1937 factor cost)

Agriculture

1937 - 63
1940 - 69.9
1941 - 44.1
1942 - 27.4
1943 - 30.5
1944 - 45.1
1945 - 47.3

Defence Industry

1937 - 4.3
1940 - 10.5
1941 - 16.8
1942 - 38.7
1943 - 47.8
1944 - 52.3
1945 - 36.7

Civilian Industry

1937 - 61.1
1940 - 64.5
1941 - 56.5
1942 - 26.1
1943 - 27.8
1944 - 32.6
1945 - 35.2

--

Harrison does perform a hypothetical allocation of resources in the absence of Lend Lease. His conclusion sums up his work on Lend Lease in relation to the Soviet war economy (p.145, op.cit):
This analysis is undeniably crude. The numbers, though apparently precise, do no more than illustrate the argument. Moreover they rest on significant assumptions of the ceteris paribus kind. They presume that, in the absence of aid, the Soviet domestic product would have remained the same; in fact, one of the major determinants of Soviet wartime GNP was the loss and gain of territory, so anything detracting from the quantity and quality of the Soviet war effort would certainly have reduced the total output of the domestic economy. Quality, as well as quantity: the military effectiveness of a billion rubles laid out on Soviet defence was surely higher if the package included lend-leased means of transport, communication and soldiers' kit. The absence of aid also implied substantial cutbacks of civilian consumption and investment. Without aid, gross investment would have remained below replacement levels, resulting in a steady contraction of the capital stock available for use; this too would have forced Soviet GNP below actually achieved levels in 1942-44, with fewer resources then available for defence. Since there was a limit to the resources freed by cutting investment, living standards would also have been depressed below the levels actually experienced, which were already associated with widespread deaths from starvation. More starvation deaths amongst the working population would have forced an additional decline in domestic output.
Regards to all and apologies for not doing tables in full and cherry picking interesting trends.

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Re: Was Lend-Lease critical in the East?

#64

Post by ljadw » 15 Feb 2012, 07:11

About the Spam:it only was some 11 % of the LL food :485 thousand ton on a total of 4.5 million (source:supplying the allies)

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Re: Was Lend-Lease critical in the East?

#65

Post by ljadw » 15 Feb 2012, 12:53

I have seen that there was a lot of referring to official Soviet statistics(I did it myself :( ),but,I don't think this is a wise thing.I was doing some searchings,and,accidentally,I was encountering some excerpts of "The Bread of Affliction",which were containing the followong:
<the disintegration of the Soviet economic system led to a pivotal role for private markets in the distribution (and thus also in the production :idea: )of food >
<in 1945 50 % of the food came from the private markets>
That's why(IMHO) the official statistics ,as
agricultural production
1940 indexe :100
1943:38
1944 :54
are misleading,these statistics only are a reverse exemple of the Potemkin villages .
What happened was the bankrupcy of warcommunism,and its replacement by (good? 8-) )old fashioned capitalism and private enterprise,things,the regime was not very enthusiast about .
But,the state said implecitly to the population :we can't feed you,you have to take care of your self .
It was the theory of :it is not important if the cat is black or grey,as long she is catching mouses(I think I have heard this elsewhere 8-)
Whatever,this evolution was not increasing,but rather decreasing the possible impact of LL food deliveries .

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Re: Was Lend-Lease critical in the East?

#66

Post by Zebedee » 15 Feb 2012, 17:31

Table J.2 Net Imports arriving, by origin and commodity, 1941-4 (million dollars), p.276

US

Animal products (edible)

1941 - -0.5 (ie Net US imports)
1942 - 101.2
1943 - 430.3
1944 - 428.2

Veg.products, beverages

1941 - 0.2
1942 - 18.1
1943 - 92.4
1944 - 75.2

Table 5.10. Households' consumer spending in cash at constant prices, 1940 and 1944. p.108 (billion rubles)

1940

Official trade (goods): 165
Kolkhoz markets: 28

1944

Official trade (goods):64
Kolkhoz markets: 44

Caveats: figures exclude incomes derived from kolkhoz market and the retrading of official goods, military subsistence and the subsistence of population under NKVD control.


Table 5.8. Gross National Product by final use, 1940 and 1942-44 (billion rubles at 1937 factor cost)

Household Consumption

1940 - 122.8
1942 - 52.6
1943 - 50.5
1944 - 77.1


Figures from Harrison, op.cit.

---

Just to add some commentary.

The impact of Kolkhoz markets was only important relative to the absolute shortages. Half not a lot is still not much.

The only items (in dollar value) imported which outweighed edible animal products (cf production figures in the post I made prior to this one) were those of 'machinery', in the widest sense of the word, both military and non-military.

Not read 'Bread of Affliction' in full, though browsing the google books preview, it's clear that the quotes being taken from it do not reflect the nuances of Moskoff's work.

edited: to add commentary, one mistake corrected in date for table 5.8 (1942, not 1941), apologies if any others have slipped through
Last edited by Zebedee on 15 Feb 2012, 18:40, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Was Lend-Lease critical in the East?

#67

Post by Jon G. » 15 Feb 2012, 18:03

Very useful figures, Zebedee, thank you for posting them.

I find it illuminating that whereas Soviet food production had its worst war year in 1942 (not so surprising), the food part of LL already peaked in 1943, at figures (in dollars) c. five times higher than 1942, then the food aid declines slightly already in 1944. That could say something about LL food aid covering specific, measurable needs, rather than as a consistently growing trend.

It is also interesting to see the persistently declining figures for Soviet meat output. I think something similar happened in most European economies - from a nutrition point of view vegetabile products offer more bang for the buck, although producing them is also periodically more labour intensive. Relative to other Soviet war years. 1942 was a high producing year from a meat production point of view, but I think the overall declining trend in meat production denotes slaughtering lots of animals early on, while not wasting many resources rearing new animals for next year's slaughter - no doubt also helped along by the fact (cf. your figures) that the majority of LL food aid was edible animal products.

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Re: Was Lend-Lease critical in the East?

#68

Post by Zebedee » 15 Feb 2012, 18:30

Hi Jon,

re. peaks and troughs in Lend Lease. Perhaps what we're seeing is the arrival of the 'bulk' of Lend Lease which covered an 18 month period from July 1943 through to December 1944 (57% of it by dollar value) - it certainly seems to fit the narrative of the aid filling gaps/permitting reallocation of resources within the Soviet economy. Which is of course not to say that the gaps could not be filled in other ways, albeit a lot less efficiently and with an impact elsewhere as Harrison notes. Just an aside, but the slight fall in the overall levels of foodstuffs being imported are contrasted with the increased reliance by the armed forces on imports of food - as LWD noted a few posts back, a ton of food isn't necessarily always just a ton of food.

So Lend Leased agricultural products (millions of dollars) according to Table 6.2, p.133

1941 - 0
1942 - 184.8
1943 - 591.9
1944 - 579.1
Jan. - June 1945 - 272.1
July - Dec. 1945 - 58.3

There are also tentative indications within Harrison's numbers that 1944's lend lease saw substantial amounts of non-military items going into the Soviet economy which one could, again tentatively, use to suggest that we're seeing a restocking of the Soviet economy to take it back above the minimum (or below minimum) subsistence levels for its population. That's certainly reflected in the household consumption figures, the GNP for agriculture etc. And while reflective of Soviet military successes, one can ask how much eg grain an acre of land produces without the means to harvest it. Ties back to one of the points Tooze makes on 'Total War' in The Wages of Destruction where, building on Harrison's work, he suggests that the Soviets won the production race in 42/43 by denuding their civilian economy to unsustainable levels in the short term before then (with the aid of lendlease) reallocating resources back to it.

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Re: Was Lend-Lease critical in the East?

#69

Post by LWD » 15 Feb 2012, 20:16

ljadw wrote:About the Spam:it only was some 11 % of the LL food :485 thousand ton on a total of 4.5 million (source:supplying the allies)
It was just a convienient and well known example.

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Re: Was Lend-Lease critical in the East?

#70

Post by LWD » 15 Feb 2012, 20:27

Jon G. wrote:Very useful figures, Zebedee, thank you for posting them. ....
May be breaking a rule here but I'll second that. Very nice to have some numbers to work with. I found the amount of fish particularly interesting. Any idea if the figures are for meat "on the hoof" or processed?

Wonder if the fish production went up as there was less competition in Pacific waters?
Jon G. wrote:Very useful figures, Zebedee, thank you for posting them.

I find it illuminating that whereas Soviet food production had its worst war year in 1942 (not so surprising), the food part of LL already peaked in 1943, at figures (in dollars) c. five times higher than 1942, then the food aid declines slightly already in 1944. That could say something about LL food aid covering specific, measurable needs, rather than as a consistently growing trend.
Since much or all of the LL food was already processed and could be stored for some period of time do you think this could have been a factor as well? If you want protection from a bad harvest for instance processed and preserved food is much more useful than over producing in hopes that an excess in one area will cover a deficit elsewhere.

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Re: Was Lend-Lease critical in the East?

#71

Post by antfreire » 15 Feb 2012, 20:55

Has anybody thought of how critical would it had been for Germany if it had been the recipient of the Lend Lease?

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Re: Was Lend-Lease critical in the East?

#72

Post by Zebedee » 15 Feb 2012, 20:59

LWD wrote: I found the amount of fish particularly interesting. Any idea if the figures are for meat "on the hoof" or processed?
Perhaps worth making explicit that in the absence of processed meat, then it is essentially salted fish which will be providing the bulk of the high protein component of meals. So if one removes 'spam' (just as an example again) from the equation, the burden of making up for that will fall upon the Soviet fishing industry.

I believe that the meat production figures in that chart are for processed meat. Harrison gives another chart which provides it in liveweight terms, as well as a further chart which attempts to estimate stock levels and investment which would probably interest Jon (Appendix H). Bit more complicated to reproduce, but if there's interest I can try to reproduce one way or another.

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


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.

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Re: Was Lend-Lease critical in the East?

#73

Post by Jon G. » 15 Feb 2012, 21:30

LWD wrote:
Jon G. wrote:Very useful figures, Zebedee, thank you for posting them. ....
May be breaking a rule here but I'll second that. Very nice to have some numbers to work with. I found the amount of fish particularly interesting. Any idea if the figures are for meat "on the hoof" or processed?
No rules broken as far as I am concerned. I think the meat figures are for finished product, otherwise the denominator would probably have been in head of cattle or similar. The 'edible animal products' LL category is a bit broader than just 'meat' we should remind ourselves, but a lower output of animals (of all categories) would of course also denote a declining supply of animal products of all kinds, not just meat. That is borne out by Zebedee's figures for cows, above.

Fish figures don't drop as dramatically as other food categories but that just reflects, I think, that the USSR's losses in fishing waters were trivial compared to losses in land, particularly agrarian lands. Otherwise, they only lost a stretch of recently-acquired Baltic coast (Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia) in 1941, and perhaps rather larger parts of the Black Sea in 1942, but then fish output does hit its wartime low that year, just as all other kinds of food output.
...
Since much or all of the LL food was already processed and could be stored for some period of time do you think this could have been a factor as well? If you want protection from a bad harvest for instance processed and preserved food is much more useful than over producing in hopes that an excess in one area will cover a deficit elsewhere.
It is clearly a factor that LL procured food arrived in known quantities, at known places, in portable forms (the almost clichéed tin of spam)

Beyond that, however, lies the circumstance that the Soviets were even able to make choices about food deliveries and food production policies. It's only in a country where the state has complete control (well, theoretically complete at least) over food production that allocating more resources from primary sectors to industrial sectors as planned action is even possible.

Allowing factory workers to grow their own plots, in their own free time, is a small concession to make when the armed forces and the munitions industry clearly took priority over agriculture in the big picture.

Finally, it is worth remembering that the Soviets were used, as it were, to famine and food shortages. Part of it is simply due to the enormous size of the country, but other parts are due to war (food shortages in Moscow in the spring of 1918), civil war and drought (1921-1922), forced collectivisation (1932-1933), war again (siege of Leningrad 1941-1944), and even post-war 1946-47.

In a country where food shortages were more common, or at least not unknown, it is perhaps easier for the political leadership to make choices which in the short term were decidely ruthless - especially if foreign aid is on hand to cover some of the shortages which will arise in the short term (i.e. comparing 1942 food production lows to the 1943 LL food deliveries peak)

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Re: Was Lend-Lease critical in the East?

#74

Post by ljadw » 15 Feb 2012, 21:34

A statement by the US secretary of Agriculture on 4 february 1943 before the Senate Committee for Foreign Affairs:In december 1942,we were sending for the first time more food to the SU than to Britain .

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Re: Was Lend-Lease critical in the East?

#75

Post by Jon G. » 15 Feb 2012, 21:40

ljadw wrote:A statement by the US secretary of Agriculture on 4 february 1943 before the Senate Committee for Foreign Affairs:In december 1942,we were sending for the first time more food to the SU than to Britain .
The UK depended on overseas imports for many of its needs, including most of its food. That's hardly news. Rather, the Secretary of Agriculture's remark could illuminate the importance (growing importance, apparently) of US food exports to the SU.

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