Lend-lease may well have been the most important US contribution to the European theatre, because it helped the USSR to mobile their forces and move them around faster.
And the Russian tanks absolutely did matter. Russia had the best tanks in the early war, and those sufficiently stumped the weaker German tanks to make them rush the overly expensive and inefficient but powerful Tiger into production.
But it was absolutely a case where every bit helped. British intelligence and bombing, taking Italy out of the war, Overlord, it all mattered. But most of the blood was spilled in Russia.
Exactly, the entire German gamble of invading Russia was a repeat of their (genius) invasion of France: highly mobile overrunning of tanks combined with lethal Luftwaffe air support.
The problem was entirely the fact the Germans were completely caught off guard by the quality of Russian tanks and anti-tank guns.
The Nazi's should never have invaded Russia, but their baises against the slavs made them feel superior. Likewise in these biases still exist in North American / European accounts of WW2, where Russia's technological and industrial dominance is downplayed.
It makes sense in the context of the Cold War but in 2017 it saddens me this is still up for debate. Although the fact anti-Russian sentiment is still highly politicized in mass media this might be expecting too much from popular culture on my part...
But without US-provided materials and equipment Soviets will not be able to produce tanks during 1942-1944.
This is an oft repeated lie we tell ourselves. US contribution to USSR's military production was less than 1%. And by the time our "help" reached the soviet union, the soviets had already beaten the germans.
The battle of moscow ended in January 1942. That's when ww2 in europe was over. The rest was brutal clean up duty by the soviets.
> Without such support, the USSR would have faced the same problem that Germany did: a critical inability to properly supply their front-line troops.
Firstly, germany's problem was lack of oil. Not the number of trucks. Secondly, The soviet military industry was the largest in the world until we joined the war and their military production was never affected. And the soviets had tons of oil. Only second to the US.
The lend-lease history saving the soviet union is propaganda. If we had stayed neutral in ww2, the soviets would have beaten the germans. Other than stalin giving up, there was no way for germany to beat the soviet union. Look at the stats.
Even most blatant Soviet propaganda put that into 4%.
Marshal Zhukov said that Lend-lease was critical to Soviet victory. And that was from a man who took Berlin.
Just a few facts: for USSR lend-lease accounted for 30% of trucks, more than half of aviation fuel and about 93% of railroad equipment.
So it's definetely not a propaganda.
Does it? 4% is still nothing.
> Marshal Zhukov said that Lend-lease was critical to Soviet victory.
So did stalin. Politicians, generals, etc say a lot of things. Especially about "free" stuff.
> Just a few facts: for USSR lend-lease accounted for 30% of trucks, more than half of aviation fuel and about 93% of railroad equipment.
Facts you just made up?
> So it's definetely not a propaganda.
4% to 93%. Sounds a lot like propaganda.
That greatly overstates the USSR's role. While the USSR and the Germany were basically locked in a massive conflict hemorrhaging manpower, the USSR's side was largely propped up by the US lend-lease program, which supplied crucially needed supplies of logistics, particularly trucks. Without such support, the USSR would have faced the same problem that Germany did: a critical inability to properly supply their front-line troops.
Also, Russian geography also killed the Germans. Blitzkrieg, where every 30 miles you have to wait a week for supplies to be brought up, doesn't work when you're traversing 600 miles of terrain. It works even less well when the railroad is a single-track feature that's incompatible with your rail system, even the major roads are barely passable in the best times and impassable in the season of mud, and all of your supplies are being carted by horses (which have this nasty habit of dying in -30° weather).