Hacker News Reader

Comment by c-smile | Hacker News Reader

But far not all them had at their possession resources of half of rest world.

Western Europe is all about that. How many colonial guldens are under each stone of town squares of its cities ...

No surprise that technical revolution was originated there.

Back to Russia...

At WW1 it had no chances to confront rest of Europe. Like it was "shell hunger" in Russian army in 1916 - it's "industry" simply could not produce enough.

But at WW2 time it did that - pretty much all Europe was working on Hitler's war machine.

Rise of potential was tremendous if to consider that it happened between 1917 and 1941.

Of course the only option of that burst was exploitation of its own people - Russia didn't get any (significant) investments from outside.

View on HN

By the time of the WWII it was just as bad; pretty much all of strategic supplies, explosives, fuel, etc. were coming from USA and UK.

USSR supplied most of the manpower, but without the American military-industrial complex, Germans would have rolled all the way to the Pacific with no problem.

"pretty much all of strategic supplies"

That's simply not true.

58,000 of T34/T34-85 was produced during WW2 time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_combat_vehicle_producti...

That's just medium tanks - workhorse of the war. Total production of armored vehicles in USSR at WW2 > 100,000.

While it got 19,510 tanks in total on Lend-Lease: https://ww2-weapons.com/lend-lease-tanks-and-aircrafts/

Only 4,000 of them were Shermans - the only Lend-Lease tanks that were comparable at least somehow. All others were nicknamed "wheeled coffins".

The same ratio is for aircrafts.

As of fuel then only some high-octane ones - for some aircrafts.

USSR lost about 2000 tanks at Dubno operation (1941) in one(!) battle, because of problems with engines, fuel, and lack of communication. Germans had no tanks at all at that time (according to USSR classification, Germans had light armored vehicles, with anti-riffle armor only). Tank is good only if it operational and under command.

When T-34's and Shermans met in Korea, it didn't go too well for T-34's. And some of the most decorated Soviet aces flew Airacobras.

But the most important part is that without American alloys, fuels, machine tools, let alone food and warm clothing (something USSR had a big problem supplying the populace with even during peacetime) there would be nothing to make T-34s with. That's what strategic supplies are.

Some of the important battles early in the war, i.e. stopping Germans from marching on Baku oil fields, were fought mostly with British tanks.

At beginning of WWW2, USSR had pretty good position: thousands of tanks, millions of tons of ammunition, million army, powerful ally (Germany). USSR attacked Finland at winter to prevent invasion of France & Britain via Norway and Finland to attack Leningrad. It was risky move, lot of soldiers of Red Army died because of cold, but USSR won. At beginning 1941, USSR waited for beginning of Britain bombing of Baku, to start invasion to East (to attack British military bases) with help of Germany, and then to conquer Britain islands. Everything was perfect until 22 June 1941.

A non-aggression pact is not an alliance, nor does it make an ally. Hitler fundamentally hated the communists, but was also desperate to prevent the USSR from joining the war. Stalin also fundamentally hated the Nazis.

> non-aggression pact is not an alliance

Jointly dividing Poland and having a military parade there is not an alliance?

Providing secret base for U-boats - just a pact, not an alliance?

Not even to mention the cooperation between German and Soviet secret police, massive flow of supplies from USSR to Germany etc. etc. prior to the German attack.

Yes, making random agreements is not an alliance.

Random agreements? Like "hey, let's do something... maybe invade a few random countries"?

Sure, if you want to designate any random aggreement as a full on best-friends-for-life alliance, you do you, buddy. But the facts remain, Germany and the USSR were delivered facto enemies who were looking to destroy each other the first chance they get.

So how it should void the fact of their pact?

Yes, they did sign a non-aggression pact. No, they were not allies.

If it quacks like duck, if it looks like duck, if it walks like duck - it duck.

Well first you'd need to establish that the subject in question quacks, and quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, walks, and walks like a duck. So far the only thing done here is take the definitions of things any country with geographic proximity and bare minimum willingness to negotiate would do, then redefine everything as alliance.

Which fits the duck allegory perfectly, since it refers to something that is not actually a duck.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/usvsth3m/you-know-phrase-if-looks-5...

>USSR supplied most of the manpower, but without the American military-industrial complex, Germans would have rolled all the way to the Pacific with no problem.

That's revisionist history -- and not the way things went down, or even how people that lived it knew them to be.

https://www.vox.com/2014/6/16/5814270/the-successful-70-year...

Or even how Hitler knew them to be:

https://www.feldgrau.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13647

Have you posted something about a novel historical research showing that neither lend-lease nor pre-lend-lease supplies of war materiel ever happened, it might have made for an interesting discussion. Vox, however, prints exactly what is to be expected from what Uncle Joe used to call fellow travelers in public, and useful idiot in private.

That reminds me of one time I was asked to help in translating some "documents" showing that it was US soldiers rather than Soviet that moved pretty much every German that still moved. A quick fact check showed that they lifted the passage from a neo-nazi site, which is where most attempts to defend the USSR usually end.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com