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Comment by samastur | Hacker News Reader

This is a myth they tell themselves. USSR won by incredible amounts of American supplied material.

A truck without a driver has no value in a war. Lend lease was important but the ambition and drive to defeat Germany required huge sacrifices on all sides that are impossible without shared cultural ideals.

Those "shared cultural ideals" amounted to very little beyond "conquer the Nazis, before they conquer us" - as late-war and post-war relations between the USSR and the Western Allies showed. Or, as pre-'39 Western policies showed. The '30's saw the Nazis as an evil...but a useful and "not too" evil, that would (mostly, in effect) protect the West from the greater evil of Soviet Communism.

You’ve watched too many Hollywood movies. Yes, Lend-Lease was very helpful - but only about 5% of Soviet GDP. For example, the Soviets produced more tanks than all other allies combined, and that was while under massive active attack and invasion - even moved entire factories.

The real myth is that the Soviets just threw meat waves and would have lost without Uncle Sam. Most of that was anti communist propaganda and any serious (ie non-narrative driven) historian knows the truth about the industrial and military achievements of the Soviets in that war.

I think he's right though, the 5% figure isn't accurate. Perplexity answer below:

https://anonpaste.pw/v/6f99bf00-ab49-48fc-978a-27f656a37c02#...

Nonetheless, the production hell people working at those factories went through shouldn't be downplayed.

Documentary (2024): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjGYMFVMeYo

"the Soviets produced more tanks than all other allies combined"

For such feats, factory equipment mattered. So did trucks. Studebakers were relatively cheap and probably wouldn't move the needle on your GDP-based meter, but they were very important to Soviet logistics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_Wor...

Tanks & SPGs

British Empire - 47862

USA and territories - 108410

USSR - 119769

Other vehicles

British Empire - 1475521

USA and territories - 2382311

USSR - 265000

Bombers

British Empire - 38158

USA and territories - 96872

USSR - 21116

Total large ships

British Empire - 558

USA and territories - 2020

USSR - 63

Lend lease included food and industrial equipment which was critical for Russia through the war not just tanks, aircraft, and ships. The value was more in covering what their economy struggled with than simply total output.

“In all, $31.4 billion went to the United Kingdom, $11.3 billion to the Soviet Union, $3.2 billion to France, $1.6 billion to China, and the remaining $2.6 billion to other Allies.” ~12x that when counting for inflation.

As pointed out by a sibling poster Russia produced more of them than the US but not more than US + England. But the context was tanks are relatively difficult to ship, so America focused on other areas.

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