Edward

Yes. That is right. USSR manufactured a lot of weaponry but nothing else. And this is a reason that I certainly would not call USSR an Industrial Giant.

L&L delivery to USSR 1943 to 1945.

• Trucks: delivered L&L 375,883. Soviet Union during entire war managed to manufacture 197,100 trucks, vastly inferior to US products. Without US truck the offensive operation will be impossible to carry across the huge area of Eastern front. The logistic of war can not be replaced by heroism and sacrifice of individual soldiers and civilian worker. (please note: Germany managed to manufacture 345914 trucks during entire war)
• Food: Delivered L&L 4,478,000 tons. Assuming that the single ration will be approximately one pound, this is equivalent to 9,000,000,000 rations. This is equivalent of food for 500 days for entire Red Army (3 rations per day x 6,000,000 soldiers x 500 days = 9,000,000,000 rations). And food, or lack of it, is a very powerful weapon.
• Boots: 15,417,000 pairs plus additionally 106,893,000 tonnes of lather. It is evident that entire Red Army were equipped with western boots (or at least boots made from western leather)
• I do not have hire the amount of L&L aluminium delivered to USSR but I remember that it was enough to keep SU aviation industry going for two years.
• Steel-L&L steel delivered to SU was enough to made 90,000 tanks.

(The values quoted point 4 and 5 are from my memory only so there is a possibility of small errors)

Volkov

It would be fair to say that tanks were not the only thing that the imports of steel went to. I'd say much of it went to submarine and gun (possibly ammo too) construction. After all, the sovjets were very, very fond of massive artillery bombardments.

Edward

Yes, we can say that. That example was used only to show the order of magnitude.

Lest-We-Forget

Sorry for the very late addition to this thread, i have only just stumbled across it.

My understanding was that the reason Germany declared war on the USA, was because the Kriegsmarine thought it could win the battle of the Atlantic if it was able to attack convoys in the western half of the Atlantic, and once Germany had declared, war on the USA, there U-boat crews called it another 'Happy time' as they were able to hunt un-escorted merchant shipping off the east coast of the US, combined with the lack of a blackout on the US coast, which silhouted the Merchantmen against the coastline making it easier to spot and sink them.

As for the whole reason for the thread, if you flip the coin, and look at Allied mistakes, you could equaly argue that Germany could have been defeated quicker.

Had the Royal Navy not turned into the North sea during the attack on Norway, they would most likely have sunk the majority of the German invasion force, and had the french army not forgotten the straps that held the ski's on their mountain troops feet, and had air support been provided, and had the Allies sent more than ill equipped reserve units, and had the Norwegian commanders not fallen for the trickery of the German paratroops, then Norway may well have been a disaster for the Germans.

In France, had the British and french provided their units with effective radios, and used tanks in the way Britian had devised but discarded, (later to be termed 'Blitzkrieg' and used by the Germans...) then there is every chance the German advance would have been cut off by an effective counter attack.
Something many Germans were very wary of, which contributed to the decision to halt at Dunkirk, with the fear of such an armoured counter attack on their over stretched supply lines.

Also, had the Germans suffered a large naval loss in Norway, their ability to mound operation Sealion would have been gone, so the threat to Britain would have been far lower.

Then you could look at the Royal Navies mistaken decision to not take the U-boat threat seriously as another mistake, to which if they had more destroyers at the start of the war, they may well have been able to defeat the U-boats early in the war.

You could also look at Churchills mistake in sending troops from North Africa to try to defend Greece, which left both theatres short of men and equipment, and cost the British further losses of men and equipment and prevented an early victory in North Africa before any German intervention was possible.

There was also no way Hitler and the Nazis would ever have considered a alliance with the USSR (as suggested earlier), as they despised them, and wanted the Allies to actualy join them in a war against the USSR.

The Japanese also refused point blank to declare war on the USSR, as all along their plan was to take on the western nations to seize control of the western pacific, and a fight with the USSR would only have detracted from that effort.

As someone stated earlier in the thread, wars tend to be won by the side that makes less mistakes, and this was the case in WWII, but certainly many mistakes were made by both sides, and had things gone differently, both sides would no doubt have made more.

I just thank the brave men and women that won the war, from ALL allied nations, for the freedom they secured from nazi oppression.