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To: Zhang Fei
Much of the pro-Russian, anti-Ukraine, anti-Europe, anti-NATO messaging seems to be:

The Russians are invincible.

They can never lose.

Although the Russians (Soviets) took considerable territory, especially while allies of Germany, they very likely would have lost the war without US aid. US aid was critical in vehicles, steel for making tanks, cold weather boots, food, and much more.

It was a fairly close thing, as it was. Hitler had to start making as big of mistakes as Stalin for the Germans to lose.

Even so, as I recall, the Russians had about 3-5 casualties for every German casualty on the Eastern Front.

10 posted on 04/23/2024 8:40:58 PM PDT by marktwain (The Republic is at risk. Resistance to the Democratic Party is Resistance to Tyranny. )
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To: marktwain; marcusmaximus; Paul R.; Bruce Campbells Chin; PIF; familyop; MercyFlush; tet68; ...

Ukraine ping

mark twain: [Much of the pro-Russian, anti-Ukraine, anti-Europe, anti-NATO messaging seems to be:
The Russians are invincible.

They can never lose.

Although the Russians (Soviets) took considerable territory, especially while allies of Germany, they very likely would have lost the war without US aid. US aid was critical in vehicles, steel for making tanks, cold weather boots, food, and much more.

It was a fairly close thing, as it was. Hitler had to start making as big of mistakes as Stalin for the Germans to lose.

Even so, as I recall, the Russians had about 3-5 casualties for every German casualty on the Eastern Front.]


A good chunk of the criticism of Axis military performance, especially from rear echelon types, focuses on them not spending enough on logistics. I think that’s misguided. Logistics is money. The more money you have, the better your logistics. The US economy was almost the size of the UK, France and Germany (and maybe Russia) combined. That buys a lot of logistics.

Germany used horse-drawn transport because fuel for horses grows everywhere. Diesel, gasoline and kerosene for airplanes was barely enough even with horse-drawn transport. Their logistics problems would have multiplied if they had used fleets of trucks for resupply.

Fuel from the US was just as vital for Russian advances as the weaponry. Without that fuel, the Russian war effort would have sputtered to a dead stop. And the astonishing thing is that it supplied a Russia that was just as territorially aggressive as its Tsarist predecessor, that had colluded with Germany to start WW2. When Churchill said “if Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons”, he was referring obliquely to Russia.


https://www.rferl.org/a/did-us-lend-lease-aid-tip-the-balance-in-soviet-fight-against-nazi-germany/30599486.html
[Under Lend-Lease, the United States provided more than one-third of all the explosives used by the Soviet Union during the war. The United States and the British Commonwealth provided 55 percent of all the aluminum the Soviet Union used during the war and more than 80 percent of the copper.

Lend-Lease also sent aviation fuel equivalent to 57 percent of what the Soviet Union itself produced. Much of the American fuel was added to lower-grade Soviet fuel to produce the high-octane fuel needed by modern military aircraft.

The Lend-Lease program also provided more than 35,000 radio sets and 32,000 motorcycles. When the war ended, almost 33 percent of all the Red Army’s vehicles had been provided through Lend-Lease. More than 20,000 Katyusha mobile multiple-rocket launchers were mounted on the chassis of American Studebaker trucks.

In addition, the Lend-Lease program propped up the Soviet railway system, which played a fundamental role in moving and supplying troops. The program sent nearly 2,000 locomotives and innumerable boxcars to the Soviet Union. In addition, almost half of all the rails used by the Soviet Union during the war came through Lend-Lease.]


11 posted on 04/23/2024 9:17:00 PM PDT by Zhang Fei (My dad had a Delta 88. That was a car. It was like driving your living room)
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