Well, depending on what time frame you are asking about, Great Britain was fighting for it’s life, France was occupied (literally) and the US was striving to remain out of the war and at least nominally neutral (while covertly we were supporting the allied powers with supplies and waging shadow war with Germany on the oceans). In an alternative universe where Russia was going it alone, the US would remain neutral in fact, France would still be occupied and out of the picture, and Great Britain would presumably have thrown in the towel or otherwise made some sort of accommodation with the Germans and not be helping Russia with it’s war in any way. In that alternative universe I can’t see any way for the Russians to survive a completely unengaged Germany, and that doesn’t factor in what the Japanese might do if they chose not to attack the US and instead turned their eyes to the Northern Resource Area…
Yep, what if the Japanese went after Siberia instead of China? This is completely predicated on a serious war with Russia and not China. If it had been a serious concentrated offensive, I don’t think the battle of Nomonhanaka Khalkhin Gol would have been more than a blip.
What? Food? No, we were feeding them. Ammo? No. Uniforms? No. Airplanes. No.
They were only making enough tanks.
Sure, by not producing as many tanks. They would have to cut tank production enough to make up for not only the trucks but 18,000 aircraft, 10,000 armored fighting vehicles, about one third of all ammunition, food, uniforms, 2,000 locomotives and 11,000 railcars .
In other words, after the Soviets got done cutting tank production enough to make up for this, they would have one T34 sitting in a show-room.
Or a bunch of dudes on foot, in winter with no cold weather gear, food or ammo- but some nice shiny tanks.
But some tanks that couldn’t be supplied in the field, so would just sit there hoping the Germans would come to them so they could fire then one load out of ammo and then hopefully defeat the Germans or have to flee on foot. That’s the thing…the Soviets might have been able to make or trains, jeeps, trucks, planes, ammo, food, etc…but at the sacrifice of making all those 10’s of thousands of heavy and light armored vehicles they made. Which would have cut down on their abilities to do those massive set piece battles they used in WWII, with masses of tanks (many of which would be destroyed initially, only to have the Russians throw in a huge number of reserves), their massive artillery barrages (which required a truly staggering amount of shells), endless seeming numbers of troops (requiring boots, beans and bullets in huge quantities), and waves of air planes (requiring gas, bullets, and of course the planes themselves in, again, huge quantities).
BTW, producing a truck isn’t ‘an engineering feat’ in that it wasn’t exactly rocket science. Producing a GOOD truck, such as the trucks the US produced during WWII WAS quite an achievement, and one I doubt the Soviets could have matched on their own (their own trucks prior to lend/lease pretty much sucked, which is why they loved our trucks so much and copied them post war…not to mention the fact that it would have seriously cut into their production of other things if they tried to make the huge numbers they required for their type of warfare).
We’ve had that thread if you want to search for it. Basically the Russians would have handed the Japanese their ass, in pieces, because the Japanese had no real armor.
Under this (unlikely) scenario though, that might not have been the case, because I don’t think the Russians could logistically support the war against Germany by itself, let alone a two front war against Germany AND Japan. Also, one of the reasons the Japanese had no big armor (they did have tanks, they just sucked) was because they were resource strapped in a similar way that we are projecting the Russians would be in this thread. That was because they were in a fight to the knife with the US, and pouring most of their resources into the fleet and their air craft production. Nothing to say that they couldn’t shift their limited production to some sort of tanks, armored vehicles and ground logistics and take on a beleaguered Russia in Siberia.
Would be pretty much moot though, since I think a Russia standing all alone and without any external support couldn’t fend off Germany anyway, let alone if Japan put it’s oar in the water too.
True enough. Russia standing alone is slowly ground into dust.
Does anyone know what percentage these numbers are compared to total Russian production?
Dudes were on foot, they didn’t have many armoured personnel carriers.
Dudes rode the tanks into battle.
Dudes died of the cold, just as the Germans and in the same numbers, if not more. They did have better lubricants though, that didn’t freeze.
Food was very scarce and this is one point I readily see a big advantage from US aid.
One recurring theme from all Russian veterans is that they were constantly hungry.
One third of all ammunition? Really?
You were producing 85mm tank-shells by the score while your own shermans used a crappy 75mm gun?
Aren’t practically all Russian calibres totally different from American ammo?
I agree that the aid the Russians got might have just given them the edge to reach Berlin but I don’t agree to the notion, that is forwarded here, that they were totally dependant on US aid to merely survive.
The Russians made about 20K tanks & armored vehicles a year. And the Russkies used a bewildering array of ammo, including some US Caliber. But you see we could simply make Russian or british calibers, not a problem
While the T34 was indeed upgunned to a 85 mm gun in later 1944, the Sherman Tank destroyer version got a 90MM long gun, which was quite a bit more powerful.
Where do you get the notion that the Soviets didn’t have ‘many’ armored personnel carriers? They had 10’s of thousands of the things.
BTW, were they on bare foot, or did they have boots? Where did the boots (and other clothes come from)? Russia make all of that? Were the Russians tough enough to go naked into battle or could they have, perhaps, used some stuff to help them slog along?
I don’t believe the Russians died in the same numbers just due to the cold, but I’d be open to a cite on this if it’s true.
How much hungrier would they all have been without any food aid coming in from the US? How much less combat effective would they have been? Or is hunger just something they could tough it out and go without?
In addition to making them finished goods we also provided the Russians with a hell of a lot of raw or partially refined materials (steel, brass, propellent, gasoline, etc). The early T-34’s had a 76 mm gun btw…it wasn’t until later in the war that the Russians up-gunned their tanks with stuff like the T-34/85. By then the US was putting bigger guns on it’s tanks as well in some cases.
Also, you’ve totally ignored the main theme folks in this thread have been trying to convey…logistics. Let’s pretend that Russia DID have sufficient food, materials and production to keep it’s armies in boots, beans and bullets for the war. How do they move all that stuff to the front where they need it in a timely manner? Just put it on the backs of those foot slogging Russian infantry and have them schlepp it out? Where do they get all those 10’s of thousands of trains mentioned earlier? Where do they get all the jeeps and trucks to take it from the rail distribution centers and move it to where the fighting is? And if they just make it all by shifting production, how many less tanks and armored vehicles do they have to fight with over the course of the war?
shrug They were totally dependent on allied aid to fight the kind of war they fought, with the type of massive set piece battles they fought. Without that they wouldn’t have dealt the huge blows they dealt the German army early on or set them back on their heels, nor would they have been able to massively go on and sustain the offensive in the later stages of the war. All war is about logistics, but modern war, and especially modern war as fought by the Soviets (and, honestly, by the US) during WWII massively involved huge amounts of logistics capability to mount and sustain offensive (or even defensive) operations.
I think it is worth mentioning that even without Lend Lease the US would have likely still sold goods to the Soviets. Lend-Lease was not extended to the Soviets until November '41. But the US started selling goods to them in June '41. These were paid for in gems, gold and other precious metals.
It certainly would have been a lot less than Lend-Lease, but the Soviets wold have still had access to the US market. And it is also worth mentioning how much miscellaneous crap Lend-Lease included: fishing tackle, musical instrument parts, nylons, synthetic hosiery excluding nylons. There are hundreds of entries like these. While only a few percent of the total. I think they could have done ok without safety razors, domestic vacuum cleaners and the like.
But much of the raw goods, food and trucks would have still been available. The US would have gotten a lot more gold and the like back. But the US market is not an either/or proposition. The Soviets had plenty of stuff to sell, and the US would be open for business.
I mentioned much of this in an early post, but I think you are interpreting it incorrectly. Let’s assume that the US would have defied the Germans and continued to sell stuff to the Russians. How would we have gotten the masses of equipment and raw materials TOO the Russians, especially without the Brits in the war? Would the Germans have just let us continue to ship large quantities of goods to Russia despite there being a war on?
ETA: And this leaves aside how the Russians, already strapped financially and fighting for it’s life, could have afforded to continue to pay the US in precious metals and the like for all they needed. I doubt the US would have taken credit for everything, especially if things were going badly for the Russians.
I say no way. Without the West, Hitler would not have needed to divide his forces to fight on two fronts and could have just devoted all his resources to conquering the Soviets. In addition, Hitler would have had the time to develop the Atom bomb. At which point it would have been game over for the Soviets.
I don’t think the Sherman ever mounted a 90mm. See this chart in Wikipedia. I think you’re thinking of the high-velocity 76mm.
The Sherman 76mm could penetrate around 90-120mm of armor at 1000m range; although I’m having trouble finding penetration tables for the T-35-85’s D5 gun, I have a hard time imagining it was worse.
There were three paths for the materials we sent to Russia: Arctic Convoys, the Persian Corridor, and the Pacific Route.
Now without the Brits, we’d have been hard pressed to keep sending stuff over the top of Scandinavia to the Russian Arctic ports.
The Persian Corridor was through Iran and Iraq, and we pretty much overthrew governments and, with British help, set up a transport corridor. It we were not in the war, then this probably would not have happened.
The last is then the Pacific Route, through Vladivistok and other smaller ports. No doubt that this route would remain open.
The Germans would have nothing to say about this route.
Perhaps he’s thinking of the M36 Gun Motor Carriage or, colloquially, ‘tank destroyer’, which was essentially based on a M4 Sherman chassis? Per the cite, it mounted a 90 mm M3 gun.
From what I can quickly google, the T-34/85 was made with two different 85mm guns: the D-5 and the ZIS-S-53. The following discussion at the World of Tanks discussion boards might be of interest. Also, this discussion at the same board lists the ZIS-S-53 penetration tables, as well as a bunch of others. Other lists have the ZIS and D-5 as having identical penetration, but I do not know whether that is true or not.
From the list of penetration values:
Second batch of data seems to be from the very long gun installed on the Super Pershing tank destroyers. I’d like to see primary cites for those figures, as opposed to some message board postings.
One thing that’s apparent in researching these figures is that armor penetration figures vary really widely from cite to cite. Compare the armor penetration figures at the wiki for the 76mm M1 Gun, that Sailboat mentioned, with the list of 76mm penetration above. I imagine a lot of the ambiguity is to differing target compositions and ambiguity in detailing exactly which ammunition is being shot out of which test gun.
Fun thread, on the all. My own feelings on the OP are close to **RickJay’s **posted ones at 8-11, 9:39. I think the Western Powers would have been delighted to see Communism be strangled in its crib, and if Germany crippled itself in the attempt, so much the better.
One thing I don’t believe I’ve seen in the thread yet. How was the Soviet Union supplying itself with Petroleum, Oil, and Lubricants (POL)? Was most of it coming from the Caspian fields near Baku, as well as fields in the rest of the Caucasus (Grozny, primarily)? Or had the Kuibyshev reserves been developed enough to make up the slack, even if Edelweiss had succeeded and the Germans had captured the Baku/Caucasus fields? (The equipment having already been evacuated to the Kuibyshev area) I’d read of oil and other materiel shipments from Iran; how much of the Soviet’s POL needs were they capable of supplying?
There wasn’t too much the Germans could do to interdict it. Only 23% of all Soviet Lend Lease went via the Arctic convoys. Over 50% went through Vladivostok. Interestingly the Japanese enforced neutrality status on those ships. So you had American ships with American crews flying under Soviet flags of convenience, being inspected by the Japanese navy. These supplies were restricted to non-war materials. But that still allowed trucks, food, boots, raw materials, etc. basically anything that didn’t have a gun attached or explosives.
As to how much gold and such the Soviets had… that is an interesting question. All of these numbers are at least somewhat questionable… they are the best I have access to. But they should be roughly accurate.
In 1941 they had a stash of $2.8 billion (US) worth of gold in 1941. And mined around $1.5 billion more during the war. They exported (mostly in payment) some $500 million during the war. And used another $100 million in production etc. So they had a bit less than $4 billion in disposable gold. In gold alone they had enough to buy a third of the Lend Lease they received. Numbers for platinum, silver, other precious metals and gems are questionable enough it is hard to get a good feel for them. But they appear to account for at least as much. For example the Soviets apparently produced between 40-60% of the worlds platinum during the war years. So the Soviets would have roughly $8 billion in disposable resources, against the roughly $11 billion in goods that they received via Lend Lease.
Now add in the theoretical… how much production might have changed in the theoretical… I don’t know. With manpower shortages, it might go down. With a need for these to buy essential goods, it might go up.
But the key point remains. Odds are pretty good that the Soviets will still end up with much of the Lend Lease materials.
Even assuming the rest of your post is 100% accurate I’m not seeing it. According to what you wrote there, at best we are talking about 50% of the supplies going through Vladivostok, so that’s probably going to be a hard ceiling right there of cutting their supplies in half. Then you say they had (perhaps) the hard currency (if they still had the resources to mine at exactly the same rates and have possession of the same territories to mine in that they did during the actual war) of roughly a third of what Lend/Lease costs…which seems to indicate that, at best, we are now talking about a third of the supplies (all non-military) that they could expect.
And all this assumes that everything would have been exactly the same during the war except that they weren’t getting Lend/Lease, which I find highly implausible. An unengaged Germany fighting solely against Russia is going to allow that mass of supplies to go to keep the Soviet Union alive?? :dubious: They aren’t going to pressure the Japanese to either embargo or halt shipments, OR, more plausibly, send their own subs and ships to interdict those trade routes in some way? Possibly get basing rights in Japan for their ships? I mean, they didn’t do this in our reality because, well, they were fighting for their life against all of the major allies, and it wasn’t feasible to do. But they wouldn’t be having a huge battle in the Atlantic against the UK and a covert war against the US Navy in this reality. I can’t see the Germans just shrugging and playing along with the US supplying the Russians with that quantity of goods. Nor do I see how, even with that, it’s a slam dunk for the Russians…they still have to use their own limited production to produce stuff that they would have gotten from the US and the other allies, detracting from the resources they used to make all those planes, artillery pieces, and most importantly tanks and other armored vehicles.
Also (sorry, I’m posting this on the road so don’t have a ton of time to sit down and think through all of the permutations of the various aspects of this), that still doesn’t show that Russia could go it alone…after all, whether we give them the aid or sell them the aid (assuming for a moment that it would work), they are still not beating the Germans on their own. In fact, they are still relying rather heavily on an outside nation and it’s resources to allow them to survive, again even assuming it would work that way…correct?