XT, you have forgotten the Persian route, which accounted for another 27% of Soviet Lend Lease. So we are talking 77% of those goods will still be available. Likewise you have only counted the gold. In all precious metals and gems they would have closer to 70% or more of the value of Lend Lease in hard resources to trade for US goods. And even if it is non-military goods. Honestly that is what most of what the US shipped anyway. Not saying the military goods weren’t important… but the Soviets were out producing the Germans in most military categories, most years of the war.
And the Germans wouldn’t have a way to effectively blockade the Soviets. In this supposed alternate history, the UK and US are neutral. There is no way they are going to stand to let the Germans run unrestricted submarine warfare. And if the Germans start sinking neutral ships, well that gets them back into war with everyone again. They can try a blockade, but it’ll have to be a traditional surface blockade. And it likely will have to allow non-war materials through. So it wouldn’t be very effective anyway.
Likewise the Japanese would have no incentive to lease bases to the Germans. In this history The UK would have a full strength Far East fleet. As would the Dutch and French for that matter. Taking on all of the above and the US is something they aren’t likely to try. Remember much of the Japanese reasoning was that the European war presented a unique opportunity to seize the Southern Resource Area, while the European powers were weak and distracted. They were allies of convenience only with Germany. They were happy to take advantage of the chaos Germany caused, but they weren’t ideological allies. And they certainly weren’t going to lift a finger to help the Germans without real benefit to themselves.
Finally this isn’t aid that the US would be giving them. It would be international trade. Copper purchased from neutral Chile by the US didn’t count as aid. Neither did steel purchased from neutral Sweden by Germany. No country can survive without trade and access to the variety of raw materials and finished goods a modern economy needs… even in the 20th century. Even the UK and Germany conducted a small amount of trade during the war with each other, mostly via Spain. Germany would put up with it because Germany would have to. And the US would do it, first to make a ton of money, and help the economy out the depression, and second for the same reasons we helped Iraq in the '80s. Keeping the Soviets in the fight exhausts the Commies and the Nazis, while not costing a thing. That would be a sweet deal from Roosevelt’s perspective.
I’m not arguing that this makes it a “slam dunk” for the Soviets. In fact I’m not sure they can win against the Germans by themselves. But Lend Lease can be, and in this thread has been, vastly overstated. At the time it was supposed to have only accounted for roughly 4% of Soviet production.* Although it did account for a lot more (over 90%) in certain specific categories. It is also important to remember that the vast majority of Lend Lease arrived between the summer of '43 and early '45. So the battle of Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk were all fought with somewhere between all Soviet equipment and almost all Soviet equipment. The Germans were stopped and the push back was started while the Germans were only very lightly engaged anywhere else. There is no reason to expect that the Germans could have done any better in '41 or '42 than they did historically. And they were so overmatched in '43 that they could only try a limited offensive… and had to strip other sectors to even try that, only to get their butts handed to them and be pushed back hundreds of miles all along almost the entire front. And only that last bit did the Western Allies or Lend Lease help much. '43 was when the Mediterranean started sucking in more than just token German forces. Likewise, bombing wasn’t doing much of anything till '43. In '42 less than 50,000 tons of bombs were dropped to minimal effect. Only in '43 when this was increased to over 200,000 tons and '44 with over 900,000 tons did bombing have a significant impact on German industry. And by that time Germany was already losing.
Who would win? I don’t know. But I think the Soviets would give a much better accounting of themselves than many posters here seem to be thinking. You are still looking at a stalemate by the end of '42. Could the Soviets have managed the massive offensives of '43-'45? That is the million dollar question. And it doesn’t have an easy answer that I can see.
*As with most Soviet numbers there is a lot of debate. No one seems to think that it was as low as 4% anymore. Right after the Soviet archives were opened there was a huge swing to accounting Lend Lease as about 30% of Soviet production. But the consensus seems to be settling back to below 10%.
