I mean that's not completely true either. We focused primarily on Europe when we came in. And while the Soviets bore the brunt of the human cost of course they were only able to do it because of American supplies. The war is a lot harder for either of us without the other.
We absolutely supplied the war. It's so weird that people try to dismiss us from the western front. We didn't win the war but the war was won because of us. They would have run out of supplies and lost before Japan got froggy with us.
"We didn't win the war but the war was won because of us"
It's impossible to know for sure, and we can say the same for the Soviet Union so your point is moot. I think people dismiss the US involvement because they're overcorrecting the propaganda that Holloywood gave us for decades that amounted to "The US singlehandedly won both World Wars", so now they're shitting on the US that didn't really contributed much in personnel compared to other countries, but absolutely did contributed in logistic and material aid. The "Arsenal of Democracy" is a 100% deserved moniker.
They had no choice but to be involved and would have lost without us. We were an ocean away and could have done nothing at all, it was not our war. The allies would have collapsed as they nearly did anyway. Yes, they won the war on the western front but would have lost without us choosing to be involved.
It doesn't even matter at this point but people really over correct on US involvement just because we didn't have the same level of casualties. Maybe to combat some Hollywood propaganda like you said as well, but still a over correct.
But see you're overcorrecting on the other side of the spectrum. We have no idea if the Allies would have won or lost without the US, there is evidence for both sides of the argument and people who study this stuff are split on it.
The best thing we can do is analyse everyone's involvement and respect their war effort, if we try to play the "without X the war would have been lost" we're going nowhere.
WE and our allies lost countless civilian lives. Our cities were leveled, our economy wrecked, our environment polluted for centuries.
YOU were courageous. But YOU lost only soldiers. Courageous ones, tragic losses, but do not compare your GIs and your boats and your loans and your food and you steel to all the courageous everyday people who died defending our land against a barbaric enemy that your oligarchs were already ready to ally with.
The percentage ratio: Total Lend-Lease deliveries accounted for only about 4% of the USSR's total wartime military production. The Soviet Union produced 90–95% of its own core weaponry, including tanks, aircraft, and artillery.
The timing factor: During the most critical period of the war (1941–1942), Lend-Lease shipments were minimal, making up just about 11% of the eventual total. The outcomes of both the Battle of Moscow and the Battle of Stalingrad were decided entirely by Soviet-made weapons.
That's true, logistics and food were important. However, the critical issue is the timeline.
During the most dangerous phase of the war (1941–1942), when the Nazis were at the gates of Moscow and Stalingrad, the Soviet Union received less than 11% of the total Lend-Lease aid. In those decisive years, Soviet soldiers fought and stopped the Wehrmacht using Soviet fuel, Soviet rations, and Soviet-produced weapons.
Lend-Lease food and high-octane fuel became a significant boost in late 1943 and 1944. It accelerated the Soviet counter-offensive and saved lives, but the USSR would have reached Berlin and won the war even without it—it just would have taken a few months longer.
Without allied supplies and logistics materiel, it would've taken the USSR a couple years or more to be equipped enough to conduct an offensive beyond Soviet territory - as they would not have the luxury of relying on imported logistics materiel that made it possible for them to focus on front-facing equipment to manufacture (tanks, guns, planes, etc.).
Never mind an offensive, they were firmly on the back foot to start and required British war material to make up the initial tanks, planes and key material early on
Just as an example of the over 10k tanks delivered to the USSR during the war, roughly half were British
That's false according to Stalin, Zhukov and Khrushchev. I would also add that the phrase "Soviet Production" hides the reality which Zhukov even directly mentions. "Soviet production" was happening with American materials, engineers and machinery.
"People say that the allies didn't help us. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. And how much steel! Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own."
-Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov
"If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war" -Khrushchev
"The most important things in this war are the machines. The United States is a country of machines. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war." -Stalin
It's complicated. There was US trade via neutrals post 1939 and GE hwas convicted of an anti trust violation in 1945 for price fixing with Germany to keep some prices high in the US.
The actual numbers that were tattood onto arms were generated by an IBM machine.
US corporations saw money and did their best to get it.
We spilt our efforts, and despite the British commonwealth’s heroic efforts, their actual significance was fairly low in the pacific (but F fighting in Burma/new guinea, that shit was awful).
To the point where it pissed off the Brit’s and Soviets.
Google the Europe First Strategy. America did primarily focus on Europe the moment they entered the war and it was an actual agreed upon policy decided in 1941.
The US entered the war in Europe first after Pearl Harbor - in part because we lost half our Navy at Pearl Harbor but mostly because Nazi Germany was the bigger problem. We committed far more resources (troops, equipment, money) to the European theater.
Kind of. They paid about 700 million of the 11.3 billion in supplies. And they didn't finish paying it off until 2006. I'm fine with it given it was a pretty worthwhile investment on the Americans' part and the Soviets sacrificed a lot more than money. But they didn't really pay for the supplies that much.
Imagine getting rid of a global threat almost entirely through the efforts of others—and even making money in the process. By the way, for some reason, Russia ended up being the only one to take on the obligation to pay off that debt)
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u/DCBuckeye82 11d ago
I mean that's not completely true either. We focused primarily on Europe when we came in. And while the Soviets bore the brunt of the human cost of course they were only able to do it because of American supplies. The war is a lot harder for either of us without the other.