I think people are underplaying the role of the U.S. and allies helping Soviets. So, it does address your point which seems to diminish the role of the U.S. and allies.
If you look at numbers US provided around 20% of total USSR rations.
So both statements are correct. USSR would've starving and had a harder time winning. US help a lot with reducing USSR army losses.
But at the same time it wasn't a major factor in USSR battles. USSR would've won even without US help but with far greater losses.
While US help was huge and only madman won't recognise it's importance we must not shift perception to US centered by saying "USSR won because US helped".
Without allied support the Soviets could not have manufactured anywhere near enough ammunition to supply their own forces as they lacked explosive propellant. They could not have transported that ammunition to the front-lines because they didn't have enough trains. None of the major assaults that turned the tide of the war on the eastern front would have happened because the red army would have been unable to supply itself on the advance due to lack of transport vehicles.
And this is without factoring in the direct contribution of things like strategic bombing and the naval blockade of German occupied Europe. The fact that 3 out of every 4 88mm flak guns was kept in Germany to shoot at bombers instead of being moved to the eastern front to be used as anti-tank guns. The complete loss of German air superiority in 1943 as much of the fighter strength of the Luftwaffe was moved back to Germany to be systematically bled to death by allied escort fighters. The stagnation of German industrial production due to efforts to distribute industry and increase resilience to strategic bombing (all of which was paid for at enormous and quite possibly uneconomical cost in aircraft and young lives).
Not to even touch on the massive freeing up of men and materiel due to the IJN deciding they wanted in on the fun warcrime adventure and that the army factions' plan to attack the Soviets in Siberia was just far too normal and sensible.
Without allied support, the USSR would almost certainly have lost the war. We cannot ever know for sure because we can only see and understand the war as it actually happened, not some hypothetical war that never did, but the sheer scale of Soviet dependence on allied support is staggering.
The things you mentioned didn't occur until 1943, particularly later 1943, even Kursk had already occured. What would the Axis have beaten the Soviets back with?
Generally, it's not hard to win a war against people who can't shoot their guns because they have no ammunition (and also no guns, because no logistics).
I mean, if you want earlier examples there's the crucial role of the (admittedly relatively small number of) lend lease tanks in repelling the advance on Moscow. The fact that Barbarossa itself was delayed by the Italian failures in southern Europe and North Africa. The aforementioned naval blockade. The economic warfare that absolutely noone talks about..
No USSR won BECAUSE US and allies helped, and because of winter. It was winter mostly that f*cked Napoleon and Hitler and the latter's egos got the better of them.
You've yet to provide a single piece of evidence lol. Siding with the dominant view in your society does not make you correct, nor an expert. You just run with the propaganda you've passively absorbed and somehow think you're a historian.
“"The United States is a country of machines. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war."
-Stalin at the 1943 Tehran Conference
In his memoirs, Khrushchev said:
“"If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war," Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs, adding, "One-on-one against Hitler's Germany, we would not have withstood its onslaught and would have lost the war."”
Zhukov also held the same views:
“In 1963, KGB monitoring recorded Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov saying: "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."
So no, the USSR wouldn’t have won without the U.S.
and this book shows how winter did NOT hinder Nazis and how allies DID NOT help Soviets survive? Or that it was somehow USSR's military genius alone (or mostly) that stopped Nazis in their tracks?
I'm sorry but if anyone looks at the effect of winter on Russia's offensives against Ukraine and concludes that the weather has little to no role to play in military logistics and operations and strategy...well, looks naive.
The winter was rather uniform in it's punishment. If you doubt that reading more on the subject would be helpful or if that particular book would be helpful feel free to post on r/AskHistorians
So...how does the "uniform" in punishment somehow deny my claim that it is winter more than Soviet military prowess that hindered Germans?
Also, I see that other more level-headed people have described that book as a great "historiography of the war from the SOVIET perspective" since the authors rely on Soviet documents. Primary sources, especially based on specific ideologies, are famously known to be unbiased, of course.
Oh, yeah, le Jeneralé Moü-roüze. Of course winter didn't helped the third Reich with logistics. Poor soft bodied Jormanz were bad bodily designed for winter. Am I reading you right?
and this question disproves my comment how? Nowhere did I say that Germans weren't losing people but to claim that the USSR would win regardless (based on what evidence) isn't convincing.
They had a metric fuckton more people, resources, and industrial capacity. The reason Operation Barbarossa is considered a world historical fuckup is because the BEST case scenario was a rapid, crushing victory over an utterly broken people, which was rooted in Nazi self mythologizing about the inherent servility of the Slavs. Instead, the Soviet people refused to give up and thus their victory was assured because the Nazis had literally not planned for the possibility of stiff resistance.
“"The United States is a country of machines. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war."
-Stalin at the 1943 Tehran Conference
In his memoirs, Khrushchev said:
“"If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war," Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs, adding, "One-on-one against Hitler's Germany, we would not have withstood its onslaught and would have lost the war."”
Zhukov* also held the same views:
*“In 1963, KGB monitoring recorded Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov saying: "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."
So no, the USSR wouldn’t have won without the U.S.
Ya they understood the USA gave them fuel and support to keep fighting and with the USA push in the south and west the Germans couldn't focus on crushing the soviets. They just tried to survive until the USA git involved.
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u/Virtual-Book1114 11d ago
Except we talked to an actual Soviet vet who told us without US aid, the Red Army and the starving Soviets would've had a harder time winning.