Comments by "David Himmelsbach" (@davidhimmelsbach557) on "Lend Lease to the Soviet Union, the Soviet and German Economies, and more... TIK Q&A 3" video.

@ Man of the west -- it's the TRUCKS. Stalin went no far as to demand reparations from the French over their Peugot rucks. Paris told him to stuff it. France would've never been defeated without Nazi access to Soviet crude oil. It was the difference maker. Yeah, you never read about that anywhere.
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@Cyberian... you're making the classic mistake of confusing bulk statistics with what was CRITICAL. The war decisive stuff doesn't show up in Bulk Stats at all. Typically it was NEVER recorded in the first place. It was TOO sensitive. I know of three items that were deliberately omitted from the stats: radio tubes, Western Electric com cables ( critical to Uranus victory - but so secret that it's omitted ) and tungsten carbide tool bits purchased from SWEDEN with American GOLD and flown into Russia in very early 1942. These were the actual source of the Soviet production miracle. They increase tool speeds about 8 times on average over HSS bits - the only bits Stalin had. These LL items are TOO embarrassing to acknowledge. So they weren't. This leaves the younger generation babbling on about totally skewed statistics to this day. The CRITICAL stuff is the SMALL STUFF. Not SPAM, not Studebakers, not gasoline, none of the stuff that hits the books in 1943.
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LendLease CAN'T be analyzed statistically since it has two entirely different 'wings.' The first was the most CRITICAL stuff: this usually weighed virtually nothing and was often flown in via Alaska and Siberia. The ENTIRE motivation for the ALCAN highway was to move CRITICAL stuff to the USSR. This stuff usually was so secret it wasn't even recorded. It was shipped on oral orders only. So it's evaporated from history. The Western Electric cable system was transferred on this basis. You can't find any record of it ever happening anywhere. It decided both el Alamein and Uranus. (!!!) It was so ULTRA secret that only signals experts knew anything about it. It was as secret as Bletchley Park. (ULTRA) Likewise you can't find anything about the panic purchase of Swedish tungsten carbide bits that were purchased for in gold by the USA and then flown over Finland to save Stalin's ass. While ultra CRITICAL, they have evaporated from the historical record. THEY were the reason for the Soviet production miracle. In the panic to get factories east, electric motors were just thrown off of flat cars. This was attested to by the very Russian doing it. Entire fields of equipment were just laying in the dirt, then mud, then snow. By the time it came to rebuild, the motors were all ruined. The USA LendLease aid replaced them! Many of the ruined motors had been made in the USA in the first place... so it was no trouble to swap old for new. The second phase is that of BULK. This is the stuff that Russians love to focus on and dismiss -- because bulk deliveries came after the critical period of the war. This line of 'thinking' allows them to entirely ignore the astounding CRITICAL shipments that occurred in 1942 at horrific expense in life and $$$. The second-rate British and American planes all came with radios. This was what rescued the Red air force. She could now train enough pilots -- quickly to over come losses at the front. Previously the USSR was being bled to death in the skies. Un-radioed planes make for very lousy trainers.
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@Vlad... EVERY combatant power couldn't get enough locomotives. BTW, the Americans hated the 2-10-0 scheme. Re-tooling to manufacture it would've been most unwise. (Slows production) I can see why the USSR loved it: she has astoundingly straight track, courtesy of the Tsar; her main lines were, with rare exception, un-ballasted. She needed to spread out the ground pressure. Left out of the equation: the number of British and American locos dedicated to the Iranian run. These had to be pulled out our ears. The build out of the Abadan to Astrakhan rail link is one of the great untold stories of the war. When the Germans saw ( aerial photos ) how fast the USSR completed rail roads -- their minds were fried. IIRC there was a rail swap point where British & American aid transitioned from British gauge to Russian gauge. It quickly became a huge operation. The vast bulk of LendLease aid ended up using this route. Long as it was, it avoided U-boats. Because it was so long, it didn't really kick into high gear until 1943... by which time the Nazis had entirely lost the war. Even the USA, with no locos lost to combat, was pulling its hair out trying to get even more. Rail traffic in WWII went clear through the roof. You might be amused to see the video footage of the USA rebuilding the rail net of Northwest Africa (1942-43) It was also performed at a frantic pace. The Allied Powers made the Axis Powers look totally stupid -- logistically. Bagration was decided logistically. It was a blow-out!
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@Ethan... those rocket launching trucks were American. Stalin simply stopped producing trucks during the war. His surviving trucks were pulled back to the major cities where their standard drives could function. American four-wheel drive machines were used at the front.
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@James-- rubber you say? The Soviet system became totally dependent upon LL TIRES and Rubber. Stalin didn't have synthetic rubber plants, and Japan controlled all of the rubber plantations worth talking about. Stalin also totally depended upon US radio tubes. Kept secret for decades, he'd lost his only tube plant during Typhoon. (1941) He faked out even the Americans... and his own citizens. He crafted a mythic radio tube plant in the east so that he would not look bad and that their morale would buck up.
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@777-- and that's the bulk stuff. The CRITICAL stuff that decided the war is totally missing from your stats: radio tubes, TC bits, com cables. These decided the war, and they all went in during 1942. Most were flown in at terrific expense. Alaska to Siberia... some from Sweden.
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@Vlad... the Germans shot up and destroyed thousands of locomotives. It got so bad that in the winter of 41 Soviet troops had to march quite some distance to the front... in the snow... because Stalin couldn't take any more locomotive losses. He was at crisis levels. Your production stats keep showing reductions in output. No other combatant power showed production losses. ( until the very end ) You numbers are classic Soviet disinformation. Stalin is conning the USA into sending him even more LendLease aid. That's all. The idea that the USA is sending WWI locos to Stalin is pure comedy. The locos were brand new Baldwins. They didn't go backwards and use twenty-five year old designs. They weren't even set up to do so. All that was done was to re-gauge their current machine to Russian specs. Any other solution would be totally impractical. The Baldwins stayed on Soviet tracks in active service through the 1960s. It was a mature design that everybody loved. Diesels did them in. None of the stuff you're posting was CRITICAL. If it was really, really important it never hit the books, was kept top secret. Get it?
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@Vlad... the Nazis were relentless liars... straight through the war. It was policy from the first to NOT count as lost any gear that could be recovered and 'repaired' -- even if it was -- in fact -- just a heap of parts. Re-manufactured British and German machines were always counted as New Production. This is where the astounding increase in Spitfire production came from in the Autumn of 1940. This was not American practice. America could NEVER send stuff back to the factory to be repaired. The factory was an ocean away! The USSR was not much into factory repairs, either. The Urals were one heck of a distance away. The Soviet factories were not set up for anything but full on mass production of new machines. Both the Soviets and Americans did not hesitate to harvest repair parts in the field. Actual German commander's reports of losses reflected how they would go over with the high command. Rommel famously reported crazy high losses in the 12SS that were bogus. What he wanted was a complete change in tactics. So he fed Adolf a tear-jerker! ANY German document ( and Soviet ) has to be triple-checked for accuracy. The authors were 'flexible.' Heh.
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@silveriorebelo8045 By 1940 Stalin was sending Hitler game changing amounts of crude oil. They'd cut a revised trade deal BEFORE Hitler invaded France.
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@Vlad Read Death Ride by John Mosier. By the end you'll come to realize that NOT ONE of the Soviet statistics is at all honest. They were fabricated to support Stalin's narrative. Period. Tungsten carbide tool bits are the REAL source of the production miracle. Talk to a machinist. Historians -- for them -- it's over their heads. They just can't grasp that a switch in tool tips makes a lathe punch out EIGHT TIMES as much production. Ditto for every other cutting tool. HSS is restricted to brass.
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@TTT135 The USA pulled JAPAN off of Stalin -- December 1941. That was the First "Second Front." It released 500,000 Red soldiers -- the boys that bailed Stalin out in December 1941. Yeah, he made his move even before Pearl Harbor because he had advance knowledge that Japan was going to attack. Naturally, he did NOT inform UK or USA that Japan was on the warpath. What a pal ! The USA pulled one German army after another out of Russia LONG before Normandy. Sicily, alone triggered Hitler into removing an SS panzer corps, and a panzer army and an infantry army from Russia. Their departure was never acknowledged by Stalin -- then or ever.Their shift out of Russia ended ALL major offensive operations in the east. The USAAF pulled the Luftwaffe out of Russia. Only token formations were left. During Bagration June 22, 1944 the Luftwaffe was down to less than 200 planes within Army Group Center. (!) The missing planes were dedicated to just the 8th Air Force -- not even the RAF. Hitler did not prioritize stopping the night bombing campaign of Bomber Harris. It was only killing civilians. The USAAF was destroying Adolf's ability to make ware.
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@PJL... you are fundamentally wrong. If you can't take your gear to the front it doesn't count. The Anglo-Allies ruined Germany with Ike's 'transport plan.' He made it impossible for the Nazis to get their stuff to the battle. He blew up their rail and road net. This was done against the protests of EVERYBODY. He had to use his rank to get it done. EVERYBODY thought he was nuts. After the war he was proved entirely correct, everybody else was totally wrong. Ever since the US has adopted Ike's thinking. It's dogma.
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@RHaMMer-- utterly wrong. Keeping Italy in the war was what drove Adolf to pull out SEVEN panzer divisions. The 1SS didn't 'surrender' tanks -- they left them for the 3SS. This was a COMMON logistical practice for big strategic moves. EVERY German division deployed out of Russia left its gear behind. They were certain to get totally new stuff as they were rebuilt in northern France. This was entirely routine at the time.
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@Vlad... BTW the MkVIb king tiger came in two varients. The first went entirely to the eastern front. The Soviets destroyed every last one during the opening moves of Bagation. These had the Porsche turrets. They looked great on paper, pretty in fact, but were way too expensive to produce. It turned out that they were crappier than the Henschel design... which is the one most folks are familiar with. By mid 44 Adolf was entirely out of his mind. D-Day was 'Game Over.' Bagration should never have been fought. Germany was already totally defeated. The mad tyrant was just running up the body count.
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@Daniel Then Adolf wins the atomic bomb booby prize. It was always intended for him. Your scenario is EXACTLY why it got AAA priority during the war. That meant that 40% of the USA war economy was dedicated to the B-29 + Atomic Bomb. Yup. That's astounding! The ENTIRE rest of the American war effort ran on the remaining 40% after you back out penicillin -- which took 20%, too. Penicillin sucked down chrome in astounding quantities, BTW. (Stainless steel)
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@Perera The USA pulled Japan off of Russia once Stalin's man informed him that Japan was certain to attack the USA. He promptly shifted 500,000 soldiers out of the Far East -- with tremendous impact December 1941 -- and the USA was not even at war at the time. The USAAF pulled the Luftwaffe out of Russia -- almost entirely -- BEFORE Normandy. In financial terms, the Air War was MORE expensive than the land campaign. So you entire line of reasoning implodes. The USA + UK pulled one panzer army and one infantry army out of Russia when they invaded Sicily. That invasion stopped the German attack at Kursk dead in its tracks. The Germans NEVER had a strategic attack in Russia for the rest of the war. As the Germans shifted into the west -- they were ground up and destroyed. The units involved were the PREMIER units in Germany. The only super-units in the left east: 3SS, 5SS and Grossdeutchland. In the west: 1SS, 2SS, HG, 1st Para, 2nd Para, 4th Para, 7th Para,116th Pz, Pz Lehr, -- and ALL of the decent units in the Luftwaffe. The USAAF shut off Adolf's oil supply: Ploesti and the Big Week ( February 1944) ALL of the critical oil attacks occurred LONG before Normandy.
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@Man of the West... the British machines did NOT reach the front in 1941 -- no matter how many times you might read so. First, the Russians didn't know how to drive them. Their dials and gauges all had to be converted to Cyrillic, too. They also had to train the mechanics on how to perform even the most basic tasks -- like how to tension the tracks, change the oil, etc. This was all going on during Typhoon, in deep cold. What a #$%^&. British machines DID show up during the Soviet counter-attack -- which ran on for months -- as in January--Mud 1942. Just because the machines reached port did not mean that the Soviets could march them into battle. The contrast with Shermans delivered to Monty is night and day. It took British mechanics about one-day to become totally up to speed with American M-4s... and they read English, too. Nothing like that ever happened with LL gear. Every last bit had to be re-labelled lest the citizens figure out that the good stuff was coming from the evil capitalist states of the West.
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@Russian... the Soviets were CRITICALLY short of mechanics straight through to the end of the war. It was so bad that they ALWAYS conscripted captured German mechanics into their army. I know of one such guy. He was captured and employed THREE TIMES. Captured German mechanics ALWAYS got special treatment... totally unlike other captured Germans. They were easy to spot: they had filthy, greasy hands that had never touched a gun.
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@Russian... Astrakan had no rail road connection at all. With American LL rails lines were laid to and from it... at a speed the Germans found absolutely astounding -- ten miles a day! The system was laid down exactly like the 19th American Transcontinental rail road: sleepers were skipped and no ballast was laid. American bulldozers flattened the route about as fast as they could move. But during Blau, Astrakan had NOTHING.
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@madarab I have NO idea what you're responding to... but... WWII would been canceled right off if Hitler had attacked Czechoslovakia in 1938 -- because the Czechs had better tanks and better bunkers and would've slaughtered the panzer force. That was the conclusion that the Nazi government came to -- only after occupying the border forts of the Czechs. Remember Mark III tank production had JUST started. The number of Mark IV tanks was pitiful. Mark 1 & Mark II tankettes were death traps.
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@madarab Fictive you say -- but Hitler and Goering agreed -- at the time -- that Germany would've lost its a$$ going up against such forts. As a side note: Goering agreed with Chamberlain -- behind closed doors -- and under cut Adolf. That's how the Munich deal was reached. When Goering did this, he was splitting against Hitler -- leaving him the only man in the room -- arguing against the crowd. Adolf was so furious that he would not speak to Goering for weeks thereafter. ONLY after getting the photos and reports from his army about the Czech forts and tanks did Adolf relent. Goering WAS RIGHT. Nazi Germany would've lost its a$$ fighting in the mountains. Suddenly, Goering was in Hitler's good graces -- for it was now plain that Goering had saved Nazi Germany from a classic Adolf folly. So... there YOU stand, all alone. France BLEW IT. BTW, London can't be blamed. England had no frontier with Germany and did not have a significant land army. The ONLY nation that counted was France. Chamberlain had to pretty-up for his public whatever Paris was going to do. Britain was actually a side-show at Munich. While Chamberlain was talking peace in our time -- his pen was financing the Spitfire, ChainHome, and the RAF and RN that Churchill would wage the war with. Churchill's contribution to British armaments were trivial in comparison. So, while talking peace, Chamberlain was ramping up British military capability as fast as events would allow. The Big Goof in British history was BALDWIN -- Chamberlain's predecessor.
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@RHa... Incorrect. The single strongest panzer corps had not been committed: the 24th. It could've stopped the Soviet moves, and rather easily. It was taken away and sent to Italy because of the Anglo-Allied threat... by Adolf himself... over protests from his generals. It stayed in Italy, only to come back to the East in dribs and drabs. Further the SS corps was broken up. The 1SS went to Italy, too. The 2SS was sent off, and then recalled in a panic to stop the Red army's southern attack. It was shipped to Italy, too, after the southern Red offensive was contained. The 2SS left its 170mm gun batteries behind. Both divisions left their heavy equipment behind, too. It was absorbed by the 3SS and other units. Both entered Italy with virtually nothing. They were entirely re-equipped while in northern Italy. At one point the 1SS paraded around its first and only company of Panther tanks to convince the Italians that whole division had arrived! Hitler feared that the entire Italian nation would flip. It did so September 9, 1943. Without the German moves Italy would've flipped MUCH sooner... with its army still intact!
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@Vlad... Even today you, as a tourist, can take the train route within Iran used by Britain and America to supply the USSR. That route is even on YouTube. The over-dub specifically mentions that this or that was used massively during WWII. Curiously, it's evident that much of the cargo was going by barge and ship across the Caspian Sea -- thence up the Volga. (!) The Astrakan connection north had not yet been built and yet LL aid was flowing. In Putin's video history, the A-20 ( aka Boston bomber ) is called out by said video as being essential for stopping 1st Panzer Army. The Red pilots LOVED it. By Russian standards it was over instrumented.
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@vlad... "As a result, tactical and organizational measures in the West came down to plugging holes. Commanders, troops and military equipment, frankly, became second-rate. Since 1943, the basis of the German troops of the Western Front was the elderly, equipped with obsolete weapons. Neither the personnel nor the weapons met the requirements of the coming heavy battles." More proof that you can't believe anything a Nazi says or writes. 1) Adolf SHUT OFF all tank reinforcements to the Eastern Front 12-31-1943. Stug IIIs would have to do. 2) The SS panzer divisions in the West were brought totally up to strength. 3) The 116th panzer division ( 2 panther battalions + 1 Mark IV battalion ) was created from scratch. ( by Guderian as a birthday present... heh... it was filled with anti-Nazi Germans, BTW. ) 4) Panzer Lehr was built out as a super division, too. 5) 2nd Parachute was sent to France -- at full strength. 6) In mid-44, 9th & 10th SS panzer divisions were sent to Normandy -- from Poland. (!) They were supposed to reinforce the East. Oh, well. Taken altogether, Adolf created a new panzer army, the 5th, in the West. He even sent west machines explicitly designed to stop Soviet tanks -- namely the Jagpanther. Not one of these terrors ever went east. (!) Lastly, the Germans sent a LOT more divisions into Italy than just 8. Those were merely the first wave. In this telling, the Nazis are trying to convince the Americans and British that they were not facing the REAL German Army.
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@Vlad... Stalin had an entire CORPS of NKVD troops dedicated to this task. It pissed the British and Americans off Big Time. Yeah, it reached diplomatic levels. The children of the USA sent CARE packages to to the USSR. They'd gone door-to-door to pick up pennies for this drive. Even THEIR charity goods were held up and re-labelled. This infuriated our diplomats. That you are in denial about this Stalinist policy shows you how effective it was. Alien machines were easily explained away as new Soviet machines. After all, all of their internal dials and legends were in Cyrillic. Many Soviet tanks were designed by Christie -- the American. So when Western technologies popped up -- they were not new. BTW, the engine for the T-34 started life as a French dirigible motor. The 82mm mortar started life as the French 81mm mortar -- a design that every army of note adopted: French, German, American, Soviet -- and more. The Reds also knocked off the Browning 50 cal, too. (14.5mm gun) { Like the 82mm mortar, the Reds copied the device but increased the size a bit.} All of the above is why it was child's play to convince the general population that Lend Lease goods were miracles of production from east of the Urals. You'd have to be at the very top to know what was going on. As for historians: they are total zeroes when it comes to chemistry or mechanics -- or mass production. That's why the switch from High Speed Steel to Tungsten Carbide triggers no mental activity -- it goes in one eye-ball and comes out their ears. TC is the TRUE source of the Soviet war production miracle. It's impossible to build any major war plant in the depth of a Siberian winter. You can't pour concrete -- there is snow everywhere -- you can't dig frozen ground -- etc. It took the US two-years to get B-24 production really going -- and we had everything going our way. The removed Soviet factories were largely destroyed in the process. How do we know? Russians who were there, who unloaded the flat cars, have told us so. The panic was so great that he merely shoved electric motors off the train into the snow and mud. The train didn't even stop! It just crawled along as it was 'unloaded.' No-one knew where anything was when the snow melted.
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@ At Man of the West... The Soviets even admitted that they had to INSTITUTE factory education after the fiasco of 1941. Soldiers were abandoning tanks that had trivial mechanical faults. Being peasants, they didn't have the first clue about what to do. British tanks were so advanced compared to Soviet anythings that the boys were stumped without training. The typical Ivan had never seen a motor before. Think about it. You're under-estimating how long it takes armies to train boys from scratch -- where the average IQ really is 100 or less. This was not the college crowd -- the kind of guy you know so well.
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@ Man of the west... Hurricanes HAD RADIOS. With the loss of their radio tube factory (Typhoon did it in) all during 1942 Red planes had no radios. (!!!!!) This is STILL not appreciated by most historians. The loss of their only radio tube factory was of the deepest state secrecy. Stalin managed to keep this fiasco secret from both Britain and America straight through the war. America supplied the missing tubes, BTW. This meant a major re-engineering for the Soviets. The American pin-outs were not metric. So even though a triode was a triode, the sockets weren't the same. British and American planes trained the Red air force... because they had radio tubes. Lend Lease is why the Red air force exploded out of no-where in 1943. Now the Soviets could train new pilots faster than Germany could shoot them down.
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@Vlad... The 116th Panzer Division was presented to Adolf Hitler on his birthday, April 20, 1944. He didn't even know it existed before. Guderian raised it up behind his back... out of the new production of Panther tanks -- of which he was in charge of as Inspector General of Panzer Troops. ( In reality, he was in charge of de-bugging the Panther and accelerating all tank production. In that role, he thwarted the production of Jagpanthers... in favor of Panthers. At one time, it was proposed that 2 Jagpanthers would be built for every single Panther. Guderian stopped that production priority. Turret rings and turrets cost a fortune. Turret-less machines cost about 35% less. They don't need a vertical turret lathe. But Jagpanthers were what the Nazi armies needed. They could open up a JS-2 tank like a can of spam. Thank God we had Guderian on our side. (sarc) My own Father faced one of these beasts. They were terrifying. They had the massive 88mm gun -- in the longest form -- first used at Kursk. Hitler redirected them towards his Ardennes offensive -- December 16, 1944 and other operations in the West. As tank killers, they were the ultimate machine in WWII. Your Googling is the first instance I've read that ANY Jagpanthers made it east -- even though they were expressly designed to stop Soviet tanks. No wonder you hardly know of them. &&& Vald, by Adolf's order -- the eastern armies were to no longer be a priority -- December 31, 1943. All that had gone before was stopped. Other than a handful of super-elite divisions ( GD, 3SS, 5SS -- and at the end HG ) the East Heer lost all of its punch. The 1SS, 2SS, 9SS, 10SS, 12SS, -- and others -- were sent west. The HG, 1st para, 2nd para, 4th para went west. The 116th and Panzer Lehr went west. The Luftwaffe went to Central Germany -- to fight the USAAF -- not to fight the RAF or Red Air Force. ( Hitler would not prioritize the RAF.) The German Navy was ALWAYS in the west. Both the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine cost Nazi Germany a fortune... MUCH more than the war in the East. (!!!!) After the blood-letting in the East, it's impossible for Russians to accept that their's was the minor theater of the war... drawing off never more than 40% of all German war production. Planes and boats cost a fortune. They use ONLY elite manpower. They consume the best materials... the most expensive and rare. They use crude oil in vast amounts -- whereas armies can live off of horses and coal. BTW, the real secret to Barbarossa -- the Germans ran their draft horses into the ground -- during the mud season. They never recovered. This did not happen to the Soviet Army.
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@Vlad79500 You're missing it. When in 1942 -- and ONLY in 1942 -- the Red AIr Force had to fly without radios. Only Lend Lease planes had radios. You're young. You don't remember how short the life of a radio tube is. Many burn out in a few weeks. So they were constantly being tested and swapped. They were mounted in sockets for that very reason. Solid state electronics are -- these days -- rarely mounted in sockets. ( CPUs and memory, excepted. ) The entire reason that the factory was lost was because it was not permitted to shut down and ship east. Its tubes were already in crisis demand by all higher commands. There are COUNTLESS memoirs by Soviet pilot cadets about being forced to train in planes without radios in 1942. Once Lend Lease planes were available in quantity, that stopped. Second rate fighters were normally used as trainers. The USAAF kept the P-40 in mass production for this very purpose -- 12,000 were built! Very few were ever sent to the front from 1942 on wards. Instead, they were used as trainers until the pilots had totally mastered combat flight tactics. The P-40 was a much cheaper plane to build, BTW. It had no exotic engine. It was not geared for even medium altitudes. It was only after the P-40 was mastered that a young pilot was transitioned to the top-line stuff. They all cost twice as much to operate, BTW. The Soviets used the same principle. First rate aircraft were not to be used for training. The only flight time you'd get in one would be an orientation flight -- maybe two. It was this totally shocking surge in pilot training that did in the Luftwaffe. In the Spring of 1943 the Red Air Force just gutted the Luftwaffe in southern Russia. This air campaign was MORE significant than Uranus. The Germans lost strategic air superiority over the Soviets. Only but rarely could the Luftwaffe provide tactical cover. After Kursk, even that was impossible. The USAAF had drawn off virtually the entire Luftwaffe by September 1943. Ploesti became the new priority -- consuming countless Luftwaffe fighters. The USAAF was attacking it from Foggia, Italy -- so recently acquired. Consequently, the prestige of the Luftwaffe back in Berlin simply cratered. Those boys couldn't do anything right.
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@Vlad79500 Vlad -- the ONLY Soviet factory producing those essential tubes was LOST. That was the crisis. Russians tell tales of tubes being removed from working aircraft sets to be sent up to Moscow on a total panic basis. Stavka decided that senior commanders simply HAD to have radios. To keep them running, they needed SPARE tubes. This crisis caused most all of the terrible Soviet military performance in 1942. T-34s were now being shipped with no radios almost straight through the year. Once the tube crisis was over, the Red Army immediately went on the offensive -- staying that way for the rest of the war -- with the exception of the super-battle of Kursk. The flip in performance totally stunned the German Army. Radio stations used totally different tubes -- ultra-high power tubes. The radio communications we're discussing are those of a purely tactical nature: tank to tank ; plane to plane.
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@TTT135 You really need to read Death Ride by John Mosier. ISBN 978-1-4165-7348-7 He totally destroys your argument. 1) ALL Soviet statistics are lies. All releases had to conform to what Stalin wanted spewed about. They NEVER had ANY correspondence to fact. 2) His subordinates dared not kick upstairs ANY stats that showed this or that factory not meeting Stalin's production goals. This fear went up and down the line. One tip off: Note how many posters here don't know a thing about Mars. It was a fiasco that Stalin made evaporate down the memory hole. Mars only became well known in the West AFTER the end of the Cold War. Putin even had to sponsor a whole new series of war stories to kind of clean up the record -- and restore the average Ivan's faith in Moscow.
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of the west... Studebaker is STILL slang for army truck.
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@brianlong2334 The Nazis kept the French cranking out everything from trucks to Peugot bicycles. You can witness French trucks in no-end of propaganda footage from Barbarossa. If French trucks were a trivial factor -- then why did Stalin & Company raise such an uproar. 10,000 trucks would be insignificant in any calculus. Speer stated in his autobiography the French industry was contributing 50,000 tons of steel -- per day -- to the Nazi war effort. Since ships and tanks were not sourced French, we can safely assume that Paris was kicking Hitler the stuff used by the military behind the lines -- dual use goods. ( Rails, trucks, rolled steel, ... taken together such goods allowed Germany, proper, to totally rev up war goods production. It's notable that Nazi war production peaked the month after France fell. In September Hitler lost Romania's oil and France's steel.)
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@silveriorebelo8045 By 1940 the Soviet taps had opened wide. BTW, the panzer thrust to the sea was fueled by French retail gasoline stations along the way. Yeah, the Germans merely rolled into Shell, Esso, you name it, and drained the service stations tanks dry. THAT was something not in the panzer playbook -- until it happened. It's the key reason the panzers got to the sea so quickly. Out running their supply trucks proved no hindrance at all. (Food, too.) However, once they reached the Channel, they finally DID have to get their stuff from the rear. This was a factor that caused Berlin to hold up on its attacks against the Dunkirk bastion.
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@brianlong2334 It was the DIFFERENCE MAKER. BTW. Romanian oil is actually of low quality. Soviet (Baku, Mykop, etc.) was much better. It's like coal fields. Some are better than others. It's not true that all crude oil is the same. Rather oil is like coal. So oil trades off a BENCHMARK grade -- like Saudi Light or Brent (light) and then discounts are proffered as the crude is assayed to be heavier and more sour. (Iranian crude) The Baku blend was MUCH MORE suitable for making aviation fuel. It didn't require as many refining steps to get what you needed. For the Nazis, that was ~91 octane. In today's market Libyan crude and American fracked crude carry the highest price per barrel. Brent is right underneath them -- but because it's in the hub of European distribution, Brent is the benchmark. Paris HAD modeled how many sorties the Luftwaffe could put up -- prior to the Pact. Because of internal politics, French air force fighters were not available in sufficient quantity, May 1940. Their Big Hope had just entered serious production -- about six-weeks back. Paris HAD spent large on its air force -- without getting one. With each turn of government, the prior design was thrown out and a new contract let. This left France with the wealthiest design teams on the planet -- and little to show for their exertions. Speer claimed that the Nazis were TAKING 50,000 tons per day of French steel. That's a tempo of 18,000,000 tons per year. Some of that steel came as a result of the French terms of surrender, back in 1940. That is, the steel was FREE to Hitler. He was sucking dry France for just about everything he could think of -- and he had a great imagination for a thief. Speer specifically called out his refusal to integrate war production with Italy.(!!!) It turns out that the industrialists disdained Italian anythings. The Krauts would not share even their obsolete Mark III tank blue prints. I believe that its armor plate manufacture was too touchy. The Nazis wouldn't even use Italian anythings in their supply chain.
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@brianlong2334 One thing that can really throw you off -- anyone off -- is that steel producers like to brag -- a LOT. In practice this means that their 'production' includes the volume straight out of the furnace. Yet the typical 1940s producer -- any nation -- would re-cycle 20% of their initial production right back into a melt. ( a 'heat' ) Why? Crappy quality control. Today's digital systems and IR temperature readers didn't exist. The 20% return had an industry specific term: "Home Scrap." The Japanese decisively lost the steel production war with the US. So after the war, MITI made steel their number one priority. ( MITI had a lot of number one priorities, heh. ) One way they gutted US Steel was by way of drastically reducing Home Scrap. The other was on wages -- and tariffs on US steel imports -- at every level -- especially to include motor vehicles. What this boils down to is that you and I would really have to rip off the covers of Nazi steel production to get quality stats. I have a VERY hard time believing that war-time Nazi Germany had a low Home Scrap number. They were using LOTS of forced labor. Everywhere one looks in the Nazi economy -- it' as crazy as the Communist economy. In both cases, the tyrants choked over paying up for the best technology -- which usually meant (1930-40s) imports from the USA. Detroit had no such compunction. What we can say is that Speer was crying in his beer when France fell. By September, he knew that the jig was up. I wish that Nazi had been hanged. He cheated the gallows. As for my av-gas contention: The USSR gave Hitler enough quality crude for him to not only defeat France -- but to even attempt the Battle of Britain. There's a noted lack of discussion -- but the BoB sucked down av-gas like crazy for a nation that didn't have that much production. That expenditure HAD to have an impact on Barbarossa. Yet today, Russian totally ignore the BoB. They act as if it was just a dust-up. The fact is that air wars are astoundingly expensive. The USSR actually fought their Great Patriotic War 'on-the-cheap' -- substituting blood for money... if you can call that cheap. Russians just can't grasp that modern war is fought with the national economy -- entire. Hence, Hitler was spending only a MINORITY of his war output on the Eastern Front. The U-boat war was ruinously expensive for the West and the Nazis. You can't use instant recruits for sailors or ship builders. Ditto for air forces. Imagine Barbarossa with Luftwaffe twice its historical size!
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