Comments by "bakters" (@bakters) on "Panzer IV vs. Sherman" video.

"T34 was a good tank..." It stayed in service for a long time, didn't it? I like that story, when Hungarians started a ww2 monument and rode in it against the police. With that said, I think Sherman was a contender for the best tank in ww2. I like this tank. It was great. Not necessarily at it's best in Russian mud, though.
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@janchovanec8624 "All leather was coming from USA and vast majority of food." That sounds quite interesting. All leather and most of the food... Considering that Soviet Union received relatively small percentage of Lend Lease, and all of that late, I guess 100% of it consisted of leather and food... Let's look at the numbers, shall we? Lend-Lease made up about 11% of the total war effort of the USA. Less then a quarter of that ended up in USSR (more like one fifth, but whatever), so that gives 3% of USA's war effort, give or take. That tiny amount resulted in destroying 80% of German armed forces, while the remaining 97% accounted for the rest. Maybe Americans should have sent everything to the USSR, since they were so incredibly efficient with it...?
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"The Soviets received millions of tons " Which amounted to a tiny 2%-ish fraction of the total USA war effort. Do you really claim that this 2% won the war? Besides, citing $BIGNUMBERs without context is usually done in order to mislead the reader. "basically all livestock" It's a tipping point theory all over again. It comes in various colors. It can be explosives, boots, food, rubber, trucks or whatever else. It always revolves around a tiny amount with huge impact. Is it possible that there was a tipping point and that Lend-Lease actually swung the scales? Sure, you can never exclude the possibility. But even then we need to remember who delivered the huge load required to bring the scales approximately close to balance! It wasn't Lend-Lease, for sure.
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"You said it correctly: 2% of the USA war effort. It was however the total Soviet GDP several times over." The estimates start at 4% and end at 14%. I haven't seen anyone remotely sane claiming anything above 20% of Soviet GDP. Which means, you don't count as a remotely sane person. "It was during the crucial times of late 1941 and 1942 that lend-lease was at its most important." Almost nothing has reached the destination at this time. 2% in 1941 and 14% in 1942. So your claim is, that 2% of 2%, which is 0.04%, of the total war effort of the USA has won the war. How is it in lala-land? The weather is splendid, I presume. "The UK and US dropping by and going "Oh, that stuff at which you fail hard?" In general Soviets didn't like Lend-Lease equipment very much. It didn't suit their doctrine, it wasn't metric, supply chains were stretched and so on. When high amounts of good products, like Jeeps, Studebacker trucks or Aircobras, reached their lines, they liked them all right, so it's not like they were biased. 4 000 Shermans were meh. Not bad, but not good enough or plentiful enough to make much of a difference.
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"So Sergei... does that mean a sword is a good anti-tank weapon?" I'm not Sergei, I'm not from Russia, I'm from those who suffered under it for two centuries. Anyway, yes. Swords being used for a long time means they are good weapons.
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@philgardocki5294 "In active service, the T-34 had a half life of 10 days. Not including combat losses." What was the main failure mode and why didn't they fix it? I'm sure you have all the info to support your claim, don't you? Aaanyway, I have found a declassified CIA report where they evaluate a captured T34. They think it's a good tank (by Korean war standards!). All parts in working order, unlikely to fail soon. Good quality of materials used (on par or even better than in American tanks), high quality of machining, despite very rough outside appearance, easy and uncomplicated maintenance, easy to fix, so on and so forth. "ENGINEERING ANALYSIS OF THE RUSSIAN T34/85 TANK" Detailed examination revealed that most parts were in excellent condition, with no likelihood of early failure. [They do list possible failures, caused mostly by inadequacy of the design, but the engine is not one of those.]
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@philgardocki5294 "16,000,000 tons" $BIGNUM without context means nothing. 2% of USA's war effort, 10%-ish of USSR's war effort makes way more sense. Do you really claim, that 2% of war effort sent to the USSR won the war? Are you really willing to go so far into the crazy land? What about the remaining 98%? All wasted...
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@NuclearTreerat "Yes." Yes what? You refer to a several years old post, buried under 200 comments and you provide no context? "Manpower that was wasted" Like they even had a choice... What do you do? Simply refuse to fight until Hitler waits long enough to better train your men? Anyway, in Leningrad they were reduced to cannibalism on a massive scale. They still produced arms in the city and did not surrender. I'm sure they would have, if Germans would offer them some chance of survival, but they did not, so it was a fight to the bitter end. "Without first Lend Lease" Let me repeat my numbers. The official American numbers state that the value of Lend Lease was on the order of 10% of the total American war effort. Less than a quarter of that reached the USSR, and the vast majority of it late. In light of that, claiming that Lend Lease was crucial for Soviet victory is not even sane! Do you understand? You guys claim that a 2%-ish token help thrown at the Eastern Front decided the war! "you can't fight a war if you have no trucks" Not true. You use railways and horses. Like the Germans did. Sure, the lack of trucks will slow you down, but it won't immobilize your army. Besides, the Soviets had their own trucks. Not as good as the American ones, but still usable.
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