Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Why the Allies considered Bombing the Soviet Union 1940" video.

  1. America send large amounts of help. So I am not questioning that. All I am saying is that about 80% of that help came between late 1943 to 1945... when the German army already had been severly beaten in Stalingrad and the axis forces was on the retreat. And Germany was unable to recover the huge losses of men it suffered from the winters and the many epic meatgrinder battles. After Stalingrad many axis countries tried to withdraw from the war. And the battle of Kursk was the beginning of the end of German air superiority over the Russian skies. German tank production had increased greatly, but none the less did tank losses keep phase with tank production. Maybe Hitler could won the war on the East if he had gotten a peace treaty with the western powers. And attacked Russia in 1943, and grabbed the oilfields, the industries and farms from southern Russia so the Russian economy had gotten severly mutilated while the German resource shortages would have been permanently reliefed. But besides from that, I think it is unlikely that Germany would ever win a war with Russia. The Great victories won in 1941 wasn't just caused by German mastery of the art of war and Russian incompetence. But a huge deal of it was also caused by pure luck. Had the Russians not so foolishly lined up the air force on the runways so they became simple targets and sitting ducks for the Luftwaffe, so they could totally destroy the worlds largest airforce in just two weeks... then the war could have ended very differently. Had Stalin been wiser and allowed retreats and concentrated all his supertanks into large units, he would certainly had caused much trouble for the Germans. And had he not overextended his winter counteroffensive, then it would have ended up as a huge success instead of a failure. And if Hitler had listened to his Generals instead of order "not one step back", then the Russian counteroffensive probably had destroyed the Wehrmacht, and the war would have been over in 1942. So many things could have gone wrong, that it is strange that the Germans could become as succesful as they were before Stalingrad happened.
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  2. The thing is that most of the lend-lease help came after 1943 when the war on the eastern front already had been lost for the Germans. So it was never any kickstart thanks to lend-lease to begin with. Russia could build its own tanks without American help. My guess is that Russia would have won the war even without the lend-lease help. They would probably had cut back their production of guns and tanks, and instead increased their production efforts in make trucks and locomotives and food production if the lend lease help never happened. Russia would probably have played safer with her scarce manpower because the military, the agriculture, the mining industry, and the military industry would be competing harshly about all manpower they could get. And much more so than in richer countries such as Britain and USA, where tractors and machines were more plentiful and reduced the need for workers. Lend lease was probably unimportant, since it probably didn't change the outcome of the war. When lend-lease started to arrive for real the second half of 1943, the axis had already lost the battle over the Atlantic, Japan had been beaten at Midway, the Africa Korps had been beaten at El-Alamein and kicked out from Africa, Germany had bleed much blood in the winter 1941-42 and in the winter 1942-43 had the Sixth Army been destroyed at Stalingrad. It was too late for the Axis to turn things around. Germany was beaten even before any real quantaties of lend-lease help had arrived. And the small amounts that arrived before 1943 barely made any difference. After 1943 help started to arrive, which helped Russia greatly, and that in combination with the reconquest of Ukraine helped to relief the Soviet economy from shortages of food and manpower. And when food and trucks came from America, the Russians didn't need as much men to work to work as farmers or workers in an automotive factory, but could instead put more men in uniform to fight the Germans instead. If the Germans had somehow kept Southern Russia under control and lend-lease never happened, then perhaps the Russian economy would have been under serious problems like it was in 1917. But that's another topic for discussion. I am baseing much of my argumentation on the book - the Economics of World War II, by Mark Harrison https://books.google.se/books?id=ZgFu2p5uogwC&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=the+economics+of+world+war+ii+mark+harrison&source=bl&ots=5FivRGqGxO&sig=GpvSPtwGQvMAywRJfgMqx4jSjUo&hl=sv&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjNzfTVwaDUAhVHjiwKHTkJCV44ChDoAQgnMAE#v=onepage&q=the%20economics%20of%20world%20war%20ii%20mark%20harrison&f=false German war production was never started for real until 1943, and didn't exceed Russias until 1944 (if I remember correctly. But by then the war had already been lost for Germany. And Germany couldn't have done much to increase their war production before 1943 either, since you cannot start large scale mass-production unless you first got a trained workforce and built factories for that purpose. And Germany had to spend the first half of the second World War to train German men and women to become industrial workers and to build those factories (and military construction works such as the atlantic wall that consumed about a quarter of all concrete, steel and manpower in Germany). So there was no way for Germany to outproduce the USSR, unless Germany had decided to wait with invading Russia until 1943.
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  3. Just the US Army alone had 12 million men during world war II. And to that one could add 6-7 million men of the British common wealth. While Russia had 11.3 million men in 1945, and 4 million of them was stationed in Europe. So its not a crushing numerical superiority. Moreover was the Russians out of reserves to fill the ranks when men died, while the western powers had plenty of men to call to battle. The Russian tank losses had also been awful the winter 1944-45 with over ten thousand machines lost, so the western powers might very well had a numerical superiority in armour. And as I said earlier, the allies would probably have bombed the Soviet infrastructure into rubble so they would have been cut of from all supplies... and the starving men in the Soviet army would be unable to do much when their guns are out of ammo and their tanks are out of fuel. And on top of did the allies also have a crushing economic superiority.
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  4. The western allies had 50% larger forces and 4 times larger industrial production and they were generally more technologically advanced. The superior allied Air force would probably have bombed the Russian railroad network into ruins - and the only way to fix this problem for the Russians would have been to import locomotives from America. And without supplies and reinforcements the Russian forces would have been an easy prey for allied troops. America also had nearly 900 atomic bombs in stockpile in 1949, and their bombers could reach basicly every city in the Soviet empire and turn into ruins. During the late war was the Soviets very much relying upon American imports. Of trucks, of tanks, of planes, of locomotives, on uniforms, machinery, explosives, food rations and so on. And without this help the Soviets would have been forced into a dilemma - should they decrase the army to increase the production of the economy? or should they increase the army with the economic output falling as a consequence? America was the richest country on the planet and never had such a problem during the war. It put 16 million men in uniform, and expanded both the industrial and agricultural production during the war. And its war economy wasn't even running at 100% of its full potential. Already in late 1943 decisions were made to cut back war production. Meanwhile Russia was fighting for her life in a life and death struggle, and she never had the privilegie to have an ocean protecting her land - so 13.000 villages and hundreds of towns fell into German hands and much of the industry got destroyed during the war and millions were killed. Russia would never have a postwar economic boom like Italy, Germany, UK and USA because her industrial base was weaker than before the war - unlike the other countries mentioned. Russia would probably also soon run out of explosives in a war with the west. Not because she didn't make any of it herself during the war. But most of it was done with US made machinery made by US blueprints, and the chemicals in the production process was imported from America. And in addition so was much explosives imported from America direcly.
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  5. The allies considered bombing Romania (for the oil) and attacking Norway and Sweden (for the Iron) in order to stop the resource delieveries to Germany. While Germany also had their resource objectives of the war such as the oil fields in Southern Russia. But it is true that Germany always had a shorter time horizon in her wars since her days when she fought the huns. Germany has been great at winning battles and fighting knock out wars, but sucked at longterm planning, war production and logistics.... while America has been the polar opposite and strong in its longterm planning instead. And the problem with the German way of war is that Germany managed to deliever numerous great victories of her enemies that failed to give any decisive end to the war. The red army suffered crushing defeat after defeat in 1941, but yet Germany failed to bring the war to an end. Frederick the Great had pretty much the same problem during the Seven years war, when Prussia produced many splendid victories without knocking out any of her overwhelmingly mighty enemies from the war.
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