Editing Lend-Lease (section)

==Significance of Lend-Lease==
{{expand section|with=more info on lent arms, resources, and aid to countries other than the USSR|date=February 2025}}
Even after the United States forces in Europe and the Pacific began to attain full strength during 1943–1944, Lend-Lease continued. Most remaining Allies were largely self-sufficient in frontline equipment (such as tanks and fighter aircraft) by this time{{snd}}though arms shipments continued{{snd}}but Lend-Lease logistical supplies (including motor vehicles and railroad equipment) remained of enormous assistance.<ref name="Weeks 2004, p. 9">{{harvnb|Weeks|2004|p=9}}</ref>
WWII was the first major war in which whole formations were routinely motorized; soldiers were supported with large numbers of all kinds of vehicles, not just for direct combat roles, but for transport and logistics as well.<ref name=Bishop>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MuGsf0psjvcC&pg=PA101 |title=The Encyclopedia of Weapons of World War II|first=Chris|last=Bishop |date=2002|publisher=Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.|via=Google Books|isbn=978-1586637620}}</ref> In spite of this, belligerent powers massively decreased production of non-lethal materiel to focus on weapons production; this inevitably produced shortages of products required for industrial or logistical uses, particularly unarmored vehicles. Thus, the Allies were almost totally reliant on American industrial production for unarmored vehicles, including ones purpose-built for military use.<ref name=Bishop/> 

For example, the USSR was very dependent on rail transport, and starting during the latter half of the 1920s<ref>{{Cite web | url=https://www.americanheritage.com/how-america-helped-build-soviet-machine | title=How America Helped Build the Soviet Machine &#124; American Heritage}}</ref> but accelerating during the 1930s, hundreds of foreign industrial giants such as [[Ford Motor Company|Ford]] were commissioned to construct modern dual-purpose factories in the USSR, 16 alone within a week of May 31, 1929.<ref>{{Cite web | url=https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ford-signs-agreement-with-soviet-union |title = Ford Motor Company signs agreement with Soviet Union}}</ref> However, with the outbreak of war these plants switched from civilian to military production, and locomotive production dropped dramatically. Just 446 locomotives were produced during the war,<ref>{{cite interview |last=Budnitsky |first=Oleg |title=Russian historian: Importance of Lend-Lease cannot be overestimated |work=Russia Beyond the Headlines |url=http://rbth.com/business/2015/05/08/allies_gave_soviets_130_billion_under_lend-lease_45879.html }}</ref> with only 92 of those being built between 1942 and 1945.<ref>{{cite book| author=Hill, Alexander | url= https://books.google.com/books?id=kJCRAgAAQBAJ | title= The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, 1941–45: A Documentary Reader | page= 188| isbn= 978-1135765262 | date= December 10, 2008 | publisher=Routledge }}</ref> In total, 92.7% of the wartime procurement of railroad equipment by the USSR came from Lend-Lease,<ref name="Weeks 2004, p. 9"/> including 1,911 locomotives and 11,225 railcars.<ref>{{harvnb|Weeks|2004|p=146}}</ref> Trucks were also vital; by 1945, nearly a third of the trucks used by the [[Red Army]] were U.S.-built. Trucks such as the [[Dodge WC series#Three-quarter-ton models|Dodge {{frac|3|4}}-ton]] and [[Studebaker US6 2½-ton 6x6 truck|Studebaker {{frac|2|1|2}}-ton]] were easily the best trucks available in their class on either side on the [[Eastern Front (World War II)|Eastern Front]]. American shipments of telephone cable, aluminum, canned rations and clothing were also critical.<ref>{{harvnb|Weeks|2004|p=107}}</ref> 

Lend-Lease also supplied significant amounts of weapons and ammunition. The Soviet air force received 18,200 aircraft, which amounted to about 30 percent of Soviet wartime fighter and bomber production over the course of the war.<ref name="Weeks 2004, p. 9"/> Most tank units were Soviet-built models but about 7,000 Lend-Lease tanks (plus more than 5,000 British tanks) were used by the Red Army, eight percent of war-time production.

A critical aspect of Lend-Lease was the supply of food. The invasion had cost the USSR a huge amount of its agricultural base; during the initial Axis offensive of 1941–42,{{specify|date=February 2025}} the total sown area of the USSR fell by 41.9% and the number of collective and state farms by 40%. The Soviets lost a substantial number of draft and farm animals as they were not able to relocate all the animals in an area before it was captured and of those areas in which the Axis forces would occupy, the Soviets had lost 7 million of out of 11.6 million horses, 17 million out of 31 million cows, 20 million of 23.6 million pigs and 27 million out of 43 million sheep and goats. Tens of thousands of agricultural machines, such as tractors and threshers, were destroyed or captured. Agriculture also suffered a loss of labour; between 1941 and 1945, 19.5 million working-age men had to leave their farms to work in the military and industry. Agricultural issues were also compounded when the Soviets were on the offensive, as areas liberated from the Axis had been devastated and contained millions of people who needed to be fed. Lend-Lease thus provided a massive quantity of foodstuffs and agricultural products.{{elaborate|date=February 2025}}<ref>Nikolay Ryzhkov & Georgy Kumanev “Food and other strategic deliveries to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease Act, 1941–1945”, pp. 106–124</ref>

According to the Russian historian [[Boris Vadimovich Sokolov]], Lend-Lease had a crucial role in winning the war:

<blockquote>On the whole the following conclusion can be drawn: that without these Western shipments under Lend-Lease the Soviet Union not only would not have been able to win the Great Patriotic War, it would not have been able even to oppose the German invaders, since it could not itself produce sufficient quantities of arms and military equipment or adequate supplies of fuel and ammunition. The Soviet authorities were well aware of this dependency on Lend-Lease. Thus, Stalin told Harry Hopkins [FDR's emissary to Moscow in July 1941] that the U.S.S.R. could not match Germany's might as an occupier of Europe and its resources.<ref name="Weeks 2004, p. 9" /></blockquote>

[[Nikita Khrushchev]], having served as a [[military commissar]] and intermediary between Stalin and his generals during the war, addressed directly the significance of Lend-lease aid in his memoirs:

<blockquote>I would like to express my candid opinion about Stalin's views on whether the Red Army and the Soviet Union could have coped with Nazi Germany and survived the war without aid from the United States and Britain. First, I would like to tell about some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were "discussing freely" among ourselves. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany's pressure, and we would have lost the war. No one ever discussed this subject officially, and I don't think Stalin left any written evidence of his opinion, but I will state here that several times in conversations with me he noted that these were the actual circumstances. He never made a special point of holding a conversation on the subject, but when we were engaged in some kind of relaxed conversation, going over international questions of the past and present, and when we would return to the subject of the path we had traveled during the war, that is what he said. When I listened to his remarks, I was fully in agreement with him, and today I am even more so.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SaIkK868enQC |title=Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev: Commissar, 1918–1945|last1=Khrushchev|first1=Nikita Sergeevich |last2=Khrushchev|first2=Serge |year=2004|publisher=Penn State Press |isbn=978-0271023328|pages=638–639|language=en}}</ref></blockquote>

In a confidential interview with the wartime correspondent [[Konstantin Simonov]], the Soviet Marshal [[Georgy Zhukov]] was secretly recorded by the KGB saying:

<blockquote>Today [1963] some say the Allies didn't really help us ... But listen, one cannot deny that the Americans shipped over to us material without which we could not have equipped our armies held in reserve or been able to continue the war.<ref>Albert L. Weeks The Other Side of Coexistence: An Analysis of Russian Foreign Policy, (New York, Pittman Publishing Corporation, 1974), p. 94, quoted in Albert L. Weeks, Russia's Life-Saver: Lend-Lease Aid to the U.S.S.R. in World {{nobr|War II}} (New York: Lexington Books, 2010), 1</ref></blockquote>

[[David Glantz]], an American military historian known for his books on the Eastern front, offers a somewhat different view, but still emphasized the significance of Lend-Lease:

<blockquote>Although Soviet accounts have routinely belittled the significance of Lend-Lease in the sustainment of the Soviet war effort, the overall importance of the assistance cannot be understated. Lend-Lease aid did not arrive in sufficient quantities to make the difference between defeat and victory in 1941–1942; that achievement must be attributed solely to the Soviet people and to the iron nerve of [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]], Zhukov, [[Boris Shaposhnikov|Shaposhnikov]], [[Aleksandr Vasilevsky|Vasilevsky]], and their subordinates. As the war continued, however, the United States and Great Britain provided many of the implements of war and strategic raw materials necessary for Soviet victory. Without Lend-Lease food, clothing, and raw materials (especially metals), the Soviet economy would have been even more heavily burdened by the war effort. Perhaps most directly, without Lend-Lease trucks, rail engines, and railroad cars, every Soviet offensive would have stalled at an earlier stage, outrunning its logistical tail in a matter of days. In turn, this would have allowed the German commanders to escape at least some encirclements, while forcing the Red Army to prepare and conduct many more deliberate penetration attacks in order to advance the same distance. Left to their own devices, Stalin and his commanders might have taken twelve to eighteen months longer to finish off the Wehrmacht; the ultimate result would probably have been the same, except that Soviet soldiers could have waded at France's Atlantic beaches.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Glantz |first=David M. |year=1995 |title=When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler |others=House, Jonathan M. (Jonathan Mallory) |location=Lawrence|publisher=University Press of Kansas |page=285 |isbn=978-0700607174 |oclc=32859811}}</ref></blockquote>