this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
245 points (100.0% liked)
the_dunk_tank
15915 readers
6 users here now
It's the dunk tank.
This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.
Rule 1: All posts must include links to the subject matter, and no identifying information should be redacted.
Rule 2: If your source is a reactionary website, please use archive.is instead of linking directly.
Rule 3: No sectarianism.
Rule 4: TERF/SWERFs Not Welcome
Rule 5: No ableism of any kind (that includes stuff like libt*rd)
Rule 6: Do not post fellow hexbears.
Rule 7: Do not individually target other instances' admins or moderators.
Rule 8: The subject of a post cannot be low hanging fruit, that is comments/posts made by a private person that have low amount of upvotes/likes/views. Comments/Posts made on other instances that are accessible from hexbear are an exception to this. Posts that do not meet this requirement can be posted to [email protected]
Rule 9: if you post ironic rage bait im going to make a personal visit to your house to make sure you never make this mistake again
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Lend lease was important but I’m not so sure about the USSR losing.
Most historians specializing on the Eastern Front agree that Hitler caught the USSR off-guard by only about a year, as Stalin’s purges from 1937 led to a massive reorganization of its military that was still incomplete by 1941. However, the Germans would have had a much harder chance if they had invaded by 1942, when the reorganization would have completed by then.
Even then, the planners of Operation Barbarossa gave themselves only 4 months to crush the Red Army, after which they’d run into significant logistical issues. The German military wasn’t as invincible as people usually think. Nazi Germany suffer from perpetual manpower (both military personnel and industrial labor), logistics, fuel and supply shortage, as well as aging military equipments.
The German blitzkrieg wasn’t a formal military doctrine, unlike the Red Army’s Deep Operation doctrine. It was performed to cover up these weaknesses of the German military because they were unable to wage protracted and sustained warfare without running into manpower and logistics issue.
As such, the German invasion of the USSR was essentially doomed by winter of 1941, when they failed to defeat the Red Army within 4 months. When the Germans failed to reach the Caucasus oil field by the winter of 1942 (Operation Blau) and were instead stuck at Stalingrad, it was all but over for the Germans.
The Soviet industries were already kicked into high gear, after being relocated into the Urals, and by the end of the war the Soviet industrial output had far surpassed Nazi Germany’s (and second only to the United States which was far off to the other side of the world and sustained minimal damage from the war).
So, lend lease did play a role, especially in terms of reducing Soviet casualties and war damages, there’s no doubt about it, but that doesn’t mean that Hitler’s campaign against the USSR wasn’t just as doomed as it would be without the lend lease.