How close was the Soviet Union to Collapse in 1942-1943?
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- Опубліковано 8 вер 2024
- The Axis had overrun much of the western Soviet Union In 1942. And going off the available evidence, it appears that their economy was on the brink of collapse.
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History isn’t as boring as some people think, and my goal is to get people talking about it. I also want to dispel the myths and distortions that ruin our perception of the past by asking a simple question - “But is this really the case?”. I have a 2:1 Degree in History and a passion for early 20th Century conflicts (mainly WW2). I’m therefore approaching this like I would an academic essay. Lots of sources, quotes, references and so on. Only the truth will do.
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During WW2 my grandmother lived in the eastern part of Kazakhstan (back then part of USSR), and she tells that the only thing that kept her family alive was potato trims made by shovels, that were left over i the soil after the potato had been gathered. They were searhing fields for those potato trims after the crops were gathered (and shipped elsewhere).
Thank you for sharing. It's anecdotal evidence, but important nonetheless
@@TheImperatorKnight I remembered other stories related to soviet economy.
My grandmother, her sisters and many mre women were voluntarily making (by hand) tobacco pouches for soldiers at front. Those pouches would be collected by the authorities and then distributed in the army.
Also my grandmother started working at state farm when she was 11 old (she was born at 1931).
One of our relatives was traveling to distant villages (in North Kazakhstan) bringing them some pelts so that he could collect winter jackets made by the locals (also for soldiers at front) when he visited them again few months later. By the way, that was the only adult male in our family that was not sent to the front (he had polio as a child).
It is easy to underestimate toughness of Russian people. Even now west is still doing it.
Gathered by machines or hand? The potato harvesters in the US would leave the under sized potatoes, which would have probably been sufficient. Perhaps this was deliberate because supermarkets want the larger ones.
@@joechang8696 By hand. So if you you use a shovel to dig out potatoes, you sometimes slice the potato that still is in the soil with a shovel. Big slices are collected right away, but sometimes there are small slices (which I called trims in my previous comment), that are hard to find and pick. So my grandmoter was looking for those ones. Also one has to remember that usually it was a very severe penalty (Gulag) for taking food from the farm field (all of which was the state property).
It sucks to fight a war on your own soil - a fact most Americans have forgotten.
We have not forgotten the Civil War.
@@nickdanger3802 fair point. But a lot of Americans think the Civil War mainly impacted the soldiers and forget what happened to the Shenandoah Valley and Georgia unless somebody points it out. Lots of cities were burned - not just Atlanta. Large parts of Pennsylvania, Kansas, Missouri, Mississippi, and South Carolina were devastated. Some of the worst atrocities of the war were committed by Jubal Early in Chambersburg PA, and by Quantrill's Raiders in Kansas. Sherman and Sheridan were unleashed in part to take revenge on the South. Not many people today know the backstory.
@@GeographyCzar According to National Pornographic Atlanta was burned to destroy it as a hub of Confederate infrastructure, only slightly different from the RAF dropping incendiary's on any city in Germany and vice versa.
www.nationalgeographic.org/thisday/nov15/burning-atlanta/
@@nickdanger3802 "National Pornographic" LMAO
Nope, we never really did it at all.
My grandma, Nina Alexeevna Loginova, was 14 in 1941, living in a village in Ivanovo oblast. She had to work at a collective farm, replacing men left for the front, while still attending school, that is, from morning till night, all four years till 1945, without holidays (not sure, maybe on 1 May and 7 November they had holidays). She would say the food situation was generally alright for them (probably alright by her standards of the day, not ours) during the first years, but it worsened by 1945. Then, she would say, things were starting to look grim: they weren't exactly starving, but were not very far away from that. The hardest thing, however, she said (and it adds another dimension to the discussion about the fall in agricultural productivity) was the lack of horses and tractors: all were taken for the needs of the front, they had to rely on oxen. I remember her talking about it: "A horse is a clever animal", she would say, "you tell it to go somewhere, it goes there. But an ox is stupid and stubborn: you need it to pull the plough, and it just lies there on the field and refuses to stand up. You beat it with a stick, but it just doesn't care" (and we're talking a teenage girl beating an ox with a stick, mind you) "Then you fall down on your knees, hug its neck and start begging: come on, dear, please, stand up, please, just stand up now - and it still doesn't". And in many places they didn't even have oxen and the peasant women had to pull the plough themselves.
She's still alive btw, 93 years old now. This was a tough year for her though: she had her arm broken, but it's getting better now.
P. S.: I, as a Russian, am deeply insulted for your disdain for rye bread. I honestly don't understand what your problem with rye bread is, how is it any worse than wheat bread? Puzzles me.
nothing wrong with rye bread as far as I'm concerned
The eestern Soviet Union, ie Ukraine and the Kuban, suffered terrible famines, some deliberately inflicted, since the 1920s. The last was in 1947.
as a Dane i can tell you we eat rye bread with cold cut meat ,pates, smoked fish, boiled eggs, and luke warm meatballs on ,, we call it the cold table , and its done even on holy days like easter ,,,
rye bread is very good and healty
Rye bread is a yum tasty.
Maybe rye bread is not as tasty for everyone. Matter of taste really. Wouldn't be my first choice but I would still eat it if I don't have anything else.
I always suspected the Soviet Union was much harder pressed in 1942 than many historians realized. The defeats in 1941 had been so staggering, and so much agricultural land had been lost, and the idea that industry had been neatly picked up and planted beyond the Urals sounded so unlikely, that the idea that it held fast and resumed with vigour in 1942 seemed off.
I agree to an extent. Yes, the Soviets were very bad off, but I suspect that Stalin held enough internal power to paper it over for another year or two in order to repel the Germans, even if it meant just letting everyone he considered useless to the war effort starve. After all, the Germans did want to kill and/or enslave them whether they surrendered or not, and the Soviets knew it, so what was the alternative? However, after that, there probably would have been a total collapse of the Soviet economy and government. The losses would have been too great to salvage.
@@bluemarlin8138 Exactly. The germans lost the war because of their blind chauvinism.
@@bluemarlin8138 They started getting food stuffs and vehicles from The USA and UK in 43. I'd think 42 would have been pretty bad.
My father as a child of 10 and 11 lived in one of the cities under strong attack during World War 2. In the late 1970s he and I were in a grocery store in the US and I happened to see rabbit meat packaged in the meat section. I pointed it out and he was visibly disturbed, noting you cannot tell cat meat from rabbit. He later explained it during the war he ate a whole lot of rabbit that in fact actually should have been purring.
He wasn't in Moscow. He was in London.
No one talks about how many people starved in western Europe even after the Nazi's had been defeated. Suffice to say the moment Hitler started that war probably ten million people were going to be dead from starvation in just a few years time.
@@pietersteenkamp5241 from what my dad says there was no outright starvation in London. I think his parents were worried more about dietary issues and not enough protein.
He also describes the neighborhood kids building slingshots and eating pigeon.
Yes, City pigeons.
@@1jimmarch The hunger was somewhat exported to the colonies if at all but people in the cities did whatever they could to augment their food intake with the poor of course being most at risk of not having family in he countryside. :)
@@pietersteenkamp5241 correct. At least a million people starved in India to make sure London didn't.
Jim March Simpson Incorrect. A million died in India because of drought and failure of crops.
12:45 "The Soviets survived on far less food than all of the combatant nations except the Japanese..."
*ghostly wails in Chinese and Bengali*
Everyone forgets the great Famine of 1943 in India... guess nobody wants to blame the British Empire.
@@KnightofAges It was Bengal famine not Indian famine. That would be quite bigger problem for whole war effort. It would probably delayed whole D day and western front, maybe for another year.
Soviet and Indian situation weren’t really comparable.
Out of 170 million people in Soviet union around 30-35 million served in military. Plus another bunch who were pushed to military industry. Number of people in agriculture went from 50 million in 1940 to 25 million in 1942.
British India that had combined population of 380 million had to lose productivity of “just” 2,5 million people who served in war effort. Agricultural base was largely intact. Outside of course Burma and Bengal region that were on front line.
India wasn’t going to collapse.
@@KnightofAges Bengal was a frontline province in WW2 and the Japanese were employing scorched earth tactics in the region...
@@stafer3 Bengal in 1943 was 100% part of India (the British Raj), so I said there was a famine in India.
And nobody in this thread is talking about a 'collapse', just remembering that other peoples starved more in WW2 than the Russians.
@@adamdesouza6153 Sorry to spoil it, but the famine took place in 1943, while the Japanese Army only set foot in the area in late 1944...
1942: "they were starving, eating 1000 calories less than americans"
2019: "they were morbidly obese, eating 1000 calories less than americans"
Nobody loves food more than us Yanks lol.
Thin may be in, but.....FAT is where it's AT!!!!!
Mate 1942 ,100%Oganic food in ,2019 no more organic ,forget about calories
@@750suzuki Not in your head, though, bro.
@Belagerungsmörser the Sheep I didnt say we ate good food, just a lot. Were morbidly obese.
In Soviet Russia, economy collapses you.
In Soviet Russia, road forks you
(ref: Family Guy)
@@TheImperatorKnight in Soviet russia, video releases another TIK
hahaha.
Comments don't often make me laugh but that one did!
@@TheImperatorKnight In Soviet Russia, television watches you!
@Caliban777 The US Red Army will come to throw out the Russian Bandits and Plutocracy, bleeding the Russian workers.
The USSA is coming soon for all the America's!
Now about starvation during the war. My father at that time was about 18 or so . He never liked to talk about that time. However, once he mentioned that "he was lucky to have a hunting rifle, unlike many other families". He would shoot everything that flew around to feed his family. Also, they would go out to the wheat fields next to them to pick up whatever left after the harvest.
And still, he said that they lived much better then other people up north in Siberia and in Ukraine - We lived in the southern part of Kazakhstan. My father was drafted to the war in 1944 and later stormed Berlin. He also, often mentioned about Lendlease too. The best things he liked were American can food and Studebaker truck!
Rye bred is quite good. In Finland the deault bred is Rye Bred. Bark bread, which is made from mixture of Rye and phloem of pine tree on the other hand is anti-starvation method. The "edible" portion of pine tree is about 4kg per cubic meter of wood. And Finnish sources, tell that it has been used in Finland, Scandinavia and Northern Russia historically in famine situations. And the people who make said bread on modern days tell that traditional 40% pine and 60% rye, however to avoid side effects modern use is limited to 25% or below. And to have acceptable taste it is limited to about 10-12% . Just like some mushrooms need processing before becoming edible so does the phloem of pine tree. And by processed I don't mean modern processing but methods used more than 1000 years.
yeah i love black bread and rye as well, white bread is boring.
Probably TIK is thinking of SAWDUST bread which did in fact exist that's what near famine and outright famine do.
Nice belt. You gonna eat that?
Pine needles are also completely edible and a very high source of vitamin C
@@MatoroTBS but as a Finnish communist you are already a traitor so I would molchat
Jouni Osmala - In the wartime Soviet Union - or at least Leningrad during the seige - "bread" often contained substantial quantities of sawdust to make the portions a little more substantial than would have been possible if unadulterated bread were used. I remember that clearly from an episode of The World At War.
The Leningrad siege featured literal cannibalism; people eating belts and shoes; people eating rats; and people literally sifting through shit looking for anything edible in it.
This is not a myth, it's all well documented facts.
What are the implications of a economic collapse ? All the soldiers just pack their bags and go home?
What would it actually look like ?
They wouldn't have been able to feed the troops, therefore they can't fight.
@@andrewpestotnik5495
Napoleon's ghost nods.
That depends on the type of collapse. If we are talking about "just" extreme food shortages across all of USSR to the same tune as in Leningrad or during Holodomor, there would not have been an outright collapse. Leningrad had not collapsed either, after all. Soldiers and the administration in Leningrad were not subject to starvation. Non-essentials were. Army, bureaucracy and most important workers would still be fed to survive and fight on. And don't let the averages mentioned in the video fool you. 2400 calories seem not that bad. But one can not work 12-hour shifts on physically demanding work with such ration. And the army was marching on foot - 40+ kilometers per day. You need ~2500 calorie *surplus* to make that distance (assuming light gear). You have to provide active combat troops and industry workers with enough food - intense physical work can not be done on a force of will alone (not for long anyway). So any further shortages would not have affected army and such right away. Instead there would have been "peripheral degradation". More and more less important civilians would receive less and less food. Basically, everyone, not directly involved in the war effort would receive rations at or below starvation level. And, since the system is far from perfect, some would receive even less. And people would start to die. In Leningrad, peak starvation deaths were at 100,000 per month. For the whole of USSR it would have been a couple of millions per month. Propaganda would limit the morale effect from this. So, the war efforts could continue for quite some time. But between deaths from starvation, rampant diseases, deterioration of workforce - the front would receive less and less resources and breakdowns of the supply chain would happen more and more often. This would lead first to inability to attack on strategic level, than to inability to react to enemy's actions. It would have been a total collapse and defeat, if not for the germans being also at the end of their supply leash.
But it would all take time to severely affect RKKA capabilities. Even with germans holding Astrakhan-Voronezh line in 1942, the food situation for USSR would not had been significantly different up until the second half of 1943. More immediate effect would have had the oil situation. And there is too many 'what ifs'.
@@KidoKoin well thanks for the detailed reply
We saw it happen on the German side. I remember an anecdote from a German soldier’s book. He said the last order they received was “every man for himself”. The soldiers discussed it for a time, looked at their compasses, and either went west or went home
this is the best history channel on UA-cam
i agree but I am biased regarding ww2 content 😁
@@jessnellaf2401 I hear you. However, TIK is the best history channel regardless of historic period covered. This level of dedication and research and, at the same time, absence of any bias is astonishing. A true gem.
@@airpaprika i agree... i said my bias however, the best part for me is... this is were i got this... this is where i got that... these three good authors disagree.. first let me tell you what they said, then ill give you my opinion. Thats some priceless commentary for a buff like me. Usually there is some ego BS
The only other channel (or group of channels) that's in the same league is TheGreatWar/WW2 channel
The week by week format covers more, but at the same time, it's less "dense" I guess ?
@@airpaprika He's extremely biased towards the soviet union and the allies and he's acknowledged his bias, I like his videos but he's still probably the most biased historian in youtube-
The word you are trying to pronounce is actually pronounced as "SevUralLag". The "lag" part of it is a short for Russian word "lager" which means "camp". The whole word is a contraction and consists of three words: Severniy (Northen) Yralskiy (Ural) and Lager (Camp). In a nutshell, it was named so since the camp was located in the northern part of the Ural Mounten region. Many, if not all of the Gulag camp names, usually ended with "lag", for instance, KarLag (a camp in Karaganda region of Kazakhstan with about one million inmates) and so on.
I was born in the former USSR and lived there for more than 35 years before immigrating to the US in 1992. I would be happy to help you guys with any Russian translations/explanations etc. John
"The overwhelming majority of those remaining in the gulag were ill, EMANCIPATED, and infirm." lol That little slip changes the whole feel the gulag segment in morbidly funny ways.
They were emancipated from human rights and decency.
Haha, yes I heard it too.
I thought I was the only one to hear that slip up. There are many more. But how do you mistake the 2 words. It's not even a malapropism.
@@haroldfiedler6549
They actually were emancipated in the sense that they were released from the camps, in the hope they might be able to feed themselves outside.
@@jamestheotherone742 maybe because they were criminals?
my grandmother said, that at some point during the war food shortage was so severe, they (civilians) had one potato per person per day
Sad:(
@@flying0possum : there is a whole series of dark jokes about Latvians starving during the war, and potatoes by the way.
LolCats are bastards.
After watching your review of this collapse topic I’m even more mystified at the will of the Soviet people to keep fighting. The shortages and starvation didn’t break the common soldiers fighting spirit. Much is said about “not one step back” crap but how did the morale not break down completely? Who were these people who stood at such a precipice and didn’t break? This goes deeper than fear of the state or enemy. Something unique occurred and may never happen again.
The citizens kept fighting for 2 reasons. If they surrendered they would have been exterminated or put to work as slaves by the Axis. Or if they directly disobeyed to fight, their generals would have them executed. Death on both sides of you makes fighting the only real option. Plus there would be nowhere to run away to on your own or with your family except deeper into russia where there is less food.
Because the N*z* plan was to enslave and kill them all.
I imagine it’s because the Nazis planned to exterminate and/or enslave those soldiers and their families, one way or the other. The Soviet soldiers had also heard about the sub-human treatment of Russian soldiers in WWI (even though the Russians returned the favor), and correctly assumed that the same fate awaited them if they surrendered. (And then of course there were GRU death squads there to shoot them if they retreated or tried to surrender.) If WWII had just been a war to depose Stalin and the communists, or an aggressive war for territory, then I suspect the Soviet soldiers and citizens wouldn’t have tolerated the hardships when things were going badly on the battlefield. That’s one reason Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will fail in the long run.
The Nazi's planned to kill and enslave all the Slav people. That would motivate anyone! Even the Ukrainians who thought Capitalism was like a Doris Day Movie!
@@bluemarlin8138 Germans basically dug their own grave here with their racism.
the 59% productivity of UK agricultural workers vs industrial workers can be explained by the government taking over farms and ensuring they were being run efficiently. Every plot of fallow land had to be sewn with crops or you lost your farm. UK farmers worked extremely hard to feed people. There's a great series called Wartime Farm from the BBC where historians live as farmers during WWII and have other historians guest star as government inspectors and stuff. Incredible.
Upvoted but also not entirely true. The UK had a low proportion of agricultural workers because prior to the war because much of the countries food supply was imported. This was not true in the USA. In the UK there was plenty of slack in the agricultural system which allowed for the potential of greater production in wartime under Government direction and with higher prices which gave an incentive to higher productivity.
Interesting, the Soviet farming industry had a great reduction in output after the Nazi invasion, but as TIK pointed out in his previous video there was also a very large reduction in population in Soviet territories so much so that their population fell below the overall Axis population. Giving agricultural production as a percentage of prewar figures is only half the story as there was less mouths to feed.
TIK knows what he is talking about 90% of the time and he is right here. In Soviet Union there were several regions that were able to export grain (like South Russia, Ukraine, Western Siberia) to other regions. Now, those very regions were under occupation yet Soviet Union needed more industrial workers and more soldiers, as well as horses and tractors, putting even worse strain on peasentry. Yet, Soviet Union didn't collapse like Empire did in 1916-1918, neither did over-strain on peasentry resulted in multi-million dead famine like in 1931-1933. Shortages of food and starvation were present in countryside, but not in the industrial centers nor the army (except in cases when there were severe logistical issues such as Stalingrad and Leningrad). State declared who gets to eat and in poorer areas and special settlments (exiled people, neither free citizens but not Gulag inmates) working or putting on a uniform meant that your children and elderly will get some thin soup and bread every day which is better than nothing.
@@brankodrljaca1313 i Will add that if the nazis weren't nazi, treathing Better the occupied population and make clear that the only enemy was stalin and not the entire soviet population could had lessen the strenght of the soviets and make more probaly revolts in distant regions
@@brankodrljaca1313 Western Siberia was never occupied by German forces
WW2 and invasion of Nazi Germany along with its allies brought unimaginable suffering and misery upon USSR. That event changed whole Soviet society and all of its people for centuries to come.
@Crystal Dreams There is no doubt that the dictatorial reign of Joseph Stalin was oppressive, cruel, and often evil. I certainly do not find much to like about the totalitarianism & form of communism that existed in the U.S.S.R. . However, I will suggest that life under the Czars was pretty awful for virtually all Russians, and I will note that both Russia & Ukraine had been rather under-developed & 'backwards' nations prior to the Russian Revolution.. So, while the environment in the U.S.S.R. was not good at all,, it still represented an improvement over Czarist Russia for a great number of Soviets. Most certainly, the U.S.S.R. made great strides in science, technology, literacy & education in a remarkably short period of time... progress that may not have occurred if the Czars had stayed in power.
The end of the Soviet Union means endless suffering under the psychotic IMF!
@@strikerswheelchair2809 Fascism is Communism in its opposite. Stalin refused to bring Socialism to Europe since he wanted to protect the USSR with his policy of Socialism in one country and no other. He wanted Finlandisation of the countries where the Red Army had forced out Fascism. He was a Socialist Nationalist he represented the insipid Bureaucrasy. Which replaced the Bolshevik Party he murdered.
Putins Kleptocrasy, refuses to allow the US IMF . To take over Nationalist Russia.
Hence the US's hatred of Russia, China and any country refusing the IMF.
Ussr had Jewish dictatorship. Do not put it all on Uncle Joe.
A century is 100 years
I'm from Lithuania, my neighbour with his family was exiled in gulag, he said they were very lucky, because that was fishing gulag, they were caching and gutting fish, it was harsh and of course all fish was taken away, but they were left with heads and tails, so they could actually cook that and have healthy fish diet. Others were not that lucky, the worse were mining gulags, some of materials would be toxic and there were no work safety or protection equipment.
Only killers and robbers worked in mining gulags.
Maybe you got the fish for working for the Nazi's!
The very worst were mines in The Arctic.
The ones around Magadan most infamously.
@@lovepeace9727 No, thousands of innocents, including hundreds of Orthodox priests singled out for especially tortuous treatment, worked, starved and died there.
@@MarktheMole jails are full of innocent people. Every single one has his own story ...
Most people getting ready to work out: "Ah, play the pop tunes."
Me: "Oh hey a video about the collapse of the Soviet Union. Perfect jogging material!"
Thought it was only me who did this lol
“They were eating rye bread, yeah.”
...thee have made an enemy today.
White bread has a lot less calories and is harder to grow.
@Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicolvocanoconiosis Do you find it funny how the english dont know that thou is informal and you are formal?
@Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicolvocanoconiosis No Im refering to how most english think that thou, thy, ... sounds formal, but in fact you, your, ... is the formal one.
My grand grandparents went through WW2 in the eastern front and they lived right on the battlefield and it is crazy how they survived and when the war ended, they were sent to a gulag in Siberia for a few years and than they were sent back when Stalin died.
Russian history can be summed up as " Then it got worse". Incompetent tsar, civil war bought by lenin's revolution, stalin and the german invasion, Mr K almost ending the world, brezhnev's stability or stagnation(take your pick), weak leader gorbachev, dissolution of the USSR by the traitor Yeltsin and his disastrous reign and now putin who is forcing russia into a confrontation with the west. Russia lost the cold war and should just accept it instead of trying to build the new soviet empire.
@@KillerofWestoids The Cold War is not over.
Polling by the Levada Center suggest Stalin's popularity has grown since 2015, with 46% of Russians expressing a favourable view of him in 2017 and 51% in 2019.[925] The Center, in 2019, reports that around 70% of Russians believe that Stalin played a positive role in their homeland[926] and in May 2021, a survey finds that Stalin is the most important personality in Russian public opinion, followed by Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Pushkin.[927]
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General Assembly
Seventy-fifth session
46th plenary meeting
Wednesday, 16 December 2020, 10 a.m.
New York
document address page 10 UA-cam does not skip the link.
Draft resolution I is entitled “Combating
glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices
that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of
racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related
intolerance”.
A recorded vote has been requested.
A recorded vote was taken.
In favour:
Algeria, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina,
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain,
Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Benin,
Bhutan, Bolivia (Plurinational State of), Bosnia
and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei
Darussalam, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde,
Cambodia, Cameroon, Central African Republic,
Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Congo,
Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea, Djibouti, Dominica,
Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El
Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Eswatini,
Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Grenada,
Guatemala, Guinea, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras,
India, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Jamaica, Jordan,
Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lao
People’s Democratic Republic, Lebanon, Lesotho,
Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives,
Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Mongolia,
Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia,
Nauru, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Oman,
Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay,
Peru, Philippines, Qatar, Republic of Moldova,
Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis,
Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Sao
Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia,
Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, South Africa,
South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Syrian
Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste,
Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkmenistan,
Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United Republic
of Tanzania, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela
(Bolivarian Republic of), Viet Nam, Yemen,
Zambia, Zimbabwe
Against:
Ukraine, United States of America
Abstaining:
Afghanistan, Albania, Andorra, Australia, Austria,
Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus,
Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland,
France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary,
Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kiribati, Latvia,
Liberia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg,
Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, New
Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Palau, Poland,
Portugal, Republic of Korea, Romania, Samoa,
San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden,
Switzerland, Tonga, Turkey, United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Northern Ireland
See you on the battlefield.
@@KillerofWestoids "Putin, who is forcing Russia into a confrontation with the west." I think you've got it twisted; the West is forcing Russia into a confrontation, despite Putin's best efforts to avoid it.
You see comrade, right now there are too many mouths to feed. But what if! there were only half as many mouths to feed?!
You joke, but that's how socialism works. Take from those who have and give to those who don't. So if some people are hungry, some other people must die, and their food can be redistributed to the others. This is the problem of socialist economics: the economy is fixed, they can't grow it, so the only way for some to have more than others must because they've stolen ('exploited') more resources off the others. Therefore they justify the killing of those who have more. Utter stupidity.
@@TheImperatorKnight socialism isn't just one thing though. North Korean Communism isn't the same as Scandinavian socialism.
@@TheImperatorKnight "This is the problem of socialist economics: the economy is fixed, they can't grow it." There was no economic growth in the Soviet Union? Where are you getting this information?
I didn't say there was no economic growth. I said that socialist economics doesn't factor that in, since in their ideology, economics is a zero-sum game.
@@xkiroxX In North Korea, those in favor with the powers-that-be get to eat. When they fall, the next group in favor with the powers-that-be pick up the food and get to eat.
In Scandinavia, everybody gets to eat. Weirdos.
From what I understand, American "lend lease" food fed at least half the Soviet Army, (perhaps 17 million out of 34 million men) taking a huge burden off the civilian population.
I understand that the "lend lease" with the UK gave the US the use of some ports in Canada and elsewhere. What did the US get from the "lend lease" with the Soviet Union?
The US got 35 milliom soviet soldiers that fought for it. Lets say the USSR surrenders and starts supporting the Nazis. You would have a powerful Germany. Good luck beating it. In other words. The US got a few million of its soldiers not being killed. Is that a good deal?
@@hanaluong2672 Winning the war maybe? U think those +25M soviets deaths didnt matter for the war effort?😂
Just a small thought in regards to all comments claiming that theory of economic collapse in 1942 is impossible:
In 90's Soviet Union collapsed just because of arms race with NATO, without war, casualties or destruction. In proces of self-salvation SU drained and destroyed economies of East Germany, Poland and Baltic republics. Economies od Albania and country formerly known as Yugoslavia become collateral damage as well. Us who lived at that time in east block can easily imagine how SU would look in 1942 without L&L program.
I read an article about the issue of lend lease to the Soviet Union during World War - it said the cans of Spam (and wheat, etc.) from the United States did as much to keep the USSR population alive and in the fight as the weapons that were sent via convoy.
The weapons were probably the least valuable Lend Lease shipments, behind spam, trucks and communications equipment.
and zillions of cans of orange juice.
@@MarktheMole - Sorry, are you referring literally to cans of orange juice shipped to the Soviets in WW2? I had not come across that fact.
@5:45 The stunning productivity of American (Canadian too) agriculture. With much less of their population involved with farming yet still able to grow large surpluses to export.
That wont be true for much longer....
@@dwwolf4636 You are all kinds of massive stupid
1:30 *SAD HOI 4 NOISES*
As I already said, I think on the long run Germans would won against Soviets if Americans didn't stepped in, especially after 1943. I don't think the Soviet counter-offensive in late 1942 help much in terms of supply, because Ukraine and the west of USSR were in ruins. Georgy Zhukov pretty much admitted they wouldn't survived without US help, which could be a reason why he was censored after the war.
Major battles which were won without lend-lease: Battle of Moscow, Battle of Stalingrad
Battles which were won together with first lend-lease shipments: Battle of Kursk, Battle of Leningrad
Soviets practically won the main battles of the war without any LL. LL kicked in when soviets blitzkrieged the Germans back to and in Berlin. The same way as Germans did when they surprise attacked SU in July 1941.
Care to elaborate how you came to that conclusion?
@@cccpredarmy Yes. When I say "Americans stepped in", I don't mean only on LL, which was crucial for Soviet survival, I mean on strengthening pressure on the Reich coming from the west. Huge German war effort after 1942 went on the west as well, which wasn't the case in 1941/42.
By 1943 German war machine wasn't in full swing. The height of German war production will happened during 1944 (take into account this was the year with the strongest strategic air campaign by the Western allies, and which wasn't possible without US Army Air Force), which was dramatic increase compared with 1941/42. In 1942 the Reich produced about 4 thousand tanks; in 1944 about 11 thousand. Soviets didn't significantly increase its own war production after 1942, saying the disparity (in which Soviets had massive advantage in 1942) will starts decreasing dramatically after the battle of Stalingrad, not other way around.
The overall population was on the Axis side.
In interwar period the Soviets collected grain for the Red Army. This probably had big effect for surviving 1941/42, but on the long run this would drain out.
The battle of Stalingrad was marked as a "turning point", the reason why is because at that time the Axis starts declining on all fronts, because the pressure starts coming from all sides. For example, during the last strategic operation, the Operation Citadel, the Western allies invaded Italy, established control over Atlantic, and British launched air operation over Hamburg which killed over 40 thousand people in a single operation.
The counter-offensive in late 1942 wouldn't be a decisive success. For example, during WWI the Brusilov offensive in 1916 had a huge success, but 1,5 year later the Russian empire collapsed.
In my opinion, if the West didn't send LL and didn't put a massive pressure on the West, the front on the East would probably stall during 1943/44, but, the Reich, unlike Soviets, didn't suffer major destruction, meaning Soviet production of weapon and grain wasn't sustainable on the long run, to keep war effort rolling.
The Reich not just keep its war effort rolling, but they increased production dramatically, with better tanks, better weapon, better planes.
No, the Soviets never blitzkrieged the Germans. It was a long, attritional bloodshed. They partly "blitzkrieged" the Germans during the Operation Bagration, which coincide with the landing in France.
@@stef1896 red army blitzkrieged germans constantly after Kursk. If didn't on one front then they did it on the other. Just follow the data of SU land gain after 1943.
Until very late preparation of Kursk SU didn't recieve ANYTHING significant from the LL.
LL made the soviet blitzkrieg faster and with less losses of manpower, no doubt in that.
Why do put so much significance on the Allies regains of a prior lost territories to the germans? I mean the germans already put a handful of their divisions in Africa like e.g. the soviets put their divisions to the far East borders to hold back Japanese.
In other words why do we never hear from the americans being thankful to the soviets to hold back another 600000+ japanese soldiers, which, if put on the Pacific Islabds would cause a shitton of problems to the USA battling the Japanese there.
The counting of soldiers on secondairy frontlines is useless imo. A country is always surounded by neighbors and has to put soldiers on the borders no matter what. Just for security reasons.
@@cccpredarmy But you don't understand how warfare functioning: Japanese couldn't supply neither soldiers they have in the Pacific. For example in Philippines' island, the Layte, Japanese soldiers lived on the land, eat roots and raised potato. How they would feed more soldiers? Not to mention Japanese navy was totally outgun from 1943.
Second, Eisenhower and Zukhov deeply respected each other, something which is alien for today's keyboard warriors, stuck in their stupid and useless identity politics. During Hungarian revolution, on request from foreign secretary to support Hungarians uprising, Eisenhower respond, "Soviets earn it with their blood."
The Reich wouldn't be defeated in 1945, nor in 1946 and probably neither in 1947 if allies, both from the East and the West, didn't combined their effort, unless US starts dropping atomic bombs on German cities, but we can agree that would be an awful solution.
And I will give you another stunning figures why Soviets would have problems with Germans without pressure from the West: during 1944 Soviets reach 7:1 ration on the sky at some portions of the front, total air superiority, but in 1944 the Reich produced 25 thousand fighters, more than 1940/41/42/43 combined; Soviets produced about 18 thousand fighters, but still had ratio massively on their side. Where these German fighters ends? Mostly destroyed by Western allies. In 1943/44 the Reich produced about 3 times more steel then the USSR. Where this steel end? Well huge chunk of this steel went on, for example, building submarines. Only with this steel the Reich could build about 30 thousand tanks.
All I'm trying to say is, the Axis were arguably stronger than the USSR, and without combined effort, the Reich would stood even in 1947. By that time, I think the USSR would collapse without Western assistants. Thinking that somehow the Red Army become magical force after the Battle of Stalingrad is rather naive.
Best channel on UA-cam. Spam did not win the war, but it kept the allies in the war.
American trucks and shipping were the offensive item that was their most important contribution to the war.
I remember looking up the stats and listed for all the causes was 2.5 to 3.2 million civilian deaths in non occupied territory as result of "wartime shortages".
Additionally a further 1 million died in 1946 as a result of starvation. Between 1914 to 1946 Russia/Soviet Union lost between 40 million to 60 million of it's population.
Roughly 20-30% of it's 1910 census. How a country can continue to function let alone become a super power after all that is beyond incomprehensible.
Rebel Scum well when Russian women still outnumber the men 10-1. You can thank the Germans for that :)
@@Live4This Well I'm an American, so it's not something I can take advantage off. Though I have a feeling that they wouldn't see it as a positive and would probably reply with something akin to "When the Muslims outnumber the Germans" Perhaps you mean well but I'm sure most Russians would take offense to your statement.
@@robertalaverdov8147 Im American as well :P idk they might be happy lol.
Neon Noir Please provide your sources. Without that your comment comes across as a trolling rant.
Neon Noir Your statement is interesting to say the least. I don’t think “the west” used them as a sacrificial lamb. We did help support the soviets before we were even in the war with resource, tanks etc. The Germans were fighting a losing war since 1942 and they did a pretty damn good job with tactical retreats. Although the siege of Budapest was the same outcome as Stalingrad which to my surprise they didn’t learn. Regardless the soviets fought their own battles and took massive casualties.
In “Stalin’s War”, McMeekin says the USSR would probably have had to sue for peace in late 1942. but for the flood of Lend-Lease aid. Long after the war, Krushchev said they could not have won without Lend-Lease Spam.
So, a new treaty of Brest-Litovsk, just like in 1918?
Hi, love the show.
The Soviet lost a lot of there food production capabilities at this point, but also it no longer needed too feed the same amount of people as in 1937 as a lot of the population was in German occupied areas, under siege or dead. So using the 1937 production quota of food doset mean they where eating 50% less. What do you think about that?
Good point.
their*
Noname it sounds Petty but it drives me nuts too
The people that were dying due to lack of food and from diseases that come out of starvation conditions were the Soviet version of "useless eaters". The soldiers and factory workers were relatively well cared for as they were critical for the war effort. The rest of the population, not so much. The troops were also good at foraging and "requisitioning" food supplies and animals from vlllagers and townspeople. Add to that the Lend-Lease supplies that were flowing in and I dont think the Soviet Union was anywhere near the point of collapse. Certainly, the fact that people in the Gulags were dropping dead at a high rate, as well as the increase in deaths among those not critical to the war effort, has virtually no relation to the Soviet warfighting capabilities. At least not in a time horizon of less than five years.
Nobody except the Bourgeois eats well in War. The Military did since they needed the strength to kill their fellow man.
The economic losses to the Soviet Union as a result of the German 1942 campaign were considerable. There was the loss of food, industry and war materials in Ukraine. But worse yet were the impacts when 6th Army reached and blocked the Volga. The blocking of the Volga created a true economic and military crisis. The Soviet Union was cut off entirely from the oil and oil products made in the Baku area. They lost perhaps 76% of their oil production. They lost 85% of their refined aviation fuel production. And by September 1942, the inability to ship out oil products from Baku started to limit production. There storage was completely full.
They had back-up plans to try and use Krasnovodsk on the other side of the Caspian as a point of delivery for Baku's oil production, but given the limited infrastucture and greater rail distances, how well that might have worked is anyone's guess.
The planning for the 1942 campaign in the Soviet Union by Germany was right for the wrong reasons. While trying to take over the resources of the Caucassus to fuel the german war effort wasn't really practical, destroying those resources and denying them to the Soviet economy was extremely practical. Taking the Ukraine, blocking the Volga and destroying the soviet oil industry was in military terms probably the most effective sort of warfare the Germans could undertake against the Soviet Union in 1942.
The thinking man’s lindybegie. You are like historian of the decade, the breadth of your knowledge is incredible. So widely read on every ww2 topic.
Q. If you could give up your current life to have a chance to go back and fight in ww2 at any rank or service branch would you do it?
Happy Monday Tik!
Thanks Vass, Happy Monday to you too!
TIK Thanks! I don’t think I have any Eastern Front related material to comment on. Trying to get some research done for a review on the Movie Midway.
Superb Video! Very interesting. One can clearly see that you're putting a lot of effort in them and i especially like how you talk about your sources and how you evaluate their reliability!
Best ww2 history channel in YT. Greetings from Berlin.
My mom and dad talked about starving in the soviet union at that time. I have often herd it being said that in that time the soviet union only existed on paper.
"Now they say that the allies never helped us, but it can't be denied that the Americans gave us so many goods without which we wouldn't have been able to form our reserves and continue the war," Soviet General Georgy Zhukov said after the end of WWII.
Could you name the source, please?
from even more generals..... it did not even matter if the supplies were useful (I am thinking we was talking about the Cromwell tanks in 41 and the p39's) The fact we were not in it alone... that some where ppl were helping was more important to moral than anything!
Did the Americans provide military weapons as well? Or did the Soviet Union purely rely on their own manufacturing?
@@korneliusparker536 deliveries represented about 20 percent of the total number of armored vehicles produced by Russia during the war.Specifically, this was 16 per cent of Russian main battle tanks, 12 per cent of Russian self-propelled gun carriages and tank destroyers, and 100 per cent of Russian infantry fighting vehicles. The USA alone supplied the Russians with 501,660 tactical wheeled and tracked vehicles, including 77,972 Jeeps, 151,053 1.5 t trucks and 200,622 2.5 t trucks. those 151k 1.5 ton trucks far out weighed their numbers as they were 6 wheel drive in a land with few roads.. In addition, 15,631 guns and 131,633 sub machine guns were supplied to Russia by the Allies.
Russian aircraft production 1942-1944 was 42,427 fighters and 11,797 bombers (additional 30,506 ground attack planes), which results that approximately 20 per cent of the fighters and 30 per cent of the bombers of the Red Air Force were American-built and approx. 10 per cent of the fighters were British-built.
The timing is important in any conversation about the impact these suplies had such as British having a very small contribution in total... but the squadrons of hawkers hurricanes and over 450 Matilda 2 delivered in 41 had much more impact than much larger supplies of better equipment later on in the war. The 152k 1,5 ton six wheel drive trucks where more important than the 200k 2.5 ton trucks by an order of magnitude. So this topic can be a rabbit hole of death.. never ending and complex... From all that ive researched you can say the following and be reasonably correct if not 100% accurate.
1. the USA, Canada and Briton supplied @20% of all war materials to the soviets in world war2.... about 1.2% to 2% more was sent but lost at sea or interdicted in various ways.
2. the most important supplies far exceeding all others was a subset of 152k trucks, 2000 locomotives, 11000 rail cars and all the food.
3. the cold war following so close to the closing of ww2 was muddled the questions of effectiveness of these lend lease supplies however, virtual all soviet generals agree that these massive quantities of materials had more impact on the moral and mental ability to "hang on. we have help coming" than their actual tactical significance. That is to say... no matter how much the supplies helped we probably would have collapsed in hopelessness if not for the moral given by lend lease.
A better perspective in valuating the significance of lend lease is that of the placebo effect,. there was enough material delivered to give hope. That hope effected the war much more than the actual medicine (supplies) could ever achieve.
TIK and I have a disagreement about man power... he said the numbers do not lie... my argument is the supplies (specifically food and transport) gave the Soviets the will and hope that far and away exceeded the man power numbers used.
@@user-lu8vb1pm9p just google lend lease... there is very little dispute over numbers however, like i said the significance of these numbers is augured over insistently. If you have a specific thing that you cant find ill be happy to help
Lend Lease saved them, it's amazing the communists would take supplies from the "Bourgeois" countries they used as an example of an enemy of capitalism at their borders.
By 1946 the real feelings the Soviet Union had came out, but it should have been no surprise. So much for being allies.
The Soviets allied with the most hardcore fascist state in history in 1939-41. Stalin always put pragmatism over ideology. That's why he won.
The fact that molotov said to delay 2nd front they need the supplies NOW indicates to me that they was in a bad way and prone to fall if things had gone even slightly different.
Define “fall”
I always made the argument that the Germans should never have gone into stalingrad. Instead, had a smaller force to protect the flank while the caucus operation went full steam.
Ken McD I aways made the argument the Germans should have stayed in Germany.
I've been binging on your videos about the Eastern Front for over a week now. Amazing content.
The US was shipping a massive amount of goods to the Soviets, from boots to aircraft
any mcdonalds? lol
yep and according to Major Jordan's diaries, we shipped plenty of uranium over to boot!
Probably lots of canned fruit, vegetables, evaporated milk, canned meat, C rations, from the central valley of California. With the decline of popularity of canned stuff, those canneries are now closed. The powdered eggs will probably not be missed.
they was supplying all sides. something which no so called history and truth channel likes covering lol
Heck yeah the death rates in Gulags was high. 90% didnt survive their first year, especially the winters.
Communists: Every human being. Every man, woman, and child deserves to receive from the bounty of the state!
Also Communists: *We* decide who is human!
Soviet Socialist: We also get to decide what you deserve to receive, whenever we feel like you should receive it.
@@pietersteenkamp5241 I see you don't know your Russian Revolution history very well. Or pretty much every single implementation of socialism that has been attempted. But thats okay. Lots of ignorant people these days. You have lots of company.
@@jamestheotherone742 Actually i knew what you know know when i was in high school and still had not quite figured out that my elders could not be trusted to teach me economist or politics. I hope you are in your twenties as i can forgive people who still think socialism is the ultimate evil when they are that young and dumb.
@@pietersteenkamp5241 So you are saying you are old and dumb? Or just that you bought into the lie of Marx way back when and your ego (or something) won't let you admit that you were wrong? Well bless your heart.
@@jamestheotherone742 As i tried to explain to you i was indoctrinated the same way you were about the evils of socialism but then had the courage/maturity to inspect the so called 'facts' and eventually figured that i had been had by billionaires and their lackeys in the media. I have faith that TIK will eventually figure this out and maybe even you can eventually break free of your corporate indoctrination and embrace democracy and an economic system that actually , as Corbyn/Sanders says, "for us".
Rye bread is excellent! Also bear in mind that outside of the 'bread backet' rye is one of the few grains that can be grown in the Russian climate.
It's funny. Rye used to be considered substandard, but now sourdough rye bread is considered a delicacy.
While I don't remember the source book, I remember a chart showing the #'s of combat aircraft and tanks in the Soviet Army on VE day. Both #'s were within a few points of the #'s supplied by the UK/USA via Lend Lease! So I magine that Lend Lease was absolutely vital to Soviet victory. The Red Army marched on US Leather, Rode in US Trucks, and lived on US food!!!
English Wikipedia address en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease#Repayment
The Lend-Lease policy, formally titled An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States
During the war the USSR provided an unknown number of shipments of rare minerals to the US Treasury as a form of cashless repayment of Lend-Lease. This was agreed upon before the signing of the first protocol on October 1, 1941, and extension of credit. Some of these shipments were intercepted by the Germans. In May 1942, HMS Edinburgh was sunk while carrying 4.5 tonnes of Soviet gold intended for the U.S. Treasury. This gold was salvaged in 1981 and 1986.[81] In June 1942, SS Port Nicholson was sunk en route from Halifax, Nova Scotia to New York, allegedly with Soviet platinum, gold, and diamonds aboard; the wreck was discovered in 2008.[82] However, none of this cargo has been salvaged, and no documentation of its treasure has been produced.[83]
@@user-qt1cp1be3u I know it wasn't a one way street. IMO the USA/UK would have supplied the USSR regardless! Why do I say that? Because the Western Allies were prepared to fight to the last Russian. 2/3's of all German troops lost were lost on the Eastern front! Imagine the additional US/UK casualties if we had had to kill those Germans! I'm not saying we would have quit but think how the World would be different if the War in Europe had continued into 1946. How different if it had been Berlin that was nuked.
@@ethanperks372 Not 2/3rds (67%), it was closer to 85%.
@@alexwood5425 Thank you! And of course the War in the East had a ferocity not seen in the West.
Even we Brits owe much to the USA, and the empire nations
10:15 "-all [inflation] will do is flood into the capital goods industries"
Correction: Inflation will flood into those industries in which the new money is spent first. In a semi-capitalist economy with fractional reserve banking, that is the capital goods sector. In the Soviet economy, that would be wherever the commissars spend their fresh rubles.
i.e. food.
Lend Lease was basically a precursor Marshall plan for the Soviets. The reason they ended up as a superpower by the end of the war and not just another devastated nation.
Being a superpower in 1945/46 had more to do with massive militaries & supporting industries/resources. In that sense, the Soviets deserve the credit for their superpower status....at an incredible cost, but they earned it.
In terms of being an economic & political superpower, they were far less imposing.
I've been wondering this for a while. Nothing better than watching one of your videos with my morning cup of coffee. Thank you for your videos - they certainly will stand the test of time.
Also, raw agricultural production is never classified by monetary value, it's done in a standardized yield unit. Tons of grain, gallons of milk etc. Do you ever read of a dairy farmer saying his cows produced $1M worth of milk? No, they produce X number of gallons of milk. From that we can determine how efficient / inefficient agricultural production is relative to another region or country.
Zhukov stated that lend lease was worth 70 soviet divisions. That is a fair pile of equipment, food, and raw materials
4,478,116 tons of food to the Soviet Union from the USA. Nincompoops: "That's not that much!" Me: "Yes, it is a lot." It was all concentrated, dehydrated, and canned food. Meaning, that each ton of food had a lot more calories than a ton of fresh food. You can fit a hellavalot more instant potatoes and powdered milk in one ton than if you use whole potatoes. Get it? Starting to understand just how valuable the food aid was? Yeah, and because it was dehydrated, concentrated, and canned, it didn't need refrigeration and could be in the distribution system for quite some time without worrying about spoilage. And of course, lets not mention the 1,911 steam locomotive and 9,920 flat cars sent to the Soviet Union to transport it from the ports to the population. So to all those who say, "the Soviet Union beat the Germans all by themselves.", suck on the facts.
That's a lot of food and other stuff. I assume it was much needed and greatly appreciated. I'm sure those were tough times having been attacked shortly after multiple social upheavals.
I'm not sure throwing resources at someone in need means that you get a slice of the glory. I mean, nobody tries to diminish the involvement of the U.K. They relied on the Lend/Lease program and lost far fewer people than the U.S.S.R.
Does France get to claim some glory from the American revolution since they sent resources to the U.S.?
It seems like the Soviets defeated the German army alone. There were no other armies in Stalingrad. There were no other armies chasing the Germans out of Eastern Europe. Yeah, they had help but no one else was doing the dieing. While they really did bear the full force of the German army and survive, by themselves.
Please don't take this as an apology for Communism.
Let's suck on the facts together and give those people a little bit of credit.
@@notsure7939 I wish I could be gracious about your comment, because I'm used to people instantly launching into personal attacks if they read something they don't like. And of course, you were respectful and courteous. Unfortunately, I find your comment absolutely ridiculous. You've made so many false equivalencies and logical fallacies that I hardly know where to begin. Firstly, my point about the food aid was to support TIK's idea that the SU was close to economic collapse, and my claim that Lend Lease prevented it. I have long held that view and I am tired of the very partisan and deliberate characterization of America's aid to the SU as being inconsequential. Which is exactly what you are arguing. The other reason I made the post is to poke a finger in the eye of the biased ideologues who refuse to acknowledge the facts and their implications.Your characterization of US aid as "throwing resources at someone" is fallacious and scornful. Speaking of robbing someone of their glory, right? So the US deserves no credit? Not to mention that is a - deliberate - misrepresentation of what US aid the Russia was about. I think it's clear that you're biased and trying to drag this into personal politics because it is you who don't want to give credit where it's due. The idea that the SU would have been able to continue fighting without the mountain of war material and aid given to the SU is ludicrous in my opinion. I believe I can make a cogent argument for that belief, but I won't be making it with you. I'd be wasting my breath. Oh, and your damned right the French deserve credit. No one who knows anything about the American revolution would dispute that French aid was critical and that without it, the surrender of Cornwallis in Virginia would have been impossible.
@@juliancate7089 you make good points. Perhaps I downplayed the value of the aid. I suppose the point I'm trying to make is that, to my knowledge, France isn't interested in making sure everyone knows that they contributed to the revolution because citizens of the U.S. did the fighting and dieing. Think of the amount of wars the U.S. has funded in one way or another. Do they want credit for the various South American wars that they put money and resources toward?
It's very likely that without assistance from the U.S., the S.U. and possibly even the U.K. (to a much lesser extent) would not have survived. But none of the aid would have mattered if the S.U. hadn't been able to field millions of soldiers. Therefore I feel they deserve a little credit and just like most laymen in the U.S. they deserve to feel like they defeated their enemy.
I mean you no disrespect. Please assume that my beliefs are at least as complicated as your own and I have no desire to insult.
@@notsure7939 You are offering a false choice that if I say American aid made the difference for the SU during the war and especially at specific moments, that therefore I am taking credit away from the Russian soldiers. The answer is that it is both. it was a combination of aid and guts. So, please point to any post I have made on this thread or at anytime on this forum where I have said that Russian soldiers deserve no recognition. You keep trying to move the point onto these false equivalencies and emotional arguments. The real point is economics. No one has suggested that the Russians didn't fight. Again, anyone who knows anything about the war knows that the Russians put up valiant efforts, but to turn a phrase back on you, it doesn't matter how many soldiers you have if they're all starving to death. No insult taken. I never thought you were trying to be deliberately insulting. Hyperbolic and ideological, but not insulting.
@@juliancate7089 in your first post in this thread, you ended your post by saying that the S.U. cannot claim that they defeated the Germans alone. I am arguing that they can. Your argument to that is that the U.S. contributed so much that S.U. would surely have lost without it. I don't disagree with that, but you seem to feel like the U.S. isn't getting enough credit for that aid. My argument is that nobody else does that. Countries fund wars all the time and when history looks at that war the people who actually fought are the ones who get the credit. Sure the sources of funding might get an honorable mention but history will refer to that war as a war between the sides that fought and died. Why is the war involving S.U. and Germany different?
Contributing aid doesn't make you part of the war otherwise the American revolution would have involved England, the colonies and France. We all know France didn't fight so we don't consider them involved in the war. They were not combatants.
Can you give me examples of non combatant countries that history considers part of a war because they contributed supplies?
The problem with studying history is that people read a few textbooks on a subject and perhaps watch a few films and take what is said as gospel and don’t challenge or question the facts.
I am an avid researcher of the Titanic and I have read/seen some interesting challenges from an amateur historian who takes survivors accounts and challenges the historians accepted view of the sinking, and gives quite a decent alternative view. All his views have been ignored and ridiculed because they don’t conform with the established story.
Human beings are that - human. They aren’t infallible. They make mistakes. They see things in a jaded way and remember them with bias.
With regards to this video, I think your research is very credible. It shows how the Soviet Union was in a dire situation at the time. I’d imagine that had the Nazis not enacted a policy of absolute destruction in their wake that they may very well have won the war - I’m sure that many Soviet satellite countries being oppressed by Stalin’s regime would have joined forces with them. Instead Hitler ordered his men to exterminate everything in their way - it was a war of annihilation. I imagine it was also due to this that the Soviet people endured such food shortages as they saw the cruelty and imminent death invading their country. Must have been a horrible time to live.
mentions dire straits *money for nothing, guitar solo starts playing*
The agricultural sector of Germany wasn't really mechanised either. Most farmers relied on horses, while tractors didn't became the standard until the 1950's. I think the reason for the low productivity of the soviet agricultural sector is the collectivisation and the overall totalitarian structure of stalinist society and economy. (See: Stalin biography by D. Volkogonov)
I recommend Stakhanovites--and Others: The Story of a Worker in the Soviet Union, 1939-1946 as an anecdotal evidence of the harshness of life in Soviet Union during the war. He had a story about working as a turner in Kazakhstan and he was always hungry, he won some worker award and spent all the money on food that made him sick and went back to being hungry
Just a thought, Stalin’s collective farms were failing to produce enough food before the H invasion. Did that event and the lend lease supply of food from USA actually save USSR from collapse. No invasion by H USSR collapsed long before it did.
From what you're saying, the agricultural output was 44 percent of prewar by the end of 1942. And workers were half of prewar levels. This was probably due to the large number of civilians in occupied territory.
Very good. People always want to discredit something to make themselves feel taller. Lend-Lease was NOT a waste. They had the trucks to follow up a German retreat when they needed. American Trucks.
It seems to me that some see that pointing out the problems the USSR and its people faced as an attack on their contribution to defeating the Axis. In my view it only makes their achievements more extraordinary.
Yeah yeah... The song about how soviet people beated the best army on the planet despite of their incompetent leaders...
the tankers had enough fuel to keep warm and enough Montana caned beef to stay full were happy.... who can say that nowadays?
It's a testament to how ruthless the Soviets were, at the very least, that their people having food to eat was less important to them than being the ones to take Berlin for the sake of political bullshit.
Hmm, did I say something wrong?
I was talking about the people and their tenacity and bravery fighting the Axis, not about the oppressive regime they also had to endure.
@@uncleJan1 it is a little easier to continue the heroic charge... when you know there are political officers maning machine guns... just waiting for someone to turn around.that "oppressive regime" and the "bravery fighting" are not as separated as you espouse. 😎
I was lucky enough to have a chance to listen to some personal accounts of the hardships the older generation of my family experienced during the first years of the war. At one point the evacuated to the Urals family survived on worms infested malt the babooshka accidently found near a kvas factory. At the same time there was an interesting class difference. Cities starved, but old traditional sussistence economy countryside somehow survived, being used to endless wars, it was even common to leave your children with relatives in the country, at least they have some food.
Russia deserves an apology from the world. What a tragic fate for a country which had so much potential. Imagine if WW1, WW2, Soviet union had never happened. Russia would have probably held on the "republics" and have a population of at least 400 million .
Man, you're stretching my brain-- it kinda hurts.
The Soviet economy wasn't that productive before the war, riddled with inefficiency and corruption. I recall one story I read where, lacking proper grain railway cars, local officials put a grain harvest on flatbed cars, which meant most of it had blown away by the time it reached its destination. It makes sense that the Soviets would struggle under Hitler's invasion.
The thing about programs like Lend-Lease is that they rarely are the sole factor in victory, or in keeping a country fighting. Their effects tend to be incremental rather wholesale. But, if you can reasonably feed 1 to 2 million more people with Lend-Lease than without it, that's not insignificant.
BTW, I have an ever increasing list of books I need to read thanks to your recommendations. Thanks.
Good video.
Silly me. I certainly do not need to make my comment private. What I wanted to say that thank you for your excellent work (included some of your biases) . Your videos have had an unexpectedly profound effect on my life. In early November, I had a total hip replacement surgery to deal with severe arthritic hip pain. After I returned home, I started to re-listen to many of your videos just distract myself. I noticed that they had an unusual effect on me-my pain experiences was reduced. So, I decide to just set "autoplay" in all your videos so they were playing in the background even while I was asleep and I was comforted just by listening to them. As a former research psychologist, I have no explanation for this, however--your video s are awesome.
How dare you Tik, rye bread is delicious!
If we assume that the soviet economy would have collapsed in 1943 if the germans held on to the terretories captured in case blue then the whole "there was no way that germany could win ww2" theory falls apart pretty quickly. However as you mentioned tik it is impossible to say if the the soviet economy would have collapsed. Great video as always!
Why, the germans would probably still lost the race to thd atomic bomb. The Manhattan project had a massive head start
Very informative video, thank you. I have heard it before that it was difficult to calculate the price of a german tank compared to a soviet but I never really got a proper explanation as to why in terms of economic.
this was a problem all over. I remember reading that civilians in France had to figure our if the calories in going to get some food in the countryside (where there was a small black market) would be more than the calories from the food they would purchase. Or even as modern scuba diving was being invented, diving and hunting down fish to spear, was found to expend more calories than could be recovered from the fish. The French citizen had to think before almost any action, as movement meant calories lost.
Why do you say rye bread is bad? It's just a staple in some countries and as nutritious. Good work as usual. You can make ersatz bread by introducing usually non-edible things like sawdust in the flour or certain ground roots etc. Maybe substandard refers to this.
Its because it is less caloric
the trucks alone made a difference,,,, the amount of materiel recived from lend lease was staggering
Hey Tik great episode as always. I was wondering if you will eventually get to operation Bagration, I know its really late in the war and thus probably would not be covered for some time. Also do you know of any good books to read about this coming from somebody who is a beginner interested in WW2.
"Siberia is next to the front line..." Well, not really. The most eastern area of German advance was Northern Caucus which is still Eastern Europe. And it was still about, maybe, 1000 or so km. to Ural mountains and only after that they could get to the western part of Siberia. I lived in those places.
Great video, and great analysis - I really enjoyed watching this!
That said, just a few minor remarks:
- The low effectiveness of women workers engaged in farming is somewhat overstated. The pre-war Soviet Union went to great lenghths to introduce women to various jobs previously mostly dominated by men, and historically, Russian households would typically feed "off the earth" - backyards were (and in rural areas, are to this day) traditionally a place for growing food rather than lawnmoving, BBQ and fun pastime. On top of that, most of the farming was typically manual labor that could be easily mastered, and rarely required technically advanced skills, such as operating and maintaining machinery, etc. I would presume that this fact even has a minor role in how many people were involved in the farming industry at the time - a job for one person was oftentimes a job for three, due to lack of proper or advanced tools.
- Low worker motivation for due to collectivization is a nonfactor during that period - wars have always had a polarizing and unifying efect on populaton, magnified tenfold by the effective propaganda machine that existed at the time, as well as the sheer magnitude and homelandnature of the conflict. Furthermore, the majority of the population was ready to support the war effort even at the cost of enduring sever hardship. A great example here is the siege of Leningrad, where people were most literally starved to death, and on rare occasions some, sadly, went way beyond just eating cats and dogs.
- All of the calculation presented seem to stress that food production declined drastically by 1942/43 (almost half!), however it is worth mentioning that at the same time with loss of control over territory, as well as staggering losses in population (dead and captured soldiers/civilians), the food consumpton by population that was still under soviet control also declined significantly.
- GULAGs are hardly indicative of anything on the broader scale of the country-wide economy, as at times of war, especially one of the WW2 magnitude, they were hardly a high priority for the state. We may or may not agree with Soviet policies of the time (I'm not trying to justify neglect for human life, don't get me wrong), however the fact remains that people who ended up in GULAG were at the time considered as criminals, traitors, enemies of the state, etc.
I think the infamous "Not a step back" order by Stalin is what actually points to how dire the economic situation of the USSR was.
They were running of fumes and had colossal food shortages, the Communist party admitted it in their orders to the front and diplomatic correspondence.
Wrong. The "not a step back" order is not a dire call but a disciplinairy one in the first place. Imagine you're in the leading staff of a state which faces an overwhelming force. You have sleepless nights of constant work of planing and concentrating enough material on crucial areas on the frontline. You planed everything, checked all possibilities and prepared to the best you could. You wake up the next day and see that everything collapsed and the germans just went through. You now, hopelessly try to fogure out what caused it and see clearly that you actually really had enough aces to use against the enemy but soldiers simply ran from the battlefield in fear without using any of them... Imagine you have it multiple times in a row and germans now literally have one leg through the door of your home.
I guarantee you you'll crawl to the staff members above begging to initiate an order to get the soldiers to not leave their positions!
@The Colonel Utter BS.
Order #270 which you are referring to applied only to families of commanders and political officers who removed their insignia and surrendered or deserted.
Big Difference dont you think ??
@The Colonel I would say there is huge difference between losing a Commanding Officer and a Conscript soldier.
The reason why it was issued because of instances of commanding officers instead of organizing a defence were surrendering without a fight or abandoning their posts and running off to the rear (With insignia removed to blend in with the crowd).
P.S.
At least 2 of my great uncles were POWs and my family were not punished in any way that i'm aware of.
@The Colonel If it wasn't necessary it would not come into existence. It was issued for the same reasons Order 227 was, to keep morale and order in the Red Army from disintegrating.
Hitler's stand fast strategy in general now makes more sense! TIK this is one of your best vids so far! WELL BLOODY DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
For real, watching TIKs vids and lectures while also reading ww2 books and researching ww2 really shows you how much most people who act like they know about the second world war don't know shit.
Lewis at 16:20 says the number of USSR agricultural workers dropped from 50 million to 25 million. At the same time the USA only had 11 million agricultural workers but were feeding much of the world. Were the US agricultural workers that much more productive? Yes!
TIK, I often see you mention that talk between Molotov and Roosevelt. First time I heard you mentioning it you were skeptical about its authenticity. Now you call it a primary source. Soo, can you please state where we can find the source for this story? Aka a transcript of a conversation or something?
@The Colonel "There was no 'quid pro quo' !"
@The Colonel As I understand it It is not a secret Stalin wanted a second front and every thing the USA could produce and both right now even though the USA and Britain didn't have the ships. You may find this interesting.
Food and other strategic deliveries to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease Act, 1941-1945
histrf.ru/uploads/media/default/0001/12/df78d3da0fe55d965333035cd9d4ee2770550653.pdf
@@daarksideyt
There were many reasons why an invasion of France wasn't possible until 1944.
But you're right in suggesting that even if it had been possible it would have been a bad decision to proceed with it if the cost had been a decline in the ability of the Soviet Army to kill Germans.
Excellent analysis...Very few Russians-even those familiar with the details of the War-realize how dire the situation was. That is why the economic help, assistance, support-whatever you can call it-given to the USSR by the West (mainly by the US) was so invaluable. Nikita Khrushev in his memoirs (published after the Soviet collapse only) stated: "we made it to Berlin by the price of our blood but on American wheels". The whole country basically was eating American canned food and using thousands of items the Soviet economy simply could not produce (jeeps, radios, spare parts, various planes, trucks etc etc etc). Throughout decades the Soviets underplayed the significance of this essential help or simply never talked about it. The Americans (mainly Hollywood, mainstream media and popular culture) never really showcased and under reported Soviet military contribution to the downfall of Hitler. 9 out of 10 German soldiers were killed by the Soviets.
Very few Russian realized how dire the situation was? You must be kidding. Every Russian knew and knows how bad it was. From first-hand sources, from my grandma, grandpa, and so on. My grandma ate food scraps in occupied Ukraine. My grandad, at the age of 18 was making artillery shells at the military plan in the Caucasus. That gave him that "food ration" card TIK mentioned, and that meant he could feed the rest of the family (he was the older brother in the family of 5) with it.
As for "the whole country was eating American can food"... sorry, you're not good with math. As TIK stated, Lend-Lease provided food for 1 million people. and the population of the USSR at that time was? close to 200 million. So less than 0.5% at best. To my knowledge, American lend-lease food was sent to the soldiers at the front mostly, civilians never saw it.
Have you read
Deathride: Hitler vs. Stalin - The Eastern Front, 1941-1945
by John Mosier
@TIK
1) Have you read Trotksy's book "The Revolution Betrayed"? A good portion of it goes about the Soviet economy in the 30'ies, so it gives some ideas of what the state of the USSR was when Germany pounded on it in 1941. I believe you could find this book interesting.
2a) Farmer's low productivity in Russia is also historical. In Western Europe, farmers learned to generate a superior amount of food for buying markets in the cities. In Russia, this started a lot later. In 1914, about 85% of the Russians lived in the countryside, nearly all food-producers, the highest percentage of all the major powers in WW1. Post-WW1, in the 20ies, Russian farmers also had less access to investment capital (for buying tractors and the like), reducing productivity as well.
2b) The forced collectivization and the reduced incentive to produce played a role, certainly, but there is more to it. There is a historical debt too. That is what I am trying to say.
3) There existed a large black market with prices more reflective of the real market prices. However, these weren't officially recorded.
4) Have you tried to make a comparison with WW1? Russia's economy was under lot of strain then too. Huge refugees swelled the cities leading to enormous housing problems and food shortages in those cities. Yet there was not great revolution in WW2 like there was in WW1. Don't forget the February Revolution was the workers in Petrograd going on strike and onto the streets, and after 5 days the Petrograd garrisons joined the workers. There was some fighting in Moscow. But the most pertinent to me is that the rest of the country accepted the overthrowing of the monarchy. Wether the other cities, the villages or the front: no one felt inclined to go out and fight for the Tsar's continued rule. This low had the authority of the Tsar fallen. I have the feeling it is totally different with Stalin and the USSR in WW2. I don't have the impression that a similar revolt in one large city would have led to a similar collapse of the whole system. What is your view on this, TIK?
5) Great Vid TIK! This was an excellent vid of the Soviet Economy in 1942-1943.
Ukrainians welcomed germans till those started to kill people. Also Caucas people sided with Germany. Stalin sent Chechens in Gulag for this. It was some defetism in soviet side. But Stalin know how to handle revolution, and nazi behavior to kill or enslave what is non arian, didn't help either
I tend to totally agree with your appraisal of the situation. The Soviets were in a far worse situation with their economy than most people realized at the time.
You are a smart man tik. Great channel
There are two primary reasons the "economy" didn't collapse: primarily the Communist Party was acceptable as a ruling authority and compared to the Fascist invaders it was much preferred, and secondly the soviet citizens were defending their homeland. These are the bare bones. And by the end of 1942 the tide had turned in favour of the RKKA.
I doubt that the soviet union could have collapsed anytime soon. They would have fought till the last person.
I'd think the situation would be a bit more complicated than just wondering whether or not the Soviets were starving in 1942. Primarily because of the nature of the regime and its own actions. Regardless of the economic flaws that the Soviet Union had, much of what propelled it through the war was Stalin and many of the other actions taken before the war and in the wake of his rise to power after Lenin's death. This included the paranoid murder of many Communist officials that were at the very least suspected of loyalties to men like Trotsky and others... to say nothing of things like the Holodomor. These actions were on such a scale that while the German invasion in 1941 was at least initially taken as "liberation" by local populations... the only stress that would knock out the Soviet Union would be if Stalin was either killed or broke down, for there just wasn't the sort of organization in the Soviet Union that could be used to turn against Stalin the way Hindenburg and Ludendorff turned the Russian people onto Lenin against the Provisional Government in 1917.
And to me, that means that the real point of potential Soviet collapse was in 1941 as Barbarossa enjoyed its massive initial successes, when Stalin at least initially broke down and withdrew into seclusion. I've seen a documentary (though I can't remember its name know... so if the story is true, could you list what possible books it might be referred to in) that even made the commentary that a group of Soviet officials trying to get Stalin to come back to Moscow were surprised to find the Soviet dictator practically cowering and that they had come to kill him for the failures the Soviets had suffered up to that point in the war. When these officials told Stalin that they would be lost without him... that was when he seemed to regain his confidence and he came back to being the dictator he loved being. But with that, it mean that while the Soviet people might face starvation conditions throughout much of their domain, there was still no organized movement that could have really tipped the balance against Stalin within the Soviet Union.
And by late 1941, as some of the stories of atrocities committed by the German Army, the SS, and the Einzatzgruppen behind the lines either filtered through the lines or were discovered after the defeat of Operation Typhoon in December 1941, there fell a massive sort of propaganda victory that would be of use to the Soviets. For if they're starving in the Soviet controlled areas and are being shot and dumped in a ravine in the German controlled areas... the end result is the same. They're still being killed and I'd think a fair number of Soviet citizens in 1941-1942 chose the devil they knew over the devil they didn't. Thus, while they were in a very tight spot in 1942... I don't think they were necessarily that close to complete collapse. There was no organization behind any opposition to Stalin and the Nazis weren't exactly giving the Soviet people reason to defect or rebel against Stalin.
And at the same time, given the general strategic position and logistical situation that the Germans had in 1942... I'm not fully sure they could have actually put greater stress on the Soviet system then they did. Barbarossa began in 1941 with 3.5 million men in 3 army groups, Blue began in 1942 with far fewer men in 1 army group and much of your battlestorm video on Stalingrad would seem to suggest they'd had their own fair share of trouble supplying what they had in that push toward the city. In this, despite the stresses the Soviets were under... I don't think that the Germans had the strength to actually secure the Stalingrad and Caucasus region, which might have done it... but if they didn't have the strength to do it, speculating on it becomes more a thought exercise and irrelevant to what actually happened. As such, while the Germans may have come close, when looking at the Soviet economic situation, they didn't have the military capacity to actually get there. Thus, close but no cigar.
Collectivation of farms has alot of initial downsides too it. Take Zimbabwe in recent time as an example, which is quite similar to some of the issues seen in the Soviet union. It is more complex than this, but basically you take land from productive landowners, who spend generations expanding and developing their farms to be as productive as possible. Then you distribute it out to alot of people, some of which have no experience running a farm at all. This creates a huge drop in production output, since the experienced farmers now have limited options in terms of production.
"Without Spam, we would not have been able to feed our soldiers" - Nikita Khrushchev
Complete BS
@@konstantinkelekhsaev302 I got that quote from a wiki article about spam en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_(food)#History they do list a source, that said I suspect the person translating/ quoting him might have exaggerated his point, surely spam was just one of many food sources, but spam played an interesting role across all theaters of WW2.
For the entire period of the war, the Allies delivered 4.5 million tons of food to USSR. For comparison - the volume of grain harvest in the USSR was:
1941 - 55.9 million tons.
1942 - 29.7 million tons.
1943 - 29.4 million tons.
1944 - 49.1 million tons.
1945 - 47.3 million tons.
Total - 211.4 million tons. Thus, a direct percentage of allied assistance is 2.2% of the volume of the soviet harvest.
@@user-bw7ke2us2i Sounds about right to me, a sharp drop off in 42 when significant parts of the USSR were under occupation. Interesting that 44 somehow produced more that 45, I would have thought it would have been a steady upswing, thanks for the info. I'm sure the point was not to say that spam saved the USSR or anything like that, just that some may have starved without the aid.
@@MidKnightblue0013 Lend-Lease spam and other canned meat amounted to 600 thousand tons over a period OF 4 YEARS.
Most of it (if not all of it) went to the soldiers on the frontline, and soldiers received the best rations so i doubt Apam saved anyone from starving.
I'm probably arriving way to late in this comment section to get any answers, but my question is:
Can one not calculate 'the economy', or at least the war economy, of the WW2 Soviet Union throught work hours spent on each piece of equipment produced? The cost of a T34 would be something like X WH (work hours) - including all stages of the production from metal mining, smelting, and so on, to test driving outside of facory. I know this is a HUGE calculation if it is to be done across the entire board, but it seems doable. Just because there is no price set on labour, doesn't mean production has no price.
No, the Nazis would have lost anyway because they botched the planning of Barbarossa. The whole operation was wrongheaded. Why attack Moscow? Why attack Leningrad??? You aren’t going to kill Stalin or the ghost of Lenin. All the USSR’s resources are in the South. Barbarossa should primarily been an invasion of the Ukraine with a goal of seizing the Caucuses. They could have essentially hugged the Black Sea, keeping one whole flank of the army secure, with the panzers driving on Stalingrad in October 1941, not 1942.
Indeed. While Barbarossa was planed, there were plans to concentrate on one front at a time. Strike in the south first, then north, in the end Moscow (if needed at all). If Hitler had accepted this, the war would have taken another path.
So the war was essentially lost in autumn/winter 1941. The reboot in 1942 with Fall Blau was a hopeless offensive, as the forces were never enough and weak anyway by the losses in winter 1941. Baku and the Oilfields were out of reach and the whole Caucasus could never be taken, pacified and hold against a Soviet counterattack.
Yeah, Blau’s timetable was more or less doomed from the start because of those early soviet attacks throwing the plan into disarray.
German overconfidence played a big factor too. They really did just think all they needed to do is invade and the Soviet state would collapse into anarchy and Stalin will somehow be deposed. I guess it wasn’t completely delusional thinking, after what the Germans did to the rest of Europe, but they had plenty of maps and knew where the resources they wanted were.
And you think wars go like that? They did that in Fall Blau, and what was the result? They did nothing. The ideea of a three proned attack was to anihilate as much of the soviet forces as possible. Due to the scale of the front and the size of the soviet army, they could not pull something like France, where they encircled the main French and British army and forced an easy capitulation by a useless oponent. If they would have concentrated on a single front, yes, the initial gains might have been greater, but this means dozens of soviet divisions would have been left at ease, able to relocate however they wanted. Let's assume the Axis followed your plans and hugged the Black Sea. This means that Dozens of soviet divisions from the Central and Northern parts of the Eastern Front could strike into the flank of the advancing Axis, the germans risking being trapped into their own Dunkirk. This was the main ideea behind the three proned attack.
Another thing, doubling the number of units at a front does not mean that you can advance with all of them. You are still limited by logistics, aka railway tracks, roads etc. If you want to use the full potential, you have to build your own supply lines, which is not an easy feat because the army advances faster than you can build.
And finally, Barbarossa's demise might have been the same reason why it had so much success. The soviets were anticipating a war with Germany, correctly guessing Hitlers intent, the grain fields in Ukraine and the oil in Caucasus. So they concentrated quite a lot of their forces into the Southern Front. However, Halde sensed the opportunity for a faster victory by doing the same thing like in France, aka go for the Wolfs lair and strike for Moskow. This meant that instead of the main Soviet force fighting the main Axis force, the main Axis force went towards Moskow and Leningrad. Now the bulk of the Axis forces faced a weaker enemy (although it seems the crews were better trained here). And this is supported by how the war unfolded, the Army Group North and Center had the greatest success, meanwhile in the South many objectives were not even close.
Lastly, we again have to look at logistics. Having the main german force go along the Black Sea meant that the logistical lines had to either pass through Romania or go from Poland to southern Ukraine and again be vulnerable to Soviet counter attacks. Not to mention, the Black Sea Fleet of the Soviet Navy could have intervened.
As for how things got so bad for the Soviets, there are three main reason that are too often overlooked.
1. A German attack in 1941 made almost no sense in 1941, especially in June 1941. Germany was still fighting a war against Great Britain. And it just launched an operation in Greece. Furthermore, USSR and Sweden were both main suppliers of strategic resources (iron and oil) for the German War Machine. Germany invaded two countries (Norway and Denmark) in one high risk operation just to secure the supply of iron from Sweden, so why would it attack a vital supplier of oil? The Ribbentrop-Molotov anti-agression pact and further deals secured Soviet Union's position as a necessity for Germany, so an immediate war made no sense in the context. The joke of Battle of France, the disaster in Greece and inaction from the British to engage mainland Germany along with other developments I'll discuss further made all those reasons useless.
2. Germany got unexpected allies. Bulgaria was a fascist state (well, close to one if not one at least), but it had no intention of war and was in good relations with USSR. Bulgaria had actually not actively participated in the war against USSR, but served as a supply route and naval base for the Germans. Furthermore, USSR was in good relations with Italy as well. Hungary was a bit of a mix, but they were considered as insignifiant. However, the biggest blow to Soviet plans was perhaps the joining of Finland and Romania along the Axis. This made almost no sense to them. In the memoirs of the Romanian embassy staff in USSR it is shown that our ambassador was the second most surprised person of the declaration of war, being topped only by Molotov. Not only Romania and Finland were countries too small to face the USSR, but they had reasons to hate the Germans as well. Yes, they had animosities with the soviets from 1939, but there is a lesser known side of history. Germans actually helped the Soviets in the Winter War. And with Romania, everyone knows the 'secret protocol' of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact allowing to annex the territories known as Bessarabia and Northern Bucovina (now Republic of Moldova and part of Western Ukraine) . Yet the Germans gave the way for this. BUT. And this is a big round but. No one seems to remember the more open and official Treaty of Vienna from 1940. With this, parts of Transylvania were given to Hungary (which secured the later's participation in the war). Economically speaking, this was a bigger blow then the loss of Bessarabia. Not only that, but following the annexation, the hungarians began butchering the romanian population there. And if that was not enough, later the same year Germany again pressed Romania to give up territories obtained after the Balkan wars to Bulgaria. So for the Soviets, Romania joining the Axis was illogical. 'I know we had problems, but why on Earth would you ally with a guy who did much worse to you and another guy [Hungary] that also did worse to you?! Couldn't you just stay neutral?' Finalnd joining the war meant that Soviet Forces had to be diverted to defend north of Leningrad which just a few months later proved to be crucial as there were no supply routes to the city. As for Romania joining the war, that was even worse. It meant that the Germans had a whole new logistic network to supply their Army Group souths. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers joined the Axis. A capable airforce (better than the Italian) joined the fight. Germans now had access to Black Sea ports and airfields and the length of the initial front almost doubled.
3. Given the fake sense of security the Soviets were not expecting a war in the West, so they began dismantling and reorganising their defensive lines and depots there. They were however expecting a war with Japan (they just fought an inconclusive one in 1939, part of a decade-long border conflict). So less attention was given to the Western Soviet Front compared to the Far East one.
Omega Alpha wow that’s a lot of reply to unpack there, and most of it is actually really interesting.
Yes, absolutely Barbarossa was stupid to begin with. Trade is always best and the Soviets were well positioned to supply a United Nazi Europe and were happy to watch Germany and Britain duke it out. But if Hitler were capable coexisting with the USSR, he wouldn’t have been Hitler. So meh Barbarossa was going to happen. But did it have to happen in 1941? No maybe not, but the Nazis were riding high and over confident and they really just thought the war would be over by Christmas for reasons.
However, I still think hugging Black Sea would have been a more sound plan for Barbarossa. You don’t need to stack up the German armies, you just need a steady stream of meat for the grinder. The German armies in the north and center had the most success because they faced the least amount of resistance. The bulk of the Red armies were in the Ukraine defending the soviet breadbasket because that’s what was most important to them.
AG Center’s job from the beginning ought to have been just to protect AG South’s massive exposed left flank from those counter attacks you mention, and not flying off to storm Moscow (also known as bloody Super Madrid), and Army Group North should never have attacked at all except to like hold the red army in place. The Soviet Black Sea Fleet, while a threat, probably could have been tackled by the Luftwaffe. In short the whole emphasis of the attack should have been towards the South and it shouldn’t have been so rushed.
Little correction: On 5:35 TIK mention census and what he says is just partially true. Before census Stalin bragged how Soviet population grew almost 30 millions in 10 years because of successes of collectivization and industrialization. He ordered census to be done in impossible timetable and not Soviet population grew some 15 million (statisticans expected 21,3 million, much of 6,3 million difference were unrerecorded deaths to famine, under registrations, migration of nomads to escape starvation and so on). Demographers were shot and new census was done in 1939 but it showed 170,5 million, not even close to what Stalin expected before 1937. However, this census was accepted and published, so what is the difference? Difference is that in late 1936 and early 1937, Stalin was still building a case against right oposition that was against way Stalin did collectivization and warned it might have catastrophic effect. In meantime, Bukharin and others were all executed and Stalin washed his hands before census of 1939, saying that those were unrealistic expectations or worse from Gosplan.
Well done TIK a great video. That said, if the Soviet state was on the verge of collapse then I believe that had Hitler hit Moscow and taken it in 1942 it may have led to a collapse of the Soviet state.
@The Colonel They are interconnected, besides Moscow was also a key industrial hub.
@The Colonel Moscow was a better target because the Red Army's main forces were concentrated there. Their defeat would have been a significant blow to the Soviet war effort. Secondly Moscow is the key industrial rail and political heart of the USSR, it is the brain and heart of the Soviet empire. Secondly a nation on the brink of economic collapse would not be easily able to survive such a psychological blow. These factors, economic and psychological are linked. A collapsed Moscow may have been the straw that broke the camels back. Many key industries and the main electrical power grid was located there. Finally, an attack on Moscow was logistically viable as the Germans had by 1942 built several double gauged rail tracks and the road and rail network in this region was second to none. By going south the germans extended themselves greatly and were reliant on essentially one rail line which passed through Rostov. We are talking huge logistical bottlenecks. which ensured in the Sixth Army being unable to stockpile supplies for the Winter.
Well the Fascist lost ha, ha!
The inability of the collective farms to feed the Soviet population in WW2 was not just because of the conscription of young men it was also because the draft horses on the farms also went to the front. The older men and the women were not able to plough without the horses. There are stories of tanks being attached to ploughs in newly liberated areas.
Thank you for bringing such a wonderful humanity to such a horrifying period of history. Really appreciate your channel.
I think, that there are first hand estimations of the Reich's Military Espionage /Fremde Heere Ost/, which provides an assumption to the food question in 1942-1943 as well.
They noted, in their two 1930s foreign economic reports (not a FHO report) and the last one just prior Barbarossa, that the Food production is heavily reliant on mechanization (labor resources were moved to the industry), i.e. Oil, while per-hectare output still lagged behind thus of the Third Reichs, by a factor of at least 2. So, holding the Ukraine (concentration of Grain production) + minimizing Oil deliveries (which was a fact in 1942) due to hold on to Northern Caucasus and Volga should result at least in an food delivery collapse, before the remaining economy fails. I think that Glanz has mentioned such thoughts too in his books.
2500 calories for Soviet soldiers and farmers seems quite normal, until you realize the amount of physical labor involved (infantry soldiers had to walk).
Think about how during winter a soldier needs over 6000 calories a day to fight.
Twice I have spent months trying to calculate a "normalised" cost of the Sherman vs the T-34 vs the Panther. My conclusion was that I might have got to within a factor of 10 but there was a 1 in 5 chance my figures were even further out than that. The increasing cash circulation in the USSR was not only due to inflation, in some respects people had more money in real terms. EG the price of some vegetables did not go up as fast as the amount of cash circulating. However this was also due to multiple factors. EG moderately increased output from 1941 in areas like Irkutsk (though it also went down in other areas), and government controls on pricing. Absolutely everything I looked at as a factor had multiple other factors affecting it, at least one of which had a magnitude that could not be determined. Just don't even try normalising using the price of a loaf of bread. That's a real road to insanity.
This is the interesting minutiae that never gets talked about. The devil, or Stalin, is in the details.
I'd like to see how the angels of USA are going keep their economy strong when their major food producing land is occupied,all of their major industry is either destroyed or under bombardment and a lot of men had to be drafted to the frontline.
Van Tuz it will NEVER happen but if it did, I don’t think Americans today would have the stomach for any of it.
@@elbucho8867 Perhaps we're about to "cut our teeth". In WW2 it was North Africa. I'll let someone else make a remark based on current events.
www.pix11.com/news/local-news/nypd-city-hall-deny-police-brass-shake-up-talk
What would the Soviet Union have done if Japan had decided to stop all soviet pacific convoys around this time? Wikipedia's stats put that route's contribution at 50% of lend-lease material, with a focus on trucks and the scarce food.
Immediately attacked (and probably destroyed) The Kwantung Army in Manchuria.
That's why The Japanese didn't do it.