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Modern Russian propaganda claims that World War II was won solely by the Soviet Union and thanks to Joseph (Dzhugashvili) Stalin… Let us explore the facts to assess the accuracy of these claims.
The Soviet Union Was Stronger
Thus, this was the force ratio in 1941:
With this force ratio, The Red Army should have completely defeated the German Wehrmacht. However, the opposite took place. During the first year of war, Germany penetrated into almost 2000km of Soviet territory, and had three times less victims than the defending Red Army (the number does not even include casualties among the civilians) though common sense dictates that the attacker should be quantitatively stronger and have more victims than the defending side.
In other words, though the Soviet Union was better armed, it suffered huge human and territorial losses because of poor organization and management.
As it is known, it took the Soviet Union 3 years to finally get rid of German occupation and another year to finally win the war. And this is despite the fact that the Soviet Union (even without US and British assistance addressed below) produced more military equipment and sent it to the front than Germany.
In particular, the following is the number of military equipment produced in 1941-1945 and sent to the front:
Nevertheless, as it has been noted, the USSR was able to get rid of German occupation only in 1944, and with all the aforementioned advantages, the Red Army “succeeded” in having three times more victims than the German Wehrmacht.
Hence, it can be contended that the Soviet military authorities conducted a rather clumsy and incompetent military policy, as a result of which winning the war took 4 years and lives of at least 10 million Soviet soldiers in spite of assistance by allies and its military (weapons) capabilities.
The West Armed the Soviet Union
When talking about the Soviet victory, it is worth taking into account the circumstance that starting from 1941 the US and Great Britain started to provide (mainly free) military aid to the Soviet Union within the framework of the Lend-Lease program.
In particular, the assistance of the Western countries consisted in provision of the following items to the Soviet Union:
- 7.000 tanks from the US (most of them M4 Sherman) and 5.200 from Great Britain
- 11.400 aircraft from the US and 5.000 from Great Britain
- 35.000 motorcycles
- 51.000 SUVs (mainly Jeep)
- 376.000 trucks
- 13.000 wagons
- 8.100 tractors
- 133.000 rifles
- 195 ships (mostly military ships)
- 350.000 tons of explosives (mostly trotyl)
- 4,5 million tons of food products
- 800.000 tons of non-ferrous metals
- 2,7 million tons of oil products
- 15 million pairs of military shoes.
If we add to the aforementioned the circumstance that a second front was opened against the German army by the Anglo-American forces in France in 1944, a question emerges… What would have been the course of the war and how would it have ended had the Soviet Union really been alone against Germany?
In other words, the claims that the Soviet Union won the war against Nazi Germany almost on its own are unfair, to say the least. And the statements according to which the victory was possible thanks to Stalin and other Soviet leaders are simply a lie.
