More advice needed.

[Sigrun]

Regarding US lend-lease to the Soviets in WW2.

Having done some research it would appear LL supplies began arriving in Russia in Oct 1941, and accounted over the duration of the war for approx 20% of Soviet available war materiel.

Is this in the right ballpark?

Thanks in advance.

(I've posted this in here because it'll apply to my CMBB war.)

[Der Alte Fritz]

The main influence of Lend Lease equipment was in trucks and radios, by and large the weapons that were sent were not widely used by Soviet forces. So your war should factor in mainly material assistance.

cheers

[Sigrun]

Originally posted by Der Alte Fritz:

The main influence of Lend Lease equipment was in trucks and radios, by and large the weapons that were sent were not widely used by Soviet forces. So your war should factor in mainly material assistance.

cheers

Apparently the Soviets couldn't have built so many of their own tanks without US steel?

Another query...how much of Germany's output was deployed on the eastern front? I've read as much as 90%, but that seems somewhat high.

[General Bolt]

Originally posted by Sigrun:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Der Alte Fritz:

The main influence of Lend Lease equipment was in trucks and radios, by and large the weapons that were sent were not widely used by Soviet forces. So your war should factor in mainly material assistance.

cheers

Apparently the Soviets couldn't have built so many of their own tanks without US steel?

Another query...how much of Germany's output was deployed on the eastern front? I've read as much as 90%, but that seems somewhat high. </font>

[Barkhorn1x]

One of the - vital - facets of Lend-Lease that is seldom remarked upon is the supply of close to 2,000 US locomtives to the USSR - who produced next to none during the war.

It is hard to imagine the Soviet offensives of '44-45 being successful w/o this contribution- and all those trucks of course.

Oh and BTW, England will complete it's loan payments for these items by the end of this year.

Thanks guys, even though took you 61 years.

Don't know where the payments from the USSR stand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease#Significance

Barkhorn.

[para]

Think i'm correct in saying the UK is the only country to pay you back at all!Better late then never.

[JT Fox]

Originally posted by Barkhorn1x:

Oh and BTW, England will complete it's loan payments for these items by the end of this year.

Thanks guys, even though took you 61 years.

Barkhorn.

Your welcome.

List of requirements for next war will follow shortly.

[Gazer]

Originally posted by para:

Think i'm correct in saying the UK is the only country to pay you back at all!Better late then never.

I don't think that is true. I might be wrong, but I think that Finland payed it all some 10 or 20 years after the war. I heard it mentioned in relation to study grants available for us in USA. One was supposed to be the war loans we payed to USA and since we were the only ones to actually pay it back they decided to give it back as study grants.

[JasonC]

Bzzt, sorry, wrong answer. US and UK LL to Russia, all items combined, came to only 7% of Russian war output by value. It was an even smaller component of actual armaments, since most of it was focused on logistical support items - railway equipment, trucks, packaged food for the army, and feedstocks for Russian productions in bottleneck areas (for ammo e.g.).

Interestingly enough, the portion of German war output gleaned from occupied Europe was about the same, 7%. Most of it from France (steel in particular) and the low countries and Denmark. Sweden was also critical to German war economy stuff in iron ore. The help to each was comparable, if anything Germany got slightly more from non-German sources than Russia got from non-Russian - and materially more if one counts non-German labor employed inside Germany as another kind of "import".

[JasonC]

para - the UK did not pay back LL amounts. They were offset first by "reverse LL" - mostly ship repairs for US ships conducted in UK ports - then the rest partially by UK investments in the US, and the sizable remainder were cancelled in a package deal related to the post war trading regime.

Basically the UK promised to dismantle its system of "imperial preference" tariffs, that prevented Canada and Australia, in particular, from trading mostly with the US, and promised to make the pound convertible into dollars, thus effectively allowing trade with the US to UK, as well (currency controls act as a form of protection). The US also provided a few billion dollars in fresh cash (after the war) as a stabilization loan as part of the package, on easy terms, which was repaid.

The first try at convertibility only lasted briefly before collapsing, until US dollar credits under the Marshall plan allowed it to be resumed.

There had been a large LL dollar balance remaining - on the order of $10 billion, worth around 15 times that today - which the US forgave in return for the trade liberalization measures. All concerned wanted to avoid the byzantine entangled legacy obligations that had followed WW I. Incidentally, Keynes negotiated this deal for the British side.

[Sigrun]

Thanks guys, that's been most helpful.

[para]

Originally posted by JasonC:

para - the UK did not pay back LL amounts. They were offset first by "reverse LL" - mostly ship repairs for US ships conducted in UK ports - then the rest partially by UK investments in the US, and the sizable remainder were cancelled in a package deal related to the post war trading regime.

Basically the UK promised to dismantle its system of "imperial preference" tariffs, that prevented Canada and Australia, in particular, from trading mostly with the US, and promised to make the pound convertible into dollars, thus effectively allowing trade with the US to UK, as well (currency controls act as a form of protection). The US also provided a few billion dollars in fresh cash (after the war) as a stabilization loan as part of the package, on easy terms, which was repaid.

The first try at convertibility only lasted briefly before collapsing, until US dollar credits under the Marshall plan allowed it to be resumed.

There had been a large LL dollar balance remaining - on the order of $10 billion, worth around 15 times that today - which the US forgave in return for the trade liberalization measures. All concerned wanted to avoid the byzantine entangled legacy obligations that had followed WW I. Incidentally, Keynes negotiated this deal for the British side.

Is there anything you don't know?

as usual JC a very informative post, thanks.