How big of a role did Lend-Lease play in the Soviet's victory over Nazi Germany?

So without Lend-Lease, assuming those supplies that would've been sent to the Soviets were instead sent to France with the D-day landings and beyond, what would Europe look like at the closing of WW2? What impact would it have had on the Cold War?

The British sure, but the Soviet food situation was truly desperate and it would be pretty hard to argue that it was worse than Germany's except in the latest stages of the war. Germany had the responsibility of their own populace and that of occupied countries with declining production, but Soviet agricultural output collapsed by more than 60% and stayed that way until 1944 even with the liberation of territories adding tens of millions of mouths to feed. Even by 1945 most food products were below their pre-war production by 50%.

>Neither of them could have prosecuted a war without US involvement.
Again, what the hell are you basing this on?

>The British sure, but the Soviet food situation was truly desperate and it would be pretty hard to argue that it was worse than Germany's except in the latest stages of the war.
No, Soviet agricultural production was down about 40% from pre-war totals. Incidentally, about 40% of their population was overrun. Not that Soviet food production was great in the best of times, but they weren't starving in 1941, they weren't starving in 1942, and food aid like pretty much everything else, only got big in 1943.

>For agriculture 1942 was a dreadful year, with output down over 60 per cent compared to 1940. But at least the population which it had to support had also fallen, although only by one third. 1943 was even worse - farm output stagnated or fell further, while the population recovered from 130 to 143 million. Improvements followed, but were far less than needed to restore the Soviet diet. In wartime Soviet workers ate much less meat and vegetables, and hardly any sugar or preserves, making up for these with some extra fish and potatoes.
Mark Harrison, Soviet Planning in Peace and War, p. 130
The Soviets weren't outright suffering from mass starvation, but they did have widespread malnutrition, something that greatly affects workers and wasn't experienced on such a scale in Germany until later in the war.

Harrison also points out that Soviet agricultural policies were deliberate products of Lend-Lease, and that had they not been available, they "doubtless could have procured replacements".

> but they did have widespread malnutrition, something that greatly affects workers and wasn't experienced on such a scale in Germany until later in the war.
Germany's war economy was not confined to Germany though, they drew enormously on allied and conquered peoples for pretty much everything from primary resource extraction to processing to even weapons manufacture. And those people were starving, and in places like Poland or the German occupied areas of Yugoslavia, actually starving to death, not just suffering from malnutrition. Their food apparatus for Germany proper was very much sustained by expropriation, especially of former Soviet territories, but you can only keep that running for so long, what with the agricultural population you're exploiting dropping precipitously every year.

Do you have any stats on the extent to which Germany drew upon other countries for resources and manufacturing, and their reliance on expropriated food?

I don't know of any concise form citation for Germany's integration with occupied territories for their war economy. That's really something you'd need an entire book for.

>and their reliance on expropriated food?

From wages of Destruction, by Tooze, page 548

>In 1942-43 occupied Europe supplied Germany with more than a fifth of its grain, a quarter of its fats, and almost 30 per cent of its meat. Most of these provisions never crossed the German border. The food went directly to the Wehrmacht. Of those deliveries that did enter the Reich, the General Government supplied an astonishing 51 per cent German rye imports, 66 per cent of oats and 52 per cent of German potato imports.

Meanwhile, on page 366.

>What this meant in practice was that, by comparison with a German ration of more than 2,600 calories in early 1940, the 'ration' for the inhabitants of Poland's major cities was set at 609 calories. Jews were provided with 503 calories per day. By the end of the year the Polish ration had improved to 938 daily calories

419

>In Belgium and France, the official ration allocated to 'normal consumers' of as little as 1,300 calories per day. Daily allocatiosn in Norway and the Czech protectorate hovered around 1,600 calories.

It was huge. The Germans probably would have exhausted themselves sooner or later but without LL the chances of any soviet counteroffensive - much less one into the heart of western Europe - is a laughable proposition.

Why were Poles and Jews given rations at all if Hitler wanted to exterminate them?

19.3% precisely.

>How big of a role did it play really?

Lend-Lease kept the Soviets in the war and without it, they’d have been forced to sign a cease-fire with the Germans.

...

For much of the war, the Red Army was better equipped, at least in aggregate, than the Wehrmacht forces. Soviet problems were primarily in the realms of command and control, not the lack of gear.

"No"

>I don't know of any concise form citation for Germany's integration with occupied territories for their war economy.
Here's two tables on it, both drawing on data from 1943. In armaments production, the occupied territories made a negligible 9.3% contribution to total output, but had a more noticeable impact in shipbuilding, vehicles, and communications equipment. In raw materials, the most important were iron and aluminum.

>at least in aggregate
>but per capita it was dismal

K

You do realize that the two have absolutely nothing to do with each other, right? The nation's armed forces are not comprised of the total population.

do you think he was talking about per capita in the total population or per capita in the army?

I presume he meant per capita of the total population, since per capita is something usually applied to GDP totals. In any event, when you consider that for most of 1941, the Red Army was fielding less men at the front at any given time than the Germans were, the comparison doesn't really make sense if you're talking about per capita among the army, except MAYBE some parts of early 1942, and even then I don't think it works.