I’m going to be honest here, that alone is generally enough to make me downvote, ignore, and move on. However I respect that you’ve written a detailed historical response, which is the only reason I’m going to reply as I am.
I’ve had this debate too many times with tankies and it goes nowhere. The time and effort I could invest into replying to paragraph upon paragraph of text would yield nothing of value, and as I have seen time and time again we would both walk away without any difference of historical opinion. So I apologise but I’m not going to sit here and waste what could be an hour or more of my time sourcing and counter-arguing what I feel is a futile endeavour. And if I may offer some advice, conciseness is more respectful of ones time rather than the wall-of-text approach.
I will say that I fully acknowledge that Soviet troops were monumental in defeating Nazi Germany, but this was not in a vacuum and without the contributions of the other Allies and programs such as Lend-Lease the Soviets would have also not have achieved what they did. As for the Poland stuff, I heavily disagree, and I’ll leave it at that.
I respect and appreciate Lend-Lease, I can’t tell if it saved the war, but it certainly saved hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives by providing much-needed humanitary assistance in hunger-struck WW2 USSR.
As for conciseness, I don’t believe I’ve taken too long to explain my point of view, it’s just that the geopolitics of the era are complicated, and they require lengthy explanation by themselves. I haven’t overcomplicated anything, and it’s your choice whether to read it or not, but it’s a collection of several extremely important points IMO that define the Soviet policy in the prelude of the Great Patriotic War.
As for Poland, can you pinpoint me to what exactly of my analysis you disagree with? I’d like to learn more if you have any valuable input
I respect and appreciate Lend-Lease, I can’t tell if it saved the war, but it certainly saved hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives by providing much-needed humanitary assistance in hunger-struck WW2 USSR.
Almost all of the trucks used by the Soviet Military were US-made trucks delivered through that lend-lease program. I would guess that the ability to bring fuel and ammo to the front did help the Soviet Army quite some bit!
It is of course possible they could have won bringing the ammo to the front with horses instead of trucks, but honestly – I doubt they would have made it.
I’m not trying to argue about alternate history, you can speculate as much as you want about a Soviet victory with or without those trucks, I already said that it’s factual that lend-lease saved hundreds of thousands if not millions of Soviet lives. What’s this interrogation?
Hm, I should have actually quoted just the sentence “I respect and appreciate Lend-Lease, I can’t tell if it saved the war” because that’s what I was actually referring to. Sorry :)
Because it is very clear that it did save the war. Having lived in Germany, Finland, the Russia, and Ukraine, I hear a lot of that “~Soviet Union~the Russia did it practically all by itself”, which is extremely contrafactual. And hurts the Russia, as they don’t understand what their “možem povtorit’” actually holds to it…
But, it does seem that you and me very largely agree about things, so all in all things are just fine, no worries :)
I’m going to be honest here, that alone is generally enough to make me downvote, ignore, and move on. However I respect that you’ve written a detailed historical response, which is the only reason I’m going to reply as I am.
I’ve had this debate too many times with tankies and it goes nowhere. The time and effort I could invest into replying to paragraph upon paragraph of text would yield nothing of value, and as I have seen time and time again we would both walk away without any difference of historical opinion. So I apologise but I’m not going to sit here and waste what could be an hour or more of my time sourcing and counter-arguing what I feel is a futile endeavour. And if I may offer some advice, conciseness is more respectful of ones time rather than the wall-of-text approach.
I will say that I fully acknowledge that Soviet troops were monumental in defeating Nazi Germany, but this was not in a vacuum and without the contributions of the other Allies and programs such as Lend-Lease the Soviets would have also not have achieved what they did. As for the Poland stuff, I heavily disagree, and I’ll leave it at that.
I respect and appreciate Lend-Lease, I can’t tell if it saved the war, but it certainly saved hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives by providing much-needed humanitary assistance in hunger-struck WW2 USSR.
As for conciseness, I don’t believe I’ve taken too long to explain my point of view, it’s just that the geopolitics of the era are complicated, and they require lengthy explanation by themselves. I haven’t overcomplicated anything, and it’s your choice whether to read it or not, but it’s a collection of several extremely important points IMO that define the Soviet policy in the prelude of the Great Patriotic War.
As for Poland, can you pinpoint me to what exactly of my analysis you disagree with? I’d like to learn more if you have any valuable input
Almost all of the trucks used by the Soviet Military were US-made trucks delivered through that lend-lease program. I would guess that the ability to bring fuel and ammo to the front did help the Soviet Army quite some bit!
It is of course possible they could have won bringing the ammo to the front with horses instead of trucks, but honestly – I doubt they would have made it.
I’m not trying to argue about alternate history, you can speculate as much as you want about a Soviet victory with or without those trucks, I already said that it’s factual that lend-lease saved hundreds of thousands if not millions of Soviet lives. What’s this interrogation?
Hm, I should have actually quoted just the sentence “I respect and appreciate Lend-Lease, I can’t tell if it saved the war” because that’s what I was actually referring to. Sorry :)
Because it is very clear that it did save the war. Having lived in Germany, Finland, the Russia, and Ukraine, I hear a lot of that “~Soviet Union~the Russia did it practically all by itself”, which is extremely contrafactual. And hurts the Russia, as they don’t understand what their “možem povtorit’” actually holds to it…
But, it does seem that you and me very largely agree about things, so all in all things are just fine, no worries :)