“To what extent was the Soviet Union
responsible for the Allied victory in Europe in the Second World War?”
It is
indisputable that the Soviet Union’s Red Army did most of the fighting against
Germany in the Second World War, sustaining losses unparalleled in history
before finally driving back the invaders; twenty million war dead, only half of
them soldiers. When one compares these sobering figures with the next highest
figure, China’s ten million, or the combined losses of Britain and the United
States, fewer than one million, the magnitude of the Soviet Union’s loss
becomes clear. However, it would be a mistake to suggest that the Soviet Union
singlehandedly won the war. Besides the North African and Italian campaigns and
the eventual invasion of Europe, which undoubtedly took a great deal of
pressure off the Red Army, the Western Allies engaged in various less obvious
but still crucial aspects of total war; the Royal Navy was responsible for the
effective blockade of Germany throughout the duration of the war, while the
combined air forces of Britain and the United States carried out the strategic
bombing campaign which weakened German industry. Lend-Lease from the Western
Allies also made a considerable contribution to the Soviet war effort,
providing Soviet industry with raw goods and technical experience which it had
previously lacked. This indirect involvement was the deciding factor in a war
which the Germans came very close to winning; though the Soviet Union
contributed to the defeat of Nazi Germany more than any other Allied nation,
the Western powers also made a significant and vital contribution to the war
effort.
The Soviet Union
provided by far the greatest direct military contribution to the victory of the
Allied powers over Nazi Germany, but the efforts of the Western Allies also made
a significant impact. When Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy on
June 6 1944, the Great Patriotic War had been raging for three years, and the
Wehrmacht had been severely degraded. After the shattering defeats of 1941 and
the hard-won stalemate of 1942, the tide of the war turned at the Battle of
Stalingrad, beginning on August 23 1942. After the surrender of General Paulus’
VI. Army on February 2 1943, the Soviets began to roll the Germans back, and
following the Battle of Kursk in July 1943, no further large-scale German
offensives were possible. The Wehrmacht sustained a combined total of 5.5
million losses (dead, wounded, captured and missing) on the Eastern Front,
compared to approximately 1.25 million in the Western and Southern theatres[1]. Furthermore, Germany only lost around 6,000
tanks and self-propelled guns[2]
in the Western and African theatres, compared to around 34,000 in the East. However,
it is important to remember that, even in 1944, Germany’s defeat was by no
means assured. The opening of a Second Front against Germany had always been
Stalin’s foremost demand of the Western Allies; he saw direct military
assistance as a necessity. In June 1941, 70% of the Wehrmacht was committed to
Operation Barbarossa, and by June 1942, that number had risen to 80%; however,
following the invasion of Western Europe, it fell to 60%. While all of these
figures demonstrate that the Soviets did most of the fighting, the contribution
of the Western Allies took a considerable amount of pressure off the Red Army
and was as such an important factor in Germany’s defeat.
In the only true
total war in history, winning the battle on land was not enough to secure
victory; the German war economy had to be targeted as well as the German Army,
and it was the Western Allies, not the Soviet Union, which took on the task of
pounding Germany’s cities to rubble, helping to secure victory the Allied
Victory in Europe. One cannot consider the British and American contribution to
the Allied war effort without considering their combined bomber offensive, but
the real effects of the campaign are difficult to judge; simply gauging the
loss of life and property is not sufficient, as the disproportionate impact of
the destruction of specific targets on Germany’s war economy must also be
considered. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, conducted during and immediately
after the war, made use of the interrogations of important German officials to
supplement its statistical research; the testimony of these officials,
especially Albert Speer, Hitler’s Armaments Minister, provided an insight into
not only the impact of strategic bombing on Germany’s industry, but also the effects
of area bombing on German morale. According to the Survey’s Morale Division,
the effects of area bombing on the morale of the German populace were considerable.
Speer, for instance, reported that in the wake of the 1943 raid on Hamburg,
the, “depression among the population was extraordinary”[3],
and that if the raids had continued, “German morale...would have suffered a
critical blow”[4]. However,
in its published report, the Division countered that the extent of Nazi control
over Germany’s civilian population prevented the loss of morale from being
transferred into a noticeable drop in production output. The Survey concluded
that while area bombing raids, “seriously depressed the morale of German
civilians”[5],
they did not, “decisively affect the behaviour—or the capacity—of the German
people to support the war effort”[6].
Regardless of the impacts on German morale, the primary objective of the strategic
bombing campaign was the destruction of German industry and infrastructure.
Since the war, there has been a great deal of debate over whether the Allied
air forces were effective in this capacity. A common argument against the
effectiveness of the campaign is the fact that. German military output
continued to rise between 1939 and 1944 as evidence for the ineffectiveness of
the strategic bombing campaign.
TABLE I:
COMPARISON OF GERMAN, BRITISH, AMERICAN AND SOVIET AIRCRAFT PRODUCTION, 1941-44
1941
|
1942
|
1943
|
1944
|
|
Britain
|
20,094
|
23,672
|
26,263
|
26,461
|
Soviet Union
|
15,737
|
25,436
|
34,900
|
40,300
|
United States
|
19,433
|
47,836
|
85,898
|
96,318
|
Germany
|
12,401
|
15,409
|
24,807
|
40,593
|
GRAPH I: COMPARISON OF GERMAN,
AMERICAN AND SOVIET TANK PRODUCTION, 1941-44
SOURCE: Cloudworth, WWII
Tank Production in 1940-1945. http://cloudworth.com/WW2-articles/WWII-tank-production.html. (Accessed 3/09/2015).
However, it is
important to note that in the first years of the war Germany was still running
a largely consumer-oriented economy. Unlike the three major Allied Powers,
which all embarked upon the task of total economic mobilization shortly after
they became involved in the war, Germany’s full economic potential was not
truly exploited until 1944. As Table I and Graph I show, the growth of the
German military production between 1941 and 1944 was matched by the Soviet
Union, which lost massive amounts of territory in those years. Meanwhile,
British production stayed fairly constant, as by 1941 the British economy had
been more or less fully mobilized. The
peak of German production in 1944 is indicative of the increasing desperation
of the Nazi leadership and its willingness to make greater sacrifices on the
home front rather than an indication of the ineffectiveness of the Allied strategic
bombing campaign. On the other hand, the Survey’s Economic Division also
concluded that the targeting priorities of the Bombing Campaign were incorrect.
While the Allies had initially focused almost exclusively on hitting factories
which produced high-level finished goods in order to create industrial choke
points, (most famously in the two Schwienfurt Raids on August 17 and October 14
1943, aimed at damaging Germany’s ball-bearing production in order to cripple
Germany’s ability to produce aircraft and industrial machinery.) The Survey
concluded that basic industries, such as electricity, transportation and oil,
were better targets, as they could not be easily restored to full production
capacity once they had been hit. The division concluded that power stations
would have been the best targets, though electric power had been, “removed as a
priority target for strategic bombers”[7],
during the war because of its relative de-centralization. Still, the two
sectors cited by the survey as the second best targets for strategic bombing,
oil and transportation, had been targeted extensively by the Allies following
the invasion of Europe. They concluded that the Allied attacks on Germany’s
transportation network in 1944 and 1945 had, “paralysed the German industrial
economy”[8],
and that the simultaneous attacks on German petroleum facilities brought about
its, “total collapse”[9].
It can therefore be assumed that while the large area raids which took place in
the early years of the war had a limited effect on the German war economy, the
later raids on key industrial sectors contributed a great deal to the Allied
victory in Europe.
Throughout the
war, the Soviet Union received direct economic aid from the Western Allies in
the form of Lend-Lease. For many years it was widely accepted that Lend-Lease
to the Soviet Union constituted only a small fraction of the nation’s total war
production; the official party line was that Lend-Lease contributed about, “4%
of the total production capacity of the USSR”[10].
However, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, archival evidence has revealed
that, though the quantity of equipment supplied to the Red Army was not great,
the Soviets did receive high-end equipment that it could not produce for itself.
Though the Western Allies produced only 0.5% of all the small arms used by the
Red Army during the war, they also produced about 20% of its armoured vehicles,
including all of its armoured personnel carriers By December 1941, the Soviets
had lost 20,500 tanks, leaving only 670 to defend Moscow. At the beginning of
the winter offensive of December 1941, British tanks made up 30 to 40% of the
total Soviet medium and heavy tank force; by the end of the month, 466 tanks
had been delivered. While these tanks were certainly inferior to the Soviet
T-34 and KV-1, those models were not produced in large numbers until 1942.
British aircraft also made a significant contribution to the Soviet victory at
the battle of Moscow. About 15% of the aircraft defending Moscow in December
1941 were British Tomcats and Hurricanes, but their contribution was
disproportionate to their numbers because a large number of Soviet aircraft at
that time were all but obsolete[11].
As well as military equipment, the Western Allies also provided the Soviet
Union with industrial goods to help make up for its massive territorial and
material losses. Once again, though their actual contribution to Soviet
domestic production was small, Britain and the United States were able to
provide various industrial goods, such as specific types of machine tools,
which the Soviets could not produce for themselves, and also raw goods such as
aluminium and rubber, which they lacked at the time and needed for the
production of their own tanks and aircraft. While the Allies only produced
about 18% of the Soviet air force during the war, 50% of Soviet-made aircraft
were made of aluminium which they supplied. The Western contribution to the
Soviet economy, and therefore the Soviet victory, was as such considerable.
When evaluating
the respective contributions of the Western Allies and Soviet Union to
Germany’s final defeat, it is important to consider all of the factors involved
in total war, and not just direct military action. Prior to June 1944, the
Allies weakened the German war economy with their combined bomber offensive and
surface blockade while strengthening the Soviet war effort with Lend-Lease.
Though the effects of the early bombing raids were limited, Lend-Lease provided
the Soviets with valuable finished goods that they could not produce for
themselves at the moment when they were needed most. Having pinned a large part
of Germany’s armed forces on the Atlantic Coast since the conclusion of the
Battle of France, the Allies opened the second front, forcing Germany to divide
its forces further. From D-Day onwards, the Allied strategic bombing tactics
were refined, which lead to the total collapse of Germany’s war economy, while greater
and greater amounts of Lend-Lease was pumped into the Soviet economy after
1942. These Western efforts supported the military efforts of the Soviet Union
in ensuring the final defeat of Nazi Germany.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
War Chronicle, Estimated War Dead World War II. http://warchronicle.com/numbers/WWII/deaths.htm.
(Accessed 06/07/2015).
Military History Now, The
Atlantic Wall — 11 Amazing Facts About the Nazi Defences at Normandy. http://militaryhistorynow.com/2014/06/04/the-atlantic-wall-11-amazing-facts-about-the-nazi-defences-at-normandy/. (Accessed 14/07/2015).
History, Battle of Kursk. http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/battle-of-kursk. (Accessed
14/-7/2015).
The Choices Program, Strategic
Bombing in World War II. http://www.choices.edu/resources/supplemental_fogofwar_ww2.php. (Accessed 14/07/2015).
The University of Warwick, The
Economics of World War II: an overview. http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/mharrison/public/ww2overview1998.pdf. (Accessed 15/07/2015).
Historynet, How Lend-Lease Helped
the Soviets Defeat the Germans. http://www.historynet.com/did-russia-really-go-it-alone-how-Lend-Lease-helped-the-soviets-defeat-the-germans.htm. (Accessed 18/07/2015).
Historynet, World War II: Eighth Air Force Raid on Schwienfurt. http://www.historynet.com/world-war-ii-eighth-air-force-raid-on-schweinfurt.htm. (Accessed 08/09/2015).
The Unknown War, Russian
Historian: Importance of Lend-Lease cannot be overstated, http://asia.rbth.com/business/2015/05/08/allies_gave_soviets_130_billion_under_lend-lease_45879.html, (Accessed 08/09/2015).
Gentile, Gian P. How Effective Is
Strategic Bombing? Lessons Learned From World War II To Kosovo. NYU Press,
New York, 2001.
Davies, N. Europe at War 1939-1945:
No Simple Victory. Panmacmillan, London, 2007.
[1] No two sources seem to corroborate
on the question of German casualties. These figures are from the official war
diary of the German High Command, published in a newspaper called Die Ziet in 1949.
[2] Including self-propelled artillery
and tank destroyers.
[3]
Gentile, Gian P. How Effective Is
Strategic Bombing? Lessons Learned From World War II to Kosovo, NYU Press,
New York, 2001, P. 63.
[4]
Ibid
[5]
Ibid P. 63.
[6]
Ibid
[7] Ibid, P.70
[8] Ibid, P.71
[9] Ibid.
[10] The Unknown War, Russian Historian: Importance of Lend-Lease
cannot be overstated, http://asia.rbth.com/business/2015/05/08/allies_gave_soviets_130_billion_under_lend-lease_45879.html, (Accessed 08/09/2015).
[11]
The Yak-1 was the only Soviet aircraft comparable to the Hurricane and Tomcat,
but it was not available in large numbers during the Battle of Moscow.
