by Max Barry

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by The People's Republic of United States of Stalinia. . 64 reads.

Lend Lease and the USSR

In recent years it has become popular for Western media and internet forums to increasingly demean the Soviet victory over Germany with various myths, framing them in the worst light possible to the point where the Nazis are seen as the honorable victims by some. Among the most famous is the myth of Lend-Lease. The myth is not so much that it didn't exist, but in how key a role it played in the Soviet Victory. The most common claim is that Lend-lease saved the USSR from destruction in 1941 or was a deciding factor in the European Victory overall. This is a bald-faced lie in the face of statistical evidence and historical knowledge, I will explain why by giving facts.

1) Timing
2) Surplus
3) Goods Sent
4) Strategic Bombing and the Western Front
5) Western Support and Help of Nazis
6) The war was artificially created and artificially prolonged.
Conclusion:
Afterword:

- The USSR traded with the Nazis too!
- The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact! The Division of Poland!
- The Soviets let the Germans Train on their land!
- The USSR Never Paid Back the Lend-Lease Debt

1) Timing
It is an undeniable fact that the USSR only started to regularly receive Lend-Lease in 1943, AFTER the tide-turning battle of Stalingrad, (and the victory at Moscow and the countless battles before that). Britain, meanwhile, recieved a lend-lease of 3x larger an amount.
On June 1st 1941 USSR had 25932 tanks and howitzers, 6060 were produced by 31st of December, 1941. 31992 vehicles total. Approximately 20,5K was lost by the end of the year. That means 11,5K tanks left. In 1941 the USSR received 361 tanks, all from Britain, this was approximately 1% of the soviet tank forces on the eve of the battle of Moscow, and none of them took part in the battle.

2) Surplus
The majority of initial Lend-Lease was made up of stock-excess of the US and the UK army, with old M3s Grants, M3 Stewarts, British Matilda's and older model Spitfires and Hurricanes. These were poorly received by Soviet troops, Matildas did not come with any instruction and thus their different mechanical nature made it hard to even operate, and repairing them was next to impossible. Their guns, whilst powerful in 1939, were harmless to German tanks unless at close ranges, and it's armor no longer could take the hits of German tank guns. The complex track system and narrow tracks made it impossible to use in snow or mud. The M-3 Grant, (the older cousin of the M4 Sherman), was better in mobility and simplicity but at the cost of being a completely obsolete garbage can of a tank and the soviet troops hated them.

From Stephen Zaloga's "Red Army Handbook": "One of the less popular lend-lease designs provided to the USSR was the M3 Lee medium tank, the ancestor of the better and more successful M4 Sherman. Its archaic design and turreted 37mm gun and its thin armor led to its caustic Russian nickname, which translates as "a coffin for seven brothers".

The M4 Sherman variant used by the USSR was a happy accident, and even then one that required modification. The M4A2 sent was equipped with a diesel engine, not a gasoline one. Diesels were only used by the Marines in the US Armed forces, they were thus a big pain in the neck for the US army, until they decided to send them to the USSR. They were fitted with extended end connectors (The envy of Normandy M4s, struggling in the bocages) and sent to special formations such as the 9th tank division.

Hero of the Soviet Union, Dmitriy Loza provides some insight, although, because he never actually served with T 34s his ability to compare is limited, and he disregards the extended end connectors. https://iremember.ru/en/memoirs/tankers/dmitriy-loza/

A similar, but rare story is of the Air-Cobra. The plane was considered uncompleted and with numerous production flaws by the British and sent to the USSR. The main issue was its inability to perform well above 15,000 feet, making its original role as an interceptor, useless. It's heavy cannon made it prefect for ground attack and the low-level dog-fights of the Eastern front however, and thus it was a unintended boon for the VVS and became the most liked foreign fighter of WW 2 in the USSR.

- http://lend-lease.airforce.ru/english/articles/romanenko/p-39/
- https://scout.com/military/warrior/Article/P-39-Airacobra-Americas-Worst-WWII-Fighter-Was-the-Star-of-Russi-106937163

3) Goods Sent
Lets just compare the goods USSR received from the Lend Lease to the goods they manufactured on their own:

Lend Lease / Russian product (1941–1945)

aircrafts: 14,795/134,100

tanks: 7,056/102,800

artillery cannons: 8,218/825,200

oil: 2,670,000/110,600,000 (tons)

steel: 1,500,000/39,680,000 (tons)

food: 733,000/64,121,000 (tons)

https://www.zhihu.com/question/40962741

Lend lease sent to the USSR:

Aircraft - 7.411 (CW) + 14.795 (US) = 22.206

Automotive:

--- 1.5 ton trucks 151.053 (US

--- 2.5 ton trucks 200.662 (US)

--- Willys Jeeps 77.972 (US)

Bren Gun Carriers - 2.560 (CW)

Boots - 15 million pairs (US)

Communications equipment:

--- Field phones - 380.135 (US)

--- Radios - 40.000 (US)

--- Telephone cable - 1.25 million miles (US)

Cotton cloth - 107 million square yards (US)

Foodstuffs - 4.5 million tons (US)

Leather - 49.000 tons (US)

Motorcycles - 35.170 (US)

Locomotives - 1.981 units (US)

Rolling stock - 11.155 units (US)

Tanks - 5.218 (CW) + 7.537 (US) = 12.755

Tractors - 8.701 (US)

Trucks - 4.020 (CW) + 357.883 (US) = 361.903

That's the entirety of Allied Lend Lease to the Soviet Union. We did a good job, that's a lot of stuff to produce and bring to a country on the other side of the world during a maritime war effort; but that's barely 10% of Soviet production*, and it most certainly did not win the war.

*(The war was decided in the winter of 1941, before the first American trade arrived.)

For more precise numbers:

Aircraft Production
>Soviet Union:
1942: 18,251 plus 4,042 lend-lease
1943: 34,637 plus 9,206 lend-lease
1943: 33,210 plus 6,459 lend-lease
>Germany:
1942: 17,400
1943: 25,200
1944: 34,300

Tank Production
>Soviet Union:
1942: 20,727 plus 4,582 lend-lease
1943: 28,608 plus 3,798 lend-lease
1943: 28,963 plus 3,223 lend-lease
>Germany:
1942: 4,800
1943: 11,800
1944: 17,800
(Source: M Harrison, Soviet Planning in Peace and War 1938-45, Cambridge 1985)

At its peak in 1944, Allied aid to the USSR accounted for about 10% of the Soviet GNP. (Note 'Allied' - it wasn't just American aid).

Even the famed trucks are over-exaggerated

01/01/42
Domestic russian trucks in service: 317,100
Lend lease trucks: 0
---
01/01/43
Domestic Russian trucks in service: 378,800
Lend lease trucks: 22,000
---
01/01/44
Domestic Russian trucks in service: 387,000
Lend lease trucks: 94,100
---
01/01/45
Domestic Russian trucks in service: 395,200
Lend lease trucks: 191,300
---
05/01/45
Domestic russian trucks in service: 385,700
Lend lease trucks: 218,100
---

A) Note: "trucks" cover any kind of military transport vehicles.
B) Note: By 1944 was 4-6% of the trucks in Russian service were captured from the Germans.

A more compressed version: Red Army Motor Vehicle Park in thousands
Vehicle - Date 22/6/41 - 1/1/42 - 1/1/43 - 1/1/44 - 1/1/45 - 1/5/45
- Domestic - 272.6, 317.1, 378.8, 387.0, 395.2, 385.7
% of Total Park - 100.0%, 99.6%, 99.7%, 77.9%, 63.6%, 58.1%
- Imported- N/A, N/A, 22.0, 94.1, 191.3, 218.1
% of Total Park - 0.0%, 0.0%, 5.4%, 19.0%, 30.4%, 32.8%
- Captured- N/A, 1.4, 3.7, 14.9, 34.7, 60.6
% of Total Park - 0.0%, 0.4%, 0.9%, 3.9%, 6.0%, 9.1%
- Total - 272.6, 318.5, 404.5, 496, 621.2, 664.4

IF you take the time to decipher the numbers posted above, you will see that although there is no doubt the LL trucks helped a lot, they were in no way decisive in the outcome of the war (by decisive I mean their absence would have meant a German victory). The Soviets also purposely tailored their production to complement LL materiel deliveries, thus the reduced Soviet truck output from '42 onwards was not a result of their plant being maxed out, it was a conscious decision once it was clear LL trucks would become available in quantity so as to allow domestic production to focus on other areas of industry. On a side note, another little known fact about LL trucks is that about a third of them (119,000 mv) were actually re-assembled in Soviet factories after delivery.

All info on trucks from "Journal of Slavic Military Studies" Vol. 10, June 1997, "Motor Vehicle Transport Deliveries through Lend-Lease" by V.F. Vorsin.

Additionally many of these people ignore the fact that the mathematics of soviet production do not include products from the previous decade of industry, which is why these statistics

Railroad Rails
Soviet Production: 48,990
Allied Deliveries: 622,100
Total: 671,090
Allied Proportion: 92.7%

Locomotives
Russian Production: 442
Allied Deliveries: 1966
Total: 2408
Allied Proportion: 81.6%

Rail cars
Soviet Production: 2635
Allied Deliveries: 11,075
Total: 13,710
Allied Proportion: 80.7%

Explosives (tons)
Soviet Production: 600,000
Allied Deliveries: 295,600
Total: 895,600
Allied Proportion: 33%

Copper Ore (in tons)
Soviet Production: 470,000
Allied Deliveries: 387,600
Total: 857,600
Allied Proportion: 45.2%

Aluminum (thousands of tons)
Soviet: 263
Allied Deliveries 328.1
Total: 591.1
Allied Proportion: 55.5%

Tires
Soviet Production: 8,368,000
Allied Deliveries: 3,606,000
Total: 11,974,000
Allied Proportion: 30.1%

Machine Tools
Soviet Production: 115,400
Allied Deliveries: 44,704
Total: 160,104
Allied Proportion: 27.9%

(Beaumont, Joan. Harrison, Mark. Accounting For War: Soviet Production, Employment, and the Defense Burden, 1941-1945)

These are not the same as the amount of total domestic production was used in the war. If these railcars and trains were not sent the USSR would probably made do with the 25,000 locomotives and half a million freight cars she already had, (People's Commissariat of Transport main-gauge trains only, other trains such as narrow-gauge trains and kleinloks not included). The total Soviet locomotives destroyed or captured 1941-1945: 15,800 including all trains. The number of People's Commissariat of Transport main-gauge locomotives destroyed or captured: 3,800. Number of German locomotives captured/recaptured in the 1943 offensive: 2,000.
>http://izmerov.narod.ru/rstories/reihsbahn.html

This was displayed earlier when I counted the number of tanks the Soviet union had for 1941 including both pre-war stock and production of 1941. It is self-evident, that for tanks the USSR had over 2x more from pre-war production than what they produced in the first year meaning they started off with a significant number, which tips the balance from 20-50% and down into the previous 10%.

A study on soviet transport details the extent of soviet railways up to 'modern day' (the 80s): http://www.marines.mil/Portals/59/Publications/Soviet%20Union%20Study_8.pdf

In additionally, regardless of what was sent, much of it did not reach the USSR because U-boats often sank convoys, and much of what was delivered took time to apply. Western steel had to be case hardened, SU home production did not require this treatment as it was hard from day 1. LL steel income therefore is misleading, as it took a relative period of time for it to be used, in fact its prime use was domestic construction rather than military, as indeed were most LL food stuffs since the Red Army used salted and dried food stuffs rather than canned. And you cannot assert that it did much to feed the whole population because

A) 320 MILLION tonnes of wheat alone was produced in USSR 1941-1945. Without the lands occupied by nazis.
B) Total LL supply of food was 4,478 million tonnes. 1,4% of just the wheat crops in Soviet Union.
Food and other strategic deliveries to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease Act, 1941-1945:
https://histrf.ru/uploads/media/default/0001/12/df78d3da0fe55d965333035cd9d4ee2770550653.pdf

Lastly (for this section) the soviet merchant fleet was more than involved in the deliveries of Lend lease since the Japanese didn't want the USSR in the war against them, the US was able to rely on Russian-flagged ships to deliver goods unharassed while US flagged ships were freely targeted by the Japanese.

According to The Reports to Congress on Lend-Lease operations. Messages from the Presidents of the United States, (U. S. Government Printing Office. Washington, D.C. 1941-1957), roughly 46% of the goods destined for the Soviet Union were shipped via the Pacific Ocean. The goods were directed across the Pacific Ocean to Soviet Far Eastern ports, and through the Bering Strait via the Northern Sea Route.

All information on the lend lease fleet activity:
http://lend-lease.airforce.ru/english/articles/paperno/index.htm

The Canadian contribution, although a biased article, which uses some less than reputable sources, it does use documents from the time and provides examples of the various issues in the lend-lease shipping, (such as the structural issues of the rushed Liberty ships): https://www.cnrs-scrn.org/northern_mariner/vol20/tnm_20_129-147.pdf

4) Strategic Bombing and the Western Front
The other claim relating to Lend-Lease is that US bombing raids destroyed German production and thus let Soviet production to come on top and that Western interference in Italy and Africa was somehow a benefit to the USSR.

HOWEVER even according to Western historians Strategic bombing only began to wear down German economy in 1944, and the first 1000 bomber raid only occurred in May 1942 1943 in the bombing of Cologne, and was not repeated for many months. The USSR did not sit idly either, with most of the Luftwaffe tied up tangling with the Soviet Air force and conducting bombing raids of its own.

“In the first half of 1944, battle casualty rates for every 1,000 bomber crewmen serving six months in combat included 712 killed or missing and 175 wounded: 89 percent. By one calculation, barely one in four U.S. airmen completed twenty-five missions over Germany, a minimum quota that was soon raised to thirty and then thirty-five on the assumption that the liberation of France and Belgium and the attenuation of German airpower made flying less lethal.” ― Rick Atkinson, The Guns at Last Night: The War in Western Europe 1944-1945

“Allied air forces flying from England lost twenty bombers a day in March; another three thousand Eighth Air Force bombers were damaged that month. Morale problems could be seen in the decision of nearly ninety U.S. crews in March and April to fly to neutral countries, usually Sweden or Switzerland, to be interned for the duration.” ― Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944

Here are bombing operations of the USSR
(I hate using wikipedia however these articles are sourced): >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World_War_II#Soviet_strategic_bombing
>http://www.airwar.ru/history/av2ww/soviet/tb7/tb7.html
>http://www.century-of-flight.net/Aviation%20history/WW2/Soviet%20bombing%20raids.htm

Additionally US bombers often had to land in the USSR after a mission, without which they would have not been able to fly home and would have ended up on the bottom of the English Channel or a burning wreck in France. A prominent example is Operation Frantic.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Frantic

>https://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21586520-damning-verdict-bombing-campaign-europe-during-second-world-war-costly
>http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/articles/failurestratbombing.aspx

Moreover Soviet production outproduced Germany by almost 50% more in many industrial areas despite the fact that they were diverting plenty of resources to the reconstruction of their industrial base, much of which was uprooted and rebuilt during the German advance. Meanwhile the Germans most prominent diversion of industrial resources was the Atlantic Wall.
"In the Soviet case 8 million tons of steel and 90 million tons of coal in 1943 were translated into 48,000 heavy artillery pieces and 24,000 tanks; Germany in the same year turned 30 million tons of steel and 340 million tons of coal into 17,000 tanks and 27,000 heavy guns." - Richard Overy, Why The Allies Won, Page 182, W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (May 17, 1997)
https://books.google.com/books?id=aA-lS2K4hJkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=why+the+allies+won&hl=en&sa=X&ei=hDSyUZ20LczxyAHO6oCoBQ#v=snippet&q=%22In%20the%20soviet%20case%208%20million%22&f=false

And if you look at the war's top nazi aces they all made their career on the eastern front, and most of them died there too.

Onto the actual Western fighting.
First the West outright delayed and delayed the opening of a Western Front, despite the USSR and Stalin asking repeatedly for a Second Front from at least 1942 onwards, and receiving only hollow re-assurances in return, even as the USSR fought tooth and claw with the best of the German military forces.
The D-day landings were continually post-poned. A failed attempt at a raid, (set up to fail) was the example given for their "inability" in spite of the fact that unlike in 1944 at D-Day, the Atlantic Wall and the Normandy defenses of the Germans had not been set up yet. This failed attempt had been to send in Canadian troops onto a heavily defended cliff-side in broad daylight with little support. Calling it a set up would be an understatement.
- https://consortiumnews.com/2011/08/18/truth-still-a-casualty-at-dieppe/
- https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/we-were-sitting-ducks-100-year-old-veteran-shares-dieppe-raid-memories-1.3671764

The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 by Rick Atkinson details the Italian terrain was horrible for an offensive, and how many lives were lost in this campaign while achieving so little. This is of course ignoring how Italy was a minor player, especially by that point in the war and taking it out of the war wouldn't open a new front because of the horrible terrain created by the Apennine mountains, a fact known since Hannibal's invasion.

The largest and most significant action taken by the Western Allies prior to late 1944 was the North African Campaign. However that was important for the Western Allies only. The USSR didn't use the Suez canal for its war effort and could trade with the British through Persia and the rest of Asia. An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, also by Rick Atkinson, deals with the whole North African campaign. The book heavily criticizes the Allied's blunders; confusion, chaos, faulty planning, faulty execution and overall lack of leadership throughout the campaign, something that the famed Field-Marshall Rommel, the Desert Fox, took full advantage of despite the fact that the only Axis forces there were the limited Afrika Korps (which shows how little Hitler cared about Africa). Mediterranean Control again only helped the Allies since the Black Sea was unavailable until after the USSR pushed the Germans out of their territories, by which time the lend-lease aid was already merely a helpful bonus.

“Old Ironsides, the only American tank division to see desert combat in World War II, was the only one to get no desert training. Hamilton H. Howze, the 1st Armored operations officer and a future four-star general, later asserted, “None of the division was worth a damn.” ― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

5) Western Support and Help for Nazis
The assistance to the Soviets by the Western Allies and their military actions against the Germans would likely have been uneccessary had they not spent the latter half of the 1930s (and into the war) helping the Germans gain power. As is outright stated, WW-2 wouldn't have happened in the first place without the actions of the Western Allies prior to and in the beginning of the war. In other words, the argument of Allied assistance to the Soviets is in many parts negated by their assistance to the Nazis.

The Nazis, by the time they attacked the Soviet Union, not only had or retained the backing of many large and small US companies, but also possessed access to the industrial works and resources of the entirety of Western Europe excluding Britain. This only makes sense considering the highly privatized Nazi economic system and elitist ideology.

"We stand for maintenance of private property. We shall protect private enterprise as the most expedient, or rather the sole possible, economic order." - Adolf Hitler, speech in 1926, quoted by Heiden in Der Fuhrer (a 1944 book by the historian Konrad Heiden)

“Privatization” was coined in English descriptions of the German experience in the mid-1930s. In the early twentieth century, many European economies featured state ownership of vital sectors. Reprivatisierung, or re-privatization, marked the Nazi regime’s efforts to de-nationalize sectors of the German economy. As Bel notes, “German privatization of the 1930s was intended to benefit the wealthiest sectors and enhance the economic position and political support of the elite.”
- https://daily.jstor.org/the-roots-of-privatization/

>Christoph Buchheim and Jonas Scherner, 'The Role of Private Property in the Nazi Economy: The Case of Industry'(The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 66, No. 2 (Jun., 2006)- pp. 390-416: http://economics.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Workshops-Seminars/Economic-History/buchheim-041020.pdf
>http://www.ub.edu/graap/nazi.pdf
>http://www.ub.edu/graap/JEP.pdf
>https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/04/capitalism-and-nazism/

The company Standard Oil supplied millions of barrels of oil to the Nazis. In the Canary Islands in general, a filling station was set up for German submarines which provided them an ample base for the Battle of the Atlantic allowing them to easily extend their range South. In addition, this corporation owned a patent for tetraethyl, which was part of the fuel for aircraft.
- https://newrepublic.com/article/104346/standard-oil-axis-ally

The International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) established a supply of components and even entire ready-to-use units for the V-missiles which bombarded Britain. According to the contract, ITT conscientiously supplied Germany with special communication equipment, high-frequency equipment, selenium rectifiers, fuses to artillery shells (30,000 each month), radar equipment, telephone sets, switches and many, many others.

The International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation maintained close ties with leaders of Nazi Germany from 1933 until the end of the war in 1945, according to Anthony Sampson, the author of a forthcoming book, “The Sovereign State of ITT,” to be published by Stein and Day. His charge is based on a study of U.S. government records in the National Archives that have been ignored until recently.
- https://www.jta.org/1973/04/24/archive/disclose-itt-had-nazi-ties

IBM was yet another friend of the Nazis. IBM, supplied computing machines, spare parts for them and special paper for concentration camps. Apparently, as the contingent of death camps replenished, the Americans increased the supply of IBM, which helped the fascists quickly calculate the population of those yet to be exterminated. While individual members of departments making those instruments may not have been aware of their purpose (though it is doubtful anyone would admit to such an atrocity now), The higher ups of IBM most certainly were aware, considering how close they were to Hitler.
- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ibm-and-nazi-germany/

The Rockefeller enterprise eventually agreed to pay a minor fine “for having betrayed America” but was allowed to continue its profitable commerce with the enemies of the United States. A tentative investigation into IBM’s arguably treasonous activities in the land of the Nazi enemy was similarly aborted because the US needed IBM technology as much as the Nazis did. Edwin Black writes: “IBM was in some ways bigger than the war.” Both sides could not afford to proceed without the company’s all-important technology. “Hitler needed IBM. So did the Allies.” (Black, 333, and 348) Uncle Sam briefly wagged a finger at Standard Oil and IBM, but most owners and managers of corporations who did business with Hitler were never bothered at all. The connections of ITT’s Sosthenes Behn with Nazi Germany, for example, were a public secret in Washington, but he never experienced any difficulties as a result of them. Meanwhile, it would appear that the headquarters of the Western Allies were keen to go as easy as possible on the American-owned enterprises in Germany. According to German expert Hans G. Helms, Bernard Baruch, a high-level advisor to President Roosevelt, had given the order not to bomb certain factories in Germany, or to bomb them only lightly; it is hardly surprising that the branch plants of American corporations fell into this category. And indeed, while Cologne’s historical city centre was flattened in repeated bombing raids, the large Ford factory on the outskirts of the city enjoyed the reputation of being the safest place in town during air attacks, although some bombs did of course occasionally fall on its properties. (The Myth of the Good War: America in the Second World War, revised edition By Jacques R. Pauwels, Billstein et al, 98-100)

In 1940, Ford factories began mass production of trucks and other vehicles for the Nazis such as the Maultier. The Ford plants in Europe also worked, supplying the fascists with cars of various purposes, tires, aircraft engines, auto parts and much more. A Ford plant in 'neutral' Switzerland also repaired German trucks.
- http://www.kfzderwehrmacht.de/Homepage_english/Motor_Vehicles/Germany/Ford/Ford_V_3000_S-SSM/ford_v_3000_s-ssm.html

The relationship of Ford and GM to the Nazi regime goes back to the 1920s and 1930s, when the American car companies competed against each other for access to the lucrative German market. Hitler was an admirer of American mass production techniques and an avid reader of the antisemitic tracts penned by Henry Ford. "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration," Hitler told a Detroit News reporter two years before becoming the German chancellor in 1933, explaining why he kept a life-size portrait of the American automaker next to his desk.
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/nov98/nazicars30.htm?noredirect=on

Primary examples of investments in the German economy.
"Ford" - $ 17.5 million.
Standard Oil of New Jersey (now Exxon Mobil Corporation) - $ 120 million.
General Motors - $ 35 million.
"ITT" - $ 30 million.

Hitler's ideas caught on with the rich elite of the world especially well. Something remarked upon by William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany in 1937, who said, “... I have had plenty of opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to the Nazi Regime.”

William Randolph Hearst for example. In the mid 1930s he was one of the richest men in the world due to his yellow-news outlets; 25 daily newspapers, 24 weekly newspapers, 12 radio stations, 2 world news services, one business providing news items for films, the Cosmopolitan film company, and a lot of others. In 1948 he bought one of the US’s first TV stations, BWAL – TV in Baltimore. In 1934 he visited Nazi Germany where he was personally received by Hitler as a guest and friend. His anti-communist ranting only ramped up afterwards, publishing repeated articles about the 1932-34 famine in the USSR, focusing on Ukraine and using scurrilous fraud photographs of a one Thomas Walker as supposed 'evidence'. Despite being called out on this multiple times, he continued to print the articles.

Another example is Prescott Bush. Prescott Bush was a firm believer in eugenics, (the study of genetic improvement through selecting parents, or racial superiority) which was very common among the influential families at the start of the twentieth century. Of course we are all more than familiar with the eugenics 'studies' done by the Nazis (such as those conducted in Auschwitz by the escaped Angel of Death Dr. Mengele). The grandfather of George Bush Jr. was one of seven directors of Union Banking Corp., a New York investment bank owned by a bank controlled by the Thyssen family. Brown Brothers Harriman's affiliate Union Bank - of which Prescott was the director - had invested huge sums of money into Thyssen Steel, the backbone of Nazi steel production. August Thyssen was an affluent German industrialist who lost much of his corporate empire to the harsh Treaty of Versailles after WWI. Vowing this would never happen again, he founded three banks in three countries: The August Thyssen Bank in Berlin, Bank voor Handel en Scheepuaart in Rotterdam, Holland, and Union Banking Corp. in New York City. Using money channeled through these three banks, Thyssen financed the rise of the Nazi party and their front-man Adolf Hitler, ruling Nazi steel production along side Krupp, profited from the mining of coal by Jewish slaves, and financed concentration camps including Auschwitz. In 1937, while director of Union Bank, Prescott hired Allen Dulles to 'cloak' his accounts; Allen obviously didn't do that great of a job because in 1942 the U.S. Alien Property Custodian froze Union Bank's accounts and fined Prescott 1 million dollars. 'Coincidentally,' Allen Dulles was appointed U.S. Intelligence Chief in post-war Germany while he was also the lawyer representing Thyssen's bank in Holland. This ensuing cover-up may have saved Prescott from further penalty stemming from proper investigation. In 1951, Prescott reclaimed Union Bank from the U.S. Alien Property Custodian, and went on to represent Connecticut in the Senate. his sons and grandsons would continue his legacy of war-profiteering and proliferation throughout the Cold War and into the 21st century, with the actions of George Bush Junior still running their course (Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.)

- How Prescott helped Hitler: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
- Eugenics and Nazi Germany: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-biological-state-nazi-racial-hygiene-1933-1939

http://www.globalresearch.ca/secret-history-the-u-s-supported-and-inspired-the-nazis/5439236

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/hitlers-willing-business-partners/303146/

http://nationalpost.com/g00/news/how-six-months-before-the-second-world-war-britain-gave-hitler-9-million-in-gold-that-belonged-to-another-country/wcm/3c1b3aa0-3bfe-4e57-83e9-8eefeec7cc52?i10c.referrer

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar

https://fort-russ.com/2016/05/hitler-was-financed-by-federal-reserve/

http://www.globalresearch.ca/profits-ber-alles-american-corporations-and-hitler/4607

This didn't stop with Corporations either. The people and governments of many European countries supported the German war-effort, including volunteering to fight. The German author of the book “Results of the Second World War” (1953), K. Pfeffer wrote,
"Most volunteers from Western Europe went to the Eastern Front only because they saw this as a common task of the West ... Volunteers from Western Europe, as a rule, were attached to SS units and units ..."

The English historian A. Taylor wrote about the two “neutral” countries least of all dependent on Nazism, Switzerland and Sweden, that they “could bring Germany more benefits than if they were in the position of vanquished. Germany received iron ore from Sweden, precision instruments from Switzerland. Without this, she could not continue the war.” Almost every third fascist projectile was made of steel smelted from Swedish ore, and almost all the necessary tungsten came from Portugal.

Professor Richard Kaczmarek, director of the Institute of History of the Silesian University, author of the book “Poles in the Wehrmacht” claims that roughly half a million Poles served the German army during the war. In 1942 alone, the Poles made up 40-45% of the personnel of the 96th infantry division of the Wehrmacht, about 30% of the 57th division, about 30% of the 11th division (together with the Czechs), about 12% of the 110th division. The French also had their contribution with 220,000 volunteers serving in the 33rd SS division Charlemagne alone.

The British Royal Family was all but public in their support of the Nazi regime. Even if one dismisses the nazi salute photographs one cannot deny their role in supporting Germany. Anti-semitic sympathies, letters of correspondence, and generally being supportive:
- https://www.timesofisrael.com/british-archives-hiding-royal-familys-rife-anti-semitism-in-1930s-says-historian/
- http://www.sxolsout.org.uk/56.html
- http://christophereverard.co.uk/the-british-prince-who-financed-hitler/

This of course is ignoring things like Western military sympathies to the Nazis. The best example of this is of course General Patton. He sympathized with the Nazis and believed the USSR was a Jew-Bolshevik conspiracy along with other anti-Semitic ideals. He was killed in a car crash, however his ideas did not decline.

The New Yorker, Blood, Guts and McChrystal By Amy Davidson Sorkin, June 25, 2010 http://archive.fo/Fjm4g

“…Thinking like that often got Patton into trouble. Much of it has been recounted before, in the movie Patton and elsewhere. In one well-known incident, Patton was visiting a field hospital when he came across a soldier who didn't appear to be wounded. When Patton asked what was wrong with him, the soldier responded, "It's my nerves." Patton blew up: "You cowardly bastard! You're going right back to the front. Although that's too good for you. You ought to be lined up against a wall and shot. Although that's too good for you, too. I ought to shoot you myself, goddamn you!" Patton then pulled out his (ivory-handled) gun, repeatedly slapped the soldier, and ordered doctors to get the GI out of the hospital. Hirshson adds that as Patton left, he shouted, "There's no such thing as shell shock! It's an invention of the Jews!" The slapping eventually made it into the press and caused such an outrage that Eisenhower temporarily stripped Patton of his command." - Life of General Patton
http://www1.cuny.edu/portal_ur/news/cuny_matters/2002_october/gralpatton.html

This prejudicial and ethno-racial hatred extended to the Russians, whom he unilaterally despised,
"The difficulty in understanding the Russian is that we do not take cognizance of the fact that he is not a European, but an Asiatic, and therefore thinks deviously. We can no more understand a Russian than a Chinaman or a Japanese, and from what I have seen of them, I have no particular desire to understand them, except to ascertain how much lead or iron it takes to kill them. In addition to his other Asiatic characteristics, the Russian have no regard for human life and is an all out son of bitch, barbarian, and chronic drunk." - Statement (8 August 1945), as quoted in General Patton: A Soldier's Life (2002) by Stanley P. Hirshson, p. 650

The sheer prejudice and hatred in his words is remarkably similar to that of the Germans, indeed to quote Der Untermensch (translation)
"... the subhuman the greatest enemy of the dominant species on earth, mankind. The subhuman is a biological creature, crafted by nature, which has hands, legs, eyes and mouth, even the semblance of a brain. Nevertheless, this terrible creature is only a partial human being. Although it has features similar to a human, the subhuman is lower on the spiritual and psychological scale than any animal. Inside of this creature lies wild and unrestrained passions: an incessant need to destroy, filled with the most primitive desires, chaos and coldhearted villainy."
Der Untermensch: https://ia800500.us.archive.org/15/items/SS-Hauptamt-Der-Untermensch/Ss-hauptamt-DerUntermensch194252S.Scan_text.pdf
Translation source: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/deruntermensch.html

Indeed the term "Untermensch" (undermen) was created by an American, Lothrop Stoddard. His book, The Passing of the Great Race, was even praised by president Warren G. Harding.

But those who believe and propogate the 'clean Wehrmacht' will say 'surely regular troops and officers did not think so'. In response I can only quote Colonel-General Hoepner. On May 2nd 1941 he stated,
"The war against the Soviet Union is an essential component of the German people's struggle for existence. It is the old struggle of the Germans against the Slavs, the defense of European culture against the Muscovite-Asiatic flood, the warding off of Jewish Bolshevism. This struggle must have as its aim the demolition of present Russia and must therefore be conducted with unprecedented severity. Both the planning and the execution of every battle must be dictated by an iron will to bring about a merciless, total annihilation of the enemy. Particularly no mercy should be shown toward the carriers of the present Russian-Bolshevik system." - (Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich By Omer Bartov, Pg 128-129)
- https://books.google.com/books?id=UXFGDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA129&lpg=PA129&dq=The+war+against+the+Soviet+Union+is+an+essential+component+of+the+German+people%27s+struggle+for+existence.+It+is+the+old+struggle+of+the+Germans+against+the+Slavs,+the+defense+of+European+culture+against+the+Muscovite-Asiatic+flood,+the+warding+off+of+Jewish+Bolshevism.+This+struggle+must+have+as+its+aim+the+demolition+of+present+Russia+and+must+therefore+be+conducted+with+unprecedented+severity.+Both+the+planning+and+the+execution+of+every+battle+must+be+dictated+by+an+iron+will+to+bring+about+a+merciless,+total+annihilation+of+the+enemy.+Particularly+no+mercy+should+be+shown+toward+the+carriers+of+the+present+Russian-Bolshevik+system.&source=bl&ots=1uPu0m-Kej&sig=UKTFJGipDdZYbJK0a7LG_-D_Rks&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjJidK0pOzZAhXBwVkKHXpnD2YQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=The%20war%20against%20the%20Soviet%20Union%20is%20an%20essential%20component%20&f=false

This was their sentiment from the very beginning and part of their ideology and military doctrine, i.e. General Plan Ost.
Patton may have been a good tactician but he was a horrendous person no better than the Nazis he fought. It is clearly seen in General Patton's Warning an anti-semitic description of the immediate after-math of WW 2 and how General Patton viewed it.
- https://books.google.com/books?id=QSpUZ6t6BPwC&pg=PA4#v=onepage&q&f=false
- https://books.google.com/books?id=ATCXucbTYX0C&pg=PA161#v=onepage&q&f=false
- https://web.archive.org/web/20120319160503/http://www.natall.com/national-vanguard/assorted/patton.html

Patton was not alone in his ideas either. Harry Truman (prior to his vice-presidency) openly declared in 1941:
"If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible." A sentiment that has continued to today, with irrational calling for military force against Russia from both US Republican and Democrat party politicians and affiliates, be they liberal or conservative.

Post-WW2 Truman was among the big approvers of Operation Drop shot and Operation Unthinkable, despite being fully aware of the destructive effects nukes had. He was also lenient on many Nazi officials and let many key German and Ukrainian nazis move to America in exchange for their valuable information and knowledge. The Ukrainian OUN-UPA were especially useful as they provided mountains of propaganda for scare stories that the IRD section of the CIA/MI-6 released as anti-communist propaganda. Among these IRD propagandists is the famed Robert Conquest who would go on to write several select books, most prominent of which is his Harvest of Sorrow, all filled with ahistorical myths and poor citation.
In the meanwhile the Germans were used for their tactical expertise, which is why many were included as military strategists and even led key NATO positions.

Examples include Adolf Heusinger, Hitlers Head of Operations who planned the O.K.H (operations of all the land forces of the armies), who had his crimes written off as indirect. A German general who was originally a planner of operations, he surrendered and became an adviser later rising in rank as head of the West German military from 1957 to 1961 and later as Chairman of the NATO Military Committee from 1961 to 1964. He may not be personally involved in the deaths of WW 2 but that is the same excuse one could give other war criminals of less important rank.
- https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/HEUSINGER,%20ADOLF_0006.pdf

McCullough, David (15 June 1992). Truman. New York, New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 262

Truman’s subsequent creation of the CIA resulted in more death, misery, destruction and tyranny than any country prior, the British Empire being the only rival. The over-throwal of legitimate democracies that did not immediately side with the USA and the support of dictators and criminals is a crime, linked to the CIA’s creation and Truman’s insane attempt to isolate a country as massive as the USSR. We’re lucky Stalin had the clarity of mind and temper to NOT start a direct war for which we, the West, were not prepared for (regardless of what bluster Patton claimed).
- https://www.salon.com/2014/03/08/35_countries_the_u_s_has_backed_international_crime_partner/
- https://williamblum.org/essays/read/overthrowing-other-peoples-governments-the-master-list

6) The war was artificially created and artificially prolonged
First, you have the 'phony war'. In which French, British armies waited just on west side of the Rhine river without doing anything for 8 months, as German army was busy conquering and repressing Poland. Crazy, really, especially in the light of the fact that Germany's industrial heartland, Rhineland is just to the east of this river. take it over, and you cripple a massive segment of German industry. Hell, they could have done this far earlier since it was on the 7th of March, 1936 that German troops marched into the Rhineland and violated the Versailles Treaty they had signed. The British and French didn't just ignore this but actually met (such as the British Cabinet meeting on 11 March 1936) before deciding not to do anything because they feared that they would have to rely on the USSR and thus Germany would be "Bolshevized". In other words they let the biggest military conflict in the world occur because they preferred "letting loose another great war" over the POSSIBILITY of a communist Germany. Moreover they argued over sending a warning to Hitler and using economic sanctions... but as we know this doesn't happen in practice and the whole affair is hand-waved aside.

Even if one waves aside the Versailles treaty for being over 15 years old, in 1925 the Locarno Pact was signed following the European peace conference held in Switzerland. It reaffirmed national boundaries decided by the Treaty of Versailles, approved the German entry into the League of Nations and initiated something nick-named the “spirit of Locarno” symbolizing hopes for an era of European peace. By 1930 German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann had negotiated the removal of the last Allied troops in the demilitarized Rhineland.
Prior to his the Germans of course had their own secretive military developments but none were open or directly violated the Versailles Treaty or the Locarno Pact like the events of 1936.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/german-occupation/

The Germans themselves confirmed that the French alone would have been able to halt and reverse the Germans had they decided to act.
"The forty-eight hours after the march into the Rhineland were the most nerve-racking in my life. If the French had then marched into the Rhineland, we would have had to withdraw with our tails between our legs, for the military resources at our disposal would have been wholly inadequate for even moderate resistance." Quoted in "What Hitler Knew: The Battle for Information in Nazi Foreign Policy" by Zachary Shore, 2003

the actions of 1936 were hardly the first or the last violations of the Versailles treaty either, http://archive.fo/3Q8rR

Back to the Phoney war itself - The 'allies' didn't do anything after declaring war for the attack on Poland - they didn't even do any proper military operations. France eventually did start with the Saar offensive, however after Poland fell they retreated back over the border essentially abandoning the progress they made to the chagrin of General De Gaulle.
>https://www.historynet.com/operation-saar-a-lost-opportunity-september-99-world-war-ii-feature.htm
The West just waited until Germany repressed Poland and ferried over all their military units and prepared and put them into position to attack France. There is no kind of explicable logic for this kind of thing in warfare. The only possibility is that they were expecting and waiting for Nazi Germany to attack USSR. Although to be fair, Poland's military command and its sheer cowardice and incompetence was a key part as well.

This only made sense considering the positive Western relations with the Nazis. Even in 1939 Hitler still wished to make peace with Britain (and thus be able to turn his full attention to the USSR). He displayed this at Dunkirk. Churchill's last minute denial was very suspect.

- https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20180224/opinion/Betrayal-at-Dunkirk-Rodolfo-Ragonesi.671549
- https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/786093/Hitler-Nazi-Germany-Battle-of-Dunkirk-World-War-2-peace-treaty-British-Winston-Churchill
- http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v02/v02p375_Lutton.html

Second is the delaying of landings in Occupied Europe. Churchill did his best to delay any landing. The D-day landings were intentionally post-poned by Churchill citing an inability to do so and using a failed attempt, (set up to fail) as an example of it. This failed attempt had been to send in Canadian troops onto a heavily defended cliff-side in broad daylight with little support. Calling it a set up would be an understatement.
- https://consortiumnews.com/2011/08/18/truth-still-a-casualty-at-dieppe/
- https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/we-were-sitting-ducks-100-year-old-veteran-shares-dieppe-raid-memories-1.3671764

When he couldn't stall any longer, divert the first landings to Italy, which he called 'the soft belly of Europe'. Nothing soft about it of course, Alps create a natural barrier, towards central Europe, impossible to pass. In WW1 Italians and Austrians fought there for 4-5 years and couldn't move an inch. Not to mention naturally hilly nature of northern Italy. As a result many people got massacred trying to take over Italy, easily defended by Germans. In Monte Casino and many other major engagements, allied troops got butchered like WW-1, storming fortified and defended positions. Churchill wasn't stupid. His staff wasn't stupid. The only reason why they did this would be to delay landings in mainland Europe. Which they did.

The reason was that Churchill saw USSR and its ideology as a danger to the established order in Britain and the west. He believed the 'opulent' (rich) should govern 'the masses' (we, the people). Many times in his life he went to utmost extent to punish and repress anyone who challenged this - the rule of his opulent class - from getting British army to shoot at striking workers to advocating chemical weapons against 'rebelling' locals in middle east to Bengal famine and "Is Gandhi dead yet" incident.

All these, and on top of that the fact that he wanted to immediately attack USSR at the end of WW2. (Operation Unthinkable, Operation Drop shot, etc.) already point to a distinct disinterest in helping the USSR.

Additionally when the USSR was at Berlin's doorstep, the Germans frantically tried to make a separate peace with the Western allies, through Allan Dulles, future head of the CIA. The USSR found out through their spy networks and pointed it out, embarrassing the West and preventing the attempt from going through.
In 1945 Dulles was sent to collaborate a peace treaty with Germany with SS Officer Karl Wolff. This was Operation Sunrise/Crossword. It is forgotten in the US, the Soviets, however, commemorated the plot and its discovery in the cult spy series Seventeen Moments of Spring
- http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1973-2/seventeen-moments-in-spring/operation-sunrise-crossword/
- https://erenow.net/modern/the-devils-chessboard-allen-dulles-the-cia/5.php

In and of itself it was not a crime, however it had the potential of betrayal, of which the allies were certainly well capable of. Other examples of potential betrayal was the planned Operation Pike, which involved supported the Finns in an assault on Leningrad, and a bombing of Baku’s oilfields as well as Stalingrad to destroy that area as well. The plan was being considered up until 1942, long after the Germans had clearly shown themselves to NOT be allying with the Soviets.

Dulles and his friends continued operating criminally throughout the Cold Wars first years, over-throwing legitimate governments which were not implicitly under US-control, and supporting and rescuing nazis, whom they treated graciously in return for the valuable propaganda they gave to use in anti-soviet media.
Many people know of Operation Paperclip, the US operation to rescue Nazi Scientists and take them to the USA (such as Wernher Braun, who was a leading NASA scientist throughout the 50s and 60s). However few know of the operations to rescue non-scientist nazis.
- https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/us/in-cold-war-us-spy-agencies-used-1000-nazis.html?_r=0
- https://web.archive.org/web/20170517004908/http://vho.org:80/aaargh/fran/livres8/Hydra.pdf
- https://rev01ution.red/ubezhishhe-zla-kuda-delis-glavnye-nacisty-posle-1945/

Dave Emory, and anti-fascist researcher, cites a book published in 2011 by Colonel Fletcher Prouty, retired. In it, Col. Prouty describes how at the end of the World War he witnessed the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA, transport a number of Balkan Nazi intelligence specialists out of Europe to Turkey. Excerpt from the book:
"On August 23, 1944, the Romanians accepted Soviet surrender terms and in Bucharest the OSS rounded up Nazi intelligence experts and their voluminous Eastern European intelligence files and concealed among a trainload of American POW’s who were being quickly evacuated from the Balkans via Turkey. Once in ‘neutral” Turkey, the train continued to a planned destination at a site on the Syrian border, where it was stopped to permit the transfer of Nazis and POW’s to a fleet of U.S. [Army] Air Force planes for a flight to Cairo... I was the chief pilot of that flight of some thirty aircraft and was stunned by the discovery of two things I would never have suspected: A number of the Americans had had one or both legs amputated at the knee by their Balkan captors, solely for the purpose of keeping them immobile (the plane I flew had airline seats rather than canvas “bucket” seats, and the men on my plane had lost one or two legs in that barbaric manner), and concealed among these POW’s were a number of Balkan Nazi intelligence specialists who were being taken out of the Balkans ahead of the Soviet armies by the OSS."
- http://spitfirelist.com/news/august-1944-the-cold-war-begins-in-earnest/

This is also dismissing the several friendly fire incidents in 1944, where the friendly fire by the West came off as intentional, but was brushed aside for the sake of larger politics.
- http://www.stalkerzone.org/american-pilots-attacked-soviet-troops-1944-aerial-battle-nis/

Conclusion:
To conclude the US Lend-Lease of WW 2 was not decisive to the USSR defeating Germany. It was useful to the USSR defeating Germany quickly. In the words of British historian Professor Geoffrey Roberts in a 2011 interview with RT news,
"The Soviet Union could have defeated Nazi Germany on its own, but it would have taken it a lot longer and at much greater price and, of course, it would have taken the country much longer to recover after World War II..."
Germany lost WW 2 in 1941/1942 as it surged through Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Estonia. It took horrific losses that it could not replace. By March 1942, the Wehrmacht was barely holding on as an offensive force. The USSR was outproducing them, calling up more manpower. If they couldn’t do it in early 1941, when everything was in their favor, how were they going to do it in 1942, or 1943, or 1944, or 1945, when everything was favoring the USSR? Simple answer, they couldn’t. The USSR would have won alone. However, if you could ask a Soviet veteran if they would have wanted to, I would bet they would unanimously say no, and thank the Western Allies for their contribution in bringing Hitler to his knees. That is all that is important.
- https://www.quora.com/After-reading-answers-on-Quora-I-feel-like-Britain-and-the-USA-did-10-of-stopping-Hitler-It%E2%80%99s-all-about-the-Russians-Am-I-wrong-My-whole-life-I-felt-like-we-contributed-more/answer/Michael-Che-10
The West may have stopped giving the USSR credit but the USSR never did the same for its former allies.
- https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Russia-so-ungrateful-to-the-British-and-the-West-considering-we-helped-them-fight-off-Nazi-Germany-with-Lend-Lease-supplies-with-the-Arctic-convoys-Which-I-might-add-we-could-ill-afford-to-spare/answer/Aleksandr-Donskoy

After word:
It is inevitable that someone will bring up the following whataboutisms
- The USSR traded with the Nazis too!
- The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact! The Division of Poland!
- The Soviets let the Germans Train on their land!
- The USSR Never Paid Back the Lend-Lease Debt

These all ring hollow.

- Firstly on the 'trade' between the USSR and Germany

The USSR's international trade economy was that of an exporter of raw materials, and so they did export raw materials to Germany.

It's ridiculous to use that as some kind of anti-Soviet propaganda. Damning them for engaging in trade with a country they weren't at war with, a country that by that point was almost the only country left in continental Europe to trade with because it had swallowed up most of the other major ones. Trading does not equal supporting the Nazi war effort, and to suggest that it does is disingenuous and just goes to show the person who claims so as someone determined to see the USSR in the worst possible light and spin anything to make it appear so. It's also noteworthy that the Soviet Union is the only country that receives such intensive scrutiny for trading with Nazi Germany and its non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, despite the fact that all the other major countries in Europe and the world also had agreements with Germany and traded with Germany long prior to the 1940 Soviet-German agreement.

The USSR occupied the fifth place in Germany’s imports (after Italy, Denmark, Romania and Holland). It's imports were minuscule in the over-all picture of things and made up an inconsequential amount of both its own and German resources.
The USSR sent Germany roughly 1 million tons of grain from the beginning of 1940 to the beginning of war in the East (June 22nd 1941). The USSR produced 95.6 million tons of grains in 1940 alone... making total soviet exports of grain to Germany just barely more than 1% of Soviet grain production. The Population of Germany in 1940 was 66 million people. That 1 million tons of grain was hardly going to last more than a few months. Moreover the grain made up nearly 1/3 of the entirety of Soviet imports

The fact is that, even during the non-aggression pact period (in fact, ESPECIALLY during that period), the Soviet Union was feverishly preparing for war with Germany, by massively expanding the Red Army, developing new weapons, building defensive fortifications, moving industry to the East beyond the Urals. They wanted to delay war as long as they could, because they weren't in a good position to fight Germany alone and with a military just beginning re-armament (the prospect they faced because the UK, Poland and France rejected all of their earlier attempts at forming an anti-German alliance), but they knew war was coming regardless and were preparing for it as best they could. Part of this was the trade agreement. The USSR wasn't just giving Germany resources for free after all:
The Soviet Navy received the unfinished heavy cruiser Lutzow with equipment necessary to complete its construction; samples of ship artillery, mines, torpedoes, periscopes, etc. In addition to that, 5 dual-purpose ships, propeller shafts, high-pressure compressors, steering gear, motors for boats, marine electrical equipment, leaded cable, fans, marine medical equipment, pumps, systems for reducing the effects of pitching on marine devices, equipment for galleys, bakeries, ship laundry, rechargeable batteries and for submarines, naval gun turrets, 88 mm submarine cannon, Stereoscopic rangefinders, optical quadrants, photo-theodolite stations, periscopes, five mine samples, anti-submarine bombs, 406-mm and 280-mm three-gun ship towers, and the blueprints for the Battleship "Bismark" as well as other equipment to utilize and reverse engineer.
The Soviet Airforce recieved samples of the latest models of Luftwaffe aircraft as well as aggregates of their construction with propellers, piston rings for aircraft engines, taximeters, altimeters, speed recorders, oxygen supply system at high altitudes, dual aerial cameras, instruments for determining the load on the aircraft control, radio direction finders, aircraft radio stations with intercom, devices for blind landing and other instruments for aircraft, aircraft batteries, stands for testing engines, riveting automatic machines, and bomb sights.
The Red Army received samples of artillery, tanks, radio communications devices.

The Civilian sphere also received a lot, with samples of more than 300 types of agricultural machinery and industrial production machines: excavators, metal lathes, drilling rigs, electric motors, compressors, pumps, steam turbines, oil equipment, etc.

In other words the USSR sold a tiny portion of its consumable resources for a jacked up price to the Germans. While getting important long-term investment products in exchange.

- As for the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact itself
The Pact was not and never will be considered an alliance and was made at the last moment when the actions of Western countries like France and Britain essentially put it in a terrible political position

Prior to the Soviet-German Pact there was a long line of pacts with other countries that NAZI Germany had
- 1933: The 4 powers Pact, (Italy, UK, France)
- 1934: Hitler-Pilsudski Pact (Poland)
- 1935: Anglo-German Naval Agreement (UK)
- 1936: Anti-Comintern Pact (Japan)
- 1938, September: German-British Non-Aggression Pact (UK)
- 1938, September 30th: Munich Agreement, (UK, France, Italy) permission for the annexation of Czechoslovakia by Germany, Hungary and Poland
- 1938, December: German-French Non-Aggression Pact (France)
- 1939, March: German-Romanian Economic Treaty (Romania)
- 1939, March: Non-Aggression Pact (Lithuania)
- 1939, May: Pact of Steel; Friendship and Alliance (Italy)
- 1939, May: Non-Aggression Pact (Denmark)
- 1939, June: Non-Aggression Pact (Estonia)
- 1939, July: Non Aggression Pact (Latvia)
And only THEN
- 1939, August: Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (USSR)

Grover Furr: https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/gfon39pactpnews07.html

This is of course dismissing other actions, such as the Soviet effort for an anti-German defensive Pact, (which they offered repeatedly since 1933, something well covered in the book Silent Conflict: A Hidden History of Early Soviet-Western Relations by Michael Jabara Carley.

The USSR is the only country that actively tried to prevent WWII. After 8 years of disappointment, Litvinov resigned and was replaced by Molotov, and the Soviet government terminated its collective security policy and began focusing on strengthening its borders.

In 1934, the Soviet Union joined the League of Nations, the predecessor to the UN. Maxim Litvinov who represented the Soviet Union spent the next 4 years from 1934 to 1938, trying to install some sort of collective security in the League of Nations. Kind of like a global NATO.

“The State I represent entered the League… with the sole purpose of the maintenance of indivisible peace… The League of Nations is still strong enough by its collective actions to avert or arrest aggression… There is no room for bargaining or compromise” - Maxim Litvinov

4 years of imploring for a collective defensive army in the League were ignored. Even as Germany, Japan, and Italy withdrew from the league of nations and Japan invaded the Soviet Union and China, and Italy invaded Ethiopia, the League of Nations did nothing.

Instead the nations of Europe, especially Britain, France and Poland made treaties and appeasements to German state. In 1938 came the most egregious example - the betrayal of Czechoslovakia. The Borders of the country were bitten away by Hungary, Poland and Germany, like removing the front wall of a house. THe Germans then decided to take the rest of the house as well. And all this was sanctioned under the Munich Pact by France and Britain, who pressured Czechoslovakia's President Eduard Benes to not invoke their military pact with the Soviet Union.

The end result of this was a bolstering of German military might and industry through the absorbed military of the Czechs and the factories like Skoda.
In terms of statistics:
Airplanes, 1582; that equals 39% of the German air force in mid '39

Anti-aircraft guns, 501; enough for 46 German infantry divisions (out of 87 in mid '39, at target strength)

Guns light and heavy, 2175; enough for 26 infantry divisions

Mine throwers, 785; enough for 33 infantry divisions

Machine guns, 43,876; enough for 68 infantry divisions

Tanks, 469; enough for 1.5 (out of 5) tank divisions
These numbers are cited by Hitler himself as well as historiographic data:
- http://comicism.tripod.com/390428.html
- https://weltkrieg2.de/wehrmacht-kriegsgliederung-1-september-1939/

In August of 1939, Litvinov attempted, for the last time, to sign a military treaty with Poland, the UK, and France that could’ve stopped the war before it ever began. “The Soviet offer - made by war minister Marshall Klementi Voroshilov and Red Army chief of general staff Boris Shaposhnikov - would have put up to 120 infantry divisions (each with some 19,000 troops), 16 cavalry divisions, 5,000 heavy artillery pieces, 9,500 tanks and up to 5,500 fighter aircraft and bombers on Germany's borders in the event of war in the west”

To summarize the Soviet efforts to prevent WW-2
- In 1933, USSR tried to sign a Pacific pact with Britain and USA to put a brake on Japanese imperialism, they declined, later resulting in Japan making swift advances and allowing the quick capture of Dutch and British Colonies when the Japanese openly attacked in 1939.
- In late 1933, the Soviet government proposed an "Eastern pact", which was to be signed by several countries in opposition to Germany
- In September 1934 the Soviet Union joined the League of Nations, accepting France's invitation to join.
- In 1936 the Soviet government proposed collective action to stop German aggression, the future allies ignored it.
- In October 1937 at the Brussels Conference, USA and Britain rejected the Soviet proposal for the League of Nations to apply sanctions on Japan, after they had invaded China.
- In 1938, the Soviet government prepared to intervene militarily in Czechoslovakia should they decide to fight Germany. Their government refused and the allies signed the Munich pact, giving The Sudetenland (and later the rest of the country) to Hitler.
- In April 1939, Soviets proposed another military coalition against Nazi Germany in the event of an aggression in Eastern Europe
- The Soviets did one last attempt in July 1939, and proposed a military coalition with a plan laid out by Shaposhnikov to deploy 136 divisions to fight Nazi Germany, which the Polish government refused to allow.

>https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442225855/Silent-Conflict-A-Hidden-History-of-Early-Soviet-Western-Relations
>https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/3223834/Stalin-planned-to-send-a-million-troops-to-stop-Hitler-if-Britain-and-France-agreed-pact.html

- Or what of Poland? Poland has traditionally been painted the victim in WW-2, in part due to the politics of West and Soviet Blocs, the latter not wanting to provoke anti-Polish resentment in the Warsaw Pact and the former not wanting to discredit the anti-soviet drivel that ex-Szlakhta members spouted for CIA propaganda.
This is covered very well in the following articles
Yuri Muhin: http://www.ymuhin.ru/content/%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%B9%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%8F-%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%BB%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D1%8C
Grover Furr: https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/research/mlg09/did_ussr_invade_poland.html

The USSR spent the 30's trying to get the western powers to ally against Hitler but Britain/France continued with their policy of appeasement (or collaboration, actively aiding in Hitler's annexation of territory).
When Hitler annexed Czechoslovakia the USSR offered military support but Poland denied them access through its territory to help. Even earlier when Hitler entered the Rhineland the Poles undermined the already wishy-washy positions of the French by stating they would uphold the 1921 Polish-French alliance only if France was the one invaded.

The West stood by and did nothing again in Spain while the USSR provided the only real aid that people fighting fascism there received. Even the Abraham Lincoln brigade from the USA was a volunteer group and not a US government effort.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact was only signed after it was blatantly clear that the west would not act until Hitler invaded a west friendly power and was otherwise quite willing to be friendly with fascists. The British/French hoped instead that Hitler would invade Russia and take out the USSR which they themselves had invaded and tried to destroy 20 years earlier during the Revolution -- the NAP was Russia's way of avoiding this since they clearly weren't ready to face the German army. An unhappy compromise, yes, but certainly not an alliance and certainly not their primary choice.

Also, there were several reasons why it made sense for the USSR to agree to occupy Poland. First of all, it acted as a buffer zone between the rest of the USSR and the Nazis. Second, it would've fallen to the Nazis had the USSR done nothing, and third, many of the people in that area were for the Soviets, especially given their other alternatives. Poland was ruled by a right-wing dictatorship that oppressed many of its people. Wikipedia tells us about the make-up of the part of Poland the USSR occupied:

the Soviet Union took over 52.1% of territory of Poland (~200,000 km˛), with over 13,700,000 people. The estimates vary; Elżbieta Trela-Mazur gives the following numbers in regards to ethnic composition of these areas: 38% Poles (ca. 5,1 million people), 37% Ukrainians, 14,5% Belarusians, 8,4% Jews, 0,9% Russians and 0,6% Germans. There were also 336,000 refugees from areas occupied by Germany, most of them Jews (198,000)

Many Ukranians wanted to reunite with the Ukraine as a soviet satellite and the Polish government had oppressed the Belarusians and Jews as well. It might be hard for some to believe but a good many people wanted Soviet rule over the fascist-sympathetic right-wing and discriminatory dictatorship they'd been under.

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bereza_Kartuska_prison
-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camps_for_Russian_prisoners_and_internees_in_Poland_(1919%E2%80%9324)
-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Russian_Civil_War

The main takeaway is that there literally was no Poland when the Soviets "invaded Poland". As pointed out, the Polish government had fled to Rumania with the German invasion, and by doing so, had relinquished any semblance of a Polish state.

This is the understanding held by all of the allied powers at the time of the invasion. If you look at the records, nobody in the League of Nations (precursor to the UN) treated the Soviet "invasion" as an act of war against Poland, unlike Germany's invasion. There were no statements, and nobody who had security agreements with Poland attacked the Soviets. It legally was not an invasion of a foreign state. It was a buffer against the German invasion, which otherwise would have come right to the Soviet border.

This was discussed during the Second Meeting of the Anglo-French Supreme War Council in Hove on 22 September 1939.

The meeting reached 2 conclusions:
1) The primary goal was to ensure stability in the Mediterranean: This was paramount for both the British and French Colonial Empires, all the rest had to come second. This meant Mussolini had to be appeased or otherwise dealt with.
2) A declaration of war against the Soviet Union could not be followed up by actual military action unless Turkey could be persuaded to join the Allies… simple geographical disadvantage.

Contrast that international response to the one the Soviets received when they invaded Finland for the same reason. (Background; the Soviets asked the Finns for land to buffer the border from Leningrad, and offered 2x as much in return. Finns said no, Soviets took it anyway, good thing they did because the Finns fell to the Nazis in no time, since the Mannerheim government was basically fascist to begin with. Soviets gave Finland sovereignty back later.) They booted the USSR from the League of Nations and internationally condemned the invasion, because Finland was still a sovereign state, unlike Poland.

In short, the pain counters are:
1) Why did Poland not refuse to allow the Soviets entrance to their country when the Soviet consulate sent them a request to let the Red Army in?
2) Why did Poland's government issue decrees (mirrored by the Red Army command) to NOT fire on the Red Army? Why did it not rescind them if it was still viable on Sept 28th?
3) Why did Poland not declare war on the USSR as well? Why did it's allies not declare war when they were treatied to come to Poland's aid in the event off a Polish-Soviet war, NOT in a Polish-German one.

Lastly the international establishment, including anti-soviet, imperialist Churchill did not consider it an invasion despite the fact that they were howling in feigned 'outrage in Finland that very same year.

The above sources on Poland cover this as well.

- As for the third whataboutism;
We must remember that the Soviet-German military projects were launched in the 1920s, and in 1922-1933 it was the so-called Weimar Republic. The Weimar Republic was a largely democratic state. It was hoped that Germany would eventually become a socialist republic or social-democratic at the least, even in spite of the turmoil in the country.
In the 1920s, the USSR was an agrarian country with an economy that was beginning to recover after the First World War and following the Civil War/Foreign Intervention. Russia's first tank - "Fighter of Freedom - Comrade Lenin" - was copy of a Renault FT tank. By the availability of qualified specialists, USSR was also inferior to Germany; in Germany compulsory secondary education was introduced as early as 1871, while at the end of the Russian Empire the majority of the population was illiterate. After the defeat in the First World War, Russia and Germany were the most "offended" states. Their territories were torn away, the army of Germany was turned into a decorative one. Russia (now the Soviet Union) had to build new armed forces in conditions of international isolation. Russia lagged behind the advanced powers in a number of military technologies and the USSR made haste to catch up. In April 1922, during the conference in Genoa, Berlin and Moscow signed the Rapallo Treaty. Countries renounced claims to each other. Berlin recognized the nationalization of all German property in Russia. Traditional trade ties were restored. However the treaty did not contain military articles. In 1926 Germany and the USSR signed the Treaty of Berlin, which reaffirmed the Rapallo Treaty of 1922, essentially letting one another know that in the case of a third party attacking one of them, the other would not join against them. Germany needed landfills/polygons where it was possible to test the equipment. In the mid-1920s, an aviation school was established in Lipetsk (1925-1930) and a tank school in Kazan (1926). The tank school trained 30 people. The school in Lipetsk trained 200 German pilots in 5 years and nearly 150 Soviet pilots. Compare - in 1932 in the schools in Braunschweig and Reichlin the Germans prepared almost 2,000 pilots. After Hitler came to power, the schools were closed, all equipment on site went to the USSR. In the end, we can say that the Germans helped the Russians understand how to train tankmen and pilots and not the other way around. The Germans, with their own money, prepared their own and Soviet pilots and tankmen. None of the great German commanders were trained in the USSR, they came only for inspections (such as Guderian and Lutz in Kazan in the summer of 1932). Or they came to observe maneuvers of the Red Army.
- https://history.wikireading.ru/7639
The USSR stopped relations with Germany when Hitler came to power, and no military aid of any kind was given during the nazi regime.

- Finally the idea of repaying the Lend Lease.
First of all, the USSR MORE than repaid the Lend Lease Debt by single-handedly dealing more damage to the Germans than the rest of the Allies combined and thus saving the lives of millions of soldiers of the Western allies as well as billions of dollars worth of losses at the cost of their own.
Secondly the USSR DID in fact attempt to pay back the Lend Lease, albeit incompletely, something that Britain ALSO never repaid for that matter. Some was forgiven (considering the First point), some was paid for. The Soviets repaid ~$500m of the $11bn, while the UK repaid $5bn of $30bn. Some repayments were simply not recieved. For example here is an article about a 1942 repayment from the USSR that got torpedoed. Supposedly $3 billion worth of platinum on board (In modern dollars, worth $50m in 1942).
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2891442/posts
Also there was the Reverse-lend-lease program which included sending Soviet products and resources to the allies. For example the French pilots of the Normandie-Neman air regiment often used Yak-3 fighters, and retained 37 of them after the war with the newly re-established French Air Force.

So, let us never forget, it was the Soviet Union that finally did the lion's share of the fighting against Nazi Germany and ultimately destroyed it. That can't be taken away, no matter how much the "anti-Stalinist" left and the right-wing it assists, try to diminish and smear the Soviet Union with this propaganda.

Post Scriptum
Before anyone starts by trying to talk about how Soviet politicians claimed that Lend Lease was invaluable, I present an actual objective quote by Marshal Zhukov. that best puts a cap on the entire story of the value or lack thereof, of Lend Lease aid;

"The Soviet people give their due to the people of the United States and Britain, to their soldiers, sailors, officers and military leaders who did everything in their power to bring closer the victory over Nazi Germany. We sincerely honour the memory of the killed British and American seamen who despite the dangerous situation at sea, despite the fact that they faced death every mile of the way, delivered to us the cargoes under the Lend-Lease agreement. We highly appreciate the valiance of the participants in the Resistance movement in many European countries." (…) "We also touched upon the deliveries under the Lend-Lease programme. Everything seemed clear in that respect then. Nevertheless, for years after the war bourgeois historiography has asserted that it was the Allied deliveries of armaments, materials and foodstuffs that had played a decisive role for our victory over the enemy. True, the Soviet Union did receive supplies the economy needed so badly: machinery, equipment, materials, fuel and foodstuffs. For example, over 400,000 vehicles, a great number of locomotives and communication facilities were brought from the United States and Britain. But could all that have had a decisive influence on the course of the war? I have already mentioned that the Soviet industry developed on such a scale during the war that it provided the front and rear with everything needed. I see no sense in going into all that once more. As for the armaments, what I would like to say is that we received under Lend-Lease from the United States and Britain about 18,000 aircraft and over 11,000 tanks. That comprised a mere 4 per cent of the total amount of armaments that the Soviet people produced to equip its army during the war. Consequently, there is no ground for talk about the decisive role of the deliveries under Lend-Lease. As for the tanks and aircraft supplied to us by the British and US governments, they, to be frank, did not display high fighting qualities; especially tanks which, running on petrol, would burn like torches" -2014 edition of his memoirs ("Marshal of Victory: The Autobiography of General Georgy Zhukov")
http://booksdescr.org/item/index.php?md5=B2EEF3B4C47AF4D8AFE26F4F6F75E34B

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