Who won WWII?

[ReluctantSamurai]

Parts of it were still classified, at until a few years ago when I last made serious effort of looking into it.

Accounting for War was published in 1996 so those figures were available almost 20 years ago. But...I'll take your comment as an attempt to admit a factual error, and leave it at that

Important note is where you'll often find Harrison wrong is that he takes into account what was sent and when was it sent. The problem is that not all of it made it on time or made it at all.

Missed this comment the first read-through. And it's not the case. Harrison makes an allowance of 27% losses between what was sent and what actually arrived. Damn number geeks think of everything.....

I would just say the Allies won and leave it at that so far as the fighting of the war is concerned.

And as you can see, folks get bored with topics that just throw numbers around, and rightfully so.

Having said that, let's discuss something more fun

The Soviets deserve all of the credit for the German defeats at Moscow in Dec 1941, and again at Stalingrad at the end of 1942. LL impact on those two battles was minimal, at best. So if the Soviets had not received one single dollars worth of LL, they win both battles anyways.

But now it's 1943, and Stavka is sitting in a Kremlin planning room deciding what to do next. Remember now, there are no imports from the US and UK to factor into what will be possible in the coming year. You've already stripped the non-military areas of the budget for the war effort, and you've pretty much exhausted all the pre-war stockpiles of raw materials and other resources. You've got a rural population on the verge of outright rebellion, so asking the "peasant-worker" to put up with further conscription of their grain and their men of military age, and to further put up with a lack of medical attention, a lack of parts for their farm machinery, etc, is dicey at best.

What does your economic plan for the coming year, and that of the next several years, consist of? Be as broad or specific as you like, but I would be most interested in what your objectives for the forth-coming operations in the Ukraine would be.....ie what manpower you felt will be available for raising new formations and providing replacements for existing ones, considering you've had to keep many thousands more potential conscripts in the factories; and what available equipment you can expect to have at your disposal, since there is no material (radios, aluminum, tool and die machinery, food, trucks, aircraft, etc, etc, etc) coming to you from overseas?