“Quoting no less a military genius than Marshall Zhukov: "Speaking about our readiness for war from the point of view of the economy and economics, one cannot be silent about such a factor as the subsequent help from the Allies. First of all, certainly, from the American side, because in that respect the English helped us minimally. In an analysis of all facets of the war, one must not leave this out of one's reckoning. We would have been in a serious condition without American gunpowder, and could not have turned out the quantity of ammunition which we needed. Without American `Studebekkers' [sic], we could have dragged our artillery nowhere. Yes, in general, to a considerable degree they provided our front transport. The output of special steel, necessary for the most diverse necessities of war, were also connected to a series of American deliveries." Moreover, Zhukov underscored that "we entered war while still continuing to be a backward country in an industrial sense in comparison with Germany."
Konstantin Simonov's (Soviet journalist/poet/novelist) truthful recounting of these meetings with Georgi Zhukov for his book of interviews with Marshall Zhukov (which took place in 1965 and 1966), are corroborated by the utterances of G. Zhukov hiself, which were recorded as a result of eavesdropping by security organs from 1963 until the Marshall’s demise: "It is now said that the Allies never helped us . . . However, one cannot deny that the Americans gave us so much material, without which we could not have formed our reserves and could not have continued the war . . we had no explosives and powder. There was none to equip rifle bullets. The Americans actually came to our assistance with powder and explosives. And how much sheet steel did they give us? We really could not have quickly put right our production of tanks if the Americans had not helped with steel. And today it seems as though we had all this ourselves in abundance." Interestingly this secretly recorded conversation of Marshall Zhukov is in contradiction with Zkukov’s own book where he "toes the party line" and denigrates the Lend-Lease aid. In view of the Soviet control of publishing, I wonder which I would put most faith in?
….While Zhukov down-played the contributions of Great Britain and Canada, together they dispatched about a million and a half tons of war supplies and food to the USSR between 1941 and 1945 and among the equipment shipped were thousands of aircraft and tanks and well over 200,000 tons of wheat and flour. The United States provided by far the greater share of the aid and sent about sixteen million tons of stores under the Lend-Lease and earlier agreements. Of the total 17,500,000 tons of material aid dispatched to the USSR, it arrived by the North Atlantic sea route to Murmansk and Archangel and also through Persia (Iran/Iraq). The Pacific route, in spite of the fact that it included a long rail haul across the breadth of Siberia, eventually proved capable of importing as much as the North Atlantic and Persian routes combined. Even the entry of Japan into the war against the United States did not seriously check the flow into Vladivostok since all available Soviet freighters were moved over to the Pacific and a large number of United States vessels were transferred to the Soviet flag.
