They stopped the main line of advance in the Winter of '41 in which 75% of their tank inventory at that time was British and American. The Soviet Union lost a staggering 20,500 tanks from June 22 to December 31, 1941. At the end of November 1941, only 670 Soviet tanks were available to defend Moscow. Only 205 of these tanks were heavy or medium types, and most of their strength was concentrated in the Western Front, with the Kalinin Front having only two tank battalions (67 tanks) and the Southwestern Front two tank brigades (30 tanks). The first 20 British tanks arrived at the Soviet tank training school in Kazan on October 28, 1941, at which point a further 120 tanks were unloaded at the port of Archangel in northern Russia. Courses on the British tanks for Soviet crews started during November as the first tanks, with British assistance, were being assembled from their in-transit states and undergoing testing by Soviet specialists.
The tanks reached the front lines with extraordinary speed. Extrapolating from available statistics, researchers estimate that British-supplied tanks made up 30 to 40 percent of the entire heavy and medium tank strength of Soviet forces before Moscow at the beginning of December 1941, and certainly made up a significant proportion of tanks available as reinforcements at this critical point in the fighting. By the end of 1941 Britain had delivered 466 tanks out of the 750 promised.
With these historical facts in mind it is really not hard to conclude that the British and American aid to the Soviets had an significant effect on the outcome of those crucial last months of 1941 and in the events proceeding into early 1942. People who claim that the western allied aid to the SU didn't really matter is engaging in historical revisionism. An effort offcourse that has been ongoing up until the collapse of the Soviet Union, as the Soviets themselves didn't want the capitalists to take any credit for their role in their own "glorious patriotic war".
The article or articles you are drawing from.
Hill, Alexander. British Lend Lease Aid and the Soviet War Effort, June 1941 June 1942. The Journal of Military History , Vol. 71, No. 3 (Jul., 2007), pp. 773-808
Hill, Alexander. British Lend-Lease Tanks and the Battle of Moscow, November–December1941 — Revisited. The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 22: 4, 574 — 587
Few problems here.
First let me highlight exactly where you are getting your info from.
from Marshal Rotmistrov;
"At the end of November 1941, only 670 Soviet tanks were available to defend Moscow—that is, in the recently formed Kalinin, Western, and Southwestern Fronts. Only 205 of these tanks were heavy or medium types, and most of their strength was concentrated in the Western Front, with the Kalinin Front having only two tank battalions (67 tanks) and the Southwestern Front two tank brigades (30 tanks)."
On October 28th, British Valentine tanks arrived at a tank training school in Kazan and 120 more tanks were unloaded at Archangel. At this point the number of tanks that were being delivered is immaterial. However, it is worth noting this final statistic, at the conclusion of 1941 the British had delivered 466 tanks, 259 Valentines, and 145 Matildas, the remainder were the essentially useless Tetrarch. What is now pertinent is how many of these tanks made it to the front and actually took an active role in the fighting and what their relative efficacy was.
The British Military Mission in Moscow reported that by 9 December approximately 90 tanks had been in action. This report is seemingly in contrast to the following statistics provided by Moshchanskiy and Kolomiets which puts the total number of British tanks in service with Soviet formations at 46 tanks on 20 December. The discrepancy here could simply be that in 11 days of fighting half of these tanks were knocked out. Moshchanskiy and Kolomiets indicate that during the Battle for Moscow, no more than 2% of the total numbers of armored vehicles were of British make.
That is not a significant number, however how do we relate the relative quality of these tanks. We know that roughly 205 of the total number of fighting vehicles were classified as medium or heavy by the Soviets. The Valentine and Matilda were classified as medium and heavy respectively by the British, but how do they actually stack up? The principle medium tank employed at this point by the Red Army was the T-34/76b, while the heavy tank was the KV-1. The T-34/76b weighed 27.6 tons with a maximum speed of 32 KPH, while the KV-1 came in at 42.8 tons and 22 KPH. Both tanks boasting a 76 mm gun , and in fact at this point in the war, these were the two most powerful and effective tanks in active service amongst any of the belligerents of WW2. The Matilda and Valentine both clocked in at around 15 KPH, while the Matilda weighed 26 tons while the Valentine weighed 16. The Matilda in particular was exceptionally armored and was highly resistant to the majority of German weapons that were currently in use. However, the armaments of both tanks were simply not suitable, nor was "up gunning" possible, with both tanks housing 40mm guns . The armor of the Matilda was matched by that of the T-34's and easily surpassed by the KV-1's armor.
The table that Alexander Hill provides in his article clearly shows that the Valentine by Soviet classification is a light tank, while the Matilda is a medium tank that is easily outclassed by the T-3476b. The relative speed of both tanks is not so important due to the nature of Operation Typhoon. The Soviets were on the defensive which allowed them to use these tanks in defensive positions where the vehicles could be put in place ahead of time and their cripplingly low speed would not hinder combined armor movements. The British tanks were also not designed with the Russian winter in mind, to that end they were not designed with wide, load distributing track systems. This meant that in December and January when cross country movement would entail driving through deep snow, the Valentine and Matilda were nowhere near as adequate as their Soviet designed counter parts. The Matilda and Valentine were capable of traversing through 35 and 40cm of snow respectively while the T-34 and KV-1 could operate in up to 70cm of snow leading to the recommendation that these tanks be held back until conditions were more favorable. In addition, we need to look at the relative performance of these machines as a function of familiarity.
There is no question that in 1941 where the Valentine and Matilda saw service in Africa they were quite effective, however, how much time did Soviet tank crews have to familiarize themselves with these new weapon systems? The first tanks arrived at training fields on October 28. These crews will have had scant few days to familiarize themselves with these weapon systems before they would have been forced to the front as a stop gap. By mid December the typical training period was just 15 days for tank crews on these weapons. This is hardly an adequate period of time to become familiar with a machine the crews would be staking their lives on. In addition, the issue of maintenance has to be raised. It seems likely that proper maintenance of these tanks was impossible due to a lack of familiarity with the tanks; this would help to account for the large disparity in the number of tanks delivered to the USSR and the actual number fielded. Suprun notes that by the end of 1942 "almost half of foreign tanks broke down at disembarkation points or in transit due to inappropriate use and maintenance. A significant portion, getting to the point of contact with the enemy, did not remain in combat for technical reasons."
So what exactly was the contribution of these tanks and lend-lease at this critical juncture of the war? According to Kolomiets Moshchanskiy on December 20, 1941 of the 46 Valentine and Matilda tanks active around Moscow, only eight were Matilda's which deserve to be categorized as a medium tank and of those eight, five were held back for repairs. This is slightly unfair to the Valentine which clearly outclassed the available Soviet light tanks, however it is equally as unfair to classify the Valentine as a medium when it clearly was not. In terms of effectiveness it is clear that these tanks were underpowered in terms of horses and in terms of millimeters. Their armaments were inadequate and to compound the issue the men responsible for operating and maintaining these vehicles were not going to be operating them at anywhere near their maximum output levels. This also ignores the nature of the fighting, where artillery and infantry is what formed the backbone of Soviet resistance and the later offensives around Moscow. From a strictly technical stand point, the British emergency lend-lease to the Soviet Union in the waning months of 1941 was something, but that is about all it was. These tanks made up a very small percentage of the overall medium and heavy tank compliment that actively fought, and they could not be fully utilized due to lack of familiarity and harsh conditions which limited them further.
So I am going to respectfully disagree with your recanting of Alexanders Hills thesis.
If you want my sources.
Kolomiets, M. Moshchanskiy, I. Tanki Lend-Liza [Lend Lease Tanks]
The rest of the information is mined from the the Alexander Hill articles both his own sources and the Soviet sources he sourced himself.
Again I will reiterate this. October 1941 through to January 1942 was the most critical phase of the war in the following context; Germany was never closer to achieving its strategic and operational goals, and German military power was at its absolute zenith in comparison to Soviet power following the tremendous successes of Barbarossa. If you hold that statement to be true and I don't think any rational historian would disagree with it, then the reality is that at this critical juncture of the war, lend-lease played little if any role at all in the outcome of the battle for Moscow. At these stages, lend-lease was either nearly non-existent, or simply not in sufficient quantity to have any real measurable impact. The role of lend-lease was in deciding how the war would end and when, but not who would win it.
There were several posters who replied to me earlier, I won't bother to quote them because unlike you, they really are not worth my time. I will just say this, bring me a strong argument with solid facts backing it up including primary source material regarding Lend Lease in 1941/1942 and auxiliary manpower that Germany should have shunted East. Then give me a realistic strategy for how Germany can beat the USSR. If you can provide the information that supports your well reasoned arguments I will happily analyze them, cross check them and then adjust my position if an adjustment is warranted.
Sections of this rebuttal are pulled from a paper I had previously written in University.
Sorry I posted this before I saw the mod clamping down! I think I kept things respectful though!
. In such cases, even if you don't win the war, you can still win the game.
