Thursday 26 December 2019

Truck Proportions

There is a commonly held opinion that, without foreign aid, the Red Army would have hardly any trucks at all and would not be able to execute strategic offensives. Indeed, if you compare the amount of trucks produced in the USSR during the war and the amount of trucks shipped in, the amount of the latter is much greater. This creates the impression that the Red Army was almost entirely dependent on foreign aid for trucks.

However, it is incorrect to take into account only what was produced during the war without looking at what was already in stock. At the start of the war trucks in agricultural use were confiscated en masse for military use. This injection of new trucks ensured that the majority of the Red Army's trucks were still domestic even by the end of the war. 


Domestic
Imported
Captured
Total
June 22nd, 1941
272,600
100%
-
-
-
-
272,600
January 1st, 1942
317,100
99.6%
-
-
1,400
0.4%
315,100
January 1st, 1943
378,800
93.7%
22,000
5.4%
3,700
0.9%
404,500
January 1st, 1944
387,000
77.9%
94,100
19.0%
14,900
3.1%
496,000
January 1st, 1945
395,000
63.6%
191,100
30.4%
34.700
6.0%
621,200
May 1st, 1945
385,700
58.1%
218,100
32.8%
60,600
9.1%
664,400
As the war went on, the amount (if not the proportion) of domestic trucks in the Red Army increased, so even at reduced capacity domestic industry managed to make up for losses and more. Even at the very end of the hostilities in Europe, Lend Lease trucks composed less than a third of the Red Army's truck fleet.

4 comments:

  1. Wow. Another Cold War 'fact' I learned decades ago bites the dust. Very illuminating.

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  2. That's still a lot of trucks. Hardly insignificant to the war effort.

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    Replies
    1. But put it in context...the material I read back 40 years ago insisted like ́80 % of the Red Army's trucks being American, and said explicitly "American trucks put the Red Army on wheels" starting by late 1943. But as the table shows, < 20 % of the Red Army's trucks were Allied (mostly American) at the start of 1944.

      This is not unlike most other US/British Aid to Soviet Russia; some 60 % of it came from the second half of 1944 to May 1945--after Kursk, after Bagration, after the war had decisively turned and had essentially been won.

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  3. I would say that is not ONLY the amount of trucks the point that matters. The interesting point is that US trucks were mostly, if not all, proved, reliable army trucks with enough performance to carry troops, drag guns etc. Providing Soviet mechanised units with the carrying capabilities they needed for their first line troops.

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