Comment by seadan83 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by seadan83 | Hacker News Reader

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Indeed, USSR casualties (including civilians) were off the charts. USSR, then China, then Germany and then Indonesia. [0] 'Russian blood' part is something of an understatement.

The lend lease part is not correct. Lend lease went mostly to UK (Google AI says about 60% of lend lease went to UK & the rest of lend lease was split between USSR & China. Take that with a grain of salt)

Not to be taken with a grant of salt, according to wikipedia: "Most tank units were Soviet-built models but about 7,000 Lend-Lease tanks (plus more than 5,000 British tanks) were used by the Red Army, eight percent of war-time production. " [1]

Also per wikipedia, USSR produced about 30k light tanks, 65k medium tanks (eg: t-34), and 13k heavy tanks. [2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#/media...

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_combat_vehicle_producti...

>The lend lease part is not correct. Lend lease went mostly to UK (Google AI says about 60% of lend lease went to UK

UK sent stuff to USSR, too, including probably some of the stuff they got from the US, and they delivered it to Murmansk (rather than requiring the Soviets to come get it) during which their convoys and sailors took losses from the German navy.

I heard that the USSR received $1 trillion worth of stuff in 2025 dollars from it WWII allies. The US sent advisors, too, e.g., in how to build factories.

Of course, a few years later the US was sending stuff to Germany as part of the Marshall Plan, one of the purposes of which was to build up Germany so it could resist future Soviet aggression.

> UK sent stuff to USSR

Yes, but that wasn't part of the "lend lease" program.

The quantity of materials sent from the UK to the USSR was significant. Just it was not part of the lend lease program. (Arguably this is something better, just direct aid without strings attached).

The quantities of what the UK gave to the USSR was a sacrifice of blood and treasure: "food and raw materials, roughly £30 billion in today’s money. This included 5,000 tanks and 7,000 aircraft, while public charitable donations provided approximately £5.3 million (roughly £490 million in today’s money) in medical stores...."

"Some of these supplies were purchased in the United States (US) by the UK for delivery directly to the USSR. Most British supplies were carried by sea to Northern Russia, docking at Archangel or Murmansk, by a series of Arctic convoys, which were subject to sustained German attacks from three dimensions from powerful German forces based in Northern Norway" [1]

> I heard that the USSR received $1 trillion worth of stuff in 2025 dollars from it WWII allies

Sounds plausible (I would hesitate to repeat it without seeing the data behind the numbers). I'm curious how the number breaks down as a relative amount.

[1] https://www.geostrategy.org.uk/britains-world/telling-the-tr...

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