Could the Soviets REALLY Have Beaten Hitler Alone?

Could the Soviets REALLY Have Beaten Hitler Alone? On 7 November 1941, Soviet tanks crossed Red Square in a snowstorm and drove straight to a front line less than a hundred kilometres away. On the very same day, in Washington, Roosevelt signed the paper that made the Soviet Union eligible for Lend-Lease. Of everything America and Britain would ship to the Soviets during the whole war, about two per cent arrived in 1941. Three summers later the same Red Army was racing across Belarus on American trucks. So — could the Soviets really have beaten Hitler on their own? In this animated documentary we put the whole war on one wall: a Soviet pipe from behind the Urals and an Allied pipe from three oceans. Chapter by chapter we shut one valve and watch what the front does — holds, slows or slides — and a WAR METER keeps the score. We look at the "four per cent" of Voznesensky and the "America saved them" of German memoirs; the true size of the Eastern Front (three of every four German divisions, three to four of every five German dead); Moscow 1941 with a few hundred British Matildas and Valentines and a couple of hundred Hurricanes; the evacuation of 1,500 factories east of the Urals and a telegram that said Il-2s were needed "like air, like bread"; Stalingrad, won with Soviet tanks while the Allied pipe was still being built; the three roads — PQ-17 and the order to scatter, the Persian Corridor, Soviet ships past Japanese inspectors; what was really in the boxes — 400,000 trucks, 1,900 locomotives, 380,000 field telephones, aluminium, aviation fuel, powder, boots and Spam; Bagration on Studebaker wheels; two-thirds of the Luftwaffe's fighters and 10,000 88-mm guns pointed at American bombers; Africa, Italy, Normandy and the front that never opened in Manchuria; what Khrushchev said Stalin said, what Zhukov told Simonov in private, and what Glantz & House, Harrison and Overy conclude today. Then the verdict — and the part historians still debate. ⏱ Chapters 0:00 Could the Soviets Really Have Beaten Hitler Alone? 1:35 The Question 4:28 The Meat Grinder 7:06 Moscow, Alone? 10:01 The Great Escape East 12:50 Stalingrad 16:03 The Three Roads 19:23 What Was in the Boxes 23:12 Wheels of 1944 26:29 The War Above Germany 29:42 The Other Fronts 33:04 The Test 36:41 The Verdict Which valve mattered more — and where would you put the date Berlin falls with the Allied pipe shut? Tell us in the comments, and tell us which side of this argument you came in on. Subscribe for more history told from both sides. Also on this channel: "What REALLY Lost Germany WW2?" and "Did Winter REALLY Defeat Hitler at Moscow?". In memory of the Soviet soldiers and civilians who carried this war, of the German soldiers who died in the East, and of the Allied sailors lost on the Arctic route. Sources include David M. Glantz & Jonathan M. House (When Titans Clashed, 1995/2015), Albert L. Weeks (Russia's Life-Saver: Lend-Lease Aid to the U.S.S.R., 2004), Alexander Hill (The Red Army and the Second World War, 2017; "British Lend Lease Aid and the Soviet War Effort, June 1941–June 1942", 2007), Mark Harrison (Accounting for War, 1996), Richard Overy (Russia's War, 1997; The Bombing War, 2013), Rüdiger Overmans (Deutsche militärische Verluste, 1999), G. F. Krivosheev (Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses, 2001), Adam Tooze (The Wages of Destruction, 2006), Williamson Murray (Strategy for Defeat, 1983), Steven Zaloga (Soviet Lend-Lease Tanks, 2017), Richard Woodman (Arctic Convoys, 1994), T. H. Vail Motter (The Persian Corridor and Aid to Russia, 1952), the US Reports to Congress on Lend-Lease Operations, and N. A. Voznesensky's The Economy of the USSR During World War II (1948). Khrushchev's memoirs, Konstantin Simonov's notes of his conversations with Zhukov, Anastas Mikoyan's reported interview and Adolf Galland's memoir are quoted as recollections, not documents. Disputed points — the share of Lend-Lease in Soviet output (4 % vs 7–10 %, depending on what is counted), the proportion of British tanks at Moscow, the exact share of German losses in the East, division counts by theatre, and how much longer a Soviet victory alone would have taken — are presented as debated. The valve tests are the channel's reading. All scenes are animated illustrations, not archival footage. #history #ww2 #documentary