Absolutely true on all counts, save one. I did calculations on the amount of air power, anti-air, personnel, and fuel the Germans dedicated to the anti-bombing campaign in the west, 90% of which was against daytime bombing by the Americans. It was about 30% of their resources in any category.
If you put 30% more air over Kursk, the Germans win. It’s not close. They were winning the battle up to the point they lost air superiority. The Stukas with the tank buster guns were slaughtering the Russian armor. So without the US in the war, I don’t know if Germany beats Russia, but it’s a much, much longer war.
Also, the material that flowed in was astounding. In 1941-early 1942, the BEST Russian fighter plane on the front was the P-39 AirCobra, a plane so bad we wouldn’t even put our own pilots in it. So despite the massive power of the Red Army (offensives of 100 divisions!), they were using Ford trucks and American transports to move all their infantry. And they used American/Brit radios extensively. In short, the Russians were able to focus really on just three things: men, cannons, and tanks.
“... In 1941-early 1942, the BEST Russian fighter plane on the front was the P-39 AirCobra, ...”
Not sure who’s feeding data to LS, but I’d have to know a lot more about how “best” is judged here before accepting any such claim.
The VVS and PVO of the Red Army were well-served by fighter aircraft of the Lavochkin bureau, early MiGs, and the Yakovlev series of fighters: the notion that Bell’s P-39 outclassed them is ridiculous.
Production variants of the P-39 were equipped with inferior superchargers, limiting high altitude performance of what was otherwise a very innovative design. Above 12,000 ft MSL, it was very vulnerable to fighters with better turbochargers.
If you want to blame anyone, blame the penny-pinching morons in the US Congress who laid such tight funding constraints on the US Army Air Corps that system development was truncated. The design never recovered.
And the Soviets did not use P-39s for ground attack as a primary mission. Much of that work fell to Ilyushin’s Il-2 Shturmovik, a larger two-place aircraft with heavier armament and armor. It became the most-produced combat aircraft in history: made in about nine times the numbers of the P-39s the United States supplied to the USSR.
Records do indicate that Bell’s fighter fared well against the Luftwaffe’s Ju-87s, twin-engine bombers, and early Me-109s.
“...the P-39 AirCobra, a plane so bad we wouldn’t even put our own pilots in it. ...”
This is erroneous.
Total P-39 production exceeded 9,500. Less than half went to the Soviet Union. The rest equipped the UK RAF, the RAAF, France, Italy, Portugal, and US units, with which they saw action in the Pacific and the Mediterranean.
What may forever be debated and never resolved is the issue of how many German divisions were either pre-occupied or, ultimately, destroyed on the different fronts. The Russians kept millions of German soldiers on the Eastern front and killed or captured huge numbers of them, which, in turn, meant that the Western Allies did not have to contend with them in their theaters of operation. The reverse is also true, though on a somewhat lesser scale: the Anglo/American West kept large numbers of German forces from being available on the Eastern front and/or forced the Germans to draw on forces that were fighting elsewhere.
The calculus of just who created the greatest strategic benefit is almost impossible to reckon, but, without question, the Russians, regardless of their kill ratios, tied up and destroyed huge numbers of Germans, which I believe was their greatest contribution to the Allied victory.