Board Thread:Timeline Discussions/@comment-7559950-20130911012534/@comment-3428312-20150118004951

Lordganon wrote: Wrong, GB. Like you continue to be on the overall topic.

Lend-Lease allowed them extra resources, which enabled better supply and quicker re-supply. Many cases, easier to use what it sent for their means. But by no means were they dependent on it, or needed it. All it meant was that they could advance further, more often. Without it, they would be a few months behind otl.

Germans came up with the idea, and almost none in the Finnish High Command wanted to do it. The only area where they really involved themselves outside of lost territory was East Karelia, which they claimed anyway. As for Mannerheim, the only time he did anything like that was under orders from the Finnish president. It was Finnish government policy to take what they claimed and what was taken from them. They even attempted to peace out numerous times for what had been taken from them, and kept up relations with the West until forced out of it by the West. Claiming I am wrong, as I have stated multiple times in the past, does not make it so when all the facts readily available to yourself point to the contrary.

Let's start with this Lend-Lease bit of yours, which goes in the face of pratically all historians and data. 55% of all aviation fuel, 92% of all rail lines, 81% of all locomtives, 80% of all rail cars, a third of all explosives, 45% of all copper, 55% of all aluminum, and 30% of all tires (This isn't including all the natural rubber exported as well), 27% of the machine tools, roughly a fourth of all tanks, 30% of the sugar, and 15% of the meat used in the Soviet war economy was Western (Primarily American, but the UK was especially critcal in the early war) in origin. To suggest this aid was just "extra resources" or that they "weren't dependent upon it" is absurd to the point of causing laughter. Quite frankly, suggesting the Soviets just shrug off losing these supplies and then find a way to magically produce it all with domestic sources while maintaining their production on other things as well is baseless thinking.

As to the again claim that the Finns didn't want to do that, that's once again not supported by the facts. Mannerheim himself presented the plan to the OKW, and after his resolve lapsed in the wake of American pressure many Finnish officers still wanted to carry on the operation.