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Carl Hamilton
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Historian with a focus in 20th century US/Soviet mil his.Jun 27
How did the Soviet industry fare during Operation Barbarossa? Did they have enough resources to replace losses during major battles like Kursk and Stalingrad?
In 1941 during the catastrophe that was Operation Barbarossa, Zhukov was chief of staff, and at one point he described in a memo from the Stavka, that the situation was “pretty difficult” and not very likely to improve. This is a slight underestimation. There are two ways of looking at it, one slightly optimistic and one slightly pessimistic. On the bright side, the Soviet Union persevered, and was able to establish and increase their military-industrial output and win the war, which is extremely impressive while losing so much of their territory.

On the other hand, when Zhukov said the situation was difficult, what he meant to say in expressive words was that the Soviet economy was a bucket of dogshit on wheels going gown a hill at 100km/h towards a very solidly built brick wall.

From 1941 to the end of 1942, the Soviet lost about 34% of their entire country’s output, including 48% of agricultural output, 32% of the civilian population and 23% of their factories. Disregarding the extreme military losses, that’s quite a thing to lose within 18 months. Imagine for a moment, that America was invaded, and their starting point was that America had lost from New York to New Orleans and to Chicago. This was the conditions, something America itself pointed out in WW2.

In short, it’s difficult to even describe the scale of what the Soviets lost, and I can tell you that they did not recover their civilian society until the 1950s, that’s how great the devastation was. The fact that the Soviets were able to produce anything at all is impressive, the fact that they outproduced the Germans under these cataclysmic conditions, is a downright miracle.

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