The Dark History Of The Soviet War Machine | War Factories | Timeline

my name's dan snow and i want to tell you about history hit tv it's like the netflix for history hundreds of exclusive documentaries and interviews with the world's best historians we've got an exclusive offer available to fans of timeline if you go to history hit tv you can either follow the information below this video or just google history hit tv and use the code timeline you get a special introductory offer go and check it out in the meantime enjoy this video the untold story of war production [Music] all wars are about competition and production the side that can produce more is always going to triumph over the other side hitler knows he needs industry if he wants to build a war machine this is a war between the factory the real story of how the second world war was fought and won the united states is about to launch the single greatest program of armament production in human history [Music] they swamped the other side with a tide of mass production the secret war of the factories that would decide the fate of the whole world gotta get back to work [Music] [Music] of all the countries that fight in the second world war by far the largest is russia a land mass twice the size of the usa and 70 times bigger than britain if war production were about resources russian war factories should have out produced the rest of the world by a huge margin but britain though only a tiny fraction of the size of russia will produce more fighter planes more bombers more military vehicles and many more warships us production will dwarf that of communist russia even in the production of tanks for which soviet war factories are best known the us and uk combined will produce over 25 000 more than russia the story of soviet war production is one of the most remarkable of the second world war but behind the heroism depicted in the propaganda newsreels is a dark tale of oppression forced labor cannibalism and mass killing this is the story of the soviet war factories after the revolution russia's communists set out to create a terrifying military regime stalin spends years building a vast military force soviet war preparations began long before hitler was a threat in the west or long before japan was a threat in the east if you go back to the 1920s what you find is the general staff being told to think about future war to defend the new socialist regime from external threats and to suppress opposition within the communists seek to become a military superstate and that means building war factories leonard admired the germans for centralization he admired the americans in mass production and he admired his own zerzynski for inventing the seeker police and you put those together and you have kind of that's the soviet economy of the 1930s though the communists envy american mass production they hate the society that created it based as it is on free markets private property and individual freedom in soviet russia things will be different in the west industrialization was a very um natural process in the soviet case it was a state-driven campaign regulated from moscow very consciously the communist state will be in charge of production the trouble is communist bureaucrats don't know how to build or run factories so for help they turn to america albert khan is an american engineer who designs the general motors headquarters and almost all of henry ford's mass production automobile factories it's khan who will design ford's famous war factory willow run he is dubbed the architect of detroit they were the industrial giants of detroit the masters of manufacturing who understood how to mass produce the machinery understood how to get things done and get it done rapidly to produce a product in 1930 khan was given a contract by the soviets for his firm to go over and put up factories in the soviet union his firm basically established a bureau in in moscow and they created dozens and dozens of industrial designs of many plants and factories that were erected and trained hundreds of soviet engineers khan's firm designs no fewer than 521 soviet plants and factories including some of the giant factories in chelyabinsk hundreds of tons of american machine tools are shipped to the soviet union khan attempts to recreate the american mass production conveyor belt system in the factories work continues according to the 10-year plan stalin proudly shows off his new factories the beginning of a brave new era of communist industry evidence he claims of the superiority of socialism and its ability to out produce the west but not only are these factories designed by american engineers from detroit some of them like the stalingrad tractor plant are even built in america albert khan had designed and built it in the states and then it was taken into part sent to the soviet union and under the supervision of american engineers it was erected at stalingrad the soviets are incredibly proud of this factory it's held up as an example of soviet success but actually it was built in america and overseen by american engineers in the 30s there was a lot of deliberate copying of american mass production here the building of magneto gorsk is really based upon the steel production in gary indiana the first motor factories these were very much modeled on the idea of ford and fordism for its factories the soviet union has turned to america and for its tank design it turns to britain in 1930 stalin sends commissars to the uk they will return with tanks tractors and cars to reproduce the soviets want a functional effective easy to produce tank it's actually the vicar's six-ton tank that they end up producing as the soviet t26 the t26 russian copy of the british vicar's six ton is the most produced tank of the decade but by the late 1930s it has evolved into the famous t-34 this tank re-engineered by alexander morizov is one of the most heavily produced tanks of world war ii many will be captured by the nazis marked with swastikas and used against the russians themselves this tank was intended to be mass-produced from the outset this was going to be the tank the soviets used the slabs of armor welded together the casting of the turret on the fire control equipment was absolutely made for russian industry quite roughly engineered right the way through but where it needed to be finally engineered it was finally engineered it was fit for purpose in every sense stalin devotes vast resources to his wall factories but at a terrible cost to the russian people the war factories absolutely dominate soviet industry they produce more than the agricultural sector tractor production and car production combined they occupy over a tenth of all machine building and metalwork production in sharp contrast to its detroit built war factories homegrown state-run soviet industry is a disaster the communists are unable to mass-produce low-priced quality goods for ordinary consumers twenty years after the russian revolution ordinary people in this socialist utopia are struggling to feed and clothe themselves but the welfare of the people it seems is not a priority despite the grinding poverty of ordinary russians stalin is spending twice as much on armaments as america and britain combined output from russia's armament factories grows 70-fold in the year 1939 alone the soviet war factories produced nearly 3 000 tanks over 10 000 aircraft over a hundred thousand machine guns and over 1.5 million rifles and carbines when you look at the amount of armament production going on in the soviet union in the 30s it's pretty clear that it's not done to protect the soviet people and their welfare you wouldn't be doing this much unless you were going to pursue an aggressive stance at some point in future but the soviet union is not alone in this germany's war factories have been busy too by 1939 hitler's vermont is armed to the teeth it is the only army in the world that compares with the red army there are two countries that are leading war production around about 1939 1940. one's germany the others the soviet union between the two of them they're producing more than half of the world's combat aircraft even nazi germany can't compete with stalin in tank production by 1941 the red army has more tanks than the rest of the world combined as many as 22 000 nobody but a fool would invade the soviet union also starred in thought on the 22nd of june 1941 german forces pour into the soviet union catching stalin completely off guard when the blow came that was from five different directions and from the north one extra just for luck hitler has the advantage of surprise he's meant to be stalin's ally they'd agreed to divide poland between them with hitler taking the west and stalin taking the east hitler has assembled the largest invasion force in history and it is now sweeping across russia they send in five and a half million troops five thousand aircraft to use three thousand tanks they stomp their way through the country the speed of the german advance is breathtaking within just one week german forces are 200 miles deep into soviet territory for stalin this is a perilous moment he's in danger of losing his precious war factories the territories that are falling to the nazis immediately contain most of the war factories and something like 40 percent of the soviet population the loss of stalin's western territories could mean the loss of 85 percent of pre-war aircraft factories nine major tank factories 70 percent of soviet capacity for coking coal and iron ore over half its steel making iron coal and aluminium capacity and 40 percent of its capacity for electric power and railway freight stalin's immediate response is to send people out there civilians military anyone to protect industrial cities this is an absolutely critical period zhukov is telling his troops attack attack attack even if you have no weapons if there's one rifle between two the two of you go into battle when one of you is killed the other one picks up the rifle and the casualties at this stage of the war are horrifying somehow or other they have to hold off this attacking behemoth some factories along with their workers are told to stay and continue production as the nazis approach russian factories already working overtime even increased the temper of their war production there were tank factories in leningrad and in stalingrad and the tanks were being produced unpainted taken out of the factories and straight to the front line the soviets are unable to hold off the invading force they are completely out machined and stalin knows it you've got to see world war ii as a war of production it's absolutely imperative these factories are saved if stalin stands a hope of defeating the axis powers so what stalin does is to order one of the most extraordinary logistical feats of the war stalin now issues one of the most incredible orders of world war ii that no fewer than one and a half thousand factories should be taken apart transported 700 miles to the east and then reassembled [Music] in 1941 stalin has a large number of war factories some of the biggest in the world the trouble is they are in the wrong place as the nazis move further into russia stalin demands that one and a half thousand of them be relocated 700 miles to the east beyond hitler's grasp so the loss of this territory could easily have lost the war for the soviet union but the orders were there very early on burn everything that you can't take take what you can as the german armies advanced while the decision to move the factories is taken quickly actually doing it is a challenge of breathtaking proportions to begin with nobody really knew where it was going they had no field telephone equipment everybody was cut off nobody could communicate all news was old news they didn't know how far they were going to have to retreat which had all sorts of unfortunate consequences a lot of stuff was lost on the way misrooted fell into the hands of the enemy some of it was moved too far and never quite reached its destination one of the men involved in moving the factories is alexander morizov he has worked on russia's famous t-34 tank and manages one of its factories morozov helps to relocate skilled engineers and labourers as well as machinery and stock to new sites in the east 30 000 soviet civilians will be mobilized to move 10 000 pieces of factory equipment machines are totally taken apart and tool rooms are completely disassembled everything's boxed up in thousands of crates and train upon train arrives to take them by rail as much as about 1400 miles to nizhny tagil a million railway truck loads of equipment will be moved if these were placed end to end they would form a solid line stretching along 10 000 kilometers of track but it's not just buildings and equipment more than 16 million people must go too the population of the urals will be transformed forever it goes from being responsible for about 40 percent of the workforce in 1940 to within a couple of years it's almost doubled the euros simply aren't prepared for this great influx in people and industry where all these workers going to be housed how they're going to be fed often people were just setting up machinery in the open fields without power without worker accommodation probably something of the order of the 10th or an eighth of soviet industrial capacity was physically moved hundreds of kilometers and that means not only machines but also materials plans instructions the whole infrastructure that makes a factory it was picked up put on trucks and shipped out but transporting the wall factories east is not enough soviet workers must now reconstruct these factories and get producing for the red army time is of the essence for the soviet union the nazi vermont is making fast progress in september 1941 the nazis reach leningrad stalin needs to reassemble his factories and fast for the reconstruction of a steel works just outside chileabinsk workers are given 75 days to get these factories up and running again that's very little time they've got to re-establish 18 production shops together with railway lines water supplies and air shafts this is a huge task it's a really inhospitable climate so the people that have been told to start building these factories they can't even break the ground to do so because it's frozen something like two meters down so in these horrible conditions they're having to try and thaw the ground out or plant explosives in it to try and blast through so that they can even begin the task of putting up a factory this is round the clock tireless work the job is finished ahead of schedule in just six weeks the progress of the nazi vermont is quick but the mobilization of soviet workers is quicker some of the soviet union's most important war factories are being successfully moved and reconstructed in the 1941 scramble one example is chelyabinsk they take seven industrial plants including kirov which has 15 000 workers which is a huge shift in people and materials kellya vince gets transformed over the course of the war into essentially the world's largest tank arsenal it actually gets named tankograd or tank city tank city will come to employ a workforce of sixty thousand out of it will come over eighteen thousand tanks and over seventeen million units of ammunition but soviet tank production is not confined to tank city one of the most important factories to move to urals is the zinski railcar factory alexander morizov merges it with a local factory and turns it into the stalin ural tank factory now this is the largest tank factory of the entire war and it produces vast quantities of morozov's t-34 tanks evacuation of industry to the east was a tremendous accomplishment following the nazi invasion of 1941 over 500 large-scale factories are moved and reassembled on top of this the soviet state begins a vast new program of factory construction they will build over 3 500 big new factories from scratch during the war years this is a rate of 780 a year when you consider the ever looming nazi presence in the west the sheer scale of soviet construction of brand new factories is absolutely astonishing what the soviets do is realign their production economy for the war so civilian places like car and truck manufacturers are suddenly told you make tanks now throughout 1942 the soviet union is losing still more ground to the nazi war machine this loss is a huge setback for soviet wartime production but despite this the ussr begins out producing the axis powers in tanks by a huge margin in 1942 only a year after nazi invasion the soviet union is producing almost four times as many tanks as germany it is not just tanks that the soviets produce in large numbers though less commonly remembered for it soviet war factories are matching the nazis in aircraft production factory 18 is evacuated to nizhny teguil after the german invasion and they produce something like 15 000 illusion 10 fighters you can compare that with the willow run factory the ford motor company that produced 7000 liberators now liberators were four engine bombers and i know a four engine bomb is a much more complicated thing than a single engine fighter but nonetheless 15 000 from a single factory that's well over 10 of total soviet wartime aircraft production from one factory and the germans couldn't get anywhere close in terms of numbers soviet war factory production beats that of the nazis they produce over 20 000 more aircraft than the germans more than 300 000 more machine guns and more than 2 million rifles and carbines russian production during world war ii is at first sight very very impressive and this appears to be a triumph for the command and control economy of the soviet union but behind the numbers is a story not only of inefficiency and shoddy production but also of terror torture and the shocking inhumanity of russia's communist rulers [Music] by 1942 stalin's relocated war factories are churning out vast numbers of tanks and other military equipment but victory against the nazis is far from inevitable soviet production is not the unadulterated success story it first appears soviet war factories are riddled with production problems and they are underpinned by a system of fear terror and imposition to understand soviet war factories it is crucial to understand that the state has complete control over the lives of everybody in the soviet union the soviet union was founded in opposition to capitalism there was to be no private property or individual pursuits instead everything was to be owned collectively and individuals were to be harnessed to collective goals this world view is connected essentially with a vision of human life in which individual human beings are not seen as autonomous agents with purposes goals of their own instead the idea is there is some grandiose collective goal which trumps individual well-being and individual happiness and that's a central part of the ideology of both nazi germany and soviet communism in capitalist america there are hundreds thousands of private firms competing to win customers they must offer products that are cheaper or better than their rivals but in russia's planned socialist economy competition has been extinguished soviet producers are effectively operating as monopolies there is simply no competition and of course what this gets rid of is something really important in business the whole idea of incentive they're not competing to deliver products to either price or quality as a result the soviet war factories are turning out really shoddy goods the soviet union's got a really huge problem with quality control american firms must please their customers to survive but soviet state monopolies just have to hit the output targets the famous soviet era joke was about the factory that was given a target of nail output in weight and which met that target by producing one single enormously large and very heavy nail that joke is funny because it captures exactly what did happen under that system which was people meeting targets through production but in ways that produced a product that was ultimately useless innovation and quality take a back seat what counts in russia's planned economy is numbers the only thing that matters is hitting those production targets because that's what's going to save the factory managers skins so to the dismay of pilots the quality aircraft is never going to improve tanks were produced with defects which in peace time would probably have led to them being sent back but this is war we you know what is an army if it doesn't have tanks so these tanks were sent off to the front line where the defects became apparent when they went into battle the tanks that do make it to the front often lack the vital support they need to keep going the soviet union during the entire course of world war ii produced less than two hundred thousand motor vehicles they're producing almost more tanks than they are trucks or jeeps it's great to have masses of tanks but you need motor vehicles to bring the ammunition and the fuel forward and to keep the logistics moving and this is something the soviet union had not thought of you would assume that places like the soviet union and germany where the state is in control of the economy would lead to the most efficient production but actually it always leads to deficiencies the introduction of market incentives might have driven up production but the communist rulers regard any weakening of state control as a threat every time stalin and molotov are faced with a proposal that will sacrifice a little bit of control for the sake of more efficiency they say no power is what it's all about not efficiency we must have the power to direct resources while it was a way of ensuring control consumers never really got what they wanted even the army in a way almost all factories are converted to war production the rest of the economy is starved of resources this actually would have turned out shells and other munitions far in excess of the estimate in a month we had these priorities everything for the front more aircraft more tanks more guns nothing else matters outside the defense industry the rest of the economy is is really collapsing factories are told to stop producing farm machinery like tractors and instead they've got to produce armaments and farms and not sense sufficient fuel to power what tractors are still in operation in the interior of the country that wasn't occupied young men went off to fight horses were taken into the army the supply of machinery and fertilizers completely disappeared so agriculture became a much more primitive business and yields fell in the unoccupied regions as well so by the time you get to 1942 43 living standards for ordinary civilians are probably 30 40 of what they were before the war agricultural output falls greatly over the course of the war and a significant part of this decline can be attributed to the policies of the soviet state in 1942 and 43 the worth of agricultural output is less than half of what it was in 1940 the soviet government isn't stupid they know that if you ignore agriculture you're not going to be able to feed everybody they know that the death toll will be massive they don't care the philosophy is that the state is important the individual people are not the soviets did have that perception that human being as an individual is irrelevant and the state needs a paramount and of course that exacerbated the death toll human suffering aside a chronically underfed workforce is not a productive workforce people are simply too weak to work and you've got a lack of focus on civilian needs that doesn't make any long-term economic sense the average soviet worker is offered few positive incentives to work much harder the soviet state has got a massively de-prioritized civilian production so even basic goods like food and clothes they're all scarce shops empty why would an already underfed workforce work hard in difficult factory conditions as this policy carries on russians begin to die in their millions not from german bombs and bullets but because of the actions of their own socialist government who were dying from what was called elementary dystrophy and that basically meant extreme nutritional decline people were dying from a total lack of protein and kind of turned into living skeletons and then died the soviet people are led to desperate measures to survive there's documented cases of cannibalism mass piles of bodies ready for burial had all the fleshy parts cut out of them and even of people eating their near relatives to keep ordinary people from rising up in revolt the soviet state uses terror in the soviet system no descent is allowed so if you move the workers thousands of miles the other side of the urals and established in the new factory and you give them tents to live in in freezing conditions and you know that if you complain you'll be shot then there'll be no complaints so you can provide an absolute bare minimum for your population because all dissent is crushed one of the functions that the soviet secret police fulfill is to terrorize the population and to spur them into productive activity simply through the fear that they do not do things if they are declared to be an economic saboteur as it's called they will be shot and not only they will be shot but typically their friends and their family will be shot as well it was completely illegal to joke about the authorities to spread rumors to pass on information that you were not supposed to have people were arrested for slandering a party leaders or criticism of the government's rumbling in the queues for example and the sentences for this particular crime were even more severe than for theft so people could be sentenced for 10 years of hard labor for just talk stalin will employ a vast army simply to keep his population under control these are able-bodied men who should have been at the front and they were monitoring people's telephone conversations and looking at letters and any slight criticism of joseph stalin would get one sent to the gulag so you will have a decorated army artillery captain like alexander solzhenitsyn who in early 1945 because of a humorous remark that might be construed as critical of stalin in a lettered home is arrested by the encounter and sent to the gulags the soviet union is actually not a country that belongs to the workers as the propaganda always claimed in fact during the war gulags provided soviet factories with more forced labour than was even used in nazi germany in the camp system as a whole in 1942 probably a fifth the prisoners are dying and that's largely hunger hunger and overwork but largely hunger in these few short years more soviet soldiers will be shot by the secret police the nkvd than all of the americans killed over the course of the war by 1943 despite the communist regime's single-minded focus on war production despite the vast resources available to them despite terrorizing their own population into total obedience the soviet union is still struggling to repel hitler's forces they have not enough trucks and jeeps not enough fuel and steel and food not even enough boots for their soldiers they will need help to defeat the nazis it will come from the capitalist west [Music] 1944 is the year of stalin's 10 victories the red army successfully conducts 10 offensives driving german forces from soviet territory soviet propaganda depicts this as a victory of war production the capacity of the socialist system to mass-produce t-34 tanks but soviet's success in 1944 is not due to any triumph of soviet war production at the beginning of 1944 the eastern front is still closer to moscow than it is berlin the push to expel the nazis from russia and ultimately to invade nazi germany will require the red army to move thousands of miles west but soviet war factories are not producing the vehicles let alone the food that this will require fortunately in 1944 the red army is not relying on russian war factories alone here at bethlehem fairfield dockyard baltimore sits one of the few remaining liberty ships a ship that was mass produced in wartime america and is often credited with doing much to help the allies win the war but this is not a battleship it is a cargo vessel a total of 2710 liberty ships were built and they carried two-thirds of all the cargo that left the united states during world war ii liberty ships like this carried vast amounts of military and other supplies from the united states and britain to the soviet union the ships sailed through the dangerous arctic route and persian corridor on their way to russia what's delivered will change the course of the war a huge amount of material and personnel came from the united states ammunition bombs machine gun bullets airplanes trucks tanks every conceivable kind of cargo as we say beans to bullets little things like quinine big things like trucks or still bigger like 50 ton tanks we had to get the tools to where they would do the most good one of the reasons why the success of the soviet economy during world war ii in producing military equipment like is actually illusory is that through the great degree this was done on the back of massive assistance from the west and particularly from the united states the soviets are only able to carry on offensive warfare in modern sense because during the war the american led lease provides over 400 000 jeeps and trucks to the red army this is more than twice the total production the soviets have during the war so general zhukov one of the great soviet commanders is being driven around in vehicles produced in ohio it's sometimes said that the red army's firepower was mostly home produced but its mobility came from america and it's not just the 400 000 trucks and jeeps the us also sends over 35 000 motorcycles almost 10 000 railway flat cars and almost 2 000 steam locomotives the mobility of the red army is also dramatically increased by provisions of canned food over the course of the war the soviet union is given four million tons of foodstuffs what soldiers needed on the move was concentrated calories and proteins and going into battle with a stale loaf and a couple of gherkins was not the same as american spam memoirs of red army soldiers talk about these big tins of american beef stew that sustained them it is not just america making these contributions to the soviet effort the first of the tanks move off on their way to the eastern front good luck to them and good luck to our gallant allies they want more tanks let's make sure they get them from the port of liverpool in britain left many of the cargo ships bound for russia the british sent tanks spitfires hurricanes even radar ambulances medical supplies and 15 million pairs of boots for the red army soldiers it's astonishing that britain which is a fraction of the size of the soviet union is supplying it with all that aid it is not just in quantity that british and american war factories excel the complexity and quality of almonds coming out of say britain and america is much higher than it is in the soviet union between 1941 and 1944 the ussr will produce 46.5 billion dollars worth of armaments that is barely more than britain's 32.4 billion dollars which is shocking when the disparity in population size is considered whilst the usa will produce an enormous 140.6 billion dollars worth of armaments the allies do not just provide weapons and military vehicles allied aid enables soviet war factories to continue production despite the soviet neglect of its wider economy the u.s provides soviet factories with over a million tons of machinery and industrial equipment six million tons of steel and non-ferrous metal and a million miles of telephone wire and much else besides the americans will provide russia with 2.6 million tons of oil products during the war this is mostly high octane aviation fuel it is still cheaper for the allies to extract oil build a tanker send a tanker across the planet protect the tanker while it's out on the water and deliver it to the soviet union than helping the soviet union extract their own oil of which they have an abundance within their own borders i think there's quite a lot of irony in the fact that you've got a capitalist society fueling a communist war effort the west of course stands for everything that soviet ideology have built itself in opposition to and actually the west isn't that fond of the soviet union either but nevertheless they've both got to help each other if they want to defeat the axis powers the alliance between the capitalist west and communist east was often strained it was not easy for everyone to stomach an alliance with the soviet union stalin was generally understood to be a bloodthirsty and completely unreliable partner the reality was the allied hopes of defeating germany did rest very largely upon soviet resistance so it was just enlightened self-interest to send aid to the russians over the course of the war the soviet union will receive 127 billion worth of supplies in 1944 the red army is using vast amounts of equipment produced by the capitalist west but they're still using communist methods of fighting the view that human beings are a kind of raw material to be used by the planning power extended also to the way in which wars were fought decisions were taken where the question of what kind of likely casualties were being incurred by military operations was hardly thought of by the higher command the soviet idea of an offensive is to throw waves of troops and tanks and if the first wave is largely wiped out that creates a breakthrough opportunity for the follow-on waves the russian way of war is extremely generous in throwing away human lives and throwing away material in order to get victory this is a massive loss of life that is simply from dictators that are unrestrained and in fact encourage their generals and encourage their officers and leaders to be brutal the british american way of war is much more mechanized it's much more reliant on equipment it's much more careful about human lives and losses great suffering and loss of life is not only the fate of soviets on the battlefield it is also the reality for ordinary civilians on the home front under the rule of their own state the homefront story is actually a really sad one although on the surface bolshevik leaders claim to be progressives socialists fighting for the quality and prosperity of the people in reality it was brutal dictatorship that killed its own population in hundreds of thousands and with huge mismanagement caused the deaths of millions despite the threat of torture and execution the nightmare of living under communism caused many people to rebel unlike most other european nations the soviet union has lots of wartime traitors in 1941 and 42 millions of ukrainians belarusians russians will collaborate willingly with the germans not because they like the germans and because they hate joseph stalin so much world war ii will directly cause the premature deaths of 50 to 60 million people throughout the world but up to half of these some 28 million were soviet citizens 9 million soviet soldiers die but more than twice that number of soviet civilians will lose their lives as well the soviet home front is a story of deprivation repression and death as the end of the war comes into sight this relationship between the soviet union and the western allies deteriorates rapidly the expediency of collaborating is being replaced by this old animosity that existed well before the war and actually what you can see here are the paving blocks of the cold war starting to be laid both powers want to make it to berlin first in order to be able to influence the fate of germany after the war so in a way this is a race between the capitalist west and the soviet east they were both pressing forward to berlin and stalin wanted to get there first but what carried the soviet assault again was american trucks the red army reaches berlin at the end of january 1945. the war in europe ends in september 1945. the cold war has begun the growing struggle between two great powers to shape the post-war world the ideological battle between communist east and capitalist west is well underway what you find after the war because of this apparent success of uh soviet mass production of war material is the idea that the soviet economy was something which had not only been successful then but was a model for the future in fact we now know it was a total disaster socialist politicians in the west including in the british labour party point to soviet war production as an example to be followed after the war at least government come forward and say that in matters of economic planning they agree with the soviet union they're looking at the figures for what the soviet union produced during the war but not the cost of having that kind of command economy and how detrimental it was to the population in the post-war years britain will introduce a heavily planned state-controlled economy with disastrous results one of the great delusions of the 20th century after both the first world war and the second world war was the idea that the experience of the war proved the superiority of planning over a free economy in a free society the war sees the defeat of fascism in germany but this is achieved only by strengthening the grip of communist totalitarianism in the soviet bloc it is a cruel irony that this is done with the help of the capitalist west and their immensely productive war factories [Music] you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

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Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, stalin, russian ww2, soviet russia, soviet ww2, soviet production, stalinist russia, ussr documentary, russia ww2, soviet history

Id: fcpUdhj-9A8

Length: 43min 46sec (2626 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 21 2021