American Aid to the Soviet Union
The English military history, Basil Liddell Hart, wrote the following concerning the German failure in the Caucasus: An important factor in the failure was that the Russians had hundreds of bombers stationed at the airﬁelds in the vicinity of Grozny. American help through the Persian Gulf, which reached the southern portion of the desperate ﬁghting conducted by the Soviets, also became appreciable for the ﬁrst time. The commander of the Wiking tank battalion, later wrote: It was during the ﬁghting down in the Caucasus that American weapons appeared in large numbers for the ﬁrst time. Some Russian tank units were equipped entirely with Shermans, American Dodge trucks and jeeps. Even the uniforms that the Russian soldiers wore, especially the equipment issued to the Russian alpine forces, were of American origin. Even the rations that we pulled out of the rations containers on knocked-out ﬁghting vehicles were American. The only thing left on the Russian soldier that was Russian was the soldier himself. Everything else was of American origin. Image: Original color photo of a battle-weary MG team of the SS-Division Wiking in the Caucasus 1942. The man carrying the ammo crate with a yellow brassard is a Soviet Hiwi (voluntary helper). The Waffen-SS trained and deployed Soviet collaborationists from September 1941. Credit: SS-Sturmbannführer Ewald Klapdor, Viking Panzers. Public domain.