>>>BTW, Russia, might have been broke, but that did not stop them from conquering half of europe on their own.
>>
>>But they depended heavily on the Murmansk run and Stalin really needed American and British airpower to keep Germany's industrial capacity under producing.
>
>And they actually had the advantage of not really having to actually pay for their own production. They just had to make their people survive - there wasn't any need for any weapons manufacturer to make any money, it's all within the family (aka state), and profit wasn't anywhere on the horizon, and wasn't actually needed as motivation - Hitler gave them all the incentive they needed.

If Hitler was providing all the incentive why did the NKVD work so hard to keep people motivated?

Stalin seemed to think the airstrikes were important - the Tehran conference made that pretty clear.

>
>Any government can print money. Stalin could print tanks. Crazy vs mad, who wins, eh?

The Russians made great tanks and the Russian people did an amazing job enduring incredible suffering during the War. Of course they could thank their leaders for having prepared them by providing incredible suffering *before* the war. The level of terror certainly didn't increase in 1940 - it just diversified.

The suffering of the Russian people in WWII was as much a product of Stalin as it was of Hitler. The insulting thing is that Stalin made them say 'Thank you'. At least Hitler was honest about how he felt about Slavs.