Resource Mobilisation for World War II : A Comparative View of the Soviet Productive Effort, 1938-45.

By the end of World War II the USSR had become the strongest nation in Europe and a first rate military power. Behind Soviet victory lay her economic achievement, sustaining not only a 12 million strong army but also defence industries which mass produced modern weapons on a scale unimaginable in 1940. Table 1 shows that Soviet munitions output, already at a high level before the war, increased rapidly under in wartime conditions ; taking the war years as a whole, cumulative Soviet defence output was exceeded only by that of the United States.