School would probably also have noted that 80% of the USSR's copper, 1/3 of its explosives, fuel, trucks, etc. came from the US and UK via Lend-Lease. At a fairly critical time in the war.
Zhukov: "People say that the allies didn't help us. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. And how much steel! Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own."
School might also have noted the complicated history of the USSR and the Nazis; things like the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
Not really. They mostly started coming after the USSR stopped the Nazis in 1942.
"complicated history of the USSR and the Nazis"
Too bad your school forgets to mention the Munich agreement between the Nazis and the West, and all the efforts of the USSR to forge an anti-Nazi pact with the Great Britain and France. All of which happenned before the M-R pact.
Munich was bad and is to this day a touchstone of failure of character in the West (indeed, one of the ways those proposing capitulation to Russian purported annexation of parts of Ukraine as the cost of peace are mocked is comparing their stand to Munich).
But its not like after Munich, Britain and France invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia while Hitler took the Sudetenland, so bad as it is, it doesn’t compare to the Molotov-Ribbentropp pact.
The European hyena bit off what the Russian Empire hyena bit off 30 years earlier. Which the European hyena bit off 15 years earlier. Which the Russian Empire hyena bit off 20 years earlier. Which the... isn't it convenient to cherry pick one point in history and base all your truth on it?
Zhukov: "People say that the allies didn't help us. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. And how much steel! Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own."
School might also have noted the complicated history of the USSR and the Nazis; things like the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.