What REALLY Happened to the Studebaker Trucks Zhukov Said Won the War

Between 1941 and 1945, the United States sent roughly 200,000 Studebaker US6 trucks to the Soviet Union under Lend-Lease — vehicles that became the literal backbone of the Red Army's advance from Stalingrad to Berlin, and the launch platform for the famous Katyusha rocket system. Marshal Zhukov privately admitted the Soviet war effort could not have functioned without them. So why did nearly all 200,000 disappear so completely that fewer than a dozen confirmed examples survive today? This video breaks down the legal loophole that let Moscow absorb the fleet without ever fully accounting for it, the technology it secretly handed to Soviet truck design, and the Cold War politics that made forgetting the trucks a deliberate choice rather than an accident. Subscribe for more WWII logistics history focused on supply lines, industry, and the friction of war.