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Through [Lend-Lease], the US sent the 2026 equivalent of almost $700bn to allies, mostly USSR and Great Britain. To the USSR alone;
And, from a logistical standpoint;
link
The heuristic I've seen is that the U.S. provided the equipment for something like 50 to as much as 100 "divisions" of the Soviet Army. The quibbles here are on doctrinal definitions vs reality of divisional sizes and readiness. I think that's all besides the point. Lend-Lease was a colossal operation and did represent the shifting of national resources away from our own armed forces. The 90 divisions weren't a result of a short fall of men or material, but a deliberate policy move.
Here's the official U.S. Army history on "The 90 Division Gamble" -- link
Arguing over division size and our ability to equipment them isn't a nerdy armchair general exercise. The American way of war since WW2 has been to simply overwhelm the opposing force with MORE of everything. Through the 50s and 60s, there was real fear that we might not be able to do this toe-to-toe with the Russians in Europe. We never got to that point. The largest conflict we did engage in at that time, Vietnam, resulted in American forces losing precisely zero engagements over about a company sized magnitude. Even the Tet Offensive was, militarily, a pretty handy defeat. The problem, of course, is policy and politics.
The United States loves to fight with one hand behind it's back for a whole host of shitty political reasons. A lot of it can be grouped under the umbrella term "optics" -- screaming babies, women and children running away from a burning village / town / city, our own soldiers coming back maimed or shellshocked. War is ugly and bad and Washington has developed the idea that it can be "managed" with policy to make it less and ugly and bad and, somehow, also just as "effective" (whatever that means).
Another culprit is the relationship between Civilian and Military leadership. "No" isn't a word you use with a superior in the military and that culture translates over to how they (Military leadership) "work" with Congress. There's a lot of pants-on-head retarded requests from Congress and even the President - "Can we do this with half as many troops? Or, wait, what about special operations ONLY? No planes. No artillery. Just secret ninjas!" And very few senior military leaders have the elan to dissuade the policy maker or executive on the other side of the table from his or her harebrained plan. Having worked with a few retired generals / admirals in my GovCon days, many of them say that being a general in today's military is a colossal let down. You aren't actually training, equipping, and commanding a division (or ship, or air wing), you're lobbying about budgets and base renaming bullshit in D.C. much of the time.
There is some interesting historical foreshadowing of this. Famous, General Marshall was in D.C. for most of World War 2 despite being, perhaps, more qualified that many (most?) of the field commanders in Europe / Africa. The problem was he was too valuable in terms of political ability to have him away for any large length of time.
All of this ties to the discussion of "warrior spirit" here. Outside of infantry and special operations units, I would content it doesn't exist in the U.S. military and hasn't in quite some time. We run a managerial military and it's the best in the world because we just have so. much. more of everything. Remember the old joke; after the U.S. Air Force, who has the second largest air force in the world? The. U.S. Army. The third? The U.S. Navy. The fourth? The Marines (I don't know if this last one is true anymore). But, like many "managerial" things, much of military decision making has been captured in a consensus-driven, consultant-corporateese style thinking.
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