ABSTRACT
Anglo-Americans underestimated the Soviets resilience and staying power at the frontline, as well as at the home front. Most Anglo-American observers believed in June 1941 that the Soviet Union would be a new easy conquest for Hitler's armies. The most important specific misconceptions harboured by the observers could be found in the underestimation of the economy and the economic system, coupled with the idea that the Soviets generally lacked the competence to make the economy work. The underestimation of the mobilization capacity and munitions output alone, is basically enough to make clear why they were so fast in writing off Soviet military resistance. The notion that Britain stood alone against the German menace after the fall of France can in some ways be further strengthened by knowledge of the nature of British assessments, since it seems that not even Churchill really believed that the Soviets would be able to put up any effective resistance against the Germans.
