Were average soldiers appreciative/grateful? Was the scale of lend-lease widely understood? Did soldiers encounter American-made stuff often?
I ask this question largely because a professor of mine told me that it was common Soviet practice to scratch out evidence of equipment being from the US and to avoid giving any credit. Is this true at all?
I can speak a little about the armoured vehicles side of the Lend Lease program, building on my previous answer
There was definitely no hiding of the origin of the equipment. The common soldier was definitely aware that, for instance, the Sherman was an American tank and the Valentine was a British tank. Unless the whole tank was repainted (such as for winter), the original markings were retained. For instance, here is a photo of the Tetrarch in the USSR that still has the insignia of the 10th Royal Hussars. Controls on the tanks were also not painted over. Some equipment had Russian labels, but, for instance, the manual for Valentine Mk.VII tanks shows drawings of the control panel with English writing only.
The 1954 book Tank (Moscow, Voyenizdat), largely very technical, has a very politically slanted intro (a practice not uncommon in Soviet books of the era). This is a good window into the "politically correct" opinions about foreign equipment at the time. Even here, the contributions of foreign tanks are (begrudgingly) acknowledged. Strangely enough, the book mentions that the British dropped the idea of infantry tanks based on Soviet developments, although I can't fathom the reason why anyone would think that.
Various technical solutions that originated from foreign tanks are lumped all together without mention of the country of origin.
