Much of the meaning of Lend-Lease aid can be better understood when considering the innovative nature of World War II, as well as the economic distortions caused by the war. This gold was salvaged in 1981 and 1986. American contributions of the time were far fewer. When the House of Representatives finally took a roll call vote on February 9, 1941, the 260 to 165 vote was largely along party lines. Source: "The Soviet Union: The Defeated Victor" pp. Negotiations dragged on intermittently for 25 years. The Lend-Lease act was enacted in March 1941 and authorized the United States to provide weapons, provisions, and raw materials to strategically important countries fighting Germany and Japan primarily, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China. Lend-Lease kept the Soviet home front going through the winter of 1941 and throughout 1942. D.C. 4 Ottawa Protocol (July 1, 194430 June 1945). 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[81], While repayment of the interest-free loans was required after the end of the war under the act, in practice the U.S. did not expect to be repaid by the USSR after the war. How important was Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union? [6], After the Fall of France during June 1940, the British Commonwealth and Empire were the only forces engaged in war against Germany and Italy, until the Italian invasion of Greece. [45], Joseph Stalin, during the Tehran Conference during 1943, acknowledged publicly the importance of American efforts during a dinner at the conference: "Without American machines the United Nations could never have won the war."[46][47]. Lend-Lease also sent aviation fuel equivalent to 57 percent of what the Soviet Union itself produced. BM-13N Katyusha on a Lend-Lease Studebaker US6 truck, at the Museum of the Great Patriotic War, Moscow, In June 1941, within weeks of the German invasion of the USSR, the Anglo-Soviet Agreement was made and the first British aid convoy set off along the dangerous Arctic Sea route to Murmansk, arriving in September. The Soviet debt for Lend-Lease supplies was finally paid and closed as part of the settlements with the Paris Club on August 21, 2006. Subscribe to our HistoryNet Now! The programme began to increase in scale during 1943. For the Australian company, see. the president asked at a press conference. "During World War II, only the supplies brought in by Lend-Lease prevented the paralysis of rail transport in the Soviet Union." The Lend-Lease program also sent tons of factory equipment and machine tools to the Soviet Union, including more than 38,000 lathes and other metal-working tools. "Without Lend-Lease, the Red Army would not have had about one-third of its ammunition, half of its aircraft, or half of its tanks. However, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov both stated that Lend-Lease enabled the Soviet Union to defeat Germany on the Eastern Front. At the end of 1941 there were greater numbers of the MiG-3, but the plane was considered difficult to fly. How important was lend lease to Soviet Union? Nikita Khrushchev offered the same opinion. Under these circumstances even small quantities of aid took on far greater significance. The munitions totaled 308m (not including naval munitions supplied), the food and raw materials totaled 120m in 1946 index. The story of how that microfilm came to be in the National Archives is a convoluted tale worthy of telling. In th. Substantial quantities of machine tools and raw materials, such as aluminum and rubber, were supplied to help Soviet industry back on its feet: 312 metal-cutting machine tools were delivered by convoy PQ-12 alone, arriving in March 1942, along with a range of other items for Soviet factories such as machine presses and compressors. Congress did not allow the aid to be free, so the U.S. discounted it's Lend-Lease supplies by 90 percent of costs. Lend-Lease - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org In a few paragraphs the Wiki page shows the importance of the deliveries. And though rapid increases in tank firepower would soon render the 40mm two-pounder main gun of the Matilda and Valentine suitable for use on light tanks only, the armor protection of these British models put them firmly in the heavy and medium categories, respectively. ), 1,911 steam locomotives, 66 diesel locomotives, 9,920 flat cars, 1,000 dump cars, 120 tank cars, and 35 heavy machinery cars. Canada would eventually produce 1,420 Valentines, almost exclusively for delivery to the Soviet Union. In 1939, after Germany invaded Poland, Roosevelt bypassed these restrictions by persuading Congress to permit the government to sell military supplies to France and Britain on a cash-and-carry basisin other words, they could pay cash for American-made supplies and then transport them on their own ships. Part of the bill required the British to open their empire to trade. "[50] To which Senator Robert Taft (R-Ohio), responded: "Lending war equipment is a good deal like lending chewing gumyou certainly don't want the same gum back. I don't want $15I want my garden hose back after the fire is over. Lacking any detailed information to the contrary, Western authors generally agreed that even if Lend-Lease was important from 1943 on, as quantities of aid dramatically increased, the aid was far too little and late to make a difference in the decisive battles of 19411942. How important was Lend-Lease for the Soviet war effort? On September 20, 1945, all Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union was terminated. But the Soviet Union was never alone: Months before the United States formally entered the war, it had already begun providing massive military and economic assistance to its Soviet ally through the Lend-Lease program. On the Allied side, there was almost total reliance upon American industrial production, weaponry and especially unarmored vehicles purpose-built for military use, vital for the modern army's logistics and support. ", In practice, very little was returned except for a few unarmed transport ships. Our Fortresses and Liberators take off from huge air bases built, equipped and serviced under reverse lend-lease at a cost to them of hundreds of millions of dollars. "I knew that its place was in a museum," Vyacheslav Filippov, a colonel in the Russian Air Force reserve who has written extensively about the Lend-Lease program's Siberian connection, told RFE/RL at the time. Britain wished to retain some of this equipment in the immediate post-war period. The British shared technology included the cavity magnetron (key technology at the time for highly effective radar; the American historian James Phinney Baxter III later called "the most valuable cargo ever brought to our shores"),[13][14] the design for the VT fuze, details of Frank Whittle's jet engine and the FrischPeierls memorandum describing the feasibility of an atomic bomb. How important was the Lend Lease Act to the Soviet Union? The Strange Alliance, The Story of Our Efforts at Wartime Co-operation with Russia. [55], In total, the U.S. deliveries to the USSR through Lend-Lease amounted to $11 billion in materials: over 400,000 jeeps and trucks; 12,000 armored vehicles (including 7,000 tanks, about 1,386[57] of which were M3 Lees and 4,102 M4 Shermans);[58] 11,400 aircraft (of which 4,719 were Bell P-39 Airacobras, 3,414 were Douglas A-20 Havocs and 2,397 were Bell P-63 Kingcobras)[59] and 1.75million tons of food. Roosevelt made sure that Lend-Lease policies were supportive of his foreign policy goals by putting his top aide Harry Hopkins in effective control of the program. 151 Wing in Operation Benedict, to provide air defence of the port and to train Soviet pilots. A Soviet report by Politburo member Nikolai Voznesensky in 1948 asserted that the United States, described as "the head of the antidemocratic camp and the warrior of imperialist expansion around the world," contributed materiel during the war that amounted to just 4.8 percent of the Soviet Union's own wartime production. Totaling $11.3 billion, or $180 billion in today's currency, the Lend-Lease Act of the United States supplied needed goods to the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1945 in support of what Stalin described to Roosevelt as the "enormous and difficult fight against the common enemy bloodthirsty Hitlerism." 400,000 jeeps & trucks; 14,000 airplanes [35] One item typical of many was a tire plant that was lifted bodily from the Ford Company's River Rouge Plant and transferred to the USSR. Rather, Lend-Lease was designed to serve America's interest in defeating Nazi Germany without entering the war until the American military and public was prepared to fight. Secret Cipher Telegram. [29] The Lend-Lease act was enacted in March 1941 and authorized the United States to provide weapons, provisions, and raw materials to strategically important countries fighting Germany and Japan primarily, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China. And how much steel! billion (about $ billion in prices ) were sent to several dozen recipient countries, including the main ones: THE ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS OF LEND-LEASE By EUGENE STALEY . Learn more about quality higher-education opportunities in the U.S. that you will not find anywhere else in the world. Answer (1 of 14): Lend Lease was pretty much strategic charity. A particular critical aspect of Lend-Lease was the supply of food. The Neutrality Acts of 1935, 1936, and 1937 intended to keep the United States out of war, by making it illegal for Americans to sell or transport arms, or other war materials to warring nationsneither to aggressors, nor to defenders. This was the first big war in which whole formations were routinely motorized; soldiers were supported with large numbers of all kinds of vehicles. The British Military Mission to Moscow noted that by December 9, about ninety British tanks had already been in action with Soviet forces. Actual military production was achieved by sacrificing the civilian economy for short-term gain (and likely by burning up pre-existing stockpiles of raw materials). Ordnance goods (ammunition, artillery shells, mines, assorted explosives) provided amounted to 53 percent of total domestic consumption. Each method was difficult. In spring 1944, the House passed a bill to renew the Lend-Lease program by a vote of 334 to 21. The handing over of forty imported machine tools to Aviation Factory No. "I want to tell you what, from the Russian point of view, the president and the United States have done for victory in this war," Stalin said. Interested in U.S. History? [35] Most tank units were Soviet-built models but about 7,000 Lend-Lease tanks (plus more than 5,000 British tanks) were used by the Red Army, eight percent of war-time production. [55] This constituted some 23% of the total aid to the USSR during the war. Lend-Lease aircraft deliveries were also of significance during the Battle of Moscow. At a time when the majority of Americans opposed direct participation in the war, Lend-Lease represented a vital U.S. contribution to the fight against Nazi Germany. The Soviets have long insisted that Lend-Lease aid made little difference. Lend-Lease aid did not arrive in sufficient quantities to make the difference between defeat and victory in 19411942; that achievement must be attributed solely to the Soviet people and to the iron nerve of Stalin, Zhukov, Shaposhnikov, Vasilevsky, and their subordinates. After a decade of neutrality, Roosevelt knew that the change to Allied support must be gradual, given the support for isolationism in the country. Exmo. Originally intended to lend arms and material to the. 28, 30, 31, harvnb error: no target: CITEREFHardesty1991 (, Soviet Supply Protocols. Together with other recently published sources, including the wartime diaries of N. I. Biriukov, a Red Army officer responsible from August 1941 on for the distribution of recently acquired tanks to the front lines, this newly available evidence paints a very different picture from the received wisdom. Allen (1946) p 252. Roosevelt's top foreign policy advisor Harry Hopkins had effective control over Lend-Lease, making sure it was in alignment with Roosevelt's foreign policy goals.[3]. Just 446 locomotives were produced during the war,[39] with only 92 of those being built between 1942 and 1945. However, the real significance of Lend-Lease for the Soviet war effort was that it covered the "sensitive points" of Soviet production -- gasoline, explosives, aluminum, nonferrous metals, radio communications, and so on, says historian Boris Sokolov. A further 15% were in favor of qualifications such as: "If it doesn't get us into war," or "If the British can give us some security for what we give them." Lend Lease came as a response to the Axis Powers' violence and showed that America was committed to defending their nation and its . But according to . But listen, one cannot deny that the Americans shipped over to us material without which we could not have equipped our armies held in reserve or been able to continue the war.[48]. (1942). . [36] The USSR was very dependent on rail transport and starting during the latter half of the 1920s[37] but accelerating during the 1930s (The Great Depression), hundreds of foreign industrial giants such as Ford were commissioned to construct modern dual-purpose factories in the USSR, 16 alone within a week of May 31, 1929. Payment was to be stretched out over 50 annual payments, starting in 1951 and with five years of deferred payments, at 2% interest. Once again, raw figures do not tell the whole story. The Lend-Lease program also provided more than 35,000 radio sets and 32,000 motorcycles. In 1946, the post-war Anglo-American loan further indebted Britain to the U.S. Lend-Lease items retained were sold to Britain at 10% of nominal value, giving an initial loan value of 1.075billion for the Lend-Lease portion of the post-war loans. United States and Britain, not the Soviet Union, China, or other United Nations . Fourth protocol period from July 1, 1944 (signed April 17, 1945), formally ended May 12, 1945, but deliveries continued for the duration of the war with Japan (which the Soviet Union entered on August 8, 1945) under the "Milepost" agreement until September 2, 1945, when Japan capitulated. President Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease bill into law on March 11, 1941. I will quote at length: By July 1942 the Red Army had 13,500 tanks in service, with more than 16 percent of those imported, and more than half of those British. The total of defense materials and services that Canada received through lend-lease channels amounted in value to approximately $419,500,000. . For foreign citizens who want to live permanently in the United States. Ukraine is a founding member of the United Nations and it is also a member of the Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization, and the OSCE. In particular, it shows that British Lend-Lease assistance to the Soviet Union in late 1941 and early 1942 played a far more significant part in the defense of Moscow and the revival of Soviet fortunes in late 1941 than has been acknowledged. The legislation is modeled off the World War II-era Lend-Lease Act that allowed the US to arm the Soviet Union, Britain, and other allies prior to its entry into the war. Britain got of their arms and ammunition from this Act. The pact was terminated when Germany launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union. There were apparently only 263 LaGG-3s in the Soviet inventory by the time of the Moscow counteroffensive, and it was an aircraft with numerous defects. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. Some idea of the scope of economic collaboration can be had from the fact that from the beginning of 1942 through 1945 Canada, on her part, furnished the United States with $1,000,000,000 to $1,250,000,000 in defense materials and services. The first of these units to have seen action seems to have been the 138th Independent Tank Battalion (with twenty-one British tanks), which was involved in stemming the advance of German units in the region of the Volga Reservoir to the north of Moscow in late November. American aid also provided 4.5 million tons of food, 1.5 million blankets, and 15 million pairs of boots. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. 3, S. 468. Such machines were of higher quality than analogues produced in the Soviet Union, which made a significant contribution to boosting Soviet industrial production. During the war, Soviet factories produced more than 29.1 million small arms of all major types, while only 152,000 small arms ( 0.5% of the total) were manufactured by American, British, and Canadian plants. [33], The program was gradually terminated after V-E Day. [66], By the end of 1941, early shipments of Matilda, Valentine and Tetrarch tanks represented only 6.5% of total Soviet tank production but over 25% of medium and heavy tanks produced for the Red Army. Lend-Lease's precise significance to Allied victory in WW2 is debated. The plane spent 69 years on the tundra before a Russian Geographical Society expedition rescued it in 2016 and returned the wreckage to Krasnoyarsk. Lend-Lease effectively ended the United States' pretense of neutrality which had been enshrined in the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s. That the Soviet victories of late 1941 were won with Soviet blood and largely with Soviet weapons is beyond dispute. 1776, 55 Stat. Some 3,964,000 tons of goods were shipped by the Arctic route; 7% was lost, while 93% arrived safely. In fact the British intercepted German communications indicating that German forces had first come in contact with British tanks on the Eastern front on November 26, 1941. [citation needed] The USSR had only a very small number of heavy bombers in comparison. Few Americans objected to Soviet aid until 1943. Lend Lease was pretty much strategic charity. In time, opinion shifted as increasing numbers of Americans began to consider the advantage of funding the British war against Germany, while staying free of the hostilities themselves. Posted on 2/25/23 at 2:25 pm to WPBTiger. On February 24, 1943, a Douglas C-47 Skytrain transport aircraft with serial number 42-32892 rolled out of a factory in Long Beach, California, and was handed over to the U.S. Air Force. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. The plan proposed by FDR was to "lend-lease or otherwise dispose of arms" and other supplies needed by any country whose security was vital to the defense of the United States. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty 2023 RFE/RL, Inc. All Rights Reserved. The cooperation that was built up with Canada during the war was an amalgam compounded of diverse elements of which the air and land routes to Alaska, the Canol project, and the CRYSTAL and CRIMSON activities were the most costly in point of effort and funds expended. re: In hindsight was it a mistake for the US to ally with the Soviet Union during WW2. In a secret protocol of this pact, the Germans and the Soviets agreed that Poland should be divided between them, with the western third of the country going to Germany and the eastern two-thirds being taken over by the U.S.S.R. Popular Questions What was the cause of World War II? This page was last edited on 23 February 2023, at 02:14. Crowley, Leo T. "Lend-Lease". The first American tanks and planes reached Egypt in time to be used in the second British drive into Libya which started on November 2, 1941. The 19th and Early 20th Century History. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany's pressure, and we would have lost the war. The 1930s began with one of the world's greatest economic depressionswhich had started in the United Statesand the later recession of 193738 (although minor relative to the Great Depression) was otherwise also one of the worst of the 20th century. In accordance with the Anglo-Soviet Military Supplies Agreement of June 27, 1942, military aid sent from Britain to the Soviet Union during the war was entirely free of charge. Left to their own devices, Stalin and his commanders might have taken twelve to eighteen months longer to finish off the Wehrmacht; the ultimate result would probably have been the same, except that Soviet soldiers could have waded at France's Atlantic beaches. newsletter for the best of the past, delivered every Monday and Thursday. [22], In February 1942, the U.S. and Britain signed the Anglo-American Mutual Aid Agreement[23] as part of a greater multilateral system, developed by the Allies during the war, to provide each other with goods, services, and mutual aid in the widest sense, without charging commercial payments. I believe that lend lease to the USSR was a massive mistake that led directly to the cold war and all the issues associated with it. The Yak-1, arguably the best of the batch, and superior in most regards to the Hurricane, suffered from airframe and engine defects in early war production aircraft. Britain and the Commonwealth were carrying the battle for all civilization, and the overwhelming majority of Americans, led in the late election by their president, wished to help them. The political fog of the Cold War often marred the truth about the vehicles received. "In order to really assess the significance of Lend-Lease for the Soviet victory, you only have to imagine how the Soviet Union would have had to fight if there had been no Lend-Lease aid," Sokolov wrote. But in order to sustain the war effort all the way back to Germany, Lend-Lease was decisive. [7], During this same period, the U.S. government began to mobilize for total war, instituting the first-ever peacetime draft and a fivefold increase in the defense budget (from $2billion to $10billion). [76] Australia and New Zealand supplied the bulk of foodstuffs to United States forces in the South Pacific. Agricultural issues were also compounded when the Soviets were on the offensive, as areas liberated from the Axis had been devastated and contained millions of people who needed to be fed. Tomahawks also served in defense of the Doroga Zhizni or Road of Life across the ice of Lake Ladoga, which provided the only supply line to the besieged city of Leningrad during the winter of 194142. Only 22% were unequivocally against the President's proposal. And the Soviet Union didn't pay much of that. In 194546, the value of Reciprocal Aid from New Zealand exceeded that of Lend-Lease, though in 194243, the value of Lend-Lease to New Zealand was much more than that of Reciprocal Aid. On March 12, 1943, the plane was given to the Soviet Air Force in Fairbanks, Alaska, and given the registration USSR-N238. Mentions of Lend-Lease in memoirs were always accompanied by disparagement of the quality of the weapons supplied, with American and British tanks and planes invariably portrayed as vastly inferior to comparable Soviet models. Most remaining Allies were largely self-sufficient in frontline equipment (such as tanks and fighter aircraft) by this time but Lend-Lease provided a useful supplement in this category and Lend-Lease logistical supplies (including motor vehicles and railroad equipment) were of enormous assistance.
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