Then in 1972 agreement was reached on $722 . 31, enacted March 11, 1941), was a policy under which the United States supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, France, China, and other Allied nations with food, oil, and materiel between 1941 and 1945. In Walter Yust, ed., "17 Billion Budget Drafted; Defense Takes 10 Billions. 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. [55] This constituted some 23% of the total aid to the USSR during the war. Even aid that might seem like a drop in the bucket in the larger context of Soviet production for the war played a crucial role in filling gaps at important moments during this period. The first lend-lease shipments, consisting largely of food and industrial commodities, arrived in England at a time when the German submarine blockade was close to starving out the British Isles. On September 20, 1945, all Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union was terminated. On December 7, 1940, its Prime Minister Winston Churchill pressed President Roosevelt in a 15-page letter for American help. [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. In fact our armed forces in Britain, ground as well as air, receive as reverse lend-lease, with no payment by us, one third of all the supplies and equipment they currently require, Britain furnishes 90% of their medical supplies and in spite of her food shortage, 20% of their food.[78]. Subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter with top stories from master historians. While Soviet pilots praised the maneuverability of the homegrown I-153 Chaika and I-16 Ishak fightersstill in use in significant numbers in late 1941both types were certainly obsolete and inferior in almost all regards to the British-supplied Hurricane. The program started 3 months after the German invasion of USSR in June, 1941. [60], Roughly 17.5million tons of military equipment, vehicles, industrial supplies, and food were shipped from the Western Hemisphere to the USSR, 94% coming from the US. A total of 699 Lend-Lease aircraft had been delivered to Archangel by the time the Arctic convoys switched to Murmansk in December 1941. The museum was established inside a former school and has been open for 8 years. It carried 40 Hawker Hurricanes along with 550 mechanics and pilots of No. (1942). 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. Within months, the Lend-Lease program was expanded to include China and the Soviet Union. 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]. Balances for the Soviet Union were solved through a payment scheme in 1972, where they pledged to make three initial payments. Between June 1941 and May 1945, Britain delivered to the USSR: In total 4million tonnes of war material including food and medical supplies were delivered. Borodin said he wished to honor and show gratitude to the United States and its veterans who rendered aid to the Soviet Union during World War II. [15] Though these may be considered the most significant, many other items were also transported, including designs for rockets, superchargers, gyroscopic gunsights, submarine detection devices, self-sealing fuel tanks and plastic explosives. Check out A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn on Amazon https://amzn.to/3lS8oVMLike & Subscribe for Daily US H. For foreign citizens who want to live permanently in the United States. Source: "The Soviet Union: The Defeated Victor" pp. 'We Would Have Lost': Did U.S. Lend-Lease Aid Tip The Balance In Soviet Fight Against Nazi Germany? It is our living history. About 15 percent of the aircraft of the 6th Fighter Air Corps defending Moscow were Tomahawks or Hurricanes. It is obvious from this information that during the period of October 1, 1941, to May 1, 1944, the U.S.A., under Lend-Lease, Sent the Soviet Union arms, equipment, materials, and food totaling $5,357,300,000 and weighing 8,514,000 long tons, not including the weight of 92 delivered ships or the weight of 3333 airplanes, which arrived by air. In spring 1944, the House passed a bill to renew the Lend-Lease program by a vote of 334 to 21. Almost all European nations outside the Soviet bloc were members of the plan from the beginning. As early as October 12, 1941, the Soviet 126th Fighter Air Regiment was operating with Tomahawks bought from the United States by Britain. Dec 7, 1941 . [11] Isolationists were strongly opposed, warning it would result in American involvement with what was considered by most Americans as an essentially European conflict. 19329 posts. Lend-Lease was the most visible sign of wartime cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union. That the Soviet victories of late 1941 were won with Soviet blood and largely with Soviet weapons is beyond dispute. Payment was to be stretched out over 50 annual payments, starting in 1951 and with five years of deferred payments, at 2% interest. Even before the United States entered World War II in December 1941, America sent arms and equipment to the Soviet Union to help it defeat the Nazi invasion. Lend-Lease's precise significance to Allied victory in WW2 is debated. And how much steel! Deane, John R. 1947. "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. It was quite important, and it became especially important during the second half of WWII when the Red Army went from defending to attacking. By the end of 1941 Britain had delivered 466 tanks out of the 750 promised. Robert Coalson is a senior correspondent for RFE/RLwho covers Russia, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe. I don't want $15I want my garden hose back after the fire is over. ", Nikolai Ryzhkov, the last head of the government of the Soviet Union, wrote in 2015 that "it can be confidently stated that [Lend-Lease assistance] did not play a decisive role in the Great Victory.". Such assessments, however, are contradicted by the opinions of Soviet war participants. 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. The 136th Independent Tank Battalion was combined with the latter to produce a tank group of only twenty-one tanks, which was to operate with the two ski battalions against German forces advancing to the west of Moscow in early December. Yauza. In April 1945, Congress voted that it should not be used for post-conflict purposes, and in August 1945, after Japan surrendered, the program was ended. 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. Under these circumstances even small quantities of aid took on far greater significance. Thus, Stalin told Harry Hopkins [FDR's emissary to Moscow in July 1941] that the U.S.S.R. could not match Germany's might as an occupier of Europe and its resources.[35]. Lend-lease was a system of U.S. assistance to the Allies in World War II.It was based on a bill of March, 11, 1941, that gave the president of the United States the right to sell, transfer into property, lease, and rent various kinds of weapons or materials to those countries whose defense the president deemed vital to the defense of the United States itself. First protocol period from October 1, 1941, to June 30, 1942 (signed October 7, 1941), Second protocol period from July 1, 1942, to June 30, 1943 (signed October 6, 1942), Third protocol period from July 1, 1943, to June 30, 1944 (signed October 19, 1943). The invasion had cost the USSR a huge amount of its agricultural base; during the initial Axis offensive of 194142, the total sown area of the USSR fell by 41.9% and the number of collective and state farms by 40%. Photo: Museum of the U.S. Air Force (Courtesy Photo). Lend Lease was pretty much strategic charity. In practice, most equipment was destroyed, although some hardware (such as ships) was returned after the war. 31, enacted March 11, 1941),[1] was a policy under which the United States supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, France, China, and other Allied nations with food, oil, and materiel between 1941 and 1945. In addition, almost half of all the rails used by the Soviet Union during the war came through Lend-Lease. In addition, there would have been constant shortages of transportation and fuel. United States Army in World War II, Statistics: Lend-Lease World, U.S. Army in WW II, Statistics: Lend-Lease Chief of Military History, 15 Dec 1952, Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, Rape during the Soviet occupation of Poland, United States aircraft production during World War II, Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Military history of the United States during World War II, Springwood birthplace, home, and gravesite, Little White House, Warm Springs, Georgia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lend-Lease&oldid=1141045045, United States federal commerce legislation, United States foreign relations legislation, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from January 2022, Articles with unsourced statements from November 2020, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, "Pre Lend-lease" June 22, 1941, to September 30, 1941 (paid for in. Part I. on the Soviet war effort during the first year of the war was in the far. [8] The Two-Ocean Navy Act of July 1940 set in motion a rapid expansion of the United States Navy. An oft-quoted statement by First Vice-Chairman of the Council of Peoples Commissars Nikolai Voznesensky summed up the standard line that Allied aid represented only 4 percent of Soviet production for the entire war. [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. The programme began to increase in scale during 1943. Lend-Lease aid to the USSR was nominally managed by Stettinius. The Lend-Lease Act was the system by which the U.S. gave away $50 billion in military aid in 1941-45 (during World War II) so that the Allies could better fight Germany and Japan. To: The War Office. The United States is a country of machines. 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. Roosevelt's Soviet Protocol Committee was dominated by Harry Hopkins and General John York, who were totally sympathetic to the provision of "unconditional aid". [16] Propaganda showing the devastation of British cities during The Blitz, as well as popular depictions of Germans as savage also rallied public opinion to the Allies, especially after Germany conquered France. During the bitter fighting of the winter of 19411942, British aid made a crucial difference. Courses on the British tanks for Soviet crews started during November as the first tanks, with British assistance, were being assembled from their in-transit states and undergoing testing by Soviet specialists. https://www.historynet.com/did-russia-really-go-it-alone-how-lend-lease-helped-the-soviets-defeat-the-germans/, Jerrie Mock: Record-Breaking American Female Pilot, Few Red Tails Remain: Tuskegee Airman Dies at 96. But Was He Drugged Into Confessing. "[17], Opposition to the Lend-Lease bill was strongest among isolationist Republicans in Congress, who feared the measure would be "the longest single step this nation has yet taken toward direct involvement in the war abroad". 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. In the case of the Soviet Union, this residual civilian-type lend-lease was valued by the United States at $2.6 billion (out of total lend-lease to the Soviet Union of $10.8 billion). The Soviet government at first offered to pay $170 million. Churchill also granted the US base rights in Bermuda and Newfoundland for free; this act allowed their British garrison to be redeployed to more crucial theatres. Canada operated a program similar to Lend-Lease called Mutual Aid that sent a loan of Can$1billion (equivalent to Can$15.4billion in 2021)[30] and Can$3.4billion (Can$52.3billion) in supplies and services to Britain and other Allies.[31][5]. 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. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war.". 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. As one Roosevelt biographer has characterized it: "If there was no practical alternative, there was certainly no moral one either. Supplies that arrived after the termination date were sold to the United Kingdom at a large discount for 1.075 billion, using long-term loans from the United States, which were finally repaid in 2006. Canada also aided the United Kingdom and other Allies with the Billion Dollar Gift and Mutual Aid totalling $3.4 billion in supplies and services (equivalent to $61 billion in 2020) .[4][5]. Britain got of their arms and ammunition from this Act. The Soviets lost a substantial number of draft and farm animals as they were not able to relocate all the animals in an area before it was captured and of those areas in which the Axis forces would occupy, the Soviets had lost 7 million of out of 11.6 million horses, 17 million out of 31 million cows, 20 million of 23.6 million pigs and 27 million out of 43 million sheep and goats. Congress did not allow the aid to be free, so the U.S. discounted it's Lend-Lease supplies by 90 percent of costs. American deliveries to the Soviet Union can be divided into the following phases: Delivery was via the Arctic Convoys, the Persian Corridor, and the Pacific Route. Some 3,964,000 tons of goods were shipped by the Arctic route; 7% was lost, while 93% arrived safely. He never made a special point of holding a conversation on the subject, but when we were engaged in some kind of relaxed conversation, going over international questions of the past and present, and when we would return to the subject of the path we had traveled during the war, that is what he said. Newly discovered files tell another story. The munitions totaled 308m (not including naval munitions supplied), the food and raw materials totaled 120m in 1946 index. It permitted him to "sell, transfer title to, exchange, lease, lend, or otherwise dispose of, to any such government [whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States] any defense article." Nearly $8billion (equivalent to $124billion today) worth of war material was provided to U.S. forces by its allies, 90% of this sum coming from the British Empire. Britain had been paying for its materiel with gold as part of the "cash and carry" program, as required by the U.S. Neutrality Acts of the 1930s, but by 1941 it had liquidated a large part of its overseas holdings and its gold reserves were becoming depleted in paying for materiel from the United States. How much Soviet equipment was Lend-Lease? Without Lend-Lease, Russia would not have been able to carry out the Stalingrad counteroffensive and Operation Bagration. The Lend-Lease Memorial in Fairbanks, Alaska, commemorates the shipment of U.S. aircraft to the Soviet Union along the Northwest Staging Route. [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. The exploits of the British-equipped 136th Independent Tank Battalion are perhaps the most widely noted in the archives. The tanks reached the front lines with extraordinary speed. The United States used lend-lease to induce recipients to the American way of thinking, especially regarding the economy and free-market trade. From the depths of the Cold War to the present day, many Soviet and Russian politicians have ignored or downplayed the impact of American assistance to the Soviets, as well as the impact of the entire U.S.-British war against the Nazis. The 1947 money value of the supplies and services amounted to about $11 billion. He suggested amending the act to allow warring nations to purchase military goods, arms and munitions if they paid cash and bore the risks of transporting the goods on non-American ships, a policy that would favor Britain and France. [64], From October 1, 1941, to May 31, 1945, the United States delivered to the Soviet Union 427,284 trucks, 13,303 combat vehicles, 35,170 motorcycles, 2,328 ordnance service vehicles, 2,670,371 tons of petroleum products (gasoline and oil) or 57.8 percent of the aviation fuel including nearly 90 percent of high-octane fuel used,[35] 4,478,116 tons of foodstuffs (canned meats, sugar, flour, salt, etc. In practice, very little equipment was in usable shape for peacetime uses. But since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a trickle of information has emerged from archives in Moscow, shedding new light on the subject. By spring and summer of 1942 the Hurricane had clearly become the principal fighter aircraft of the Northern Fleets air regiments; in all, 83 out of its 109 fighters were of foreign origin. 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. For comparison, a total of 22 million tons landed in Europe to supply American forces from January 1942 to May 1945. Materials totalling $. The Lend-Lease Act was designed to provide allies with aircraft and supplies for the war in Europe. Exmo. -8. The Strange Alliance, The Story of Our Efforts at Wartime Co-operation with Russia. The convoy was the first of many convoys to Murmansk and Archangelsk in what became known as the Arctic convoys, the returning ships carried the gold that the USSR was using to pay the US. Lend-Lease, formally the Lend-Lease Act and introduced as An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States (Pub. David Glantz, the American military historian known for his books on the Eastern front, concludes: Although Soviet accounts have routinely belittled the significance of Lend-Lease in the sustainment of the Soviet war effort, the overall importance of the assistance cannot be understated. But the Germans were doggedly held off in front of Moscow in late November and early December, and then rolled back by a reinvigorated Red Army in a staggeringly brutal winter counteroffensive. Saudi Arabia-Top 10 most important events in the History. The U.S. received $2 million in reverse Lend-Lease from the USSR. 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." . This inevitably produced shortages of related products that are required for industrial or logistical uses, particularly unarmored vehicles. The country's agriculture was in a difficult situation. 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]. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. When Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, we Mongols stood with our northern neighbor as best we could. It was part of a scratch operational group of the Western Front consisting of the 18th Rifle Brigade, two ski battalions, the 5th and 20th Tank Brigades, and the 140th Independent Tank Battalion. In turn, this would have allowed the German commanders to escape at least some encirclements, while forcing the Red Army to prepare and conduct many more deliberate penetration attacks in order to advance the same distance. 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. Roosevelt concluded that the United States needed to help the Soviets fight against the Germans. Lend Lease A transformative example that demonstrated America's willingness and ability to help its allies in times of war was the aid provision America provided to Britain and the Soviet Union during World War II. [12] The aim of the British Technical and Scientific Mission was to obtain the industrial resources to exploit the military potential of the research and development work completed by the UK up to the beginning of World War II, but that Britain itself could not exploit due to the immediate requirements of war-related production. 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. LEND LEASE. The captain, two crew members, and six passengers had left earlier in an ill-fated effort to get help. 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. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. By the end of 1941, the lend-lease policy. During early February 1941, a Gallup poll revealed that 54% of Americans were in favor of giving aid to the British without qualifications of Lend-Lease. Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union officially ended in September 1945. L.7711, H.R. [65], Warsaw 1945: Willys jeep used by the Polish First Army as part of U.S. Lend-Lease program. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. For example, in the 4 Ottawa Protocol (July 1, 1944, to June 30, 1945) the USSR requested 240 B-17 bombers and 300 B-24 bombers, none of which were supplied. The Soviet Union got arms, ammunition, aircraft, and industrial equipment for its army. "If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war," he wrote in his memoirs. Only 205 of these tanks were heavy or medium types, and most of their strength was concentrated in the Western Front, with the Kalinin Front having only two tank battalions (67 tanks) and the Southwestern Front two tank brigades (30 tanks). In 1941, the threat of World War II drove passage of the Lend-Lease Act repealing key provisions of the Neutrality Acts. While in April 1944 Congress were briefed by the Foreign Economic Administrator, Leo T Crowley; Just as the RAF's operations against Germany and the invasion coasts would not have been possible on their present scale without lend-lease so the United States Eighth and Ninth air forces daylight missions from Britain would not have been possible without reverse lend-lease. On March 12, 1943, the plane was given to the Soviet Air Force in Fairbanks, Alaska, and given the registration USSR-N238. Evolucin de los . 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. 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[21], After the attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States entering the war in December 1941, foreign policy was rarely discussed by Congress, and there was very little demand to cut Lend-Lease spending. 150 in July 1942, for example, was the critical factor in enabling the factory to reach projected capacity within two months. [79], Congress had not authorized the gift of supplies delivered after the cutoff date, so the U.S. charged for them, usually at a 90% discount. 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. 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.