Campbell, Thomas M. and George C. Herring, eds. Newly discovered files tell another story. [32] In September 1943, he was promoted to Undersecretary of State, and Leo Crowley became director of the Foreign Economic Administration, which was given responsibility for Lend-Lease. Part I. World War II | Facts, Summary, History, Dates, Combatants, & Causes 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 the Lend Lease Act to the Soviet Union? The U.S. received $2 million in reverse Lend-Lease from the USSR. [6], In 1939 howeveras Germany, Japan, and Italy pursued aggressive, militaristic policiesPresident Roosevelt wanted more flexibility to help contain Axis aggression. From: 30 Military Mission. Perhaps most directly, without Lend-Lease trucks, rail engines, and railroad cars, every Soviet offensive would have stalled at an earlier stage, outrunning its logistical tail in a matter of days. After this final payment, Britain's Economic Secretary to the Treasury formally issued thanks to the U.S. for its wartime support. "The Museum of the Allies and Lend-Lease is a unique, one-of-a-kind museum," said Borodin. Mongolian lamb and meat donations to the front lines outperformed those sent by the Lend-Lease Act. The handing over of forty imported machine tools to Aviation Factory No. Much of the American fuel was added to lower-grade Soviet fuel to produce the high-octane fuel needed by modern military aircraft. The Lend-Lease Act was designed to provide allies with aircraft and supplies for the war in Europe. Lend-Lease, formally the Lend-Lease Act and introduced as An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States (Pub. How Much of What Goods Have We Sent to Which Allies? | AHA - Historians D.C. 4 Ottawa Protocol (July 1, 194430 June 1945). The United States and the British Commonwealth provided 55. . HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. Almost all European nations outside the Soviet bloc were members of the plan from the beginning. Most visibly, the United States provided the Soviet Union with more than 400,000 jeeps and trucks, 14,000 aircraft, 8,000 tractors and construction vehicles, and 13,000 battle tanks. [8] The Two-Ocean Navy Act of July 1940 set in motion a rapid expansion of the United States Navy. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. [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. The distribution of loans was 90% to the UK, 5% to Australia, 1% to New Zealand, 3% to India, and zero to Canada. The Lend-Lease Memorial in Fairbanks, Alaska, commemorates the shipment of U.S. aircraft to the Soviet Union along the Northwest Staging Route. billion (about $ billion in prices ) were sent to several dozen recipient countries, including the main ones: When poll participants were asked their party affiliation, the poll revealed a political divide: 69% of Democrats were unequivocally in favor of Lend-Lease, whereas only 38% of Republicans favored the bill without qualification. Red Army Lend/Lease Vehicles - Axis History Mystery surrounds the infamous burning of the Reichstag in 1933. The Strange Alliance, The Story of Our Efforts at Wartime Co-operation with Russia. WWII program to provide U.S. allies with free armaments, This article is about the World War II program. In practice, very little equipment was in usable shape for peacetime uses. The Viking Press. "It was not just some piece of scrap metal. . 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." 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. Lend-Lease - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org In a few paragraphs the Wiki page shows the importance of the deliveries. . The American Lend-Lease program was signed into law in March 1941. 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. Milestones: 1937-1945 - Office of the Historian north, and in particular for the Northern Fleet.102Much of the material. An estimated 25 million Soviet citizens perished in the titanic conflict with Nazi Germany between June 1941 and May 1945. The United States did not provide them to the USSR when requested. It needed all the available resources to pressure Germany on the lands far from Moscow, where Germany was getting a degree of home advantage. In a November 1943 report to Congress, President Roosevelt said of Allied participation in reverse Lend-lease: the expenditures made by the British Commonwealth of Nations for reverse lend-lease aid furnished to the United States, and of the expansion of this program so as to include exports of materials and foodstuffs for the account of United States agencies from the United Kingdom and the British colonies, emphasizes the contribution which the British Commonwealth has made to the defense of the United States while taking its place on the battle fronts. ", In 1963, KGB monitoring recorded Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov saying: "People say that the allies didn't help us. 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. 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. 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. 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. As the war continued, however, the United States and Great Britain provided many of the implements of war and strategic raw materials necessary for Soviet victory. Posted on 2/25/23 at 2:25 pm to WPBTiger. [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]. 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. James Phinney Baxter III (Official Historian of the Office of Scientific Research and Development), Wolfgang Schumann (et al. [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. During the war the USSR provided an unknown number of shipments of rare minerals to the US Treasury as a form of cashless repayment of 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. While the Matilda Mk II and Valentine tanks supplied by the British were certainly inferior to the Soviets homegrown T-34 and KV-1, it is important to note that Soviet production of the T-34 (and to a lesser extent the KV series), was only just getting seriously underway in 1942, and Soviet production was well below plan targets. While much of the documentary evidence remains classified secret in the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense and the Russian State Archive of the Economy, Western and Russian researchers have been able to gain access to important, previously unavailable firsthand documents. 19329 posts. Particularly important for the Soviets in late 1941 were British-supplied tanks and aircraft. Lend-Lease, formally the Lend-Lease Act and introduced as An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States (Pub. 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. Officially the "Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry". 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. 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. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty 2023 RFE/RL, Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Persian Corridor was the longest route, and was not fully operational until mid-1942. -8. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1982, Bd. 4, 48. Collection. The 1947 money value of the supplies and services amounted to about $11 billion. 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 most important aspect of Lend Lease was the first few months of the war when British Aircraft and Tanks represented such a huge influx of material while the Soviets had factories still in transit etc. [citation needed] The USSR had only a very small number of heavy bombers in comparison. 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. 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%. 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. Painting of Lend-Lease tanks and equipment - Axis History Forum 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. 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]. Pro lend-lease ! # On September 2, 1945, with the signing of In spring 1944, the House passed a bill to renew the Lend-Lease program by a vote of 334 to 21. 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. 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. The records constitute the primary policy and subject files on World War II Lend-Lease to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). 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. Britain got of their arms and ammunition from this Act. Lend-Lease - Wikipedia New Ukraine Military Aid Bill Isn't Your Grandfather's Lend-Lease Act The Lend-Lease policy was officially titled "An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States", and was a program where the U.S. supplied Free France, Great Britain and the Republic of China with food, oil, and materiel between 1941 and August 1945. . A map of lend-lease shipments from the United States to the U.S.S.R. from 1941-45. Lend-lease will be considered, first, as a method of wartime supply allocation; second, as a method of accounting which may create inter- . [nb 2][9] Sympathetic to the British plight, but hampered by public opinion and the Neutrality Acts, which forbade arms sales on credit or the lending of money to belligerent nations, Roosevelt eventually came up with the idea of "lendlease". And Soviet forces would have been much more poorly coordinated with a constant lack of radio equipment. Lend Lease Acts - Lend Lease Lend Lease: A Transformation of - Studocu Overcoming massive defeats and colossal losses over the first 18 months of the war, the Red Army was able to reorganize and rebuild to form a juggernaut that marched all the way to Berlin. Nikita Khrushchev offered the same opinion. [65], Warsaw 1945: Willys jeep used by the Polish First Army as part of U.S. Lend-Lease program. 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. 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 Surplus military equipment was of no value in peacetime. Nikolay Ryzhkov & Georgy Kumanev Food and other strategic deliveries to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease Act, 19411945, pp. initially requested by the Soviet Union from Britain was naval, in the. "[10] As the President himself put it, "There can be no reasoning with incendiary bombs."[11]. Particularly important for the Soviets in late 1941 were British-supplied tanks and aircraft. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. 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. The Soviets have long insisted that Lend-Lease aid made little difference. Lend-Lease Act (1941) | National Archives Lend-Lease: Western Aid for the Soviet Union - YouTube Crowley, Leo T. "Lend-Lease". TNA WO 193/580, Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022, Allied technological cooperation during World War II, "Letter, Winston Churchill to Franklin Roosevelt, December 7, 1940, pp. "Transatlantic Generosity: Canada's 'Billion Dollar Gift' to the United Kingdom in the Second World War.". The Senate passed it by a vote of 63 to 1. Recd 11/12/41. No one ever discussed this subject officially, and I don't think Stalin left any written evidence of his opinion, but I will state here that several times in conversations with me he noted that these were the actual circumstances. 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. As early as October 12, 1941, the Soviet 126th Fighter Air Regiment was operating with Tomahawks bought from the United States by Britain. Materiel delivered under the act was supplied at no cost, to be used until returned or destroyed. 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. Democrats voted 238 to 25 in favor and Republicans 24 in favor and 135 against. [75][77], Though diminutive in comparison, Soviet Union supplied the United States with goods that the latter badly needed, including 300,000 tons of chrome ore, 32,000 tons of manganese ore, and large supplies of platinum, gold and wood. 106124, Albert L. Weeks The Other Side of Coexistence: An Analysis of Russian Foreign Policy, (New York, Pittman Publishing Corporation, 1974), p. 94, quoted in Albert L. Weeks, Russia's Life-Saver: Lend-Lease Aid to the U.S.S.R. in World, Zaloga (Armored Thunderbolt) pp. [36] Most belligerent powers severely decreased production of non-essentials, concentrating on producing weapons. Lend-Lease aid did not save the Soviet Union from defeat during the Battle of Moscow. ", United States Army Center of Military History, "Britain pays off final instalment of US loan after 61 years", "Salvor's report citing recovery of further 29 bars", "Treasure hunters 'find $3billion in platinum on sunken WW2 British ship', Official New Zealand war history of Lend-lease, from, Official New Zealand war history; termination of Mutual Aid from 21 December 1945, from. re: In hindsight was it a mistake for the US to ally with the Soviet Union during WW2. . This is the official website of the U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Russia. 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 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. 1920's, Great Depression & WWII timeline | Timetoast timelines HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. Subscribe to our HistoryNet Now! During the bitter fighting of the winter of 19411942, British aid made a crucial difference. 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). Joseph Stalin never revealed to his own people the full contributions of Lend-Lease to their country's survival, but he referred to the program at the 1945 Yalta Conference saying, "Lend-Lease is one of Franklin Roosevelt's most remarkable and vital achievements in the . 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. World War II Allies: U.S. Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union, 1941-1945 The United States and Soviet Union secretly ferried thousands of warplanes from Great . Did Soviet Union Repay Lend-lease? - Caniry On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. 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. 1. Alerts and Messages for U.S. visitors to Russia. [56] Nevertheless, some 8,244,000 tons of goods went by this route, 50% of the total. The pact was terminated when Germany launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union. Yauza. As such, Ladd Field came to represent not only a political and economic exchange, but a cultural one as well. Lend-Lease effectively ended the United States' pretense of neutrality which had been enshrined in the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s. Under Lend-Lease, the U.S. shipped more than $50 billion in supplies equivalent to more than $700 billion today. This particular C-47 was sent to the Far North and spent the war conducting reconnaissance and weather-monitoring missions over the Kara Sea. Regardless of Soviet cold-war attempts to forget (or at least diminish) the importance of Lend-lease, the total impact of the Lend-Lease shipment for the Soviet war effort and entire national economy can only be characterized as both dramatic and of decisive importance. This Douglas is the only Lend-Lease aircraft that remains in Russia.". 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." [49], Roosevelt, eager to ensure public consent for this controversial plan, explained to the public and the press that his plan was comparable to one neighbor's lending another a garden hose to put out a fire in his home. CMV: Lend Lease to the Soviet Union during WWII was a massive mistake 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.