Balances for the Soviet Union were solved through a payment scheme in 1972, where they pledged to make three initial payments. Secret Cipher Telegram. I was recently able to examine Russian-language materials of the State Defense Committeethe Soviet equivalent of the British War Cabinetheld in the former Central Party Archive. After a series of dramatic Nazi successes during the opening stages of Hitlers invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, foreign observers predicted that Soviet resistance would soon collapse. Interested in U.S. History? The handing over of forty imported machine tools to Aviation Factory No. After the German assault on Russia in June 1941, the defenders got aid with this system through war material, food, fuel and other important raw materials. In addition, the Lend-Lease program propped up the Soviet railway system, which played a fundamental role in moving and supplying troops. How important was Lend-Lease for the Soviet war effort? US Government Printing Office. The lend/lease military aid program, and the Matilda's role in it, was hardly decisive to the Soviet Union's subsequent victories on the Eastern or Western front. Check out A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn on Amazon https://amzn.to/3lS8oVMLike & Subscribe for Daily US H. The dispute remained unresolved until 1972, when the U.S. accepted an offer from the USSR to repay $722 million linked to grain shipments from the U.S., representing 25% of the initial debt with inflation taken into account, with the remainder being written off. [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]. [8] The Two-Ocean Navy Act of July 1940 set in motion a rapid expansion of the United States Navy. The body of the captain, Maksim Tyurikov, was found by local hunters about 120 kilometers from the wreck in 1953. 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 all, the United States shipped $50 billion ($608 billion in 2020 money) worth of materiel under the program, including $11.3 billion to the Soviet Union. 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. Under the Lend-Lease Act, the United States sent enormous quantities of war materiel to the Soviet Union, which was critical in helping the Soviets withstand the Nazi onslaught. By the end of 1941, the lend-lease policy. The 19th and Early 20th Century History. The Hurricane was rugged and tried and tested, and as useful at that point as many potentially superior Soviet designs such as the LaGG-3 and MiG-3. Other largely British-equipped tank units in action with the Western Front from early December were the 131st Independent Tank Brigade, which fought to the east of Tula, south of Moscow, and 146th Tank Brigade, in the region of Kriukovo to the immediate west of the Soviet capital. Lend-Lease aid to the USSR was nominally managed by Stettinius. Alerts and Messages for U.S. visitors to Russia. Thanks to Lend-Lease, during the war years, the Soviet Union received about 14.8 thousand aircraft, 7.1 thousand tanks, 8.2 thousand anti-aircraft guns, a large number of cars, tractors and other vital supplies. 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. [29] I recently heard someone claim that the Soviet Union would have been unable to survive Operation Barbarossa and subsequent German offensives without the vast amount of supplies they received from the Allies under the Lend-Lease program. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. Recd 11/12/41. For foreign citizens who want to live permanently in the United States. 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. [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. Source: "The Soviet Union: The Defeated Victor" pp. . This followed the 1940 Destroyers for Bases Agreement, whereby 50 US Navy destroyers were transferred to the Royal Navy and the Royal Canadian Navy in exchange for basing rights in the Caribbean. Lend-Lease, formally the Lend-Lease Act and introduced as An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States (Pub. The United States is a country of machines. Reverse Lend-Lease to the United States totalled $7.8 billion. Without Lend-Lease, Russia would not have been able to carry out the Stalingrad counteroffensive and Operation Bagration. (1942). Additionally, many of the British tools arrived in early 1942, when Soviet tool production was still very low, resulting in a disproportionate impact. Many of our pilots fly Spitfires built in England, many more are flying American fighter planes powered by British Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, turned over to us by the British. After the war, it was transferred to civilian aviation, carrying passengers over the frozen tundra above the Arctic Circle. Given the disruption to Soviet production and Red Army losses, the Soviet Union was understandably eager to put British armor into action as soon as possible. The pact was terminated when Germany launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union. Member since Oct 2007. The Lend-Lease agreements with 30 countries provided for repayment not in terms of money or returned goods, but in "joint action directed towards the creation of a liberalized international economic order in the postwar world." Learn more about quality higher-education opportunities in the U.S. that you will not find anywhere else in the world. Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union officially ended in September 1945. Washington. Under Lend-Lease, the United States provided more than one-third of all the explosives used by the Soviet Union during the war. 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 addition, almost half of all the rails used by the Soviet Union during the war came through Lend-Lease. The U.S. government never published detailed reports on what and how much was sent under the Lend-Lease program to the USSR. The Soviet air force received 18,200 aircraft, which amounted to about 30 percent of Soviet wartime fighter and bomber production (mid 194145). 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. During Nikita Khrushchevs rule in the late 1950s and early 1960s, there was a window of greater frankness and openness about the extent of aid supplied from the West under the Lend-Lease Actbut it was still clearly forbidden for Soviet authors to suggest that such aid ever made any real difference on the battlefield. The British Military Mission to Moscow noted that by December 9, about ninety British tanks had already been in action with Soviet forces. The tanks reached the front lines with extraordinary speed. 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 passage of the 1939 amendment to the previous Neutrality Acts marked the beginning of a congressional shift away from isolationism, making a first step toward interventionism. 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. 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. Both were superior to all but the Soviet KV-1 and T-34 in armor, and indeed even their much maligned winter cross-country performance was comparable to most Soviet tanks excluding the KV-1 and T-34. 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. [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. Any mention of the role that Western assistance played in the Soviet war effort was strictly off-limits. For the Australian company, see. About 15 percent of the aircraft of the 6th Fighter Air Corps defending Moscow were Tomahawks or Hurricanes. A total of 699 Lend-Lease aircraft had been delivered to Archangel by the time the Arctic convoys switched to Murmansk in December 1941. 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. 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]. "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. 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]. According to Biriukovs service diary, the first 20 British tanks arrived at the Soviet tank training school in Kazan on October 28, 1941, at which point a further 120 tanks were unloaded at the port of Archangel in northern Russia. External links to other Internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views or privacy policies contained therein. re: In hindsight was it a mistake for the US to ally with the Soviet Union during WW2. Lend-Lease was the most visible sign of wartime cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union. 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. United States and Britain, not the Soviet Union, China, or other United Nations . [75] Reciprocal contributions included the Austin K2/Y military ambulance, British aviation spark plugs used in B-17 Flying Fortresses,[75] Canadian-made Fairmile launches used in anti-submarine warfare, Mosquito photo-reconnaissance aircraft, and Indian petroleum products. Marshall Plan Countries. [38] With the outbreak of war these plants switched from civilian to military production and locomotive production ended virtually overnight. This gold was salvaged in 1981 and 1986. 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. Once again, raw figures do not tell the whole story. [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. 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 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. . 2009. pp. 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. Particularly important for the Soviets in late 1941 were British-supplied tanks and aircraft. Then in 1972 agreement was reached on $722 . Dec 7, 1941 . 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. . 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. 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." In the meantime, Great Britain was running out of liquid currency and asked not to be forced to sell off British assets. Havlat, Denis. [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. 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. "It should be remembered that during World War I, the transportation crisis in Russia in 1916-17 that did a lot to facilitate the February Revolution [which lead to the abdication of the tsar] was caused by a shortage in the production of railway rails, engines, and freight cars because industrial production had been diverted to munitions," Sokolov wrote. For comparison, a total of 22 million tons landed in Europe to supply American forces from January 1942 to May 1945. A particular critical aspect of Lend-Lease was the supply of food. After this final payment, Britain's Economic Secretary to the Treasury formally issued thanks to the U.S. for its wartime support. The American lend and lease system was introduced in the beginning of the war to support Great Britain in their struggle with Germany. By the end of the war, the United States had extended over $49 billion in Lend-Lease aid to nearly forty nations. Democrats voted 238 to 25 in favor and Republicans 24 in favor and 135 against. Canada would eventually produce 1,420 Valentines, almost exclusively for delivery to the Soviet Union. Moscow. 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. Tens of thousands of agricultural machines, such as tractors and threshers, were destroyed or captured. Extrapolating from available statistics, researchers estimate that British-supplied tanks made up 30 to 40 percent of the entire heavy and medium tank strength of Soviet forces before Moscow at the beginning of December 1941, and certainly made up a significant proportion of tanks available as reinforcements at this critical point in the fighting. On March 11, 1941, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act. [76] Australia and New Zealand supplied the bulk of foodstuffs to United States forces in the South Pacific. [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). 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. ): Deutschland im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Yes, in 1942 Lend-Lease was of course important for Soviet Russia. Campbell, Thomas M. and George C. Herring, eds. Each method was difficult. Lend-Lease started in March 1941, providing for military aid to any country whose defense was considered vital to the security of the U.S. But Was He Drugged Into Confessing. Mackenzie, Hector. To: The War Office. 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. It is commonly agreed that the implementation of the Lend-Lease Act greatly increased the strength of the Soviet Union and Great Britain against Germany, the two biggest gainers in this Act. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. 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 program sent nearly 2,000 locomotives and innumerable boxcars to the Soviet Union. A total of 22,800 armored vehicles were delivered to the Red Army during World War II, of which 1,981 were lost in dangerous Arctic convoys. 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. 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 . The 1947 money value of the supplies and services amounted to about $11 billion. Roosevelt concluded that the United States needed to help the Soviets fight against the Germans. The story of how that microfilm came to be in the National Archives is a convoluted tale worthy of telling. Deane, John R. 1947. American aid also provided 4.5 million tons of food, 1.5 million blankets, and 15 million pairs of boots. That the Soviet victories of late 1941 were won with Soviet blood and largely with Soviet weapons is beyond dispute. Such assessments, however, are contradicted by the opinions of Soviet war participants. In Walter Yust, ed., "17 Billion Budget Drafted; Defense Takes 10 Billions. 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. No one talks about this officially, and Stalin never, I think, left any written traces of his opinion, but I can say that he expressed this view several times in conversations with me.". "Transatlantic Generosity: Canada's 'Billion Dollar Gift' to the United Kingdom in the Second World War.". ", "Address Is Spur To British Hopes; Confirmation of American Aid in Conflict is Viewed as Heartening, A joining of interests, Discarding of Peace Talks is Regarded as a Major Point in the Speech.". Similarly, the Soviet Union repaid $722 million in 1971, with the remainder of the debt written off. And they would have been perpetually hungry without American canned meat and fats. 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. The United States used lend-lease to induce recipients to the American way of thinking, especially regarding the economy and free-market trade. 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." Championed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Lend-Lease Act authorized the transfer . The United States did not provide them to the USSR when requested. 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 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. [73][74], Reverse Lend-Lease was the supply of equipment and services to the United States. At the end of November 1941, only 670 Soviet tanks were available to defend Moscowthat is, in the recently formed Kalinin, Western, and Southwestern Fronts. 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. Much of the logistical assistance of the Soviet military was provided by hundreds of thousands of U.S.-made trucks and by 1945, nearly a third of the truck strength of the Red Army was U.S.-built. 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. The sole modern heavy bomber the USSR had was the Petlyakov Pe-8, and it only had 27 of them at the start of the war, with fewer than 100 produced until 1945. In practice, most equipment was destroyed, although some hardware (such as ships) was returned after the war. Evolucin de los . It provided Britain and the Soviet Union with limited war materiel beginning in October that year. 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]. [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. Britain also supplied extensive material assistance to American forces stationed in Europe, for example the USAAF was supplied with hundreds of Spitfire Mk V and Mk VIII fighter aircraft. 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. | AHA", "Lend-Lease and Military Aid to the Allies in the Early Years of World, The United States at war; development and administration of the war program by the federal government, Sea routes of Soviet Lend-Lease:Voice of Russia, "$220 Million in Gold Bullion was Recovered from HMS Edinburgh", "Report to Congress on Reverse Lend-Lease", "Chapter XIV: The United States and Canada: Copartners in Defense. It seems to fly in the face of some stories I've heard about Stalin ordering the obliteration of all USA and British markings on Lend Lease Materiel so as to maintain the illusion of the USSR doing it all on its own and that the others fighting the common enemy were the "little allies". American shipments of telephone cable, aluminum, canned rations and clothing were also critical. "[10] As the President himself put it, "There can be no reasoning with incendiary bombs."[11]. The Viking Press. As early as October 12, 1941, the Soviet 126th Fighter Air Regiment was operating with Tomahawks bought from the United States by Britain. James Phinney Baxter III (Official Historian of the Office of Scientific Research and Development), Wolfgang Schumann (et al. Lend-Lease: Western Aid for the Soviet UnionPart of Eastern Front Fortnight (4) on WW2TVWith Denis HavlatDuring WWII the Soviet Union received large amounts . Under Lend-Lease, the U.S. shipped more than $50 billion in supplies equivalent to more than $700 billion today. 151 Wing in Operation Benedict, to provide air defence of the port and to train Soviet pilots. 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. [27] Other recipients were led by $11.3billion ($137billion) to the Soviet Union, $3.2billion ($38.7billion) to France, $1.6billion ($19.3billion) to China, and the remaining $2.6billion to the other Allies. This was the first big war in which whole formations were routinely motorized; soldiers were supported with large numbers of all kinds of vehicles. I don't want $15I want my garden hose back after the fire is over. Allen (1946) p 252. To address balance of payment issues between the US and Canada, and to prevent the US monopolizing British orders, the Hyde Park Declaration of 20 April 1941[28] made weapons and components manufactured in Canada for Britain eligible for Lend-Lease financing as if they had been manufactured in the US. Mongolian lamb and meat donations to the front lines outperformed those sent by the Lend-Lease Act. [82] In June 1942, SSPort Nicholson was sunk en route from Halifax to New York, allegedly with Soviet platinum, gold, and diamonds aboard; the wreck was discovered in 2008. This was mostly in the form of landing, servicing, and refueling of transport aircraft; some industrial machinery and rare minerals were sent to the U.S. 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 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. 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. 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. This page was last edited on 23 February 2023, at 02:14. 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. The Government of Mongolia donated its gold and hard currency reserves to the Soviet Union for four years in a row. Few Americans objected to Soviet aid until 1943. And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own.". [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. Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? Posted on 2/25/23 at 2:25 pm to WPBTiger. 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. 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