how important was lend lease to the soviet union

Almost all European nations outside the Soviet bloc were members of the plan from the beginning. . ", 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. Lend Lease came as a response to the Axis Powers' violence and showed that America was committed to defending their nation and its . One of the greatest differences with prior wars was the enormous increase in the mobility of armies. In 1944, Britain transferred several of the US-made destroyers to the USSR. American aid also provided 4.5 million tons of food, 1.5 million blankets, and 15 million pairs of boots. "[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. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. 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. The Persian Corridor was the longest route, and was not fully operational until mid-1942. Democrats voted 238 to 25 in favor and Republicans 24 in favor and 135 against. From 1941 to 1945, total lend-lease aid to the Soviet Union accounted for only 5% of the Soviet GDP in total. I will quote at length: In addition, there would have been constant shortages of transportation and fuel. How Much of What Goods Have We Sent to Which Allies? Without Lend-Lease, Russia would not have been able to carry out the Stalingrad counteroffensive and Operation Bagration. [34], Lend-Lease contributed to the Allied victory. For travel to the United States on a temporary basis, including tourism, temporary employment, study and exchange. THE ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS OF LEND-LEASE By EUGENE STALEY . . 2009. . 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. This gold was salvaged in 1981 and 1986. For the Australian company, see. 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. [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. 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. Roosevelt believed that if the Soviets were defeated the Allies would be far more likely to lose. 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). Such machines were of higher quality than analogues produced in the Soviet Union, which made a significant contribution to boosting Soviet industrial production. 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. Allen (1946) p 252. [65], Warsaw 1945: Willys jeep used by the Polish First Army as part of U.S. Lend-Lease program. Such assessments, however, are contradicted by the opinions of Soviet war participants. On April 23, 1947, it was forced to make an emergency landing with 36 people on board near the village of Volochanka on the Taimyr Peninsula. Lend-Lease aircraft deliveries were also of significance during the Battle of Moscow. [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. .. The Lend-Lease law was adopted by the U.S. Congress on March 11, 1941; according to it, all the supplied vehicles, arms, equipment and materials were not to be paid for should they be destroyed. 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. This inevitably produced shortages of related products that are required for industrial or logistical uses, particularly unarmored vehicles. 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. [11] Isolationists were strongly opposed, warning it would result in American involvement with what was considered by most Americans as an essentially European conflict. 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. 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. Part of the bill required the British to open their empire to trade. 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. 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. [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. 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. 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. Canada was not a direct recipient of Lend-Lease aid. 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%. It is an indication of the extent to which the British have been able to pool their resources with ours so that the needed weapon may be in the hands of that soldierwhatever may be his nationalitywho can at the proper moment use it most effectively to defeat our common enemies.[76]. [6], In 1939 howeveras Germany, Japan, and Italy pursued aggressive, militaristic policiesPresident Roosevelt wanted more flexibility to help contain Axis aggression. Reverse Lend-Lease to the United States totalled $7.8 billion. How much Soviet equipment was Lend-Lease? The 1947 money value of the supplies and services amounted to about $11 billion. 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. (1942). Democrats. The United States and the British Commonwealth provided 55 percent of all the aluminum the Soviet Union used during the war and more than 80 percent of the copper. 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". Totaling $11.3 billion, or $180 billion in todays 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., By U.S. Mission Russia | 10 May, 2020 | Topics: History, News, U.S. & Russia. 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. As early as October 12, 1941, the Soviet 126th Fighter Air Regiment was operating with Tomahawks bought from the United States by Britain. The Lend-Lease Memorial in Fairbanks, Alaska, commemorates the shipment of U.S. aircraft to the Soviet Union along the Northwest Staging Route. 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. The U.S. received $2 million in reverse Lend-Lease from the USSR. [29] But Was He Drugged Into Confessing. Dear h, I don't doubt the word of the old gent seeing USA on "Soviet" equipment. The Arctic route was the shortest and most direct route for lend-lease aid to the USSR, though it was also the most dangerous as it involved sailing past German-occupied Norway. [3] In terms of administration, the president established the Office of Lend-Lease Administration during 1941, headed by steel executive Edward R. This was agreed upon before the signing of the first protocol on October 1, 1941, and extension of credit. The aid was given for free on the basis that such help was essential for the defense of the United States. 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. Roosevelt approved $1billion in Lend-Lease aid to Britain at the end of October 1941. Secret Cipher Telegram. On March 11, 1941, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act. Posted on 2/25/23 at 2:25 pm to WPBTiger. In contrast, 17 Republicans (63 percent) voted "nay" while 10 Senate Republicans (37 percent) sided with the Democrats to pass the bill.[19]. 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 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. 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. Lend-Lease aid to the USSR was nominally managed by Stettinius. 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. 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. In May 1942, HMSEdinburgh was sunk while carrying 4.5 tonnes of Soviet gold intended for the U.S. Treasury. north, and in particular for the Northern Fleet.102Much of the material. More than 20,000 Katyusha mobile multiple-rocket launchers were mounted on the chassis of American Studebaker trucks. Most famously, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin raised a toast to the Lend-Lease program at the November 1943 Tehran conference with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt. Even after the United States forces in Europe and the Pacific began to attain full strength during 19431944, Lend-Lease continued. About 15 percent of the aircraft of the 6th Fighter Air Corps defending Moscow were Tomahawks or Hurricanes. And the Soviet Union didn't pay much of that. 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. You act like that would have been easy. After the war, it was transferred to civilian aviation, carrying passengers over the frozen tundra above the Arctic Circle. Roosevelt concluded that the United States needed to help the Soviets fight against the Germans. "Transatlantic Generosity: Canada's 'Billion Dollar Gift' to the United Kingdom in the Second World War.". How important was the US lend-lease? Under these circumstances even small quantities of aid took on far greater significance. The total of defense materials and services that Canada received through lend-lease channels amounted in value to approximately $419,500,000. 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. 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. [70][71], Significant numbers of British Churchill, Matilda and Valentine tanks were shipped to the USSR.[72]. 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 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. The tanks reached the front lines with extraordinary speed. Just 446 locomotives were produced during the war,[39] with only 92 of those being built between 1942 and 1945. 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]. "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. 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]. The Soviet Union got arms, ammunition, aircraft, and industrial equipment for its army. The Short History Of The Great Patriotic War, also from 1948, acknowledged the Lend-Lease shipments, but concluded: "Overall this assistance was not significant enough to in any way exert a decisive influence over the course of the Great Patriotic War. 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. The handing over of forty imported machine tools to Aviation Factory No. Similarly, the Soviet Union repaid $722 million in 1971, with the remainder of the debt written off. 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. 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. Interested in U.S. History? At the end of 1941 there were greater numbers of the MiG-3, but the plane was considered difficult to fly. The Senate passed it by a vote of 63 to 1. [43] Lend-Lease also supplied significant amounts of weapons and ammunition. 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. [80], The final payment of $83.3million (42.5million), due on December 31, 2006 (repayment having been deferred in the allowed five years and during a sixth year not allowed), was made by Britain on December 29, 2006 (the last working day of the year). American contributions of the time were far fewer. Supply volumes and the significance of lend-lease. In September 1940, during the Battle of Britain the British government sent the Tizard Mission to the United States. 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 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. Churchill called the letter "one of the most important I ever wrote.". Reverse lend-lease policies comprised services such as rent on bases used by the U.S., and totaled $7.8billion; of this, $6.8billion came from the British and the Commonwealth, mostly Australia and India. Additionally, many of the British tools arrived in early 1942, when Soviet tool production was still very low, resulting in a disproportionate impact.