how important was lend lease to the soviet union

Following the Nye Committee[nb 1] hearings, as well as influential books of the time, such as Merchants of Death, both 1934, the United States Congress adopted several Neutrality Acts in the 1930s, motivated by non-interventionismfollowing the aftermath of its costly involvement in World War I (the war debts were still not paid off), and seeking to ensure that the country would not become entangled in foreign conflicts again. On April 23, 1947, this C-37 was forced to make an emergency landing with 36 people on board near the village of Volochanka on the Taimyr Peninsula. Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union officially ended in September 1945. Canada was not a direct recipient of Lend-Lease aid. 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. . But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. External links to other Internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views or privacy policies contained therein. 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. The Soviet government at first offered to pay $170 million. The programme began to increase in scale during 1943. "During World War II, only the supplies brought in by Lend-Lease prevented the paralysis of rail transport in the Soviet Union.". aid from Britain can be argued to have had the most significant impact. Franklin D. Roosevelt had committed the United States in June 1940 to materially aiding the opponents of fascism, but, under existing U.S. law, the United Kingdom had to pay for its growing arms purchases from the United States with cash, popularly known as cash-and-carry. Lend-Lease aid did not save the Soviet Union from defeat during the Battle of Moscow. 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. "[10] As the President himself put it, "There can be no reasoning with incendiary bombs."[11]. Although British shipments amounted to only a few percent of Soviet domestic production of machine tools, the Soviet Union could request specific items which it may not have been able to produce for itself. [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. ", "How America Helped Build the Soviet Machine | American Heritage", "Ford Motor Company signs agreement with Soviet Union", "Russian historian: Importance of Lend-Lease cannot be overestimated", "Russia and Serbia, A Century of Progress in Rail Transport", "How Much of What Goods Have We Sent to Which Allies? Learn more about quality higher-education opportunities in the U.S. that you will not find anywhere else in the world. Washington. L. 77-11, H.R. "If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war," he wrote in his memoirs. And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own.". Such assessments, however, are contradicted by the opinions of Soviet war participants. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. newsletter for the best of the past, delivered every Monday and Thursday. The story of how that microfilm came to be in the National Archives is a convoluted tale worthy of telling. 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. Similarly, the Soviet Union repaid $722 million in 1971, with the remainder of the debt written off. It carried 40 Hawker Hurricanes along with 550 mechanics and pilots of No. 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. Lend-Lease, formally the Lend-Lease Act and introduced as An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States (Pub. 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. [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. In Walter Yust, ed., "17 Billion Budget Drafted; Defense Takes 10 Billions. 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." After the war, it was transferred to civilian aviation, carrying passengers over the frozen tundra above the Arctic Circle. When the war ended, almost 33 percent of all the Red Army's vehicles had been provided through Lend-Lease. [18], The vote in the Senate, which occurred on 9 March, revealed a similar partisan difference: 49 Democrats (79 percent) voted "aye" with only 13 Democrats (21 percent) voting "nay". [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. 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. The United States did not provide them to the USSR when requested. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. Marshall Plan Countries. Yes, in 1942 Lend-Lease was of course important for Soviet Russia. And many of the supplies needed by our Air Force are procured for us without cost by reverse lend-lease. Substantial quantities of machine tools and raw materials, such as aluminum and rubber, were supplied to help Soviet industry back on its feet: 312 metal-cutting machine tools were delivered by convoy PQ-12 alone, arriving in March 1942, along with a range of other items for Soviet factories such as machine presses and compressors. The Government of Mongolia donated its gold and hard currency reserves to the Soviet Union for four years in a row. Stalin needed trucks and was provided with Studebaker trucks on a massive scale. 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. Allen (1946) p 252. The Soviet Union got arms, ammunition, aircraft, and industrial equipment for its army. $31 billion went to Britain, $11 billion to the Soviet Union, $3 billion to France, and $1.6 billion to China. The British Eighth Army under Gen. Bernard Law Montgomery employed U.S. planes, guns and tanks when they whipped Rommel's Afrika Korps at El Alamein. WWII program to provide U.S. allies with free armaments, This article is about the World War II program. 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]. It provided Britain and the Soviet Union with limited war materiel beginning in October that year. Deane, John R. 1947. [35] 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. [76] Australia and New Zealand supplied the bulk of foodstuffs to United States forces in the South Pacific. 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. 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. 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. The agreement was that all temporary construction for the use of American forces and all permanent construction required by the United States forces beyond Canadian requirements would be paid for by the United States, and that the cost of all other construction of permanent value would be met by Canada. It allowed the USSR to conquer and subjugate eastern Europe and Manchuria and allowed them to prop up communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe, China and North Korea. Recd 11/12/41. "[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. 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. Few Americans objected to Soviet aid until 1943. After this final payment, Britain's Economic Secretary to the Treasury formally issued thanks to the U.S. for its wartime support. 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. Nikita Khrushchev, having served as a military commissar and intermediary between Stalin and his generals during the war, addressed directly the significance of Lend-lease aid in his memoirs: I would like to express my candid opinion about Stalin's views on whether the Red Army and the Soviet Union could have coped with Nazi Germany and survived the war without aid from the United States and Britain. . [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. Collection. The political fog of the Cold War often marred the truth about the vehicles received. If Germany defeated the Soviet Union, the most significant front in Europe would be closed. The cooperation that was built up with Canada during the war was an amalgam compounded of diverse elements of which the air and land routes to Alaska, the Canol project, and the CRYSTAL and CRIMSON activities were the most costly in point of effort and funds expended. Lend-Lease kept the Soviet home front going through the winter of 1941 and throughout 1942. However, the real significance of Lend-Lease for the Soviet war effort was that it covered the "sensitive points" of Soviet production -- gasoline, explosives, aluminum, nonferrous metals, radio communications, and so on, says historian Boris Sokolov. In May 1942, HMSEdinburgh was sunk while carrying 4.5 tonnes of Soviet gold intended for the U.S. Treasury. Moscow. 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. Congress did not allow the aid to be free, so the U.S. discounted it's Lend-Lease supplies by 90 percent of costs. 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. Lend Lease was pretty much strategic charity. [67][68] The British tanks first saw action with the 138 Independent Tank Battalion in the Volga Reservoir on November 20, 1941. 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. [69] Lend-Lease tanks constituted 30 to 40 percent of heavy and medium tank strength before Moscow at the beginning of December 1941. 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. According to research by a team of Soviet historians, the Soviet Union lost a staggering 20,500 tanks from June 22 to December 31, 1941. In 1946, the post-war Anglo-American loan further indebted Britain to the U.S. Lend-Lease items retained were sold to Britain at 10% of nominal value, giving an initial loan value of 1.075billion for the Lend-Lease portion of the post-war loans. As one Roosevelt biographer has characterized it: "If there was no practical alternative, there was certainly no moral one either. 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). [29] Trucks such as the Dodge '"`UNIQ--templatestyles-0000003F-QINU`"'34-ton and Studebaker 2+12-ton were easily the best trucks available in their class on either side on the Eastern Front. The aid was given for free on the basis that such help was essential for the defense of the United States. Just 446 locomotives were produced during the war,[39] with only 92 of those being built between 1942 and 1945. 150 in July 1942, for example, was the critical factor in enabling the factory to reach projected capacity within two months. Balances for the Soviet Union were solved through a payment scheme in 1972, where they pledged to make three initial payments. How much Soviet equipment was Lend-Lease? Additionally, many of the British tools arrived in early 1942, when Soviet tool production was still very low, resulting in a disproportionate impact. The United States and the British Commonwealth provided 55. [83] However, none of this cargo has been salvaged, and no documentation of its treasure has been produced.[84]. 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. Secret Cipher Telegram. 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. From there, it flew 5,650 kilometers to the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, one of some 14,000 aircraft sent by the United States to the Soviet Union during World War II under the massive Lend-Lease program. Photo: Museum of the U.S. Air Force (Courtesy Photo). Then in 1972 agreement was reached on $722 . Although most of the actual construction of joint defense facilities, except the Alaska Highway and the Canol project, had been carried out by Canada, most of the original cost was borne by the United States. Almost all European nations outside the Soviet bloc were members of the plan from the beginning. The American Lend-Lease program was signed into law in March 1941. Any mention of the role that Western assistance played in the Soviet war effort was strictly off-limits. For the Australian company, see. 1415 FDR Library", "Anglo-American Mutual Aid Agreement, February 28, 1942", "The Hyde Park Declaration 1941: Origins and Significance", "Consumer Price Index, annual average, not seasonally adjusted", "Consumer Price Index by product group, monthly, percentage change, not seasonally adjusted, Canada, provinces, Whitehorse, Yellowknife and Iqaluit", "America Reports On Aid To Allies etc. President Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease bill into law on March 11, 1941. Ukraine is a founding member of the United Nations and it is also a member of the Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization, and the OSCE. 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]. . . "[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". Reverse Lend-Lease to the United States totalled $7.8 billion. [61][62], Restrictions in the supply of weapons from the United States were mainly limited to heavy bombers. 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. This was the first big war in which whole formations were routinely motorized; soldiers were supported with large numbers of all kinds of vehicles. 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. Mackenzie, Hector. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1982, Bd. About 15 percent of the aircraft of the 6th Fighter Air Corps defending Moscow were Tomahawks or Hurricanes. Alerts and Messages for U.S. visitors to Russia. | 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. 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. "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. 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. This Douglas is the only Lend-Lease aircraft that remains in Russia.". 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. Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. The captain, two crew members, and six passengers had left earlier in an ill-fated effort to get help. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. The Lend-Lease Act was designed to provide allies with aircraft and supplies for the war in Europe. 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. 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. Mongolian lamb and meat donations to the front lines outperformed those sent by the Lend-Lease Act. Subscribe to our HistoryNet Now! 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. How important was the Lend Lease Act to the Soviet Union? Dear h, I don't doubt the word of the old gent seeing USA on "Soviet" equipment. On December 7, 1940, its Prime Minister Winston Churchill pressed President Roosevelt in a 15-page letter for American help. 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. Lend Lease came as a response to the Axis Powers' violence and showed that America was committed to defending their nation and its . 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. Under these circumstances even small quantities of aid took on far greater significance. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Mystery surrounds the infamous burning of the Reichstag in 1933. In September 1940, during the Battle of Britain the British government sent the Tizard Mission to the United States. Each method was difficult. In practice, most equipment was destroyed, although some hardware (such as ships) was returned after the war. 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. Only 22% were unequivocally against the President's proposal. How important was Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union? Under Lend-Lease, the U.S. shipped more than $50 billion in supplies equivalent to more than $700 billion today. The plane spent 69 years on the tundra before a Russian Geographical Society expedition rescued it in 2016 and returned the wreckage to Krasnoyarsk. Some of these shipments were intercepted by the Germans. By the end of the war, the United States had extended over $49 billion in Lend-Lease aid to nearly forty nations. 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. Churchill called the letter "one of the most important I ever wrote.". 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. On May 11, 1947, 27 people were rescued, having spent nearly three weeks in the icebound wreck. 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. The Lend-Lease Act was initially created to help Great Britain as they struggled in World War II. In 1941, the threat of World War II drove passage of the Lend-Lease Act repealing key provisions of the Neutrality Acts. [65], Warsaw 1945: Willys jeep used by the Polish First Army as part of U.S. Lend-Lease program. Source: "The Soviet Union: The Defeated Victor" pp. 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. As early as October 12, 1941, the Soviet 126th Fighter Air Regiment was operating with Tomahawks bought from the United States by Britain. [43] Lend-Lease also supplied significant amounts of weapons and ammunition. by Robert Beckhusen Key point: If the West had not invaded Europe and provided equipment, it would have. 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. 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. 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. 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. The U.S. government never published detailed reports on what and how much was sent under the Lend-Lease program to the USSR. And Soviet forces would have been much more poorly coordinated with a constant lack of radio equipment. 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]. 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. [33], The program was gradually terminated after V-E Day. Our Fortresses and Liberators take off from huge air bases built, equipped and serviced under reverse lend-lease at a cost to them of hundreds of millions of dollars.

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