how important was lend lease to the soviet union

But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. The Viking Press. Of this, $6.8 billion came from the British and the Commonwealth. A particular critical aspect of Lend-Lease was the supply of food. Alerts and Messages for U.S. visitors to Russia. Even Joseph Stalin himself would say that the lend-lease was . 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. . A steady stream of British-made tanks continued to flow into the Red Army through the spring and summer of 1942. Nikita Khrushchev offered the same opinion. 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. Additionally, many of the British tools arrived in early 1942, when Soviet tool production was still very low, resulting in a disproportionate impact. 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. 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. 5,218 tanks (including 1,380 Valentines from Canada), 323 machinery trucks (mobile vehicle workshops equipped with generators and all the welding and power tools required to perform heavy servicing), 1.15bn ($1.55bn) worth of aircraft engines, Allen, R. G. D. "Mutual Aid Between the U.S. and The British Empire, 1941-45". ", "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? 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. -8. [22], In February 1942, the U.S. and Britain signed the Anglo-American Mutual Aid Agreement[23] as part of a greater multilateral system, developed by the Allies during the war, to provide each other with goods, services, and mutual aid in the widest sense, without charging commercial payments. And it is a salient point that over 80% of the aid was received after June 1942, when the tide of the war had already turned against the Germans on the Eastern Front. Under Lend-Lease, the U.S. shipped more than $50 billion in supplies equivalent to more than $700 billion today. From 1941 to 1945, total lend-lease aid to the Soviet Union accounted for only 5% of the Soviet GDP in total. Part I. 2009. . [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. From: 30 Military Mission. 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. In April, this policy was extended to China,[20] and in October to the Soviet Union. How important was the US lend-lease? 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. 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. "[10] As the President himself put it, "There can be no reasoning with incendiary bombs."[11]. Roosevelt's Soviet Protocol Committee was dominated by Harry Hopkins and General John York, who were totally sympathetic to the provision of "unconditional aid". The museum was established inside a former school and has been open for 8 years. And Soviet forces would have been much more poorly coordinated with a constant lack of radio equipment. initially requested by the Soviet Union from Britain was naval, in the. The terms of the agreement provided that the materiel was to be used until returned or destroyed. It provided Britain and the Soviet Union with limited war materiel beginning in October that year. It needed all the available resources to pressure Germany on the lands far from Moscow, where Germany was getting a degree of home advantage. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1982, Bd. In addition, much of the $31 billion worth of aid sent to the United Kingdom was also passed on to the Soviet Union via convoys through the Barents Sea to Murmansk. 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. 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. The Lend-Lease Act was initially created to help Great Britain as they struggled in World War II. In spring 1944, the House passed a bill to renew the Lend-Lease program by a vote of 334 to 21. The United States used lend-lease to induce recipients to the American way of thinking, especially regarding the economy and free-market trade. 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. Lend Lease was pretty much strategic charity. [29] [55], The Pacific Route opened in August 1941, but was affected by the start of hostilities between Japan and the U.S.; after December 1941, only Soviet ships could be used, and, as Japan and the USSR observed a strict neutrality towards each other, only non-military goods could be transported. "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. 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. Roosevelt believed that if the Soviets were defeated the Allies would be far more likely to lose. But for decades the official Soviet line went much further. The captain, two crew members, and six passengers had left earlier in an ill-fated effort to get help. 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. [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. Subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter with top stories from master historians. Officially the "Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry". 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. 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. In practice, most equipment was destroyed, although some hardware (such as ships) was returned after the war. 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. Particularly important for the Soviets in late 1941 were British-supplied tanks and aircraft. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war.". Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? 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. 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 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. Learn more about quality higher-education opportunities in the U.S. that you will not find anywhere else in the world. [34], Lend-Lease contributed to the Allied victory. The convoy was the first of many convoys to Murmansk and Archangelsk in what became known as the Arctic convoys, the returning ships carried the gold that the USSR was using to pay the US. 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]. Under Lend-Lease, the United States provided more than one-third of all the explosives used by the Soviet Union during the war. 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. 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. . Campbell, Thomas M. and George C. Herring, eds. The aid was given for free on the basis that such help was essential for the defense of the United States. Under Lend-Lease, the United States provided more than one-third of all the explosives used by the Soviet Union during the war. D.C. 4 Ottawa Protocol (July 1, 194430 June 1945). This gold was salvaged in 1981 and 1986. And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own.". $31 billion went to Britain, $11 billion to the Soviet Union, $3 billion to France, and $1.6 billion to China. [3] In terms of administration, the president established the Office of Lend-Lease Administration during 1941, headed by steel executive Edward R. [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]. 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. [1] There was no repayment required.