how important was lend lease to the soviet union

Even after the United States forces in Europe and the Pacific began to attain full strength during 19431944, Lend-Lease continued. World War II Allies: U.S. Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union, 1941-1945 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. Did Russia Really Go It Alone? How Lend-Lease Helped the - HistoryNet The U.S. received $2 million in reverse Lend-Lease from the USSR. This act set up a system that would allow the United States to lend or lease war supplies to any nation deemed "vital to the defense of the United States." . As one Roosevelt biographer has characterized it: "If there was no practical alternative, there was certainly no moral one either. Lend-Lease Act - Conservapedia 151 Wing in Operation Benedict, to provide air defence of the port and to train Soviet pilots. 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. How important was the Lend-Lease to the Soviet war effort? [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. The Soviet Northern Fleet was also a major and early recipient of British Hurricanes, receiving those flown by No. In December 1940, President Roosevelt proclaimed the United States would be the "Arsenal of Democracy" and proposed selling munitions to Britain and Canada. [6], In 1939 howeveras Germany, Japan, and Italy pursued aggressive, militaristic policiesPresident Roosevelt wanted more flexibility to help contain Axis aggression. The American Lend-Lease program was signed into law in March 1941. But since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a trickle of information has emerged from archives in Moscow, shedding new light on the subject. The Persian Corridor was the longest route, and was not fully operational until mid-1942. Saudi Arabia-Top 10 most important events in the History. Crowley, Leo T. "Lend-Lease". Championed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Lend-Lease Act authorized the transfer . uboat.net - Fighting the U-boats - The Lend-Lease Act U.S. Citizens with emergencies, please call +(7) (495) 728-5577, Outside of Office Hours, contact: +7 (495) 728-5000. [24], A total of $50.1billion (equivalent to $606billion in 2021)[26] was involved, or 17% of the total war expenditures of the U.S.[2] Most, $31.4billion ($380billion) went to Britain and its empire. The Lend-Lease Act was signed into law on March 11, 1941, and ended on September 20, 1945. "[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. by Robert Beckhusen Key point: If the West had not invaded Europe and provided equipment, it would have. A monument in Fairbanks, Alaska, to the American pilots who flew almost 8,000 U.S. planes to Alaska and to the Soviet pilots who flew them on to Siberia as part of Lend-Lease. 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. .. Britain wished to retain some of this equipment in the immediate post-war period. Democrats voted 238 to 25 in favor and Republicans 24 in favor and 135 against. Lend-Lease kept the Soviet home front going through the winter of 1941 and throughout 1942. billion (about $ billion in prices ) were sent to several dozen recipient countries, including the main ones: It was said that the Matilda was inferior to the T-34, and in truth it probably was. Dalton Delan: It's not World War II, but we are dealing with a new Axis adopted, it is in some important respects anachronistic today. During the bitter fighting of the winter of 19411942, British aid made a crucial difference. 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. The tanks reached the front lines with extraordinary speed. "During World War II, only the supplies brought in by Lend-Lease prevented the paralysis of rail transport in the Soviet Union.". Just 446 locomotives were produced during the war,[39] with only 92 of those being built between 1942 and 1945. In Walter Yust, ed., "17 Billion Budget Drafted; Defense Takes 10 Billions. Payment was to be stretched out over 50 annual payments, starting in 1951 and with five years of deferred payments, at 2% interest. [3] In terms of administration, the president established the Office of Lend-Lease Administration during 1941, headed by steel executive Edward R. [61][62], Restrictions in the supply of weapons from the United States were mainly limited to heavy bombers. After a decade of neutrality, Roosevelt knew that the change to Allied support must be gradual, given the support for isolationism in the country. Crowley, Leo T. "Lend Lease" in Walter Yust, ed. First, I would like to tell about some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were "discussing freely" among ourselves. [21], After the attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States entering the war in December 1941, foreign policy was rarely discussed by Congress, and there was very little demand to cut Lend-Lease spending. "If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war," he wrote in his memoirs. the president asked at a press conference. This gold was salvaged in 1981 and 1986. 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. 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. [1] There was no repayment required. This is the official website of the U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Russia. 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. The Lend-Lease Memorial in Fairbanks, Alaska, commemorates the shipment of U.S. aircraft to the Soviet Union along the Northwest Staging Route. By the end of 1942, the Nazi advance into the Soviet Union had stalled; it was finally reversed at the epic battle of Stalingrad in 1943. ", In 1963, KGB monitoring recorded Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov saying: "People say that the allies didn't help us. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. THE ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS OF LEND-LEASE By EUGENE STALEY . 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. Part of the bill required the British to open their empire to trade. BM-13N Katyusha on a Lend-Lease Studebaker US6 truck, at the Museum of the Great Patriotic War, Moscow, In June 1941, within weeks of the German invasion of the USSR, the Anglo-Soviet Agreement was made and the first British aid convoy set off along the dangerous Arctic Sea route to Murmansk, arriving in September. Dear h, I don't doubt the word of the old gent seeing USA on "Soviet" equipment. [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. The exploits of the British-equipped 136th Independent Tank Battalion are perhaps the most widely noted in the archives. In addition, there would have been constant shortages of transportation and fuel. Matilda II in Soviet Service - Tank Encyclopedia 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. How Lend-Lease helped the Red Army win in World War II (PHOTOS) 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. Mystery surrounds the infamous burning of the Reichstag in 1933. 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.". 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. [53] Soviet Ambassador Maxim Litvinov significantly contributed to the Lend-Lease agreement of 1941. Lend-Lease aid did not arrive in sufficient quantities to make the difference between defeat and victory in 19411942; that achievement must be attributed solely to the Soviet people and to the iron nerve of Stalin, Zhukov, Shaposhnikov, Vasilevsky, and their subordinates. [29] 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. Similarly, the Soviet Union repaid $722 million in 1971, with the remainder of the debt written off. 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. That the Soviet victories of late 1941 were won with Soviet blood and largely with Soviet weapons is beyond dispute. 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. [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. 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. Has Russia paid off the USSR's Lend-Lease debt? - Quora On March 11, 1941, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act. Heavy bombers had not been mentioned in previous protocols. In practice, most equipment was destroyed, although some hardware (such as ships) was returned after the war. Initially, this proposal failed, but after Germany invaded Poland in September, Congress passed the Neutrality Act of 1939 ending the munitions embargo on a "cash and carry" basis. The program started 3 months after the German invasion of USSR in June, 1941. Lend-Lease: How American supplies aided the USSR in its darkest hour Particularly important for the Soviets in late 1941 were British-supplied tanks and aircraft. Under conditions of much of European Russia being occupied by the Axis, attrition was a losing prospect for the USSR; without Allied aid they might very well have collapsed as a military power some time in 1943. ): Deutschland im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Some of these shipments were intercepted by the Germans. [56] Nevertheless, some 8,244,000 tons of goods went by this route, 50% of the total. First protocol period from October 1, 1941, to June 30, 1942 (signed October 7, 1941), Second protocol period from July 1, 1942, to June 30, 1943 (signed October 6, 1942), Third protocol period from July 1, 1943, to June 30, 1944 (signed October 19, 1943). 2009. . Nikolay Ryzhkov & Georgy Kumanev Food and other strategic deliveries to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease Act, 19411945, pp. 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. Large quantities of undelivered goods were in Britain or in transit when Lend-Lease terminated on September 2, 1945. ", In practice, very little was returned except for a few unarmed transport ships. . U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Lend-Lease Act on March 11, 1941. 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 . Additionally, many of the British tools arrived in early 1942, when Soviet tool production was still very low, resulting in a disproportionate impact. ", Nikolai Ryzhkov, the last head of the government of the Soviet Union, wrote in 2015 that "it can be confidently stated that [Lend-Lease assistance] did not play a decisive role in the Great Victory.". Did Soviet Union Repay Lend-lease? - Caniry That is the U.S. would be "repaid" when the recipient fought the common enemy and joined the world trade and diplomatic agencies, such as the United Nations.[51]. United States and Britain, not the Soviet Union, China, or other United Nations . 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. Most went to Britain, but the Soviet Union received more than $11 billion. [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]. 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 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%. Langer, William L. and S. Everett Gleason. Lend-Lease Helped Win World War II, But Not On The Eastern Front The evidence is here. [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. Havlat, Denis. How Much of What Goods Have We Sent to Which Allies? | AHA - Historians [11] Isolationists were strongly opposed, warning it would result in American involvement with what was considered by most Americans as an essentially European conflict. So the Soviets were charged 10 cents on the dollar of actual cost. In 1941, the threat of World War II drove passage of the Lend-Lease Act repealing key provisions of the Neutrality Acts. 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." [55] This constituted some 23% of the total aid to the USSR during the war. 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. In terms of its relationship with the Soviet Union, lend-lease served as a powerful tool for demonstrating the benefits of the . Lend-Lease Act (1941) | National Archives [63] The production of heavy bombers in the United States until 1945 amounted to more than 30,000. But for decades the official Soviet line went much further. Milestones: 1937-1945 - Office of the Historian For the Australian company, see. The 1947 money value of the supplies and services amounted to about $11 billion. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. Agriculture also suffered a loss of labour; between 1941 and 1945, 19.5 million working-age men had to leave their farms to work in the military and industry. Soviet authorities recognized that the Great Patriotic War gave the Communist Party a claim to legitimacy that went far beyond Marxism-Leninism or the 1917 Revolution, and took pains to portray their nations victories in World War II as single-handed. Secret Cipher Telegram. 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. The pact was terminated when Germany launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union. 'We Would Have Lost': Did U.S. Lend-Lease Aid Tip The Balance In Soviet Lend-Lease - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org In a few paragraphs the Wiki page shows the importance of the deliveries. In September 1940, during the Battle of Britain the British government sent the Tizard Mission to the United States. I will quote at length: [35] "What do I do in such a crisis?" Lend Lease of WW2: was it paid by Soviet Union? - Axis History Member since Oct 2007. 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]. The handing over of forty imported machine tools to Aviation Factory No. Alerts and Messages for U.S. visitors to Russia. A total of 699 Lend-Lease aircraft had been delivered to Archangel by the time the Arctic convoys switched to Murmansk in December 1941. [83] However, none of this cargo has been salvaged, and no documentation of its treasure has been produced.[84]. Yauza. 15 Great Facts About Ukraine - Discover Walks Blog Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war.". Such assessments, however, are contradicted by the opinions of Soviet war participants. 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. 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. 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. 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].

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