how important was lend lease to the soviet union

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. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. WWII program to provide U.S. allies with free armaments, This article is about the World War II program. The handing over of forty imported machine tools to Aviation Factory No. You act like that would have been easy. Each method was difficult. 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. For the Australian company, see. 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. James Phinney Baxter III (Official Historian of the Office of Scientific Research and Development), Wolfgang Schumann (et al. American and Soviet pilots pose in front of a Bell P-39 Airacobra, supplied to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease program. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. 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. [61][62], Restrictions in the supply of weapons from the United States were mainly limited to heavy bombers. newsletter for the best of the past, delivered every Monday and Thursday. In practice, very little equipment was in usable shape for peacetime uses. Of this, $6.8 billion came from the British and the Commonwealth. 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. Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union officially ended in September 1945. 150 in July 1942, for example, was the critical factor in enabling the factory to reach projected capacity within two months. The terms of the agreement provided that the materiel was to be used until returned or destroyed. 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. A map of lend-lease shipments from the United States to the U.S.S.R. from 1941-45. Robert Coalson is a senior correspondent for RFE/RLwho covers Russia, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe. The 1947 money value of the supplies and services amounted to about $11 billion. Tens of thousands of agricultural machines, such as tractors and threshers, were destroyed or captured. The 19th and Early 20th Century History. 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. Of these, 99 Hurricanes and 39 Tomahawks were in service with the Soviet air defense forces on January 1, 1942, out of a total of 1,470 fighters. 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. . 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. 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. 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The Soviet government at first offered to pay $170 million. This was agreed upon before the signing of the first protocol on October 1, 1941, and extension of credit. [43] Lend-Lease also supplied significant amounts of weapons and ammunition. A total of 699 Lend-Lease aircraft had been delivered to Archangel by the time the Arctic convoys switched to Murmansk in December 1941. Tomahawks also served in defense of the Doroga Zhizni or Road of Life across the ice of Lake Ladoga, which provided the only supply line to the besieged city of Leningrad during the winter of 194142. For travel to the United States on a temporary basis, including tourism, temporary employment, study and exchange. 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. The story of how that microfilm came to be in the National Archives is a convoluted tale worthy of telling. The Soviet authorities were well aware of this dependency on Lend-Lease. 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. Lend-Lease, formally the Lend-Lease Act and introduced as An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States (Pub. Member since Oct 2007. Borodin said he wished to honor and show gratitude to the United States and its veterans who rendered aid to the Soviet Union during World War II. No one ever discussed this subject officially, and I don't think Stalin left any written evidence of his opinion, but I will state here that several times in conversations with me he noted that these were the actual circumstances. 4, 48/Maslov MA Bomber PE-8. . Payment was to be stretched out over 50 annual payments, starting in 1951 and with five years of deferred payments, at 2% interest. The Soviet debt for Lend-Lease supplies was finally paid and closed as part of the settlements with the Paris Club on August 21, 2006. [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. 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. Lend-Lease effectively ended the United States' pretense of neutrality which had been enshrined in the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s. Mystery surrounds the infamous burning of the Reichstag in 1933. The Red Army was a force to be reckoned with and was willing to sustain unlimited casualties. From 1941 to 1945, total lend-lease aid to the Soviet Union accounted for only 5% of the Soviet GDP in total. [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. Moscow. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty 2023 RFE/RL, Inc. All Rights Reserved. In 1944, Britain transferred several of the US-made destroyers to the USSR. Saudi Arabia-Top 10 most important events in the History. Crowley, Leo T. "Lend-Lease". It carried 40 Hawker Hurricanes along with 550 mechanics and pilots of No. 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. Supply volumes and the significance of lend-lease. [6], In 1939 howeveras Germany, Japan, and Italy pursued aggressive, militaristic policiesPresident Roosevelt wanted more flexibility to help contain Axis aggression. 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. Canada would eventually produce 1,420 Valentines, almost exclusively for delivery to the Soviet Union. Lend-Lease - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org In a few paragraphs the Wiki page shows the importance of the deliveries. Materials totalling $. [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. Canada was not a direct recipient of Lend-Lease aid. And they would have been perpetually hungry without American canned meat and fats. According to the Russian historian Boris Vadimovich Sokolov, Lend-Lease had a crucial role in winning the war: On the whole the following conclusion can be drawn: that without these Western shipments under Lend-Lease the Soviet Union not only would not have been able to win the Great Patriotic War, it would not have been able even to oppose the German invaders, since it could not itself produce sufficient quantities of arms and military equipment or adequate supplies of fuel and ammunition. Lend-Lease aid did not save the Soviet Union from defeat during the Battle of Moscow. 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." . 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. The plane spent 69 years on the tundra before a Russian Geographical Society expedition rescued it in 2016 and returned the wreckage to Krasnoyarsk. This particular C-47 was sent to the Far North and spent the war conducting reconnaissance and weather-monitoring missions over the Kara Sea. 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. 1776, 55 Stat. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Lend-Lease Act on March 11, 1941. The political fog of the Cold War often marred the truth about the vehicles received. ", In practice, very little was returned except for a few unarmed transport ships. Courses on the British tanks for Soviet crews started during November as the first tanks, with British assistance, were being assembled from their in-transit states and undergoing testing by Soviet specialists. On April 28th, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act ( S.3522 ), which has now gone to President Joe Biden's desk for signature.. Known today as Lend-Lease. How important was the US lend-lease? 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 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. Secret Cipher Telegram. And the Soviet Union didn't pay much of that. As one Roosevelt biographer has characterized it: "If there was no practical alternative, there was certainly no moral one either. In terms of its relationship with the Soviet Union, lend-lease served as a powerful tool for demonstrating the benefits of the . 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. And Soviet forces would have been much more poorly coordinated with a constant lack of radio equipment. The United States did not provide them to the USSR when requested. Washington. Large quantities of undelivered goods were in Britain or in transit when Lend-Lease terminated on September 2, 1945. The Soviet air force received 18,200 aircraft, which amounted to about 30 percent of Soviet wartime fighter and bomber production (mid 194145). Alerts and Messages for U.S. visitors to Russia. Supplies that arrived after the termination date were sold to Britain at a large discount for 1.075billion, using long-term loans from the United States. It was part of a scratch operational group of the Western Front consisting of the 18th Rifle Brigade, two ski battalions, the 5th and 20th Tank Brigades, and the 140th Independent Tank Battalion. Langer, William L. and S. Everett Gleason. The distribution of loans was 90% to the UK, 5% to Australia, 1% to New Zealand, 3% to India, and zero to Canada. In practice, most equipment was destroyed, although some hardware (such as ships) was returned after the war. But Was He Drugged Into Confessing. 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 Lend-Lease Memorial in Fairbanks, Alaska, commemorates the shipment of U.S. aircraft to the Soviet Union along the Northwest Staging Route. [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. The exploits of the British-equipped 136th Independent Tank Battalion are perhaps the most widely noted in the archives. Lend Lease came as a response to the Axis Powers' violence and showed that America was committed to defending their nation and its . After a decade of neutrality, Roosevelt knew that the change to Allied support must be gradual, given the support for isolationism in the country. Britain wished to retain some of this equipment in the immediate post-war period. 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. And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own.". Evolucin de los . Some of these shipments were intercepted by the Germans. A further 15% were in favor of qualifications such as: "If it doesn't get us into war," or "If the British can give us some security for what we give them." The United States and the British Commonwealth provided 55. 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. 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." 400,000 jeeps & trucks; 14,000 airplanes Even Joseph Stalin himself would say that the lend-lease was . When the war ended, almost 33 percent of all the Red Army's vehicles had been provided through Lend-Lease. [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. 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 United States used lend-lease to induce recipients to the American way of thinking, especially regarding the economy and free-market trade. And how much steel! One of the greatest differences with prior wars was the enormous increase in the mobility of armies. 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. [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. 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. 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 others were never found. 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. 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. The plan proposed by FDR was to "lend-lease or otherwise dispose of arms" and other supplies needed by any country whose security was vital to the defense of the United States. [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). THE ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS OF LEND-LEASE By EUGENE STALEY . [29] Interested in U.S. History? 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. [70][71], Significant numbers of British Churchill, Matilda and Valentine tanks were shipped to the USSR.[72]. As early as October 12, 1941, the Soviet 126th Fighter Air Regiment was operating with Tomahawks bought from the United States by Britain. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. But in order to sustain the war effort all the way back to Germany, Lend-Lease was decisive. re: In hindsight was it a mistake for the US to ally with the Soviet Union during WW2. 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]. Nikita Khrushchev offered the same opinion. A steady stream of British-made tanks continued to flow into the Red Army through the spring and summer of 1942. 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. 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. Once again, raw figures do not tell the whole story. Within months, the Lend-Lease program was expanded to include China and the Soviet Union. 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. Allen (1946) p 252. [73][74], Reverse Lend-Lease was the supply of equipment and services to the United States. Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? [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. the president asked at a press conference. 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. In January 1941, following up on his campaign pledge and the prime minister's appeal for arms, Roosevelt proposed to Congress a new military aid bill. The Government of Mongolia donated its gold and hard currency reserves to the Soviet Union for four years in a row. In th. 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. For comparison, a total of 22 million tons landed in Europe to supply American forces from January 1942 to May 1945. In the meantime, Great Britain was running out of liquid currency and asked not to be forced to sell off British assets. [83] However, none of this cargo has been salvaged, and no documentation of its treasure has been produced.[84]. The Strange Alliance, The Story of Our Efforts at Wartime Co-operation with Russia. "[10] As the President himself put it, "There can be no reasoning with incendiary bombs."[11]. 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. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. The records constitute the primary policy and subject files on World War II Lend-Lease to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). 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. About half of these were delivered by sea via the North Atlantic or were flown across the South Atlantic Ocean to the USSR via North Africa. [55] This constituted some 23% of the total aid to the USSR during the war. 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. United States and Britain, not the Soviet Union, China, or other United Nations . The captain, two crew members, and six passengers had left earlier in an ill-fated effort to get help. "[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".

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