how important was lend lease to the soviet union how important was lend lease to the soviet union

[36] Most belligerent powers severely decreased production of non-essentials, concentrating on producing weapons. The U.S. government never published detailed reports on what and how much was sent under the Lend-Lease program to the USSR. On March 11, 1941, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act. The others were never found. 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. 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. 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. Originally intended to lend arms and material to the. In May 1942, HMSEdinburgh was sunk while carrying 4.5 tonnes of Soviet gold intended for the U.S. Treasury. Negotiations dragged on intermittently for 25 years. 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. adopted, it is in some important respects anachronistic today. "It should be remembered that during World War I, the transportation crisis in Russia in 1916-17 that did a lot to facilitate the February Revolution [which lead to the abdication of the tsar] was caused by a shortage in the production of railway rails, engines, and freight cars because industrial production had been diverted to munitions," Sokolov wrote. The Persian Corridor was the longest route, and was not fully operational until mid-1942. 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. Even Joseph Stalin himself would say that the lend-lease was . "During World War II, only the supplies brought in by Lend-Lease prevented the paralysis of rail transport in the Soviet Union.". 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. 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. Secret Cipher Telegram. The Soviet authorities were well aware of this dependency on Lend-Lease. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. 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". 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. 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. 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. 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. Lend-Lease: Western Aid for the Soviet UnionPart of Eastern Front Fortnight (4) on WW2TVWith Denis HavlatDuring WWII the Soviet Union received large amounts . And the Soviet Union didn't pay much of that. The story of how that microfilm came to be in the National Archives is a convoluted tale worthy of telling. newsletter for the best of the past, delivered every Monday and Thursday. "I want to tell you what, from the Russian point of view, the president and the United States have done for victory in this war," Stalin said. It was a decisive step away from non-interventionist policy and toward open support for the Allies. By the end of 1941, the lend-lease policy. In a secret protocol of this pact, the Germans and the Soviets agreed that Poland should be divided between them, with the western third of the country going to Germany and the eastern two-thirds being taken over by the U.S.S.R. Popular Questions What was the cause of World War II? The political fog of the Cold War often marred the truth about the vehicles received. 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. "It was not just some piece of scrap metal. Member since Oct 2007. 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." Perhaps most directly, without Lend-Lease trucks, rail engines, and railroad cars, every Soviet offensive would have stalled at an earlier stage, outrunning its logistical tail in a matter of days. 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. aid from Britain can be argued to have had the most significant impact. In fact the British intercepted German communications indicating that German forces had first come in contact with British tanks on the Eastern front on November 26, 1941. How important was the Lend Lease Act to the Soviet Union? 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. [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 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%. [61][62], Restrictions in the supply of weapons from the United States were mainly limited to heavy bombers. 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. Lend-Lease also sent aviation fuel equivalent to 57 percent of what the Soviet Union itself produced. The American Lend-Lease program was signed into law in March 1941. 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 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. [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 Soviet Union got arms, ammunition, aircraft, and industrial equipment for its army. [67][68] The British tanks first saw action with the 138 Independent Tank Battalion in the Volga Reservoir on November 20, 1941. United States and Britain, not the Soviet Union, China, or other United Nations . 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. In practice, very little equipment was in usable shape for peacetime uses. In contrast, 17 Republicans (63 percent) voted "nay" while 10 Senate Republicans (37 percent) sided with the Democrats to pass the bill.[19]. 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. Democrats. ", In practice, very little was returned except for a few unarmed transport ships. 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 . 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. 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. 4, 48. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty 2023 RFE/RL, Inc. All Rights Reserved. In addition, almost half of all the rails used by the Soviet Union during the war came through Lend-Lease. By the end of 1941 Britain had delivered 466 tanks out of the 750 promised. 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. ", In 1963, KGB monitoring recorded Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov saying: "People say that the allies didn't help us. British and Commonwealth deliveries to the Soviet Union in late 1941 and early 1942 would not only assist in the Soviet defense of Moscow and subsequent counteroffensive, but also in increasing Soviet production for the next period of the war. The 1947 money value of the supplies and services amounted to about $11 billion. The Lend-Lease Memorial in Fairbanks, Alaska, commemorates the shipment of U.S. aircraft to the Soviet Union along the Northwest Staging Route. 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. ): Deutschland im Zweiten Weltkrieg. 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. 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. During Nikita Khrushchevs rule in the late 1950s and early 1960s, there was a window of greater frankness and openness about the extent of aid supplied from the West under the Lend-Lease Actbut it was still clearly forbidden for Soviet authors to suggest that such aid ever made any real difference on the battlefield. [29] Then in 1972 agreement was reached on $722 . 1776, 55 Stat. In 1944, Britain transferred several of the US-made destroyers to the USSR. Before becoming secretary of commerce in the Truman administration, he had served in two crucial posts during World War II, as Lend-Lease representative in Britain and then as U.S. ambassador to Moscow. [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. In September 1940, during the Battle of Britain the British government sent the Tizard Mission to the United States. Yes, in 1942 Lend-Lease was of course important for Soviet Russia. A total of 22,800 armored vehicles were delivered to the Red Army during World War II, of which 1,981 were lost in dangerous Arctic convoys. As early as October 12, 1941, the Soviet 126th Fighter Air Regiment was operating with Tomahawks bought from the United States by Britain. Canada operated a program similar to Lend-Lease called Mutual Aid that sent a loan of Can$1billion (equivalent to Can$15.4billion in 2021)[30] and Can$3.4billion (Can$52.3billion) in supplies and services to Britain and other Allies.[31][5]. 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[3] In terms of administration, the president established the Office of Lend-Lease Administration during 1941, headed by steel executive Edward R. 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. Lend-Lease Helped Win World War II, But Not On The Eastern Front The evidence is here. On March 12, 1943, the plane was given to the Soviet Air Force in Fairbanks, Alaska, and given the registration USSR-N238. [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. One of the greatest differences with prior wars was the enormous increase in the mobility of armies. At the end of 1941 there were greater numbers of the MiG-3, but the plane was considered difficult to fly. Crowley, Leo T. "Lend-Lease". A total of $50.1 billion (equivalent to $719billion in 2021) worth of supplies was shipped, or 17% of the total war expenditures of the U.S.[2] In all, $31.4 billion went to the United Kingdom, $11.3 billion to the Soviet Union, $3.2 billion to France, $1.6 billion to China, and the remaining $2.6 billion to other Allies. Lend Lease was pretty much strategic charity. 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.". 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. 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. [6], In 1939 howeveras Germany, Japan, and Italy pursued aggressive, militaristic policiesPresident Roosevelt wanted more flexibility to help contain Axis aggression. So the Soviets were charged 10 cents on the dollar of actual cost. "The Museum of the Allies and Lend-Lease is a unique, one-of-a-kind museum," said Borodin. 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. The Strange Alliance, The Story of Our Efforts at Wartime Co-operation with Russia. Materials totalling $. [27] Other recipients were led by $11.3billion ($137billion) to the Soviet Union, $3.2billion ($38.7billion) to France, $1.6billion ($19.3billion) to China, and the remaining $2.6billion to the other Allies. From 1941 to 1945, total lend-lease aid to the Soviet Union accounted for only 5% of the Soviet GDP in total. The railroads would have periodically come to a halt. Saudi Arabia-Top 10 most important events in the History. 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. Lend-Lease assistance to the USSR. Canada would eventually produce 1,420 Valentines, almost exclusively for delivery to the Soviet Union. [66], By the end of 1941, early shipments of Matilda, Valentine and Tetrarch tanks represented only 6.5% of total Soviet tank production but over 25% of medium and heavy tanks produced for the Red Army. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. 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. "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. Reverse Lend-Lease to the United States totalled $7.8 billion. 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. [65], Warsaw 1945: Willys jeep used by the Polish First Army as part of U.S. Lend-Lease program. Some of these shipments were intercepted by the Germans. For foreign citizens who want to live permanently in the United States. Learn more about quality higher-education opportunities in the U.S. that you will not find anywhere else in the world. But for decades the official Soviet line went much further. 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. And how much steel! Lend-Lease thus provided a massive quantity of foodstuffs and agricultural products.[44]. Such assessments, however, are contradicted by the opinions of Soviet war participants. The United States is a country of machines. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Lend-Lease Act on March 11, 1941. [8] The Two-Ocean Navy Act of July 1940 set in motion a rapid expansion of the United States Navy. 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. [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. 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. 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). Payment was to be stretched out over 50 annual payments, starting in 1951 and with five years of deferred payments, at 2% interest. Congress did not allow the aid to be free, so the U.S. discounted it's Lend-Lease supplies by 90 percent of costs. 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. The British Military Mission to Moscow noted that by December 9, about ninety British tanks had already been in action with Soviet forces. American and Soviet pilots pose in front of a Bell P-39 Airacobra, supplied to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease program. Materiel delivered under the act was supplied at no cost, to be used until returned or destroyed. Robert Coalson is a senior correspondent for RFE/RLwho covers Russia, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe. For the Australian company, see. 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. Campbell, Thomas M. and George C. Herring, eds. .. Supply volumes and the significance of lend-lease. It carried 40 Hawker Hurricanes along with 550 mechanics and pilots of No. Crowley, Leo T. "Lend Lease" in Walter Yust, ed. 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. The programme began to increase in scale during 1943. 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 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.