WWII lend-lease: was the US aid that helpful? (I) Even after the United States forces in Europe and the Pacific began to attain full strength during 19431944, Lend-Lease continued. Yauza. Roosevelt's top foreign policy advisor Harry Hopkins had effective control over Lend-Lease, making sure it was in alignment with Roosevelt's foreign policy goals.[3]. 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. Did Soviet Union Repay Lend-lease? - Caniry 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. Just 446 locomotives were produced during the war,[39] with only 92 of those being built between 1942 and 1945. In April 1945, Congress voted that it should not be used for post-conflict purposes, and in August 1945, after Japan surrendered, the program was ended. Lend Lease Acts - Lend Lease Lend Lease: A Transformation of - Studocu The pact was terminated when Germany launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union. 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.. The body of the captain, Maksim Tyurikov, was found by local hunters about 120 kilometers from the wreck in 1953. The Soviet Union and the United States - Library of Congress 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. The total of defense materials and services that Canada received through lend-lease channels amounted in value to approximately $419,500,000. More than 20,000 Katyusha mobile multiple-rocket launchers were mounted on the chassis of American Studebaker trucks. When I listened to his remarks, I was fully in agreement with him, and today I am even more so. 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. 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. 151 Wing in Operation Benedict, to provide air defence of the port and to train Soviet pilots. As such, Ladd Field came to represent not only a political and economic exchange, but a cultural one as well. Much of the American fuel was added to lower-grade Soviet fuel to produce the high-octane fuel needed by modern military aircraft. And the Soviet Union didn't pay much of that. During World War II, the Soviet Union received almost 15,000 U.S.-built aircraft under the lend-lease program. Churchill called the letter "one of the most important I ever wrote.". And Soviet forces would have been much more poorly coordinated with a constant lack of radio equipment. [8] The Two-Ocean Navy Act of July 1940 set in motion a rapid expansion of the United States Navy. Subscribe to our HistoryNet Now! The museum was established inside a former school and has been open for 8 years. The Lend-Lease Program, 1941-1945 - FDR Presidential Library & Museum north, and in particular for the Northern Fleet.102Much of the material. [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. 19329 posts. 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. Yes, in 1942 Lend-Lease was of course important for Soviet Russia. American contributions of the time were far fewer. As early as October 12, 1941, the Soviet 126th Fighter Air Regiment was operating with Tomahawks bought from the United States by Britain. Report from Mikoyan to Stalin and Molotov regarding Lend-Lease 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%. 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. 5-6. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. [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 United States and Soviet Union secretly ferried thousands of warplanes from Great . World War II | Facts, Summary, History, Dates, Combatants, & Causes Painting of Lend-Lease tanks and equipment - Axis History Forum Matilda II in Soviet Service - Tank Encyclopedia How important was Lend-Lease for the Soviet war effort? Russia's War in Ukraine: Putin's Soviet Delusion 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. Only 22% were unequivocally against the President's proposal. 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. "During World War II, only the supplies brought in by Lend-Lease prevented the paralysis of rail transport in the Soviet Union.". 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. CMV: Lend Lease to the Soviet Union during WWII was a massive mistake Lend-Lease thus provided a massive quantity of foodstuffs and agricultural products.[44]. Originally, the American policy was to help the British but not join the war. [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 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. . Havlat, Denis. At a time when Soviet industry was in disarraymany of their industrial plants were destroyed or captured by the advancing Nazi troops or in the process of evacuation eastbattlefield losses of specific equipment approached or even exceeded the rate at which Soviet domestic production could replace them during this crucial period. "If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war," he wrote in his memoirs. In contrast, 17 Republicans (63 percent) voted "nay" while 10 Senate Republicans (37 percent) sided with the Democrats to pass the bill.[19]. I will quote at length: How important was the Lend Lease Act for the Soviet Union - Quora Particularly important for the Soviets in late 1941 were British-supplied tanks and aircraft. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. Stettinius. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. American aid also provided 4.5 million tons of food, 1.5 million blankets, and 15 million pairs of boots. 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. Posted on 2/25/23 at 2:25 pm to WPBTiger. re: In hindsight was it a mistake for the US to ally with the Soviet Union during WW2. The Senate passed it by a vote of 63 to 1. Ladd Field and the Lend-Lease Mission: Defending Alaska in WWII Agricultural issues were also compounded when the Soviets were on the offensive, as areas liberated from the Axis had been devastated and contained millions of people who needed to be fed. Mackenzie, Hector. It provided Britain and the Soviet Union with limited war materiel beginning in October that year. 1. 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. Large quantities of undelivered goods were in Britain or in transit when Lend-Lease terminated on September 2, 1945. Lend Lease was pretty much strategic charity. How important was the US lend-lease? . In 1941, the threat of World War II drove passage of the Lend-Lease Act repealing key provisions of the Neutrality Acts. The aid was given for free on the basis that such help was essential for the defense of the United States. In addition, the Lend-Lease program propped up the Soviet railway system, which played a fundamental role in moving and supplying troops. They Say He Burned Down the Reichstag. 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. What percent of Soviet equipment was Lend-Lease? 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. 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. Lend-Lease: How American supplies aided the USSR in its darkest hour In the case of the Soviet Union, this residual civilian-type lend-lease was valued by the United States at $2.6 billion (out of total lend-lease to the Soviet Union of $10.8 billion). The Lend-Lease Act was the system by which the U.S. gave away $50 billion in military aid in 1941-45 (during World War II) so that the Allies could better fight Germany and Japan. Lend-Lease Act - Conservapedia [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. 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. Supply volumes and the significance of lend-lease. 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. 'We Would Have Lost': Did U.S. Lend-Lease Aid Tip The Balance In Soviet How important was the Lend-Lease to the Soviet war effort? 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. 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. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. 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. Any mention of the role that Western assistance played in the Soviet war effort was strictly off-limits. 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. 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. How important was Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union? By October, German troops were poised outside both Leningrad and Moscow. Under these circumstances even small quantities of aid took on far greater significance. Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? 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. [69] Lend-Lease tanks constituted 30 to 40 percent of heavy and medium tank strength before Moscow at the beginning of December 1941. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany's pressure, and we would have lost the war. The US Supported Soviet Union with Lend-Lease Program - YouTube Russian historian: Importance of Lend-Lease cannot be overestimated The history of Lend-Lease began on May 15, 1940 when UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill asked Roosevelt to temporarily. [73][74], Reverse Lend-Lease was the supply of equipment and services to the United States. 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. 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. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. The handing over of forty imported machine tools to Aviation Factory No. 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]. Britain wished to retain some of this equipment in the immediate post-war period. The terms of the agreement provided that the materiel was to be used until returned or destroyed. 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. And they would have been perpetually hungry without American canned meat and fats.