The total of defense materials and services that Canada received through lend-lease channels amounted in value to approximately $419,500,000. World War II | Facts, Summary, History, Dates, Combatants, & Causes While the Matilda Mk II and Valentine tanks supplied by the British were certainly inferior to the Soviets homegrown T-34 and KV-1, it is important to note that Soviet production of the T-34 (and to a lesser extent the KV series), was only just getting seriously underway in 1942, and Soviet production was well below plan targets. 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. Britain and the Commonwealth were carrying the battle for all civilization, and the overwhelming majority of Americans, led in the late election by their president, wished to help them. How obvious was lend-lease equipment to the average Soviet soldier US Government Printing Office. 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. 151 Wing of the RAF, which operated briefly from Soviet airfields near Murmansk. 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 practice, very little was returned except for a few unarmed transport ships. 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. And the Soviet Union didn't pay much of that. 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. Crowley, Leo T. "Lend Lease" in Walter Yust, ed. United States and Britain, not the Soviet Union, China, or other United Nations . The Lend-Lease Act was designed to provide allies with aircraft and supplies for the war in Europe. Answer (1 of 14): Lend Lease was pretty much strategic charity. Part of the bill required the British to open their empire to trade. Lend-Lease Act of 1941: Facts, Summary, and Significance Regardless of Soviet cold-war attempts to forget (or at least diminish) the importance of Lend-lease, the total impact of the Lend-Lease shipment for the Soviet war effort and entire national economy can only be characterized as both dramatic and of decisive importance. Ladd Field and the Lend-Lease Mission: Defending Alaska in WWII Underestimation of lend lease to the Soviet Union during WW2 American and Soviet pilots pose in front of a Bell P-39 Airacobra, supplied to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease program. The exploits of the British-equipped 136th Independent Tank Battalion are perhaps the most widely noted in the archives. CMV: Lend Lease to the Soviet Union during WWII was a massive mistake Then in 1972 agreement was reached on $722 . aid from Britain can be argued to have had the most significant impact. This was agreed upon before the signing of the first protocol on October 1, 1941, and extension of credit. adopted, it is in some important respects anachronistic today. 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 United States and the British Commonwealth provided 55. The U.S. received $2 million in reverse Lend-Lease from the USSR. 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. From: 30 Military Mission. 1776, 55Stat. .. Russia's War in Ukraine: Putin's Soviet Delusion 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). How important was the US lend-lease? The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. After the war, it was transferred to civilian aviation, carrying passengers over the frozen tundra above the Arctic Circle. In April, this policy was extended to China,[20] and in October to the Soviet Union. Lend-Lease, formally the Lend-Lease Act and introduced as An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States (Pub. From 1941 to 1945, total lend-lease aid to the Soviet Union accounted for only 5% of the Soviet GDP in total. Lend-Lease: How American supplies aided the USSR in its darkest hour 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. In December 1940, President Roosevelt proclaimed the United States would be the "Arsenal of Democracy" and proposed selling munitions to Britain and Canada. Lend-Lease: Western Aid for the Soviet UnionPart of Eastern Front Fortnight (4) on WW2TVWith Denis HavlatDuring WWII the Soviet Union received large amounts . "The Museum of the Allies and Lend-Lease is a unique, one-of-a-kind museum," said Borodin. A steady stream of British-made tanks continued to flow into the Red Army through the spring and summer of 1942. Lend-Lease aircraft supplied to the Red Air Force 1942-1944: References and literature American M3 tanks on the railway near Murmansk after arriving in Northern Russia. The British Eighth Army under Gen. Bernard Law Montgomery employed U.S. planes, guns and tanks when they whipped Rommel's Afrika Korps at El Alamein. 4, 48/Maslov MA Bomber PE-8. But the speed at which Britain in particular was willing and able to provide aid to the Soviet Union, and at which the Soviet Union was able to put foreign equipment into frontline use, is still an underappreciated part of this story. 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). 151 Wing in Operation Benedict, to provide air defence of the port and to train Soviet pilots. Allen (1946) p 252. "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. 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. 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. Dear h, I don't doubt the word of the old gent seeing USA on "Soviet" equipment. 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. It provided Britain and the Soviet Union with limited war materiel beginning in October that year. Alerts and Messages for U.S. visitors to Russia. And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own.". The dispute remained unresolved until 1972, when the U.S. accepted an offer from the USSR to repay $722 million linked to grain shipments from the U.S., representing 25% of the initial debt with inflation taken into account, with the remainder being written off. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. Robert Coalson is a senior correspondent for RFE/RLwho covers Russia, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe. Roosevelt made sure that Lend-Lease policies were supportive of his foreign policy goals by putting his top aide Harry Hopkins in effective control of the program. In addition, there would have been constant shortages of transportation and fuel. 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. 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. For the Australian company, see. This followed the 1940 Destroyers for Bases Agreement, whereby 50 US Navy destroyers were transferred to the Royal Navy and the Royal Canadian Navy in exchange for basing rights in the Caribbean. The programme began to increase in scale during 1943. Dalton Delan: It's not World War II, but we are dealing with a new Axis 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. north, and in particular for the Northern Fleet.102Much of the material. Even aid that might seem like a drop in the bucket in the larger context of Soviet production for the war played a crucial role in filling gaps at important moments during this period. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war.". The Senate passed it by a vote of 63 to 1. 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. 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. How important was the Lend-Lease to the Soviet war effort? 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. Mongolian lamb and meat donations to the front lines outperformed those sent by the Lend-Lease Act. Together with other recently published sources, including the wartime diaries of N. I. Biriukov, a Red Army officer responsible from August 1941 on for the distribution of recently acquired tanks to the front lines, this newly available evidence paints a very different picture from the received wisdom. 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. use.' On the negative side, however, it must be recorded that actual American shipments of telephone cable, aluminum, canned rations and clothing were also critical. 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. "During World War II, only the supplies brought in by Lend-Lease prevented the paralysis of rail transport in the Soviet Union." 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. Similarly, the Soviet Union repaid $722 million in 1971, with the remainder of the debt written off. 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. 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. How important was the Lend-Lease to the Soviet war effort? On March 11, 1941, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act. The first of these units to have seen action seems to have been the 138th Independent Tank Battalion (with twenty-one British tanks), which was involved in stemming the advance of German units in the region of the Volga Reservoir to the north of Moscow in late November. How Much Did Lend Lease Help Russia? - Czech Heritage Fourth protocol period from July 1, 1944 (signed April 17, 1945), formally ended May 12, 1945, but deliveries continued for the duration of the war with Japan (which the Soviet Union entered on August 8, 1945) under the "Milepost" agreement until September 2, 1945, when Japan capitulated. According to Biriukovs service diary, the first 20 British tanks arrived at the Soviet tank training school in Kazan on October 28, 1941, at which point a further 120 tanks were unloaded at the port of Archangel in northern Russia. 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. The Viking Press. "[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. Romanus, Charles F. and Riley Sunderland. During the bitter fighting of the winter of 19411942, British aid made a crucial difference. "[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". 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. For foreign citizens who want to live permanently in the United States. Materiel delivered under the act was supplied at no cost, to be used until returned or destroyed. Without Lend-Lease food, clothing, and raw materials (especially metals), the Soviet economy would have been even more heavily burdened by the war effort. [35] One item typical of many was a tire plant that was lifted bodily from the Ford Company's River Rouge Plant and transferred to the USSR. [56] Nevertheless, some 8,244,000 tons of goods went by this route, 50% of the total. . 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. [67][68] The British tanks first saw action with the 138 Independent Tank Battalion in the Volga Reservoir on November 20, 1941. Few Americans objected to Soviet aid until 1943. Democrats. 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. In Walter Yust, ed., "17 Billion Budget Drafted; Defense Takes 10 Billions. [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. In spring 1944, the House passed a bill to renew the Lend-Lease program by a vote of 334 to 21. The others were never found. Under Lend-Lease, the United States provided more than one-third of all the explosives used by the Soviet Union during the war. [8] The Two-Ocean Navy Act of July 1940 set in motion a rapid expansion of the United States Navy. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Lend Lease came as a response to the Axis Powers' violence and showed that America was committed to defending their nation and its . Washington. 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. . The plane spent 69 years on the tundra before a Russian Geographical Society expedition rescued it in 2016 and returned the wreckage to Krasnoyarsk. A map of lend-lease shipments from the United States to the U.S.S.R. from 1941-45. Bill Introduced in the House Would Allow US to Lend Weapons to Taiwan 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. 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. Almost all European nations outside the Soviet bloc were members of the plan from the beginning. uboat.net - Fighting the U-boats - The Lend-Lease Act In 1941, the threat of World War II drove passage of the Lend-Lease Act repealing key provisions of the Neutrality Acts. The United States is a country of machines. [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). 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. 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. The United States and Soviet Union secretly ferried thousands of warplanes from Great . Actual military production was achieved by sacrificing the civilian economy for short-term gain (and likely by burning up pre-existing stockpiles of raw materials). It is our living history. Nearly $8billion (equivalent to $124billion today) worth of war material was provided to U.S. forces by its allies, 90% of this sum coming from the British Empire. 19329 posts. 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. 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. -8. The aid was given for free on the basis that such help was essential for the defense of the United States. By July 1942 the Red Army had 13,500 tanks in service, with more than 16 percent of those imported, and more than half of those British. Myths and Misconceptions About the Soviets in World War II - TheCollector Nikita Khrushchev offered the same opinion. [36] Most belligerent powers severely decreased production of non-essentials, concentrating on producing weapons. I will quote at length: Lend-Lease aid to the USSR was nominally managed by Stettinius. Painting of Lend-Lease tanks and equipment - Axis History Forum Britain got of their arms and ammunition from this Act. This was the first big war in which whole formations were routinely motorized; soldiers were supported with large numbers of all kinds of vehicles. Under Lend-Lease, the U.S. shipped more than $50 billion in supplies equivalent to more than $700 billion today. Langer, William L. and S. Everett Gleason. That the Soviet victories of late 1941 were won with Soviet blood and largely with Soviet weapons is beyond dispute. Although it was not entirely reasonable that Canada should pay for any construction that the Canadian Government considered unnecessary or that did not conform to Canadian requirements, nevertheless considerations of self-respect and national sovereignty led the Canadian Government to suggest a new financial agreement. Particularly important for the Soviets in late 1941 were British-supplied tanks and aircraft. 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." [citation needed]. 5-6. [29] The Persian Corridor was the longest route, and was not fully operational until mid-1942. 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." . [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. The Lend-Lease agreements with 30 countries provided for repayment not in terms of money or returned goods, but in "joint action directed towards the creation of a liberalized international economic order in the postwar world." 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 Such machines were of higher quality than analogues produced in the Soviet Union, which made a significant contribution to boosting Soviet industrial production. This particular C-47 was sent to the Far North and spent the war conducting reconnaissance and weather-monitoring missions over the Kara Sea. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. The munitions totaled 308m (not including naval munitions supplied), the food and raw materials totaled 120m in 1946 index. [7], During this same period, the U.S. government began to mobilize for total war, instituting the first-ever peacetime draft and a fivefold increase in the defense budget (from $2billion to $10billion). newsletter for the best of the past, delivered every Monday and Thursday. [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 total amount that Canada agreed to pay under the new arrangement came to about $76,800,000, which was some $13,870,000 less than the United States had spent on the facilities. An estimated 25 million Soviet citizens perished in the titanic conflict with Nazi Germany between June 1941 and May 1945. 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. [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. U.S. Citizens with emergencies, please call +(7) (495) 728-5577, Outside of Office Hours, contact: +7 (495) 728-5000. 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 United States, the Soviet Union, and the End of World War II Lend Lease was pretty much strategic charity. 4, 48. Lend-Lease aircraft deliveries were also of significance during the Battle of Moscow. | AHA", "Lend-Lease and Military Aid to the Allies in the Early Years of World, The United States at war; development and administration of the war program by the federal government, Sea routes of Soviet Lend-Lease:Voice of Russia, "$220 Million in Gold Bullion was Recovered from HMS Edinburgh", "Report to Congress on Reverse Lend-Lease", "Chapter XIV: The United States and Canada: Copartners in Defense. The United States used lend-lease to induce recipients to the American way of thinking, especially regarding the economy and free-market trade. The 136th Independent Tank Battalion was combined with the latter to produce a tank group of only twenty-one tanks, which was to operate with the two ski battalions against German forces advancing to the west of Moscow in early December. When I listened to his remarks, I was fully in agreement with him, and today I am even more so. Lend-Lease was the most visible sign of wartime cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union. On May 11, 1947, 27 people were rescued, having spent nearly three weeks in the icebound wreck. 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. In 1944, Britain transferred several of the US-made destroyers to the USSR. The legislation is modeled off the World War II-era Lend-Lease Act that allowed the US to arm the Soviet Union, Britain, and other allies prior to its entry into the war. Lend-Lease thus provided a massive quantity of foodstuffs and agricultural products.[44]. They Say He Burned Down the Reichstag. the president asked at a press conference. The museum was established inside a former school and has been open for 8 years. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. The country's agriculture was in a difficult situation. 28, 30, 31, harvnb error: no target: CITEREFHardesty1991 (, Soviet Supply Protocols. It seems to fly in the face of some stories I've heard about Stalin ordering the obliteration of all USA and British markings on Lend Lease Materiel so as to maintain the illusion of the USSR doing it all on its own and that the others fighting the common enemy were the "little allies". It needed all the available resources to pressure Germany on the lands far from Moscow, where Germany was getting a degree of home advantage.