how important was lend lease to the soviet union

[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. The Lend-Lease Memorial in Fairbanks, Alaska, commemorates the shipment of U.S. aircraft to the Soviet Union along the Northwest Staging Route. 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.". 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). [3] In terms of administration, the president established the Office of Lend-Lease Administration during 1941, headed by steel executive Edward R. [43] Lend-Lease also supplied significant amounts of weapons and ammunition. 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. 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. ): Deutschland im Zweiten Weltkrieg. In the meantime, Great Britain was running out of liquid currency and asked not to be forced to sell off British assets. Answer (1 of 14): Lend Lease was pretty much strategic charity. 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. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. [53] Soviet Ambassador Maxim Litvinov significantly contributed to the Lend-Lease agreement of 1941. A steady stream of British-made tanks continued to flow into the Red Army through the spring and summer of 1942. Lend-Lease aircraft deliveries were also of significance during the Battle of Moscow. 2009. pp. 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. But the Germans were doggedly held off in front of Moscow in late November and early December, and then rolled back by a reinvigorated Red Army in a staggeringly brutal winter counteroffensive. Particularly important for the Soviets in late 1941 were British-supplied tanks and aircraft. initially requested by the Soviet Union from Britain was naval, in the. 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? 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. By the end of 1941 Britain had delivered 466 tanks out of the 750 promised. 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. 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. ", "How America Helped Build the Soviet Machine | American Heritage", "Ford Motor Company signs agreement with Soviet Union", "Russian historian: Importance of Lend-Lease cannot be overestimated", "Russia and Serbia, A Century of Progress in Rail Transport", "How Much of What Goods Have We Sent to Which Allies? Totaling $11.3 billion, or $180 billion in todays 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., By U.S. Mission Russia | 10 May, 2020 | Topics: History, News, U.S. & Russia. The United States is a country of machines. [35] And the Soviet Union didn't pay much of that. Lend-Lease, formally the Lend-Lease Act and introduced as An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States (Pub. 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. James Phinney Baxter III (Official Historian of the Office of Scientific Research and Development), Wolfgang Schumann (et al. 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. [citation needed] The USSR had only a very small number of heavy bombers in comparison. David Glantz, the American military historian known for his books on the Eastern front, concludes: Although Soviet accounts have routinely belittled the significance of Lend-Lease in the sustainment of the Soviet war effort, the overall importance of the assistance cannot be understated. 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. This page was last edited on 23 February 2023, at 02:14. From 1941 to 1945, total lend-lease aid to the Soviet Union accounted for only 5% of the Soviet GDP in total. [56] Nevertheless, some 8,244,000 tons of goods went by this route, 50% of the total. Alerts and Messages for U.S. visitors to Russia. Officially the "Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry". north, and in particular for the Northern Fleet.102Much of the material. 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 British Commonwealth and, to a lesser extent, the Soviet Union reciprocated with a smaller Reverse Lend-Lease program. 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 country's agriculture was in a difficult situation. Surplus military equipment was of no value in peacetime. The pact was terminated when Germany launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union. Lend-Lease: Western Aid for the Soviet UnionPart of Eastern Front Fortnight (4) on WW2TVWith Denis HavlatDuring WWII the Soviet Union received large amounts . Thus, Stalin told Harry Hopkins [FDR's emissary to Moscow in July 1941] that the U.S.S.R. could not match Germany's might as an occupier of Europe and its resources.[35]. The museum was established inside a former school and has been open for 8 years. 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. 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. Additionally, many of the British tools arrived in early 1942, when Soviet tool production was still very low, resulting in a disproportionate impact. Part I. American contributions of the time were far fewer. Allen (1946) p 252. 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. In spring 1944, the House passed a bill to renew the Lend-Lease program by a vote of 334 to 21. Canada was not a direct recipient of Lend-Lease aid. In practice, very little equipment was in usable shape for peacetime uses. 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. Ukraine is in the process of joining the European Union and has submitted an application for NATO membership. It is commonly agreed that the implementation of the Lend-Lease Act greatly increased the strength of the Soviet Union and Great Britain against Germany, the two biggest gainers in this Act. 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." "It was not just some piece of scrap metal. The Hurricane was rugged and tried and tested, and as useful at that point as many potentially superior Soviet designs such as the LaGG-3 and MiG-3. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won 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. During the war, Soviet factories produced more than 29.1 million small arms of all major types, while only 152,000 small arms ( 0.5% of the total) were manufactured by American, British, and Canadian plants. This Douglas is the only Lend-Lease aircraft that remains in Russia.". 1. 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. 151 Wing in Operation Benedict, to provide air defence of the port and to train Soviet pilots. 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. 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. First, I would like to tell about some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were "discussing freely" among ourselves. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war.". On the Allied side, there was almost total reliance upon American industrial production, weaponry and especially unarmored vehicles purpose-built for military use, vital for the modern army's logistics and support. Such assessments, however, are contradicted by the opinions of Soviet war participants. Havlat, Denis. 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. In April, this policy was extended to China,[20] and in October to the Soviet Union. 4, 48/Maslov MA Bomber PE-8. 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. 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. WWII program to provide U.S. allies with free armaments, This article is about the World War II program. Lend-Lease's precise significance to Allied victory in WW2 is debated. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty 2023 RFE/RL, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Moscow. 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. [70][71], Significant numbers of British Churchill, Matilda and Valentine tanks were shipped to the USSR.[72]. And Soviet forces would have been much more poorly coordinated with a constant lack of radio equipment. 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. 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". Marshall Plan Countries. [33], The program was gradually terminated after V-E Day. 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. 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. In addition, almost half of all the rails used by the Soviet Union during the war came through Lend-Lease. 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. [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. The Soviet air force received 18,200 aircraft, which amounted to about 30 percent of Soviet wartime fighter and bomber production (mid 194145). The first American tanks and planes reached Egypt in time to be used in the second British drive into Libya which started on November 2, 1941. 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. 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. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. 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. 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. Subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter with top stories from master historians. British Matilda tanks are loaded onto a ship for transportation to the U.S.S.R. as part of the Lend-Lease program. How important was lend lease to Soviet Union? Britain also supplied extensive material assistance to American forces stationed in Europe, for example the USAAF was supplied with hundreds of Spitfire Mk V and Mk VIII fighter aircraft. In fact, for a brief period during December 1941, the relative importance of British aid increased well beyond levels planned by the Allies as a result of American reaction to the outbreak of war with Japan; some American equipment destined for the Soviet Union was actually unloaded from merchant vessels and provided to American forces instead. 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. One of the greatest differences with prior wars was the enormous increase in the mobility of armies. (German Language). This is the official website of the U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Russia. [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. Known today as Lend-Lease. [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 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%. How important was the Lend Lease Act to the Soviet Union? The American Lend-Lease program was signed into law in March 1941. In 1946, the post-war Anglo-American loan further indebted Britain to the U.S. Lend-Lease items retained were sold to Britain at 10% of nominal value, giving an initial loan value of 1.075billion for the Lend-Lease portion of the post-war loans. They Say He Burned Down the Reichstag. Lend-Lease was the most visible sign of wartime cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union. The U.S. government never published detailed reports on what and how much was sent under the Lend-Lease program to the USSR. 150 in July 1942, for example, was the critical factor in enabling the factory to reach projected capacity within two months. [40] In total, 92.7% of the wartime production of railroad equipment by the USSR was supplied by Lend-Lease,[35] including 1,911 locomotives and 11,225 railcars[41] which augmented the existing stocks of at least 20,000 locomotives and half a million railcars.[42]. The 19th and Early 20th Century History. Nikita Khrushchev offered the same opinion. A total of 699 Lend-Lease aircraft had been delivered to Archangel by the time the Arctic convoys switched to Murmansk in December 1941. 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. [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). [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. 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]. [55] This constituted some 23% of the total aid to the USSR during the war. 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". "In a hypothetical battle one-on-one between the U.S.S.R and Germany, without the help of Lend-Lease and without the diversion of significant forces of the Luftwaffe and the German Navy and the diversion of more than one-quarter of its land forces in the fight against Britain and the United States, Stalin could hardly have beaten Hitler," Sokolov wrote in an essay for RFE/RL's Russian Service. billion (about $ billion in prices ) were sent to several dozen recipient countries, including the main ones: 5-6. Mackenzie, Hector. But Was He Drugged Into Confessing. The political fog of the Cold War often marred the truth about the vehicles received. "In order to really assess the significance of Lend-Lease for the Soviet victory, you only have to imagine how the Soviet Union would have had to fight if there had been no Lend-Lease aid," Sokolov wrote. 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. "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. To: The War Office. 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. After a decade of neutrality, Roosevelt knew that the change to Allied support must be gradual, given the support for isolationism in the country. Even after the United States forces in Europe and the Pacific began to attain full strength during 19431944, Lend-Lease continued. Secret Cipher Telegram. 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. 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. Britain got of their arms and ammunition from this Act. Exmo. The United States and Soviet Union secretly ferried thousands of warplanes from Great . But for decades the official Soviet line went much further. Almost all European nations outside the Soviet bloc were members of the plan from the beginning. 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). 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. In terms of its relationship with the Soviet Union, lend-lease served as a powerful tool for demonstrating the benefits of the . Between June 1941 and May 1945, Britain delivered to the USSR: In total 4million tonnes of war material including food and medical supplies were delivered. 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. By the end of the war, the United States had extended over $49 billion in Lend-Lease aid to nearly forty nations. The American lend and lease system was introduced in the beginning of the war to support Great Britain in their struggle with Germany. At the end of November 1941, only 670 Soviet tanks were available to defend Moscowthat is, in the recently formed Kalinin, Western, and Southwestern Fronts. [nb 2][9] Sympathetic to the British plight, but hampered by public opinion and the Neutrality Acts, which forbade arms sales on credit or the lending of money to belligerent nations, Roosevelt eventually came up with the idea of "lendlease". 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. After the war, it was transferred to civilian aviation, carrying passengers over the frozen tundra above the Arctic Circle. [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). 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. 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. 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. 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. Roosevelt concluded that the United States needed to help the Soviets fight against the Germans. Congress did not allow the aid to be free, so the U.S. discounted it's Lend-Lease supplies by 90 percent of costs. 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. 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. In May 1942, HMSEdinburgh was sunk while carrying 4.5 tonnes of Soviet gold intended for the U.S. Treasury. 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. Lend Lease came as a response to the Axis Powers' violence and showed that America was committed to defending their nation and its . Tens of thousands of agricultural machines, such as tractors and threshers, were destroyed or captured. The Lend-Lease program also provided more than 35,000 radio sets and 32,000 motorcycles. The aid was given for free on the basis that such help was essential for the defense of the United States.

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