how important was lend lease to the soviet union

In addition, almost half of all the rails used by the Soviet Union during the war came through Lend-Lease. 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. 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. Once again, raw figures do not tell the whole story. Lend Lease came as a response to the Axis Powers' violence and showed that America was committed to defending their nation and its . 28, 30, 31, harvnb error: no target: CITEREFHardesty1991 (, Soviet Supply Protocols. [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. 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. The most important aspect of Lend Lease was the first few months of the war when British Aircraft and Tanks represented such a huge influx of material while the Soviets had factories still in transit etc. A particular critical aspect of Lend-Lease was the supply of food. The Lend-Lease Act was initially created to help Great Britain as they struggled in World War II. Additionally, many of the British tools arrived in early 1942, when Soviet tool production was still very low, resulting in a disproportionate impact. 1776, 55 Stat. 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. 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. How important was lend lease to Soviet Union? [29] When the war ended, almost 33 percent of all the Red Army's vehicles had been provided through Lend-Lease. External links to other Internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views or privacy policies contained therein. This Douglas is the only Lend-Lease aircraft that remains in Russia.". Lend-Lease: Western Aid for the Soviet UnionPart of Eastern Front Fortnight (4) on WW2TVWith Denis HavlatDuring WWII the Soviet Union received large amounts . Lend-lease was a system of U.S. assistance to the Allies in World War II.It was based on a bill of March, 11, 1941, that gave the president of the United States the right to sell, transfer into property, lease, and rent various kinds of weapons or materials to those countries whose defense the president deemed vital to the defense of the United States itself. 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. Some of these shipments were intercepted by the Germans. Roosevelt concluded that the United States needed to help the Soviets fight against the Germans. 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. It was quite important, and it became especially important during the second half of WWII when the Red Army went from defending to attacking. This was agreed upon before the signing of the first protocol on October 1, 1941, and extension of credit. aid from Britain can be argued to have had the most significant impact. . 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. 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. The museum was established inside a former school and has been open for 8 years. 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. More than 20,000 Katyusha mobile multiple-rocket launchers were mounted on the chassis of American Studebaker trucks. It needed all the available resources to pressure Germany on the lands far from Moscow, where Germany was getting a degree of home advantage. You act like that would have been easy. How important was Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union? Marshall Plan Countries. Then in 1972 agreement was reached on $722 . [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. Yauza. 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. 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. L. 77-11, H.R. 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. "Western Aid for the Soviet Union During World. 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. Within months, the Lend-Lease program was expanded to include China and the Soviet Union. While much of the documentary evidence remains classified secret in the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense and the Russian State Archive of the Economy, Western and Russian researchers have been able to gain access to important, previously unavailable firsthand documents. [65], Warsaw 1945: Willys jeep used by the Polish First Army as part of U.S. Lend-Lease program. Washington. [38] With the outbreak of war these plants switched from civilian to military production and locomotive production ended virtually overnight. Just 446 locomotives were produced during the war,[39] with only 92 of those being built between 1942 and 1945. First, I would like to tell about some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were "discussing freely" among ourselves. In 194546, the value of Reciprocal Aid from New Zealand exceeded that of Lend-Lease, though in 194243, the value of Lend-Lease to New Zealand was much more than that of Reciprocal Aid. [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 United States is a country of machines. Materiel delivered under the act was supplied at no cost, to be used until returned or destroyed. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. The Soviet Northern Fleet was also a major and early recipient of British Hurricanes, receiving those flown by No. Lend-Lease - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org In a few paragraphs the Wiki page shows the importance of the deliveries. The tanks reached the front lines with extraordinary speed. 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. [21], After the attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States entering the war in December 1941, foreign policy was rarely discussed by Congress, and there was very little demand to cut Lend-Lease spending. 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. 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. The Short History Of The Great Patriotic War, also from 1948, acknowledged the Lend-Lease shipments, but concluded: "Overall this assistance was not significant enough to in any way exert a decisive influence over the course of the Great Patriotic War. On March 11, 1941, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. 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. Such machines were of higher quality than analogues produced in the Soviet Union, which made a significant contribution to boosting Soviet industrial production. The U.S. received $2 million in reverse Lend-Lease from the USSR. 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. It was a decisive step away from non-interventionist policy and toward open support for the Allies. [34], Lend-Lease contributed to the Allied victory. It is an indication of the extent to which the British have been able to pool their resources with ours so that the needed weapon may be in the hands of that soldierwhatever may be his nationalitywho can at the proper moment use it most effectively to defeat our common enemies.[76]. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. After this final payment, Britain's Economic Secretary to the Treasury formally issued thanks to the U.S. for its wartime support. Subscribe to our HistoryNet Now! Similarly, the Soviet Union repaid $722 million in 1971, with the remainder of the debt written off. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war.". Most visibly, the United States provided the Soviet Union with more than 400,000 jeeps and trucks, 14,000 aircraft, 8,000 tractors and construction vehicles, and 13,000 battle tanks. 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. In April, this policy was extended to China,[20] and in October to the Soviet Union. The Strange Alliance, The Story of Our Efforts at Wartime Co-operation with Russia. It has been estimated that American deliveries to the USSR through the Persian Corridor alone were sufficient, by US Army standards, to maintain sixty combat divisions in the line. Mystery surrounds the infamous burning of the Reichstag in 1933. 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. WWII program to provide U.S. allies with free armaments, This article is about the World War II program. 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. "Transatlantic Generosity: Canada's 'Billion Dollar Gift' to the United Kingdom in the Second World War.". "[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. That the Soviet victories of late 1941 were won with Soviet blood and largely with Soviet weapons is beyond dispute. 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. Newly discovered files tell another story. On May 11, 1947, 27 people were rescued, having spent nearly three weeks in the icebound wreck. How Much of What Goods Have We Sent to Which Allies? This was the first big war in which whole formations were routinely motorized; soldiers were supported with large numbers of all kinds of vehicles. [33], The program was gradually terminated after V-E Day. The British Military Mission to Moscow noted that by December 9, about ninety British tanks had already been in action with Soviet forces. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. 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. Roosevelt approved $1billion in Lend-Lease aid to Britain at the end of October 1941. 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. 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. Pro lend-lease !<br><br>#<br><br>On September 2, 1945, with the signing of the act of surrender of militaristic Japan, the Second World War was completed, and on September 20, 1945, all Lend-Lease supplies to the USSR were stopped. The Soviet debt for Lend-Lease supplies was finally paid and closed as part of the settlements with the Paris Club on August 21, 2006. The Government of Mongolia donated its gold and hard currency reserves to the Soviet Union for four years in a row. New Orleans. In addition, much of the $31 billion worth of aid sent to the United Kingdom was also passed on to the Soviet Union via convoys through the Barents Sea to Murmansk. Thanks to Lend-Lease, during the war years, the Soviet Union received about 14.8 thousand aircraft, 7.1 thousand tanks, 8.2 thousand anti-aircraft guns, a large number of cars, tractors and other vital supplies. The Soviet authorities were well aware of this dependency on Lend-Lease. Lend-Lease's precise significance to Allied victory in WW2 is debated. In practice, most equipment was destroyed, although some hardware (such as ships) was returned after the war. "What do I do in such a crisis?" I was recently able to examine Russian-language materials of the State Defense Committeethe Soviet equivalent of the British War Cabinetheld in the former Central Party Archive. By October, German troops were poised outside both Leningrad and Moscow. Lend-Lease thus provided a massive quantity of foodstuffs and agricultural products.[44]. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. Allen (1946) p 252. 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. 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. Materials totalling $. 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. By the end of 1941, the lend-lease policy. [36] Most belligerent powers severely decreased production of non-essentials, concentrating on producing weapons. Campbell, Thomas M. and George C. Herring, eds. 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 Museum of the Allies and Lend-Lease is a unique, one-of-a-kind museum," said Borodin. Democrats. The country's agriculture was in a difficult situation. The United States used lend-lease to induce recipients to the American way of thinking, especially regarding the economy and free-market trade. ", "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? [35] Most tank units were Soviet-built models but about 7,000 Lend-Lease tanks (plus more than 5,000 British tanks) were used by the Red Army, eight percent of war-time production. [83] However, none of this cargo has been salvaged, and no documentation of its treasure has been produced.[84]. As one Roosevelt biographer has characterized it: "If there was no practical alternative, there was certainly no moral one either. "[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". 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. 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. By the end of the war, the United States had extended over $49 billion in Lend-Lease aid to nearly forty nations. Lend-Lease, formally the Lend-Lease Act and introduced as An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States (Pub. ", "Address Is Spur To British Hopes; Confirmation of American Aid in Conflict is Viewed as Heartening, A joining of interests, Discarding of Peace Talks is Regarded as a Major Point in the Speech.". Answer (1 of 14): Lend Lease was pretty much strategic charity. Lend-Lease Helped Win World War II, But Not On The Eastern Front The evidence is here. 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. 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. 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). 2009. pp. In terms of its relationship with the Soviet Union, lend-lease served as a powerful tool for demonstrating the benefits of the . Lend-Lease aircraft deliveries were also of significance during the Battle of Moscow. He never made a special point of holding a conversation on the subject, but when we were engaged in some kind of relaxed conversation, going over international questions of the past and present, and when we would return to the subject of the path we had traveled during the war, that is what he said.

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