how important was lend lease to the soviet union

Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war.". Thereafter it saw the passage of 4,160,000 tons of goods, 27% of the total. Churchill called the letter "one of the most important I ever wrote.". 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. 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. Particularly important for the Soviets in late 1941 were British-supplied tanks and aircraft. 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". The 1930s began with one of the world's greatest economic depressionswhich had started in the United Statesand the later recession of 193738 (although minor relative to the Great Depression) was otherwise also one of the worst of the 20th century. Washington. ), 1,911 steam locomotives, 66 diesel locomotives, 9,920 flat cars, 1,000 dump cars, 120 tank cars, and 35 heavy machinery cars. billion (about $ billion in prices ) were sent to several dozen recipient countries, including the main ones: Under these circumstances even small quantities of aid took on far greater significance. Moscow. Havlat, Denis. There were apparently only 263 LaGG-3s in the Soviet inventory by the time of the Moscow counteroffensive, and it was an aircraft with numerous defects. Tens of thousands of agricultural machines, such as tractors and threshers, were destroyed or captured. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Lend-Lease Act on March 11, 1941. The Soviet authorities were well aware of this dependency on Lend-Lease. by Robert Beckhusen Key point: If the West had not invaded Europe and provided equipment, it would have. The country's agriculture was in a difficult situation. Similarly, the Soviet Union repaid $722 million in 1971, with the remainder of the debt written off. The Soviet air force received 18,200 aircraft, which amounted to about 30 percent of Soviet wartime fighter and bomber production (mid 194145). Lend-Lease aid did not save the Soviet Union from defeat during the Battle of Moscow. The exploits of the British-equipped 136th Independent Tank Battalion are perhaps the most widely noted in the archives. Lend-Lease: Western Aid for the Soviet UnionPart of Eastern Front Fortnight (4) on WW2TVWith Denis HavlatDuring WWII the Soviet Union received large amounts . [citation needed] The USSR had only a very small number of heavy bombers in comparison. The Lend-Lease Act was initially created to help Great Britain as they struggled in World War II. Surplus military equipment was of no value in peacetime. 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. 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 During the bitter fighting of the winter of 19411942, British aid made a crucial difference. That the Soviet victories of late 1941 were won with Soviet blood and largely with Soviet weapons is beyond dispute. . [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. 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. The Strange Alliance, The Story of Our Efforts at Wartime Co-operation with Russia. [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. 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. [32] In September 1943, he was promoted to Undersecretary of State, and Leo Crowley became director of the Foreign Economic Administration, which was given responsibility for Lend-Lease. [83] However, none of this cargo has been salvaged, and no documentation of its treasure has been produced.[84]. But since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a trickle of information has emerged from archives in Moscow, shedding new light on the subject. the president asked at a press conference. 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 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. [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. This page was last edited on 23 February 2023, at 02:14. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. 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. 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. For example, in the 4 Ottawa Protocol (July 1, 1944, to June 30, 1945) the USSR requested 240 B-17 bombers and 300 B-24 bombers, none of which were supplied. Mystery surrounds the infamous burning of the Reichstag in 1933. 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. Source: "The Soviet Union: The Defeated Victor" pp. Lend-Lease thus provided a massive quantity of foodstuffs and agricultural products.[44]. 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? Of these, 99 Hurricanes and 39 Tomahawks were in service with the Soviet air defense forces on January 1, 1942, out of a total of 1,470 fighters. 1776, 55 Stat. [63] The production of heavy bombers in the United States until 1945 amounted to more than 30,000. 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. [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. As such, Ladd Field came to represent not only a political and economic exchange, but a cultural one as well. Lend-Lease Helped Win World War II, But Not On The Eastern Front The evidence is here. Member since Oct 2007. 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. For foreign citizens who want to live permanently in the United States. And the Soviet Union didn't pay much of that. In th. Ordnance goods (ammunition, artillery shells, mines, assorted explosives) provided amounted to 53 percent of total domestic consumption. -8. Much of the American fuel was added to lower-grade Soviet fuel to produce the high-octane fuel needed by modern military aircraft. The Lend-Lease Memorial in Fairbanks, Alaska, commemorates the shipment of U.S. aircraft to the Soviet Union along the Northwest Staging Route. [43] Lend-Lease also supplied significant amounts of weapons and ammunition. 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 story of how that microfilm came to be in the National Archives is a convoluted tale worthy of telling. Lend-Lease, formally the Lend-Lease Act and introduced as An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States (Pub. Lend-lease will be considered, first, as a method of wartime supply allocation; second, as a method of accounting which may create inter- . 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. 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. And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own.". 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. Learn more about quality higher-education opportunities in the U.S. that you will not find anywhere else in the world. The records constitute the primary policy and subject files on World War II Lend-Lease to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union officially ended in September 1945. Stettinius. 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. 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. In 1944, Britain transferred several of the US-made destroyers to the USSR. The Senate passed it by a vote of 63 to 1. The tanks reached the front lines with extraordinary speed. Such assessments, however, are contradicted by the opinions of Soviet war participants. The pact was terminated when Germany launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union. 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. The Soviet Union got arms, ammunition, aircraft, and industrial equipment for its army. It is our living history. 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. "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. American aid also provided 4.5 million tons of food, 1.5 million blankets, and 15 million pairs of boots. Britain wished to retain some of this equipment in the immediate post-war period. 19329 posts. . In turn, this would have allowed the German commanders to escape at least some encirclements, while forcing the Red Army to prepare and conduct many more deliberate penetration attacks in order to advance the same distance. adopted, it is in some important respects anachronistic today. Canada operated a program similar to Lend-Lease called Mutual Aid that sent a loan of Can$1billion (equivalent to Can$15.4billion in 2021)[30] and Can$3.4billion (Can$52.3billion) in supplies and services to Britain and other Allies.[31][5]. 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. initially requested by the Soviet Union from Britain was naval, in the. United States and Britain, not the Soviet Union, China, or other United Nations . 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). 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. Deane, John R. 1947. A total of 699 Lend-Lease aircraft had been delivered to Archangel by the time the Arctic convoys switched to Murmansk in December 1941. 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. Lend-Lease was the most visible sign of wartime cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union. Known today as Lend-Lease. Lend-Lease kept the Soviet home front going through the winter of 1941 and throughout 1942. The United States and Soviet Union secretly ferried thousands of warplanes from Great . The supplies dispersed under the Lend-Lease Act ranged from tanks, aircraft, ships, weapons and road building supplies to clothing, chemicals and food. THE ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS OF LEND-LEASE By EUGENE STALEY . Once again, raw figures do not tell the whole story. In 1941, the threat of World War II drove passage of the Lend-Lease Act repealing key provisions of the Neutrality Acts. Rather, Lend-Lease was designed to serve America's interest in defeating Nazi Germany without entering the war until the American military and public was prepared to fight. Part of the bill required the British to open their empire to trade. . Nikolay Ryzhkov & Georgy Kumanev Food and other strategic deliveries to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease Act, 19411945, pp. 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. 4, 48. L. 77-11, H.R. In 1939, after Germany invaded Poland, Roosevelt bypassed these restrictions by persuading Congress to permit the government to sell military supplies to France and Britain on a cash-and-carry basisin other words, they could pay cash for American-made supplies and then transport them on their own ships. Joseph Stalin never revealed to his own people the full contributions of Lend-Lease to their country's survival, but he referred to the program at the 1945 Yalta Conference saying, "Lend-Lease is one of Franklin Roosevelt's most remarkable and vital achievements in the . 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. A particular critical aspect of Lend-Lease was the supply of food. American deliveries to the Soviet Union can be divided into the following phases: Delivery was via the Arctic Convoys, the Persian Corridor, and the Pacific Route. Part I. [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]. Dec 7, 1941 . During early February 1941, a Gallup poll revealed that 54% of Americans were in favor of giving aid to the British without qualifications of Lend-Lease. "Transatlantic Generosity: Canada's 'Billion Dollar Gift' to the United Kingdom in the Second World War.". This was agreed upon before the signing of the first protocol on October 1, 1941, and extension of credit. The distribution of loans was 90% to the UK, 5% to Australia, 1% to New Zealand, 3% to India, and zero to Canada. "Western Aid for the Soviet Union During World. Lend-Lease assistance to the USSR. [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. Most went to Britain, but the Soviet Union received more than $11 billion. It carried 40 Hawker Hurricanes along with 550 mechanics and pilots of No. By the end of 1941 Britain had delivered 466 tanks out of the 750 promised. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. Even Joseph Stalin himself would say that the lend-lease was . After a decade of neutrality, Roosevelt knew that the change to Allied support must be gradual, given the support for isolationism in the country. TNA WO 193/580, Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022, Allied technological cooperation during World War II, "Letter, Winston Churchill to Franklin Roosevelt, December 7, 1940, pp. ", In practice, very little was returned except for a few unarmed transport ships. Much of the logistical assistance of the Soviet military was provided by hundreds of thousands of U.S.-made trucks and by 1945, nearly a third of the truck strength of the Red Army was U.S.-built. The Neutrality Acts, enacted between 1935 and 1939, were intended to prevent the United States from becoming involved in foreign wars. [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. 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. External links to other Internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views or privacy policies contained therein. The convoy was the first of many convoys to Murmansk and Archangelsk in what became known as the Arctic convoys, the returning ships carried the gold that the USSR was using to pay the US. 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. Lend-Lease aircraft deliveries were also of significance during the Battle of Moscow. After the war, it was transferred to civilian aviation, carrying passengers over the frozen tundra above the Arctic Circle. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty 2023 RFE/RL, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Almost all European nations outside the Soviet bloc were members of the plan from the beginning. 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. So the Soviets were charged 10 cents on the dollar of actual cost. 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 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. In practice, most equipment was destroyed, although some hardware (such as ships) was returned after the war. 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. 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. A map of lend-lease shipments from the United States to the U.S.S.R. from 1941-45. Negotiations dragged on intermittently for 25 years. Yes, in 1942 Lend-Lease was of course important for Soviet 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. Particularly important for the Soviets in late 1941 were British-supplied tanks and aircraft. From: 30 Military Mission. 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. The American lend and lease system was introduced in the beginning of the war to support Great Britain in their struggle with Germany. 3, S. 468. [79], Congress had not authorized the gift of supplies delivered after the cutoff date, so the U.S. charged for them, usually at a 90% discount. The munitions totaled 308m (not including naval munitions supplied), the food and raw materials totaled 120m in 1946 index. A further 15% were in favor of qualifications such as: "If it doesn't get us into war," or "If the British can give us some security for what we give them." From 1941 to 1945, total lend-lease aid to the Soviet Union accounted for only 5% of the Soviet GDP in total. Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? "During World War II, only the supplies brought in by Lend-Lease prevented the paralysis of rail transport in the Soviet Union.". In spring 1944, the House passed a bill to renew the Lend-Lease program by a vote of 334 to 21. Only 205 of these tanks were heavy or medium types, and most of their strength was concentrated in the Western Front, with the Kalinin Front having only two tank battalions (67 tanks) and the Southwestern Front two tank brigades (30 tanks). For comparison, a total of 22 million tons landed in Europe to supply American forces from January 1942 to May 1945. 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. On March 11, 1941, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act. The body of the captain, Maksim Tyurikov, was found by local hunters about 120 kilometers from the wreck in 1953. [8] The Two-Ocean Navy Act of July 1940 set in motion a rapid expansion of the United States Navy. James Phinney Baxter III (Official Historian of the Office of Scientific Research and Development), Wolfgang Schumann (et al. [67][68] The British tanks first saw action with the 138 Independent Tank Battalion in the Volga Reservoir on November 20, 1941. By the end of the war, the United States had extended over $49 billion in Lend-Lease aid to nearly forty nations. In fact the British intercepted German communications indicating that German forces had first come in contact with British tanks on the Eastern front on November 26, 1941. Large quantities of undelivered goods were in Britain or in transit when Lend-Lease terminated on September 2, 1945. "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 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. 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. [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. Materials totalling $. [38] With the outbreak of war these plants switched from civilian to military production and locomotive production ended virtually overnight. Alerts and Messages for U.S. visitors to Russia. The sole modern heavy bomber the USSR had was the Petlyakov Pe-8, and it only had 27 of them at the start of the war, with fewer than 100 produced until 1945. [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". 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. [45], Joseph Stalin, during the Tehran Conference during 1943, acknowledged publicly the importance of American efforts during a dinner at the conference: "Without American machines the United Nations could never have won the war."[46][47]. Subscribe to our HistoryNet Now! 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. 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. . Officially the "Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry". On September 20, 1945, all Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union was terminated. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. It provided Britain and the Soviet Union with limited war materiel beginning in October that year. 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. The Government of Mongolia donated its gold and hard currency reserves to the Soviet Union for four years in a row. 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. Lend Lease came as a response to the Axis Powers' violence and showed that America was committed to defending their nation and its . 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.". 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. As the war continued, however, the United States and Great Britain provided many of the implements of war and strategic raw materials necessary for Soviet victory. The Lend-Lease program also provided more than 35,000 radio sets and 32,000 motorcycles. Lend-Lease, formally the Lend-Lease Act and introduced as An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States (Pub. 28, 30, 31, harvnb error: no target: CITEREFHardesty1991 (, Soviet Supply Protocols. But in order to sustain the war effort all the way back to Germany, Lend-Lease was decisive. How important was Lend-Lease for the Soviet war effort?

Vi Derm Skin Lightening Complex 4% Hydroquinone, What Kind Of Cancer Did Landon Mcbroom Have, Ouedkniss Dfsk 2012, Coinspot Net Worth, Articles H