This was agreed upon before the signing of the first protocol on October 1, 1941, and extension of credit. Most went to Britain, but the Soviet Union received more than $11 billion. Stalin needed trucks and was provided with Studebaker trucks on a massive scale. An oft-quoted statement by First Vice-Chairman of the Council of Peoples Commissars Nikolai Voznesensky summed up the standard line that Allied aid represented only 4 percent of Soviet production for the entire war. That is the U.S. would be "repaid" when the recipient fought the common enemy and joined the world trade and diplomatic agencies, such as the United Nations.[51]. [6], After the Fall of France during June 1940, the British Commonwealth and Empire were the only forces engaged in war against Germany and Italy, until the Italian invasion of Greece. 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." 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. And it is a salient point that over 80% of the aid was received after June 1942, when the tide of the war had already turned against the Germans on the Eastern Front. Of this, $6.8 billion came from the British and the Commonwealth. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. The Resurrection of World War II Lend-Lease Records on the USSR: A How much Soviet equipment was Lend-Lease? by Robert Beckhusen Key point: If the West had not invaded Europe and provided equipment, it would have. Aircraft Deliveries to the Soviet Union - Lend-Lease 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 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 Strange Alliance, The Story of Our Efforts at Wartime Co-operation with Russia. [67][68] The British tanks first saw action with the 138 Independent Tank Battalion in the Volga Reservoir on November 20, 1941. [56] Nevertheless, some 8,244,000 tons of goods went by this route, 50% of the total. "The Museum of the Allies and Lend-Lease is a unique, one-of-a-kind museum," said Borodin. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. It needed all the available resources to pressure Germany on the lands far from Moscow, where Germany was getting a degree of home advantage. The captain, two crew members, and six passengers had left earlier in an ill-fated effort to get help. This was mostly in the form of landing, servicing, and refueling of transport aircraft; some industrial machinery and rare minerals were sent to the U.S. [76] Australia and New Zealand supplied the bulk of foodstuffs to United States forces in the South Pacific. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. The Soviet authorities were well aware of this dependency on Lend-Lease. 'We Would Have Lost': Did U.S. Lend-Lease Aid Tip The Balance In Soviet Fight Against Nazi Germany? (German Language). -8. Lend-Lease Act (1941) | National Archives The Arctic route was the shortest and most direct route for lend-lease aid to the USSR, though it was also the most dangerous as it involved sailing past German-occupied Norway. Marshall Plan Countries. 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. 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. 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. For comparison, a total of 22 million tons landed in Europe to supply American forces from January 1942 to May 1945. Lend-Lease - Wikipedia American and Soviet pilots pose in front of a Bell P-39 Airacobra, supplied to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease program. Lend-Lease Act of 1941: Facts, Summary, and Significance 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. So the Soviets were charged 10 cents on the dollar of actual cost. [11] Isolationists were strongly opposed, warning it would result in American involvement with what was considered by most Americans as an essentially European conflict. Large quantities of undelivered goods were in Britain or in transit when Lend-Lease terminated on September 2, 1945. How important was the Lend-Lease to the Soviet war effort? The program sent nearly 2,000 locomotives and innumerable boxcars to the Soviet Union. 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. But for decades the official Soviet line went much further. 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 terms of the agreement provided that the materiel was to be used until returned or destroyed. British Matilda tanks are loaded onto a ship for transportation to the U.S.S.R. as part of the Lend-Lease program. 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. For foreign citizens who want to live permanently in the United States. Such assessments, however, are contradicted by the opinions of Soviet war participants. The tanks reached the front lines with extraordinary speed. It was quite important, and it became especially important during the second half of WWII when the Red Army went from defending to attacking. [citation needed] The USSR had only a very small number of heavy bombers in comparison. Supplies that arrived after the termination date were sold to the United Kingdom at a large discount for 1.075 billion, using long-term loans from the United States, which were finally repaid in 2006. 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. US Neutrality Acts of the 1930s and the Lend-Lease Act - ThoughtCo Within months, the Lend-Lease program was expanded to include China and the Soviet Union. By October, German troops were poised outside both Leningrad and Moscow. Under Lend-Lease, the U.S. shipped more than $50 billion in supplies equivalent to more than $700 billion today. I recently heard someone claim that the Soviet Union would have been unable to survive Operation Barbarossa and subsequent German offensives without the vast amount of supplies they received from the Allies under the Lend-Lease program. 2009. pp. Ukraine is a founding member of the United Nations and it is also a member of the Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization, and the OSCE. How important was the Lend-Lease to the Soviet war effort? 5-6. Soviet industry in World War II - Wikipedia President Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease bill into law on March 11, 1941. How Lend-Lease helped the Red Army win in World War II (PHOTOS) How Much of What Goods Have We Sent to Which Allies? British Lend Lease Aid and the Soviet War Effort, - Scribd The Yak-1, arguably the best of the batch, and superior in most regards to the Hurricane, suffered from airframe and engine defects in early war production aircraft. The Lend-Lease Act was signed into law on March 11, 1941, and ended on September 20, 1945. 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. How important was the Lend Lease Act to the Soviet Union? 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 Government of Mongolia donated its gold and hard currency reserves to the Soviet Union for four years in a row. Ladd Field and the Lend-Lease Mission: Defending Alaska in WWII Democrats voted 238 to 25 in favor and Republicans 24 in favor and 135 against. 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. "I knew that its place was in a museum," Vyacheslav Filippov, a colonel in the Russian Air Force reserve who has written extensively about the Lend-Lease program's Siberian connection, told RFE/RL at the time. The Allies and the Role of Lend-Lease in WWII: The Russian View Matilda II in Soviet Service - Tank Encyclopedia It was said that the Matilda was inferior to the T-34, and in truth it probably was. The lend/lease military aid program, and the Matilda's role in it, was hardly decisive to the Soviet Union's subsequent victories on the Eastern or Western front. [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. What percent of Soviet equipment was Lend-Lease? Canada was not a direct recipient of Lend-Lease aid. Nikita Khrushchev offered the same opinion. And Soviet forces would have been much more poorly coordinated with a constant lack of radio equipment. 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. The U.S. asked for $1.3 billion at the cessation of hostilities to settle the debt, but was only offered $170 million by the USSR. 'We Would Have Lost': Did U.S. Lend-Lease Aid Tip The Balance In Soviet "During World War II, only the supplies brought in by Lend-Lease prevented the paralysis of rail transport in the Soviet Union.". U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Lend-Lease Act on March 11, 1941. After the war, it was transferred to civilian aviation, carrying passengers over the frozen tundra above the Arctic Circle. 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. Some of these shipments were intercepted by the Germans. ", In 1963, KGB monitoring recorded Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov saying: "People say that the allies didn't help us. Lend-Lease effectively ended the United States' pretense of neutrality which had been enshrined in the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s. 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. The Red Army was a force to be reckoned with and was willing to sustain unlimited casualties. Crowley, Leo T. "Lend Lease" in Walter Yust, ed. 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. . I will quote at length: For European Recovery (June 23, 1997) - Library of Congress - Loc.gov ", "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? [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. Evolucin de los . 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. Particularly important for the Soviets in late 1941 were British-supplied tanks and aircraft. The Senate passed it by a vote of 63 to 1. north, and in particular for the Northern Fleet.102Much of the material. 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. [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. Russia's War in Ukraine: Putin's Soviet Delusion 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. [36] Most belligerent powers severely decreased production of non-essentials, concentrating on producing weapons. Answer (1 of 14): Lend Lease was pretty much strategic charity. 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 aid was given for free on the basis that such help was essential for the defense of the United States. 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. 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. Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. Lend-Lease assistance to the USSR. Britain wished to retain some of this equipment in the immediate post-war period. L. 77-11, H.R. But in order to sustain the war effort all the way back to Germany, Lend-Lease was decisive. Exmo. 'We would have lost': Did U.S. lend-lease aid tip the balance in Soviet For travel to the United States on a temporary basis, including tourism, temporary employment, study and exchange. Myths and Misconceptions About the Soviets in World War II - TheCollector [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. [33], The program was gradually terminated after V-E Day. World War II | Facts, Summary, History, Dates, Combatants, & Causes The supplies dispersed under the Lend-Lease Act ranged from tanks, aircraft, ships, weapons and road building supplies to clothing, chemicals and food. After this final payment, Britain's Economic Secretary to the Treasury formally issued thanks to the U.S. for its wartime support. Saudi Arabia-Top 10 most important events in the History. [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. James Phinney Baxter III (Official Historian of the Office of Scientific Research and Development), Wolfgang Schumann (et al. 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. In the meantime, Great Britain was running out of liquid currency and asked not to be forced to sell off British assets. [3] In terms of administration, the president established the Office of Lend-Lease Administration during 1941, headed by steel executive Edward R. [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. 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. uboat.net - Fighting the U-boats - The Lend-Lease Act New Ukraine Military Aid Bill Isn't Your Grandfather's Lend-Lease Act 4, 48. Similarly, the Soviet Union repaid $722 million in 1971, with the remainder of the debt written off. "If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war," he wrote in his memoirs. [29] 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. 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. First, I would like to tell about some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were "discussing freely" among ourselves. [35] While I was in training, my motivation was to get these wings and I wear them today proudly, the airman recalled in 2015. 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. This was the first big war in which whole formations were routinely motorized; soldiers were supported with large numbers of all kinds of vehicles. 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 and onwards, the RKKA used extensive numbers . The United States and the British Commonwealth provided 55. 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. Did Soviet Union Repay Lend-lease? - Caniry 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. [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. Lend-Lease also sent aviation fuel equivalent to 57 percent of what the Soviet Union itself produced. Lend-Lease, formally the Lend-Lease Act and introduced as An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States (Pub. The Lend-Lease Memorial in Fairbanks, Alaska, commemorates the shipment of U.S. aircraft to the Soviet Union along the Northwest Staging Route. Bill Introduced in the House Would Allow US to Lend Weapons to Taiwan 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.