how important was lend lease to the soviet union

The Lend-Lease Act was signed into law on March 11, 1941, and ended on September 20, 1945. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. In April, this policy was extended to China,[20] and in October to the Soviet Union. Ukraine is in the process of joining the European Union and has submitted an application for NATO membership. Lend-Lease aid to the USSR was nominally managed by Stettinius. adopted, it is in some important respects anachronistic today. 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. The tanks reached the front lines with extraordinary speed. initially requested by the Soviet Union from Britain was naval, in the. [73][74], Reverse Lend-Lease was the supply of equipment and services to the United States. How important was Lend-Lease for the Soviet war effort? 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. The American lend and lease system was introduced in the beginning of the war to support Great Britain in their struggle with Germany. The munitions totaled 308m (not including naval munitions supplied), the food and raw materials totaled 120m in 1946 index. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. In practice, very little equipment was in usable shape for peacetime uses. D.C. 4 Ottawa Protocol (July 1, 194430 June 1945). Most remaining Allies were largely self-sufficient in frontline equipment (such as tanks and fighter aircraft) by this time but Lend-Lease provided a useful supplement in this category and Lend-Lease logistical supplies (including motor vehicles and railroad equipment) were of enormous assistance. In Walter Yust, ed., "17 Billion Budget Drafted; Defense Takes 10 Billions. Even aid that might seem like a drop in the bucket in the larger context of Soviet production for the war played a crucial role in filling gaps at important moments during this period. Lend-Lease - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org In a few paragraphs the Wiki page shows the importance of the deliveries. Recd 11/12/41. 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. re: In hindsight was it a mistake for the US to ally with the Soviet Union during WW2. As one Roosevelt biographer has characterized it: "If there was no practical alternative, there was certainly no moral one either. Agricultural issues were also compounded when the Soviets were on the offensive, as areas liberated from the Axis had been devastated and contained millions of people who needed to be fed. 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. Roosevelt's top foreign policy advisor Harry Hopkins had effective control over Lend-Lease, making sure it was in alignment with Roosevelt's foreign policy goals.[3]. [3] In terms of administration, the president established the Office of Lend-Lease Administration during 1941, headed by steel executive Edward R. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. 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. [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). A particular critical aspect of Lend-Lease was the supply of food. . Lend-Lease started in March 1941, providing for military aid to any country whose defense was considered vital to the security of the U.S. Lend Lease was pretty much strategic charity. Just 446 locomotives were produced during the war,[39] with only 92 of those being built between 1942 and 1945. Many of our pilots fly Spitfires built in England, many more are flying American fighter planes powered by British Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, turned over to us by the British. Roosevelt concluded that the United States needed to help the Soviets fight against the Germans. ), 1,911 steam locomotives, 66 diesel locomotives, 9,920 flat cars, 1,000 dump cars, 120 tank cars, and 35 heavy machinery cars. When the House of Representatives finally took a roll call vote on February 9, 1941, the 260 to 165 vote was largely along party lines. Newly discovered files tell another story. It is obvious from this information that during the period of October 1, 1941, to May 1, 1944, the U.S.A., under Lend-Lease, Sent the Soviet Union arms, equipment, materials, and food totaling $5,357,300,000 and weighing 8,514,000 long tons, not including the weight of 92 delivered ships or the weight of 3333 airplanes, which arrived by air. The United States used lend-lease to induce recipients to the American way of thinking, especially regarding the economy and free-market trade. 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. 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. 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 Nikita Khrushchev offered the same opinion. Posted on 2/25/23 at 2:25 pm to WPBTiger. 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. This was the first big war in which whole formations were routinely motorized; soldiers were supported with large numbers of all kinds of vehicles. 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. 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. Overcoming massive defeats and colossal losses over the first 18 months of the war, the Red Army was able to reorganize and rebuild to form a juggernaut that marched all the way to Berlin. In addition, there would have been constant shortages of transportation and fuel. The Lend-Lease Act was designed to provide allies with aircraft and supplies for the war in Europe. [27] Other recipients were led by $11.3billion ($137billion) to the Soviet Union, $3.2billion ($38.7billion) to France, $1.6billion ($19.3billion) to China, and the remaining $2.6billion to the other Allies. 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. 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. Romanus, Charles F. and Riley Sunderland. 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. US Government Printing Office. The Soviet Northern Fleet was also a major and early recipient of British Hurricanes, receiving those flown by No. Negotiations dragged on intermittently for 25 years. [citation needed]. This is the official website of the U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Russia. 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. [61][62], Restrictions in the supply of weapons from the United States were mainly limited to heavy bombers. The Soviets lost a substantial number of draft and farm animals as they were not able to relocate all the animals in an area before it was captured and of those areas in which the Axis forces would occupy, the Soviets had lost 7 million of out of 11.6 million horses, 17 million out of 31 million cows, 20 million of 23.6 million pigs and 27 million out of 43 million sheep and goats. 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. Without Lend-Lease food, clothing, and raw materials (especially metals), the Soviet economy would have been even more heavily burdened by the war effort. The British Military Mission to Moscow noted that by December 9, about ninety British tanks had already been in action with Soviet forces. The political fog of the Cold War often marred the truth about the vehicles received. Learn more about quality higher-education opportunities in the U.S. that you will not find anywhere else in the world. 106124, Albert L. Weeks The Other Side of Coexistence: An Analysis of Russian Foreign Policy, (New York, Pittman Publishing Corporation, 1974), p. 94, quoted in Albert L. Weeks, Russia's Life-Saver: Lend-Lease Aid to the U.S.S.R. in World, Zaloga (Armored Thunderbolt) pp. Large quantities of undelivered goods were in Britain or in transit when Lend-Lease terminated on September 2, 1945. -8. Havlat, Denis. Roosevelt's Soviet Protocol Committee was dominated by Harry Hopkins and General John York, who were totally sympathetic to the provision of "unconditional aid". 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 total of defense materials and services that Canada received through lend-lease channels amounted in value to approximately $419,500,000. 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. "Without Lend-Lease, the Red Army would not have had about one-third of its ammunition, half of its aircraft, or half of its tanks. The records constitute the primary policy and subject files on World War II Lend-Lease to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). "Western Aid for the Soviet Union During World. 151 Wing in Operation Benedict, to provide air defence of the port and to train Soviet pilots. 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. Of this, $6.8 billion came from the British and the Commonwealth. Almost all European nations outside the Soviet bloc were members of the plan from the beginning. Democrats. On March 11, 1941, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act. [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. One of the greatest differences with prior wars was the enormous increase in the mobility of armies. Only 22% were unequivocally against the President's proposal. 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. When the war ended, almost 33 percent of all the Red Army's vehicles had been provided through Lend-Lease. In May 1942, HMSEdinburgh was sunk while carrying 4.5 tonnes of Soviet gold intended for the U.S. Treasury. 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. How important was the US lend-lease? On May 11, 1947, 27 people were rescued, having spent nearly three weeks in the icebound wreck. [18], The vote in the Senate, which occurred on 9 March, revealed a similar partisan difference: 49 Democrats (79 percent) voted "aye" with only 13 Democrats (21 percent) voting "nay". In December 1940, President Roosevelt proclaimed the United States would be the "Arsenal of Democracy" and proposed selling munitions to Britain and Canada. Congress did not allow the aid to be free, so the U.S. discounted it's Lend-Lease supplies by 90 percent of costs. 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. Known today as Lend-Lease. From the depths of the Cold War to the present day, many Soviet and Russian politicians have ignored or downplayed the impact of American assistance to the Soviets, as well as the impact of the entire U.S.-British war against the Nazis. Evolucin de los . Photo: Museum of the U.S. Air Force (Courtesy Photo). Balances for the Soviet Union were solved through a payment scheme in 1972, where they pledged to make three initial payments. As early as October 12, 1941, the Soviet 126th Fighter Air Regiment was operating with Tomahawks bought from the United States by Britain. 150 in July 1942, for example, was the critical factor in enabling the factory to reach projected capacity within two months. American contributions of the time were far fewer. How Much of What Goods Have We Sent to Which Allies? In 1941, the threat of World War II drove passage of the Lend-Lease Act repealing key provisions of the Neutrality Acts. [76] Australia and New Zealand supplied the bulk of foodstuffs to United States forces in the South Pacific. 1415 FDR Library", "Anglo-American Mutual Aid Agreement, February 28, 1942", "The Hyde Park Declaration 1941: Origins and Significance", "Consumer Price Index, annual average, not seasonally adjusted", "Consumer Price Index by product group, monthly, percentage change, not seasonally adjusted, Canada, provinces, Whitehorse, Yellowknife and Iqaluit", "America Reports On Aid To Allies etc. 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. By October, German troops were poised outside both Leningrad and Moscow. [11] Isolationists were strongly opposed, warning it would result in American involvement with what was considered by most Americans as an essentially European conflict. Materials totalling $. But listen, one cannot deny that the Americans shipped over to us material without which we could not have equipped our armies held in reserve or been able to continue the war.[48]. Crowley, Leo T. "Lend Lease" in Walter Yust, ed. Within months, the Lend-Lease program was expanded to include China and the Soviet Union. Any mention of the role that Western assistance played in the Soviet war effort was strictly off-limits. When Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, we Mongols stood with our northern neighbor as best we could. 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. THE ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS OF LEND-LEASE By EUGENE STALEY . The British Commonwealth and, to a lesser extent, the Soviet Union reciprocated with a smaller Reverse Lend-Lease program. "If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war," he wrote in his memoirs. Lend Lease came as a response to the Axis Powers' violence and showed that America was committed to defending their nation and its . After a decade of neutrality, Roosevelt knew that the change to Allied support must be gradual, given the support for isolationism in the country. "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. And many of the supplies needed by our Air Force are procured for us without cost by reverse lend-lease. The aid was given for free on the basis that such help was essential for the defense of the United States. A map of lend-lease shipments from the United States to the U.S.S.R. from 1941-45. This inevitably produced shortages of related products that are required for industrial or logistical uses, particularly unarmored vehicles. [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. . BM-13N Katyusha on a Lend-Lease Studebaker US6 truck, at the Museum of the Great Patriotic War, Moscow, In June 1941, within weeks of the German invasion of the USSR, the Anglo-Soviet Agreement was made and the first British aid convoy set off along the dangerous Arctic Sea route to Murmansk, arriving in September. Once again, raw figures do not tell the whole story. The handing over of forty imported machine tools to Aviation Factory No. 1776, 55 Stat. It was a decisive step away from non-interventionist policy and toward open support for the Allies. [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. [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. 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 1942, the Nazi advance into the Soviet Union had stalled; it was finally reversed at the epic battle of Stalingrad in 1943. 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. And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own.". This page was last edited on 23 February 2023, at 02:14. 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]. Lend-Lease effectively ended the United States' pretense of neutrality which had been enshrined in the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s. How important was lend lease to Soviet Union? Under Lend-Lease, the U.S. shipped more than $50 billion in supplies equivalent to more than $700 billion today. ", In 1963, KGB monitoring recorded Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov saying: "People say that the allies didn't help us. 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 . 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). The Lend-Lease program also provided more than 35,000 radio sets and 32,000 motorcycles. But for decades the official Soviet line went much further. The Soviets have long insisted that Lend-Lease aid made little difference. [15] Though these may be considered the most significant, many other items were also transported, including designs for rockets, superchargers, gyroscopic gunsights, submarine detection devices, self-sealing fuel tanks and plastic explosives. The Soviet authorities were well aware of this dependency on Lend-Lease. 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. Under Lend-Lease, the United States provided more than one-third of all the explosives used by the Soviet Union during the war. 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. 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. For travel to the United States on a temporary basis, including tourism, temporary employment, study and exchange. But Was He Drugged Into Confessing. Supply volumes and the significance of lend-lease. 31, enacted March 11, 1941),[1] 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. Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? It carried 40 Hawker Hurricanes along with 550 mechanics and pilots of No. The U.S. government never published detailed reports on what and how much was sent under the Lend-Lease program to the USSR. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. Similarly, the Soviet Union repaid $722 million in 1971, with the remainder of the debt written off. The United States is a country of machines. Nikolay Ryzhkov & Georgy Kumanev Food and other strategic deliveries to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease Act, 19411945, pp. The Lend-Lease Memorial in Fairbanks, Alaska, commemorates the shipment of U.S. aircraft to the Soviet Union along the Northwest Staging Route. 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. Particularly important for the Soviets in late 1941 were British-supplied tanks and aircraft. Lend-Lease aircraft supplied to the Red Air Force 1942-1944: References and literature American M3 tanks on the railway near Murmansk after arriving in Northern Russia. 5-6. Championed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Lend-Lease Act authorized the transfer . Under Lend-Lease, the United States provided more than one-third of all the explosives used by the Soviet Union during the war. 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. Most went to Britain, but the Soviet Union received more than $11 billion. 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.". 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. On December 7, 1940, its Prime Minister Winston Churchill pressed President Roosevelt in a 15-page letter for American help. Washington. But the speed at which Britain in particular was willing and able to provide aid to the Soviet Union, and at which the Soviet Union was able to put foreign equipment into frontline use, is still an underappreciated part of this story. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. ", "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? [64], From October 1, 1941, to May 31, 1945, the United States delivered to the Soviet Union 427,284 trucks, 13,303 combat vehicles, 35,170 motorcycles, 2,328 ordnance service vehicles, 2,670,371 tons of petroleum products (gasoline and oil) or 57.8 percent of the aviation fuel including nearly 90 percent of high-octane fuel used,[35] 4,478,116 tons of foodstuffs (canned meats, sugar, flour, salt, etc. 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. "During World War II, only the supplies brought in by Lend-Lease prevented the paralysis of rail transport in the Soviet Union.".

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