But the Germans were doggedly held off in front of Moscow in late November and early December, and then rolled back by a reinvigorated Red Army in a staggeringly brutal winter counteroffensive. 4, 48. "What do I do in such a crisis?" The supplies dispersed under the Lend-Lease Act ranged from tanks, aircraft, ships, weapons and road building supplies to clothing, chemicals and food. In terms of its relationship with the Soviet Union, lend-lease served as a powerful tool for demonstrating the benefits of the . 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. The political fog of the Cold War often marred the truth about the vehicles received. Marshall Plan Countries. Roosevelt made sure that Lend-Lease policies were supportive of his foreign policy goals by putting his top aide Harry Hopkins in effective control of the program. On the Allied side, there was almost total reliance upon American industrial production, weaponry and especially unarmored vehicles purpose-built for military use, vital for the modern army's logistics and support. 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. The Soviet air force received 18,200 aircraft, which amounted to about 30 percent of Soviet wartime fighter and bomber production (mid 194145). 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. [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. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war.". 150 in July 1942, for example, was the critical factor in enabling the factory to reach projected capacity within two months. 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. How important was Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union? 2009. . Few Americans objected to Soviet aid until 1943. In addition, the Lend-Lease program propped up the Soviet railway system, which played a fundamental role in moving and supplying troops. Other largely British-equipped tank units in action with the Western Front from early December were the 131st Independent Tank Brigade, which fought to the east of Tula, south of Moscow, and 146th Tank Brigade, in the region of Kriukovo to the immediate west of the Soviet capital. Originally, the American policy was to help the British but not join the war. 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]. ", Nikolai Ryzhkov, the last head of the government of the Soviet Union, wrote in 2015 that "it can be confidently stated that [Lend-Lease assistance] did not play a decisive role in the Great Victory.". Stalin needed trucks and was provided with Studebaker trucks on a massive scale. Lend-Lease: Aircraft to the Soviet Union > National Museum of the To: The War Office. As early as October 12, 1941, the Soviet 126th Fighter Air Regiment was operating with Tomahawks bought from the United States by Britain. 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. Reverse Lend-Lease to the United States totalled $7.8 billion. 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. 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. At the end of 1941 there were greater numbers of the MiG-3, but the plane was considered difficult to fly. Canada also aided the United Kingdom and other Allies with the Billion Dollar Gift and Mutual Aid totalling $3.4 billion in supplies and services (equivalent to $61 billion in 2020) .[4][5]. uboat.net - Fighting the U-boats - The Lend-Lease Act "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 captain, two crew members, and six passengers had left earlier in an ill-fated effort to get help. [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. During World War II, the Soviet Union received almost 15,000 U.S.-built aircraft under the lend-lease program. 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. [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). 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. [70][71], Significant numbers of British Churchill, Matilda and Valentine tanks were shipped to the USSR.[72]. But the Soviet Union was never alone: Months before the United States formally entered the war, it had already begun providing massive military and economic assistance to its Soviet ally through the Lend-Lease program. The agreement was that all temporary construction for the use of American forces and all permanent construction required by the United States forces beyond Canadian requirements would be paid for by the United States, and that the cost of all other construction of permanent value would be met by Canada. And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own.". ", In practice, very little was returned except for a few unarmed transport ships. Even after the United States forces in Europe and the Pacific began to attain full strength during 19431944, Lend-Lease continued. Although most of the actual construction of joint defense facilities, except the Alaska Highway and the Canol project, had been carried out by Canada, most of the original cost was borne by the United States. 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. [83] However, none of this cargo has been salvaged, and no documentation of its treasure has been produced.[84]. Langer, William L. and S. Everett Gleason. Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? 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. 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. The United States and Soviet Union secretly ferried thousands of warplanes from Great . According to Biriukovs service diary, the first 20 British tanks arrived at the Soviet tank training school in Kazan on October 28, 1941, at which point a further 120 tanks were unloaded at the port of Archangel in northern Russia. Crowley, Leo T. "Lend Lease" in Walter Yust, ed. 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. New Orleans. From 1941 and onwards, the RKKA used extensive numbers . In a November 1943 report to Congress, President Roosevelt said of Allied participation in reverse Lend-lease: the expenditures made by the British Commonwealth of Nations for reverse lend-lease aid furnished to the United States, and of the expansion of this program so as to include exports of materials and foodstuffs for the account of United States agencies from the United Kingdom and the British colonies, emphasizes the contribution which the British Commonwealth has made to the defense of the United States while taking its place on the battle fronts. The British Military Mission to Moscow noted that by December 9, about ninety British tanks had already been in action with Soviet forces. Could the soviets have won without lend lease? It provided Britain and the Soviet Union with limited war materiel beginning in October that year. [38] With the outbreak of war these plants switched from civilian to military production and locomotive production ended virtually overnight. I will quote at length: Lend-Lease Act (1941) | National Archives When I listened to his remarks, I was fully in agreement with him, and today I am even more so. During the bitter fighting of the winter of 19411942, British aid made a crucial difference. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. By the end of 1941 Britain had delivered 466 tanks out of the 750 promised. Soviet industry in World War II - Wikipedia The Neutrality Acts, enacted between 1935 and 1939, were intended to prevent the United States from becoming involved in foreign wars. Moscow. Lend-Lease also sent aviation fuel equivalent to 57 percent of what the Soviet Union itself produced. Courses on the British tanks for Soviet crews started during November as the first tanks, with British assistance, were being assembled from their in-transit states and undergoing testing by Soviet specialists. 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. 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. When the war ended, almost 33 percent of all the Red Army's vehicles had been provided through Lend-Lease. Under Lend-Lease, the United States provided more than one-third of all the explosives used by the Soviet Union during the war. Only 22% were unequivocally against the President's proposal. Such machines were of higher quality than analogues produced in the Soviet Union, which made a significant contribution to boosting Soviet industrial production. The Soviet authorities were well aware of this dependency on Lend-Lease. billion (about $ billion in prices ) were sent to several dozen recipient countries, including the main ones: "Western Aid for the Soviet Union During World. 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. Democrats voted 238 to 25 in favor and Republicans 24 in favor and 135 against. 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. [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. Check out A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn on Amazon https://amzn.to/3lS8oVMLike & Subscribe for Daily US H. Materials totalling $. At a time when the majority of Americans opposed direct participation in the war, Lend-Lease represented a vital U.S. contribution to the fight against Nazi Germany. 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. ): Deutschland im Zweiten Weltkrieg. 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. [53] Soviet Ambassador Maxim Litvinov significantly contributed to the Lend-Lease agreement of 1941. Deane, John R. 1947. An estimated 25 million Soviet citizens perished in the titanic conflict with Nazi Germany between June 1941 and May 1945. Just 446 locomotives were produced during the war,[39] with only 92 of those being built between 1942 and 1945. Under Lend-Lease, the U.S. shipped more than $50 billion in supplies equivalent to more than $700 billion today. WWII program to provide U.S. allies with free armaments, This article is about the World War II program. 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. Lend Lease came as a response to the Axis Powers' violence and showed that America was committed to defending their nation and its . The Lend-Lease program also provided more than 35,000 radio sets and 32,000 motorcycles. "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. How Much of What Goods Have We Sent to Which Allies? How important was the Lend Lease Act to the Soviet Union? You act like that would have been easy. Lend-Lease, formally the Lend-Lease Act and introduced as An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States (Pub. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. How important was the Lend-Lease to the Soviet war effort? The U.S. government never published detailed reports on what and how much was sent under the Lend-Lease program to the USSR. Lend-Lease: How the US Kept the Soviets Afloat in World War II [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. Crowley, Leo T. "Lend-Lease". Without Lend-Lease, Russia would not have been able to carry out the Stalingrad counteroffensive and Operation Bagration. 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. How important was the US lend-lease? Part I. 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. Lend-Lease assistance to the USSR. Large quantities of undelivered goods were in Britain or in transit when Lend-Lease terminated on September 2, 1945. 1. The country's agriculture was in a difficult situation. [36] Most belligerent powers severely decreased production of non-essentials, concentrating on producing weapons. 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. Ukraine is in the process of joining the European Union and has submitted an application for NATO membership. Heavy bombers had not been mentioned in previous protocols. Lend-Lease aid to the USSR was nominally managed by Stettinius. While I was in training, my motivation was to get these wings and I wear them today proudly, the airman recalled in 2015. [34], Lend-Lease contributed to the Allied victory. 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. Lend-Lease kept the Soviet home front going through the winter of 1941 and throughout 1942. Substantial quantities of machine tools and raw materials, such as aluminum and rubber, were supplied to help Soviet industry back on its feet: 312 metal-cutting machine tools were delivered by convoy PQ-12 alone, arriving in March 1942, along with a range of other items for Soviet factories such as machine presses and compressors. One of the greatest differences with prior wars was the enormous increase in the mobility of armies. After a decade of neutrality, Roosevelt knew that the change to Allied support must be gradual, given the support for isolationism in the country. 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. In hindsight was it a mistake for the US to ally with the Soviet Union [55], In total, the U.S. deliveries to the USSR through Lend-Lease amounted to $11 billion in materials: over 400,000 jeeps and trucks; 12,000 armored vehicles (including 7,000 tanks, about 1,386[57] of which were M3 Lees and 4,102 M4 Shermans);[58] 11,400 aircraft (of which 4,719 were Bell P-39 Airacobras, 3,414 were Douglas A-20 Havocs and 2,397 were Bell P-63 Kingcobras)[59] and 1.75million tons of food. Payment was to be stretched out over 50 annual payments, starting in 1951 and with five years of deferred payments, at 2% interest. Member since Oct 2007. Lacking any detailed information to the contrary, Western authors generally agreed that even if Lend-Lease was important from 1943 on, as quantities of aid dramatically increased, the aid was far too little and late to make a difference in the decisive battles of 19411942. How obvious was lend-lease equipment to the average Soviet soldier Allen (1946) p 252. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. [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. Source: "The Soviet Union: The Defeated Victor" pp. Arctic convoys of World War II - Wikipedia [citation needed] The USSR had only a very small number of heavy bombers in comparison. Secret Cipher Telegram. aid from Britain can be argued to have had the most significant impact. Myths and Misconceptions About the Soviets in World War II - TheCollector World War II Allies: U.S. Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union, 1941-1945 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. In the case of the Soviet Union, this residual civilian-type lend-lease was valued by the United States at $2.6 billion (out of total lend-lease to the Soviet Union of $10.8 billion). . 'We would have lost': Did U.S. lend-lease aid tip the balance in Soviet On February 24, 1943, a Douglas C-47 Skytrain transport aircraft with serial number 42-32892 rolled out of a factory in Long Beach, California, and was handed over to the U.S. Air Force. American contributions of the time were far fewer. Lend-Lease - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org In a few paragraphs the Wiki page shows the importance of the deliveries. Congress did not allow the aid to be free, so the U.S. discounted it's Lend-Lease supplies by 90 percent of costs. And many of the supplies needed by our Air Force are procured for us without cost by reverse lend-lease. [3] In terms of administration, the president established the Office of Lend-Lease Administration during 1941, headed by steel executive Edward R. Negotiations dragged on intermittently for 25 years. Lend Lease For Ukraine: It was not a Good Deal for US - SOFREP About $11 billion in war matriel was sent to the Soviet Union under that program. In particular, it shows that British Lend-Lease assistance to the Soviet Union in late 1941 and early 1942 played a far more significant part in the defense of Moscow and the revival of Soviet fortunes in late 1941 than has been acknowledged. 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. 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. 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. 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. | AHA", "Lend-Lease and Military Aid to the Allies in the Early Years of World, The United States at war; development and administration of the war program by the federal government, Sea routes of Soviet Lend-Lease:Voice of Russia, "$220 Million in Gold Bullion was Recovered from HMS Edinburgh", "Report to Congress on Reverse Lend-Lease", "Chapter XIV: The United States and Canada: Copartners in Defense. 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. This inevitably produced shortages of related products that are required for industrial or logistical uses, particularly unarmored vehicles. That the Soviet victories of late 1941 were won with Soviet blood and largely with Soviet weapons is beyond dispute. Roosevelt concluded that the United States needed to help the Soviets fight against the Germans. But according to . . Once again, raw figures do not tell the whole story. Yes, in 1942 Lend-Lease was of course important for Soviet Russia. [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]. Mystery surrounds the infamous burning of the Reichstag in 1933. "It should be remembered that during World War I, the transportation crisis in Russia in 1916-17 that did a lot to facilitate the February Revolution [which lead to the abdication of the tsar] was caused by a shortage in the production of railway rails, engines, and freight cars because industrial production had been diverted to munitions," Sokolov wrote. 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. 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 debt for Lend-Lease supplies was finally paid and closed as part of the settlements with the Paris Club on August 21, 2006. 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]. Lend-Lease: How American supplies aided the USSR in its darkest hour The plane spent 69 years on the tundra before a Russian Geographical Society expedition rescued it in 2016 and returned the wreckage to Krasnoyarsk. Originally intended to lend arms and material to the. 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. And though rapid increases in tank firepower would soon render the 40mm two-pounder main gun of the Matilda and Valentine suitable for use on light tanks only, the armor protection of these British models put them firmly in the heavy and medium categories, respectively.