how important was lend lease to the soviet union

The distribution of loans was 90% to the UK, 5% to Australia, 1% to New Zealand, 3% to India, and zero to Canada. [80], The final payment of $83.3million (42.5million), due on December 31, 2006 (repayment having been deferred in the allowed five years and during a sixth year not allowed), was made by Britain on December 29, 2006 (the last working day of the year). [citation needed]. [83] However, none of this cargo has been salvaged, and no documentation of its treasure has been produced.[84]. Moscow. By October, German troops were poised outside both Leningrad and Moscow. Lend-Lease Helped Win World War II, But Not On The Eastern Front The evidence is here. 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. The Persian Corridor was the longest route, and was not fully operational until mid-1942. 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. Lend-Lease's precise significance to Allied victory in WW2 is debated. 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]. 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]. The Lend-Lease Memorial in Fairbanks, Alaska, commemorates the shipment of U.S. aircraft to the Soviet Union along the Northwest Staging Route. Nikita Khrushchev offered the same opinion. In December 1940, President Roosevelt proclaimed the United States would be the "Arsenal of Democracy" and proposed selling munitions to Britain and Canada. If Germany defeated the Soviet Union, the most significant front in Europe would be closed. In September 1940, during the Battle of Britain the British government sent the Tizard Mission to the United States. The American Lend-Lease program was signed into law in March 1941. Romanus, Charles F. and Riley Sunderland. Canada would eventually produce 1,420 Valentines, almost exclusively for delivery to the Soviet Union. In 1946, the post-war Anglo-American loan further indebted Britain to the U.S. Lend-Lease items retained were sold to Britain at 10% of nominal value, giving an initial loan value of 1.075billion for the Lend-Lease portion of the post-war loans. ", "Address Is Spur To British Hopes; Confirmation of American Aid in Conflict is Viewed as Heartening, A joining of interests, Discarding of Peace Talks is Regarded as a Major Point in the Speech.". Democrats voted 238 to 25 in favor and Republicans 24 in favor and 135 against. 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. "[10] As the President himself put it, "There can be no reasoning with incendiary bombs."[11]. For foreign citizens who want to live permanently in the United States. Nikolay Ryzhkov & Georgy Kumanev Food and other strategic deliveries to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease Act, 19411945, pp. 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. Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? During World War II, the Soviet Union received almost 15,000 U.S.-built aircraft under the lend-lease program. Dear h, I don't doubt the word of the old gent seeing USA on "Soviet" equipment. 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. The Short History Of The Great Patriotic War, also from 1948, acknowledged the Lend-Lease shipments, but concluded: "Overall this assistance was not significant enough to in any way exert a decisive influence over the course of the Great Patriotic War. 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. It was part of a scratch operational group of the Western Front consisting of the 18th Rifle Brigade, two ski battalions, the 5th and 20th Tank Brigades, and the 140th Independent Tank Battalion. Message to U.S. Citizens Winter Holiday Hours U.S. Mission Russia, Security Alert U.S. Mission Russia (December 14, 2020), U.S. National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirbys Interview with TV Rain, Russias War Against Ukraine One Year Later, G7 Foreign Ministers Statement on the Illegal Annexation of Sovereign Ukrainian Territory, U.S. Embassy Moscow Spotlights Posters for Peace, Message to U.S. Citizens: U.S. Mission Russia Reduction of Consular Services, Security Incident at Spaso House, the U.S. Ambassadors Residence in Moscow, Ambassador Sullivans Interview with Echo Moskvy in St. Petersburg Radio, Young Actors Present a New Interpretation of An American Classic, American Choreographer Bob Boross Introduces Jazz Dance to Russian Students, Statement from the Consul General on the Suspension of Operations at U.S. Consulate General, Vladivostok, Temporary Suspension of Operations at the U.S. Consulate General in Vladivostok, Ambassador Jon Huntsman Speaks at Media Roundtable in Vladivostok, April 24, 2018, Statement from Consul General Amy Storrow U.S. Consulate General Yekaterinburg, Celebrating 295th anniversary of Yekaterinburg, World War II Allies: U.S. Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union, 1941-1945, Novaya Gazeta Europe Interview with Victoria Nuland, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Any mention of the role that Western assistance played in the Soviet war effort was strictly off-limits. In spring 1944, the House passed a bill to renew the Lend-Lease program by a vote of 334 to 21. The program sent nearly 2,000 locomotives and innumerable boxcars to the Soviet Union. Collection. [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". 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. "It was not just some piece of scrap metal. 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. It seems to fly in the face of some stories I've heard about Stalin ordering the obliteration of all USA and British markings on Lend Lease Materiel so as to maintain the illusion of the USSR doing it all on its own and that the others fighting the common enemy were the "little allies". Most went to Britain, but the Soviet Union received more than $11 billion. Recd 11/12/41. 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. Some 3,964,000 tons of goods were shipped by the Arctic route; 7% was lost, while 93% arrived safely. 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. 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. Stettinius. 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. 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. 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 body of the captain, Maksim Tyurikov, was found by local hunters about 120 kilometers from the wreck in 1953. 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. 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. While Soviet pilots praised the maneuverability of the homegrown I-153 Chaika and I-16 Ishak fightersstill in use in significant numbers in late 1941both types were certainly obsolete and inferior in almost all regards to the British-supplied Hurricane. The story of how that microfilm came to be in the National Archives is a convoluted tale worthy of telling. When Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, we Mongols stood with our northern neighbor as best we could. 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. Tens of thousands of agricultural machines, such as tractors and threshers, were destroyed or captured. "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. 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. Robert Coalson is a senior correspondent for RFE/RLwho covers Russia, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe. The British shared technology included the cavity magnetron (key technology at the time for highly effective radar; the American historian James Phinney Baxter III later called "the most valuable cargo ever brought to our shores"),[13][14] the design for the VT fuze, details of Frank Whittle's jet engine and the FrischPeierls memorandum describing the feasibility of an atomic bomb. Under Lend-Lease, the United States provided more than one-third of all the explosives used by the Soviet Union during the war. But in order to sustain the war effort all the way back to Germany, Lend-Lease was decisive. 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. 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. After a decade of neutrality, Roosevelt knew that the change to Allied support must be gradual, given the support for isolationism in the country. 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. United States and Britain, not the Soviet Union, China, or other United Nations . Additionally, many of the British tools arrived in early 1942, when Soviet tool production was still very low, resulting in a disproportionate impact. Lend Lease came as a response to the Axis Powers' violence and showed that America was committed to defending their nation and its . In th. "If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war," he wrote in his memoirs. 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. Without Lend-Lease food, clothing, and raw materials (especially metals), the Soviet economy would have been even more heavily burdened by the war effort. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany's pressure, and we would have lost the war. This is the official website of the U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Russia. 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. The others were never found. 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. 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 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. 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. Learn more about quality higher-education opportunities in the U.S. that you will not find anywhere else in the world. After this final payment, Britain's Economic Secretary to the Treasury formally issued thanks to the U.S. for its wartime support. In addition, the Lend-Lease program propped up the Soviet railway system, which played a fundamental role in moving and supplying troops. This page was last edited on 23 February 2023, at 02:14. About $11 billion in war matriel was sent to the Soviet Union under that program. Lend-Lease effectively ended the United States' pretense of neutrality which had been enshrined in the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s. But since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a trickle of information has emerged from archives in Moscow, shedding new light on the subject. 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. . ", In practice, very little was returned except for a few unarmed transport ships. 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. I don't want $15I want my garden hose back after the fire is over. Just 446 locomotives were produced during the war,[39] with only 92 of those being built between 1942 and 1945. The country's agriculture was in a difficult situation. aid from Britain can be argued to have had the most significant impact. 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. 3, S. 468. 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. ", United States Army Center of Military History, "Britain pays off final instalment of US loan after 61 years", "Salvor's report citing recovery of further 29 bars", "Treasure hunters 'find $3billion in platinum on sunken WW2 British ship', Official New Zealand war history of Lend-lease, from, Official New Zealand war history; termination of Mutual Aid from 21 December 1945, from. Materials totalling $. [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. Alerts and Messages for U.S. visitors to Russia. The 19th and Early 20th Century History. 19329 posts. How important was the US lend-lease? Evolucin de los . L.7711, H.R. [22], In February 1942, the U.S. and Britain signed the Anglo-American Mutual Aid Agreement[23] as part of a greater multilateral system, developed by the Allies during the war, to provide each other with goods, services, and mutual aid in the widest sense, without charging commercial payments. Langer, William L. and S. Everett Gleason. 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 Neutrality Acts, enacted between 1935 and 1939, were intended to prevent the United States from becoming involved in foreign wars. In April, this policy was extended to China,[20] and in October to the Soviet Union. . A total of 699 Lend-Lease aircraft had been delivered to Archangel by the time the Arctic convoys switched to Murmansk in December 1941. In addition, there would have been constant shortages of transportation and fuel. 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. Lend-Lease also sent aviation fuel equivalent to 57 percent of what the Soviet Union itself produced. On September 20, 1945, all Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union was terminated. [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 terms of the agreement provided that the materiel was to be used until returned or destroyed. Campbell, Thomas M. and George C. Herring, eds. 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. . [38] With the outbreak of war these plants switched from civilian to military production and locomotive production ended virtually overnight. [65], Warsaw 1945: Willys jeep used by the Polish First Army as part of U.S. Lend-Lease program. 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. "Transatlantic Generosity: Canada's 'Billion Dollar Gift' to the United Kingdom in the Second World War.". 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. 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. Exmo. 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. ): Deutschland im Zweiten Weltkrieg. 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. Some idea of the scope of economic collaboration can be had from the fact that from the beginning of 1942 through 1945 Canada, on her part, furnished the United States with $1,000,000,000 to $1,250,000,000 in defense materials and services. [63] The production of heavy bombers in the United States until 1945 amounted to more than 30,000. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. 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 . Lend-Lease thus provided a massive quantity of foodstuffs and agricultural products.[44]. Crowley, Leo T. "Lend Lease" in Walter Yust, ed. While I was in training, my motivation was to get these wings and I wear them today proudly, the airman recalled in 2015. "[17], Opposition to the Lend-Lease bill was strongest among isolationist Republicans in Congress, who feared the measure would be "the longest single step this nation has yet taken toward direct involvement in the war abroad". 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. "The Museum of the Allies and Lend-Lease is a unique, one-of-a-kind museum," said Borodin. He never made a special point of holding a conversation on the subject, but when we were engaged in some kind of relaxed conversation, going over international questions of the past and present, and when we would return to the subject of the path we had traveled during the war, that is what he said. The Soviets have long insisted that Lend-Lease aid made little difference. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. A monument in Fairbanks, Alaska, to the American pilots who flew almost 8,000 U.S. planes to Alaska and to the Soviet pilots who flew them on to Siberia as part of Lend-Lease. Subscribe to our HistoryNet Now! And the Soviet Union didn't pay much of that. 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. [70][71], Significant numbers of British Churchill, Matilda and Valentine tanks were shipped to the USSR.[72]. 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 (German Language). American and Soviet pilots pose in front of a Bell P-39 Airacobra, supplied to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease program. Reverse lend-lease policies comprised services such as rent on bases used by the U.S., and totaled $7.8billion; of this, $6.8billion came from the British and the Commonwealth, mostly Australia and India. The Soviet government at first offered to pay $170 million. It was quite important, and it became especially important during the second half of WWII when the Red Army went from defending to attacking. [36] Most belligerent powers severely decreased production of non-essentials, concentrating on producing weapons. Soviet authorities recognized that the Great Patriotic War gave the Communist Party a claim to legitimacy that went far beyond Marxism-Leninism or the 1917 Revolution, and took pains to portray their nations victories in World War II as single-handed. [1] There was no repayment required. 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. on the Soviet war effort during the first year of the war was in the far. American contributions of the time were far fewer. In practice, very little equipment was in usable shape for peacetime uses. 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. In May 1942, HMSEdinburgh was sunk while carrying 4.5 tonnes of Soviet gold intended for the U.S. Treasury. U.S. Citizens with emergencies, please call +(7) (495) 728-5577, Outside of Office Hours, contact: +7 (495) 728-5000. Fourth protocol period from July 1, 1944 (signed April 17, 1945), formally ended May 12, 1945, but deliveries continued for the duration of the war with Japan (which the Soviet Union entered on August 8, 1945) under the "Milepost" agreement until September 2, 1945, when Japan capitulated. How important was the Lend Lease Act to the Soviet Union? Franklin D. Roosevelt had committed the United States in June 1940 to materially aiding the opponents of fascism, but, under existing U.S. law, the United Kingdom had to pay for its growing arms purchases from the United States with cash, popularly known as cash-and-carry. Member since Oct 2007. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. [76] Australia and New Zealand supplied the bulk of foodstuffs to United States forces in the South Pacific. Interested in U.S. History? As one Roosevelt biographer has characterized it: "If there was no practical alternative, there was certainly no moral one either. It was a decisive step away from non-interventionist policy and toward open support for the Allies.