[67][68] The British tanks first saw action with the 138 Independent Tank Battalion in the Volga Reservoir on November 20, 1941. 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. Marshall Plan Countries. 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. 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. The Lend-Lease Memorial in Fairbanks, Alaska, commemorates the shipment of U.S. aircraft to the Soviet Union along the Northwest Staging Route. Aircraft Deliveries to the Soviet Union - Lend-Lease Some 3,964,000 tons of goods were shipped by the Arctic route; 7% was lost, while 93% arrived safely. Lend-Lease - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org In a few paragraphs the Wiki page shows the importance of the deliveries. It was quite important, and it became especially important during the second half of WWII when the Red Army went from defending to attacking. 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. 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. Did Russia Really Go It Alone? How Lend-Lease Helped the - HistoryNet [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". Materiel delivered under the act was supplied at no cost, to be used until returned or destroyed. 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. 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. Lend-lease | Facts & Definition | Britannica A particular critical aspect of Lend-Lease was the supply of food. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. 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. Much of the American fuel was added to lower-grade Soviet fuel to produce the high-octane fuel needed by modern military aircraft. "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. Alerts and Messages for U.S. visitors to Russia. This act set up a system that would allow the United States to lend or lease war supplies to any nation deemed "vital to the defense of the United States." . For comparison, a total of 22 million tons landed in Europe to supply American forces from January 1942 to May 1945. Myths and Misconceptions About the Soviets in World War II - TheCollector 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. "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. No one ever discussed this subject officially, and I don't think Stalin left any written evidence of his opinion, but I will state here that several times in conversations with me he noted that these were the actual circumstances. Collection. Lend-Lease: How American supplies aided the USSR in its darkest hour 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). Canada was not a direct recipient of Lend-Lease aid. Particularly important for the Soviets in late 1941 were British-supplied tanks and aircraft. Materials totalling $. 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. 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. . "During World War II, only the supplies brought in by Lend-Lease prevented the paralysis of rail transport in the Soviet Union." 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. by Robert Beckhusen Key point: If the West had not invaded Europe and provided equipment, it would have. 4, 48. [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. The captain, two crew members, and six passengers had left earlier in an ill-fated effort to get help. LEND LEASE. 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 . [6], In 1939 howeveras Germany, Japan, and Italy pursued aggressive, militaristic policiesPresident Roosevelt wanted more flexibility to help contain Axis aggression. 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. Yauza. north, and in particular for the Northern Fleet.102Much of the material. Just 446 locomotives were produced during the war,[39] with only 92 of those being built between 1942 and 1945. [3] In terms of administration, the president established the Office of Lend-Lease Administration during 1941, headed by steel executive Edward R. It has been estimated that American deliveries to the USSR through the Persian Corridor alone were sufficient, by US Army standards, to maintain sixty combat divisions in the line. Crowley, Leo T. "Lend-Lease". 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. Lend-lease will be considered, first, as a method of wartime supply allocation; second, as a method of accounting which may create inter- . This page was last edited on 23 February 2023, at 02:14. More than 20,000 Katyusha mobile multiple-rocket launchers were mounted on the chassis of American Studebaker trucks. Mongolian lamb and meat donations to the front lines outperformed those sent by the Lend-Lease Act. 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. 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. So the Soviets were charged 10 cents on the dollar of actual cost. 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 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. If Germany defeated the Soviet Union, the most significant front in Europe would be closed. From 1941 and onwards, the RKKA used extensive numbers . 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. adopted, it is in some important respects anachronistic today. Lend-Lease kept the Soviet home front going through the winter of 1941 and throughout 1942. About $11 billion in war matriel was sent to the Soviet Union under that program. 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 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. And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own.". Balances for the Soviet Union were solved through a payment scheme in 1972, where they pledged to make three initial payments. From 1941 to 1945, total lend-lease aid to the Soviet Union accounted for only 5% of the Soviet GDP in total. 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. Dalton Delan: It's not World War II, but we are dealing with a new Axis 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 United States and Soviet Union secretly ferried thousands of warplanes from Great . In hindsight was it a mistake for the US to ally with the Soviet Union [29] Langer, William L. and S. Everett Gleason. A total of $50.1 billion (equivalent to $719billion in 2021) worth of supplies was shipped, or 17% of the total war expenditures of the U.S.[2] In all, $31.4 billion went to the United Kingdom, $11.3 billion to the Soviet Union, $3.2 billion to France, $1.6 billion to China, and the remaining $2.6 billion to other Allies. [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 stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. The American lend and lease system was introduced in the beginning of the war to support Great Britain in their struggle with Germany. Lend-Lease Act (1941) | National Archives Of this, $6.8 billion came from the British and the Commonwealth. How Lend-Lease helped the Red Army win in World War II (PHOTOS) ), 1,911 steam locomotives, 66 diesel locomotives, 9,920 flat cars, 1,000 dump cars, 120 tank cars, and 35 heavy machinery cars. "In order to really assess the significance of Lend-Lease for the Soviet victory, you only have to imagine how the Soviet Union would have had to fight if there had been no Lend-Lease aid," Sokolov wrote. After a decade of neutrality, Roosevelt knew that the change to Allied support must be gradual, given the support for isolationism in the country. 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. Large quantities of undelivered goods were in Britain or in transit when Lend-Lease terminated on September 2, 1945. 'We Would Have Lost': Did U.S. Lend-Lease Aid Tip The Balance In Soviet In a secret protocol of this pact, the Germans and the Soviets agreed that Poland should be divided between them, with the western third of the country going to Germany and the eastern two-thirds being taken over by the U.S.S.R. Popular Questions What was the cause of World War II? Mackenzie, Hector. Allen (1946) p 252. [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. Left to their own devices, Stalin and his commanders might have taken twelve to eighteen months longer to finish off the Wehrmacht; the ultimate result would probably have been the same, except that Soviet soldiers could have waded at France's Atlantic beaches. 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. How important was Lend-Lease for the Soviet war effort? [38] With the outbreak of war these plants switched from civilian to military production and locomotive production ended virtually overnight. During the war the USSR provided an unknown number of shipments of rare minerals to the US Treasury as a form of cashless repayment of Lend-Lease. On April 28th, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act ( S.3522 ), which has now gone to President Joe Biden's desk for signature.. The Allies and the Role of Lend-Lease in WWII: The Russian View The Soviet Northern Fleet was also a major and early recipient of British Hurricanes, receiving those flown by No. "[10] As the President himself put it, "There can be no reasoning with incendiary bombs."[11]. Supply volumes and the significance of lend-lease. 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. The invasion had cost the USSR a huge amount of its agricultural base; during the initial Axis offensive of 194142, the total sown area of the USSR fell by 41.9% and the number of collective and state farms by 40%. Exmo. . Trucks such as the Dodge '"`UNIQ--templatestyles-0000003F-QINU`"'34-ton and Studebaker 2+12-ton were easily the best trucks available in their class on either side on the Eastern Front. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war.". [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. They Say He Burned Down the Reichstag. Source: "The Soviet Union: The Defeated Victor" pp. 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. [36] The USSR was very dependent on rail transport and starting during the latter half of the 1920s[37] but accelerating during the 1930s (The Great Depression), hundreds of foreign industrial giants such as Ford were commissioned to construct modern dual-purpose factories in the USSR, 16 alone within a week of May 31, 1929. 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. 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. 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. [citation needed]. Pro lend-lease ! # On September 2, 1945, with the signing of The Soviet government at first offered to pay $170 million. Lend-Lease also sent aviation fuel equivalent to 57 percent of what the Soviet Union itself produced. Together with other recently published sources, including the wartime diaries of N. I. Biriukov, a Red Army officer responsible from August 1941 on for the distribution of recently acquired tanks to the front lines, this newly available evidence paints a very different picture from the received wisdom. Negotiations dragged on intermittently for 25 years. The Soviet authorities were well aware of this dependency on Lend-Lease. Pro lend-lease !<br><br>#<br><br>On September 2, 1945, with the signing of the act of surrender of militaristic Japan, the Second World War was completed, and on September 20, 1945, all Lend-Lease supplies to the USSR were stopped. From: 30 Military Mission. "Western Aid for the Soviet Union During World. [citation needed] The USSR had only a very small number of heavy bombers in comparison. In April, this policy was extended to China,[20] and in October to the Soviet Union. 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. Ukraine is in the process of joining the European Union and has submitted an application for NATO membership. A total of 699 Lend-Lease aircraft had been delivered to Archangel by the time the Arctic convoys switched to Murmansk in December 1941. Lend-Lease assistance to the USSR. It was a decisive step away from non-interventionist policy and toward open support for the Allies. The United States did not provide them to the USSR when requested. Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. Soviet industry in World War II - Wikipedia The railroads would have periodically come to a halt. How important was Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union? Any mention of the role that Western assistance played in the Soviet war effort was strictly off-limits. Rather, Lend-Lease was designed to serve America's interest in defeating Nazi Germany without entering the war until the American military and public was prepared to fight. [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. Even after the United States forces in Europe and the Pacific began to attain full strength during 19431944, Lend-Lease continued. Under these circumstances even small quantities of aid took on far greater significance. While I was in training, my motivation was to get these wings and I wear them today proudly, the airman recalled in 2015. Check out A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn on Amazon https://amzn.to/3lS8oVMLike & Subscribe for Daily US H. The 19th and Early 20th Century History. In practice, very little equipment was in usable shape for peacetime uses. Lend-Lease: Western Aid for the Soviet UnionPart of Eastern Front Fortnight (4) on WW2TVWith Denis HavlatDuring WWII the Soviet Union received large amounts . 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. This was the first big war in which whole formations were routinely motorized; soldiers were supported with large numbers of all kinds of vehicles. 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. 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. How important was the Lend Lease Act for the Soviet Union - Quora Underestimation of lend lease to the Soviet Union during WW2 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. 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. 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. re: In hindsight was it a mistake for the US to ally with the Soviet Union during WW2. Our Fortresses and Liberators take off from huge air bases built, equipped and serviced under reverse lend-lease at a cost to them of hundreds of millions of dollars. President Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease bill into law on March 11, 1941. 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]. ", 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.". Lend-Lease Act - Conservapedia James Phinney Baxter III (Official Historian of the Office of Scientific Research and Development), Wolfgang Schumann (et al. In terms of its relationship with the Soviet Union, lend-lease served as a powerful tool for demonstrating the benefits of the . (German Language). "It was not just some piece of scrap metal. 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. And they would have been perpetually hungry without American canned meat and fats. About 15 percent of the aircraft of the 6th Fighter Air Corps defending Moscow were Tomahawks or Hurricanes. Ordnance goods (ammunition, artillery shells, mines, assorted explosives) provided amounted to 53 percent of total domestic consumption. 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. How important was lend lease to Soviet Union? 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." 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. [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). By the end of the war, the United States had extended over $49 billion in Lend-Lease aid to nearly forty nations. During World War II, the Soviet Union received almost 15,000 U.S.-built aircraft under the lend-lease program. [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. 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]. 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. 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. For European Recovery (June 23, 1997) - Library of Congress - Loc.gov The tanks reached the front lines with extraordinary speed. The distribution of loans was 90% to the UK, 5% to Australia, 1% to New Zealand, 3% to India, and zero to Canada. 1. Subscribe to our HistoryNet Now! U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Lend-Lease Act on March 11, 1941. The program started 3 months after the German invasion of USSR in June, 1941. 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. A map of lend-lease shipments from the United States to the U.S.S.R. from 1941-45. During the bitter fighting of the winter of 19411942, British aid made a crucial difference. 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. [70][71], Significant numbers of British Churchill, Matilda and Valentine tanks were shipped to the USSR.[72]. This was agreed upon before the signing of the first protocol on October 1, 1941, and extension of credit. The U.S. government never published detailed reports on what and how much was sent under the Lend-Lease program to the USSR. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1982, Bd. Member since Oct 2007. 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. By the end of 1941, the lend-lease policy. ", In 1963, KGB monitoring recorded Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov saying: "People say that the allies didn't help us.