how important was lend lease to the soviet union how important was lend lease to the soviet union

That the Soviet victories of late 1941 were won with Soviet blood and largely with Soviet weapons is beyond dispute. use.' On the negative side, however, it must be recorded that actual ", 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.". 151 Wing of the RAF, which operated briefly from Soviet airfields near Murmansk. More than 20,000 Katyusha mobile multiple-rocket launchers were mounted on the chassis of American Studebaker trucks. re: In hindsight was it a mistake for the US to ally with the Soviet Union during WW2. It needed all the available resources to pressure Germany on the lands far from Moscow, where Germany was getting a degree of home advantage. [67][68] The British tanks first saw action with the 138 Independent Tank Battalion in the Volga Reservoir on November 20, 1941. Heavy bombers had not been mentioned in previous protocols. 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 supplies dispersed under the Lend-Lease Act ranged from tanks, aircraft, ships, weapons and road building supplies to clothing, chemicals and food. [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. 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. Recd 11/12/41. The American Lend-Lease program was signed into law in March 1941. By July 1942 the Red Army had 13,500 tanks in service, with more than 16 percent of those imported, and more than half of those British. 'We Would Have Lost': Did U.S. Lend-Lease Aid Tip The Balance In Soviet Fight Against Nazi Germany? In practice, most equipment was destroyed, although some hardware (such as ships) was returned after the war. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. 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. How important was the Lend-Lease to the Soviet war effort? In fact, for a brief period during December 1941, the relative importance of British aid increased well beyond levels planned by the Allies as a result of American reaction to the outbreak of war with Japan; some American equipment destined for the Soviet Union was actually unloaded from merchant vessels and provided to American forces instead. [65], Warsaw 1945: Willys jeep used by the Polish First Army as part of U.S. Lend-Lease program. 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. 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. In time, opinion shifted as increasing numbers of Americans began to consider the advantage of funding the British war against Germany, while staying free of the hostilities themselves. Lend-Lease: How the US Kept the Soviets Afloat in World War II 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. 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. 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. 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. [49], Roosevelt, eager to ensure public consent for this controversial plan, explained to the public and the press that his plan was comparable to one neighbor's lending another a garden hose to put out a fire in his home. 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. Lend-Lease: Western Aid for the Soviet Union - YouTube The United States is a country of machines. Campbell, Thomas M. and George C. Herring, eds. 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. 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. 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 handing over of forty imported machine tools to Aviation Factory No. Lend-Lease Act of 1941: Facts, Summary, and Significance 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. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty 2023 RFE/RL, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 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. [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). Lend-Lease aircraft deliveries were also of significance during the Battle of Moscow. It was a decisive step away from non-interventionist policy and toward open support for the Allies. aid from Britain can be argued to have had the most significant impact. 151 Wing in Operation Benedict, to provide air defence of the port and to train Soviet pilots. 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. The United States used lend-lease to induce recipients to the American way of thinking, especially regarding the economy and free-market trade. The Lend-Lease program also provided more than 35,000 radio sets and 32,000 motorcycles. Each method was difficult. The program started 3 months after the German invasion of USSR in June, 1941. [3] In terms of administration, the president established the Office of Lend-Lease Administration during 1941, headed by steel executive Edward R. By the end of 1941 Britain had delivered 466 tanks out of the 750 promised. "Western Aid for the Soviet Union During 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. It is our living history. 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." And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own.". Originally intended to lend arms and material to the. So the Soviets were charged 10 cents on the dollar of actual cost. 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. "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. What percent of Soviet equipment was Lend-Lease? Crowley, Leo T. "Lend Lease" in Walter Yust, ed. Mackenzie, Hector. In May 1942, HMSEdinburgh was sunk while carrying 4.5 tonnes of Soviet gold intended for the U.S. Treasury. 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]. British Lend Lease Aid and the Soviet War Effort, - Scribd 5-6. Only 22% were unequivocally against the President's proposal. 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. From 1941 to 1945, total lend-lease aid to the Soviet Union accounted for only 5% of the Soviet GDP in total. Milestones: 1937-1945 - Office of the Historian In 1941, the threat of World War II drove passage of the Lend-Lease Act repealing key provisions of the Neutrality Acts. The US Supported Soviet Union with Lend-Lease Program - YouTube 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. 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 particular critical aspect of Lend-Lease was the supply of food. Lend-Lease's precise significance to Allied victory in WW2 is debated. Answer (1 of 14): Lend Lease was pretty much strategic charity. During the bitter fighting of the winter of 19411942, British aid made a crucial difference. 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. 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. Extrapolating from available statistics, researchers estimate that British-supplied tanks made up 30 to 40 percent of the entire heavy and medium tank strength of Soviet forces before Moscow at the beginning of December 1941, and certainly made up a significant proportion of tanks available as reinforcements at this critical point in the fighting. This is the official website of the U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Russia. Ladd Field and the Lend-Lease Mission: Defending Alaska in WWII Moscow. [43] Lend-Lease also supplied significant amounts of weapons and ammunition. For European Recovery (June 23, 1997) - Library of Congress - Loc.gov Without Lend-Lease, Russia would not have been able to carry out the Stalingrad counteroffensive and Operation Bagration. 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. Democrats. Under Lend-Lease, the U.S. shipped more than $50 billion in supplies equivalent to more than $700 billion today. . Lend-Lease aid did not save the Soviet Union from defeat during the Battle of Moscow. [55], The Pacific Route opened in August 1941, but was affected by the start of hostilities between Japan and the U.S.; after December 1941, only Soviet ships could be used, and, as Japan and the USSR observed a strict neutrality towards each other, only non-military goods could be transported. The railroads would have periodically come to a halt. "What do I do in such a crisis?" 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. . Matilda II in Soviet Service - Tank Encyclopedia newsletter for the best of the past, delivered every Monday and Thursday. Lend-Lease - Wikipedia On April 23, 1947, this C-37 was forced to make an emergency landing with 36 people on board near the village of Volochanka on the Taimyr Peninsula. Most famously, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin raised a toast to the Lend-Lease program at the November 1943 Tehran conference with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt. On May 11, 1947, 27 people were rescued, having spent nearly three weeks in the icebound wreck. 150 in July 1942, for example, was the critical factor in enabling the factory to reach projected capacity within two months. 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. [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". 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. As such, Ladd Field came to represent not only a political and economic exchange, but a cultural one as well. The Soviet government at first offered to pay $170 million. About $11 billion in war matriel was sent to the Soviet Union under that 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. 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. 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 . After a decade of neutrality, Roosevelt knew that the change to Allied support must be gradual, given the support for isolationism in the country. A total of 699 Lend-Lease aircraft had been delivered to Archangel by the time the Arctic convoys switched to Murmansk in December 1941. 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. [8] The Two-Ocean Navy Act of July 1940 set in motion a rapid expansion of the United States Navy. On September 20, 1945, all Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union was terminated. 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. Underestimation of lend lease to the Soviet Union during WW2 The sole modern heavy bomber the USSR had was the Petlyakov Pe-8, and it only had 27 of them at the start of the war, with fewer than 100 produced until 1945. The Persian Corridor was the longest route, and was not fully operational until mid-1942. How important was Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union? Few Americans objected to Soviet aid until 1943. The Soviets have long insisted that Lend-Lease aid made little difference. [70][71], Significant numbers of British Churchill, Matilda and Valentine tanks were shipped to the USSR.[72]. In addition, much of the $31 billion worth of aid sent to the United Kingdom was also passed on to the Soviet Union via convoys through the Barents Sea to Murmansk. 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 addition, almost half of all the rails used by the Soviet Union during the war came through Lend-Lease. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1982, Bd. Much of the meaning of Lend-Lease aid can be better understood when considering the innovative nature of World War II, as well as the economic distortions caused by the war. 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. Lend-Lease Act: Definition, Ukraine & World War II - HISTORY Roosevelt's Soviet Protocol Committee was dominated by Harry Hopkins and General John York, who were totally sympathetic to the provision of "unconditional aid". Roosevelt approved $1billion in Lend-Lease aid to Britain at the end of October 1941. 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." . Under these circumstances even small quantities of aid took on far greater significance. As one Roosevelt biographer has characterized it: "If there was no practical alternative, there was certainly no moral one either. The aid was given for free on the basis that such help was essential for the defense of the United States. How important was the Lend Lease Act for the Soviet Union - Quora Yauza. [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. [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. When the war ended, almost 33 percent of all the Red Army's vehicles had been provided through Lend-Lease. The Soviet air force received 18,200 aircraft, which amounted to about 30 percent of Soviet wartime fighter and bomber production (mid 194145). 5,218 tanks (including 1,380 Valentines from Canada), 323 machinery trucks (mobile vehicle workshops equipped with generators and all the welding and power tools required to perform heavy servicing), 1.15bn ($1.55bn) worth of aircraft engines, Allen, R. G. D. "Mutual Aid Between the U.S. and The British Empire, 1941-45". Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war.". About half of these were delivered by sea via the North Atlantic or were flown across the South Atlantic Ocean to the USSR via North Africa. 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. "[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 practice, very little was returned except for a few unarmed transport ships. How important was the Lend-Lease to the Soviet war effort? [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. 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. Within months, the Lend-Lease program was expanded to include China and the Soviet Union. [citation needed] The USSR had only a very small number of heavy bombers in comparison. Dalton Delan: It's not World War II, but we are dealing with a new Axis . Lend-lease was a system of U.S. assistance to the Allies in World War II.It was based on a bill of March, 11, 1941, that gave the president of the United States the right to sell, transfer into property, lease, and rent various kinds of weapons or materials to those countries whose defense the president deemed vital to the defense of the United States itself. 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.