How important was lend lease to Soviet Union? https://www.historynet.com/did-russia-really-go-it-alone-how-lend-lease-helped-the-soviets-defeat-the-germans/, Jerrie Mock: Record-Breaking American Female Pilot, Few Red Tails Remain: Tuskegee Airman Dies at 96. 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. "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. The cooperation that was built up with Canada during the war was an amalgam compounded of diverse elements of which the air and land routes to Alaska, the Canol project, and the CRYSTAL and CRIMSON activities were the most costly in point of effort and funds expended. . Payment was to be stretched out over 50 annual payments, starting in 1951 and with five years of deferred payments, at 2% interest. Championed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Lend-Lease Act authorized the transfer . Under Lend-Lease, the U.S. shipped more than $50 billion in supplies equivalent to more than $700 billion today. Subscribe to our HistoryNet Now! Britain wished to retain some of this equipment in the immediate post-war period. Lend-Lease was the most visible sign of wartime cooperation between the United States and 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. L.7711, H.R. And it is a salient point that over 80% of the aid was received after June 1942, when the tide of the war had already turned against the Germans on the Eastern Front. Mentions of Lend-Lease in memoirs were always accompanied by disparagement of the quality of the weapons supplied, with American and British tanks and planes invariably portrayed as vastly inferior to comparable Soviet models. 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. The U.S. received $2 million in reverse Lend-Lease from the USSR. 4, 48. New Orleans. 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. Canada would eventually produce 1,420 Valentines, almost exclusively for delivery to the Soviet Union. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty 2023 RFE/RL, Inc. All Rights Reserved. It is our living history. [15] Though these may be considered the most significant, many other items were also transported, including designs for rockets, superchargers, gyroscopic gunsights, submarine detection devices, self-sealing fuel tanks and plastic explosives. 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. 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. Given the disruption to Soviet production and Red Army losses, the Soviet Union was understandably eager to put British armor into action as soon as possible. Stalin needed trucks and was provided with Studebaker trucks on a massive scale. 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. (1942). re: In hindsight was it a mistake for the US to ally with the Soviet Union during WW2. The captain, two crew members, and six passengers had left earlier in an ill-fated effort to get help. This inevitably produced shortages of related products that are required for industrial or logistical uses, particularly unarmored vehicles. An estimated 25 million Soviet citizens perished in the titanic conflict with Nazi Germany between June 1941 and May 1945. on the Soviet war effort during the first year of the war was in the far. initially requested by the Soviet Union from Britain was naval, in the. Lend Lease A transformative example that demonstrated America's willingness and ability to help its allies in times of war was the aid provision America provided to Britain and the Soviet Union during World War II. Robert Coalson is a senior correspondent for RFE/RLwho covers Russia, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe. [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. A steady stream of British-made tanks continued to flow into the Red Army through the spring and summer of 1942. The Red Army was a force to be reckoned with and was willing to sustain unlimited casualties. The exploits of the British-equipped 136th Independent Tank Battalion are perhaps the most widely noted in the archives. . External links to other Internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views or privacy policies contained therein. 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%. ", "How America Helped Build the Soviet Machine | American Heritage", "Ford Motor Company signs agreement with Soviet Union", "Russian historian: Importance of Lend-Lease cannot be overestimated", "Russia and Serbia, A Century of Progress in Rail Transport", "How Much of What Goods Have We Sent to Which Allies? 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. Subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter with top stories from master historians. In spring 1944, the House passed a bill to renew the Lend-Lease program by a vote of 334 to 21. On March 12, 1943, the plane was given to the Soviet Air Force in Fairbanks, Alaska, and given the registration USSR-N238. 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. By October, German troops were poised outside both Leningrad and Moscow. You act like that would have been easy. Within months, the Lend-Lease program was expanded to include China and the Soviet Union. [3] In terms of administration, the president established the Office of Lend-Lease Administration during 1941, headed by steel executive Edward R. Washington. Check out A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn on Amazon https://amzn.to/3lS8oVMLike & Subscribe for Daily US H. 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 In th. [53] Soviet Ambassador Maxim Litvinov significantly contributed to the Lend-Lease agreement of 1941. And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own.". Almost all European nations outside the Soviet bloc were members of the plan from the beginning. So the Soviets were charged 10 cents on the dollar of actual cost. Just 446 locomotives were produced during the war,[39] with only 92 of those being built between 1942 and 1945. He suggested amending the act to allow warring nations to purchase military goods, arms and munitions if they paid cash and bore the risks of transporting the goods on non-American ships, a policy that would favor Britain and France. 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. The total of defense materials and services that Canada received through lend-lease channels amounted in value to approximately $419,500,000. In 1941, the threat of World War II drove passage of the Lend-Lease Act repealing key provisions of the Neutrality Acts. The terms of the agreement provided that the materiel was to be used until returned or destroyed. 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. 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. And Soviet forces would have been much more poorly coordinated with a constant lack of radio equipment. The Neutrality Acts of 1935, 1936, and 1937 intended to keep the United States out of war, by making it illegal for Americans to sell or transport arms, or other war materials to warring nationsneither to aggressors, nor to defenders. 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. 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. I don't want $15I want my garden hose back after the fire is over. Answer (1 of 14): Lend Lease was pretty much strategic charity. Recd 11/12/41. Most went to Britain, but the Soviet Union received more than $11 billion. This Douglas is the only Lend-Lease aircraft that remains in Russia.". Mystery surrounds the infamous burning of the Reichstag in 1933. 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. By spring and summer of 1942 the Hurricane had clearly become the principal fighter aircraft of the Northern Fleets air regiments; in all, 83 out of its 109 fighters were of foreign origin.

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