how important was lend lease to the soviet union

It was a decisive step away from non-interventionist policy and toward open support for the Allies. A map of lend-lease shipments from the United States to the U.S.S.R. from 1941-45. American contributions of the time were far fewer. 2009. pp. 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. Member since Oct 2007. aid from Britain can be argued to have had the most significant impact. In addition, almost half of all the rails used by the Soviet Union during the war came through Lend-Lease. 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. In April, this policy was extended to China,[20] and in October to the Soviet Union. Lend-Lease: Western Aid for the Soviet UnionPart of Eastern Front Fortnight (4) on WW2TVWith Denis HavlatDuring WWII the Soviet Union received large amounts . As early as October 12, 1941, the Soviet 126th Fighter Air Regiment was operating with Tomahawks bought from the United States by Britain. 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. 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. [73][74], Reverse Lend-Lease was the supply of equipment and services to the United States. 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. 31, enacted March 11, 1941), was a policy under which the United States supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, France, China, and other Allied nations with food, oil, and materiel between 1941 and 1945. 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." Roosevelt's top foreign policy advisor Harry Hopkins had effective control over Lend-Lease, making sure it was in alignment with Roosevelt's foreign policy goals.[3]. [43] Lend-Lease also supplied significant amounts of weapons and ammunition. Interested in U.S. History? ", In 1963, KGB monitoring recorded Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov saying: "People say that the allies didn't help us. The supplies dispersed under the Lend-Lease Act ranged from tanks, aircraft, ships, weapons and road building supplies to clothing, chemicals and food. Under Lend-Lease, the United States provided more than one-third of all the explosives used by the Soviet Union during the war. When I listened to his remarks, I was fully in agreement with him, and today I am even more so. This Douglas is the only Lend-Lease aircraft that remains in Russia.". After the German assault on Russia in June 1941, the defenders got aid with this system through war material, food, fuel and other important raw materials. . How much Soviet equipment was Lend-Lease? 151 Wing in Operation Benedict, to provide air defence of the port and to train Soviet pilots. [36] Most belligerent powers severely decreased production of non-essentials, concentrating on producing weapons. Nikolay Ryzhkov & Georgy Kumanev Food and other strategic deliveries to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease Act, 19411945, pp. 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 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. [81], While repayment of the interest-free loans was required after the end of the war under the act, in practice the U.S. did not expect to be repaid by the USSR after the war. 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.. Supply volumes and the significance of lend-lease. The United States is a country of machines. Marshall Plan Countries. 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. ", In practice, very little was returned except for a few unarmed transport ships. More than 20,000 Katyusha mobile multiple-rocket launchers were mounted on the chassis of American Studebaker trucks. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1982, Bd. 1415 FDR Library", "Anglo-American Mutual Aid Agreement, February 28, 1942", "The Hyde Park Declaration 1941: Origins and Significance", "Consumer Price Index, annual average, not seasonally adjusted", "Consumer Price Index by product group, monthly, percentage change, not seasonally adjusted, Canada, provinces, Whitehorse, Yellowknife and Iqaluit", "America Reports On Aid To Allies etc. British Matilda tanks are loaded onto a ship for transportation to the U.S.S.R. as part of the Lend-Lease program. 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. Within months, the Lend-Lease program was expanded to include China and the Soviet Union. Initially, this proposal failed, but after Germany invaded Poland in September, Congress passed the Neutrality Act of 1939 ending the munitions embargo on a "cash and carry" basis. billion (about $ billion in prices ) were sent to several dozen recipient countries, including the main ones: [38] With the outbreak of war these plants switched from civilian to military production and locomotive production ended virtually overnight. [56] Nevertheless, some 8,244,000 tons of goods went by this route, 50% of the total. The Soviets have long insisted that Lend-Lease aid made little difference. Some 3,964,000 tons of goods were shipped by the Arctic route; 7% was lost, while 93% arrived safely. Deane, John R. 1947. Payment was to be stretched out over 50 annual payments, starting in 1951 and with five years of deferred payments, at 2% interest. 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. 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. 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. "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. So the Soviets were charged 10 cents on the dollar of actual cost. Such machines were of higher quality than analogues produced in the Soviet Union, which made a significant contribution to boosting Soviet industrial production. 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? . The U.S. received $2 million in reverse Lend-Lease from the USSR. 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. Under conditions of much of European Russia being occupied by the Axis, attrition was a losing prospect for the USSR; without Allied aid they might very well have collapsed as a military power some time in 1943. 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. Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union officially ended in September 1945. 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. Known today as Lend-Lease. The dispute remained unresolved until 1972, when the U.S. accepted an offer from the USSR to repay $722 million linked to grain shipments from the U.S., representing 25% of the initial debt with inflation taken into account, with the remainder being written off. Championed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Lend-Lease Act authorized the transfer . [76] Australia and New Zealand supplied the bulk of foodstuffs to United States forces in the South Pacific. Allen (1946) p 252. The body of the captain, Maksim Tyurikov, was found by local hunters about 120 kilometers from the wreck in 1953. Crowley, Leo T. "Lend-Lease". 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. Any mention of the role that Western assistance played in the Soviet war effort was strictly off-limits. 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.

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how important was lend lease to the soviet union