how important was lend lease to the soviet union

Mackenzie, Hector. During early February 1941, a Gallup poll revealed that 54% of Americans were in favor of giving aid to the British without qualifications of Lend-Lease. [1] There was no repayment required. Subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter with top stories from master historians. Most went to Britain, but the Soviet Union received more than $11 billion. The tanks reached the front lines with extraordinary speed. Lend-Lease, formally the Lend-Lease Act and introduced as An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States (Pub. The Soviet Union got arms, ammunition, aircraft, and industrial equipment for its army. [69] Lend-Lease tanks constituted 30 to 40 percent of heavy and medium tank strength before Moscow at the beginning of December 1941. 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. Lend-Lease aid did not arrive in sufficient quantities to make the difference between defeat and victory in 19411942; that achievement must be attributed solely to the Soviet people and to the iron nerve of Stalin, Zhukov, Shaposhnikov, Vasilevsky, and their subordinates. On May 11, 1947, 27 people were rescued, having spent nearly three weeks in the icebound wreck. From 1941 to 1945, total lend-lease aid to the Soviet Union accounted for only 5% of the Soviet GDP in total. [53] Soviet Ambassador Maxim Litvinov significantly contributed to the Lend-Lease agreement of 1941. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1982, Bd. Lend-Lease aircraft deliveries were also of significance during the Battle of Moscow. An estimated 25 million Soviet citizens perished in the titanic conflict with Nazi Germany between June 1941 and May 1945. . The country's agriculture was in a difficult situation. 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. Actual military production was achieved by sacrificing the civilian economy for short-term gain (and likely by burning up pre-existing stockpiles of raw materials). Such assessments, however, are contradicted by the opinions of Soviet war participants. 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. Washington. 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). Roosevelt made sure that Lend-Lease policies were supportive of his foreign policy goals by putting his top aide Harry Hopkins in effective control of the program. The distribution of loans was 90% to the UK, 5% to Australia, 1% to New Zealand, 3% to India, and zero to Canada. the president asked at a press conference. 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. First, I would like to tell about some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were "discussing freely" among ourselves. 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. 19329 posts. 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. 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. Lend-Lease assistance to the USSR. "I knew that its place was in a museum," Vyacheslav Filippov, a colonel in the Russian Air Force reserve who has written extensively about the Lend-Lease program's Siberian connection, told RFE/RL at the time. U.S. Citizens with emergencies, please call +(7) (495) 728-5577, Outside of Office Hours, contact: +7 (495) 728-5000. 151 Wing in Operation Benedict, to provide air defence of the port and to train Soviet pilots. In 1944, Britain transferred several of the US-made destroyers to the USSR. 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. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. The Lend-Lease program also provided more than 35,000 radio sets and 32,000 motorcycles. [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). In 1941, the threat of World War II drove passage of the Lend-Lease Act repealing key provisions of the Neutrality Acts. 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. Langer, William L. and S. Everett Gleason. Matilda II in Soviet Service - Tank Encyclopedia 3, S. 468. [38] With the outbreak of war these plants switched from civilian to military production and locomotive production ended virtually overnight. 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Under Lend-Lease, the United States provided more than one-third of all the explosives used by the Soviet Union during the war. Yes, in 1942 Lend-Lease was of course important for Soviet Russia. 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. 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. 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. The others were never found. "Western Aid for the Soviet Union During World. The munitions totaled 308m (not including naval munitions supplied), the food and raw materials totaled 120m in 1946 index. 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. 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. How much Soviet equipment was Lend-Lease? [24], A total of $50.1billion (equivalent to $606billion in 2021)[26] was involved, or 17% of the total war expenditures of the U.S.[2] Most, $31.4billion ($380billion) went to Britain and its empire. The first of these units to have seen action seems to have been the 138th Independent Tank Battalion (with twenty-one British tanks), which was involved in stemming the advance of German units in the region of the Volga Reservoir to the north of Moscow in late November. 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. [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. The American Lend-Lease program was signed into law in March 1941. WWII program to provide U.S. allies with free armaments, This article is about the World War II program. 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. 'We would have lost': Did U.S. lend-lease aid tip the balance in Soviet ): Deutschland im Zweiten Weltkrieg. 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. [43] Lend-Lease also supplied significant amounts of weapons and ammunition. LEND LEASE. The Senate passed it by a vote of 63 to 1. More than 20,000 Katyusha mobile multiple-rocket launchers were mounted on the chassis of American Studebaker trucks. 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. How important was lend lease to Soviet Union? [33], The program was gradually terminated after V-E Day. Perhaps most directly, without Lend-Lease trucks, rail engines, and railroad cars, every Soviet offensive would have stalled at an earlier stage, outrunning its logistical tail in a matter of days. Allen (1946) p 252. How important was the Lend-Lease to the Soviet war effort? This Douglas is the only Lend-Lease aircraft that remains in Russia.". By the end of 1941, the lend-lease policy. ", "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? From 1941 and onwards, the RKKA used extensive numbers . In accordance with the Anglo-Soviet Military Supplies Agreement of June 27, 1942, military aid sent from Britain to the Soviet Union during the war was entirely free of charge. 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. 'We Would Have Lost': Did U.S. Lend-Lease Aid Tip The Balance In Soviet At a time when the majority of Americans opposed direct participation in the war, Lend-Lease represented a vital U.S. contribution to the fight against Nazi Germany. 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? [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. Evolucin de los . 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. It provided Britain and the Soviet Union with limited war materiel beginning in October that year. On March 12, 1943, the plane was given to the Soviet Air Force in Fairbanks, Alaska, and given the registration USSR-N238. In hindsight was it a mistake for the US to ally with the Soviet Union Lend-Lease was the most visible sign of wartime cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union. [12] The aim of the British Technical and Scientific Mission was to obtain the industrial resources to exploit the military potential of the research and development work completed by the UK up to the beginning of World War II, but that Britain itself could not exploit due to the immediate requirements of war-related production. $31 billion went to Britain, $11 billion to the Soviet Union, $3 billion to France, and $1.6 billion to China. 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. 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. 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. When Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, we Mongols stood with our northern neighbor as best we could. It needed all the available resources to pressure Germany on the lands far from Moscow, where Germany was getting a degree of home advantage. "Transatlantic Generosity: Canada's 'Billion Dollar Gift' to the United Kingdom in the Second World War.". How Much of What Goods Have We Sent to Which Allies? | AHA - Historians 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. Secret Cipher Telegram. Large quantities of undelivered goods were in Britain or in transit when Lend-Lease terminated on September 2, 1945. Once again, raw figures do not tell the whole story. 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. [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. Lend-Lease also sent aviation fuel equivalent to 57 percent of what the Soviet Union itself produced. "[50] To which Senator Robert Taft (R-Ohio), responded: "Lending war equipment is a good deal like lending chewing gumyou certainly don't want the same gum back. [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. 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. [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. Such machines were of higher quality than analogues produced in the Soviet Union, which made a significant contribution to boosting Soviet industrial production. Exmo. 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. For comparison, a total of 22 million tons landed in Europe to supply American forces from January 1942 to May 1945. This page was last edited on 23 February 2023, at 02:14. As such, Ladd Field came to represent not only a political and economic exchange, but a cultural one as well. When I listened to his remarks, I was fully in agreement with him, and today I am even more so. Although it was not entirely reasonable that Canada should pay for any construction that the Canadian Government considered unnecessary or that did not conform to Canadian requirements, nevertheless considerations of self-respect and national sovereignty led the Canadian Government to suggest a new financial agreement. 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. Marshall Plan Countries. [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. Lend-Lease effectively ended the United States' pretense of neutrality which had been enshrined in the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s. United States Army in World War II, Statistics: Lend-Lease World, U.S. Army in WW II, Statistics: Lend-Lease Chief of Military History, 15 Dec 1952, Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, Rape during the Soviet occupation of Poland, United States aircraft production during World War II, Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Military history of the United States during World War II, Springwood birthplace, home, and gravesite, Little White House, Warm Springs, Georgia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lend-Lease&oldid=1141045045, United States federal commerce legislation, United States foreign relations legislation, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from January 2022, Articles with unsourced statements from November 2020, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, "Pre Lend-lease" June 22, 1941, to September 30, 1941 (paid for in. Robert Coalson is a senior correspondent for RFE/RLwho covers Russia, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe. Lend-Lease Helped Win World War II, But Not On The Eastern Front The evidence is here. How important was the Lend Lease Act to the Soviet Union? The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. 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. The program sent nearly 2,000 locomotives and innumerable boxcars to the Soviet Union. Much of the logistical assistance of the Soviet military was provided by hundreds of thousands of U.S.-made trucks and by 1945, nearly a third of the truck strength of the Red Army was U.S.-built. [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. During World War II, the Soviet Union received almost 15,000 U.S.-built aircraft under the lend-lease program. Milestones: 1937-1945 - Office of the Historian

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