lend-lease

Following the fall of France, Churchill bombarded his friend and contemporary Franklin D. Roosevelt with increasingly desperate requests for help. Though sympathetic, with an election looming the latter knew that his critics would excoriate any action that might lead to US involvement in another European war. The fear of the British fleet falling into German hands galvanized him into more concrete measures to support Britain. In July 1940, arguing that it was in the national interest, he agreed to swap 50 obsolete destroyers for 99-year leases on a number of British bases in the western Atlantic. Although in retrospect this was indeed the thin end of the wedge his opponents denounced, he argued that it enhanced US national security, and that supporting Britain would help keep America out of the war. After winning the November 1940 election, and after consultations with Churchill by his personal envoy, Harry L. Hopkins, he introduced a ‘Lend-lease’ Bill into Congress in January 1941 empowering him to sell, transfer, exchange, lease, or lend war supplies to any nation whose defence was deemed vital to US security. Though bitterly contested by isolationists, the bill became law in March 1941, and ten US Coastguard cutters were transferred to the Royal Navy. In July, when American troops relieved the British garrison in Iceland, US destroyers and aircraft began to escort convoys to and from the island, and by September the US Navy was escorting convoys in the western Atlantic, leading to hoped-for clashes with U-boats. After the launching of operation BARBAROSSA, he extended material aid to the USSR as well, after which opposition from the US left was muted. The Lend-Lease Act must be seen in the context of Roosevelt's very delicate balancing act to reverse hostile US public opinion and bring it around to active support for Britain, a process that was far from complete when Pearl Harbor and Hitler's declaration of war obviated the need for further subtlety.

Bibliography

• Edmonds, Robin, The Big Three (London, 1991).
• Lash, Joseph P., Roosevelt and Churchill 1939-1941 (London, 1977)

— Peter Caddick-Adams

For more information on lend-lease, visit Britannica.com.

Lend-Lease, a program of providing U.S. military and economic assistance to nations fighting the Axis powers in World War II. After the fall of France in June 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt worried that if Great Britain were defeated by Nazi Germany, the United States would stand virtually alone against the fascist powers. Isolationist sentiment and unpreparedness for war discouraged American entry into the conflict directly, while U.S. law (the Johnson Debt-Default Act of 1934) required nations at war to pay cash for American military supplies. When Prime Minister Winston Churchill warned Roosevelt that Britain would not survive without further military assistance but was running out of funds, Roosevelt developed the idea of "lending" the British the necessary supplies. On 17 December 1940 he explained the principle to newsmen using the famous analogy of lending one's garden hose to a neighbor whose house is on fire, before the fire should spread. On 29 December he sought to build public support by arguing in a national radio address that America should become "the great arsenal of democracy." Congress debated the Lend-Lease Act, named House Resolution 1776 to lend it a patriotic aura, and passed the measure on 11 March 1941.

The Lend-Lease Act greatly increased executive power by authorizing the president to "sell, transfer title to, or otherwise dispose of" military supplies to countries selected by the president. Roosevelt had sought such broad language in order to be able to extend the program to the Soviet Union, which his cabinet expected would soon be attacked by Germany. Repayment was to be in kind or in the form of any "indirect benefit" to the United States. By eliminating the need for cash payments, Lend-Lease made it possible to deliver large quantities of vital matériel for the fight against the Axis powers while avoiding the kind of recriminations over unpaid war debts that lingered after World War I.

Under the Lend-Lease program, from 1941 to 1945 the United States provided approximately $50 billion in military equipment, raw materials, and other goods to thirty-eight countries. About $30 billion of the total went to Britain, with most of the remainder delivered to the Soviet Union, China, and France. The program was administered by top Roosevelt aide Harry L. Hopkins until October 1941, then formalized under the Office of Lend-Lease Administration under Edward R. Stettinius. In September 1943, Lend-Lease was placed under the Foreign Economic Administration, headed by Leo T. Crowley. The program was terminated by President Harry S. Truman in August 1945 at the end of the war, an action resented by Soviet leaders, who believed the cutoff in aid was intended to gain diplomatic concessions.

The provision of large quantities of aid to Great Britain accelerated American involvement in the conflict with Germany because it constituted a declaration of economic warfare against Germany, and it led to the organization of naval convoys to deliver the aid, convoys that came into direct confrontation with German submarines. Whether this was Roosevelt's secret intention is a subject of debate. While Churchill gratefully described Lend-Lease as "the most unsordid act in the history of any nation," the program clearly served American interests by allowing other countries to do the actual fighting against the Axis while the United States improved its own military readiness.

The Lend-Lease program substantially bolstered the military efforts of both Britain and the Soviet Union, although in the Soviet case, the overall importance of Lend-Lease has been disputed. Soviet histories tend to play down the value of the American contribution, while some American histories have argued that the Soviet Union would have been defeated without Lend-Lease aid (even though the threat of collapse was greatest in 1941–1942, before the bulk of Lend-Lease aid arrived). Whether or not American assistance was indispensable to Soviet survival and success on the battlefield, it does seem to have improved Soviet offensive capabilities against the German military after 1942.

The United States negotiated on a bilateral basis with individual countries to determine the form of repayment, if any, for Lend-Lease aid. Approximately $10 billion in goods, in kind and in cash, was repaid to the United States, chiefly by Great Britain. The Roosevelt and Truman administrations considered the fighting carried out by their allies to have been sufficient "indirect" repayment for the bulk of the assistance, and the cost of other aid was simply written off. Lend-Lease assistance was provided to some countries for political ends, as in the case of those Latin American nations that were not directly involved in the war effort but received limited quantities of military equipment as an inducement to side with the Allies. With its conversion of loans to grants and the use of aid for diplomatic or political purposes, Lend-Lease helped create a precedent for U.S. foreign aid programs in the postwar era.

Bibliography

Dobson, Alan P. U.S. Wartime Aid to Britain, 1940–1946. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986.

Kimball, Warren F. The Most Unsordid Act: Lend-Lease, 1939– 1941. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969.

Van Tuyll, Hubert P. Feeding the Bear: American Aid to the Soviet Union, 1941–1945. New York: Greenwood Press, 1989.

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. According to the system, the materials destroyed, lost, or consumed during the war should not be subject to payment after the war. The materials that were not used during the war and that were suitable for civilian consumption should be paid in full or in part, while weapons and war materials could be demanded back. After the United States entered the war, the concept of lend lease, originally a system of unidirectional U.S. aid, was transformed into a system of mutual aid, which involved pooling the resources of the countries in the anti-Hitler coalition (known as the concept of "pool"). Initially authorized for the purpose of aiding Great Britain, in April 1941 the Lend-Lease Act was extended to Greece, Yugoslavia, and China, and, after September 1941, to the Soviet Union. By September, 20, 1945, the date of cancellation of the Lend-Lease Act, American aid had been received by nearly forty countries.

During World War II, the U.S. spent a total of $49.1 billion on the Lend-Lease Act. This included $13.8 billion in aid to Great Britain and $9.5 billion to the USSR. Repayment in kind - called "reverse lend-lease" - was estimated at $7.8 billion, of which $2.2 million was the contribution of the USSR in the form of a discount for transport services.

The Soviet Union received aid on lend-lease principles not only from the United States, but also from the states of the British Commonwealth, primarily Great Britain and Canada. Economic relations between them were adjusted by mutual aid agreements and legalized by special Allies' protocols, renewable annually. The First Protocol was signed in Moscow on October, 1, 1941; the second in Washington (October 6, 1942); the third in London (September 1, 1943); and the fourth in Ottawa (April, 17, 1945). The Fourth Protocol was added by a special agreement between the USSR and the United States called the "Program of October 17, 1944" (or "Milepost"), intended for supplies for use by the Soviet Union in the war against Japan.

On the basis of those documents, the Soviet Union received 18,763 aircraft, 11,567 tanks and self-propelled guns, 7,340 armored vehicles and armored troop-carriers, more than 435,000 trucks and jeeps, 9,641 guns, 2,626 radar, 43,298 radio stations, 548 fighting ships and boats, and 62 cargo ships. The remaining 75 percent of cargoes imported into the USSR consisted of industrial equipment, raw material, and foodstuffs. A significant portion (up to seven percent) of supplies was lost during transportation.

Most of the cargoes sent to the USSR were delivered by three main routes: via Iran, the Far East, and the northern ports Arkhangelsk and Murmansk. The last route was the shortest but also the most dangerous.

After the war the United State cancelled all lend-lease debts except that of the USSR. In 1972 the USSR and the United States signed an agreement that the USSR would pay $722 million of its debt by July 1, 2001.

Bibliography

Beaumont, Joan. (1980). Comrades in Arms: British Aid to Russia, 1941 - 1945. London: Davis-Poynter.

Hall, H. Duncan; Scott, J. D., and Wrigley, C. C. (1956). Studies of Overseas Supply. London: H. M. Stationery Off.

Herring, George C. (1973). Aid to Russia, 1941 - 1946: Strategy, Diplomacy, the Origins of the Cold War. New York: Columbia University Press.

Jones, Robert Huhn. (1969). The Roads to Russia: United States Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Van Tuyll, Hubert P. (1989). Feeding the Bear: American Aid to the Soviet Union, 1941 - 1945. New York: Greenwood Press.

—MIKHAIL SUPRUN