Lend Lease facts
While investigating facts about Letter To End Lease and Landlord Letter To End Lease With Tenant, I found out little known, but curios details like:
The U.S. spent over $50 billion on the Lend-Lease program, or more than 11% of its total war expenditures.
how was the lend-lease program a significant departure from the policy of neutrality?
The vast majority of American Lend-Lease aid sent to Britain and the Soviet Union were American made goods, but the president allowed a small portion of Canadian made goods to be included.
What lend-lease?
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what did the lend lease act do. Here are 18 of the best facts about Lend Lease Act and Lend Lease Share Price I managed to collect.
what's lend lease act?
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During World War II the USA provided $11 billion to the Soviet Union. In 1943 Stalin said that without American Lend-Lease aid "we would lose this war."
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Other routes the Americans used to get Lend-Lease materials to the Soviet Union went through the Arctic Ocean, the Black Sea, and the Persian Gulf.
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The British repaid their wartime loans decades later, but the Soviets did not.
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In 1942 Winston Churchill mused that Adolf Hitler might be executed in Trafalgar Square using an electric chair borrowed from the United States. 'This man is the mainspring of evil. Instrument — electric chair, for gangsters no doubt available on Lease Lend.'
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Although Japan was at war with the United States after December 7, 1941 and targeted most merchant ships coming and going to the U.S. with its submarines, it was not at war with the Soviet Union until the very end of the war. Because of that, the Japanese often left Soviet transport ships unmolested.
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The Lend-Lease act allowed the United States to give Allied nations any materials to be paid after the war ended.
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About the Lend-Lease program. During WW2, in 1941, America gave the Soviet Union an interest-free credit of $1 billion in the form of materiel supplies and raw materials including a total of 44,000 American jeeps, 375,883 cargo trucks, 8,071 tractors and 12,700 tanks.
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Lend-Lease passed Congress by a vote of 260 to 165. A majority of those opposed to the act were isolationist Republicans.
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The British began giving material aid to the Soviets in 1941.
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Many Lend-Lease materials were flown to Siberia from Alaska.
Why lend-lease?
You can easily fact check why was the lend lease act important by examining the linked well-known sources.
The British Empire and its colonies received more than $31 billion in Lend-Lease materials while the Soviet Union received more than $11 billion.
Reverse Lend-Lease was when the Allies provided the Americans with materials or use of foreign military bases.
Thomas Whitehead, who suggested that the British Government give the USA one of the four copies of the Magna Carta to win support for the Lend-Lease Act. The plan didn't work because the British Government didn't own any of those four copies. - source
American aid to Britain was fairly straightforward, traveling via the North Atlantic. Once in Britain, the British would often forward some of the material to the Soviet Union through the Arctic or the Mediterranean.
As soon as the war ended, the U.S. charged its allies for goods in transit, although often at a 90% reduction in cost.
When was lend lease paid off?
Billy Gawronski, a Polish American kid from NYC's Lower East Side who stowed away on Richard Byrd's South Pole Expedition at the age of 17, and went on to captain Liberty Ships delivering Lend Lease materiel to the USSR during WWII.
