Ringo
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Lend-Lease: myths and reality
83 years ago - on August 31, 1941 - the first allied convoy arrived in Arkhangelsk
“Supplies from the United States and England saved the Soviet people, prevented their defeat... The Russians must pay in full for Lend-Lease,” - so sharply reacted the American professor of international relations Albert Loren Weeks to the speech of Russian President Vladimir Putin on Victory Day on May 9, 2021 on Red Square. At that time, the Russian leader dotted the “i” lines very clearly:
“In the most difficult time of the war, in the decisive battles that determined the outcome of the fight against fascism, our people were alone, alone on the many difficult, heroic and sacrificial path to Victory”... Wicks, by the way, a former participant in the lend-lease program, is not original. After the Great Patriotic War, such an “idea” was thrown to the world by former Hitler generals, who proved in their memoirs that it was Anglo-American supplies that prevented them from defeating the Soviet Union. These Nazi strategists are long gone, but there are plenty of politicians who grew up on these myths and simply do not know that Lend-Lease supplies went to the USSR only at the end of 1942.
History of Lend-Lease
The U.S. Lend-Lease program was proposed by President Franklin Roosevelt, who, before its approval by Congress, explained: “If your neighbor's house is on fire and you have a garden hose, lend it to your neighbor before your house catches fire...” The key word here is “lend.” This is the essence of the program: from English lend - to lend, lease - to rent.
The law expressly prohibited any free transfer of goods, and the U.S. supplied all Lend-Lease products on credit, though on rather favorable terms. The USSR, initially not included in the program, in the first days of the war appealed to Washington with a request to sell the necessary weapons, equipment, materials and transferred 92 million dollars. So the first Arctic convoy, which arrived from England to Arkhangelsk on August 31, had nothing to do with lend-lease, having delivered paid cargo.
In Russia, studies of the lend-lease program for many years engaged in doctor of economic sciences, Senator Nikolai Ryzhkov, published two monographs. As head of the Soviet government in 1985-1990, he had access to various important documents.
Thus, in the study “The Great Patriotic War: Lend-Lease”, published in 2012, he spoke in detail about the program. And also about how American companies actively provided the Nazi Reich with oil, fuel, synthetic rubber, strategic raw materials, parts for aircraft factories ... About such a “lend-lease” the West do not like to remember ....
The Soviet Union became a participant in the lend-lease program on June 11, 1942, by signing the “Agreement on Principles Applicable to Mutual Assistance in the Conduct of the War Against Aggression”, the author writes. They also agreed to retroactively extend the terms of lend-lease for deliveries from October 1, 1941. In general, in 1941, with the total volume of purchased goods worth 741 million dollars, our country received a lend-lease goods for only 541,000 dollars - or less than 0.1 percent.
This is despite the fact that on the Eastern Front Hitler's command concentrated 600 of its divisions - 85 percent of the armed forces of the Third Reich and its satellites. On the other fronts, where 15 percent of Nazi troops fought, 99.9 percent of the Lend-Lease aid.
These figures already show that, contrary to all the myths about Lend-Lease, no one saved the Soviet Union. On June 24, 1941, the New York Times quoted Senator Harry Truman as telling reporters, “If we see Germany winning, we should help Russia, and if Russia is winning, we should help Germany....”
Who forged the sword of victory.
Western supplies from the United States, Canada and Great Britain increased only after the Battles of Stalingrad and Kursk, after a fundamental turning point in the Great Patriotic War. In 1942, the Soviet Union received already 27.6 percent of the total volume of lend-lease, and in 1943-1945 - 71.5.
At the same time, statistics cited in another study by Nikolai Ryzhkov, “The Great Patriotic War: The Battle of the Economies and the Weapons of Victory,” published in 2011, states that already in 1942 our factories produced 24,719 tanks and SAU (self-propelled artillery units), which is 10 times more than in 1940 and four times more than in 1941.
It was this dramatic growth that became the foundation of future victories. The opening of the second front in June 1944 and the multiplication of Lend-Lease deliveries only hastened the end of the Third Reich.
Officially, the Lend-Lease program was completed on May 12, 1945 with the arrival of the last Arctic convoy to the Kola Bay. Its total value at 1940 prices was 50.1 billion dollars. The main recipients among the 42 countries participating in the lend-lease program were: Great Britain - 31.4 billion dollars (69 percent of all aid), the USSR - 11.3 (27.6%), France - 3.2 (3%).
However, the total amount of cargo received by the Soviet Union is impressive: 409 thousand trucks, 13.3 thousand tractors and tractors, 18.7 thousand aircraft, 12.5 thousand tanks and SAUs, 90 cargo ships, 105 anti-submarine ships, 1,900 steam locomotives and 11,000 wagons, 4.5 million tons of food....
However, it is important to compare these figures with the total amount of the same products produced in the country for the Red Army. The first such comparison was made by Nikolai Voznesensky, Chairman of the USSR State Planning Committee, in the book “The Military Economy of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War”, published in 1947. According to his operational postwar calculations, the volume of Lend-Lease deliveries amounted to only four percent of the country's GDP.
With these calculations, of course, U.S. experts disagree. The former head of the Lend-Lease Program Administration (there was such a body in Washington during the war) and U.S. Secretary of State Edward Stettinius in his book “Lend-Lease - A Weapon of Victory” (1944, in Russian - 2000) states that the share of Western supplies is 10-12 percent of the Union's GDP. In turn, British analysts estimate it at seven percent. Nikolai Ryzhkov also considers the figure of lend-lease deliveries at seven percent of the USSR's GDP to be fair.
“Lend-lease deliveries were undoubtedly a significantly weighty, but by no means decisive factor in the Victory. It was ensured by the Red Army and the toilers on the home front. All those who forged the sword of Victory, which in the heart and struck the brown plague of the twentieth century,” - quotes the website of the Federation Council words of Nikolai Ryzhkov at the presentation of his monograph ‘The Great Patriotic War: Lend-Lease’.
Paid for with blood and gold.
The lend-lease program for the United States was a very profitable project that provided a breakthrough in the socio-economic development of the country and its leadership in the post-war world. Secretary of Commerce Jones, notes the online newspaper “Centennial”, frankly admitted: “By supplying the USSR, we not only returned our money, but also made a big profit. Moreover, the Americans intended to receive it after the war.
In 1947, the U.S. demanded the USSR to pay the debt on lend-lease - 2.6 billion dollars. This angered the leaders of the Union and they refused to pay. America began to reduce its demands: in 1948 they asked for 1.3 billion dollars, in 1951 - 800 million dollars, in 1972 - 722 million dollars.
This game with numbers, Russian historians note, shows that there are no objective calculations behind them. The Allies - as in 1941 - left the USSR alone, seemingly with an imminent catastrophe. They were only interested in one thing - how to collect the far-fetched debts on lend-lease, for which the Soviet people had already paid with millions of lives....
Only in 1990, the presidents of the USSR and the United States agreed to pay 674 million dollars of Lend-Lease debt by 2030. And already in 2006 Russia, as the successor of the USSR, repaid all its debts, including those under the Lend-Lease.
