Lend Lease To Russia

Thank you, however upon reading the information something caught my eye.....


It should be kept in mind that Russia was an ally of Japan throughout the war, that it had been the ally of Hitler during the first two years of the war, that its division of Poland with Germany started the war, that it was an agressive imperialist force that attacked Finland and subverted the Baltic states as well, that it had announced that it intended to take over the world and that most of the aid sent in 1945 was sent after Stalin's February speech in which he said he would continue the war but against the United States.

Franklin Roosevelt's alter ego and Lend-Lease administrator Harry L. Hopkins, a KGB agent, declared to Russia before a crowd at Madison Square Garden on June 22, 1942, that: "We are determined that nothing shall stop us from sharing with you all that we have." He was not joking.



1.An ally of Germany and Japan?
2.Continue the war against the United States?
3.Harry Hopkins a KGB agent?

 

Yeah I found that strange also. But from what I understand the list and the quanities are correct.

 

And of course the information from
http://lend-lease.airforce.ru/english/documents/index.htm

Though I haven't had time to compare the two LOL.

 

Let me try this again. My first post got triplicated and then when I tried to rewrite a duplicate, it deleted all but the rewrite.

The "paid in blood" is nonsense. Without lend lease, there would not be any fewer killed Russians. And lend lease was not only in materials and equipment. It was in the lives of American airmen going down over europe as they tried to bomb Germany. And the soldiers dying on Omaha beach. And they were not alone. A huge number of French and English soldiers also gave the final effort to a greater cause. That Stalin and his generals decided to expend men instead of equipment boiled down to what they held dearest to their effort.

If the US and Britain had decided to not support Russia against Germany, it would have changed the results of what happened, but how much depends on a lot of variables. Germany might defeated Russia, or at least changed the boundaries. Russia might have eventually won. In the long run, it probably would have not made a tremendous difference in the world. The cold war could have different aspects, but the conflict would remain.

And eventually, the forces that are striving for control today, would still being in conflict. With the wide disparity in education and creature comforts, it was bound to happen that another force or forces are striving for world domination. It is the nature of world politics.

 

Well in that case, the destruction of Germany was Soviet Union's Lend Lease to the world. Now lets talk about the reimburesment of the 28 million soles which died fighting this evil.

Ha! now that I agree with ( boundaries would have changed ) France's new neighbor would have been Russia!

 

Seadog, I think the logic is that if without lend lease the USSR would have lost, without the 28 million lives she sacrificed the war would have been lost.

 

I agree with your statement for the most part. The German military had the ability to defeat Russia, if they had made a few key changes to their history. However, their own lack of long term planning and strategy planted the seeds of their defeat. Without lend lease, the result for Russia would have been even worse than it was. Without Russia, the prospects for the Allies would be bleaker.

I have mixed opinions about the debt for the lend lease materials. Britain paid for its debt, even though we forgave a large amount of it. However, we went in knowing full well that Stalin would not honor any loan agreements. The act of Bush was mostly symbolic. It was going in and clearing the books. Probably some accountant said that we needed to remove this after all this time and they tried to make a gesture out of it.

 

Seadog,

Stalin told Roosevelt from the very beginning that the Soviet Union would not repay the United States with money. What the United States and the rest of the world would be getting out of this "deal" was the destruction of Germany paid for with Soviet citizens blood. Roosevelt accepted ( who wouldnt? ).

I would say that Stalin honored his agreement quite well.


Not to mention that Stalin returned most of which was given.

 

I cannot agree.

It's not a nonsense. Look at it this way: it was an Alliance, that's why they were called the Allies, or so I heard. What made them Allies was that they were fighting a common enemy.

In the SU case, in order to defeat Germany they invested those 28 million lives. 28 million! It's almost 1/tenth of the present day population of the USA. Can you picture every one in 10 of your state's men, women and children gone? Or of your city? Is this to be taken lightly? Can you picture the Siege of Leningrad which took 3 years being repeated say in Chicago, having to wait for a fitful offensive to bring some supplies, or wait for winter to bring over a rickety rail line over the frozen Lake Michigan while everyone starved?

The US for the common effort supplied what they could, the best they could. The SU did likewise.

Did the SU ask for blood money? What price 28 million lives? What price one in ten lives in present day USA? Did the SU try to balance those 28 million lives against all those million tons of supplies the US etc. shipped?

And as you seem to like "ifs" as the paragraphs below show, what would have happened to the Allied Victory with a defeated SU? The fiirst one to be gobbled would be the UK, strangled by a reinforced submarine effort. As for the US, how could they be able to project their power without that large aircraft carrier the UK?

If, if, if. Ifs my posterior region. If my granny hadn't died she would be alive today. What's the point in making ifs? Do they prove anything?

More ifs. Pointless.

 

My point is that no matter how you look at it, the western allies could do nothing to decrease the number of Russian casualties. Only Stalin and his generals had that power. My response was to the argument that the lend lease was insignificant. I am not criticising the blood for ground policy. It goes against my training, but Grant used the same tactics to win our War Between the States.

The fact is that Britain and the US joined forces with one of their enemies in order to defeat what was a bigger threat at the time. In retrospect, the results that followed the war may have been abated with a different tactic or alliance. A lot of American troops died to appease Stalin with the attacks on Italy.

If America had been fighting for our lives in this continent, would you be able to say with certainty that Stalin would bother to give the United States aid?

 

It goes against anyone's training but what can we do about it now? I'm of the opinion that LL was not insignificant, nor was it what decided the war at least in the SU's case. The correct answer lies somewhere in between, shrouded by conjecture.

The SU was not an enemy of either the US or UK "at the time". Please ellucidate when was war declared by the SU or by the other powers as I can't remember.

A lot of Soviet soldiers also died when Op. Bagration was brought forward two weeks in order to coordinate with Op. Overlord, for instance, probably a lot more, and later in order to distract from the Battle of the Bulge.

I can't speculate either way, can you?

 

Look at the history of the times. The first Red Scare from 1917-1920 was a major event in the states. While it did died down, the efforts of the communist party with unions after 1929 was creating a scare among Americans. The British leadership was so afraid of communism that Chamberlain supported Hitler because of its opposition to communism. I am not the first to conjecture about what would happen if the US and British would have stayed out of the war between Germany and Russia. I would suggest that you check out the works of Patrick Buchanan. His treatise on the concept has its flaws, but it is an interesting read.

And the efforts of Russia to infiltrate American and British organizations during the war, took a lot of resources away that could have been used against the axis. Think of all the weapons that were 'obtained' by Russia, disassembled, and then replicated. Including the atomic bomb.

As far as speculating on whether or not Stalin would have come to the US in a time of crises, I think we know the answer to that. Stalin never did anything for anyone unless he could get twice the benefit from it.

 

Oh please Seadog, you dont really expect anyone to believe that Russia was the only country with busy little spies do you?

All countries did this, and still do.

 

Like everyone else, or did the Western Allies come forward with LL just out of goodness of their hearts? They were doing the best they could to help the other guy keep the Jerries away from their shores!

And as for subversion and spying, yes, we know it happened, but it did happen both ways. I clearly remember in my youth (wow, so far and yet so near) reading precisely religious propaganda on their serious subversion efforts by the Church of Rome in Soviet lands. What do you call this?

 

Well, we know the top-ranking Soviet spies in the west but can you give me names of Western spies in the USSR starting from the 1930´s? I think it was a bit more difficult to get to be a spy in the Stalin´s system. I am glad to have the names, please?

 

I could tell you but then I'd have to shoot you!

Like I said this was just a low level and isolated effort by some sectors of the Catholic Church and it never got on to any effect. Try and penetrate Stalin's SU and tell what comes to you

But aren't we getting a little too ideological and weak on factual, myself included?

 

I dont buy this. As I have stated in other threads the western Allies should and could have opend a second front in France in 43, this would have saved Russian lives no doubt. It may have cost more Anglo American lives, this was the price that Churchill was not willing to pay.

Hind site is always 20/20 and it makes it easy to point fingers. The point is that the war was not executed perfectly by anyone, nor do I believe that we could ever know what would make a perfect performance by either side in the conflict. I started this thread because I was shocked to see quotes by Stalin and others depicting the importance of LL.

What I think would have been interesting if not flawed would have been the deployment of at least one American and one Commonwealth division deployed to Russia, this would ahve given these men valueable experiance, and shown that all the allies were willing to pay the ultimate price. Yes I know this would never happen and there are millions of problems with it, but like I said it would have been interesting.

 

You can find character flaws in anyone, and you can make a lot of calls in hindsight. My point is that the relationship with Russia was along the lines of "the enemy of my enemy, is my friend". American and British leadership was under no illusions about Stalin. He was a conniving dangerous SOB. And his attempts at infiltration into other nations was way beyond the efforts of any other nation.

I have no qualms about how things played out, and the efforts of the Russian soldiers was for the most part, a noble sacrifice. However, I think we all can state that there was no excuse for the raping and pillaging that they did. No matter what cause they fight for, a soldier has no legal or moral right to do that to civilians. It is a pity that the dedication of so many, has been blighted by the action of a relative few.

 

Actually Roosevelt liked and trusted Stalin more then Churchill. While the countries may not have been the best of friends, lets not confuse their relationships before and after 1945.

The reason why the Soviet spies might have had better luck then the ones from the West, must also be contributed to the stayed of affairs in the Soviet Union. The NKVD kept tabs on every foreigner. This doesnt mean that the West did not try.

Yes, the Red Army didnt exactly greet the Germans with flowers but can you blame them? I have personally spoke to several German WW2 Vets and they told me that they thought that what the Red Army soldiers did was despicable but they understood their reaction. I am of the same opinion.

Any country which would have gone through what Russia had would have reacted the same. So lets not blame Stalin or Communism for what happend, afterall man is man and history proves this.

 

and sadly watched it turn into a "nationistic" hissy fit, with each side thinking "they did the most". Some of it is correct, some of it is simply silly. Here is what I have put together over the years, and I am NOT including the secret taping of Zhukov concerning L/L, since while the transcripts exist they have only been published in a book with references to the transcripts. I'll wait till they are open and verified.

Saying the Stalin had ever expressed that the Lend Lease wouldn't be paid for is bogus, he openly thanked and praised FDR for the Lend/Lease aid as a self-less act, and even began to replace and return what hadn't been destroyed by war. The whole thing didn't fall apart until Truman took the office, and while he "dropped" a bunch of the aid payments, he did wish the merchant ships to be either returned or paid for.

In addition to the fighters listed (Bell units), there were also Douglas C-47s and other planes involved. The Pacific route eventually, by ship, became the most important of the Lend-Lease routes. Great Britain and Canada together dispatched about a million and a half tons of war supplies and food to the USSR between 1941 and 1945 and among the equipment shipped were thousands of aircraft and tanks and well over 200,000 tons of wheat and flour.

The United States provided by far the greater share of the aid and sent about sixteen million tons of stores under the Lend-Lease and earlier agreements. Of the total 17,500,000 tons of material aid dispatched to the USSR, it arrived by the North Atlantic sea route to Murmansk and Archangel and also through Persia (Iran/Iraq). The Pacific route, in spite of the fact that it included a long rail haul across the breadth of Siberia, eventually proved capable of importing as much as the North Atlantic and Persian routes combined.

Even the entry of Japan into the war against the United States did not seriously check the flow into Vladivostok since all available Soviet freighters were moved over to the Pacific and a large number of United States vessels were transferred to the Soviet flag. While Japan and the Soviets were not "allies", they both held to the "non-aggression pact" they had signed early on when the Soviets had handed the Japanese their hats in the Far East before the Nazis attacked the Soviets. The tonnage dispatches of Western material aid to the USSR from the period from 22 June 1941 to 20 September 1945 were as follows, hope this transfers (the Arctic list is mostly planes by weight).

Year Totals

Persian Gulf Pacific Atlantic Black Sea Arctic
1941-- 360,778 13,502 193,299 153,977
1942--2,453,097 705,259 734,020 949,711 64,107
1943--4,794,545 1,606,979 2,388,577 681,043 117,946
1944--6,217,622 1,788,864 2,848,181 1,452,775 127,802
1945--3,673,819 44,513 2,079,320 726,725 680,723

Among the goods delivered to the USSR were 427,000 motor vehicles, 13,000 armored fighting vehicles (including 10,000 tanks), 35,000 motorcycles, nearly 19,000 aircraft, 1,900 railway locomotives, 11,000 railway cars (flats and box) in Soviet gauge, ninety freight ships, 105 submarine-chasers and 197 torpedo-boats, and we surely can't forget the four and a half million tons of foodstuffs or the 12 million pair of boots and socks for same.

Then, post war Truman only requested that the Soviets repay the U.S. for the non-military supplies (including cargo ships), which all combined was worth about $2.5 billion of the original $11 billion Lend/Lease total. In effect "writing off" the other nearly $9 billion directly after the war ended in a vain attempt to mollify Stalin.

When the "Cold War" erupted post-WW2, it effectively ended any hopes of even reduced repayment from the Soviets, until the "Cold War" finally started thawing completely in the late 1980s with the outbreak of "glasnost". That prompted the desire of the former Soviet Union to qualify for both American loans and International Monetary Fund credits. Except for the Soviet indebtedness, repayment of most all "Allied" Lend/Lease debts had been set on "non-disruptive" scales of payment, under control and organized by the mid 1960s. (America had no desire to make the "reparations" mistake of WW1)

In 1972 the American government really did accept an open offer by the Soviet Union to pay $722 million in installments through 2001 to settle their indebtedness (less interest) of $2.5 billion, but then we must remember the mood of the times as per the "Communists" (in general); when it was hoped that by inviting them into capitalistic "world finance" loops they would become less adversarial in the little "proxy wars" which had been started up and going on since Korea. That '70s offer also fell through, and it wasn't readdressed until the final agreement in 1990.

By August 1945, when the war finally ended and all "Lend/Lease" was suspended, nearly forty nations and governments had been the recipients of American "Lend/Lease" aid. The total lend-lease appropriations funded by the American taxpayer were somewhere between $48 and $51 billion. But let us not forget that the U.S. had received more than $6 billion in reverse lend-lease in the form of minerals, dairy products and other raw material (which is why the full "total" is not easily defined). The French, Belgians, Norwegians, Yugoslavs, Greeks, and Nederlanders supplied intangible items which were included in the end "repayment" terms, hiding allied airmen, donating their homes/rationed food at the risk of their lives and such to the allied liberating forces, sans payment at the time. All kinds of arrangements for the repayments by the recipient nations were instigated shortly after the war ended.

In the 1970's American hopes for the USSR actually recognizing the L-L debt were again in vain, and until well after the death of Brezhnev just "hung fire". When the former USSR attempted to get IMF credits and US loans again in the late ‘80s, early ‘90's they simply had to agree to repayment of the old L/L aid from WW2, using their own records. In June of 1990, to qualify for U.S. loans and credits under the still active Johnson Debt-Default Act, the USSR negotiated an agreement for repayment of her remaining WWII. To the credit of the government which replaced them after their collapse, first the CIS and later the Russian states have (for the most part) honored their commitments on L/L repayments from WW2. And to my knowledge continue to do so.

BTW, Britain made the final payment to the United States of America, on Dec. 31st 2006, of £45.5 million ($126 million dollars) to the U.S. treasury thereby closing the WW2 debt that the United Kingdom ran up borrowing from the U.S.A and the U.S. taxpayer via Lend-Lease and the post-war loans ("Marshall Plan"). Over a period of 56 years Britain repaid more than £3.5 billion pounds to the U.S. Treasury. The UK's total had been reduced in payment for royalites on patents which had been sent to the US for further development.

Here is a great list of "stuff" sent to the USSR during the Lend-Lease years, and BTW this list of Major Jordan (stationed at Great Falls, MT at one time) and the one the Soviets produced to qualify for the IMF credits are virtually identical.

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHAR...arl/www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/lend.html