Lend-Lease - the history of American military aid to the USSR. Lend-Lease
Lend-Lease is a system for the transfer by the United States of America of military equipment, weapons, ammunition, equipment, strategic raw materials, food and other various goods to the countries - allies of the anti-Hitler coalition. The Lend-Lease Act was approved by the US Congress on March 11, 1941. According to this document, the president received the authority to transfer, exchange, lease and lend weapons and strategic materials to the government of any country in the event that its fight against aggression is vital for defense U.S.A. Countries that received Lend-Lease assistance signed bilateral agreements with the United States, which stipulated that materials destroyed, lost or consumed during the course of the war were not subject to any payment after the war ended. The remaining materials suitable for civilian consumption must be paid in whole or in part on the basis of long-term American loans. In total, from March 11, 1941 to August 1, 1945, the United States provided the allied countries under the Lend-Lease system in the amount of $ 46 billion, including the United Kingdom and other countries of the British Commonwealth - in the amount of $ 30.3 billion , The Soviet Union - by 9.8 billion, France - by 1.4 billion, China - by 631 million, Latin American countries - by 421 million dollars.
In the first five months of the Great Patriotic War, the Lend-Lease Law did not apply to the USSR. During this period, the United States sent $ 41 million worth of weapons and materials to the Soviet Union in cash. And only on November 7, 1941, US President F.D. Roosevelt extended the lend-lease law to the USSR.
Until that moment, lend-lease deliveries to the USSR were carried out in accordance with the Anglo-Soviet agreement on mutual assistance of July 12, 1941 from Great Britain. Already at the end of July 1941, within the framework of these deliveries, the English minelayer Adventure delivered a cargo of depth charges and magnetic mines to Arkhangelsk. And in August 1941, the first Lend-Lease convoy left England for the northern ports of the USSR.
The delivery of Anglo-American equipment and weapons to the Soviet Union was carried out by three routes. It was originally planned that up to 75% of all economic aid from the Western allies would be sent by ships through the Arctic seas to the ports of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. Until the spring of 1942, 12 sea convoys of 103 ships were sent along this route, of which only one ship was lost. However, then the situation changed dramatically. The fascist German command began to attract significant air forces, submarines and large surface ships to fight the Allied convoys. As a result, there were heavy losses in the RO-13, 16 and 17 caravans.
The second route of supplies under Lend-Lease ran from the ports of the Persian Gulf, through the deserts and mountains of Iran and Iraq to the Soviet Transcaucasia. Cargoes were shipped by rail, by highways and by air. From December 1941 to the end of 1942, thanks to the joint work of Soviet, British and American specialists, the throughput capacity of the Middle East ports was significantly increased, and already in 1943, 3447 thousand tons of cargo were delivered to the USSR by all modes of transport by the southern route and military equipment, and in 1944 this figure increased by 1.5 times and amounted to 5 498 thousand tons.
In early 1945, all deliveries through Iran and Iraq were stopped. All in all, during the Great Patriotic War, over 10 million tons of goods were delivered to the USSR via the southern route.
In the summer of 1942, during the negotiations, a third route was approved - sending aircraft by air through Alaska and Siberia. The length of the route from the American city of Fairbanks to Krasnoyarsk was 14 thousand km. It was along this route that about 8 thousand American combat aircraft were delivered during the war years.
For the entire period of the Great Patriotic War, of the main types of weapons, the United States and Britain supplied the Soviet Union with 18,700 aircraft, about 11,000 tanks and self-propelled artillery mounts, and up to 10,000 guns of various calibers. In relation to the military equipment and weapons produced in the USSR, this amounted to 16.7%, for tanks and self-propelled guns - 10.5, for artillery - about 2% of the total production of our country.
Lend-Lease. This topic must be brought to a wide circle of people so that people know the truth, and not a lie that has taken root in their heads en masse. The facts of the past are too much perverted by propaganda, and self-confident patriots-impostors of all stripes are self-confidently operating as a perverted product of propaganda as a generally recognized fact. And that is why Lend-Lease turned out to be a blank spot in the history of Russia for its population. If official propaganda mentions Lend-Lease, then in passing, as an insignificant fact, which, allegedly, did not have a significant impact on the course of the war. In fact, the influence and role of Lend-Lease on the course of World War II turned out to be enormous. History did not know anything like that.
What is it -Lend-Lease?
On May 15, 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill first asked US President Franklin Roosevelt for the provision of American weapons for temporary use, proposing to temporarily transfer 40-50 old destroyers to Great Britain in exchange for British naval and air bases in the Atlantic Ocean.
The deal took place in August 1940, but it gave rise to the idea of a broader program. By order of Roosevelt, a working group was formed in the US Treasury Department in the fall of 1940 to prepare a corresponding bill. The legal advisers of the Ministry E. Foley and O. Cox proposed to rely on the law of 1892, which allowed the Minister of War, “when at his discretion it would be in the interests of the state,” to rent out “the property of the army for a period not exceeding five years, if it did not need it. country".
Employees of the military and naval ministries were also involved in the work on the project. On January 10, 1941, the relevant hearings began in the US Senate and House of Representatives, on March 11, the Lend-Lease Act (Act) was signed, and on March 27, the US Congress voted to allocate the first appropriation for military aid in the amount of $ 7 billion.
Roosevelt compared the approved scheme for the provision of military materials and equipment on loan to a hose transferred to a neighbor in a fire, so that the flame would not spread to his own house. I don't need him to pay for the hose, the US president said, "I need him to return my hose to me after the fire is over."
The supplies included weapons, industrial equipment, merchant ships, automobiles, food, fuel and medicines. According to the approved principles, vehicles, military equipment, weapons and other materials supplied by the United States, destroyed, lost or used during the war, were not payable. Only property left after the war and suitable for civilian use should have been paid in full or in part, and the United States provided long-term loans for such payment.
The surviving military materials remained with the recipient country, but the American administration had the right to demand them back. Customer countries could, after the end of the war, buy equipment that had not yet been completed or stored in warehouses using American long-term loans. The delivery date was initially set to June 30, 1943, but was then extended annually. Finally, the law provided for the possibility of refusal to supply one or another equipment if it was recognized as secret or was needed by the United States itself.
In total, during the war, the United States provided lend-lease assistance to the governments of 42 countries, including Great Britain, the USSR, China, Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and others, in the amount of approximately $ 48 billion.
Lend-Lease- (from the English lend - "to lend" and lease - "to lease, lease") - a state program, according to which the United States of America, mainly on a gratuitous basis, transferred ammunition, equipment, food to its allies in World War II and strategic raw materials, including petroleum products.
The concept of this program gave the President of the United States the power to help any country whose defense was deemed vital to his country. The Lend Lease Act, the full title of the An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States, passed by the US Congress on March 11, 1941, stipulated that:
the supplied materials (cars, various military equipment, weapons, raw materials, other items), destroyed, lost and used during the war, are not subject to payment (Article 5)
property transferred under Lend-Lease, remaining after the end of the war and suitable for civilian purposes, will be paid in whole or in part on the basis of long-term loans provided by the United States (mainly interest-free loans).
The Lend-Lease provisions stipulated that after the war, if the American side was interested, the undamaged and not lost technology and equipment should be returned to the United States.
In total, lend-lease supplies amounted to about $ 50.1 billion (equivalent to about $ 610 billion in 2008 prices), of which $ 31.4 billion was delivered to the UK, $ 11.3 billion to the USSR, $ 3.2 billion to France and $ 1.6 billion to China. Reverse lend-lease (supplies of allies to the United States) amounted to $ 7.8 billion, of which $ 6.8 billion went to the UK and the Commonwealth countries.
In the post-war period, various assessments of the role of Lend-Lease were expressed. In the USSR, the importance of supplies was often downplayed, while abroad it was argued that victory over Germany was determined by Western weapons and that without Lend-Lease the Soviet Union would not have resisted.
In Soviet historiography, it was usually stated that the amount of aid under the lend-lease of the USSR was quite small - only about 4% of the funds spent by the country on the war, and tanks and aircraft were supplied mainly of outdated models. Today, the attitude in the countries of the former USSR to the help of the allies has changed somewhat, and attention has also begun to turn to the fact that for a number of items the supplies were of no small importance, both in terms of the significance of the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the supplied equipment, and in terms of access to new models of weapons and industrial equipment.
Canada had a Lend-Lease program similar to the American one, deliveries under which amounted to $ 4.7 billion, mainly to the UK and the USSR.
The volume of supplies and the value of Lend-Lease
Materials totaling $ 50.1 billion (about $ 610 billion in 2008 prices) were sent to recipients, including:
The reverse lend-lease (for example, the lease of air bases) was received by the United States in the amount of $ 7.8 billion, of which $ 6.8 billion came from the UK and the British Commonwealth. The reverse lend-lease from the USSR amounted to $ 2.2 million.
The importance of Lend-Lease in the victory of the United Nations over the Axis countries is illustrated in the table below, which shows the GDP of the main countries that participated in World War II, from 1938 to 1945, in billions of dollars in 1990 prices.
| Country | 1938 | 1939 | 1940 | 1941 | 1942 | 1943 | 1944 | 1945 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Austria | 24 | 27 | 27 | 29 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 12 |
| France | 186 | 199 | 164 | 130 | 116 | 110 | 93 | 101 |
| Germany | 351 | 384 | 387 | 412 | 417 | 426 | 437 | 310 |
| Italy | 141 | 151 | 147 | 144 | 145 | 137 | 117 | 92 |
| Japan | 169 | 184 | 192 | 196 | 197 | 194 | 189 | 144 |
| the USSR | 359 | 366 | 417 | 359 | 274 | 305 | 362 | 343 |
| United Kingdom | 284 | 287 | 316 | 344 | 353 | 361 | 346 | 331 |
| USA | 800 | 869 | 943 | 1 094 | 1 235 | 1 399 | 1 499 | 1 474 |
| The anti-Hitler coalition of everything: | 1 629 | 1 600 | 1 331 | 1 596 | 1 862 | 2 065 | 2 363 | 2 341 |
| Axis countries total: | 685 | 746 | 845 | 911 | 902 | 895 | 826 | 466 |
| GDP ratio, Axis allies / countries: |
2,38 | 2,15 | 1,58 | 1,75 | 2,06 | 2,31 | 2,86 | 5,02 |
As the table above (from American sources) shows, by December 1941, the GDP of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition (USSR + Great Britain) correlated with the GDP of Germany and its European allies as 1: 1. It is worth considering, however, that by this time Great Britain was exhausted by the naval blockade and could not help the USSR in any significant way in the short term. Moreover, by the end of 1941, Great Britain was still losing the battle for the Atlantic, which was fraught with a complete collapse for the country's economy, which was almost entirely tied to foreign trade.
The GDP of the USSR in 1942, in turn, due to the occupation of large territories by Germany, decreased by about a third compared to the pre-war level, while of the 200 million people, about 78 million remained in the occupied territories.
Thus, in 1942, the USSR and Great Britain were inferior to Germany and its satellites both in GDP (0.9: 1) and in population (taking into account the losses of the USSR due to the occupation). In this situation, the US leadership realized the need to provide urgent military-technical assistance to both countries. Moreover, the United States was the only country in the world with sufficient production capacity to provide such support in a short enough time to influence the course of hostilities in 1942. Throughout 1941, the United States continued to increase military assistance to Great Britain, and on October 1, 1941, Roosevelt approved the connection to the lend-lease of the USSR.
Lend-Lease, coupled with increasing assistance from Britain in its battle for the Atlantic, proved to be a critical factor in getting the United States into the war, especially on the European front. Hitler, declaring war on the United States on December 11, 1941, mentioned both of these factors as key in his decision to go to war with the United States.
It should be noted that the sending of American and British military equipment to the USSR led to the need to supply it with hundreds of thousands of tons of aviation fuel, millions of shells for guns and cartridges for PP and machine guns, spare tracks for tanks, spare car tires, spare parts for tanks, aircraft and cars. Already in 1943, when the leadership of the Allies ceased to doubt the ability of the USSR for a long-term war, the USSR began to import mainly strategic materials (aluminum, etc.) and machine tools for Soviet industry.
After the first deliveries under Lend-Lease, Stalin began to express complaints about the unsatisfactory technical characteristics of the supplied aircraft and tanks. Indeed, among the equipment supplied to the USSR, there were samples that were inferior to both Soviet and, most importantly, German. As an example, we can cite the frankly unsuccessful model of the Curtiss 0-52 aircraft reconnaissance spotter, which the Americans simply tried to attach somewhere and imposed on us almost for nothing, in addition to the approved order.
However, in general, Stalin's claims, which were subsequently thoroughly inflated by Soviet propaganda, at the stage of secret correspondence with the leaders of the allied countries were simply a form of pressure on them. Leasing relations assumed, in particular, the right of the receiving party to independently choose and negotiate the type and characteristics of the required products. And if the Red Army considered American equipment unsatisfactory, then what was the point of ordering it?
As for the official Soviet propaganda, it preferred in every possible way to downplay the significance of American aid, if not to keep silent about it altogether. In March 1943, the American ambassador in Moscow, without hiding his resentment, made a non-diplomatic statement: “The Russian authorities apparently want to hide that they are receiving outside assistance. war alone. " And during the Yalta Conference of 1945, Stalin was forced to admit that Lend-Lease was Roosevelt's remarkable and most fruitful contribution to the creation of the anti-Hitler coalition.
Mk II "Matilda II" ;, Mk III "Valentine" and Mk IV "Valentine"
Tank "Churchill"
M4 "General Sherman"
 |
| Intantry Tank Mk.III Valentine II, Kubinka, May 2005 |
Routes and volumes of supplies
The American P-39 Aircobra is the best fighter of the Second World War. Of the 9.5 thousand "cobras" released into the sky, 5 thousand were in the hands of Soviet pilots. This is one of the most striking examples of the military cooperation between the United States and the USSR.
Soviet pilots adored the American "Cobra", which more than once carried them out of mortal fights. Legendary ace A. Pokryshkin, flying on "Airacobras" since the spring of 1943, destroyed 48 enemy aircraft in air battles, bringing the total score to 59 victories.
Deliveries from the USA to the USSR can be divided into the following stages:
- "pre-lend-lease" - from June 22, 1941 to September 30, 1941 (paid in gold)
- the first protocol - from October 1, 1941 to June 30, 1942 (signed on October 1, 1941)
- the second protocol - from July 1, 1942 to June 30, 1943 (signed on October 6, 1942)
- the third protocol - from July 1, 1943 to June 30, 1944 (signed on October 19, 1943)
- the fourth protocol - from July 1, 1944, (signed on April 17, 1944), formally ended on May 12, 1945, but supplies were extended until the end of the war with Japan, which the USSR pledged to enter 90 days after the end of the war in Europe (that is, 8 August 1945). Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and on September 20, 1945, all lend-lease deliveries to the USSR were stopped.
Allied supplies were very unevenly distributed over the years of the war. In 1941-1942. conditional obligations were constantly not fulfilled, the situation returned to normal starting only in the second half of 1943.
The main routes and the volume of transported goods are shown in the table below.
| Delivery routes | tonnage, thousand tons | % of total |
|---|---|---|
| Pacific | 8244 | 47,1 |
| Trans-Iranian | 4160 | 23,8 |
| Arctic convoys | 3964 | 22,7 |
| Black Sea | 681 | 3,9 |
| Soviet Arctic | 452 | 2,6 |
| Total | 17 501 | 100,0 |
Three routes - Pacific, Trans-Iranian and Arctic convoys - provided a total of 93.5% of the total supply. None of these routes were completely safe.
The fastest (and most dangerous) route was the Arctic convoys. In July-December 1941, 40% of all deliveries went exactly this route, and about 15% of the shipped goods ended up on the ocean floor. The sea part of the journey from the US east coast to Murmansk took about 2 weeks.
Cargo with northern convoys also went through Arkhangelsk and Molotovsk (now Severodvinsk), from where the cargo went to the front along the hastily completed branch of the railway. The bridge across the Northern Dvina did not yet exist, and a meter layer of ice from river water was frozen to transport equipment in winter, since the natural thickness of the ice (65 cm in winter 1941) did not allow rails with carriages to withstand. Further, the cargo was sent by rail to the south, to the central, rear part of the USSR.
The Pacific route, which provided about half of the Lend-Lease supply, was relatively (although far from completely) safe. With the outbreak of December 7, 1941, the war in the Pacific Ocean, transportation here could only be provided by Soviet sailors, and merchant and transport ships sailed only under the Soviet flag. All non-freezing straits were controlled by Japan, and Soviet ships were subjected to forced search and sometimes sunk. The sea part of the route from the western coast of the United States to the Far Eastern ports of the USSR took 18-20 days.
| Studebakers in Iran on their way to the USSR |
The first deliveries to the USSR along the Trans-Iranian route began in November 1941, when 2,972 tons of cargo were sent. To increase the volume of supplies, it was required to carry out a large-scale modernization of the transport system of Iran, in particular, the ports in the Persian Gulf and the Trans-Iranian railway. To this end, the allies (USSR and Great Britain) occupied Iran in August 1941. Since May 1942, deliveries averaged 80-90 thousand tons per month, and in the second half of 1943 - up to 200,000 tons per month. Further, the delivery of goods was carried out by ships of the Caspian military flotilla, which until the end of 1942 were subjected to active attacks by German aviation. The sea part of the journey from the east coast of the United States to the coast of Iran took about 75 days. Several automobile factories were built specifically for the needs of Lend-Lease in Iran, which were managed by General Motors Overseas Corporation. The largest were called TAP I (Truck Assembly Plant I) in Andymeshk and TAP II in Khorramshar. In total, during the war years, 184,112 vehicles were sent from Iranian enterprises to the USSR. Cars were driven on the following routes: Tehran - Ashgabat, Tehran - Astara - Baku, Julfa - Ordzhonikidze.
It should be noted that during the war there were two more Lend-Lease air routes. According to one of them, the planes "on their own" flew to the USSR from the United States through the South Atlantic, Africa and the Persian Gulf, on the other - through Alaska, Chukotka and Siberia. On the second route, known as Alsib (Alaska - Siberia), 7925 aircraft were airlifted.
The lend-lease range of supplies was determined by the Soviet government and was intended to plug the bottlenecks in the supply of our industry and army.
| Aircraft | 14 795 |
| Tanks | 7 056 |
| Light all-terrain vehicles | 51 503 |
| Trucks | 375 883 |
| Motorcycle | 35 170 |
| Tractors | 8 071 |
| Rifles | 8 218 |
| Automatic weapons | 131 633 |
| Pistols | 12 997 |
| Explosives | 345 735 tons |
| Dynamite | 70.4 million lb |
| Gunpowder | 127,000 tons |
| TNT | £ 271.5 million |
| Toluene | 237.4 million lb |
| Detonators | 903 000 |
| Building equipment | $10 910 000 |
| Freight wagons | 11 155 |
| Locomotives | 1 981 |
| Cargo ships | 90 |
| Anti-submarine ships | 105 |
| Torpedo | 197 |
| Radars | 445 |
| Engines for ships | 7 784 |
| Food stocks | 4 478 000 tons |
| Machinery and equipment | $1 078 965 000 |
| Non-ferrous metals | 802,000 tons |
| Petroleum products | 2 670 000 tons |
| Chemicals | 842,000 tons |
| Cotton | 106 893 000 tons |
| Skin | 49 860 tons |
| Shin | 3 786 000 |
| Army boots | 15 417 000 pairs |
| Blankets | 1 541 590 |
| Alcohol | 331,066 l |
| Buttons | 257 723 498 pcs. |
Importance of supplies
Already in November 1941, in his letter to US President Roosevelt J.V. Stalin wrote:
Marshal Zhukov said in post-war conversations:
| Now they say that the allies never helped us ... But it cannot be denied that the Americans were driving us so many materials without which we could not form our reserves and could not continue the war ... We did not have explosives, gunpowder. There was nothing to equip rifle cartridges with. The Americans really helped us out with gunpowder and explosives. And how much sheet steel they drove to us! Could we have quickly set up production of tanks, if not for American help with steel? And now they present the matter in such a way that we all had our own in abundance. - From the report of the chairman of the KGB V. Semichastny - NS Khrushchev; stamp "top secret" // Zenkovich N. Ya. Marshals and general secretaries. M., 1997.S. 161 |
Highly appreciated the role of Lend-Lease and A.I. Mikoyan, who during the war was responsible for the work of seven allied people's commissariats (trade, procurement, food, fish and meat and dairy industries, sea transport and river fleet) and, as the country's foreign trade commissar, with 1942, supervising the acceptance of allied supplies under Lend-Lease:
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Here's another Mikoyan:
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The main chassis for "Katyushas" were Lend-Lease "Studebakers" (specifically, Studebaker US6). While the United States provided about 20 thousand vehicles for our "combat girl", only 600 trucks were produced in the USSR (mainly the ZIS-6 chassis). Almost all Katyushas assembled on the basis of Soviet cars were destroyed by the war. To date, in the entire CIS, only four Katyusha rocket launchers have survived, which were created on the basis of domestic ZiS-6 trucks. One is in the St. Petersburg Artillery Museum, and the second is in Zaporozhye. The third mortar on the base of the "lorry" stands like a monument in Kirovograd. The fourth is in the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin.
| The famous Katyusha rocket launchers on the chassis of the American Studebaker truck: |
The USSR received a significant number of cars from the United States and other allies: in the Red Army's car park there were 5.4% of imported cars in 1943, in 1944 in the SA - 19%, as of May 1, 1945 - 32.8% ( 58.1% were domestically produced cars and 9.1% - captured cars). During the war years, the fleet of the Red Army was replenished with a large number of new cars, largely due to imports. The army received 444,700 new vehicles, of which 63.4% are imported and 36.6% are domestic. The main replenishment of the army with cars of domestic production was carried out at the expense of old cars withdrawn from the national economy. 62% of all received vehicles were tractors, of which 60% were Studebaker, as the best of all the brands of tractors received, largely replacing horse traction and tractors for towing 75-mm and 122-mm artillery systems. Good performance was also shown by the Dodge 3/4 t vehicle, towing anti-tank artillery guns (up to 88 mm). An important role was played by the Willis passenger car with 2 drive axles, which has good maneuverability and was a reliable means of reconnaissance, communications and command and control. In addition, Willis was used as a tractor for anti-tank artillery (up to 45 mm). Of the special-purpose vehicles, it should be noted the amphibians Ford (based on the Willys car), attached as part of special battalions to tank armies for reconnaissance operations when crossing water obstacles, and Jiemsi (GMC, based on a truck of the same brand), used mainly by engineering parts when arranging ferries. The USA and the British Empire supplied 18.36% of aviation gasoline used by Soviet aviation during the war years; however, mainly American and British planes supplied under Lend-Lease were refueled with this gasoline, while domestic planes could be refueled with domestic gasoline with a lower octane number.
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| American steam locomotive EA series |
According to other sources, the USSR received under Lend-Lease 622.1 thousand tons of railway rails (56.5% of its own production), 1900 locomotives (2.4 times more than produced during the war years in the USSR) and 11,075 cars ( 10.2 times more), 3 million 606 thousand tires (43.1%), 610 thousand tons of sugar (41.8%), 664.6 thousand tons of canned meat (108%). The USSR received 427 thousand cars and 32 thousand army motorcycles, while in the USSR from the beginning of the war until the end of 1945, only 265.6 thousand cars and 27816 motorcycles were produced (here it is necessary to take into account the pre-war amount of equipment). The United States supplied 2 million 13 thousand tons of aviation gasoline (together with the allies - 2 million 586 thousand tons) - almost two-thirds of the fuel used during the war by Soviet aviation. At the same time, in the article from which the figures of this paragraph are taken, the article by BV Sokolov "The Role of Lend-Lease in Soviet Military Efforts, 1941-1945" appears as a source. However, the article itself says that the United States and Britain delivered together only 1216.1 thousand tons of aviation gasoline, and in the USSR in 1941-1945. 5539 thousand tons of aviation gasoline were produced, that is, Western supplies accounted for only 18% of the total Soviet consumption during the war. Considering that such was the percentage of aircraft delivered by the USSR under the Lend-Lease in the Soviet fleet, it is obvious that gasoline was imported precisely for imported aircraft. Along with the aircraft of the USSR, he received hundreds of tons of aviation parts, aviation ammunition, fuel, special airfield equipment and apparatus, including 9351 American radio stations for installation on Soviet-made fighters, navigation aircraft equipment (radio compasses, autopilots, radars, sextants, artificial horizons).
Comparative data on the role of Lend-Lease in providing the Soviet economy with certain types of materials and food during the war are given below:
And here is the first lie, which many repeat today, without knowing its origin and source:
The first official historical assessment of the role of Lend-Lease was given by the chairman of the State Planning Committee Nikolai Voznesensky in his book "The Military Economy of the USSR during the Patriotic War", published in 1948:
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The 4% figure was released without further comment and raised many questions. In particular, it was unclear how Voznesensky and his collaborators calculated these percentages. It was difficult to estimate the Soviet GDP in monetary terms due to the lack of convertibility of the ruble. If the count went to units of production, then it is not clear how tanks were compared to aircraft, and food to aluminum.
Voznesensky himself was soon arrested in the Leningrad case and shot in 1950, and, accordingly, could not give any comments. Nevertheless, the figure of 4% was later widely cited in the USSR as reflecting the official point of view on the importance of Lend-Lease.
Lend-Lease debts and their payment
Immediately after the war, the United States sent countries that received assistance under Lend-Lease an offer to return the surviving military equipment and pay off the debt in order to obtain new loans. Since the Lend-Lease Law provided for the write-off of used military equipment and materials, the Americans insisted on paying only for civilian supplies: rail transport, power plants, steamships, trucks and other equipment that were in the recipient countries as of September 2, 1945. For the military equipment destroyed during the fighting, the United States did not demand compensation.
United Kingdom
The volume of UK debt to the United States amounted to $ 4.33 billion, to Canada - $ 1.19 billion. The last payment of $ 83.25 million (in favor of the United States) and $ 22.7 million (Canada) was made on December 29, 2006. The main debt was compensated for account of the location of American bases in the UK
China
China's debt to the United States for Lend-Lease deliveries amounted to $ 187 million. Since 1979, the United States has recognized the People's Republic of China as the sole legitimate government of China, and therefore the heir to all previous agreements (including Lend-Lease deliveries). However, in 1989, the United States demanded that Taiwan (not the PRC) repay its Lend-Lease debt. The fate of the Chinese debt is not clear.
USSR (Russia)
The volume of American supplies under Lend-Lease amounted to about $ 11 billion. According to the law on lend-lease, only equipment that had survived the war was subject to payment; to agree on the final amount, immediately after the end of the war, Soviet-American negotiations began. In the 1948 negotiations, the Soviet representatives agreed to pay only a small amount and met the predicted refusal of the American side. The 1949 negotiations also came to nothing. In 1951, the Americans twice reduced the amount of payment, which became equal to $ 800 million, but the Soviet side agreed to pay only $ 300 million. According to the Soviet government, the calculation should have been carried out not in accordance with the actual debt, but on the basis of a precedent. This precedent should have been the proportions in determining the debt between the United States and Great Britain, which were fixed back in March 1946.
An agreement with the USSR on the procedure for paying off lend-lease debts was concluded only in 1972. Under this agreement, the USSR pledged to pay $ 722 million by 2001, including interest. By July 1973, three payments were made for a total of $ 48 million, after which payments were stopped due to the introduction of discriminatory measures by the American side in trade with the USSR (Jackson-Vanik Amendment). In June 1990, during negotiations between the presidents of the United States and the USSR, the parties returned to discussing the debt. A new deadline for the final repayment of debt was set - 2030, and the amount was $ 674 million.
After the collapse of the USSR, the debt for aid was reissued to Russia (Yeltsin, Kozyrev); as of 2003, Russia owes about 100 million US dollars.
Thus, out of the total volume of American lend-lease supplies of $ 11 billion to the USSR, and then Russia, $ 722 million was paid, or about 7%.
However, it should be noted that taking into account the inflationary depreciation of the dollar, this figure will be significantly (several times) lower. So, by 1972, when the amount of debt for lend-lease in the amount of $ 722 million was agreed with the United States, the dollar had depreciated 2.3 times since 1945. However, in 1972, only $ 48 million was paid to the USSR, and an agreement to pay the remaining $ 674 million was reached in June 1990, when the purchasing power of the dollar was already 7.7 times lower than at the end of 1945. Provided that $ 674 million were paid in 1990, the total volume of Soviet payments in 1945 prices amounted to about 110 million US dollars, that is, about 1% of the total cost of lend-lease supplies. But most of the supplies were either destroyed by the war, or, like shells, spent on the needs of the war, or, at the end of the war, in accordance with the Lend-Lease law, returned to the United States.
France
On May 28, 1946, France signed a package of agreements with the United States (known as the Blum-Byrnes Agreement) that settled the French debt for Lend-Lease deliveries in exchange for a series of trade concessions from France. In particular, France has significantly increased the quotas for showing foreign (primarily American) films on the French film market.
By 1960, virtually all countries had paid off their debts, except the USSR.
During the 1948 negotiations, the Soviet representatives agreed to pay a small sum, but the United States rejected the offer. The 1949 talks were also unsuccessful. In 1951, the American side reduced the amount it demanded to $ 800 million, but the USSR was ready to pay only $ 300 million, referring to the proportions agreed by Great Britain and the United States in 1946. Only in 1972 did the Soviet and American representatives sign an agreement on the phased payment in Washington The Soviet Union totaled $ 722 million until 2001. By July 1973, only $ 48 million had been paid, after which further payments ceased: the Soviet side thus protested against the restrictions imposed on trade between the two countries. Only in June 1990, the presidents of the USSR and the United States agreed to pay off the debt by 2030. The agreed amount was measured at $ 674 million.
Now it's easy to say that Lend-Lease meant nothing - you can't check
Stalin, both during and after the war, stubbornly did not want to advertise the help of the allies of the USSR, so that the victor's crown would belong only to him. In the Soviet military-historical literature of the "stagnant period" it was argued that supplies under Lend-Lease amounted to only 4% of all weapons and military equipment produced in the USSR during the war years.
Numerical data confirming the above statements of Zhukov and Mikoyan can be found in the studies of I.P. Lebedev 2) who writes: “During the war, the USSR received from the allies for lend-lease assistance 18,700 (according to other sources, 22,200) aircraft, including fighters" Airacobra "," Kitty Hauk "," Tomahawk "," Hurricane ", medium bombers B-25, A-20" Boston ", transport C-47, 12,200 tanks and self-propelled guns, 100 thousand kilometers of telephone wire, 2.5 million telephones; 15 million pairs of boots, more than 50 thousand tons of leather for sewing shoes, 54 thousand meters of wool, 250 thousand tons of stewed meat, 300 thousand tons of fat, 65 thousand tons of cow oil, 700 thousand tons of sugar, 1860 steam locomotives, 100 tanks on wheels, 70 electric diesel locomotives, about a thousand self-unloading cars, 10 thousand railway platforms It was with their help that 344 thousand tons of explosives, almost 2 million tons of oil products, and another 2.5 million tons of special steel for armor, 400 thousand tons of copper and bronze, 250 thousand tons of aluminum were delivered from the allies to the front and rear. aluminum, according to experts, can it was to build 100 thousand fighters and bombers - almost as many as our aircraft factories produced them throughout the war "(Lebedev I.P. 1)
The contribution of other allies should also be noted. Assistance in arms and military materials provided to the Soviet Union by Great Britain from the summer of 1941 to September 8, 1945 amounted to 318 million pounds, or 15% of the total assistance. It was in the first months of the war that the British military assistance that Stalin requested and received was very substantial. British "Spitfires", "Hurricanes" defended not only our capital, but also defended Stalingrad, the North and South of Russia, the Caucasus, and Belarus. It was on the "harrikeins" that twice Heroes of the Soviet Union Amet Khan Sultan, I. Stepanenko, A. Ryazanov won their victories.
Starting with the third protocol (entered into force on July 1, 1943), Canada began to take a direct part in providing assistance to the USSR. Canadian supplies included weapons, industrial equipment, non-ferrous metals, steel, rolled products, chemical products, and foodstuffs. To provide assistance to the USSR in 1943-1946. about 167.3 million Canadian dollars was spent, or 6.7% of the total aid.
We also point out that the annotated list of ships and vessels, including the battleship, handed over to us by the allies under Lend-Lease is over four hundred pages.
It should be added that the USSR received help from the allies not only under the Lend-Lease program. In the United States, in particular, the Russia War Relief was created. “With the money raised, the committee purchased and sent medicines, medical supplies and equipment, foodstuffs, and clothing to the Red Army, the Soviet people. In total, during the war, the Soviet Union received more than one and a half billion dollars in aid. " In England, a similar committee was chaired by Clementine Churchill, the Prime Minister's wife.
The Soviet government noted that supplies from the United States and other countries "contributed to the success of the Red Army in the liberation of their native land from the fascist invaders and in accelerating the overall victory of the allies over Nazi Germany and its satellites."
Notes (edit)
1) "We can definitely say that Stalin would never have been able to launch a large-scale counter-offensive of the Red Army, if not for 150 thousand heavy Studebaker trucks received from the United States" (Bunich I. Operation "Thunderstorm", or Error in the third sign. T 2. SPB., 1994. P. 269) The adverb “never” was selected by I. Bunich.
2) I.P. Lebedev - Major General of Aviation, member of the USSR Purchasing Commission in the USA; worked on receiving bombers A-20 "Boston".
The belittling of the role of Western supplies in Soviet military conditions was aimed primarily at affirming the myth of the "economic victory of socialism" in the Great Patriotic War and the superiority of the Soviet military economy over the military economies of capitalist countries, not only Germany, but also Great Britain and the United States. It was only after 1985 that other assessments of allied aid began to appear in Soviet publications. So, Marshal G.K. Zhukov in post-war conversations with the writer K.M. Simonov said:
“Speaking about our preparedness for war from the point of view of economy and economy, one should not ignore such a factor as the subsequent assistance from the allies. First of all, of course, on the part of the Americans, because the British helped us minimally in this sense. When analyzing all sides of the war, this cannot be discounted. We would be in dire straits without American gunpowder; we would not be able to fire as much ammunition as we needed. Without American Studebakers, we would have nothing to carry our artillery on. Yes, they largely provided our front-line transport in general. The production of special steels, necessary for the most varied needs of the war, was also associated with a number of American supplies. "At the same time, Zhukov emphasized that "we entered the war, while still continuing to be an industrially backward country in comparison with Germany." The credibility of K. Simonov's transmission of these conversations with Zhukov, which took place in 1965-1966, is confirmed by the statements of G. Zhukov, recorded as a result of wiretapping by the security forces in 1963: “Now they say that the allies never helped us ... But you can't to deny that the Americans were driving us so many materials without which we would not be able to form our reserves and would not be able to continue the war ... We had no explosives, no gunpowder. There was nothing to equip rifle cartridges with. The Americans really helped us out with gunpowder and explosives. And how much sheet steel they drove to us! Could we have quickly set up production of tanks, if not for American help with steel? And now they present things in such a way that we had all of this in abundance. "
The Red Army's vehicle fleet was also largely secured by Western supplies. The production of cars in the USSR in 1940 was 145 390, in 1941 - 124 476, in 1942 - 34 976, in 1943 - 49 266, in 1944 - 60 549, in 1945 - 74 757. Moreover, in the first half of 1941, 73.2 thousand cars were produced, and in the second - only 46.1 thousand, so that from the beginning of the war until the end of 1945, the total production of cars can be determined at 265.6 thousand. things. 409.5 thousand cars were delivered from the USA to the USSR during the war years, which is 1.5 times higher than the Soviet production during the war years. By the end of the war (as of May 1, 1945), cars delivered under Lend-Lease accounted for 32.8% in the Red Army's car park (58.1% were domestically produced cars and 9.1% were captured cars). Taking into account the greater carrying capacity and better quality, the role of American vehicles was even higher ("Studebakers", in particular, were used as artillery tractors). The pre-war fleet of Soviet cars (both those that were in the Red Army and those withdrawn from the national economy at the beginning of the war) was badly worn out. Before the war, the needs of the Red Army in motor transport were determined at 744 thousand cars and 92 thousand tractors, while there were 272.6 thousand cars and 42 thousand tractors in stock. It was planned to withdraw 240 thousand cars from the national economy, including 210 thousand trucks (GAZ-AA and ZIS-5), however, due to the severe wear of the vehicle fleet (for passenger cars, cars belonging to the 1st and 2nd categories , that is, not requiring immediate repair, there were 45%, and for cargo and special - 68%), in fact, only 206 thousand cars were withdrawn from the national economy in the first months of the war, while by August 22, 1941. Irrecoverable car losses reached 271.4 thousand. Obviously, without Western supplies, the Red Army would not have acquired the degree of mobility that it possessed at least from mid-1943, although until the end of the war the use of motor vehicles was constrained by a shortage of gasoline.
Gasoline in the USSR in 1941-1945. 10,923 thousand tons were produced (including in 1941 - 2983 thousand tons), and from the USA 267.1 thousand short, or 242.3 thousand metric, tons were received from the USA, which amounted to only 2, 8% of total Soviet production during the war (excluding production for the first half of 1941). True, the actual role of American gasoline was slightly higher due to the higher octane numbers. The USSR could not satisfy its own needs in this type of fuel, and the shortage of gasoline in the Red Army remained until the end of the war. Obviously, this situation was partly a consequence of the irrational drafting of applications for lend-lease assistance by the Soviet side - it would be more expedient to ask for fewer cars and more gasoline.
Also, the functioning of Soviet railway transport would have been impossible without Lend-Lease. The production of railroad rails (including narrow gauge rails) changed in the USSR as follows (in thousand tons) 1940-1360, 1941-874, 1942- 112, 1943 - 115.1944 - 129, 1945 - 308. The USSR was supplied with 685.7 thousand short tons of railway rails, which is equal to 622.1 thousand metric tons. This is about 56.5% of the total production of railway rails in the USSR from mid-1941 to the end of 1945. If we exclude from the calculation narrow-gauge rails, which were not supplied under Lend-Lease, then American deliveries will amount to 83.3% the total volume of Soviet production.
Even more noticeable was the role of lend-lease deliveries in maintaining the number of Soviet locomotives and railway carriages at the required level. The production of mainline steam locomotives in the USSR changed as follows: in 1940 - 914, in 1941 - 708, in 1942 - 9, in 1943 - 43, in 1944 - 32, in 1945 - 8. In 1940, 5 mainline diesel locomotives were produced. and in 1941 - 1, after which their production was discontinued until 1945 inclusive. Mainline electric locomotives in 1940 were produced 9 pieces, and in 1941 - 6 pieces, after which their production was also discontinued. Under Lend-Lease, 1900 steam locomotives and 66 diesel-electric locomotives were delivered to the USSR during the war years. Thus, Lend-Lease deliveries exceeded the total Soviet production of steam locomotives in 1941-1945. 2.4 times, and electric locomotives - 11 times. The production of freight cars in the USSR in 1942-1945 totaled 1,087 units compared to 33,096 in 1941. Under Lend-Lease, a total of 11,075 cars were delivered, or 10.2 times more than Soviet production in 1942 —1945 It is known that during the First World War, the transport crisis in Russia at the turn of 1916-1917, which largely provoked the revolution of February 1917, was caused by insufficient production of railway rails, steam locomotives and carriages, since industrial capacities and rental resources were reoriented to the production of weapons ... During the Great Patriotic War, only Lend-Lease deliveries prevented the paralysis of railway transport in the Soviet Union.
Western supplies were of decisive importance in providing the national economy with non-ferrous metals. Figures of Soviet production of basic non-ferrous metals in 1941-1945. still remain secret, so here you have to rely not on official data, but on estimates.
The facts of deliberate overestimation of reporting - an inevitable vice of the socialist planned economy, are known in relation to weapons and military equipment in the USSR both in the pre-war and post-war years.
According to our estimates, based on a decrease in labor costs per unit of various types of weapons and equipment in 1941-1943, the production of tanks and combat aircraft during the war years was at least doubled. Taking this into account, the share of Western supplies of weapons and military equipment turns out to be about twice as high as is commonly believed.
But perhaps most important to the Soviet Union were the supply of sophisticated machine tools and industrial equipment. Back in 1939-1940. the Soviet leadership placed orders for imported equipment for the production of artillery weapons. Then these orders, placed mainly in the United States, were delivered to the USSR under Lend-Lease. Namely, there was the greatest need in special machines for artillery production during the war years in the USSR. At the same time, these orders also contained a major miscalculation. A significant portion of the equipment was intended for the production of purely offensive weapons - powerful naval and super-heavy land weapons designed to destroy enemy fortifications. Naval guns were not needed, since with the beginning of the war shipbuilding was curtailed, super-heavy land artillery was also not needed, since the Red Army had to fight with the corresponding fortifications only at the very end of the war, and not on the scale that was thought before its start.
In general, it can be concluded that without Western supplies, the Soviet Union not only could not have won the Great Patriotic War, but even could not have resisted the German invasion, not being able to produce a sufficient amount of weapons and military equipment and provide it with fuel and ammunition. This dependence was well understood by the Soviet leadership at the beginning of the war. For example, the special envoy of the President F.D. Roosevelt G. Hopkins reported in a message dated July 31, 1941 that Stalin considered it impossible without American help from Great Britain and the USSR to resist the material might of Germany, which had the resources of occupied Europe. Roosevelt, back in October 1940, announcing his decision to allow the military department to provide weapons and equipment that are surplus for the needs of the American armed forces, as well as strategic materials and industrial equipment to those countries that could defend American national interests, allowed the inclusion of these countries and Russia.
The Western allies provided assistance to the USSR in preparing for war not only with Lend-Lease supplies. The struggle against the United States and Great Britain forced Germany to build submarines, diverting scarce metal, equipment and skilled labor for this. Only in 1941-1944. German shipbuilding produced submarines with a total displacement of 810 thousand tons. The main forces of the German fleet were sent to fight against the fleets and merchant shipping of Western countries (including convoys with supplies to the USSR under Lend-Lease). The Western allies also diverted significant ground forces of the Wehrmacht (in the last year of the war - up to 40%). Strategic bombing of Germany by Anglo-American aircraft slowed down the growth of its military industry, and in the last year of the war practically brought to naught the production of gasoline in Germany, finally paralyzing the Luftwaffe. From March to September 1944, the production of aviation gasoline in Germany, which was carried out almost exclusively at synthetic fuel plants - the main object of the Allied bombing at that time, decreased from 181 thousand tons to 10 thousand tons, and after a slight increase in November - to 49 thousand t - in March 1945 completely disappeared. The main forces of German aviation, especially fighter aviation, acted against the Air Force of England and the United States, and it was in the fight against the Western allies that the Luftwaffe suffered the bulk of its losses. The Soviet estimate of the losses of German aviation on the Soviet-German front: 62 thousand vehicles and 101 thousand aircraft, which constituted irrecoverable combat losses of German aviation throughout the war, is far from reality, since it was obtained by simply multiplying the number of German aircraft in individual theaters of war by the time of deployment of hostilities in a given theater, without taking into account the comparative intensity of hostilities (in sorties) in various theaters. Meanwhile, in the West, the intensity of the fighting in the air was generally higher than in the East, and the best German pilots fought there. So, in July and August 1943, when significant forces of the Luftwaffe were concentrated on the Eastern Front during the battles for Kursk, Oryol and Kharkov, out of 3213 irretrievably lost combat aircraft, only 1030 aircraft, or 32.3%, were on the Eastern Front. , about the same part of all irrecoverable losses during the war suffered by the Luftwaffe on the Eastern Front.
Since the USSR could not have waged a war against Germany without the assistance of Great Britain and the United States, the statements of Soviet propaganda about the economic victory of socialism in the Great Patriotic War and about the USSR's ability to independently defeat Germany are nothing more than a myth. In contrast to Germany, in the USSR, the goal of creating an autarkic economy that was able to provide the army in wartime with everything necessary for waging a modern war, which had emerged from the beginning of the 30s, was never achieved. Hitler and his advisers miscalculated not so much in determining the military-economic power of the USSR, as in assessing the ability of the Soviet economic and political system to function in conditions of severe military defeat, as well as the capabilities of the Soviet economy to use Western supplies efficiently and quickly enough, and Great Britain and the United States to implement such deliveries in the required quantity and on time.
Historians now face a new problem - to assess how Western supplies of industrial equipment under Lend-Lease, as well as supplies from Germany as part of reparations, contributed to the formation of a Soviet military-industrial complex capable of conducting an arms race on equal terms with the West, right down to the very last time, and determine the degree of dependence of the Soviet military-industrial complex on imports from the West for the entire post-war period.
DISPUTED TOPIC
There are different opinions about the role of the Lend-Lease in the defeat of German Nazism and its allies. So, Churchill called him " the most disinterested act in the history of all countries"And in Stalin's message to US President Truman on June 11, 1945, it was noted that" the agreement on the basis of which the United States supplied strategic materials and food to the USSR through Lend-Lease throughout the war in Europe, played an important role degree contributed to the successful completion of the war against the common enemy - Nazi Germany. "
Of the almost 18 million tons of cargo sent to the Soviet Union, more than a quarter - over 4.5 million tons - were food
American food, which came from the United States under Lend-Lease, made life easier for the warring country. Foreign products helped to survive in the post-war years
Lend-Lease food supplies provided high-calorie food to the Red Army during the entire period of the war(!!!).
In Arkhangelsk alone, during the first war winter, 20 thousand people died from hunger and disease - every tenth inhabitant. And if not for the 10,000 tons of Canadian wheat left behind with Stalin's consent, the number of deaths would have been much greater.
Undoubtedly, such an assessment is the only correct one and fully reflects the gratitude for the help of the Soviet people and the Armed Forces of the USSR, which first of all felt its results. Unfortunately, since the beginning of the Cold War, the importance of Lend-Lease was either hushed up or underestimated in our country. It was widely believed that Lend-Lease deliveries were not essential for the victory over Germany, since they accounted for an insignificant share of the total production of weapons, ammunition and military equipment in the USSR in 1941-1945, that the Americans received huge profits, and the Soviet people actually paid for them with their own blood.
All this cannot be called a lie. But a more detailed analysis allows you to reconsider the attitude towards Lend-Lease and find out the whole truth, since the truth cannot be incomplete and partial. An incomplete truth, this is a lie that is used, taking out of the context of the big picture. They are used not for good purposes at all, but incitement to hatred, enmity and misunderstanding.
And why this is being done is another question and has nothing to do with the help of the allies.
NEED TO REMEMBER
This incredible amount of cargo was delivered by sea, in which the ships of the convoys were killed en masse by the attacks of the aircraft and the submarine fleet of Germany. Therefore, some of the aircraft traveled from the American continent to the USSR on their own - from Fairbanks through Alaska, Chukotka, Yakutia, Eastern Siberia to Krasnoyarsk, from there - by echelons.
Years have passed. Many participants in the transportation of Lend-Lease cargo are not alive. But the peoples of the countries participating in the anti-Hitler coalition remember the heroic deeds of the seamen of the transport and military fleets. It is planned to install memorial plates to the participants of the Northern convoys, made in the USA (Portland), in Arkhangelsk on the Sedov embankment. By a joint decision of both chambers, the Alaska State Congress on May 1, 2001 approved the creation of monuments in Alaska, Russia and Canada in memory of the Lend-Lease program.
Unfortunately, only the Russian government has not yet expressed gratitude on behalf of the people of the Russian Federation for the enormous and disinterested assistance provided by the United States and Great Britain in 1941-1945. our country. Even in the main museum of the Great Patriotic War on Poklonnaya Gora in Moscow, there is not the slightest mention of the joint struggle on the seas and oceans, of the courage of those who, at the risk of their lives, delivered to the USSR everything necessary for Victory.
Therefore, it would be correct and timely to pay tribute to the Lend-Lease and the Northern Convoys in a special section of the museum on Poklonnaya Gora. It is high time to erect in Moscow a monument to Franklin Roosevelt, a great and sincere friend of the Soviet people, who did a lot for the triumph of the anti-Hitler coalition.
The Russian people need long ago to stop being plagued by soviet cattle and be guided in their feelings by the facts of real history, and not by its ersatz - Kremlin propaganda for the domestic consumer.
Lend-Lease South Route
At first glance, Mr. Roosevelt has been dragged into an apparently unprofitable business. Just look at the lend-lease settlement procedure:
- materials destroyed or lost during the war, as well as those that became unusable for further use, were not subject to payment;
- materials that turned out to be suitable for civilian needs after the war were paid in full or on the terms of a long-term loan;
- the materials that were not received before the end of the war could be purchased by the customer country, and the generous American government promised to credit the payment.
The only thing that somehow justified the Americans was the right, provided by the Lend-Lease Act, to reclaim the surviving military materials.
An endless shaft of cargo went to our country through Lend-Lease, from foppish officer boots with cowboy stitching along the tops to tanks and airplanes.
However, the official point of view of the USSR on Lend-Lease was expressed in the following lines:
Therefore, it is not surprising that when the American film "The Unknown War" went to the country's cinemas in the 80s, many were shocked: ace Pokryshkin told how he flew almost the entire war since 1942 on the American Airacobra fighter, how the northern caravans went with loads of help.
Until now, we believe that the Allies supplied us with everything unnecessary that lay in warehouses. And we remember how Churchill himself once said: "The tank named after me has more flaws than myself." But excuse me, our commissions accepted the lend-lease equipment, it was we who ordered the list of the necessary (or we could have requested a simple pitchfork as a weapon!). And then, this "Willis" is a bad car ?!
Actually, we asked the Americans not "Willis" at all, but motorcycle sidecars. But US Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius in January 1942 advised Ambassador Litvinov on jeeps, which the American army had already successfully used. We gave it a try and requested more soon. In total, we received 44,000 Willys MB and Ford GPW (General Purpose Willys) command vehicles during the war. They had no emblems, so they were all called "Willis".
Most of all American trucks US 6 got to the Soviet Union - about 152,000 copies. They were produced by two firms, Studebaker and REO. In each cabin of the Red Army soldier there was a brand new crisp leather jacket made of sealskin, but this luxury was immediately withdrawn for more important matters - they say, our driver will travel in an overcoat too. "Studers", as the front-line soldiers called these trucks, turned out to be the most suitable transport for the harsh front-line conditions (in particular, due to the lower compression ratio, they were less sensitive to the quality of gasoline
The total number of cars delivered to the USSR under Lend-Lease was 477,785, not counting spare parts, which would be enough to assemble more than one thousand cars.
On August 12, 1941, the first sea Lend-Lease convoy headed for the USSR. The cargo went to our northern ports: Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, Severodvinsk (Molotovsk). Return convoys bore the QP index.
From American, Canadian and British ports, ships first arrived in the deep Icelandic Hvalfjord north of Reykjavik. There they were not less than 20 ships, grouped into caravans, after which they were sent to us under the protection of warships. True, there was also a less dangerous route: through Vladivostok, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Nogaevo (Magadan), Nakhodka and Khabarovsk.
Official Soviet history has left a lot of questions about Lend-Lease. It was believed that the West, under any pretext, delayed deliveries, because it expected Stalin's regime to collapse. Then how can one explain the haste with the spread of the "Lend-Lease Law" by the Americans to the USSR?
Stalin showed the highest art of diplomacy to turn Lend-Lease into a benefit for the USSR. When discussing supplies with Churchill, Stalin was the first to use the word "sell", and pride did not allow the Prime Minister to demand payment from the USSR. In Roosevelt, on the other hand, Stalin unraveled his comrade in mollifying the skeptical Churchill. And whenever the northern convoys threatened to stop, Roosevelt began bombarding Churchill with panic dispatches. As a result, Churchill was forced to share with the Soviets even the equipment that was intended for the British army under Lend-Lease. For example, the light all-terrain vehicles Bantam, which the British themselves had - the cat cried.
The northern convoys were interrupted only twice - in the 42nd, when Great Britain was accumulating forces for a major operation in Africa, and in the 43rd, when the Allies were preparing to land in Italy.
Even Stalin did not forget to regularly chastise the Allies for the "poorly packed cargo." And the Soviet ambassador to London, Comrade Maisky did not hesitate to hint to Churchill that if the USSR could no longer fight the Germans, then the entire burden of the war would fall on the shoulders of the British. Churchill even had to counter that until June 22, 1941, he was not at all sure that Russia would not side with Hitler against Great Britain.
The Pravda newspaper noted in its lend-lease report that British deliveries began ... June 22, 1941! Surely it is known that on July 20 the first English naval caravan set out to us with help.
It is also known that in September 41st two British squadrons of Hurricane fighters arrived on the northern front. We know about the French squadron "Normandy" that fought on our soil. And about the British pilots?
But this is so, by the way. And here is the "automobile" example: during the battle for Moscow for the all-wheel drive "emka" GAZ-61 of Marshal Zhukov, the Bantam with guards was always following - one of those that the British soldier did not get.
On September 29, 1941, the Moscow conference of representatives of the USSR, Great Britain and the United States at the highest level discussed the issue of military supplies, and on November 7, 1941, Roosevelt extended the "Lend-Lease Law" to the USSR. By the way, the States had not yet entered the world war!
The technical training of the drivers and technical staff of the Red Army left much to be desired. In this regard, the Main Automobile Directorate raised the issue of training the personnel of automobile units in the basics of maintaining, operating and repairing imported equipment. Books on operation and repair were translated into Russian and published - they were attached to each machine. But for a simple Red Army chauffeur, such books turned out to be too complicated. Then brochures were printed with extremely simplified content and instructions like: "Driver! You must not pour kerosene into the Studebaker car. He will not go on it, this is not a lorry for you!" On the pages of such "short guides" a soldier of the Red Army could find a sequence of repair operations for all cases of front-line automobile life: "Do this; if you see such and such a result, do this: first, second. Third ...". However, thousands of Lend-Lease vehicles were destroyed by the drivers.
There is another mysterious page in the history of Lend-Lease. On September 19, 1941, Churchill wrote to Stalin: "I attach great importance to the issue of opening a through route from the Persian Gulf to the Caspian, not only by rail, but also by road, to the construction of which we hope to attract the Americans with their energy and organizational abilities." However, large-scale hostilities in the Persian Gulf region began long before this message. The operation to seize the Iraqi port of Basra was carried out by the British commandos back in April 1941. And the first Lend-Lease American plant started working there before the German attack on the USSR!
On July 25, British troops entered Iran from the south, and Soviet troops from the north. The losses of the British in clashes with the regular army of Reza Shah Pahlavi amounted to 22 people killed and 42 wounded. Our losses are unknown. Later, a small area in the south of the country (the port of Bushehr, Fars province) went to the Americans.
An interesting fact: the group of American military specialists sent to Iran was led by the Soviet - I.S. Kormilitsyn and his deputy L.I. Zorin. The transportation by the southern route was controlled by none other than Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan - Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR.
At that time there was only one land route from this region - from Bandar Shahpur along the Trans-Iranian railway through Ahvaz and Qom to Tehran. There was no more or less developed transport network between the border ports of Iraq and Iran.
In preparation for receiving lend-lease cargo, the ports in Khorramshahr, Bandar Shahpur and Basra were reconstructed. A railway line with a branch to the Iraqi village of Tanum (on the left bank of the Shatt al-Arab, opposite Basra) went down from Ahvaz to the south to Khorramshahr. The American construction firm Folspen rolled off the Tanum highway through Khorramshahr and Ahvaz to northern Iran.
Automotive equipment arrived in the form of assembly kits - in boxes, and the cars were assembled right on the shore. In the port of Khorramshahr, an aircraft and car assembly plant was built, in the port of Bushehr, an automobile assembly plant (it was there that the Willys, Doji, Studebakers and GMCs were assembled), and an auto assembly plant in Basra.
Local residents - Arabs and Persians worked for them, the administration consisted of Americans and British, and Soviet military specialists accepted the products. The locals were paid little, and the build quality was very poor at first. Then our military experts insisted on improving the working and living conditions of workers, and raising their qualifications. Barracks towns were built, life and food were adjusted, wages became piece-work, and they began to fine fines for marriage. Very soon things got better.
Driving cars for more than 2000 km through mountains and passes, on roads and without them turned out to be extremely difficult. On the way, running-in took place, and the cars went loaded to the limit - they were carrying spare parts, weapons, food, medicines.
Through titanic efforts in the first half of 1942, it was possible to lay an extensive system of roads across Iran, to build food, recreation and technical prevention points, to establish the protection of columns and parking places, which was important - gangs and wild tribes of Qashqai, incited by the Nazis, were raging on the roads.
While the British ruled in the Persian Gulf, 2,000 cars a month came to the USSR, although a plan was set - to hand over 120 cars a day.
In March 1943, the Americans took over the supervision of the Trans-Iranian Railway and the ports of the Persian Gulf. Since the middle of the year, assembly plants have been operating in the townships of Esh-Shuaiba (south-west of Basra, Iraq) and Andimeshk, which is on the Trans-Iranian railway. The flow immediately increased - up to 10,000 vehicles per month began to arrive from the south. The car assembly plant in Andimeshka alone sent about 78,000 cars to the USSR - that's what American mass production technology means! All in all, we received two-thirds of the Lend-Lease vehicles by the southern route.
With the removal of the front from the borders of the USSR, this route lost its significance, and in 1945 the lend-lease cargo went through the Black Sea. The assembly of cars in Iran and Iraq began to curtail, enterprises were dismantled. On October 15, 1944, personnel were withdrawn from the Soviet military camp in Esh-Shuaiba. On October 24, Soviet inspectors in Basra ceased their activities. In November 1944, the last cars were assembled in Andimeshk, at the same time the Soviet representation in Bandar Shahpur was liquidated.
We preferred to keep quiet about all this. Soviet troops in Iran, military experts in Iraq, foreign vehicles in the Red Army. All this is complicated and incomprehensible to the common people. If you begin to explain, you will have to remember that similar enterprises operated in the USSR. For example, the Gorky Automobile Plant has been assembling American cars since November 1941. Even when the GAZ was heavily bombed in the summer of 1943, the work continued right in the open air. In October 1944, the assembly equipment and technical staff were sent to Minsk, where they occupied the premises of the Daimler-Benz auto repair plant (future MAZ), which was conquered from the Germans. The first 50 trucks of this enterprise went to the front in November 1944. The assembly of the Lend-Lease was also carried out by the Moscow ZIS and KIM - the vehicles that returned from the front were also repaired there. In addition, many small enterprises were engaged in lend-lease vehicles. I wonder if these cars were counted among those 205,000 units that, according to Soviet statistics, were produced by our factories during the war years?
In a word, it is not far before a complete reassessment of the role of our allies in the victory over Germany!
But now it's time to return the "hose" borrowed from a neighbor. In 1946-47, after a major overhaul, we handed over some of the cars to the Allies. According to eyewitnesses, it happened like this: the allies drove a ship with a press and scissors into the port. A special commission meticulously accepted the equipment, checked the conformity of the factory configuration, after which it was immediately sent ... under the press and loaded onto barges in the form of "cubes". Who, one wonders, in the West needed cars of dubious assembly, and even those that were in the hands of the Red Army?
Under these presses, rare models disappeared without a trace, including the reconnaissance car RC (reconnaissance car) of the American company Bantam. Of the 2675 produced "Bows", as our drivers called them, almost all of them ended up in the USSR in the first year of the war.
Victory without allies?
Could we have won without our Western allies? That is, suppose that England and the United States did not participate in the Second World War at all. What would the Soviet Union have lost then? Let's start with Lend-Lease. We like to quote the chairman of the State Planning Commission, Nikolai Voznesensky, who said that aid under Lend-Lease amounted to no more than 4% of the total volume of Soviet production during the war years. Let it be so, although no one has yet figured out how to correctly define the then ratio between the dollar and the ruble. But if we take a few natural indicators, it becomes clear that without the help of the Western allies, the Soviet military economy could not satisfy the demands of the front. Lend-Lease received about half of all the aluminum consumed by the Soviet industry during the war years, the bulk of alloying additives, without which it was impossible to produce high-quality armor, more than a third of aviation gasoline consumed in the USSR and explosives used during the war. Cars delivered under Lend-Lease accounted for a third of the front-line vehicle fleet. Not to mention the fact that the main part of the wagons, steam locomotives and the rail, thanks to which the Soviet railway transport functioned without interruption, was delivered under Lend-Lease. Lend-Lease also received the bulk of radio stations and radars, as well as a variety of industrial equipment, tanks, aircraft, anti-aircraft guns, etc. And American stew and melange should not be forgotten.
Think about it: would we have won if we had produced half the number of planes, a quarter fewer tanks, a third less ammunition, if we didn’t have enough vehicles to transport troops, if we had several times fewer radio stations, we wouldn’t have radars and a lot of other imported equipment.
We must not forget that the Wehrmacht began to bear the most severe defeats on the Eastern Front, such as the defeat in Belarus and Romania, after the landing in Normandy, where the best German tank divisions and the main aviation forces were transferred. Anyway, the Luftwaffe suffered two-thirds of its losses in the fight against the Western allies. Almost the entire German navy also acted against England and America. And in the last year of the war, Anglo-American troops diverted over a third of the German ground forces.
Just imagine for a moment that the USSR would fight Germany one-on-one. Then the entire might of the Luftwaffe and the German fleet, as well as the entire German land army, would have descended on the Red Army. And the Soviet troops, having half the number of aircraft, would never have won air supremacy, would not have been able to defend Sevastopol and Leningrad for a long time under the conditions of the overwhelming superiority of the German fleet, and would hardly have won victories at Stalingrad and Kursk. I am afraid that in a one-on-one duel between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht, a Soviet defeat would be highly probable.
And now let's try to imagine the opposite situation: the Soviet Union does not participate in the war, remains neutral and supplies Germany with raw materials and food (option - in 1942 the USSR is defeated and withdraws from the war, as described in the science fiction novel by Robert Harris "Vaterland" and staged based on his Hollywood film). How then would the struggle of England and the United States against Germany end? The economic potential of the Western allies would still exceed the German one, which would ensure in the long term the domination of the Anglo-American aviation and navy and would exclude the German landing on the British Isles. The war would have boiled down mainly to strategic bombing of German territory. However, in terms of ground forces, the armies of England and the United States would have to catch up with the Wehrmacht for a long time. Based on what we know about the development of the American and German nuclear projects, it can be argued that the non-participation of the USSR in the war would not have a significant impact on the speed of their implementation. The gap between the Germans and the Americans on the way to the atomic bomb in 1945 was at least three years, since the Americans carried out a chain reaction in the reactor at the end of 1942, and the Germans had such an experiment in March 1945 that ended in failure. So there is no doubt that the United States would have received an atomic bomb at a time when Germany would have been far from it. The Americans, of course, would not waste this scarce weapon on already defeated Japan, but, having saved up nuclear warheads, would have dropped dozens of nuclear bombs at the end of 1945 or at the beginning of 1946 on Berlin and Hamburg, Nuremberg and Munich, Cologne and Frankfurt. -Maine. Probably, the war would have ended with the surrender of Germany after the destruction of its largest cities and industrial zones. So it is safe to say that the Red Army, with its heroic resistance, saved the Germans from the horrors of the atomic bombings.
Quote: Lend-Lease payment
This is perhaps the main topic for speculation of people trying to somehow denigrate the Lend-Lease program. Most of them consider it their indispensable duty to declare that the USSR, they say, paid for all the goods supplied under Lend-Lease. Of course, this is nothing more than a delusion (or a deliberate lie). Neither the USSR nor any other countries that received assistance under the Lend-Lease program, in accordance with the Lend-Lease law during the war, did not pay, so to speak, a cent for this assistance. Moreover, as already written at the beginning of the article, they were not obliged to pay after the war for the materials, equipment, weapons and ammunition that were consumed during the war. It was necessary to pay only for what remained intact after the war and could be used by the recipient countries. Thus, there were no lend-lease payments during the war. Another thing is that the USSR actually sent various goods to the United States (including 320 thousand tons of chrome ore, 32 thousand tons of manganese ore, as well as gold, platinum, wood). This was done as part of the reverse lend-lease program. In addition, the same program included free repair of American ships in Soviet ports and other services. Unfortunately, I could not find the total amount of goods and services provided to the allies in the framework of reverse lend-lease. The only source I have found claims that this very amount was $ 2.2 million. However, I personally am not sure about the authenticity of this data. However, they may well be considered a lower limit. The upper limit in this case will be the amount of several hundred million dollars. Be that as it may, the share of reverse lend-lease in the total lend-lease trade between the USSR and the allies will not exceed 3-4%. For comparison, the amount of reverse lend-lease from the UK to the United States is equal to 6.8 billion dollars, which is 18.3% of the total exchange of goods and services between these states.
So, there was no payment for Lend-Lease during the war. The Americans provided the bill to the recipient countries only after the war. The volume of UK debt to the United States amounted to $ 4.33 billion, to Canada - $ 1.19 billion. The last payment of $ 83.25 million (in favor of the United States) and $ 22.7 million (Canada) was made on December 29, 2006. The volume of China's debt was determined at 180 million. dollars, and this debt has not yet been paid off. The French paid off the United States on May 28, 1946, granting the United States a number of trade preferences.
The debt of the USSR was determined in 1947 at 2.6 billion dollars, but already in 1948 this amount was reduced to 1.3 billion. Nevertheless, the USSR refused to pay. The refusal followed in response to new concessions from the United States: in 1951, the amount of debt was revised again and this time amounted to 800 million. was again reduced, this time to $ 722 million; maturity - 2001), and the USSR agreed to this agreement only on condition that it was granted a loan from the Export-Import Bank. In 1973, the USSR made two payments totaling $ 48 million, but then ceased payments due to the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment to the 1972 Soviet-American trade agreement. In June 1990, during negotiations between the presidents of the United States and the USSR, the parties returned to discussing the debt. A new deadline for the final repayment of the debt was set - 2030, and the amount was $ 674 million. At the moment, Russia owes the US $ 100 million for lend-lease deliveries.
LITERATURE
Lebedev I.P. Once again about Lend-Lease. - USA: Economy. Politics. Ideology. 1990, no. 1
Lebedev I.P. Aviation Lend-Lease. - Military History Journal, 1991, No. 2
Kotelnikov V.R. Aviation Lend-Lease. - Questions of history. 1991, no. 10
Berezhnoy S.S. Lend-Lease ships and vessels. Directory. SPb., 1994
Ilyin A. Aircraft of the allies under Lend-Lease. - International life. 1995, no. 7
Allies in the 1941-1945 war M., 1995
Kascheev L.B., Reminsky V.A. Lend-Lease cars. Kharkov, 1998
Sokolov B.V. The truth about the Great Patriotic War (Collection of articles). - SPb .: Aleteya, 1989. Book on the website: http://militera.lib.ru/research/sokolov1/index.html
Lend-Lease- Lend-Lease program (from the English. lend- "lend" and lease- “lease, lease”) was a system in which the United States, mostly free of charge, transferred ammunition, equipment, food and strategic raw materials, including oil products, to its allies in World War II.
The concept of this program gave the president the power to help any country whose defense was deemed vital to the U.S. The Lend-Lease Act passed by the U.S. Congress on March 11, 1941 provided:
- the supplied materials (cars, various military equipment, weapons, raw materials, other items) destroyed, lost and used during the war are not subject to payment (Article 5);
- The lend-lease property left over from the end of the war and suitable for civilian purposes will be paid in whole or in part on the basis of long-term loans provided by the United States (mostly interest-free loans).
The Lend-Lease provisions stipulated that after the war, if the American side was interested, the indestructible and not lost technology and equipment should be returned to the United States.
The main clients of the USA are Great Britain, as well as the USSR and the countries of the Commonwealth.
In the post-war period, various assessments of the role of Lend-Lease were expressed. In the USSR, more often, mainly for ideological reasons, the importance of deliveries was diminished, while abroad it was argued that victory over Germany was determined by Western weapons and that the Soviet Union would not have resisted without Lend-Lease.
In Soviet historiography, it was usually argued that the amount of aid under the lend-lease of the USSR was quite small - only about 4% of the funds spent by the country on the war, and tanks and aircraft were supplied mainly from outdated models. Today, the attitude towards the help of the allies has changed somewhat, and attention has also begun to be paid to the fact that for a number of items supplies were important, both in terms of the importance of quantitative and qualitative characteristics, and in terms of access to new models of weapons and industrial equipment.
The reverse lend-lease (for example, the lease of air bases) was received by the United States in the amount of $ 7.8 billion, of which $ 6.8 billion came from the UK and the British Commonwealth.
Canada had a lend-lease program similar to the American one, within which supplies amounted to $ 4.7 billion, mainly to the UK and the USSR.
The importance of Lend-Lease in the victory of the United Nations over the Axis countries is illustrated by the table below, which shows the GDP of the main countries that participated in World War II, from 1938 to 1945, in billions of dollars in 1990 prices.
This graph shows the ratio of the GDP of the United Nations / Axis countries during 1938-1945.
| Country | 1938 | 1939 | 1940 | 1941 | 1942 | 1943 | 1944 | 1945 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Australia | 24 | 27 | 27 | 29 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 12 |
| France | 186 | 199 | 164 | 130 | 116 | 110 | 93 | 101 |
| Germany | 351 | 384 | 387 | 412 | 417 | 426 | 437 | 310 |
| Italy | 141 | 151 | 147 | 144 | 145 | 137 | 117 | 92 |
| Japan | 169 | 184 | 192 | 196 | 197 | 194 | 189 | 144 |
| the USSR | 359 | 366 | 417 | 359 | 274 | 305 | 362 | 343 |
| United Kingdom | 284 | 287 | 316 | 344 | 353 | 361 | 346 | 331 |
| USA | 800 | 869 | 943 | 1 094 | 1 235 | 1 399 | 1 499 | 1 474 |
| United nations total: | 1 629 | 1 600 | 1 331 | 1 596 | 1 862 | 2 065 | 2 363 | 2 341 |
| Axis countries of all: | 685 | 746 | 845 | 911 | 902 | 895 | 826 | 466 |
| GDP of United Nations / Axis Countries: | 2,38 | 2,15 | 1,58 | 1,75 | 2,06 | 2,31 | 2,86 | 5,02 |
As the table above shows, until December 1941, the GDP of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition (USSR + Great Britain) was related to the GDP of Germany and its European allies as 1: 1. It should be taken into account, however, that up to this point Great Britain was exhausted by the naval blockade and could not significantly help the USSR in the short term. Moreover, at the end of 1941, Great Britain was still losing the battle for the Atlantic, which was fraught with a complete collapse for the country's economy, which was almost completely tied to foreign trade.
The GDP of the USSR in 1942, in turn, due to the occupation of large territories by Germany, decreased by about a third compared to the pre-war level, while of the 200 million population, about 90 million remained in the occupied territories.
Thus, in 1942, the USSR and Great Britain were inferior to Germany and its satellites both in terms of GDP (0.9: 1) and in terms of population (taking into account the losses of the USSR due to the occupation). aid to both countries. Moreover, the United States was the only country in the world with sufficient production capacity to provide such support in a short enough time to influence the course of hostilities in 1942. 1941, the United States continued to increase its military assistance to Great Britain, and on October 1, 1941, Franklin Roosevelt approved joining the USSR Lend-Lease.
Lend-Lease, coupled with increasing assistance from Britain in its battle for the Atlantic, proved to be a critical factor in getting the US into the war, especially on the European front. Hitler, declaring war on the United States on December 11, 1941, mentioned both of these factors as key in his decision to go to war with the United States.
It should be noted that the sending of American and British military equipment to the USSR led to the need to supply it with hundreds of thousands of tons of aviation fuel, millions of shells for guns and cartridges for PP and machine guns, spare tracks for tanks, spare car tires, spare parts for tanks, aircraft and cars. All this lend-lease was not absolutely necessary for the USSR. Already in 1943, when the leadership of the Allies ceased to doubt the ability of the USSR for a long-term war, mainly strategic materials (aluminum, etc.) began to be imported into the USSR. and machine tools for the Soviet industry.
Deliveries to the USSR
Signing lend-lease agreements
BM-13 "Katyusha" on the Studebaker platform
A conference of representatives of the USSR, Great Britain and the United States on mutual military supplies took place in Moscow from September 29 to October 1, 1941.
As a result of the decisions taken at this conference, the first deal on supplies to the USSR was reached in February 1942, when the law on lend-lease was extended to the USSR.
On June 11, 1942, the USSR Ambassador to the United States Maxim Litvinov and US Secretary of State Cordell Hal exchanged notes stating that the "Agreement between the governments of the USSR and the United States on principles applicable to mutual assistance in the war against aggression" signed on June 11, 1942 replaces and invalidates the previous agreement between the governments of the USSR and the USA on the same issue, concluded through an exchange of messages between Roosevelt and Stalin in February 1942.
Routes and volume of supplies
The main routes and volume of deliveries of transport cargo are shown in the following table:
| Supply routes | thousand tons | % Of total |
|---|---|---|
| Pacific | 8244 | 47,1 |
| Trans-Iranian | 4160 | 23,8 |
| Arctic convoys | 3964 | 22,6 |
| Black Sea | 681 | 3,9 |
| Soviet Arctic | 452 | 2,6 |
| Total | 17 501 | 100,0 |
Three routes - Pacific, Trans-Iranian and Arctic convoys - accounted for 93.5% of total supplies. None of these routes were completely safe.
M3 "Li" tankers nicknamed "the mass grave of six"
The fastest (and most dangerous) route was the Arctic convoys. In July-December 1941, 40% of all deliveries went along this route, and about 15% of the shipped goods ended up on the ocean floor. The sea part of the journey from the US east coast to Murmansk took about 2 weeks.
Cargo with northern convoys also went through Arkhangelsk and Molotovskaya (now Severodvinsk), from where the cargo went to the front along the hastily completed branch of the railway. The bridge across the Northern Dvina did not yet exist, and a meter layer of ice from river water was frozen to transport equipment in winter, since the natural thickness of the ice (65 cm in winter 1941) did not allow the rails with carriages to withstand. Further, the cargo was sent by rail to the south, to the central, rear part of the USSR. The Pacific route, which provided about half of the Lend-Lease supply, was relatively (although far from completely) safe. With the outbreak of December 7, 1941, the war in the Pacific Ocean, transportation here could only be provided by Soviet sailors, and merchant and transport ships sailed only under the Soviet flag. All non-freezing straits were controlled by Japan, and Soviet ships were subjected to forced search, and sometimes destroyed. The sea part of the route from the western coast of the SRSS to the Far Eastern ports of the USSR took 18-20 days.
Studebakers in Iran on the way to the USSR
The Trans-Iranian route in August 1941 only transported 10,000 tons per month. To increase the volume of supplies, it was necessary to carry out a large-scale modernization of the transport system of Iran, in particular, the ports in the Persian Gulf and the trans-Iranian railway. To this end, the allies (USSR and Great Britain) occupied Iran in August 1941. By October 1942, the supply volumes were raised to 30,000, and by May 1943 - up to 100,000 tons per month. Further, the delivery of goods was carried out by ships of the Caspian military flotilla, by the end of 1942, which were actively attacked by German aviation. The sea part of the journey from the east coast of the United States to the coast of Iran took about 75 days.
It should be noted that during the war there were two more Lend-Lease air routes. For one of them, the planes "on their own" flew to the USSR from the United States through the South Atlantic, Africa and the Persian Gulf, on the other - through Alaska, Chukotka and Siberia. On the second route, known as Alsib (Alaska - Siberia), 7925 aircraft were airlifted.
Nomenclature of supplies
The lend-lease range of supplies was determined by the Soviet government and was intended to plug the bottlenecks in the supply of Soviet industry and the army. Marshal Zhukov said in post-war conversations:
The Lend-Lease program was mutually beneficial for both the USSR (and other recipient countries) and the United States. In particular, the United States won the necessary time to mobilize its own military-industrial complex.
"Valentine" "Stalin" is sent to the USSR under the Lend-Lease program.
The main chassis of the Katyusha were lend-leased Studebakers (specifically, Studebaker US6). While the United States provided about 20,000 vehicles for the Soviet Katyusha, only 600 trucks were produced in the USSR. Almost all Katyushas assembled on the basis of Soviet cars were destroyed during the war. To date, in the entire post-Soviet space, there are only four authentic Katyusha rocket launchers, created on the basis of Soviet ZIS-6 vehicles. One of them is in the St. Petersburg Artillery Museum, and the second is in Zaporozhye. The third mortar in the lorry base stands as a monument in Lugansk. The fourth is in the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin.
Jeep. Within the framework of the le-liz program, 51,000 jeep were sent to the USSR, assembled and disassembled.
According to other sources, the USSR received under Lend-Lease 622.1 thousand tons of railway rails (56.5% of its own production), 1900 steam locomotives (2.4 times more than produced during the war years in the USSR) and 11,075 cars ( 10.2 times more), 3 million 606 thousand tires (43.1%), 610 thousand tons of sugar (41.8%), 664.6 thousand tons of canned meat (108%). The USSR received 427,000 cars and 32 thousand army motorcycles, while in the USSR from the beginning of the war to the end of 1945, only 265.6 thousand cars and 27816 motorcycles were produced. The United States supplied 2 million 13 thousand tons of aviation gasoline (together with the allies - 2 million 586 thousand tons) - almost two-thirds of the fuel used during the war by Soviet aviation. At the same time, in the article from which the figures of this paragraph are taken, BV Sokolov's article "The Role of Lend-Lease in Soviet Military Efforts, 1941-1945" appears as a source. However, the article itself says that the United States and Great Britain supplied together only 1216.1 thousand tons of aviation gasoline, and in the USSR in 1941-1945, 5539 thousand tons of aviation gasoline were made, thus Western supplies accounted for only 18% of the total Soviet consumption of the times. war. Considering that this was the percentage of aircraft in the Soviet fleet.
| Aircraft | 14 795 |
| Tanks | 7 056 |
| Passenger jeeps | 51 503 |
| Trucks | 375 883 |
| Motorcycle | 35 170 |
| Tractors | 8 071 |
| Rifles | 8 218 |
| Automatic weapons | 131 633 |
| Pistols | 12 997 |
| Explosives | 345 735 tons |
| Dynamite | 70,400,000 lb |
| Gunpowder | 127,000 tons |
| TNT | £ 271.5 million |
| Tiluola | 237.4 million lb |
| Detonators | 903 000 |
| Building equipment | $ 10910000 |
| Freight wagons | 11 155 |
| Locomotives | 1 981 |
| Cargo ships | 90 |
| Anti-submarine ships | 105 |
| Torpedo boats | 197 |
| Radars | 445 |
| Engines for ships | 7 784 |
| Food stocks | 4478000 tons |
| Machinery and equipment | $ 1078965000 |
| Non-ferrous metals | 802,000 tons |
| Petroleum products | 2,670,000 tons |
| Chemicals | 842,000 tons |
| Cotton | 106 893 000 tons |
| Skin | 49 860 tons |
| Shin | 3786000 |
| Army boots | 15417000 pairs |
| Blankets | 1541590 |
| Alcohol | 331,066 l |
| Buttons | 257 723 498 pcs. |
The USSR received a significant number of cars from the United States and other allies: in the Red Army's car park there were 5.4% of imported cars in 1943, in 1944 in the SA - 19%, and as of May 1, 1945 - 32.8% (58.1% were Soviet-made cars and 9.1% were captured). The USA and the British Empire supplied 18.36% of aviation gasoline used by Soviet aviation during the war years; however, mainly American and British planes supplied under Lend-Lease were refueled with this gasoline, while Soviet planes could be refueled with Soviet gasoline with a lower octane number.
Comparative data on the role of Lend-Lease in providing the Soviet economy with certain types of materials and food during the war, such as:
| Materials (edit) | Production of the USSR (excluding the existing at the beginning of the war) | Lend-Lease | Lend-Lease / Wirobnistvo of the USSR, in% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Explosives, thousand tons | 558 | 295,6 | 53% |
| Copper, thousand tons | 534 | 404 | 76% |
| Aluminum, thousand tons | 283 | 301 | 106% |
| Tin, thousand tons | 13 | 29 | 223% |
| Cobalt, tone | 340 | 470 | 138% |
| Aviation fuel, thousand tons | 4700 | 1087 | 23% |
| Car tires, million pieces | 3988 | 3659 | 92% |
| Wool, thousand tons | 96 | 98 | 102% |
| Sugar, thousand tons | 995 | 658 | 66% |
| Canned meat, million cans | 432,5 | 2077 | 480% |
| Animal fats, thousand tons | 565 | 602 | 107% |
Lend-lease debts and their payment
Immediately after the end of the war, the United States sent countries that received aid under the Lend-Lease proposal to return the surviving military equipment and pay off the debt in order to obtain new loans. Since the Lend-Lease Law provided for the write-off of used military equipment and materials, the Americans insisted on paying only for civilian supplies: rail transport, power plants, steamships, trucks and other equipment that were in the recipient countries as of September 2, 1945. For the military equipment that was destroyed by the Nazis during the fighting, the United States did not demand a cent.
United Kingdom
The volume of UK debt to the United States amounted to $ 4.33 billion, to Canada - $ 1.19 billion. The last payment of $ 83,250,000 (in favor of the United States) and $ 22.7 million (Canada) was made on December 29, 2006.
China
China's debt to the United States for lend-lease deliveries amounted to $ 187 million. However, in 1989, the United States demanded that Taiwan (not the PRC) return the debt under Lend-Lease. The fate of the Chinese debt is not clear.
USSR (Russian Federation)
In the 1948 negotiations, Soviet representatives agreed to pay only a small amount and met the predicted refusal of the American side. Negotiations in 1949 also came to nothing. In 1951, the Americans twice reduced the amount of payment, which became equal to $ 800 million, but the Soviet side agreed to pay only $ 300 million. According to the Soviet government, the calculations should have been carried out not in accordance with the real debt, but on the basis of a precedent. This precedent should have been the proportions in determining the debt between the United States and Great Britain, which was fixed back in March 1946.
The USSR agreement on the procedure for repaying lend-lease debts was concluded only in 1972. According to this agreement, the USSR undertook to pay $ 722 million by 2001, including interest. Until July 1973, three payments were made for a total of $ 48 million, after which payments were stopped due to the introduction of economic measures by the American side in trade with the USSR (Jackson-Vanik Amendment). In June 1990, during negotiations between the presidents of the United States and the USSR, the parties returned to discussing the debt. A new deadline for the final repayment of debt was set - 2030, and the amount was $ 674 million.
After the collapse of the USSR, the debt for aid was reissued to the Russian Federation (Boris Yeltsin, Andrey Kozyrev), as of 2003, the Russian Federation owes about 100 million US dollars.
France
On May 28, 1946, France signed a package of agreements with the United States (the so-called Blum-byrnes accords) to regulate the French debt for lend-lease deliveries in exchange for a number of trade concessions from France. In particular, France has significantly increased the quotas for showing foreign (primarily American) films on the French film market.
Collocation lend-lease comes from English words: lend- lend and lease- lease. The article offered to readers by the candidate of historical sciences P. S. Petrov sets out the views of American political and military leaders, as well as estimates of Western researchers drawn from various US sources on Soviet-American cooperation within the framework of Lend-Lease, which largely determined the policy of relation to the Soviet ally during the last war.
According to the well-established opinion, making deliveries to the parties at war against Germany, the United States of America was guided primarily by its own interests - to protect itself by the hands of others and to preserve its own strength as much as possible. At the same time, the monopoly bourgeoisie of the United States pursued certain economic goals, bearing in mind that supplies under the Lend-Lease would contribute to a significant expansion of production and its enrichment through government orders.
The Lend-Lease Act (officially called the US Defense Assistance Act) was passed by the US Congress on March 8, 1941. Initially, it extended to Great Britain and a number of other countries against which Germany was at war.
According to this act, the head of state received the authority to transfer, exchange, lease, lend or otherwise supply military equipment, weapons, ammunition, equipment, strategic raw materials, food, provide various goods and services, as well as information to the government of any country, "defense which the President considers vital to the defense of the United States. "
Countries receiving lend-lease assistance signed agreements with the US government. According to them, the delivered cars, various military equipment, weapons, other items destroyed, lost or consumed during the war, were not payable after its end. The goods and materials remaining after the war that could be used for civilian consumption were supposed to be paid in whole or in part on the basis of long-term loans provided by America. And the United States could have demanded that the military materials be returned back, although, as A.A. Gromyko, the former USSR ambassador to the United States in 1943-1946, the American government has repeatedly stated that it will not exercise this right.
It is important to note that countries that entered into agreements with the United States, in turn, assumed obligations to “help protect the United States” and provide assistance to them with the materials that they had, provide various services and information. Thus, the United States received a counter, or reverse, lend-lease: machine tools, anti-aircraft guns and ammunition, equipment for military plants, as well as various services, military information, strategic raw materials, precious metals, etc.
By supplying military equipment and materials to the countries at war against Germany, the United States pursued primarily its own selfish interests. This is evidenced by many American authors, because the government provided Lend-Lease as an alternative to war. For example, R. Dawson wrote that in the US Congress and the country at the end of October 1941, there was a firm conviction, despite neutralist, isolationist and even anti-Soviet sentiments, that “dollars, even transferred to Soviet Russia, were a much more favorable contribution than sending American Army ". On the other hand, the supply of goods contributed to the expansion of production and the receipt of large profits. Thus, the prudence underlying Lend-Lease was a characteristic feature of all types of US assistance and policy in the war, which was especially clearly manifested in relations with the USSR.
The US government, which announced after the attack on the USSR on June 22, 1941 by fascist Germany and its satellites that it intended to help him, nevertheless, before doing so, for a number of months figured out for itself what “Russia's ability to resist” was, and then has already defined its position.
The United States proceeded from what danger Germany poses, first of all, to them and whether Great Britain and the United States will be able to continue to rule the world or Germany and Japan will take their place. They understood that a German victory in the war against the USSR would turn out to be "a catastrophe of primary importance for England and America," because if control over all of Europe and Asia was established, the Third Reich "would threaten the United States from both banks." At the same time, they were worried about the following question: "Suppose we provide assistance to Russia and she will defeat Hitler, who will dominate in Europe ..?" ...
Only after calculating all the pros and cons, the American leadership decided to provide assistance to the USSR. A week after the outbreak of hostilities on the eastern front, a special committee of representatives of various services was created under the US State Department, which prepared a small list of goods, including military ones, for export to the USSR. The Soviet side got the opportunity to purchase materials for cash. However, red tape and bureaucratic obstacles immediately stood in the way of this undertaking, for various departments, sending applications from the USSR to each other, argued for a long time about how to get Russian gold.
US Secretary of State Harry Hopkins at a meeting with Stalin, summer 1941
At the same time, the United States, recognizing that the Russians are also defending America, considered it necessary to assure our country of its desire to help, since it also took into account the need to have a friendly Russia in the Japanese rear. To this end, US leaders began to visit Moscow. The first to arrive was presidential aide Harry Hopkins, who understood the situation in the USSR and its ability to withstand Hitler. Based on the analysis of the information he received, the president was convinced that "helping the Russians is a well-spent money."
In the negotiations between Hopkins and Stalin at the end of July 1941, it was determined that the Red Army especially needed anti-aircraft guns, large-caliber machine guns, rifles, high-octane aviation gasoline and aluminum for the production of aircraft. The USA assessed these requests as insignificant, however, they were in no hurry to satisfy. “Almost six weeks have passed since the start of the war with Russia, but we have done practically nothing to deliver them the necessary materials,” Roosevelt wrote in one document. In addition, he believed that the aircraft intended for sale to the Soviet Union did not have to be the latest models, and the deliveries could be "symbolic".
Former US Secretary of the Interior G. Ickes wrote that only five were sent on the request for 3,000 bombers.
From June to August 1941, only 128 tons of materials purchased for cash were delivered to the USSR. It was the third month of the war, and the United States supplied us only with tools and industrial equipment purchased earlier. The situation did not change even after several months. As G. Ickes testifies, the American leadership strove to ensure that “the Russians give us all their gold, which will be used to pay off the supply of goods until (it) is exhausted. From now on, we will apply the Lend-Lease Law to Russia. " In payment for deliveries, the USSR also transferred to the United States strategic raw materials - manganese, chromium, asbestos, platinum, etc.
It must be assumed that Britain before the United States began real supplies of military materials to the Soviet Union, for on September 6, 1941, W. Churchill announced the first limited supplies to the USSR on terms similar to the American Lend-Lease.
On October 1, 1941, in Moscow, the first protocol on deliveries for a period of 9 months - until June 30, 1942, was signed by the representative of the US President A. Harriman. The value of imported goods was $ 1 billion. For payment, an interest-free loan was provided, which was supposed to begin to be repaid 5 years after the end of the war - within 10 years. On November 7, 1941, that is, four and a half months after the German attack on the USSR, Roosevelt finally signed a document on the basis of a permit adopted by Congress to extend the lend-lease law to the Soviet Union.
The first deliveries from the United States date back to October 1941. That year, the USSR received various weapons and military materials worth 545 thousand dollars, which was less than one tenth of a percent of the total cost of American supplies to other countries. In addition, the USSR purchased goods for cash in the amount of $ 41 million. Until the end of 1941, the United States supplied the USSR with 204 aircraft instead of the 600 stipulated by the protocol, 182 tanks instead of 750. According to Harriman, the United States fulfilled only a quarter of its obligations under the first protocol. All this was done in order not so much to help the USSR as to keep Russia in a state of war, to keep the front at a considerable distance from American territory with the least human losses and to minimize the direct military material costs. During the period of hostilities near Moscow at the end of 1941, American weapons were just beginning to arrive. The front was provided with Soviet-made weapons, the production of which, after the evacuation of the country's enterprises from west to east, began to grow steadily since the summer of 1942.
In February 1942, Roosevelt advanced a second billion dollars and wished to revise the terms of the loan, and then wrote to Stalin about the planned use of the American armed forces. These issues were discussed in Washington during Molotov's visit to the United States in May 1942. A second protocol was prepared for one year, according to which it was originally planned to supply 8 million tons of materials. However, the President, referring to the need to ensure the promised, but not opened in 1942, the second front, reduced the volume of supplies to 2.5 million tons. The signed "Agreement between the USSR and the United States on the principles applicable to mutual assistance in the war against aggression" the spread of the most favored nation regime to the Soviet Union and regulated supply-related issues. The USA abandoned the formal demand for payment of loans and transferred the Lend-Lease for the USSR to the same Lend-Lease basis as for England.
I must also say about the quality of American technology, its suitability for conducting battles. Stalin, in his correspondence with Roosevelt, noted that American tanks burn very easily from anti-tank rifles that hit from behind and from the side, because they run on high-grade gasoline. He also wrote that the Soviet side was ready to temporarily completely abandon the supply of tanks, artillery, ammunition, pistols and other things, but badly needed an increase in the supply of modern fighter aircraft, but not Kitihawk aircraft, which could not withstand the fight against German fighters. The preference was given to the Airacobra fighters, but it turned out that they often fell into a tailspin, and this did not make the Americans themselves want to fly on them and risk their lives. Marshal G.K. Zhukov also wrote that tanks and aircraft from the United States were not distinguished by high combat qualities.
In 1942, the following were delivered to the USSR: 2505 aircraft, 3,023 tanks, 78,964 vehicles. 12% of the total amount of equipment sent was its losses on the way to our country (that is how much it was sunk at sea, which is why supplies were stopped in spring and summer). In the same year 1942, the Soviet Union produced 25,436 aircraft and 24,446 tanks.
After the defeat of the Nazi troops at Stalingrad in February 1943, the contribution to which the Allies was insignificant, a radical turning point in the war came and the United States slightly increased the supply of military equipment.
In the spring of 1943, the United States and England decided to suspend the dispatch of convoys with cargo to the Soviet northern ports of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, citing preparations for an operation against Italy, landing on its territory. As a result, by the end of the second protocol, 1.5 million tons of cargo were under-delivered. Only by the end of November, after an eight-month break, did another convoy arrive by the northern route. Thus, in the battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943, military equipment was almost entirely of domestic production.
On July 1, 1943, the third protocol entered into force. Canada joined the supplies to the Soviet Union, Great Britain began to take a more active part in them. By this time, the needs of the USSR had changed somewhat. More vehicles, communications, clothing, medical equipment, explosives and food were required than tanks, guns, and ammunition.
Aid to the Soviet Union, despite a delay in mid-1943, increased overall for the year to 63% over 1942.
As for the supply of food, and some American authors, proving the decisive role of the United States in supplying the Soviet Army, emphasize precisely this, even here not everything was all right. According to Roosevelt's promise, in 1943, food supplies were supposed to make up 10% of the total number of products produced in the United States. In the first six months of the year, food supplies to the Soviet Union accounted for only one third. It follows that the USSR received a little more than 3% of the food that was produced in the United States. Could this have played an important role for such a large country as the USSR?
For 1941 -1944. our country received from the USA, Canada and Great Britain under Lend-Lease 2 million 545 thousand tons of food. At the same time, since 1944, the Soviet Union had to feed both the western regions of the USSR and the countries of Eastern Europe liberated by the Soviet Army, plundered and devastated by the Nazis.
However, the Soviet Union appreciated the help of the Allies, especially since since the summer of 1943, American military equipment and various equipment could increasingly be seen on the fronts of the Soviet Army. American military supplies were based on the increase in production in the United States by that time (by 35% in comparison with the average indicators of 1935-1939). Under the third protocol, in 1944, the USSR supplied well-known and much needed trucks and other vehicles, various metals, machinery and equipment, fuels and lubricants, steam locomotives, rails, and wagons.
Lend-Lease. Dodge WF32.
At the beginning of 1944, negotiations began on the content of the fourth supply protocol. Although Roosevelt considered the USSR the main factor ensuring the defeat of fascism, the forces in the United States were gaining more and more influence, slowing down supplies, and advocating a revision of relations with the Soviet Union, since the crisis in the war with Germany was overcome. The Congress feared that some of the supplied materials, machinery, equipment could be used by our country to restore the economy after the war.
On May 2, 1945, that is, after the death of Roosevelt (in April), a group of people in the US administration, which included, in particular, Deputy Secretary of State J. Grew and the head of the foreign economic administration L. Crowley, who insisted on limiting and even ending deliveries to the Soviet Union, taking advantage of the fact that the anti-Soviet G. Truman became the president of the country, reported to him this opinion. And on May 10, a decision was made to revise the policy towards the USSR, expressed in a memorandum. According to this document, lend-lease deliveries were allowed only for military operations against Japan. Purchases of other materials were only possible in cash. After the surrender of Japan in August 1945, supplies to the Soviet Union were finally stopped.
"This policy of change was one of the many harbingers of a new period in Soviet-American relations." Therefore, obviously, it is no coincidence that in the United States a number of studies related to the termination of Lend-Lease include the concept of "cold war".
Having interrupted supplies under Lend-Lease, the United States signed an agreement with the USSR in October 1945 on the sale of previously ordered goods to it on credit. But in January 1947, the US government cut off supplies under this agreement.
Summing up the assistance provided to our country by the United States, Great Britain and Canada, it should be noted that the share of their supplies in relation to domestic production was only about 4%. In total, 42 convoys arrived at Soviet ports during the war, and 36 were sent from the USSR. According to American sources, differing in performance, for the period from October 1, 1941 to May 31, 1945, 2,660 ships were sent to the USSR with a total cargo volume of 16.5 17.5 million tons, of which 15.2-16.6 million tons were delivered to the destination (77 vessels with 1.3 million tons of cargo died at sea). In value terms, supplies to the Soviet Union, transportation costs and services amounted to $ 10.8-11.0 billion, that is, no more than 24% of the total amount of dollars spent by the United States on lend-lease assistance to all countries (more than 46 billion). ... This amount is approximately 13% of all US military spending, of which aid to the eastern front accounted for only 3.3%. During the war, the USSR received: 401.4 thousand vehicles and 2 million 599 thousand tons of oil products, 9.6 thousand guns (that is, about 2% of the production of this type of weapon in our country in the amount of 489.9 thousand artillery guns), 14-14.5 thousand aircraft (taking into account losses during transportation - about 10% of the total number, equal to 136.8 thousand aircraft produced by the Soviet industry), tanks and self-propelled guns-12.2 thousand, or 12% (according to other sources, 7 thousand, or 6.8%), against 102.5 thousand tanks and self-propelled units of Soviet production, 422 thousand field telephones, over 15 million pairs of shoes, about 69 million m2 of woolen fabrics, 1860 steam locomotives (6.3% of the total number of the Soviet steam locomotive fleet), 4.3 million tons of food, which was approximately 25% of the total supply tonnage.
"Our supplies," admits the head of the military mission, General Dean, "may not have won the war, but they should have supported the Russians."
After the end of World War II, negotiations began between the USSR and the United States on the settlement of lend-lease payments, as the American government continued to strive to obtain maximum benefits in the form of payments or reimbursement of goods in kind. The administration initially estimated its claims at $ 2.6 billion, but reduced the amount to $ 1.3 billion the following year. These claims revealed discrimination against the Soviet Union, for, for example, Great Britain, which received twice as much assistance, had to pay only $ 472 million, that is, about 2% of the cost of military supplies.
Finally, on October 18, 1972, an agreement was reached to settle the lend-lease issue. The Soviet Union had to pay 722 million dollars on condition that the American side provided it with the most favored nation treatment in trade with the United States, as well as export credits and guarantees. However, due to the position unacceptable for the USSR, which was then taken by the United States on the agreements reached, the implementation of the agreement remains incomplete.
I must say that the United States has greatly enriched itself in the war. By the end of the war, their national income was one and a half times higher than the pre-war level. The total capacity of industrial production in comparison with 1939 increased by 40%. The losses of the Soviet Union in that war reached 485 billion dollars (US military spending amounted to approximately 330 billion dollars).
Leskie R. The Wars of America. - New York, Evanston and London. 1968. - p. 719.
Leighton R. M. and Soakleu R. W. Global Logistics and Strategy. 1940-1943. - Washington, 1955. - p. 259.
Dawson R. H. The Decision to Aid Russia 1941. - Chapel Hill, 1959. - p. 287.
The New York Times. - 1941. - June, 26. - p. eighteen.
Wall Street Journal. - 1941. June, 25. - p. 4.
Kimball W. F. Churchill and Roosevelt. The Complete Correspondence I. Alliance Emerging. October 1933 - November 1942 - Princeton, New Jersey, 1984 .-- p. 226.
Ickes H.L. The Secret Diary - Vol. 3 - New York, 1954. - p. 595
Ibid. - p. 320.
Leighton R. M. and Soakleu R. W. Global Logistics and Strategy. 1943-1945. - Washington, 1968. - P. 699.
Deane J.R. The Strange Alliance, - New York, 1947 .-- P. 95.
LAND-LEASE(English lend-lease, from lend - to lend and lease - to lease), a system for the transfer by the United States of America on loan or lease of military equipment and other material resources to allied countries during the Second World War.
The Lend-Lease Act was passed in the United States in March 1941 and immediately the American government extended it to Great Britain. In oct. 1941 in Moscow, representatives of the USSR, the USA and Great Britain signed a protocol on mutual deliveries. The USSR expressed its readiness to pay for the supplies of the allies with funds from the gold reserve. In nov. 1941 The United States extended the Lend-Lease Act to the USSR.
In total, during the Second World War, US deliveries under Lend-Lease to the Allies amounted to approx. $ 50 billion, of which the Sov. Union accounted for 22%. At the end of 1945, supplies to the USSR under Lend-Lease amounted to $ 11.1 billion. Of these, the USSR accounted for (in million dollars): aircraft - 1189, tanks and self-propelled guns - 618, cars - 1151, ships - 689, artillery - 302, ammunition - 482, machines and machines - 1577, metals - 879, food - 1726, etc.
Return shipments from the USSR to the United States amounted to $ 2.2 million. Sov. The Union supplied the USA with 300 thousand tons of chrome ore, 32 thousand tons of manganese ore, a significant amount of platinum, gold, timber.
Except for Amer. Lend-Lease assistance to the USSR was also provided by Great Britain and (since 1943) Canada, the volume of this assistance is estimated at 1.7 billion dollars, respectively. and $ 200 million.
The first allied convoy with cargo arrived in Arkhangelsk on 08/31/1941. (cm. Allied convoys in the USSR 1941–45). Initially, assistance to the USSR was provided in a relatively small amount and lagged behind the planned deliveries. At the same time, it partially compensated for the sharp drop in owls. military production in connection with the capture of a significant part of the territory of the USSR by the Nazis.
From summer to oct. 1942 deliveries along the northern route were suspended due to the defeat of the PQ-17 caravan by the Nazis and the preparation of the Allies for a landing in North Africa. The main flow of supplies fell on 1943–44, when a radical turning point in the war had already been reached. Nevertheless, the supplies of the allies provided not only material assistance, but also political and moral support to the Sov. to the people in the war against fasc. Germany.
According to US official figures, at the end of Sept. 1945 14,795 aircraft, 7,056 tanks, 8,218 anti-aircraft guns, 131,000 machine guns, 140 submarine hunters, 46 minesweepers, 202 torpedo boats, 30,000 radio stations, etc. were sent from the USA to the USSR. More than 7,000 aircraft were received from Great Britain , St. 4 thousand tanks, 385 anti-aircraft guns, 12 minesweepers, etc .; 1,188 tanks were delivered from Canada.
In addition to weapons, the USSR received from the United States under Lend-Lease cars (more than 480 thousand trucks and cars), tractors, motorcycles, ships, locomotives, wagons, food and other goods. Aviation squadron, regiment, division, which were sequentially commanded by A.I. Pokryshkin, from 1943 until the end of the war, flew on American P-39 Airacobra fighters. American trucks "Studebaker" were used as chassis for combat vehicles of rocket artillery ("Katyusha").
Unfortunately, some of the supplies of the allies did not reach the USSR, since they were destroyed by the Hitlerite Navy and the Luftwaffe during sea crossings of transports.
Several routes were used to carry out supplies to the USSR. On the northern route from Great Britain and Iceland to Arkhangelsk, Murmansk, Molotovsk (Severodvinsk), almost 4 million cargo was delivered, which amounted to 27.7% of the total amount of deliveries. The second route is through the South Atlantic, the Persian Gulf and Iran in the owls. Transcaucasia; St. 4.2 million cargo (23.8%).
To assemble and prepare aircraft for a flight from Iran to the USSR, intermediate air bases were used, where British, American and Sov. specialists. On the Pacific route, ships from the United States to the Far Eastern ports of the USSR went under the owl. flags and owls. captains (since the United States was at war with Japan). Cargoes were delivered to Vladivostok, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Nikolaevsk-on-Amur, Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Nakhodka, Khabarovsk. The Pacific route was the most efficient in terms of volume - 47.1%.
Another route was the air route from Alaska to Eastern Siberia, along which the American and owls. the pilots delivered 7.9 thousand aircraft to the USSR. The length of the air route reached 14 thousand km.
Since 1945, the route through the Black Sea has also been used.
In total, from June 1941 to Sept. 1945, 17.5 million tons of various cargoes were sent to the USSR, 16.6 million tons were delivered to their destination (the rest was losses during the sinking of ships). After the surrender of Germany, the United States stopped deliveries under Lend-Lease to the European part of the USSR, but for some time continued them on owls. Far East in connection with the war against Japan.
Paying tribute to the United States, I.V. Stalin in 1945 expressed the opinion that Soviet-Amer. the Lend-Lease agreement played an important role and "contributed significantly to the successful conclusion of the war against the common enemy." At the same time, both the USSR and the USA understood the auxiliary role of the Lend-Lease in the struggle of the owls. people. “We never believed that our Lend-Lease assistance was the main factor in the Soviet victory over Hitler on the Eastern Front,” noted G. Hopkins, a close aide to American President F. Roosevelt. "It was achieved by the heroism and blood of the Russian army." Besides the strategist. interaction with the USSR, Lend-Lease brought the United States a certain econ. Benefit: By providing supplies, the American monopolies have made a lot of money.
In the post-war years, negotiations were held between the USSR and the United States on lend-lease payments. The USSR returned to the United States part of the property it received and expressed its readiness to pay for the rest, but in the conditions of the outbreak of the Cold War, no agreement was reached. In accordance with the 1972 agreement, the USSR transferred two payments in the amount of $ 48 million, however, due to the refusal of the American side to provide the Sov. To the Union of the most favored nation in trade with the United States, further payments under the 1972 agreement were suspended. In 1990 payments for lend-lease were included in the Russian-Amer. agreements on the restructuring of the external debt of the former USSR; Russia's debt under Lend-Lease was liquidated in 2006.
Research Institute (Military History) VAGSh RF Armed Forces