Lend Lease during the war. Lend-Lease - the history of American military assistance to the USSR. The notorious Lend-Lease: What was it like?
Lend-Lease has been mythologized by both opponents of the Soviet regime and its supporters. The former believe that without military supplies from the USA and England the USSR could not have won the war, the latter believe that the role of these supplies is completely insignificant. We bring to your attention a balanced view of this issue by historian Pavel Sutulin, originally published in his LiveJournal.
History of Lend-Lease
Lend-Lease (from the English “lend” - to lend and “lease” - to rent) is a unique program for lending to allies by the United States of America through the supply of equipment, food, equipment, raw materials and materials. The first step towards Lend-Lease was taken by the United States on September 3, 1940, when the Americans transferred 50 old destroyers to Britain in exchange for British military bases. On January 2, 1941, Oscar Cox, an employee of the Ministry of Finance, prepared the first draft of the Lend-Lease law. On January 10th, this bill was transmitted to the Senate and House of Representatives. On March 11, the Law received approval from both chambers and was signed by the President, and three hours later the President signed the first two directives to this law. The first of them ordered the transfer of 28 torpedo boats to Britain, and the second ordered the transfer of 50 75-mm cannons and several hundred thousand shells to Greece. This is how the history of Lend-Lease began.
The essence of Lend-Lease was, in general, quite simple. According to the Lend-Lease law, the United States could supply equipment, ammunition, equipment, etc. countries whose defense was vital for the States themselves. All deliveries were free of charge. All machinery, equipment and materials spent, used up or destroyed during the war were not subject to payment. Property left over after the end of the war that was suitable for civilian purposes had to be paid for.
As for the USSR, Roosevelt and Churchill made a promise to supply it with the materials necessary for war immediately after Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union, that is, on June 22, 1941. On October 1, 1941, the First Moscow Protocol on Supply to the USSR was signed in Moscow, the expiration of which was set on June 30. The Lend-Lease Act was extended to the USSR on October 28, 1941, as a result of which the Union was granted a loan of $1 billion. During the war, three more protocols were signed: Washington, London and Ottawa, through which supplies were extended until the end of the war. Lend-Lease deliveries to the USSR officially ceased on May 12, 1945. However, until August 1945, deliveries continued according to the “Molotov-Mikoyan list.”
Lend-Lease deliveries to the USSR and their contribution to victory
During the war, hundreds of thousands of tons of cargo were delivered to the USSR under Lend-Lease. Military historians (and, perhaps, everyone else) are of greatest interest, of course, in allied military equipment - we’ll start with that. Under Lend-Lease, the following were supplied to the USSR from the USA: light M3A1 “Stuart” - 1676 pcs., light M5 - 5 pcs., light M24 - 2 pcs., medium M3 “Grant” - 1386 pcs., medium M4A2 “Sherman” (with a 75 mm cannon) - 2007 pcs., medium M4A2 (with a 76 mm cannon) - 2095 pcs., heavy M26 - 1 pc. From England: infantry "Valentine" - 2394 units, infantry "Matilda" MkII - 918 units, light "Tetrarch" - 20 units, heavy "Churchill" - 301 units, cruising "Cromwell" - 6 units. From Canada: Valentine - 1388. Total: 12199 tanks. In total, during the war years, 86.1 thousand tanks were delivered to the Soviet-German front.
Thus, Lend-Lease tanks accounted for 12.3% of the total number of tanks produced/delivered to the USSR in 1941-1945. In addition to tanks, self-propelled guns/self-propelled guns were also supplied to the USSR. ZSU: M15A1 - 100 pcs., M17 - 1000 pcs.; Self-propelled guns: T48 - 650 pcs., M18 - 5 pcs., M10 - 52 pcs. A total of 1,807 units were delivered. In total, 23.1 thousand self-propelled guns were produced and received in the USSR during the war. Thus, the share of self-propelled guns received by the USSR under Lend-Lease is equal to 7.8% of the total number of equipment of this type received during the war. In addition to tanks and self-propelled guns, armored personnel carriers were also supplied to the USSR: English “Universal Carrier” - 2560 units. (including from Canada - 1348 pcs.) and American M2 - 342 pcs., M3 - 2 pcs., M5 - 421 pcs., M9 - 419 pcs., T16 - 96 pcs., M3A1 “Scout” - 3340 pcs. ., LVT - 5 pcs. Total: 7185 units. Since armored personnel carriers were not produced in the USSR, Lend-Lease vehicles made up 100% of the Soviet fleet of this equipment. Criticism of Lend-Lease very often draws attention to the low quality of armored vehicles supplied by the Allies. This criticism actually has some basis, since American and British tanks were often inferior in terms of performance characteristics to both their Soviet and German counterparts. Especially considering that the Allies usually supplied the USSR with not the best examples of their equipment. For example, the most advanced modifications of the Sherman (M4A3E8 and Sherman Firefly) were not supplied to Russia.
The situation with supplies under Lend-Lease to aviation is much better. In total, during the war years, 18,297 aircraft were delivered to the USSR, including from the USA: P-40 "Tomahawk" fighters - 247, P-40 "Kitihawk" - 1887, P-39 "Airacobra" - 4952, P-63 " Kingcobra - 2400, P-47 Thunderbolt - 195; A-20 Boston bombers - 2771, B-25 Mitchell - 861; other types of aircraft - 813. 4171 Spitfires and Hurricanes were delivered from England In total, the Soviet troops received 138 thousand aircraft during the war. Thus, the share of foreign equipment in the receipts of the domestic aircraft fleet amounted to 13%. True, even here the allies refused to supply the USSR with the pride of their Air Force - the B-17, B-24 and B- strategic bombers 29, of which 35 thousand were produced during the war.At the same time, it was these types of vehicles that the Soviet Air Force needed most.
Under Lend-Lease, 8 thousand anti-aircraft and 5 thousand anti-tank guns were supplied. In total, the USSR received 38 thousand units of anti-aircraft and 54 thousand anti-tank artillery. That is, the share of Lend-Lease in these types of weapons was 21% and 9%, respectively. However, if we take all Soviet guns and mortars as a whole (receipts during the war - 526.2 thousand), then the share of foreign guns in it will be only 2.7%.
During the war, 202 torpedo boats, 28 patrol ships, 55 minesweepers, 138 submarine hunters, 49 landing ships, 3 icebreakers, about 80 transport ships, about 30 tugs were transferred to the USSR under Lend-Lease. There are about 580 ships in total. In total, the USSR received 2,588 ships during the war years. That is, the share of Lend-Lease equipment is 22.4%.
The most noticeable were the Lend-Lease deliveries of cars. In total, 480 thousand cars were delivered under Lend-Lease (85% of them from the USA). Including about 430 thousand trucks (mainly US 6 companies Studebaker and REO) and 50 thousand jeeps (Willys MB and Ford GPW). Despite the fact that the total receipt of vehicles on the Soviet-German front amounted to 744 thousand units, the share of Lend-Lease vehicles in the Soviet vehicle fleet was 64%. In addition, 35,000 motorcycles were supplied from the United States.
But supplies of small arms under Lend-Lease were very modest: only about 150,000 units. Considering that the total supply of small arms to the Red Army during the war amounted to 19.85 million units, the share of Lend-Lease weapons is approximately 0.75%.
During the war years, 242.3 thousand tons of motor gasoline were supplied to the USSR under Lend-Lease (2.7% of the total production and receipt of motor gasoline in the USSR). The situation with aviation gasoline is as follows: 570 thousand tons of gasoline were supplied from the USA, and 533.5 thousand tons from Britain and Canada. In addition, 1,483 thousand tons of light gasoline fractions were supplied from the USA, Britain and Canada. From light gasoline fractions, gasoline is produced as a result of reforming, the yield of which is approximately 80%. Thus, from 1,483 thousand tons of fractions, 1,186 thousand tons of gasoline can be obtained. That is, the total supply of gasoline under Lend-Lease can be estimated at 2,230 thousand tons. During the war, the USSR produced about 4,750 thousand tons of aviation gasoline. This number probably includes gasoline produced from fractions supplied by the Allies. That is, the USSR's production of gasoline from its own resources can be estimated at approximately 3,350 thousand tons. Consequently, the share of Lend-Lease aviation fuel in the total amount of gasoline supplied and produced in the USSR is 40%.
622.1 thousand tons of railway rails were supplied to the USSR, which is equal to 36% of the total number of rails supplied and produced in the USSR. During the war, 1,900 steam locomotives were delivered, while in the USSR in 1941-1945, 800 steam locomotives were produced, of which 708 in 1941. If we take the number of steam locomotives produced from June to the end of 1941 as a quarter of the total production, then the number of locomotives produced during the war will be approximately 300 units. That is, the share of Lend-Lease steam locomotives in the total volume of steam locomotives produced and delivered in the USSR is approximately 72%. In addition, 11,075 cars were delivered to the USSR. For comparison, in 1942-1945, 1092 railway cars were produced in the USSR. During the war years, 318 thousand tons of explosives were supplied under Lend-Lease (of which the USA - 295.6 thousand tons), which is 36.6% of the total production and supply of explosives to the USSR.
Under Lend-Lease, the Soviet Union received 328 thousand tons of aluminum. If we believe B. Sokolov (“The Role of Lend-Lease in the Soviet War Efforts”), who estimated Soviet aluminum production during the war at 263 thousand tons, then the share of Lend-Lease aluminum from the total amount of aluminum produced and received by the USSR will be 55%. 387 thousand tons of copper were supplied to the USSR - 45% of the total production and supply of this metal to the USSR. Under Lend-Lease, the Union received 3,606 thousand tons of tires - 30% of the total number of tires produced and supplied to the USSR. 610 thousand tons of sugar were supplied - 29.5%. Cotton: 108 million tons – 6%. During the war, 38.1 thousand metal-cutting machines were supplied from the USA to the USSR, and 6.5 thousand machines and 104 presses were supplied from Great Britain. During the war, the USSR produced 141 thousand machine tools and forging presses. Thus, the share of foreign machine tools in the domestic economy was 24%. The USSR also received 956.7 thousand miles of field telephone cable, 2.1 thousand miles of sea cable and 1.1 thousand miles of submarine cable. In addition, 35,800 radio stations, 5,899 receivers and 348 locators, 15.5 million pairs of army boots, 5 million tons of food, etc. were supplied to the USSR under Lend-Lease.
According to the data summarized in diagram No. 2, it is clear that even for the main types of supplies, the share of Lend-Lease products in the total volume of production and supplies to the USSR does not exceed 28%. In general, the share of Lend-Lease products in the total volume of materials, equipment, food, machinery, raw materials, etc. produced and supplied to the USSR. Typically estimated at 4%. In my opinion, this figure, in general, reflects the real state of affairs. Thus, we can say with a certain degree of confidence that Lend-Lease did not have any decisive impact on the USSR’s ability to wage war. Yes, under Lend-Lease such types of equipment and materials were supplied that made up the majority of the total production of such in the USSR. But would the lack of supply of these materials become critical? In my opinion, no. The USSR could well have redistributed its production efforts so as to provide itself with everything it needed, including aluminum, copper, and locomotives. Could the USSR do without Lend-Lease at all? Yes, I could. But the question is, what would it cost him? Without Lend-Lease, the USSR could have taken two ways to solve the problem of the shortage of those goods that were supplied under Lend-Lease. The first way is to simply turn a blind eye to this deficiency. As a result, the army would experience a shortage of cars, aircraft and a number of other types of equipment and equipment. Thus, the army would certainly be weakened. The second option is to increase our own production of products supplied under Lend-Lease by attracting excess labor to the production process. This force, accordingly, could only be taken at the front, and thereby again weaken the army. Thus, when choosing any of these paths, the Red Army found itself a loser. The result is a prolongation of the war and unnecessary casualties on our part. In other words, Lend-Lease, although it did not have a decisive influence on the outcome of the war on the Eastern Front, nevertheless saved hundreds of thousands of lives of Soviet citizens. And for this alone Russia should be grateful to its allies.
Speaking about the role of Lend-Lease in the victory of the USSR, we should not forget about two more points. Firstly, the vast majority of equipment, equipment and materials were supplied to the USSR in 1943-1945. That is, after the turning point during the war. For example, in 1941, goods worth approximately $100 million were supplied under Lend-Lease, which amounted to less than 1% of the total supply. In 1942, this percentage was 27.6. Thus, more than 70% of deliveries under Lend-Lease occurred in 1943-1945, and during the most terrible period of the war for the USSR, allied assistance was not very noticeable. As an example, in diagram No. 3 you can see how the number of aircraft supplied from the USA changed in 1941-1945. An even more telling example is cars: as of April 30, 1944, only 215 thousand of them were delivered. That is, more than half of the Lend-Lease vehicles were delivered to the USSR in the last year of the war. Secondly, not all of the equipment supplied under Lend-Lease was used by the army and navy. For example, out of 202 torpedo boats delivered to the USSR, 118 never had to take part in the hostilities of the Great Patriotic War, since they were put into operation after its end. All 26 frigates received by the USSR also entered service only in the summer of 1945. A similar situation was observed with other types of equipment.
And finally, to conclude this part of the article, a small stone in the garden of Lend-Lease critics. Many of these critics focus on the insufficient supplies of the allies, reinforcing this by the fact that, they say, the United States, given its level of production, could supply more. Indeed, the USA and Britain produced 22 million small arms, but delivered only 150,000 thousand (0.68%). Of the tanks produced, the Allies supplied the USSR with 14%. The situation with cars was even worse: in total, about 5 million cars were produced in the USA during the war years, and about 450 thousand were delivered to the USSR - less than 10%. And so on. However, this approach is certainly wrong. The fact is that supplies to the USSR were limited not by the production capabilities of the allies, but by the tonnage of available transport ships. And it was with him that the British and Americans had serious problems. The Allies simply did not physically have the number of transport ships necessary to transport more cargo to the USSR.
Delivery routes
Lend-Lease cargo reached the USSR via five routes: through Arctic convoys to Murmansk, along the Black Sea, through Iran, through the Far East and through the Soviet Arctic. The most famous of these routes, of course, is Murmansk. The heroism of the sailors of the Arctic convoys is glorified in many books and films. It is probably for this reason that many of our fellow citizens had the false impression that the main deliveries under Lend-Lease went to the USSR precisely by Arctic convoys. Such an opinion is pure delusion. In diagram No. 4 you can see the ratio of cargo transportation volumes along various routes in long tons. As we see, not only did most of the Lend-Lease cargo not pass through the Russian North, but this route was not even the main one, giving way to the Far East and Iran. One of the main reasons for this state of affairs was the danger of the northern route due to the activity of the Germans. In diagram No. 5 you can see how effectively the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine operated in Arctic convoys.
The use of the trans-Iranian route became possible after Soviet and British troops (from the north and south, respectively) entered the territory of Iran, and already on September 8, a peace agreement was signed between the USSR, England and Iran, according to which British and Soviet troops were stationed on the territory of Persia troops. From that moment on, Iran began to be used for supplies to the USSR. Lend-Lease cargo went to the ports of the northern tip of the Persian Gulf: Basra, Khorramshahr, Abadan and Bandar Shahpur. Aircraft and automobile assembly plants were established in these ports. From these ports to the USSR, cargo traveled in two ways: by land through the Caucasus and by water through the Caspian Sea. However, the Trans-Iranian route, like the Arctic convoys, had its drawbacks: firstly, it was too long (the convoy route from New York to the coast of Iran around the South African Cape of Good Hope took approximately 75 days, and then the passage of cargo took time across Iran and the Caucasus or the Caspian Sea). Secondly, navigation in the Caspian Sea was hampered by German aviation, which sank and damaged 32 ships with cargo in October and November alone, and the Caucasus was not the calmest place: in 1941-1943 alone, 963 bandit groups with a total number of 17,513 were liquidated in the North Caucasus Human. In 1945, instead of the Iranian route, the Black Sea route began to be used for supplies.
However, the safest and most convenient route was the Pacific route from Alaska to the Far East (46% of total supplies) or through the Arctic Ocean to Arctic ports (3%). Basically, Lend-Lease cargo was delivered to the USSR from the USA, of course, by sea. However, most of the aviation moved from Alaska to the USSR under its own power (the same AlSib). However, this path also had its difficulties, this time associated with Japan. In 1941 - 1944, the Japanese detained 178 Soviet ships, some of them - the transports "Kamenets-Podolsky", "Ingul" and "Nogin" - for 2 months or more. 8 ships - the transports "Krechet", "Svirstroy", "Maikop", "Perekop", "Angarstroy", "Pavlin Vinogradov", "Lazo", "Simferopol" - were sunk by the Japanese. The transports “Ashgabat”, “Kolkhoznik”, “Kyiv” were sunk by unidentified submarines, and about 10 more ships were lost under unclear circumstances.
Lend-Lease payment
This is perhaps the main topic of speculation among people trying to somehow denigrate the Lend-Lease program. Most of them consider it their indispensable duty to declare that the USSR allegedly paid for all cargo 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, paid, so to speak, a single cent for this assistance during the war. Moreover, as was already written at the beginning of the article, they were not obliged to pay after the war for those materials, equipment, weapons and ammunition that were used up 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 USA (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 repairs of American ships in Russian ports and other services. Unfortunately, I was unable to find the total amount of goods and services provided to the Allies under reverse Lend-Lease. The only source I found claims that this same amount was 2.2 million dollars. However, I personally am not sure of the authenticity of this data. However, they may well be considered as a lower limit. The upper limit in this case will be an amount of several hundred million dollars. Be that as it may, the share of reverse Lend-Lease in the total Lend-Lease trade turnover between the USSR and the allies will not exceed 3-4%. For comparison, the amount of reverse Lend-Lease from the UK to the USA is equal to 6.8 billion dollars, which is 18.3% of the total exchange of goods and services between these countries.
So, no payment for Lend-Lease occurred during the war. The Americans provided the bill to the recipient countries only after the war. The volume of Great Britain's debts to the United States amounted to $4.33 billion, to Canada - $1.19 billion. The last payment in the amount of $83.25 million (to the United States) and $22.7 million (Canada) was made on December 29, 2006. The volume of China's debts was determined at 180 million. dollars, and this debt has not yet been repaid. The French paid the United States on May 28, 1946, providing the United States with a number of trade preferences.
The USSR's debt was determined in 1947 in the amount of 2.6 billion dollars, but already in 1948 this amount was reduced to 1.3 billion. However, the USSR refused to pay. The refusal also followed new concessions from the United States: in 1951, the amount of the debt was again revised and this time amounted to 800 million. An agreement on the procedure for repaying the debt to pay for Lend-Lease between the USSR and the USA was signed only on October 18, 1972 (debt amount was again reduced, this time to $722 million; repayment period - 2001), and the USSR agreed to this agreement only on the condition that it was provided with a loan from the Export-Import Bank. In 1973, the USSR made two payments totaling $48 million, but then stopped payments due to the implementation of the Jackson-Vanik amendment to the 1972 Soviet-American trade agreement in 1974. In June 1990, during negotiations between the presidents of the USA and the USSR, the parties returned to discussing debt. A new deadline for the final repayment of the debt was set - 2030, and the amount - 674 million dollars. Currently, Russia owes the United States $100 million for supplies under Lend-Lease.
Other types of supplies
Lend-Lease was the only significant type of allied supplies to the USSR. However, not the only one in principle. Before the adoption of the Lend-Lease program, the United States and Britain supplied the USSR with equipment and materials in cash. However, the size of these supplies was quite small. For example, from July to October 1941, the United States supplied the USSR with cargo worth only $29 million. In addition, Britain provided for the supply of goods to the USSR on account of long-term loans. Moreover, these deliveries continued even after the adoption of the Lend-Lease program.
We should not forget about the many charitable foundations created to raise funds for the benefit of the USSR around the world. The USSR and private individuals also provided assistance. Moreover, such help came even from Africa and the Middle East. For example, the “Russian Patriotic Group” was created in Beirut, and the Russian Medical Aid Society was created in the Congo. The Iranian merchant Rahimyan Ghulam Hussein sent 3 tons of dried grapes to Stalingrad. And merchants Yusuf Gafuriki and Mamed Zhdalidi transferred 285 heads of cattle to the USSR.
Literature
1. Ivanyan E. A. History of the USA. M.: Bustard, 2006.
2. /Brief History of the USA / Under. ed. I. A. Alyabyev, E. V. Vysotskaya, T. R. Dzhum, S. M. Zaitsev, N. P. Zotnikov, V. N. Tsvetkov. Minsk: Harvest, 2003.
3. Shirokorad A. B. Far Eastern Final. M.: AST: Transizdatkniga, 2005.
4. Schofield B. Arctic convoys. Northern naval battles in World War II. M.: Tsentrpoligraf, 2003.
5. Temirov Yu. T., Donets A. S. War. M.: Eksmo, 2005.
6. Stettinius E. Lend-Lease - a weapon of victory (http://militera.lib.ru/memo/usa/stettinius/index.html).
7. Morozov A. Anti-Hitler coalition during the Second World War. The role of Lend-Lease in the victory over the common enemy (http://militera.lib.ru/pub/morozov/index.html).
8. Russia and the USSR in the wars of the 20th century. Losses of the armed forces / Under the general. ed. G. F. Krivosheeva. (http://www.rus-sky.org/history/library/w/)
9. The national economy of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War. Statistical collection.(
Lend-Lease - (from the English lend - “to lend” and lease - “to rent, rent”) is a government program under which the United States of America, mostly free of charge, transferred ammunition to its allies in World War II, equipment, food and strategic raw materials, including petroleum products.
American and Soviet pilots next to the P-39 Airacobra fighter, supplied to the USSR under Lend-LeaseWhat is it and what is it about?
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill first asked US President Franklin Roosevelt for temporary use of American weapons on May 15, 1940, 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 on its basis the idea of a broader program arose. By order of Roosevelt, a working group was formed at the US Treasury Department in the fall of 1940 to prepare a corresponding bill. The ministry's legal advisers, E. Foley and O. Cox, proposed relying on the law of 1892, which allowed the Secretary of War, “when at his discretion it would be in the interests of the state,” to lease “for a period of no more than five years army property if it is not needed a country".
Employees of the military and naval ministries were also involved in the work on the project. On January 10, 1941, relevant hearings began in the US Senate and House of Representatives, on March 11, the Lend-Lease 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 lending military materials and equipment to a hose given to a neighbor during a fire so that the flames would not spread to one’s own home. " I don't need him to pay for the cost of the hose, I need him to return my hose to me after the fire is over. », said the US President.
The supplies included weapons, industrial equipment, merchant ships, automobiles, food, fuel and medicine. According to established principles, United States-supplied vehicles, military equipment, weapons, and other materials destroyed, lost, or used during the war were not subject to payment. Only property left after the war and suitable for civilian use had to be 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 retained the right to demand them back. After the end of the war, customer countries could buy equipment whose production had not yet been completed, or which was stored in warehouses, using American long-term loans. The delivery period was initially set until June 30, 1943, but was then extended annually. Finally, the law provided for the possibility of refusing to supply certain equipment if it was considered 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, etc., amounting to approximately $48 billion.
The concept of this program gave the President of the United States the power to assist any country whose defense was deemed vital to his country. The Lend Lease Act, full name "An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States", passed by the US Congress on March 11, 1941, provided that: supplied materials (machines, 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 for in whole or in part on the basis of long-term loans provided by the United States (mostly interest-free loans).
The provisions of Lend-Lease provided that after the war, if the American side was interested, undamaged and not lost equipment and machinery should be returned to the United States.
In total, deliveries under Lend-Lease amounted to about $50.1 billion (equivalent to approximately $610 billion in 2008 prices), of which $31.4 billion was supplied to the UK, $11.3 billion to the USSR, $3.2 billion to France and $1.6 billion to China. Reverse Lend-Lease (supplies from allies to the USA) amounted to $7.8 billion, of which $6.8 billion went to the UK and 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 the victory over Germany was determined by Western weapons and that without Lend-Lease the Soviet Union would not have survived.
Soviet historiography usually stated that the amount of Lend-Lease assistance to 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 assistance of the allies has changed somewhat, and attention has also begun to be drawn to the fact that for a number of items, 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 types of weapons and industrial equipment.
Canada had a Lend-Lease program similar to the American one, under which supplies amounted to $4.7 billion, mainly to Great Britain and the USSR.
Volume of supplies and meaning of Lend-Lease
Materials totaling $50.1 billion (about $610 billion in 2008 prices) were sent to recipients, including:
Reverse Lend-Lease (for example, lease of air bases) was received by the United States in the amount of $7.8 billion, of which $6.8 billion came from Great Britain and the British Commonwealth. 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 powers is illustrated by the table below, which shows the GDP of the main countries participating in World War II, from 1938 to 1945, in billions of dollars in 1990 prices:
As the table above shows (from American sources), 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 of the Atlantic, which was fraught with complete collapse for the country’s economy, which was almost entirely dependent on foreign trade.
The USSR's GDP 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 out of a population of 200 million, 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 terms of 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 was aware of the need to provide urgent military-technical assistance to both countries. Moreover, the United States was the only country in the world that had sufficient production capacity to provide such support in a short enough time frame 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 inclusion of the USSR in Lend-Lease.
Lend-Lease, coupled with increasing aid to Great Britain in its Battle of the Atlantic, proved to be a critical factor in bringing the United States into the war, especially on the European front. Hitler, when 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 sending 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 SMGs and machine guns, spare tracks for tanks, spare tires, spare parts for tanks, planes and cars. Already in 1943, when the Allied leadership ceased to doubt the USSR’s ability to fight a long-term war, they began to import mainly strategic materials (aluminum, etc.) and machine tools for Soviet industry into the USSR.
Already after the first deliveries under Lend-Lease, Stalin began to voice 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 the Soviet and, most importantly, the German. As an example, we can cite the frankly unsuccessful model of the aviation reconnaissance spotter Curtiss 0-52, which the Americans simply sought to attach somewhere and forced it on us almost for nothing, in excess of the approved order.
However, in general, Stalin’s claims, 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 technology unsatisfactory, then what was the point of ordering it?
As for official Soviet propaganda, it preferred to downplay the importance of American assistance in every possible way, or even to ignore it altogether. In March 1943, the American ambassador in Moscow, without hiding his resentment, allowed himself an undiplomatic statement: " The Russian authorities apparently want to hide the fact that they are receiving outside help. Obviously, they want to assure their people that the Red Army is fighting this 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.
Routes and volumes of supplies
The American P-39 Aircobra is the best fighter of World War II. Of the 9.5 thousand Cobras launched into the sky, 5 thousand were in the hands of Soviet pilots. This is one of the most striking examples of military cooperation between the USA and the USSR.
The Soviet pilots were just not in love with the American Cobra, which had taken them out of mortal battles more than once. The legendary ace A. Pokryshkin, flying Airacobras since the spring of 1943, destroyed 48 enemy aircraft in air battles, bringing the total score to 59 victories.
Supplies from the USA to the USSR can be divided into the following stages:
The fourth protocol - from July 1, 1944, (signed on April 17, 1944), formally ended on May 12, 1945, but deliveries were extended until the end of the war with Japan, which the USSR undertook to enter 90 days after the end of the war in Europe (that is, on August 8 1945). Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and on September 20, 1945, all Lend-Lease deliveries to the USSR were stopped.
Allied supplies were distributed very unevenly throughout the years of the war. In 1941-1942. the stipulated obligations were constantly not fulfilled, the situation returned to normal only in the second half of 1943.
The main routes and volume of transported goods are shown in the table below:
Three routes - the Pacific, Trans-Iranian and Arctic convoys - provided a total of 93.5% of total supplies. 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 along this route, and about 15% of the goods sent ended up on the ocean floor. The sea part of the journey from the east coast of the USA to Murmansk took about 2 weeks.
Cargo with northern convoys also went through Arkhangelsk and Molotovsk (now Severodvinsk), from where cargo went to the front along a hastily completed railway line. The bridge across the Northern Dvina did not yet exist, and to transport equipment in the winter, a meter-thick layer of ice was frozen from river water, since the natural thickness of the ice (65 cm in the winter of 1941) did not allow the rails with cars to withstand. Then 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 Lend-Lease supplies, was relatively (though far from completely) safe. Since the beginning of the war in the Pacific Ocean on December 7, 1941, transportation here could only be provided by Soviet sailors, and trade and transport ships sailed only under the Soviet flag. All ice-free straits were controlled by Japan, and Soviet ships were subject to forced inspection and sometimes sunk. The sea part of the journey from the west coast of the USA to the Far Eastern ports of the USSR took 18-20 days.
Studebakers in Iran on the 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 supply volumes, it was necessary to carry out a large-scale modernization of Iran's transport system, in particular, 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, cargo delivery was carried out by ships of the Caspian Military Flotilla, which until the end of 1942 were subject to active attacks by German aircraft. The sea part of the journey from the east coast of the United States to the shores 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 ones were called TAP I (Truck Assembly Plant I) in Andimeshk and TAP II in Khorramshahr. In total, during the war years, 184,112 cars were sent from Iranian enterprises to the USSR. The cars were transported along 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, planes flew “under their own power” to the USSR from the USA through the South Atlantic, Africa and the Persian Gulf, according to another - through Alaska, Chukotka and Siberia. The second route, known as Alsib (Alaska - Siberia), carried 7,925 aircraft.
The range of supplies under Lend-Lease was determined by the Soviet government and was intended to plug the “bottlenecks” in the supply of our industry and army.
Supply value
Already in November 1941, in his letter to US President Roosevelt, Stalin wrote:
“Your decision, Mr. President, to provide the Soviet Union with an interest-free loan in the amount of $ 1,000,000,000 to ensure the supply of military equipment and raw materials to the Soviet Union was accepted by the Soviet Government with heartfelt gratitude, as urgent assistance to the Soviet Union in its huge and difficult struggle against a common enemy - bloody Hitlerism."
Marshal Zhukov said in post-war conversations:
“Now they say that the allies never helped us... But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us so much material, without which we could not form our reserves and could not continue the war... We did not have explosives, gunpowder. how to equip rifle cartridges. The Americans really helped us out with gunpowder and explosives. And how much sheet steel they sent us! How could we have quickly established the production of tanks if not for American help with steel? And now they present the situation as if we have everything it was there in abundance."
The role of Lend-Lease was also highly appreciated by Mikoyan, who during the war was responsible for the work of the seven allied people's commissariats (trade, procurement, food, fish and meat and dairy industries, maritime transport and river fleet) and, as the people's commissar of foreign trade of the country, since 1942 he led the reception Allied supplies under Lend-Lease:
“... when American stew, shortening, egg powder, flour, and other products began to arrive to us, what significant additional calories our soldiers immediately received! And not only the soldiers: some also fell to the rear.
Or let's take the supply of cars. After all, we received, as far as I remember, taking into account losses along the way, about 400 thousand first-class cars for that time such as Studebaker, Ford, Willys cars and amphibians. Our entire army actually found itself on wheels, and what wheels! As a result, its maneuverability increased and the pace of the offensive increased noticeably."
Here's Mikoyan:
“Now it’s easy to say that Lend-Lease meant nothing. It ceased to be of great importance much later. But in the fall of 1941 we lost everything, and if it weren’t for Lend-Lease, weapons, food, warm clothes for the army and other supplies, the question is how things would have turned out.”
The main chassis for the Katyushas was the Lend-Lease Studebakers (specifically, the Studebaker US6). While the States provided about 20 thousand vehicles for our “fighting girl,” only 600 trucks were produced in the USSR (mainly ZIS-6 chassis). Almost all Katyushas assembled on the basis of Soviet cars were destroyed by the war. To date, only four Katyusha rocket launchers have survived throughout the CIS, 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 based on the “lorry” stands like a monument in Kirovograd. The fourth stands in the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin.
The famous Russian Katyusha rocket launchers on the chassis of an American Studebaker truck
The USSR received a significant number of cars from the USA and other allies: in the Red Army's vehicle fleet there were 5.4% of imported cars in 1943, in 1944 in the SA - 19%, on May 1, 1945 - 32.8% ( 58.1% were domestically produced vehicles and 9.1% were captured vehicles). During the war years, the Red Army's vehicle fleet was replenished with a large number of new vehicles, largely due to imports. The army received 444,700 new vehicles, of which 63.4% were imported and 36.6% were domestic. The main replenishment of the army with domestically produced cars was carried out at the expense of old cars withdrawn from the national economy. 62% of all vehicles received were tractors, of which 60% were Studebaker, as the best of all the brands of tractors received, largely replacing horse-drawn traction and tractors for towing 75-mm and 122-mm artillery systems. The Dodge 3/4 ton vehicle, towing anti-tank artillery guns (up to 88 mm), also showed good performance. A big role was played by the Willys passenger car with 2 drive axles, which had good maneuverability and was a reliable means of reconnaissance, communications and command and control. In addition, the Willys was used as a tractor for anti-tank artillery (up to 45 mm). Among special-purpose vehicles, it is worth noting the Ford amphibians (based on the Willys vehicle), which were assigned as part of special battalions to tank armies to conduct reconnaissance operations when crossing water barriers, and Jiemsi (based on a truck of the same brand), used mainly by engineering units during crossing device. The USA and the British Empire supplied 18.36% of the aviation gasoline used by Soviet aviation during the war; True, American and British aircraft supplied under Lend-Lease were mainly refueled with this gasoline, while domestic aircraft could be refueled with domestic gasoline with a lower octane number.
According to other data, 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 those produced during the war years in the USSR) and 11075 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 to 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 by Soviet aviation during the war. At the same time, in the article from which the figures in this paragraph are taken, B.V. Sokolov’s article “The Role of Lend-Lease in the Soviet Military Efforts, 1941-1945” appears as a source. However, the article itself says that the USA and Britain together supplied only 1216.1 thousand tons of aviation gasoline, and to the USSR in 1941-1945. 5,539 thousand tons of aviation gasoline were produced, that is, Western supplies amounted to only 18% of total Soviet consumption during the war. If we consider that this was the percentage of aircraft in the Soviet aircraft fleet delivered to the USSR under Lend-Lease, then it is obvious that gasoline was imported specifically for imported aircraft. Along with the aircraft, the USSR received hundreds of tons of aviation spare parts, aviation ammunition, fuel, special airfield equipment and equipment, including 9351 American radios for installation on Soviet-made fighters, and aircraft navigation equipment (radio compasses, autopilots, radars, sextants, attitude indicators).
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:
Lend-Lease debts and their payment
Immediately after the war, the United States sent countries that received Lend-Lease assistance an offer to return surviving military equipment and pay off the debt in order to obtain new loans. Since the Lend-Lease Act provided for the write-off of used military equipment and materials, the Americans insisted on paying only for civilian supplies: railways, power plants, ships, trucks and other equipment that were in the recipient countries as of September 2, 1945. The United States did not demand compensation for military equipment destroyed during the battles.
Great Britain
The volume of Great Britain's debts to the United States amounted to $4.33 billion, to Canada - $1.19 billion. The last payment in the amount of $83.25 million (to the United States) and $22.7 million (Canada) was made on December 29, 2006. The main debt was compensated for account of the presence of American bases in Great Britain
China's debt to the United States for supplies under Lend-Lease amounted to $187 million. Since 1979, the United States has recognized the People's Republic of China as the only legitimate government of China, and therefore the heir to all previous agreements (including supplies under Lend-Lease). However, in 1989, the United States demanded that Taiwan (not China) repay the Lend-Lease debt. The further fate of the Chinese debt is unclear.
USSR (Russia)
The volume of American supplies under Lend-Lease amounted to about 11 billion US dollars. According to the Lend-Lease law, only equipment that survived the war was subject to payment; To agree on the final amount, Soviet-American negotiations began immediately after the end of the war. At the 1948 negotiations, Soviet representatives agreed to pay only a small amount and were met with a predictable refusal from the American side. The 1949 negotiations also came to nothing. In 1951, the Americans twice reduced the payment amount, 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 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 repaying debts under Lend-Lease was concluded only in 1972. Under this agreement, the USSR agreed to pay $722 million, including interest, by 2001. 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 USA and the USSR, the parties returned to discussing debt. A new deadline for final debt repayment was set - 2030, and the amount - $674 million.
After the collapse of the USSR, the debt for assistance was transferred to Russia; as of 2003, Russia owes approximately 100 million US dollars.
Thus, out of the total volume of American deliveries under Lend-Lease of $11 billion, the USSR and then Russia paid $722 million, or about 7%.
It should be noted, however, that taking into account the inflationary depreciation of the dollar, this figure will be significantly (several times) less. Thus, by 1972, when the amount of debt for Lend-Lease in the amount of $722 million was agreed upon 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. Subject to the payment of $674 million 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 what was supplied was either destroyed by the war, or, like shells, was spent for the needs of the war, or, at the end of the war, in accordance with the Lend-Lease Act, was returned to the United States.
France
On May 28, 1946, France signed a package of treaties with the United States (known as the Bloom-Byrnes Agreement) that settled the French Lend-Lease debt in exchange for a series of trade concessions from France. In particular, France has significantly increased quotas for the screening of foreign (primarily American) films on the French film market.
By 1960, almost all countries had paid off their debt, except the USSR.
During negotiations in 1948, Soviet representatives agreed to pay a small amount, but the United States rejected this offer. Negotiations in 1949 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, citing the proportions agreed upon by Great Britain and the United States in 1946. Only in 1972 did Soviet and American representatives sign an agreement Washington, an agreement on the gradual payment by the Soviet Union of an amount of $722 million until 2001. By July 1973, only $48 million had been paid, after which further payments ceased: the Soviet side thus protested against restrictions imposed on trade between two countries. Only in June 1990 did the presidents of the USSR and the USA agree to repay the debt by 2030. The agreed amount was measured at $674 million.
In general, we can conclude that without Western supplies, the Soviet Union not only would not have been able to win the Great Patriotic War, but would not even have been able to withstand the German invasion, not being able to produce a sufficient number 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, Special Presidential Envoy F.D. Roosevelt G. Hopkins reported in a message dated July 31, 1941 that Stalin considered it impossible to resist the material power of Germany, which had the resources of occupied Europe, without American help from Great Britain and the USSR. Roosevelt, back in October 1940, announcing his decision to allow the War Department to provide weapons and equipment surplus to 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 and Russia.
Need to remember
This incredible amount of cargo was delivered across seas in which convoy ships were lost en masse under the attacks of German aircraft and submarines. Therefore, some of the planes traveled from the American continent to the USSR under their own power - from Fairbanks through Alaska, Chukotka, Yakutia, Eastern Siberia to Krasnoyarsk, and from there by train.
A group of Russian and American pilots ferrying planes along the Alsib highway at the airfield in Fairbanks
Bell P-39 Airacobra before shipment from Edmonton to the USSR
P-63 before being sent to the USSR
A-20G Boston 2
Preparation of British Spitfire fighters delivered under Len-Lease for transfer to the Soviet side
Assembly shop for Bell P-39 Airacobra aircraft in the USA for the USSR
On August 27, 2006, the Lend-Lease Aviators Monument was unveiled in Fairbanks, Alaska.
“Few people know that military supplies under Lend-Lease (lend-lease) were not free at all - Russia, as the legal successor of the USSR, paid the last debts on them already in 2006,” writes historian and publicist Evgeny Spitsyn.
In the issue of Lend-Lease (from English lend - to lend and lease - to rent, to rent - ed.) for the USSR, there are many subtleties that it would be nice to understand - on the basis of historical documents.
Part I
Not entirely free
The Lend-Lease Act, or "Act for the Defense of the United States", which was passed by the US Congress on March 11, 1941, gave the President of the United States "the power to loan or lease to other states various goods and materials necessary for the conduct of war operations" if these actions, as determined by the President, were vital to the defense of the United States. Various goods and materials were understood as weapons, military equipment, ammunition, strategic raw materials, ammunition, food, civilian goods for the army and rear, as well as any information of important military importance.
The Lend-Lease scheme itself provided for the fulfillment by the recipient country of a number of conditions:1) materials destroyed, lost or lost during hostilities were not subject to payment, and property that survived and was suitable for civilian purposes had to be paid in whole or in part in order to repay a long-term loan issued by the United States itself; 2) the surviving military materials could remain with the recipient country until the United States requests them back; 3) in turn, the tenant agreed to help the United States with all the resources and information available to him.
By the way, and few people know about this either, the Lend-Lease law obliged countries that applied for American assistance to submit a comprehensive financial report to the United States. It is no coincidence that US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr., during hearings in the Senate Committee, called this provision unique in all world practice: “For the first time in history, one state, one government provides another with data on its financial position.”
With the help of Lend-Lease, the administration of President F.D. Roosevelt was going to solve a number of urgent problems, both foreign policy and domestic. Firstly, such a scheme made it possible to create new jobs in the United States itself, which had not yet fully emerged from the severe economic crisis of 1929-1933. Secondly, Lend-Lease allowed the American government to have a certain influence on the recipient country of Lend-Lease assistance. Finally, thirdly, by sending his allies only weapons, materials and raw materials, but not manpower, President F.D. Roosevelt fulfilled his campaign promise: “Our guys will never participate in other people’s wars.”
The initial delivery period under Lend-Lease was set until June 30, 1943, with further annual extensions as necessary. And Roosevelt appointed the former Secretary of Commerce, his assistant Harry Hopkins, as the first administrator of this project.
And not only for the USSR
Contrary to another common misconception, the Lend-Lease system was not created for the USSR. The British were the first to ask for military assistance on the basis of special lease relations (analogous to operational leasing) at the end of May 1940, since the actual defeat of France left Great Britain without military allies on the European continent.
The British themselves, who initially requested 40-50 “old” destroyers, proposed three payment schemes: gratuitous gift, cash payment and leasing. However, Prime Minister W. Churchill was a realist and understood perfectly well that neither the first nor the second proposals would arouse enthusiasm among the Americans, since the warring England was actually on the verge of bankruptcy. Therefore, President Roosevelt quickly accepted the third option, and in the late summer of 1940 the deal went through.
Then, in the depths of the American Department of the Treasury, the idea was born to extend the experience of one private transaction to the entire sphere of all interstate relations. Having involved the War and Navy Ministries in the development of the Lend-Lease bill, the US presidential administration on January 10, 1941 submitted it for consideration by both houses of Congress, which was approved by it on March 11. Meanwhile, in September 1941, the US Congress, after long debates, approved the so-called “Victory Program”, the essence of which, according to the American military historians themselves (R. Layton, R. Coakley), was that “America’s contribution to the war will be weapons, not armies."
Immediately after President Roosevelt signed this program, his adviser and special representative Averell Harriman flew to London, and from there to Moscow, where on October 1, 1941, the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR V.M. Molotov, the British Minister of Reserves and Supply Lord W.E. Beaverbrook and Presidential Special Representative A. Harriman signed the First (Moscow) Protocol, which marked the beginning of the extension of the Lend-Lease program to the Soviet Union.
Then, on June 11, 1942, the “Agreement between the governments of the USSR and the USA on the principles applicable to mutual assistance in waging war against aggression” was signed in Washington, which finally regulated all the fundamental issues of military-technical and economic cooperation between the two main participants in the “anti-Hitler coalition” " In general, in accordance with the signed protocols, all Lend-Lease deliveries to the USSR are traditionally divided into several stages:
Pre-Lend-Lease - from June 22, 1941 to September 30, 1941 (before the signing of the protocol); The first protocol - from October 1, 1941 to June 30, 1942 (signed on October 1, 1941); Second protocol - from July 1, 1942 to June 30, 1943 (signed on October 6, 1942); Third Protocol - from July 1, 1943 to June 30, 1944 (signed on October 19, 1943); The fourth protocol is from July 1, 1944 to September 20, 1945 (signed on April 17, 1944).
On September 2, 1945, with the signing of the act of surrender of militaristic Japan, World War II was ended, and already on September 20, 1945, all Lend-Lease deliveries to the USSR were stopped.
What, where and how much
The US government never published detailed reports of what and how much was sent under the Lend-Lease program to the USSR. But according to updated data from Doctor of Historical Sciences L.V. Pozdeeva (“Anglo-American relations during the Second World War 1941-1945”, M., “Science”, 1969; “London - Moscow: British public opinion and the USSR. 1939 -1945”, M., Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 1999), which were extracted by her from closed American archival sources dating back to 1952, Lend-Lease deliveries to the USSR were carried out along five routes:
Far East - 8,244,000 tons (47.1%); Persian Gulf - 4,160,000 tons (23.8%); Northern Russia - 3,964,000 tons (22.7%); Soviet North - 681,000 tons (3.9%); Soviet Arctic - 452,000 tons (2.5%).
His compatriot, the American historian J. Herring, wrote just as frankly that “Lend-Lease was not the most selfless act in the history of mankind... It was an act of calculated selfishness, and the Americans were always clear about the benefits that they could derive from it.”
And this was indeed the case, since Lend-Lease turned out to be an inexhaustible source of enrichment for many American corporations. After all, in fact, the only country in the anti-Hitler coalition that received significant economic benefits from the war was the United States. It is not without reason that in the United States itself, World War II is sometimes called the “good war,” which, for example, is evident from the title of the work of the famous American historian S. Terkeli “The Good War: An Oral History of World War II.” World War" (1984)). In it, he frankly, with cynicism, noted: “Almost the entire world during this war experienced terrible shocks, horrors and was almost destroyed. We came out of the war with incredible technology, tools, labor and money. For most Americans, the war turned out to be fun... I'm not talking about those unfortunate people who lost their sons and daughters. But for everyone else, it was a damn good time."
Almost all researchers of this topic unanimously say that the Lend-Lease program noticeably revived the economic situation in the United States, in the balance of payments of which Lend-Lease operations became one of the leading items during the war. To carry out deliveries under Lend-Lease, the administration of President Roosevelt began to widely use so-called “fixed profitability” contracts (cost-plus contracts), when private contractors could themselves set a certain level of income in relation to costs.
In cases where significant volumes of specialized equipment were required, the US government acted as the lessor, purchasing all the necessary equipment for subsequent leasing.
Only numbers
Of course, supplies under Lend-Lease brought victory over the enemy closer. But here are some real numbers that speak for themselves.
For example, during the war, more than 29.1 million units of small arms of all main types were produced at the enterprises of the Soviet Union, while only about 152 thousand units of small arms were supplied to the Red Army from American, British and Canadian factories. that is 0.5%. A similar picture was observed for all types of artillery systems of all calibers - 647.6 thousand Soviet guns and mortars against 9.4 thousand foreign ones, which was less than 1.5% of their total number.
For other types of weapons, the picture was somewhat different, but also not so “optimistic”: for tanks and self-propelled guns, the ratio of domestic and allied vehicles was, respectively, 132.8 thousand and 11.9 thousand (8.96%), and for combat aircraft - 140.5 thousand and 18.3 thousand (13%).
And one more thing: out of almost 46 billion dollars, which all Lend-Lease aid cost, for the Red Army, which defeated the lion’s share of the divisions of Germany and its military satellites, the United States allocated only 9.1 billion dollars, that is, a little more than one-fifth of the funds .
At the same time, the British Empire received more than 30.2 billion, France - 1.4 billion, China - 630 million, and even the countries of Latin America (!) received 420 million. In total, 42 countries received supplies under the Lend-Lease program.
It must be said that recently total supplies under Lend-Lease have begun to be assessed somewhat differently, but this does not change the essence of the overall picture. Here are the updated data: out of 50 billion dollars, almost 31.5 billion were spent on supplies to the UK, 11.3 billion to the USSR, 3.2 billion to France and 1.6 billion to China .
But perhaps, given the overall insignificance of the volume of overseas assistance, it played a decisive role precisely in 1941, when the Germans stood at the gates of Moscow and Leningrad, and when there were only some 25-40 km left before the victorious march across Red Square?
Let's look at the statistics on arms supplies for this year. From the beginning of the war to the end of 1941, the Red Army received 1.76 million rifles, machine guns and machine guns, 53.7 thousand guns and mortars, 5.4 thousand tanks and 8.2 thousand combat aircraft. Of these, our allies in the anti-Hitler coalition supplied only 82 artillery pieces (0.15%), 648 tanks (12.14%) and 915 aircraft (10.26%). Moreover, a fair portion of the military equipment sent, in particular 115 of the 466 English-made tanks, never reached the front in the first year of the war.
If we translate these supplies of weapons and military equipment into monetary equivalent, then, according to the famous historian, Doctor of Science M.I. Frolov (“Vain attempts: against belittling the role of the USSR in the defeat of Nazi Germany,” Lenizdat, 1986; “The Great Patriotic War of 1941 -1945 in German historiography", SP, LTA publishing house, 1994), which for many years successfully and worthily polemicized with German historians (W. Schwabedissen, K. Uebe), "until the end of 1941 - at the very a difficult period for the Soviet state - materials worth 545 thousand dollars were sent to the USSR under Lend-Lease from the USA, with the total cost of American supplies to the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition being 741 million dollars. That is, less than 0.1% of American aid was received by the Soviet Union during this difficult period.
In addition, the first deliveries under Lend-Lease in the winter of 1941-1942 reached the USSR very late, and in these critical months the Russians, and the Russians alone, offered real resistance to the German aggressor on their own soil and with their own means, without receiving any significant assistance from Western democracies. By the end of 1942, the agreed supply programs to the USSR were completed by the Americans and British by 55%. In 1941-1942, only 7% of the cargo sent from the United States during the war years arrived in the USSR. The main amount of weapons and other materials was received by the Soviet Union in 1944-1945, after a radical turning point in the course of the war.”
Part II
Now let's see what the fighting vehicles of the allied countries that were originally part of the Lend-Lease program were like.
Of the 711 fighters that arrived from England to the USSR before the end of 1941, 700 were hopelessly outdated machines such as the Kittyhawk, Tomahawk and Hurricane, which were significantly inferior to the German Messerschmitt and the Soviet Yak in speed and maneuverability and not They even had cannon weapons. Even if a Soviet pilot managed to catch an enemy ace in his machine gun sight, their rifle-caliber machine guns often turned out to be completely powerless against the rather strong armor of German aircraft. As for the newest Airacobra fighters, only 11 of them were delivered in 1941. Moreover, the first Airacobra arrived in the Soviet Union in disassembled form, without any documentation and with a fully exhausted engine life.
This, by the way, also applies to two squadrons of Hurricane fighters, armed with 40-mm tank guns to combat enemy armored vehicles. The attack aircraft made from these fighters turned out to be completely worthless, and they stood idle in the USSR throughout the war, since there were simply no people willing to fly them in the Red Army.
A similar picture was observed with the vaunted English armored vehicles - the light tank "Valentine", which Soviet tankers dubbed "Valentina", and the medium tank "Matilda", which the same tankers called even more harshly - "Farewell, Motherland", Thin armor, fire-hazardous carburetor engines and antediluvian transmission made them easy prey for German artillery and grenade launchers.
According to the authoritative testimony of V.M. Molotov’s personal assistant V.M. Berezhkov, who, as a translator for I.V. Stalin, participated in all negotiations of the Soviet leadership with Anglo-American visitors, Stalin was often indignant that, for example, the British supplied land -lized obsolete Hurricane-type aircraft and avoided deliveries of the latest Spitfire fighters. Moreover, in September 1942, in a conversation with the leader of the US Republican Party, W. Wilkie, in the presence of the American and British ambassadors and W. Standley and A. Clark Kerr, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief directly posed the question to him: why did the British and American governments supply the Soviet Union low-quality materials?
And he explained that we are talking, first of all, about the supply of American P-40 aircraft instead of the much more modern Airacobra, and that the British are supplying worthless Hurricane aircraft, which are much worse than the German ones. There was a case, Stalin added, when the Americans were going to supply the Soviet Union with 150 Airacobras, but the British intervened and kept them for themselves. “The Soviet people... know very well that both the Americans and the British have aircraft equal or even better in quality than German machines, but for unknown reasons some of these aircraft are not delivered to the Soviet Union.”
The American ambassador, Admiral Standley, had no information on this matter, and the British ambassador, Archibald Clark Kerr, admitted that he was aware of the matter with the Airacobras, but began to justify their sending to another place by the fact that these 150 vehicles in the hands of the British would bring “much more benefit to the common cause of the Allies than if they had ended up in the Soviet Union.”
Wait three years for the promised one?
The United States promised to send 600 tanks and 750 aircraft in 1941, but sent only 182 and 204, respectively.
The same story repeated itself in 1942: if Soviet industry produced that year more than 5.9 million small arms, 287 thousand guns and mortars, 24.5 thousand tanks and self-propelled guns and 21.7 thousand aircraft, then under Lend-Lease in January-October 1942, only 61 thousand small arms, 532 guns and mortars, 2703 tanks and self-propelled guns and 1695 aircraft were delivered.
Moreover, since November 1942, i.e. in the midst of the battle for the Caucasus and Stalingrad and the conduct of Operation Mars on the Rzhev salient, the supply of weapons almost completely ceased. According to historians (M.N. Suprun “Lend-Lease and Northern Convoys, 1941-1945”, M., St. Andrew’s Flag Publishing House, 1997), these interruptions began already in the summer of 1942, when German aviation and The submarines destroyed the notorious Caravan PQ-17, abandoned (by order of the Admiralty) by British escort ships. The result was disastrous: only 11 out of 35 ships reached Soviet ports, which was used as an excuse to suspend the departure of the next convoy, which sailed from British shores only in September 1942.
The new PQ-18 Caravan lost 10 out of 37 transports on the road, and the next convoy was sent only in mid-December 1942. Thus, in 3.5 months, when the decisive battle of the entire Second World War was taking place on the Volga, less than 40 ships with Lend-Lease cargo arrived individually in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. In connection with this circumstance, many had a legitimate suspicion that in London and Washington all this time they were simply waiting to see in whose favor the battle of Stalingrad would end.
Meanwhile, from March 1942, i.e. just six months after the evacuation of more than 10 thousand industrial enterprises from the European part of the USSR, military production began to grow, which by the end of this year exceeded pre-war figures five times (!). Moreover, it should be noted that 86% of the entire workforce were old people, women and children. It was they who in 1942-1945 gave the Soviet army 102.5 thousand tanks and self-propelled guns, more than 125.6 thousand aircraft, more than 780 thousand artillery pieces and mortars, etc.
Not just weapons. And not only allies...
Supplies not related to the main types of weapons were also supplied under Lend-Lease. And here the numbers turn out to be really solid. In particular, we received 2,586 thousand tons of aviation gasoline, which amounted to 37% of what was produced in the USSR during the war, and almost 410 thousand cars, i.e. 45% of all vehicles of the Red Army (excluding captured vehicles). Food supplies also played a significant role, although during the first year of the war they were extremely insignificant, and in total the United States supplied approximately 15% of meat and other canned goods.
And there were also machine tools, rails, locomotives, carriages, radars and other useful equipment, without which you couldn’t fight much.
Of course, having familiarized yourself with this impressive list of Lend-Lease supplies, one could sincerely admire the American partners in the anti-Hitler coalition,” if not for one nuance:At the same time, American industrial corporations also supplied supplies to Nazi Germany...
For example, the Standard Oil oil corporation, owned by John Rockefeller Jr., sold $20 million worth of gasoline and lubricants to Berlin through the German concern I.G. Farbenindustry alone. And the Venezuelan branch of the same company monthly sent 13 thousand tons of crude oil to Germany, which the powerful chemical industry of the Third Reich immediately processed into first-class gasoline. Moreover, the matter was not limited to precious fuel, and the Germans from overseas received tungsten, synthetic rubber and a lot of different components for the automotive industry, which the German Fuhrer was supplied with by his old friend Henry Ford Sr. In particular, it is well known that 30% of all tires manufactured at its factories were supplied to the German Wehrmacht.
As for the total volume of Ford-Rockefeller supplies to Nazi Germany, there is still no complete information on this matter, since this is a strictly trade secret, but even the little that has become known to the public and historians makes it possible to understand that trade with Berlin in those years was by no means did not calm down.
Lend-Lease is not charity
There is a version that Lend-Lease assistance from the United States was almost of a charitable nature. However, upon closer examination, this version does not stand up to criticism. First of all, because already during the war, within the framework of the so-called “reverse Lend-Lease,” Washington received the necessary raw materials with a total value of almost 20% of the transferred materials and weapons. In particular, 32 thousand tons of manganese and 300 thousand tons of chrome ore were sent from the USSR, the importance of which in the military industry was extremely great. Suffice it to say that when, during the Nikopol-Krivoy Rog offensive operation of the troops of the 3rd and 4th Ukrainian fronts in February 1944, German industry was deprived of Nikopol manganese, the 150-mm frontal armor of the German “Royal Tigers” began to withstand the blow of Soviet artillery shells where worse than the similar 100 mm armor plate that was previously installed on conventional Tigers.
In addition, the USSR paid for allied supplies in gold. Thus, only one British cruiser Edinburgh, which was sunk by German submarines in May 1942, contained 5.5 tons of precious metal.
A significant part of the weapons and military equipment, as expected under the Lend-Lease agreement, was returned by the Soviet Union at the end of the war. Having received in return a bill for the round sum of $1,300 million. Against the backdrop of writing off Lend-Lease debts to other powers, this looked like outright robbery, so J.V. Stalin demanded that the “allied debt” be recalculated.
Subsequently, the Americans were forced to admit that they were mistaken, but added interest to the final amount, and the final amount, taking into account these interests, recognized by the USSR and the USA under the Washington Agreement in 1972, amounted to 722 million greenbacks. Of these, 48 million were paid to the United States under L.I. Brezhnev, in three equal payments in 1973, after which payments were stopped due to the introduction of discriminatory measures by the American side in trade with the USSR (in particular, the notorious “Jackson-Vanik Amendment” - author).
Only in June 1990, during new negotiations between Presidents George W. Bush and M.S. Gorbachev, the parties returned to discussing the Lend-Lease debt, during which a new deadline for the final repayment of the debt was established - 2030, and the remaining amount of the debt — 674 million dollars.
After the collapse of the USSR, its debts were technically divided into debts to governments (Paris Club) and debts to private banks (London Club). The Lend-Lease debt was a debt obligation to the US government, that is, part of the debt to the Paris Club, which Russia fully repaid in August 2006.
According to my own estimates
US President F.D. Roosevelt directly said that “helping the Russians is money well spent,” and his successor in the White House, G. Truman, back in June 1941, on the pages of the New York Times, stated: “If we see, that Germany wins, we must help Russia, and if Russia wins, we must help Germany, and thus let them kill each other as much as possible”...
The first official assessment of the role of Lend-Lease in the overall
The author is Mark Semyonovich Solonin (b. May 29, 1958, Kuibyshev) - Russian publicist, author of books and articles in the genre of historical revisionism dedicated to the Great Patriotic War, primarily its initial period. By education, he is an aviation design engineer.
Guns, oil, gold
The article was published (with minor, purely technical abbreviations) on September 28, 2010 in the weekly Military-Industrial Courier. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all participants in the discussion of the note “Beyond Limits,” whose interesting and informative messages largely determined the content and themes of this article
On September 29, 1941, a conference of representatives of the USSR, USA and Great Britain began in Moscow, during which fundamental decisions were made on large-scale supplies of weapons and military equipment to the Soviet Union. On October 1, the first (there will be four in total) protocol on supplies worth $1 billion over 9 months was signed. Thus began the history of American Lend-Lease for the USSR. Deliveries of various materials for military and civilian purposes continued until September 1945. In total, 17.3 million tons of property with a total value of 9.48 billion dollars were delivered to the Soviet Union (mainly from the USA). Taking into account the work and services performed, the total cost of Lend-Lease in the USSR amounted to 11 billion dollars. Dollars of the early 40s, when for one thousand “green” you could buy a weighty ingot of 850 grams of gold.
FOUR PERCENT
Is this a lot - 17 million tons of goods with a total value of 7 thousand tons of pure gold? What is the real contribution of Lend-Lease supplies to equipping the Red Army and to the work of the national economy of the USSR? The best Soviet economists deeply and comprehensively studied this question and gave an exhaustive, short and accurate answer to it. The answer was published in 1947 in the book “The Military Economy of the USSR during the Second World War,” published under the signature of a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, deputy head of the government of the USSR (i.e., Stalin’s deputy), permanent (since 1938). ) Head of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, Doctor of Economic Sciences, Academician N.A. Voznesensky. Four percent. Only four percent of the volume of Soviet industry's own production came from these pitiful American handouts. There would be something to argue about - the amount of economic assistance from the allies turned out to be within the error limits of economic statistics.
Two years later, in October 1949, N.A. Voznesensky was arrested. Investigation according to the so-called The “Leningrad affair” lasted for almost a year. The best security officers, highly experienced Soviet investigators, revealed the insidious plans of seasoned enemies of the people. The Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, having comprehensively studied the materials of the case, having become familiar with the irrefutable evidence of the guilt of the conspirators, sentenced N.A. Voznesensky, A.A. Kuznetsov, P.S. Popkov, M.I. Rodionov and others to death. On April 30, 1954, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR rehabilitated Voznesensky, Kuznetsov, Popkov, Rodionov and others. It turned out that the “Leningrad case” was fabricated from beginning to end, the “evidence” of guilt was grossly falsified, a lawless reprisal took place under the guise of a “trial,” the charges were dictated by the political assignment of the warring clans surrounded by Stalin. The execution sentence was considered a mistake. Unfortunately, no one bothered to officially recognize as a “mistake” the crazy four percent that appeared in Voznesensky’s book in accordance with the instructions of the political leadership of the USSR, which at that time was preoccupied with fanning the flames of the Cold War.
There was no economic calculation behind these notorious “four percent” initially, and how could it be possible to express the ratio of the volumes of a huge range of goods in one single number? Of course, money and prices were invented precisely for this purpose, but in the conditions of the Soviet economy, prices were set prescriptively, without any connection with a completely absent market, and were calculated in non-convertible rubles. Finally, war and war economics have their own laws - is it possible to estimate the cost of flour delivered to besieged Leningrad by simply multiplying the weight in tons by pre-war prices? At what cost should hundreds of thousands of human lives saved be measured? How much do a barrel of water and an iron bucket cost in a fire? The Soviet Union received about 3 thousand km of fire hose under Lend-Lease. How much does it cost in war? Even in those cases where Lend-Lease supplies amounted to tiny fractions of a percent of the mass-dimensional volumes of Soviet production, their real significance in war conditions could be enormous. "Small spool but precious". 903 thousand detonators, 150 thousand insulators, 15 thousand binoculars and 6199 sets of semi-automatic anti-aircraft sights - is this a lot or a little?
The Americans supplied the USSR with 9.1 thousand tons of molybdenum concentrate for the “pathetic” amount of 10 million dollars (one thousandth of the total cost of Lend-Lease goods). On the scale of Soviet metallurgy, where the count was in the millions of tons, 9.1 thousand tons is an insignificant detail, but without this “trifle” it is impossible to smelt high-strength structural steel. And in the endless lists of Lend-Lease supplies there is not only molybdenum concentrate - there are also 34.5 thousand tons of zinc metal, 7.3 thousand tons of ferro-silicon, 3.3 thousand tons of ferro-chrome, 460 tons of ferro-vanadium , 370 tons of cobalt metal. And also nickel, tungsten, zirconium, cadmium, beryllium, 12 tons of precious cesium... 9570 tons of graphite electrodes and 673 tons (i.e. thousands of kilometers!) of nichrome wire, without which the production of electric heating devices and furnaces will stop. And another 48.5 thousand tons of electrodes for galvanic baths. Statistical data on the production of non-ferrous metals in the USSR remained strictly classified for half a century. This circumstance does not allow us to give a correct assessment of the value of those hundreds of thousands of tons of aluminum and copper that were supplied under Lend-Lease. However, even the most “patriotic” authors agree that Lend-Lease covered up to half the needs of Soviet industry - and this does not take into account the colossal amount of American electrical wires and cables supplied ready-made.
There are endless rows of figures for the supply of a wide variety of chemicals. Some of them were not supplied in “spool” volumes: 1.2 thousand tons of ethyl alcohol, 1.5 thousand tons of acetone, 16.5 thousand tons of phenol, 25 thousand tons of methyl alcohol, 1 million liters of hydraulic mixture. .. It is especially worth paying attention to 12 thousand tons of ethylene glycol - with this amount of antifreeze it was possible to fill about 250 thousand powerful aircraft engines. But, of course, the main component of the Lend-Lease “chemistry” was explosives: 46 thousand tons of dynamite, 140 thousand tons of smokeless gunpowder, 146 thousand tons of TNT. According to the most conservative estimates, Lend-Lease supplies covered one third of the Red Army's needs (and this estimate does not yet take into account the share of imported components used for the production of explosives in Soviet factories). In addition, 603 million rifle-caliber cartridges, 522 million large-caliber cartridges, 3 million shells for 20-mm air cannons, 18 million shells for 37-mm and 40-mm anti-aircraft guns were received from America in “ready form”.
Anti-aircraft guns, by the way, were also supplied from the USA - about 8 thousand small-caliber anti-aircraft guns (a significant part of which were installed on the chassis of a light armored personnel carrier), which amounted to 35% of the total MZA resource received by the Red Army during the war years. The share of imports of automobile tires and chemical raw materials (natural and synthetic rubber) for their production is estimated within the same limits (at least one third of the total resource).
CRUCIAL CONTRIBUTION
It is not at all difficult to find positions for which Lend-Lease supplies turned out to be larger than Soviet own production. And these are not only all-terrain passenger cars (the famous Jeeps, 50 thousand delivered), all-wheel drive trucks (the equally famous Studebakers, 104 thousand delivered), motorcycles (35 thousand), armored personnel carriers (7.2 thousand), amphibious vehicles (3.5 thousand). No matter how great the role of American automotive technology was (in total, more than 375 thousand trucks alone were delivered) - incredibly reliable in comparison with domestic "GAZ" and "ZIS" - the supply of railway rolling stock was much more important.
The technology of war in the mid-20th century was based on the use of enormous quantities of ammunition. The theory and practice of the “artillery offensive” (which remains a source of legitimate pride for Soviet military science) involved the expenditure of many thousands of tons of ammunition per day. In that era, such volumes could only be transported by rail, and the steam locomotive became a weapon no less important (albeit unfairly forgotten by the public and journalists) than a tank. Under Lend-Lease, the USSR received 1911 steam locomotives and 70 diesel locomotives, 11.2 thousand carriages of various types, 94 thousand tons of wheels, axles and wheel pairs.
American supplies were so huge that they made it possible to practically curtail our own production of rolling stock - in four years (1942-1945) only 92 steam locomotives and a little more than 1 thousand cars were produced; the released production capacity was loaded with the production of military equipment (in particular, the Ural Carriage Works in Nizhny Tagil became one of the main producers of the T-34 tank). To complete the picture, it remains only to recall the 620 thousand tons of railway rails supplied under Lend-Lease.
It is difficult to overestimate the role of Lend-Lease in the re-equipment (quantitative and qualitative) of the Soviet Armed Forces with radio communications. 2,379 complete on-board radio stations, 6,900 radio transmitters, 1 thousand radio compasses, 12.4 thousand headphones and laryngophones - and this is only for aviation. 15.8 thousand tank radio stations. More than 29 thousand various radio stations for the ground forces, including 2092 high-power (400 W) radio stations SCR-399 installed on the Studebaker chassis, with the help of which communications were provided at the corps-army-front link, and another 400 of the same radio stations, but without a car. To provide radio communications at the tactical level (regiment-division), 11.5 thousand SCR-284 portable radio stations and 12.6 thousand V-100 Pilot walkie-talkies were supplied (the latter were already supplied with inscriptions and scales in Russian at the manufacturing plant).
Simple, reliable and noise-proof wired communications were not forgotten - 619 thousand telephone sets, 200 thousand headphones, 619 telegraph stations, 569 teletypes and an absolutely astronomical amount of telephone wire (1.9 million km) were supplied to the USSR. As well as 4.6 million dry batteries, 314 diesel generators, 21 thousand battery charging stations, tens of thousands of various control and measuring instruments, including 1340 oscilloscopes. And another 10 million radio tubes, 170 ground and 370 airborne (!!!) radars. American radio stations served regularly in the national economy of the USSR, in the river and navy until the 60s, and the Soviet radio industry was provided with samples for study, development and unlicensed copying for at least 10 years in advance.
Such lists can be listed for a long time, but still, in first place in importance, I would put the provision of aviation gasoline to the Soviet Air Force (however, even in terms of tonnage, this category was in first place).
On the eve of the war, the situation with the provision of aviation fuel moved from the stage of a “gasoline crisis” to a “gasoline catastrophe.” New aircraft engines, increased in compression and supercharging, required gasoline with a higher octane number than the B-70, which was produced in significant quantities. The planned (and in fact not achieved in 1941) production volume of high-octane gasoline B-74 and B-78* (450 thousand tons) was only 12% of the mobilization request of NPOs (for B-78 it was 7.5%). The country, which at that time had the largest oil production in the entire Old World, kept its aviation on a strict starvation ration. The outbreak of war did not improve the situation at all - a large amount of gasoline was lost in blown-up warehouses in the western military districts, and after German troops reached the foothills of the Caucasus in the summer of 1942, the evacuation of Baku oil refineries further aggravated the crisis.
* Contrary to a widespread misconception, the numbers in the designation of the brand of aviation gasoline are not equal to its octane number. B-74 gasoline had an octane number, determined by the “motor method,” of 91, B-78 gasoline had an octane number of 93. For comparison, it is worth noting that the best Russian motor gasoline, AI-98, has an octane number of 89.
Soviet aviation, nevertheless, flew and fought. In total, during the war, 3 million tons of high-octane aviation gasoline were consumed (for all needs and by all departments) (2.998 thousand tons - to be precise) Where did it come from? 720 thousand tons are direct import supplies. Another 1,117 thousand tons of aviation gasoline were obtained by mixing imported high-octane (with an octane number from 95 to 100) components with Soviet-made low-octane gasoline. The remaining 1.161 thousand tons of aviation gasoline (slightly more than one third of the total resource) were produced by Baku factories. True, they produced this gasoline using Lend-Lease tetraethyl lead, which was obtained in the amount of 6.3 thousand tons. It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that without the help of the allies, the red star planes would have had to remain on the ground throughout the war.
LEND-LEASE IN THE HUMAN DIMENSION
People's Commissar of the Aviation Industry Shakhurin talks about such an episode of the war in his memoirs. At one of the three main aircraft engine plants, the implementation of the plan was systematically disrupted. Arriving at the plant, Shakhurin found out that production was limited to the work of two highly qualified turners, who could be entrusted with boring engine crankshafts; These workers could barely stand on their feet from hunger. A high-ranking Moscow boss successfully solved the problem, and from a certain “special base of the regional executive committee” an enhanced special ration was allocated for two people. Lend-Lease solved the same problem, but on a different scale.
238 million kg of frozen beef and pork, 218 million kg of canned meat (including 75 million kg designated as “tushenka”), 33 million kg of sausages and bacon, 1.089 million kg of chicken meat, 110 million kg of eggs powder, 359 million kg of vegetable oil and margarine, 99 million kg of butter, 36 million kg of cheese, 72 million kg of milk powder... It is no coincidence that I cited the volumes of Lend-Lease food supplies in precisely such strange units of measurement ( "millions of kilograms") It’s easier to divide by the number of possible consumers. For example, during the entire war, 22 million wounded were admitted to hospitals. This means that it was theoretically possible to consume 4.5 kg of butter, 1.6 kg of cheese, 3.3 kg of dry milk, 60 kg of meat to feed each of them (of course, this list does not include stewed meat - this is for a sick person not food). I trust our respected veterans to compare these lists with the actual diet of military hospitals...
Adequate and plentiful nutrition is, of course, an important condition for the recovery of the wounded, but first of all, the hospital needs medicines, surgical instruments, syringes, needles and suture thread, chloroform for anesthesia, and various medical devices. With all this we were not bad, but very bad.
On the eve of the war, huge volumes of military medical equipment were concentrated in the border districts (there were more than 40 million individual dressing packages there alone). Most of it remained there. The loss and/or evacuation of most of the pharmaceutical industry led to production volumes falling to 8.5% of pre-war levels by the end of 1941, despite the fact that the situation required a manifold increase in the production of medicines. Hospitals washed used bandages; doctors had to work without such vital drugs as ether and morphine for anesthesia, streptocide, novocaine, glucose, pyramidon and aspirin.
The lives and health of millions of wounded were saved by medical Lend-Lease - another carefully forgotten page in the history of the war. In general, allied supplies provided up to 80% of the needs of the Soviet military medical service. In 1944 alone, 40 million grams of streptocide alone were obtained. American antibiotics and sulfonamides became an invaluable treasure. And at what price can one measure one million kg of vitamins supplied to the USSR? Lend-Lease surgical instruments, X-ray machines, and laboratory microscopes served well for many years during and after the war. And 13.5 million pairs of leather army boots, 2 million sets of underwear, 2.8 million leather belts, 1.5 million wool blankets to supply the Red Army were not superfluous...
"FREEDOM" CARAVANS
The Soviet Union and the United States were not close neighbors. Accordingly, all these millions of tons of goods, including many hundreds of thousands of tons of explosives that fly into the air from the very first fragment of an aerial bomb (and no less flammable and explosive aviation gasoline), still had to be delivered to the ports of the USSR across the vast expanses of the world's oceans. The Soviet navy was able to transport only 19.4% of this gigantic tonnage; the allies supplied everything else themselves.
To solve this problem, unprecedented in scale and complexity, an equally unprecedented means was found - the Americans were able to organize high-speed mass production of ocean-going ships of the Liberty series. The figures characterizing the Liberty construction program cannot but shake the imagination. Huge ocean-going ships with a displacement of 14.5 thousand tons (length 135 m, carrying capacity 9.14 thousand tons) were built in the amount of 2,750 units. The average duration of construction of one vessel was increased to 44 days. And this is on average - in November 1942, the ship of this series, Robert Peary, was launched 4 days, 15 hours and 29 minutes after the moment of laying.
The main feature of the Liberty series ships (it was this that made it possible to achieve phenomenal production rates) was the replacement of riveting with welding. It was believed that the service life of such ships would be very low, but in war conditions it was decided to neglect this. However, "Freedom" turned out to be surprisingly tenacious - the "welded ships" sailed the seas for decades; Thus, the above-mentioned Robert Peary was in operation until 1963, and even at the beginning of the 21st century at least three Liberty were still in service!
The task was by no means exhausted by the ultra-high-speed construction of a huge number of ships. Berlin also understood the military significance of these endless caravans of ships with aviation gasoline, weapons and ammunition, and tried to take their own countermeasures. Guiding ships through the waters of the North Atlantic (about a third of all cargo was delivered along this “Murmansk” route), infested with German submarines, under the gun of German bombers, who received all the airfields of Norway for their base, became, in fact, a naval campaign of strategic scale. And the Allies won this campaign brilliantly - even in the “Murmansk direction” only 7% of the tonnage was lost; caravans heading to the ports of Iran or the Soviet Far East lost no more than 1%.
Everything is relative. How can we compare the naval miracle performed by the Allies? It is possible with the history of the “siege” of Leningrad, when the delivery of several barges with food per day across Lake Ladoga - and this over a distance of 50-80 km, and not 5 thousand nautical miles - turned into an almost insoluble problem. It is possible with the history of the ill-fated “Tallinn passage”, when the Red Banner Baltic Fleet, on a 400 km journey from Tallinn to Leningrad, without encountering a single German submarine at sea, or a single enemy vessel of the destroyer class or higher, lost 57% of the civilian ships being escorted. It is possible (although it is better not to do so) to recall the history of the many-month defense of Sevastopol, when the Black Sea Fleet - again, having practically no enemy worth mentioning at sea - was unable to either ensure uninterrupted supply of the ground forces fighting for the city, nor the evacuation of the last surviving defenders of Sevastopol ( from 15 to 20 thousand people, including at least 5 thousand wounded, were simply abandoned to the mercy of the enemy)
“Completely shameless and cynical...”
And after all this, on September 1, 2010, on the next anniversary of the start of World War II, on the state (which in this case is very important) TV channel “Culture”, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAN) gives a big lecture. , director of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, comrade A.N. Sakharov, and he says the following words: “It was agreed that the United States and other allied countries would provide great assistance to the Soviet Union under the so-called Lend-Lease system... America demanded payment in gold and not just someday, but already during military actions, during the war itself. In this sense, the Americans knew how to count money and in this sense were completely shameless and cynical. Everything that was requested was paid for, including in gold..."
Even if this shameless and cynical lie were true, we should thank the Americans for their invaluable help. This is a huge success - during a devastating war, when the fate of the country hung by a thin thread, to find a supplier who, in exchange for stupid soft metal (you can’t make a simple one out of gold and a bayonet), will sell millions of tons of military goods at normal (and not “blockade”) prices property, food, gasoline and medicine. Moreover, he himself will bring three-quarters of this cargo from the other side of the globe.
However, a lie remains a lie - in accordance with the terms of Lend-Lease, not a ruble, not a dollar, not a cent was paid during the war. After the end of hostilities, most of the supplies were simply written off as property spent during the war. At negotiations in 1948-1951 Americans billed $0.8 billion - less than one tenth of the total cost of the goods supplied. The Soviet side agreed to recognize only 0.3 billion. However, recognizing the debt and returning it are two very different things. A long, multi-decade history of disputes and squabbles has ended with the fact that to date no more than one percent of Lend-Lease supplies have been paid (taking into account dollar inflation).
As a rule, in the dispute about the significance of Lend-Lease for the USSR during the Great Patriotic War, there are only two absolutely “polar” points of view - “patriotic” and “liberal”. The essence of the first is that the influence of the Allied material assistance was very small and did not have any significant role, the second is that the Soviet Union was able to win the war solely thanks to the United States.
So, Lend-Lease is a program under which the United States provided various types of material assistance to its allies in World War II. The first steps in this direction were taken at the end of 1940, when the USA and Great Britain concluded the so-called. the “destroyers for bases” agreement, under which 50 destroyers were transferred to England in exchange for a 99-year “lease” of a number of British bases in various areas of the World Ocean. Already in January 1941, the Lend-Lease bill was approved by the US Senate, and this program was actually given a “start”.
This law assumed that the United States would supply its allies with weapons, equipment and various industrial resources. At the same time, equipment lost in battles is not subject to payment, and the remaining equipment after the end of the war must be fully or partially paid for.
Let us briefly consider the situation in which this program began. By the beginning of 1941, Germany had defeated all its opponents on the European continent; the last “stronghold of resistance” at that time was England, which was saved from being captured by German troops by its island position. However, for her the situation did not look at all joyful - most of the available equipment and weapons of the ground forces were lost at Dunkirk, the economy could barely “pull” the war, in Africa and in the Mediterranean theater of operations, British troops could not withstand the onslaught of Germany, the fleet worked in hellish overvoltage, “torn” between several key “directions” and was forced to defend extremely extended communications, “Empires where the Sun never sets.”
The communications themselves were under the threat of being completely cut off - “wolf packs” of German submarines, which at that moment had reached the peak of their success, were “atrocious” in the Atlantic. In general, despite the victory in the Battle of Britain, England was under threat of military and economic collapse.
At the same time, the United States remained a neutral country; the dominant policy in the country was isolationism. On the other hand, the prospect of Germany establishing complete control over Europe did not at all appeal to the Americans. The logical conclusion was to provide large quantities of material and military assistance necessary to “stay afloat” for England, especially since America had enormous economic power behind it, and this assistance could be provided without significant “strain.” Yes, initially Lend-Lease was focused primarily on Britain, and throughout the Second World War it was its main “consumer,” receiving an amount of aid several times greater than all the other countries of the Anti-Hitler Coalition combined.
After the German attack on the USSR, the US and British governments approved an aid program for the Soviet Union and Lend-Lease was “extended” to the USSR. Deliveries began already in October 1941, when the first convoy, designated “Dervish,” departed from England to the North of the USSR; the following “Atlantic” convoys were called the abbreviation PQ.
Let's consider what significance this had for the Soviet Union. The “main sides” of the Lend-Lease controversy focus on those points where Lend-Lease’s contribution was large, and vice versa. First of all, it is worth noting that Lend-Lease is not so much a supply of military equipment and weapons, but a supply of various industrial equipment and resources. When the Lend-Lease program started, the situation for the USSR was almost catastrophic - most of the “pre-war” army was destroyed, the Wehrmacht was getting closer and closer to Moscow, huge territories were lost, on which a colossal part of the industrial potential was concentrated.
The industry itself has been largely evacuated and scattered across echelons located in the vast expanses of the country, moving into the deep regions of the Soviet Union; accordingly, the possibilities of replenishing losses and producing new equipment are significantly limited. The main contribution of Lend-Lease is that at a critical time - the end of 1941 and the first half of 1942, it allowed the evacuated industry to “turn around” much faster, thanks to the supply of scarce raw materials, machine tools, equipment, etc., which this, to a certain extent, compensated for the “distortions” of Soviet industry, as well as the inevitable losses during its evacuation.
Moreover, throughout the war, for a number of resources, supplies under Lend-Lease were comparable to their actual production in the USSR. This is, for example, the production of rubber, explosives, aluminum, etc. Without Lend-Lease, there was a significant risk that many sectors of Soviet industry would have to “swing” much longer.
As for equipment and weapons, the contribution here in general statistics is really small, but it was very, very significant in the first years of the Great Patriotic War. There were 4 routes for the supply of military equipment and resources:
1, “Arctic route”. He is the most famous. This route ran from England or Iceland (where convoys were formed) to the northern ports of the USSR, from where the cargo was sent to its destination. In the first years of the war, this route was the most significant, because the journey along it took only two weeks, and in conditions of 41-42, every day counted. The convoys that moved along it received the name PQ - when the convoy went to the USSR, and when it went back, the abbreviation changed to QP.
The first five convoys passed without losses, but starting with convoy PQ-5, losses became regular. The Germans, quickly realizing the significance of this route, transferred all their large surface forces to Norway, also significantly increased the group of submarines and aircraft in Norway and began an active fight against allied convoys. Their biggest success was the beating of convoy PQ-17, which lost 2/3 of its strength and, along with its ships, equipment and weapons that could have equipped an entire army of 50 thousand people were lost.
2. Iranian route. This was the safest, but at the same time the longest route for delivering military equipment. In total, from dispatch from the USA to the destination, the cargo journey along it took about 3 months.
3. Alaska-Siberian Railway or ALSIB. This route was used for ferrying aircraft - the Americans ferryed the aircraft to Chukotka, and the Soviet pilots already received them and transported them to the Far East, from where they dispersed to the required parts. The delivery time for aircraft this way was very fast, but at the same time this route was extremely dangerous - if the ferry pilot fell behind the group, got lost, or something happened to the plane, it was a guaranteed death.
4. Pacific route. It ran from the ports of the West Coast of the USA to the Far Eastern ports of the USSR and was relatively safe - transports traveling through the North Pacific Ocean were significantly safe, as a rule, Japanese submarines simply did not sail here, and in addition, a considerable part of the cargo was carried by Soviet transports, to attack which the Japanese could not. This route was relatively long, but it was along it that more than half of the supplied resources and materials arrived.
As already mentioned, at the end of 1941, the USSR’s ability to make up for losses was very meager, and Lend-Lease equipment played a significant role here. However, in key directions (for example, near Moscow) there was very little of it. At the end of 19441, it was possible to form two reserve armies, equipped primarily with Lend-Lease weapons, but they were never brought into battle even at the critical moments of the Battle of Moscow, they managed “on their own.”
On the contrary, in “minor” theaters of operations the percentage of “foreign” equipment was huge. For example, most of the fighters in the “northern” theater of operations of the Eastern Front (Leningrad and the North of the USSR) consisted of Hurricanes and Tomahawks. Of course, they were inferior in quality to the German ones, but in any case it was much better than the I-16 and I-153. Lend-Lease equipment was very useful there, especially considering that one of the main supply routes passed through the North, and these fronts were supplied on a residual basis.
Lend-Lease technology played a particularly important role in the Battle of the Caucasus. Due to the critical situation at Stalingrad, all Soviet reserves went there, and the Caucasian Front received equipment in extremely small quantities, and even then, outdated.
But fortunately, the “Iranian route” passed nearby, which made it possible to quickly make up for losses. It was Lend-Lease that provided 2/3 of the Caucasian Front’s needs for equipment, moreover, “increasing” its quality level. In particular, the Matilda and Valentine tanks that arrived at that time looked clearly better than the hopelessly outdated T-26 and BT that equipped the front at the beginning of the Battle of the Caucasus.
The quality level of equipment supplied under Lend-Lease was generally equivalent to similar Soviet models. However, a very interesting point can be traced - equipment that showed mediocre results in the armies of the “producing countries” operated extremely successfully on the Eastern Front. For example, the American P-39 Airacobra fighters in the Pacific theater of operations were very mediocre machines, hated by pilots, but on the Eastern Front they gained enormous military glory, many Guards air regiments were armed with them, and many famous Soviet aces fought on them. And it was these aircraft that became the most popular of the Lend-Lease aircraft.
The situation is similar with the A-20 Boston bombers - in the Pacific Ocean it showed itself to be a very mediocre machine, but in the USSR up to 70% of the mine-torpedo regiments were armed with them, and the planes themselves became the “favorites” of Soviet bomber pilots. On the contrary, the legendary Spitfires did not “take root” at all in the USSR and were sent mainly to air defense regiments, without actually taking part in hostilities.
Of military equipment, the largest contribution of Lend-Lease is trucks and cars. The Soviet automobile industry was less developed than other powers, and the Americans supplied them in huge quantities. By the 44th, this made it possible to significantly increase the maneuverability of tank and mechanized corps, in particular. And if for tanks and aircraft the share of Lend-Lease equipment was about 12%, then here it is all 45-50.
In general, Lend-Lease, yes, really was of great importance in the first two years of the war for the USSR, and without it it would have been at least very bad. Most likely, the USSR would have won the war, but with much heavier losses, or could not achieve such impressive results by 1945. However, it is worth noting the following points:
As a rule, indicating the percentage of deliveries under Lend-Lease serves as some kind of hint at the economic weakness of the USSR, they say, look, without the Allies, the USSR would have died, etc. However, it is worth noting that the USSR received assistance under Lend-Lease that was FOUR times LESS than Great Britain, which, unlike the USSR, was extremely tight on the Lend-Lease needle, and the percentage of American equipment in the British army was many times greater. For example, the USSR received 18 thousand aircraft, while Great Britain received about 32 thousand.
As a result, if the USSR managed not only to survive in the bloodiest war in the history of mankind, taking the main blow, but also to end the war in the status of a Superpower, then England, on the contrary, lost its “imperial” status, after the war quickly sliding to the level of a completely ordinary European country, and actually became a “semi-satellite” of the United States.
In general, history does not tolerate the subjunctive mood, and with no less success one can argue about, for example, what Germany would do without Swedish ore and rare metals.
Most importantly, by helping the USSR with supplies under Lend-Lease, the Allies also helped themselves, because The more successful the Soviet army was, and the more German forces it “attracted” to itself, the easier it was for the Allies themselves. Namely, the diversion of most of the German forces against the USSR made it possible to achieve victories in Africa and Italy, successfully land in France, bomb German industry with an acceptable level of losses, etc.
Payment of debts under Lend-Lease became a significant stumbling block between the USSR and the USA already when the former allies were separated by the curtain of the Cold War. Despite a significant restructuring of debts, the then Soviet leadership refused to pay them. Stalin rightly stated that Soviet soldiers paid all their debts in full with their blood. Unfortunately, after the collapse of the USSR, the debts were “re-issued” to Russia, and at the moment Russia still owes about $100 million, the repayment period for the remaining debt is set until 2030.
