Land - Lease - Allied aid
Tens, hundreds of thousands of Soviets
they are giving their lives in the fight against
fascism and Churchill bargains on
Hurricane winds.
Joseph Stalin - September 13, 1942
On June 22, 1941, immediately after Hitler's attack on the USSR, US President Roosevelt promised Stalin that his country would provide the USSR's war effort to the greatest extent possible. The US Congress had recently passed the Lend-Lease Act, which gave the president the authority to aid any nation whose defense he deemed vital to the United States.
Supplies under Lend-Lease were provided from October 1941 until the end of the war. The US supplied over 16 million tons of tanks, airplanes, artillery, trucks, tractors, locomotives, motorcycles, fuel, explosives, latex and nonferrous metals. Entire production lines and factories were sent to the USSR, including a rolled aluminum plant, a tire plant and a number of oil refineries. In addition, the United States supplied food products: cereals, food concentrates and the famous rations of corned beef and pork.
But the large amounts of Allied aid did not reach the USSR until long after the key battles of 1941 (Moscow, Kiev, Leningrad…) and 1942 (Stalingrad). A very small portion of all wartime aid could be provided during this period. From 1943 onwards these amounts increased significantly and most supplies arrived when all was said and done, as the Red Army had already destroyed the Wehrmacht. Most historians agree that Allied aid helped accelerate the advance of the Red Army when it already had the strategic initiative, and thus shorten the war from 12 to 18 months. So probably this was not a game changer since the USSR was already on its way to winning the war when most of the supplies arrived. However, in private conversations, prominent leaders such as Zhukov, for example, would say that the Soviet Union could not have done it without the help of the allies.
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