The volume of Lend-Lease deliveries. Lend-Lease - the history of American military assistance to the USSR

Lend-Lease is a state program under which the United States of America transferred to its allies, including the Soviet Union in World War II: ammunition, equipment, food and strategic raw materials, including oil products. Aid to the Soviet Union came in three ways: across the Atlantic, through Iran, and through Alaska. German aviation and the Navy tried their best to prevent this. Nevertheless, lend-lease played an important role in the victory over Nazi Germany and its allies. Soviet propaganda, subsequently, in every possible way downplayed the role of supplies from the United States in the war. This led to the fact that many sailors, pilots and all those who participated in this program were forgotten.

Soviet Air Force officer near the post office of the Galena airfield in Alaska, USA.

Loading tanks "Matilda" in one of the British ports for shipment under Lend-Lease to the USSR.

Royal Air Force captain Jack Ross unfastens his parachute after taking off in the Vaenga area (now Severomorsk, Murmansk region).

Indian women wipe and lubricate parts of Lend-Lease tanks.

British Major General McMullen and US Army Colonel Ryan in the cabin of a locomotive delivered to the UK from the USA under Lend-Lease.

General A.M. Korolev and General Connelly shake hands in front of the first train that passed through the Persian corridor.

General A.M. Korolev, General Sanley Scott and General Donald Connelly stand in front of the locomotive of the first train that passed through the Persian corridor in 1943 as part of Lend-Lease deliveries from the USA to the USSR.

Soviet and American aviators dance with girls at the Nome airfield club in Alaska.

Soviet pilots, Lieutenants Susin and Karpov, speak with US Air Force Sergeant Alex Homonchuk at an airfield in Alaska.

American A-20 bombers stand at the Noum airfield in Alaska before being ferried to the USSR.

Colonel N.S. Vasin at lunch with US Vice President Henry Wallace and Colonel Russell Kiner in Alaska.

American bomber A-20 "Boston", crashed in Alaska.

An American P-39 fighter that crashed at Nome Airfield in Alaska.

An American P-39 fighter jet stands at Nome Airfield in Alaska.

The first delegation of the Soviet Air Force stands in front of the aircraft at the Noum airfield in Alaska.

Soviet pilots take the A-20 bomber, transferred under Lend-Lease.

American Lieutenant General Henry Arnold looks at a map at a meeting on the delivery of goods under Lend-Lease to the USSR through Alaska and Chukotka.

American senior officers at a meeting on the delivery of Lend-Lease cargo to the USSR through Alaska and Chukotka.

American General George Marshall talks with Admiral Ernst King at a meeting on the delivery of Lend-Lease cargo to the USSR through Alaska and Chukotka.

Soviet and American soldiers play billiards. Alaska.

Sending tank "Valentine" from England to the USSR.

The transfer of frigates from the US Navy to Soviet sailors. 1945

English women are preparing the Matilda tank for shipment to the USSR under Lend-Lease.

Checking radio communications in the P-63 Kingcobra fighter before being transported to the USSR as part of Lend-Lease deliveries.

Pilot of the 2nd Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment of the Northern Fleet Air Force, Senior Lieutenant N.M. Didenko at the R-39 Airacobra fighter.

A group shot of Soviet and American pilots against the backdrop of the first accepted P-63 Kingcobra fighters.

American military cargo prepared for shipment to the USSR under Lend-Lease. Tank M3 "Stuart" and aircraft A-20 "Boston".

American bombers A-20 "Boston" at the airfield in Alaska before being sent to the USSR.

Bomber A-20 "Boston" at the airfield in Alaska before being sent to the USSR.

Bombers B-25, A-20 "Boston" and R-39 fighters, prepared for delivery to the Soviet Union under Lend-Lease, are lined up along the US Air Force Ladd Field air base in Alaska before the arrival of the selection committee from the USSR.

American A-20 "Boston" aircraft (also R-39 and AT-6 in the background) are ready for acceptance by the technical commission and pilots from the USSR. Abadan Field Air Force Base, Iran.

Soviet pilots arrived at the Abadan Field air force base in Iran.

The Soviet crew of the A-20 "Boston" bomber and the Americans: a photo for memory. Somewhere in Alaska.

Soviet pilots on leave in Alaska.

The P-63 Kingcobra fighter, previously delivered to the USSR under Lend-Lease, returned to the United States and is being inspected by American technicians. Great Falls Air Force Base, USA.

R-63 Kingcobra fighters at the Buffalo airfield before being sent to the USSR.

A pair of P-63 Kingcobra fighters in flight over Niagara Falls.
The aircraft were intended for delivery to the USSR under Lend-Lease.

American bomber B-25J-30 with Soviet markings in flight over Alaska.

Soviet and American pilots at the P-63 fighter in Alaska.

Soviet brigade for testing the aircraft "Hurricane".

Trucks "Studebaker" in the transport reserve of the Red Army command.

Pre-flight training of the P-39L fighter, intended for the USSR, at Ladd Field Air Force Base in Alaska.

A rare photo of Soviet tankmen with M3A1 Stuart tanks, wearing American helmets, with a Thompson M1928A1 submachine gun and an M1919A4 machine gun. Under Lend-Lease, American equipment was left fully equipped - with equipment and even small arms for the crew.

Head of the air route Alaska-Siberia Hero of the Soviet Union Lieutenant-General Mark Izrailevich Shevelev

A convoy of US military trucks transporting Lend-Lease to the USSR stands on a road in eastern Iraq.

A corporal of the British Army Ordnance Department carries Thompson submachine guns, received under Lend-Lease from the United States, for inspection.

British soldiers in a warehouse near boxes of trinitrotoluene received under Lend-Lease from the United States.

American A-36A attack aircraft on board a cargo ship before sailing.

American fighters R-63 and R-39 before being sent to the USSR.

American dive bombers Douglas SBD-3 / 5 "Dontless" from the squadron VC-29, armed with depth charges, on the deck of the aircraft carrier "Santi", during an operation to escort a convoy in the Atlantic in 1942-1943.

Preparation of British Spitfire fighters supplied under Len-Lease for transfer to the Soviet side. Soviet pilots will overtake the planes from Iran to the USSR.

American Lend-Lease planes fly to the USSR.

English fighter pilot Sergeant Howe, who fought on the Northern Front, was awarded the Order of Lenin for 3 downed German aircraft.

Panorama of the military shipyard in Philadelphia.

Author - 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. He is an aeronautical engineer by education.

Guns, oil, gold

The article was published (with small, purely technical cuts) on September 28, 2010 in the weekly "Military Industrial Courier". I bring my sincere gratitude to all the participants in the discussion of the note "Beyond the Limit", whose interesting and informative messages largely determined the content and topics of this article.

On September 29, 1941, a conference of representatives of the USSR, the USA and Great Britain began in Moscow, during which fundamental decisions were made on large-scale deliveries of weapons and military equipment to the Soviet Union. On October 1, the first (there will be four in total) protocol on deliveries in the amount of $ 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 worth $9.48 billion 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 one thousand greenbacks could buy a weighty bar of 850 grams of gold.

FOUR PERCENT

Is it 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 deliveries to the equipment of the Red Army, to the work of the national economy of the USSR? The best Soviet economists have studied this question deeply and comprehensively and have given it an exhaustive, short and precise answer. The answer was published in 1947 in the book "The Military Economy of the USSR during the Second World War", which was published signed by 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 Economics, Academician N.A. Voznesensky. Four percent. Only four percent of Soviet industry's own production came from these miserable American handouts. There would be something to argue about - the size of the economic assistance of the allies turned out to be within the margin of error of economic statistics.

Two years later, in October 1949, N.A. Voznesensky was arrested. The investigation of the so-called. The "Leningrad case" lasted almost a year. The best security officers, highly experienced Soviet investigators revealed the insidious plans of the inveterate enemies of the people. The military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, having thoroughly studied the materials of the case, having familiarized itself with irrefutable evidence of the guilt of the conspirators, sentenced N.A. Voznesensky, A.A. Kuznetsov, P.S. Popkov, M.I. Rodionov and others to be shot. 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, lawless reprisals took place under the guise of a "court", the accusations were dictated by the political task of the opposing clans surrounded by Stalin. The death sentence was recognized as a mistake. Unfortunately, no one bothered to officially recognize as a "mistake" the insane 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" from the very beginning, and how could the ratio of the volumes of a huge range of goods be expressed in a single number? Of course, it was precisely for this purpose that money and prices were invented, but in the conditions of the Soviet economy, prices were set by directive, without any connection with the completely absent market, and were calculated in non-convertible rubles. Finally, war and the war economy 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 price should hundreds of thousands of saved human lives be measured? And how much do a barrel of water and an iron bucket cost on a fire? The Soviet Union received about 3 thousand km of fire hose under Lend-Lease. How much does it cost in a war? Even in those cases when Lend-Lease deliveries amounted to a meager fraction 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 9,100 tons of molybdenum concentrate for a "miserable" amount of $10 million (one thousandth of the total cost of Lend-Lease goods). On the scale of Soviet metallurgy, where the bill went to millions of tons, 9.1 thousand tons is an insignificant trifle, but without this "trifle" high-strength structural steel cannot be smelted. And in the endless lists of lend-lease supplies, not only molybdenum concentrate - there are also 34.5 thousand tons of metallic zinc, 7.3 thousand tons of ferro-silicon, 3.3 thousand tons of ferro-chromium, 460 tons of ferro-vanadium , 370 tons of metallic cobalt. And also nickel, tungsten, zirconium, cadmium, beryllium, 12 tons of precious cesium ... 9570 tons of graphite electrodes and 673 tons (that is, thousands of kilometers!) of nichrome wire, without which the production of electric heaters 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 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 of the needs of Soviet industry - and this is without taking into account the enormous amount of American electrical wires and cables supplied ready-made.

Endless rows are the figures for the supply of a 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 slurry. .. Particular attention should be paid 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, explosives became the main component of Lend-Lease "chemistry": 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 needs of the Red Army (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 guns, 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. Within the same limits (not less than one third of the total resource), the share of imports of automobile tires and chemical raw materials (natural and synthetic rubber) for their production is also estimated.

DECISIVE CONTRIBUTION

It is not at all difficult to find positions for which lend-lease deliveries turned out to be larger than our own Soviet production. And these are not only off-road cars (the famous Jeeps, 50,000 units were delivered), all-wheel drive trucks (the equally famous Studebakers, 104,000 units delivered), motorcycles (35,000), armored personnel carriers (7.2 thousand), amphibious vehicles (3.5 thousand). No matter how great the role of American automotive technology (in total, more than 375 thousand trucks alone were delivered) - incredibly reliable in comparison with domestic "gas" and "Zies" - deliveries of railway rolling stock were much more important.

The technology of warfare in the mid-20th century was based on the use of colossal amounts of ammunition. The theory and practice of the "artillery offensive" (which remains the legitimate pride of Soviet military science) involved the expenditure of many thousands of tons of ammunition per day. Such volumes in that era could only be transported by rail, and the locomotive became a weapon no less important (albeit unfairly forgotten by the public and journalists) than a tank. The USSR received under Lend-Lease 1911 steam locomotives and 70 diesel locomotives, 11.2 thousand wagons of various types, 94 thousand tons of wheels, axles and wheelsets.

American deliveries were so huge that they made it possible to practically curtail their 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 capacities were loaded with the production of military equipment (in particular, the Ural Carriage Works in Nizhny Tagil became one of the main manufacturers of the T-34 tank). To complete the picture, it remains only to recall the 620,000 tons of railway rails delivered under Lend-Lease.

It is difficult to overestimate the role of Lend-Lease in re-equipping (quantitatively and qualitatively) the Soviet Armed Forces with radio communications. 2,379 complete on-board radios, 6,900 radio transmitters, 1,000 radio compasses, 12,400 headphones and laryngophones - and that's just 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) SCR-399 radio stations installed on the Studebaker chassis, which provided communication in the corps-army-front link, and another 400 of the same radio stations, but no car. To ensure radio communications at the tactical level (regiment-division), 11.5 thousand SCR-284 portable radio stations and 12.6 thousand V-100 Pilot radios were delivered (the latter were supplied with inscriptions and scales in Russian at the factory).

The simple, reliable and noise-proof wired communication was not forgotten either - 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 delivered to the USSR. As well as 4.6 million dry batteries, 314 diesel generators, 21,000 battery charging stations, tens of thousands of various instrumentation, including 1,340 oscilloscopes. And another 10 million radio tubes, 170 ground and 370 airborne (!!!) radars. American radio stations regularly served in the national economy of the USSR, in the river and sea fleet until the 60s, and the Soviet radio industry was provided with samples for at least 10 years ahead for study, development and unlicensed copying.

Such lists can be listed for a long time, but nevertheless, in terms of importance, I would put the provision of the Soviet Air Force with aviation gasoline (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 with fuel passed from the stage of a "gasoline crisis" into a "gasoline catastrophe". New aircraft engines, boosted in terms of compression and supercharging, required gasoline with a higher octane rating than the B-70, which was produced in significant quantities. The planned (and actually not achieved in 1941) volume of production of high-octane gasolines B-74 and B-78 * (450 thousand tons) was only 12% of the mobilization request of NGOs (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 the strictest "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 the 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 popular misconception, the numbers in the brand designation of aviation gasoline are not equal to its octane number. Gasoline B-74 had an octane number determined by the "motor method" equal to 91, gasoline B-78 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, however, flew and fought. In total, during the war, 3 million tons of high-octane aviation gasoline (2.998 thousand tons - to be exact) were spent (for all needs and by all departments) Where did it come from? 720 thousand tons are directly imported. Another 1,117 thousand tons of aviation gasoline was 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 a big exaggeration to say that without the help of the Allies, the Red Star aircraft would have had to stand the whole war on the ground.

LEND-LEASE IN THE HUMAN DIMENSION

People's Commissar of the aviation industry Shakhurin in his memoirs talks about such an episode of the war. 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 the engine crankshafts; These workers could hardly stand on their feet because of hunger. The high Moscow boss successfully solved the problem, and from a certain “special base of the regional executive committee” a reinforced 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 marked as "tushenka"), 33 million kg of sausages and bacon, 1.089 million kg of chicken meat, 110 million kg of egg 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 was not by chance that I cited the volumes of Lend-Lease food supplies in precisely such strange units of measurement ( million kilograms). So it is 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 spend 4.5 kg of butter, 1.6 kg of cheese, 3.3 kg of powdered milk, 60 kg of meat to feed each of them (of course, stew is not included in this list - this is for a sick person not food). I trust our esteemed veterans to compare these lists with the real diet of military hospitals ...

Full 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, various medical devices. With all these, 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 stayed there. The loss and / or evacuation of most of the pharmaceutical industry enterprises led to the fact that by the end of 1941 production volumes had fallen to 8.5% of the pre-war level - and this despite the fact that the situation required a multiple increase in the production of medicines. Used bandages were washed in hospitals; doctors had to work without such vital drugs as ether and morphine for anesthesia, streptocide, novocaine, glucose, pyryramidone and aspirin.

The life and health of millions of wounded was 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. Only in 1944, only 40 million grams of streptocide were obtained. American antibiotics and sulfonamides have become an invaluable treasure. And at what price can one measure the 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. Yes, and 13.5 million pairs of leather army boots, 2 million sets of underwear, 2.8 million leather belts, 1.5 million woolen blankets to supply the Red Army were not superfluous ...

"SVOBODA" 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), had to be delivered to the ports of the USSR across the vast expanses of the oceans. The Soviet Navy was able to transport only 19.4% of this gigantic tonnage; everything else the allies delivered themselves.

To solve this task, unprecedented in scale and complexity, an equally unprecedented means was found - the Americans were able to organize high-speed in-line production of ocean-going ships of the Liberty (Freedom) series. The figures characterizing the Liberty construction program cannot but stagger 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 2750 units. The average duration of the construction of one ship was increased to 44 days. And this is an 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 ships of the Liberty series (it was this that made it possible to achieve phenomenal rates of production) was the replacement of riveting by welding. It was believed that the resource of such ships would be very low, but in a war it was decided to neglect this. However, "Freedom" turned out to be surprisingly tenacious - "welded ships" sailed the seas for decades; so, the Robert Pirie mentioned above was in operation until 1963, and even at the beginning of the 21st century, at least three Liberties were still in service!

The task was by no means exhausted by the ultra-fast construction of a huge number of ships. In Berlin, too, they understood the military significance of these endless caravans of ships with aviation gasoline, weapons and ammunition, and tried to take their own countermeasures. Piloting ships through the waters of the North Atlantic (about a third of all cargo was delivered by this "Murmansk" route), swarming with German submarines, under the gunpoint of German bombers, who received all the airfields of Norway for their base, became, in fact, a strategic naval campaign scale. And the allies won this campaign with brilliance - 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. What can we compare the naval miracle performed by the Allies? It is possible with the history of the "blockade" of Leningrad, when the delivery of several barges with food a day across Lake Ladoga - and this is at a distance of 50-80 km, and not 5 thousand nautical miles - has become an almost insoluble problem. It is possible with the history of the ill-fated "Tallinn crossing", when the Red Banner Baltic Fleet, on the 400 km route from Tallinn to Leningrad, having not met a single German submarine at sea, not a single enemy ship of the destroyer class and above, lost 57% of the escorted civilian ships. It is possible (although it is better not to do this) to recall the history of the months-long defense of Sevastopol, when the Black Sea Fleet - again, having practically no enemy worthy of mention at sea - could neither ensure an uninterrupted supply of ground forces fighting for the city, nor evacuate 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)

"Absolutely shameless and cynical..."

And after all this, on September 1, 2010, on the next anniversary of the outbreak of World War II, a doctor of historical sciences, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) gives a big lecture on the state (which is very important in this case) TV channel "Culture" , Director of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences Comrade A.N. Sakharov, and he says these 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 sometime, but already in the course of military operations, during the war itself. In this sense, the Americans knew how to count money and were in this sense completely shameless and cynical. Everything that was demanded, everything was paid for, including gold ... "

Even if these shameless and cynical lies were true, we should thank the Americans for their invaluable help. This is a huge success - during a destructive war, when the fate of the country hung in the balance, 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 equipment at normal (and not “blockade”) prices. property, food, gasoline and medicines. 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, neither the ruble, nor the dollar, nor the cent was paid during the war. After the end of hostilities, most of what was delivered was simply written off as property spent during the war. At the negotiations in 1948-1951. the Americans billed $0.8 billion, less than one-tenth of the total value of the goods supplied. The Soviet side agreed to recognize only 0.3 billion. However, to recognize the debt and return it are two big differences. A long, decades-long history of disputes and squabbles ended with the fact that at the moment no more than one percent of Lend-Lease deliveries has been paid (taking into account dollar inflation).

Lend-lease - (from the English lend - "to lend" and lease - "to rent, hire") - 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 oil products.

American and Soviet pilots next to the P-39 Airacobra fighter, supplied to the USSR under Lend-Lease

What is it and what is it about?

On May 15, 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who offered to temporarily transfer 40-50 old destroyers to Great Britain in exchange for British naval and air bases in the Atlantic Ocean, first asked US President Franklin Roosevelt to provide American weapons for temporary use.

The deal took place in August 1940, but the idea of a wider program arose from it. By order of Roosevelt, in the autumn of 1940, a working group was formed in the US Treasury Department to prepare an appropriate bill. The legal advisers of the ministry, E. Foley and O. Cox, proposed relying on the law of 1892, which allowed the Minister of War, "when at his discretion it would be in the interests of the state," to lease "for a period of not more than five years the property of the army, if it is not needed the country".

Employees of the military and naval ministries were also involved in the work on the project. On January 10, 1941, the relevant hearings began in the US Senate and House of Representatives, on March 11, the Lend-Lease Law (act) was signed, and on March 27, the US Congress voted to allocate the first appropriation for military assistance in the amount of $ 7 billion.

Roosevelt likened the approved scheme for lending military supplies and equipment to a hose given in a fire to a neighbor so that the flames would not spread to their own house. " I don't need him to pay the cost of the hose, I need him to return my hose to me after the fire is over. », said the President of the United States.

The deliveries included armaments, industrial equipment, merchant ships, vehicles, food, fuel and medicines. According to established principles, US-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 that had not yet been completed or was stored in warehouses using American long-term loans. The delivery period was initially set to June 30, 1943, but then extended annually. Finally, the law provided for the possibility of refusing to supply certain equipment if it was recognized as secret or was necessary by the United States itself.

In total, during the war, the United States provided lend-lease assistance to the governments of 42 countries, including Great Britain, the USSR, China, Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and others, in the amount of approximately $ 48 billion.

The concept of this program gave the President of the United States the power to help any country whose defense was deemed vital to his country. 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: delivered materials (machines, various military equipment, weapons, raw materials, other items), destroyed, lost and used during the war, are not subject to payment (Article 5).

Lend-lease property left after the end of the war and suitable for civilian purposes will be paid in whole or in part on the basis of long-term loans provided by the United States (mostly interest-free loans).

Lend-lease provisions stipulated that after the war, if the American side was interested, undestroyed and not lost machinery and equipment should be returned to the United States.

In total, lend-lease deliveries amounted to about $50.1 billion (equivalent to about $610 billion in 2008 prices), of which $31.4 billion was delivered to the UK, $11.3 billion to the USSR, $3.2 billion to France and $1.6 billion to China. Reverse lend-lease (supplies of allies to the US) amounted to $7.8 billion, of which $6.8 billion went to the UK and the Commonwealth countries.

In the post-war period, various assessments of the role of Lend-Lease were expressed. In the USSR, the importance of supplies was often downplayed, while abroad it was argued that the victory over Germany was determined by Western weapons and that without Lend-Lease the Soviet Union would not have survived.

In Soviet historiography, it was usually stated that the amount of lend-lease assistance to the USSR was rather small - only about 4% of the funds spent by the country on the war, and tanks and aircraft were supplied mostly of outdated models. Today, the attitude in the countries of the former USSR towards the help of the allies has somewhat changed, and attention has also begun to be paid to the fact that, for a number of items, deliveries 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 America's, with deliveries totaling $4.7 billion, mostly to Britain and the USSR.

The volume of deliveries and the significance of lend-lease

Materials totaling $50.1 billion (about $610 billion in 2008 prices) were sent to recipients, including:

Reverse lend-lease (for example, the lease of air bases) was received by the United States in the amount of $7.8 billion, of which $6.8 billion came from the UK and the British Commonwealth. Reverse lend-lease from the USSR amounted to $2.2 million.

The significance of lend-lease in the victory of the United Nations over the Axis is illustrated in 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, according to the results of 1941, Great Britain was still losing the battle for the Atlantic, which was fraught with a complete collapse for the country's economy, which was almost entirely tied to foreign trade.

The GDP of the USSR in 1942, in turn, due to the occupation of large territories by Germany, decreased by about a third compared to the pre-war level, while out of 200 million people, about 78 million people remained in the occupied territories.

Thus, in 1942, the USSR and Great Britain were inferior to Germany and its satellites both in terms of GDP (0.9: 1) and in terms of population (taking into account the losses of the USSR due to the occupation). In this situation, the US leadership saw the need to provide urgent military-technical assistance to both countries. Moreover, the United States was the only country in the world with sufficient production capacity to provide such support in a short enough time to have time to influence the course of hostilities in 1942. Throughout 1941, the United States continued to increase military assistance to Great Britain, and on October 1, 1941, Roosevelt approved the USSR joining Lend-Lease.

Lend-Lease, coupled with increasing British aid in its Battle of the Atlantic, proved to be a critical factor in bringing the US 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 deciding to go to war with the United States.

It should be noted that the sending of American and British military equipment to the USSR led to the need to supply it with hundreds of thousands of tons of aviation fuel, millions of shells for guns and cartridges for PP and machine guns, spare caterpillars for tanks, spare car tires, spare parts for tanks, aircraft and cars. As early as 1943, when the leadership of the Allies ceased to doubt the USSR's ability to engage in a long-term war, the USSR began to import mainly strategic materials (aluminum, etc.) and machine tools for Soviet industry.

Already after the first Lend-Lease deliveries, Stalin began to complain 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, German. An example is the frankly unsuccessful model of the Curtiss 0-52 aviation reconnaissance spotter, which the Americans simply sought to attach somewhere and imposed 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. The leasing relationship implied, in particular, the right of the receiving party to independently choose and stipulate the type and characteristics of the required products. And if the Red Army considered American equipment unsatisfactory, then what was the point of ordering it?

As for the official Soviet propaganda, it preferred to downplay the importance of American aid in every possible way, if not to completely hush it up. 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 receive outside help. Obviously, they want to assure their people that the Red Army is fighting alone in this war. ". And during the Yalta Conference of 1945, Stalin was forced to admit that Lend-Lease was Roosevelt's wonderful and most fruitful contribution to the creation of the anti-Hitler coalition.

Routes and volumes of deliveries

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 commonwealth between the US and the USSR.

Soviet pilots were just not in love with the American "cobra", which more than once carried them out of mortal battles. The legendary ace A. Pokryshkin, flying the Air Cobra since the spring of 1943, destroyed 48 enemy aircraft in air battles, bringing the total score to 59 victories.

Deliveries from the USA to the USSR can be divided into the following stages:

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 capitulated on September 2, 1945, and on September 20, 1945, all Lend-Lease deliveries to the USSR were stopped.

Allied supplies were very unevenly distributed over the years of the war. In 1941-1942. conditional obligations were constantly not fulfilled, the situation returned to normal only from the second half of 1943.

The main routes and the 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 deliveries. None of these routes were completely safe.

The fastest (and most dangerous) route was the Arctic convoys. In July-December 1941, 40% of all deliveries went exactly this route, and about 15% of the shipped cargo ended up on the ocean floor. The sea part of the journey from the US East Coast to Murmansk took about 2 weeks.

Cargo with northern convoys also went through Arkhangelsk and Molotovsk (now Severodvinsk), from where, along a hastily completed railway line, cargo went to the front. The bridge across the Northern Dvina did not yet exist, and for the transfer of equipment in the winter, a meter 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 rails with wagons to withstand. Further, the cargo was sent by rail to the south, to the central, rear part of the USSR.

The Pacific route, which provided about half of Lend-Lease supplies, was relatively (though far from completely) safe. With the outbreak of the Pacific War on December 7, 1941, transportation here could only be provided by Soviet sailors, and merchant ships sailed only under the Soviet flag. All non-freezing straits were controlled by Japan, and Soviet ships were subjected to compulsory inspection, and sometimes drowned. The sea part of the journey from the western coast of the USA to the Far Eastern ports of the USSR took 18-20 days.

Studebakers in Iran on their way to the USSR

The first deliveries to the USSR along the Trans-Iranian route began in November 1941, when 2,972 tons of cargo were sent. To increase the volume of deliveries, it was necessary to carry out a large-scale modernization of the Iranian transport system, in particular, the ports in the Persian Gulf and the trans-Iranian railway. To this end, the Allies (USSR and Great Britain) occupied Iran in August 1941. From May 1942, deliveries averaged 80-90 thousand tons per month, and in the second half of 1943 - up to 200,000 tons per month. Further, the delivery of goods was carried out by the ships of the Caspian military flotilla, which until the end of 1942 were subjected to active attacks by German aircraft. The sea part of the journey from the east coast of the United States to the coast of Iran took about 75 days. Especially for the needs of lend-lease in Iran, several automobile plants were built, which were under the control of General Motors Overseas Corporation. The largest were called TAP I (Truck Assembly Plant I) at Andimeshk and TAP II at Khorramshara. In total, during the war years, 184,112 cars were sent from Iranian enterprises to the USSR. Cars were distilled 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 "under their own power" flew to the USSR from the USA through the South Atlantic, Africa and the Persian Gulf, according to another - through Alaska, Chukotka and Siberia. On the second route, known as Alsib (Alaska-Siberia), 7925 aircraft were deployed.

The nomenclature of Lend-Lease supplies was determined by the Soviet government and was designed to plug the "bottlenecks" in the supply of our industry and army.

Importance of supplies

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 an urgent help 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’s undeniable that the Americans sent us so many materials, without which we couldn’t form our reserves and couldn’t continue the war… We didn’t have explosives, gunpowder. how to equip rifle cartridges. The Americans really helped us out with gunpowder, explosives. And how much sheet steel they drove us! How could we quickly set up the production of tanks if it were not for American help with steel? it was its own in abundance."

He highly appreciated the role of lend-lease and Mikoyan, who during the war was responsible for the work of seven allied people's commissariats (trade, procurement, food, fish and meat and dairy industries, maritime transport and the river fleet) and, as the country's people's commissar for foreign trade, from 1942 led the reception Allied Lend-Lease supplies:

"... when American stew, combined fat, egg powder, flour, and other products began to come to us, what significant additional calories our soldiers immediately received! And not only soldiers: something also fell to the rear.

Or take car deliveries. After all, as far as I remember, taking into account the losses along the way, we received about 400,000 first-class cars of the Studebaker, Ford, Jeeps and amphibians type for that time. Our entire army actually turned out to be on wheels and what wheels! As a result, its maneuverability has increased and the pace of the offensive has noticeably increased.

Here is another Mikoyan:

“Now it is 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 not for Lend-Lease, not for weapons, food, warm clothes for the army and other supplies, it’s still a question how things would have turned out.

The main chassis for the Katyushas was the Lend-Lease Studebakers (specifically, the Studebaker US6). While the States gave about 20,000 vehicles for our “war girl”, only 600 trucks were produced in the USSR (mainly the ZIS-6 chassis). Almost all Katyushas, assembled on the basis of Soviet cars, were destroyed by the war. To date, 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 rocket launchers "Katyusha" on the chassis of the American truck "Studebaker"

The USSR received a significant number of cars from the USA and other allies: in the automobile fleet of the Red Army 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 cars and 9.1% were captured cars). During the war years, the fleet of the Red Army 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 tractor brands received, largely replacing horse traction and tractors for towing 75 mm and 122 mm artillery systems. Good performance was also shown by a 3/4 ton Dodge car towing anti-tank artillery guns (up to 88 mm). A large role was played by the Willis passenger car with 2 driving axles, which has good cross-country ability and was a reliable means of reconnaissance, communications and command and control. In addition, Willis was used as a tractor for anti-tank artillery (up to 45 mm). Of the special-purpose vehicles, it should be noted the Ford amphibians (based on the Willis vehicle), which were attached to tank armies as part of special battalions to conduct reconnaissance operations when crossing water barriers, and Jimsi (based on a truck of the same brand), used mainly by engineering units during crossing device. The US and the British Empire supplied 18.36% of the aviation gasoline used by Soviet aviation during the war years; True, American and British aircraft delivered 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 sources, the USSR received under lend-lease 622.1 thousand tons of railway rails (56.5% of its own production), 1900 locomotives (2.4 times more than produced during the war years in the USSR) and 11075 wagons ( more by 10.2 times), 3 million 606 thousand tires (43.1%), 610 thousand tons of sugar (41.8%), 664.6 thousand tons of canned meat (108%). The USSR received 427 thousand cars and 32 thousand army motorcycles, while in the USSR from the beginning of the war until the end of 1945 only 265.6 thousand cars and 27816 motorcycles were produced (here it is necessary to take into account the pre-war amount of equipment). The United States supplied 2,13,000 tons of aviation gasoline (together with its allies, 2,586,000 tons)—almost two-thirds of the fuel used by Soviet aviation during the war years. At the same time, in the article where the figures of this paragraph are taken from, the article by B. V. Sokolov "The role of Lend-Lease in the Soviet military efforts, 1941-1945" appears as a source. However, the article itself says that the United States and Britain supplied together only 1216.1 thousand tons of aviation gasoline, and in the USSR in 1941-1945. 5539 thousand tons of aviation gasoline were produced, that is, Western supplies accounted for only 18% of the total Soviet consumption during the war. Considering that such was the percentage of aircraft supplied by the USSR under Lend-Lease in the Soviet fleet, it is obvious that gasoline was imported specifically for imported aircraft. Along with aircraft, the USSR received hundreds of tons of aviation spare parts, aviation ammunition, fuel, special airfield equipment and apparatus, including 9351 American radio stations for installation on Soviet-made fighters, and navigation equipment (radio compasses, autopilots, radars, sextants, artificial horizons).

Comparative data on the role of lend-lease in providing the Soviet economy with certain types of materials and food during the war is given below:

Lend-Lease debts and their payment

Immediately after the war, the United States sent a proposal to the countries receiving lend-lease assistance to return the surviving military equipment and pay off the debt in order to obtain new loans. Since the Lend-Lease law provided for the write-off of used military equipment and materials, the Americans insisted on paying only for civilian supplies: rail transport, power plants, steamships, trucks and other equipment that was in the recipient countries as of September 2, 1945. The United States did not demand compensation for the military equipment destroyed during the battles.

United Kingdom

The volume of the UK's debt to the USA amounted to $4.33 billion, to Canada - $1.19 billion. account of the location of American bases in the UK

China's debt to the United States for lend-lease deliveries amounted to $187 million. Since 1979, the United States has recognized the People's Republic of China as the sole legitimate government of China, and therefore the heir to all previous agreements (including lend-lease deliveries). However, in 1989, the US demanded that Taiwan (not China) repay its Lend-Lease debt. The further fate of Chinese debt is not clear.

USSR (Russia)

The volume of American Lend-Lease deliveries amounted to about 11 billion US dollars. According to the lend-lease law, only equipment that survived during the war was subject to payment; to agree on the final amount, immediately after the end of the war, Soviet-American negotiations began. At the 1948 negotiations, the 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 amount of the payment, which became equal to $800 million, but the Soviet side agreed to pay only $300 million. According to the Soviet government, the calculation should have been carried out not in accordance with the real debt, but on the basis of a precedent. This precedent was to be the proportions in determining the debt between the United States and Great Britain, which were fixed as early as March 1946.

An agreement with the USSR on the procedure for repaying lend-lease debts was concluded only in 1972. Under this agreement, the USSR undertook to pay $722 million by 2001, including interest. By July 1973, three payments were made for a total of $48 million, after which the payments were stopped due to the introduction by the American side of discriminatory measures in trade with the USSR (Jackson-Vanik Amendment). In June 1990, during the talks between the presidents of the USA and the USSR, the parties returned to discussing the debt. A new deadline for the final repayment of the debt was set - 2030, and the amount - $674 million.

After the collapse of the USSR, the debt for assistance was reissued to Russia; as of 2003, Russia owes about 100 million US dollars.

Thus, out of the total volume of US lend-lease deliveries of $11 billion, the USSR, and then Russia, paid $722 million, or about 7%.

However, it should be noted that, taking into account the inflationary depreciation of the dollar, this figure will be significantly (many times) less. So, by 1972, when the amount of debt for lend-lease in the amount of $722 million was agreed with the United States, the dollar had depreciated 2.3 times since 1945. However, in 1972, only $48 million was paid to the USSR, and an agreement to pay the remaining $674 million was reached in June 1990, when the purchasing power of the dollar was already 7.7 times lower than at the end of 1945. Given the payment of $674 million in 1990, the total amount 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 delivered was either destroyed by the war, or, like shells, was spent on the needs of the war, or, at the end of the war, in accordance with the lend-lease law, returned to the United States.

France

On May 28, 1946, France signed a package of treaties with the United States (known as the Bloom-Byrnes Agreement) that settled the French debt for lend-lease supplies in exchange for a series of trade concessions from France. In particular, France has significantly increased the quotas for showing foreign (primarily American) films on the French film market.

By 1960, almost all countries had repaid their debts, except for the USSR.

During negotiations in 1948, the Soviet representatives agreed to pay a small amount, but the US rejected this offer. Negotiations in 1949 were also fruitless. In 1951, the American side reduced the amount it demanded to 800 million dollars, but the USSR was ready to pay only 300 million, referring to the proportions agreed upon by Great Britain and the USA in 1946. Only in 1972 did the Soviet and American representatives sign in Washington, an agreement on the gradual payment of $ 722 million by the Soviet Union 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. It was only in June 1990 that the presidents of the USSR and the United States agreed to pay off the debt by 2030. The agreed amount was measured at $674 million.

In general, it can be concluded that without Western supplies, the Soviet Union would not only not be able to win the Great Patriotic War, but would not even be able to resist the German invasion, not being able to produce a sufficient amount of weapons and military equipment and provide it with fuel and ammunition. This dependence was well understood by the Soviet leadership at the beginning of the war. For example, Presidential Special 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 military department to provide weapons and equipment that are excessive for the needs of the American armed forces, as well as strategic materials and industrial equipment to those countries that can protect American national interests, allowed inclusion in the number of these countries and Russia.

Need to remember

This incredible amount of cargo was delivered across the seas, in which the ships of the convoys died en masse under the blows of aviation and the German submarine fleet. Therefore, part of the planes traveled from the American continent to the USSR on their own - from Fairbanks through Alaska, Chukotka, Yakutia, Eastern Siberia to Krasnoyarsk, and from there - by echelons.

A group of Russian and American pilots flying planes along the Alsib highway at the airfield in Fairbanks

Bell P-39 Airacobra before being shipped from Edmonton to the USSR

P-63 before being sent to the USSR

A-20G "Boston" 2

Preparation of British Spitfire fighters supplied under Len-Lease for transfer to the Soviet side

Bell P-39 Airacobra assembly shop in the USA for the USSR

August 27, 2006 in Fairbanks, Alaska, the grand opening of the monument to the pilots of Lend-Lease took place

Lend-Lease. This topic needs to be brought to the attention of a wide range of people so that people know the truth, and not the lies that have taken root en masse in their heads. The facts of the past have been distorted too much by propaganda, and the perverted product of propaganda is self-confidently operated, as a generally recognized fact, by impostor patriots of all stripes. And therefore "Lend-Lease" turned out to be a white spot in the history of Russia for its population. If official propaganda mentions Lend-Lease, then briefly, as a fact of little significance, which allegedly did not have a significant impact on the course of the war. In fact, the influence and role of Lend-Lease on the course of the Second World War turned out to be enormous. History did not know this.

What is it -"Lend-Lease"?

Roosevelt likened the approved scheme for lending military materials and equipment to a hose given to a neighbor during a fire to prevent the flames from spreading to his own house. I don't need him to pay for the cost of the hose, the US president said, "I need him to give me back my hose after the fire is over."

The deliveries included armaments, industrial equipment, merchant ships, cars, food, fuel and medicines. According to established principles, US-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.

lend-lease- (from the English lend - "to lend" and lease - "to lease, rent") - a state program under which the United States of America, mainly on a gratuitous basis, transferred ammunition, equipment, food to its allies in World War II and strategic raw materials, including oil products.

delivered 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 in whole or in part on the basis of long-term loans provided by the United States (mostly interest-free loans).

Lend-lease provisions stipulated that after the war, if the American side was interested, undestroyed and not lost machinery and equipment should be returned to the United States.

Canada had a lend-lease program similar to America's, with deliveries totaling $4.7 billion, mostly to Britain and the USSR.

The volume of deliveries and the significance of lend-lease

Materials totaling $50.1 billion (about $610 billion in 2008 prices) were sent to recipients, including:

The country	1938	1939	1940	1941	1942	1943	1944	1945
Austria	24	27	27	29	27	28	29	12
France	186	199	164	130	116	110	93	101
Germany	351	384	387	412	417	426	437	310
Italy	141	151	147	144	145	137	117	92
Japan	169	184	192	196	197	194	189	144
the USSR	359	366	417	359	274	305	362	343
United Kingdom	284	287	316	344	353	361	346	331
USA	800	869	943	1 094	1 235	1 399	1 499	1 474
Anti-Hitler coalition total:	1 629	1 600	1 331	1 596	1 862	2 065	2 363	2 341
Axis countries total:	685	746	845	911	902	895	826	466
GDP ratio, Allies/Axis:	2,38	2,15	1,58	1,75	2,06	2,31	2,86	5,02

It should be noted that the sending of American and British military equipment to the USSR led to the need to supply it with hundreds of thousands of tons of aviation fuel, millions of shells for guns and cartridges for PP and machine guns, spare caterpillars for tanks, spare car tires, spare parts for tanks, aircraft and cars. As early as 1943, when the leadership of the Allies ceased to doubt the USSR's ability to wage a long-term war, the USSR began to import mainly strategic materials (aluminum, etc.) and machine tools for Soviet industry.

As for the official Soviet propaganda, it preferred to downplay the importance of American aid in every possible way, if not to completely hush it up. In March 1943, the American ambassador in Moscow, without hiding his offense, allowed himself an undiplomatic statement: “The Russian authorities, apparently, want to hide the fact that they receive help from outside. Obviously, they want to assure their people that the Red Army is fighting in this war alone." And during the Yalta Conference in 1945, Stalin was forced to admit that Lend-Lease was Roosevelt's wonderful and most fruitful contribution to the creation of the anti-Hitler coalition.

Mk II "Matilda II";, Mk III "Valentine" and Mk IV "Valentine"

Tank "Churchill"

M4 "General Sherman"

Intantry Tank Mk.III Valentine II, Kubinka, May 2005

Routes and volumes of deliveries

Soviet pilots adored the American Cobra, which more than once took them out of deadly fights. The legendary ace A. Pokryshkin, flying the Air Cobra since the spring of 1943, destroyed 48 enemy aircraft in air battles, bringing the total score to 59 victories.

Deliveries from the USA to the USSR can be divided into the following stages:

-- "pre-lend-lease" - from June 22, 1941 to September 30, 1941 (paid in gold)
-- the first protocol - from October 1, 1941 to June 30, 1942 (signed on October 1, 1941)
-- the second protocol - from July 1, 1942 to June 30, 1943 (signed on October 6, 1942)
-- the third protocol - from July 1, 1943 to June 30, 1944 (signed on October 19, 1943)
-- the fourth protocol - from July 1, 1944, (signed on April 17, 1944), formally ended on May 12, 1945, but deliveries were extended until the end of the war with Japan, into which the USSR undertook to enter 90 days after the end of the war in Europe (that is, 8 August 1945). Japan capitulated on September 2, 1945, and on September 20, 1945, all Lend-Lease deliveries to the USSR were stopped.

The main routes and the volume of transported goods are shown in the table below.

Delivery routes	tonnage, thousand tons	% of total
Pacific	8244	47,1
Trans-Iranian	4160	23,8
Arctic convoys	3964	22,7
Black Sea	681	3,9
Soviet Arctic	452	2,6
Total	17 501	100,0

Three routes - the Pacific, trans-Iranian and Arctic convoys - provided a total of 93.5% of total deliveries. 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 shipped cargo ended up on the ocean floor. The sea part of the journey from the US East Coast to Murmansk took about 2 weeks.

Studebakers in Iran on their way to the USSR

The nomenclature of Lend-Lease supplies was determined by the Soviet government and was designed to plug the "bottlenecks" in the supply of our industry and army.

Aircraft	14 795
tanks	7 056
Passenger all-terrain vehicles	51 503
trucks	375 883
Motorcycles	35 170
Tractors	8 071
Rifles	8 218
Automatic weapons	131 633
Pistols	12 997
Explosives	345,735 tons
dynamite	70,400,000 pounds
Gunpowder	127,000 tons
TNT	271,500,000 pounds
Toluene	237,400,000 pounds
Detonators	903 000
Building equipment	$10 910 000
Freight wagons	11 155
locomotives	1 981
cargo ships	90
anti-submarine ships	105
torpedoes	197
Radars	445
Ship engines	7 784
Food stocks	4,478,000 tons
Machinery and equipment	$1 078 965 000
non-ferrous metals	802,000 tons
Oil products	2,670,000 tons
chemicals	842,000 tons
Cotton	106,893,000 tons
Skin	49,860 tons
Shin	3 786 000
Army boots	15,417,000 pairs
Blankets	1 541 590
alcohol	331 066 l
Buttons	257 723 498 pcs.

Importance of supplies

Already in November 1941, in his letter to US President Roosevelt, I. V. Stalin wrote:

Marshal Zhukov said in post-war conversations:

Now they say that the allies never helped us... But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us so many materials, without which we could not form our reserves and could not continue the war... We did not have explosives, gunpowder. There was nothing to equip rifle cartridges. The Americans really helped us out with gunpowder and explosives. And how much they drove us sheet steel! How could we quickly start producing tanks if it weren't for American help with steel? And now they present the matter in such a way that we had all this in abundance. - From the report of the chairman of the KGB V. Semichastny - N. S. Khrushchev; stamp "top secret" // Zenkovich N. Ya. Marshals and general secretaries. M., 1997. S. 161

A. I. Mikoyan also highly appreciated the role of lend-lease, during the war he was responsible for the work of seven allied people's commissariats (trade, procurement, food, fish and meat and dairy industries, maritime transport and the river fleet) and, as the country's people's commissar for foreign trade, with 1942, who led the reception of allied Lend-Lease supplies:

Quote:

Here is another Mikoyan:

Quote:

The famous Katyusha rocket launchers on the chassis of the American Studebaker truck:

The USSR received a significant number of cars from the USA and other allies: in the automobile fleet of the Red Army 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 cars and 9.1% were captured cars). During the war years, the fleet of the Red Army 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 cars of domestic production 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 tractor brands received, largely replacing horse traction and tractors for towing 75 mm and 122 mm artillery systems. Good performance was also shown by a 3/4 ton Dodge car towing anti-tank artillery guns (up to 88 mm). A large role was played by the Willis passenger car with 2 driving axles, which has good cross-country ability and was a reliable means of reconnaissance, communications and command and control. In addition, Willis was used as a tractor for anti-tank artillery (up to 45 mm). Of the special purpose vehicles, it should be noted the Ford amphibians (based on the Willis vehicle), which were attached to tank armies as part of special battalions to conduct reconnaissance operations when crossing water barriers, and Jimsi (GMC, based on a truck of the same brand), used mainly by engineering parts at the device of crossings. The US and the British Empire supplied 18.36% of the aviation gasoline used by Soviet aviation during the war years; True, American and British aircraft delivered under Lend-Lease were mainly refueled with this gasoline, while domestic aircraft could be refueled with domestic gasoline with a lower octane number.

American steam locomotive of the Ea series

Comparative data on the role of Lend-Lease in providing the Soviet economy with certain types of materials and food during the war are given below:

And here is the first lie, which many people repeat to this day, not knowing its origin and source:

The first official historical assessment of the role of Lend-Lease was given by Gosplan Chairman Nikolai Voznesensky in his book "The Military Economy of the USSR during the Patriotic War", published in 1948:

Quote:

The 4% figure was published without further comment and raised many questions. In particular, it was not clear how Voznesensky and his staff calculated these percentages. Estimating Soviet GDP in monetary terms was difficult due to the lack of convertibility of the ruble. If the bill went to units of production, then it is not clear how tanks were compared to aircraft, and food to aluminum.

Voznesensky himself was soon arrested in the Leningrad case and shot in 1950, and, accordingly, he could not comment. Nevertheless, the figure of 4% was subsequently widely quoted in the USSR as reflecting the official point of view on the significance of Lend-Lease.

Lend-Lease debts and their payment

United Kingdom
The volume of the UK's debt to the USA amounted to $4.33 billion, to Canada - $1.19 billion. account of the location of American bases in the UK

China
China's debt to the United States for lend-lease deliveries amounted to $187 million. Since 1979, the United States has recognized the People's Republic of China as the sole legitimate government of China, and therefore the heir to all previous agreements (including lend-lease deliveries). However, in 1989, the US demanded that Taiwan (not China) repay its Lend-Lease debt. The further fate of Chinese debt is not clear.

USSR (Russia)
The volume of American Lend-Lease deliveries amounted to about 11 billion US dollars. According to the lend-lease law, only equipment that survived during the war was subject to payment; to agree on the final amount, immediately after the end of the war, Soviet-American negotiations began. At the 1948 negotiations, the 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 amount of the payment, which became equal to $800 million, but the Soviet side agreed to pay only $300 million. According to the Soviet government, the calculation should have been carried out not in accordance with the real debt, but on the basis of a precedent. This precedent was to be the proportions in determining the debt between the United States and Great Britain, which were fixed as early as March 1946.

After the collapse of the USSR, the debt for assistance was reissued to Russia (Yeltsin, Kozyrev), as of 2003, Russia owes about 100 million US dollars.

Thus, out of the total volume of US lend-lease deliveries of $11 billion, the USSR, and then Russia, paid $722 million, or about 7%.

France

By 1960, almost all countries had repaid their debts, except for the USSR.

During the 1948 negotiations, the Soviet representatives agreed to pay a small amount, but the US rejected this offer. Negotiations in 1949 also proved fruitless. In 1951, the American side reduced the amount it demanded to 800 million dollars, but the USSR was ready to pay only 300 million, referring to the proportions agreed by Great Britain and the USA in 1946. Only in 1972 did Soviet and American representatives sign an agreement in Washington on a phased payment The Soviet Union paid $722 million until 2001. By July 1973, only $48 million had been paid, after which further payments ceased: the Soviet side thus protested against the restrictions imposed on trade between the two countries. It was only in June 1990 that the presidents of the USSR and the United States agreed to pay off the debt by 2030. The agreed amount was measured at $674 million.

Now it's easy to say that Lend-Lease meant nothing - you can't check

Stalin, both during and after the war, stubbornly did not want to advertise the help of the allies of the USSR, so that the crown of the winner belonged only to him. In the Soviet military-historical literature of the “stagnant period”, it was stated that Lend-Lease deliveries amounted to only 4% of all weapons and military equipment produced in the USSR during the war years.

Numerical data confirming the above statements of Zhukov and Mikoyan can be found in the studies of I.P. Lebedev 2) who writes: “During the war, the USSR received 18,700 (according to other sources, 22,200) aircraft, including Air Cobra, Kitty Hawk, Tomahawk, and Hurricane fighters, from the allies to help under Lend-Lease. ", medium bombers B-25, A-20 "Boston", transport C-47, 12,200 tanks and self-propelled guns, 100 thousand kilometers of telephone wire, 2.5 million telephones; 15 million pairs of boots, more than 50 thousand tons of leather for footwear, 54 thousand meters of wool, 250 thousand tons of stew, 300 thousand tons of fat, 65 thousand tons of cow butter, 700 thousand tons of sugar, 1860 locomotives, 100 tank cars on wheels, 70 electric diesel locomotives, about a thousand self-unloading wagons, 10 thousand railway platforms With their help, 344 thousand tons of explosives, almost 2 million tons of oil products, and another 2.5 million tons of special steel for armor, 400 thousand tons of copper and bronze, 250 thousand tons of aluminum were delivered from the allies to the front and rear. aluminum, according to experts, you can about to build 100 thousand fighters and bombers - almost as many as our aircraft factories produced during the entire war "(Lebedev I.P. one)

The contribution of other allies should also be noted. Assistance in armaments and war materials provided to the Soviet Union by Great Britain from the summer of 1941 to 8 September 1945 amounted to 318 million pounds sterling, or 15% of the total aid. It was during the first months of the war that the British military assistance that Stalin asked for and received was very substantial. English "spitfires", "Hurricanes" defended not only our capital, but defended Stalingrad, the North and South of Russia, the Caucasus, Belarus. It was on the Hurricanes that Heroes of the Soviet Union Amet Khan Sultan, I. Stepanenko, A. Ryazanov won their victories twice.

Beginning with the third protocol (entered into force on July 1, 1943), Canada began to take a direct part in providing assistance to the USSR. Canadian deliveries included armaments, industrial equipment, non-ferrous metals, steel, rolled metal, chemicals, and food. To assist the USSR in 1943-1946. approximately CAD 167.3 million was spent, or 6.7% of the total aid.

We also point out that the annotated list of ships and vessels, including the battleship, handed over to us by the allies under Lend-Lease, is over four hundred pages.

It should be added that the USSR received assistance from the allies not only under the Lend-Lease program. In the United States, in particular, the “Committee for Assistance to Russia in the War” (Russia War Relief) was created. “With the money raised, the committee purchased and sent medicines, medical preparations and equipment, food, clothing to the Red Army, the Soviet people. In total, during the war, the Soviet Union was provided with assistance in the amount of more than one and a half billion dollars. In England, a similar committee was chaired by Clementine Churchill, the Prime Minister's wife.

The Soviet government noted that supplies from the United States and other countries "contributed to the success of the Red Army in liberating their native land from fascist invaders and in accelerating the overall victory of the allies over Nazi Germany and its satellites"

Notes

1) “It can be definitely said that Stalin would never have been able to organize a large-scale counter-offensive of the Red Army, if not for 150 thousand heavy Studebaker trucks received from the USA” (Bunich I. Operation “Thunderstorm”, or Error in the third sign. T 2. St. Petersburg, 1994. P. 269. The adverb "never" is highlighted by I. Bunich.

2) I.P. Lebedev - major general of aviation, member of the procurement commission of the USSR in the USA; worked to receive A-20 Boston bombers.

The downplaying of the role of Western supplies in the Soviet military conditions was aimed primarily at asserting the myth of the “economic victory of socialism” in the Great Patriotic War and the superiority of the Soviet military economy over the war economies of the capitalist countries, not only Germany, but also Great Britain and the USA. It was only after 1985 that other assessments of allied assistance began to come across in Soviet publications. So, Marshal G.K. Zhukov, in post-war conversations with the writer K.M. Simonov, stated:

“Speaking about our readiness for war from the point of view of the economy, the economy, one cannot hush up such a factor as subsequent assistance from the Allies. First of all, of course, from the side of the Americans, because the British in this sense helped us minimally. When analyzing all sides of the war, this cannot be discounted. We would be in a difficult position without American gunpowder, we would not be able to produce the amount of ammunition that we needed. Without the American Studebakers, we would have nothing to carry our artillery on. Yes, they largely provided our front-line transport in general. The production of special steels, necessary for the various needs of the war, was also associated with a number of American supplies.

At the same time, Zhukov emphasized that "we entered the war while still continuing to be an industrially backward country compared to Germany." The reliability of K. Simonov's transmission of these conversations with Zhukov, which took place in 1965-1966, is confirmed by the statements of G. Zhukov, recorded as a result of listening by security agencies in 1963: “Now they say that the allies never helped us ... But you can’t to deny that the Americans gave us so many materials, without which we could not form our reserves and could not continue the war ... We did not have explosives, gunpowder. There was nothing to equip rifle cartridges. The Americans really helped us out with gunpowder, explosives. And how much they drove us sheet steel! How could we quickly start producing tanks if it weren't for American help with steel? And now they present the matter in such a way that we had all this in abundance.

The fleet of the Red Army was also provided to a large extent by Western supplies. The production of automobiles in the USSR in 1940 was 145,390; in 1941, 124,476; in 1942, 34,976; in 1943, 49,266; in 1944, 60,549; At the same time, in the first half of 1941, 73.2 thousand cars were produced, and in the second - only 46.1 thousand, so from the beginning of the war until the end of 1945, the total production of cars can be determined at 265.6 thousand. things. During the war years, 409.5 thousand cars were delivered from the USA to the USSR, which was 1.5 times higher than Soviet production during the war years. By the end of the war (as of May 1, 1945) in the Red Army car park, Lend-Lease vehicles accounted for 32.8% (58.1% were domestically produced vehicles and 9.1% were captured vehicles). Given the greater carrying capacity and better quality, the role of American vehicles was even higher (Studebakers, in particular, were used as artillery tractors). The pre-war fleet of Soviet cars (both those that were in the Red Army and withdrawn from the national economy with the outbreak of war) was badly worn out. Before the war, the needs of the Red Army in vehicles were determined at 744 thousand cars and 92 thousand tractors, while there were 272.6 thousand cars and 42 thousand tractors. It was planned to withdraw 240 thousand cars from the national economy, including 210 thousand trucks (GAZ-AA and ZIS-5), however, due to the heavy wear and tear of the fleet (for passenger cars, cars belonging to the 1st and 2nd categories , i.e., those that did not require immediate repair, there were 45%, and for trucks and special ones - 68%), in fact, only 206 thousand vehicles were withdrawn from the national economy in the first months of the war, while by August 22, 1941. irretrievable losses of cars reached 271.4 thousand. Obviously, without Western supplies, the Red Army would not have gained the degree of mobility that it had at least since mid-1943, although until the end of the war the use of vehicles was constrained by a lack of gasoline.

Gasoline in the USSR in 1941-1945 10,923 thousand tons were produced (including 2,983 thousand tons in 1941), and 267.1 thousand short, or 242.3 thousand metric tons, were received from the USA under Lend-Lease, which amounted to only 2, 8% of total Soviet production during the war (minus production for the first half of 1941). True, the actual role of American gasoline was somewhat higher due to higher octane numbers. The USSR could not satisfy its own needs for this type of fuel, and the shortage of motor gasoline in the Red Army continued until the end of the war. Obviously, this situation was partly a consequence of the irrational drawing up of applications for Lend-Lease assistance by the Soviet side - it would be more expedient to ask for fewer cars and more gasoline.

Also, the functioning of the Soviet railway transport would have been impossible without Lend-Lease. The production of railway rails (including narrow gauge rails) in the USSR changed as follows (in thousand tons) 1940-1360, 1941-874, 1942-112, 1943 - 115, The USSR was supplied with 685.7 thousand short tons of railway rails, which is equal to 622.1 thousand metric tons. This is about 56.5% of the total production of railway rails in the USSR from mid-1941 to the end of 1945. If we exclude narrow gauge rails from the calculation, which were not supplied under Lend-Lease, then American deliveries will amount to 83.3% total Soviet production.

Even more noticeable was the role of Lend-Lease deliveries in keeping the Soviet fleet of locomotives and railroad cars at the required level. The production of mainline steam locomotives in the USSR changed as follows: in 1940–914, in 1941–708, in 1942–9, in 1943–43, in 1944–32, in 1945–8. and in 1941 - 1, after which their release was discontinued until 1945 inclusive. Mainline electric locomotives in 1940 were produced 9 pieces, and in 1941 - 6 pieces, after which their production was also discontinued. Under Lend-Lease, 1900 steam locomotives and 66 diesel-electric locomotives were delivered to the USSR during the war years. Thus, lend-lease deliveries exceeded the total Soviet production of steam locomotives in 1941-1945. 2.4 times, and electric locomotives - 11 times. The production of freight cars in the USSR in 1942-1945 totaled 1,087 units compared to 33,096 in 1941. Under Lend-Lease, a total of 11,075 cars were delivered, or 10.2 times more than Soviet production in 1942 —1945 It is known that during the First World War, the transport crisis in Russia at the turn of 1916-1917, which largely provoked the revolution of February 1917, was caused by insufficient production of railroad rails, steam locomotives and wagons, since industrial capacities and rolling stock were reoriented to the production of weapons . During the Great Patriotic War, only Lend-Lease deliveries prevented the paralysis of railway transport in the Soviet Union.

In providing the national economy with non-ferrous metals, Western supplies were of decisive importance. Figures for the Soviet production of basic non-ferrous metals in 1941-1945. are still secret, so here you have to rely not on official data, but on estimates.

The facts of conscious overestimation of reporting - an indelible vice of the socialist planned economy, are known in relation to weapons and military equipment in the USSR both in the pre-war and post-war years.

According to our estimates, based on the decrease in labor costs per unit of various types of weapons and equipment in 1941-1943, the production of tanks and combat aircraft during the war years was at least doubled. With this in mind, the share of Western deliveries of weapons and military equipment turns out to be approximately twice as high as it is commonly believed.

But perhaps most important to the Soviet Union was the supply of sophisticated machine tools and industrial equipment. Back in 1939-1940. the Soviet leadership placed orders for imported equipment for the production of artillery weapons. Then these orders, placed mainly in the United States, were delivered to the USSR under Lend-Lease. Namely, in special machines for artillery production during the war years in the USSR there was the greatest need. However, these orders contained a major miscalculation. A significant proportion of the equipment was intended for the production of purely offensive weapons - powerful naval and super-heavy land guns designed to destroy enemy fortifications. Naval guns were not needed, since shipbuilding was curtailed with the start of the war, super-heavy land artillery was also not needed, since the Red Army had to fight the corresponding fortifications only at the very end of the war, and not on the scale that was thought before it began.

The Western allies assisted the USSR in preparing for war not only with Lend-Lease supplies. The struggle against the USA and Great Britain forced Germany to build submarines, diverting scarce metal, equipment and skilled labor to this. Only in 1941-1944. German shipbuilding produced submarines with a total displacement of 810,000 tons. The main forces of the German fleet were thrown into the fight against the fleets and merchant shipping of Western countries (including here convoys with supplies to the USSR under Lend-Lease). The Western allies also diverted significant ground forces of the Wehrmacht (in the last year of the war - up to 40%). The strategic bombing of Germany by Anglo-American aircraft slowed down the growth of its military industry, and in the last year of the war practically brought to naught the production of gasoline in Germany, completely paralyzing the Luftwaffe. From March to September 1944, the production of aviation gasoline in Germany, which was carried out almost exclusively at synthetic fuel plants - the main object of allied bombing at that time, decreased from 181 thousand tons to 10 thousand tons, and after some growth in November - up to 49 thousand .t - in March 1945, it completely came to naught. The main forces of German aviation, especially fighter aircraft, acted against the air forces of England and the USA, and it was in the fight against the Western allies that the Luftwaffe suffered the bulk of their losses. The Soviet estimate of the losses of German aviation on the Soviet-German front: 62,000 vehicles and 101,000 aircraft, which amounted to irretrievable combat losses of German aviation throughout the war, is far from reality, since it was obtained by simply multiplying the number of German aircraft in individual theaters of war by the time of deployment of hostilities in a given theater, without taking into account the comparative intensity of hostilities (in sorties) in different theaters. Meanwhile, in the West, the intensity of fighting in the air was on the whole higher than in the East, and the best German pilots fought there. So, in July and August 1943, when significant forces of the Luftwaffe were concentrated on the Eastern Front during the battles for Kursk, Orel and Kharkov, out of 3213 irretrievably lost combat aircraft, only 1030 aircraft, or 32.3%, fell on the Eastern Front. Probably , about the same part of all irretrievable losses during the war suffered by the Luftwaffe on the Eastern Front.

Since without the assistance of Great Britain and the USA the USSR could not have waged war against Germany, the statements of Soviet propaganda about the economic victory of socialism in the Great Patriotic War and the ability of the USSR to defeat Germany on its own are nothing more than a myth. Unlike Germany, in the USSR, the goal of creating an autarkic economy capable of providing the army in wartime with everything necessary for waging a modern war, which was outlined as early as the 1930s, was not achieved. Hitler and his advisers miscalculated not so much in determining the military and economic power of the USSR, but in assessing the ability of the Soviet economic and political system to function in the face of a severe military defeat, as well as the ability of the Soviet economy to effectively and quickly use Western supplies, and Great Britain and the United States to implement such supplies in the required quantity and in a timely manner.

Historians now face a new problem - to assess how Western supplies of industrial equipment under Lend-Lease, as well as supplies from Germany as part of reparations, contributed to the formation of the Soviet military-industrial complex, capable of conducting an arms race on equal terms with the West, right up to the very last time, and to determine the degree of dependence of the Soviet military-industrial complex on imports from the West for the entire post-war period.

DISCUSSION TOPIC

There are different opinions about the role of Lend-Lease in the defeat of German Nazism and its allies. So, Churchill called him " the most selfless act in the history of all countries". And in Stalin's message to US President Truman dated June 11, 1945, it was noted that "the agreement on the basis of which the United States throughout the war in Europe supplied the USSR with strategic materials and food under Lend-Lease, played an important role and to a large extent contributed to the successful completion of the war against the common enemy - Hitler's Germany".

Of the almost 18 million tons of cargo sent to the Soviet Union, more than a quarter - over 4.5 million tons - were foodstuffs

American food, coming from the United States under Lend-Lease, made life easier for the warring country. Foreign products helped to survive in the post-war years

Lend-Lease food supplies provided the Red Army with high-calorie nutrition throughout the entire period of the war(!!!).

In Arkhangelsk alone, during the first war winter, 20,000 people perished from starvation and disease - every tenth inhabitant. And if not for the 10,000 tons of Canadian wheat left with the consent of Stalin, the number of deaths would have been much greater.

Undoubtedly, such an assessment is the only correct one and fully reflects the gratitude for the help of the Soviet people and the Armed Forces of the USSR, which in the first place felt its results. Unfortunately, with the beginning of the Cold War, the significance of Lend-Lease was either hushed up or downplayed in our country. It became widely believed that lend-lease supplies were not essential for the victory over Germany, because. they accounted for an insignificant share of the total production of weapons, ammunition and military equipment in the USSR in 1941-1945, that the Americans received huge profits, and the Soviet people actually paid for them with their blood.

You can't call it all wrong. But a more detailed analysis allows us to reconsider our attitude to Lend-Lease and find out the whole truth, since the truth cannot be incomplete and partial. An incomplete truth is a lie that is used, taken out of the context of the big picture. They are used not at all for good purposes, but to incite discord, enmity and misunderstanding.

And why this is done is another question and has nothing to do with the help of the allies.

REMEMBER

This incredible amount of cargo was delivered across the seas, in which the ships of the convoys died en masse under the blows of aviation and the German submarine fleet. Therefore, part of the aircraft traveled from the American continent to the USSR under its own power - from Fairbanks through Alaska, Chukotka, Yakutia, Eastern Siberia to Krasnoyarsk, and from there - by echelons.

Years have passed. Many participants in the transportation of Lend-Lease cargo are no longer alive. But the peoples of the countries participating in the anti-Hitler coalition remember the heroic deeds of the sailors of the transport and military fleets. It is planned to install memorial plaques for the participants of the Northern convoys, made in the USA (Portland), in Arkhangelsk on the Sedov embankment. By a joint decision of both chambers, the Alaska State Congress on May 1, 2001 approved the creation of monuments in Alaska, Russia and Canada in memory of the Lend-Lease program.

Unfortunately, only the Russian government has not yet expressed words of gratitude on behalf of the people of the Russian Federation for the enormous and disinterested assistance provided by the United States and Great Britain in 1941-1945. our country. Even in the main museum of the Great Patriotic War on Poklonnaya Hill in Moscow there is not the slightest mention of the joint struggle on the seas and oceans, of the courage of those who, at the risk of their lives, delivered everything necessary for the Victory to the USSR.

Therefore, it would be right and timely to pay tribute to Lend-Lease and the Northern convoys in a special section of the museum on Poklonnaya Gora. It is high time to erect in Moscow a monument to Franklin Roosevelt, a great and sincere friend of the Soviet people, who did a lot for the triumph of the anti-Hitler coalition.

The Russian people should long ago stop being plagued by soviet cattle and in their feelings be guided by the facts of real history, and not by its ersatz - Kremlin propaganda for domestic consumers.

Southern Lend-Lease Route

On the face of it, Mr. Roosevelt was being dragged into an apparently unprofitable business. Just look at the order of payments for Lend-Lease:
- materials destroyed or lost during the war, as well as those that became unsuitable for further use, were not subject to payment;
- materials that turned out to be suitable for civilian needs after the war were paid in full or on the terms of a long-term loan;
- the customer country could purchase the materials that were not received before the end of the war, and the generous American government promised to credit the payment.

The only thing that somehow justified the Americans was the right provided by the "Lend-Lease Law" to reclaim the surviving military materials back.

Under Lend-Lease, an endless wave of cargo went to our country, from foppish officer boots with cowboy stitching to the tops to tanks and aircraft.

However, the official point of view of the USSR on Lend-Lease was expressed in the following lines:

Therefore, it is not surprising that when the American film "The Unknown War" went to the cinemas of the country in the 80s, many were shocked: ace Pokryshkin told how he had been flying the American Airacobra fighter for almost the entire war since 1942, how the northern caravans were going with supplies of aid.

Until now, we believe that the allies supplied us with everything unnecessary, stale in warehouses. And we recall how Churchill himself once said: "The tank named after me has more shortcomings than I myself." But excuse me, Lend-Lease equipment was accepted by our commissions, it was we who ordered a list of the necessary (or we could ask for simple pitchforks as weapons!). And then, this "Willis" is a bad car ?!

In fact, we did not ask the Americans for "Willis" at all, but for motorcycle sidecars. But in January 1942, US Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius advised Ambassador Litvinov of jeeps, which were already successfully used by the American army. We tried and soon asked for more. In total, during the war we received 44,000 Willys MB and Ford GPW (General Purpose Willys) command vehicles. There were no emblems on them, so they were all called "Willis".

Most of all, American trucks US 6 hit the Soviet Union - about 152,000 copies. They were produced by two firms, Studebaker and REO. In each cabin of the Red Army soldier, a brand new crisp leather jacket made of sealskin was waiting, but this luxury was immediately withdrawn for more important matters - they say, our driver will ride in an overcoat. "Students", as the front-line soldiers called these trucks, turned out to be the most suitable transport for harsh front-line conditions (in particular, due to the lower compression ratio, they were less sensitive to the quality of gasoline

The total number of cars delivered to the USSR under Lend-Lease amounted to 477,785 units, not counting spare parts, which would be enough to assemble more than one thousand cars.

On August 12, 1941, the first naval Lend-Lease convoy headed for the USSR. Cargo went to our northern ports: Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, Severodvinsk (Molotovsk). The return convoys carried the QP index.

From American, Canadian and English ports, ships first arrived in the deep Icelandic Hvalfjord north of Reykjavik. There, no less than 20 ships each, they were grouped into caravans, after which, under the protection of warships, they were sent to us. True, there was a less dangerous route: through Vladivostok, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Nogaevo (Magadan), Nakhodka and Khabarovsk.

The official Soviet history left a lot of questions about Lend-Lease. It was believed that the West, under any pretext, delayed deliveries, because it was waiting for the Stalin regime to collapse. Then how to explain the haste with the spread by the Americans of the "Lend-Lease Law" to the USSR?

Stalin showed the highest art of diplomacy in order to turn Lend-Lease into a benefit for the USSR. Discussing deliveries with Churchill, Stalin was the first to use the word "sell", and pride did not allow the Prime Minister to demand payment from the USSR. In Roosevelt, Stalin figured out the skeptical Churchill, his comrade in persuasion. And whenever the northern convoys threatened to stop, Roosevelt began to bombard Churchill with panic dispatches. As a result, Churchill was forced to share with the Soviets even the equipment that, under Lend-Lease, was intended for the British army. For example, the Bantam light all-terrain vehicles, which the British themselves had - the cat cried.

The northern convoys were interrupted only twice - in 1942, when Great Britain was building up forces for a major operation in Africa, and in 43, when the Allied landings in Italy were being prepared.

Even Stalin did not forget to regularly reprimand the allies for "poorly packed cargo." And the Soviet ambassador in London, comrade. Maisky did not hesitate to hint to Churchill that if the USSR could no longer fight the Germans, then the whole burden of the war would fall on the shoulders of the British. Churchill even had to retort that until June 22, 1941, he was not at all sure that Russia would not take the side of Hitler against Great Britain.

The Pravda newspaper in its Lend-Lease report noted that British deliveries had begun... June 22, 1941! It is certainly known that on July 20 the first English sea caravan headed for us with help.

It is also known that in September 1941, two British squadrons of Hurricane fighters arrived on the northern front. We know about the French Normandy squadron that fought on our soil. What about British pilots?

But this is so, by the way. And here is a "car" example: during the battle for Moscow, Marshal Zhukov's GAZ-61 all-wheel drive "emka" was constantly followed by Bantam with guards - one of those that the British soldier did not get.

On September 29, 1941, the Moscow Conference of representatives of the USSR, Great Britain and the USA at the highest level discussed the issue of military supplies, and on November 7, 1941, Roosevelt extended the Lend-Lease Law to the USSR. By the way, the States had not yet entered the world war!

The technical training of drivers and technical staff of the Red Army left much to be desired. In this regard, the Main Automobile Directorate raised the issue of training the personnel of automotive units in the basics of maintaining, operating and repairing imported equipment. Books on operation and repair were translated into Russian and published - they were attached to each machine. But for a simple Red Army driver, such books turned out to be too complicated. Then brochures were printed with extremely simplified content and instructions like: “Driver! You can’t pour kerosene into a Studebaker car. He won’t go on it, this is not a lorry for you!” On the pages of such "short guides" a soldier of the Red Army could find a sequence of repair operations for all cases of front-line automotive life: "Do this; if you see such and such a result, do this: first, second. third ...". Nevertheless, thousands of Lend-Lease vehicles were ruined by the drivers.

There is another mysterious page in the history of Lend-Lease. On September 19, 1941, Churchill wrote to Stalin: "I attach great importance to the question of opening a through route from the Persian Gulf to the Caspian not only by rail, but also by a highway, in the construction of which we hope to attract the Americans with their energy and organizational abilities." However, large-scale hostilities in the Persian Gulf began long before this message. The British "commandos" carried out the operation to capture the Iraqi port of Basra back in April 1941. And the first Lend-Lease American plant started working there before the German attack on the USSR!

On July 25, British troops entered Iran from the south, and Soviet troops from the north. British losses in clashes with the regular army of Reza Shah Pahlavi amounted to 22 people killed and 42 wounded. Our losses are unknown. Later, a small area in the south of the country (the port of Bushehr, Fars province) went to the Americans.

An interesting fact: a group of American military specialists sent to Iran was led by the Soviet ones - I.S. Kormilitsyn and his deputy L.I. Zorin. Controlled transportation by the southern route, none other than Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan - Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR.

There was only one land route from this region at that time - from Bandar Shahpur along the Trans-Iranian railway through Ahvaz and Qom to Tehran. There was no more or less developed transport network between the border ports of Iraq and Iran.

In preparation for receiving Lend-Lease cargoes, the ports at Khorramshahr, Bandar Shahpur and Basra were reconstructed. From Ahvaz, a railway line descended south to Khorramshahr with a branch line to the Iraqi village of Tanuma (on the left bank of the Shatt al-Arab, opposite Basra). The American construction company "Folspen" rolled off the highway from Tanum through Khorramshahr and Ahvaz to the north of Iran.

Automotive equipment arrived in the form of assembly kits - in boxes, and the cars were assembled right on the shore. Aircraft and car assembly plants have grown in the port of Khorramshahr, a car assembly plant has grown in the port of Bushehr (Willis, Dodges, Studebakers and GMC were assembled there), and a car assembly plant in Basra.

Local residents worked for them - Arabs and Persians, the administration consisted of Americans and British, and Soviet military specialists accepted the products. The locals were paid little, and the build quality was very low at first. Then our military experts insisted on improving the working and living conditions of workers, and improving their skills. Barrack towns were built, life and food were established, wages became piecework, and they began to fine fines for marriage. Things got better very soon.

Driving cars for more than 2000 km through mountains and passes, on roads and without them turned out to be extremely difficult. On the way there was a run-in, and the cars were loaded to the limit - they were carrying spare parts, weapons, food, medicines.

Through titanic efforts in the first half of 1942, it was possible to lay an extensive system of roads across the territory of Iran, build food, rest and technical prevention points, establish protection for columns and parking lots, which was important - gangs and wild Qashqai tribes incited by the Nazis raged on the roads.

While the British were in charge in the Persian Gulf, 2000 cars a month came to the USSR, although a plan was set - to hand over 120 cars a day.

In March 1943, the Americans took over the supervision of the Trans-Iranian Railway and the ports of the Persian Gulf. Since the middle of the year, assembly plants have been operating in the towns of Ash-Shuaiba (southwest of Basra, Iraq) and Andimeshk, on the Trans-Iranian Railway. Immediately the flow increased - up to 10,000 cars per month began to arrive from the south. Only the car assembly plant in Andimeshk sent about 78,000 cars to the USSR - that's what American mass production technology means! All in all, we received two-thirds of Lend-Lease vehicles by the southern route.

With the removal of the front from the borders of the USSR, this route lost its significance, and in 1945 Lend-Lease cargo went through the Black Sea. The assembly of cars in Iran and Iraq began to be curtailed, enterprises were dismantled. On October 15, 1944, personnel were withdrawn from the Soviet military camp in Ash-Shuaiba. On October 24, Soviet receivers in Basra ceased their activities. In November 1944, the last cars were assembled in Andimeshk, at the same time the Soviet representative office in Bandar Shahpur was liquidated.

We preferred to keep quiet about all this. Soviet troops in Iran, military experts in Iraq, foreign vehicles in the Red Army. All this is difficult and incomprehensible to ordinary people. If you start explaining, you will have to remember that similar enterprises worked in the USSR. For example, the Gorky Automobile Plant has been assembling American cars since November 1941. Even when GAZ was heavily bombed in the summer of 1943, work continued right under the open sky. In October 1944, assembly equipment and technical staff were sent to Minsk, where they occupied the premises of the Daimler-Benz auto repair plant (future MAZ) recaptured from the Germans. The first 50 trucks of this company went to the front in November 1944. Moscow ZIS and KIM were also involved in the assembly of "lend-lease" - in the same place they repaired the cars that returned from the front. In addition, many small enterprises were engaged in Lend-Lease vehicles. I wonder if these cars were counted among those 205,000 units that, according to Soviet statistics, our factories produced during the war years?

In a word, it is not far from a complete reassessment of the role of our allies in the victory over Germany!

But now it's time to return the "hose" borrowed from a neighbor. In 1946-47, after a major overhaul, we handed over part of the cars to the allies. According to eyewitnesses, it happened like this: the Allies drove a ship with a press and scissors to the port. A special commission meticulously accepted the equipment, checked the conformity of the factory equipment, after which it was immediately sent ... under the press and in the form of "cubes" loaded onto barges. Who, one wonders, in the West needed cars of dubious assembly, and even those that had been in the hands of the Red Army?

Under these pressures, rare models disappeared without a trace, including reconnaissance cars RC (reconnaissance car) of the American company Bantam. Of the 2675 "Bantikov" produced, as our drivers called them, almost all of them ended up in the USSR in the first year of the war.

P-63 aircraft are being prepared for shipment to the USSR. We received 2,400 of them under Lend-Lease. Nicknamed "Kingcobra" (Kingcobra), this most modern Lend-Lease fighter took a strong place in Soviet aviation after the war - it was the most massive imported aircraft. The Kingcobras remained in service until the arrival of jet fighters. Their replacement began in 1950. Finally, they played an important role in the mass retraining of pilots for jet technology - MiG-9 fighters, and then MiG-15. The fact is that both of them had a chassis with a nose wheel, like the R-63, and all Soviet piston fighters had the chassis of the old scheme with a tail support. On the "Kingcobra" and set up training for takeoff and landing in a new manner.

Victory without allies?

Could we have won without Western allies? That is, suppose that England and the United States did not participate in the Second World War at all. What would the Soviet Union have lost then? Let's start with lend-lease. We like to quote Gosplan Chairman Nikolai Voznesensky, who said that lend-lease assistance amounted to no more than 4% of the total Soviet production during the war years. So be it, although no one has yet figured out how to correctly determine the then ratio between the dollar and the ruble. But if we take a few natural indicators, it becomes clear that without the help of the Western allies, the Soviet military economy could not satisfy the demands of the front. Lend-lease received about half of all aluminum consumed by Soviet industry during the war years, the main part of alloying additives, without which it was impossible to produce high-quality armor, more than a third of aviation gasoline consumed in the USSR and explosives used during the war. Cars delivered under lend-lease accounted for a third of the front-line fleet. Not to mention the fact that Lend-Lease delivered the main part of the wagons, locomotives and rail, thanks to which the Soviet railway transport functioned smoothly. Lend-lease also received the bulk of radio stations and radars, as well as a variety of industrial equipment, tanks, aircraft, anti-aircraft guns, etc. And American stew and melange should not be forgotten.

Just think: would we have won if we had produced half as many aircraft, a quarter as many tanks, a third as little ammunition, if we didn’t have enough vehicles to transport troops, if we had several times fewer radio stations, there were no radars and a lot of other imported equipment.

We should not forget that the most severe defeats on the Eastern Front, such as the defeat in Belarus and Romania, the Wehrmacht began to bear after the landing in Normandy, where the best German tank divisions and the main aviation forces were transferred. And in general, two-thirds of their losses the Luftwaffe suffered in the fight against the Western allies. Also, almost the entire German navy acted against England and America. And in the last year of the war, the Anglo-American troops diverted more than a third of the German ground forces.

Just imagine for a moment that the USSR would have fought Germany one on one. Then the entire power of the Luftwaffe and the German fleet, as well as the entire German land army, would fall upon the Red Army. And the Soviet troops, having half as many aircraft, would never have won air supremacy, would not have been able to defend Sevastopol and Leningrad for a long time under the overwhelming superiority of the German fleet, and would hardly have won victories at Stalingrad and Kursk. I'm afraid that in a one-on-one duel between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht, a Soviet defeat would be very likely.

And now let's try to imagine the exact opposite situation: the Soviet Union does not participate in the war, maintains neutrality and supplies Germany with raw materials and food (option - in 1942 the USSR is defeated and withdraws from the war, as described in the science fiction novel by Robert Harris "Vaterland" and based on his Hollywood film). How would the struggle between England and the USA against Germany end then? The economic potential of the Western allies would still exceed the German one, which would ensure in the long term the dominance of the Anglo-American air force and fleet and would rule out a German landing on the British Isles. The war would be reduced mainly to the strategic bombing of German territory. However, in terms of ground forces, the armies of England and the United States would have to catch up with the Wehrmacht for a long time. Based on what we know about the development of the American and German nuclear projects, it can be argued that the non-participation of the USSR in the war would not have had a significant impact on the speed of their implementation. The gap between the Germans and the Americans on the way to the atomic bomb in 1945 was at least three years, since the Americans carried out a chain reaction in the reactor at the end of 1942, and for the Germans such an experiment in March 1945 ended in failure. So there is no doubt that the United States would have received an atomic bomb at a time when Germany would have been far from it. The Americans, of course, would not waste this scarce weapon on the already defeated Japan, but, having accumulated nuclear warheads, would have dropped dozens of nuclear bombs at the end of 1945 or at the beginning of 1946 on Berlin and Hamburg, Nuremberg and Munich, Cologne and Frankfurt -Maine. Probably, the war would have ended with the surrender of Germany after the destruction of its largest cities and industrial zones. So it can be said with certainty that the Red Army, with its heroic resistance, saved the Germans from the horrors of atomic bombings.

Quote: Lend-lease payment
This is perhaps the main topic for speculation by people who are trying to somehow denigrate the Lend-Lease program. Most of them consider it their indispensable duty to declare that the USSR, they say, paid for all the goods supplied under Lend-Lease. Of course, this is nothing more than a delusion (or a deliberate lie). Neither the USSR, nor any other countries that received aid under the Lend-Lease program, in accordance with the law on Lend-Lease during the war, paid not a cent for this aid, so to speak. Moreover, as it 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 did send various goods to the USA (including 320,000 tons of chrome ore, 32,000 tons of manganese ore, as well as gold, platinum, and timber). This was done as part of the reverse Lend-Lease program. In addition, the same program included free repair of American ships in Soviet ports and other services. Unfortunately, I could not find the total amount of goods and services provided to the Allies under the reverse Lend-Lease. The only source I found claims that this same amount was $2.2 million. However, I personally am not sure of the authenticity of these data. However, they may well be considered as a lower limit. The upper limit in this case will be the amount of several hundred million dollars. Be that as it may, the share of reverse lend-lease in the total lend-lease trade between the USSR and the allies will not exceed 3-4%. For comparison, the amount of reverse lend-lease from the UK to the US is $6.8 billion, which is 18.3% of the total exchange of goods and services between these states.
So, no payment for Lend-Lease occurred during the war. The Americans provided the bill to the recipient countries only after the war. The United Kingdom owed $4.33 billion to the United States and $1.19 billion to Canada. The last payment of $83.25 million (to the United States) and $22.7 million (to Canada) was made on December 29, 2006. China's debt was set at 180 million. dollars, and this debt has not yet been repaid. The French paid off the United States on May 28, 1946, by granting the United States a series of trade preferences.
The debt of the USSR was determined in 1947 in the amount of 2.6 billion dollars, but already in 1948 this amount was reduced to 1.3 billion. Nevertheless, the USSR refused to pay. The refusal followed in response to new concessions from the United States: in 1951, the amount of the debt was again revised and this time amounted to 800 million. was again reduced, this time to 722 million dollars; maturity - 2001), and the USSR agreed to this agreement only if it was granted a loan from the Export-Import Bank. In 1973, the USSR made two payments totaling $48 million, but then stopped payments in connection with the introduction in 1974 of the Jackson-Vanik amendment to the 1972 Soviet-American trade agreement. In June 1990, during the talks between the presidents of the USA and the USSR, the parties returned to discussing the debt. A new deadline for the final repayment of the debt was set - 2030, and the amount - 674 million dollars. At the moment, Russia owes the US $100 million for Lend-Lease deliveries.

LITERATURE
Lebedev I.P. Once again about Lend-Lease. - USA: Economics. Politics. Ideology. 1990, No. 1
Lebedev I.P. Aviation lend-lease. - Military History Journal, 1991, No. 2
Kotelnikov V.R. Aviation lend-lease. - Questions of history. 1991, no. 10
Berezhnoy S.S. Ships and Lend-Lease ships. Directory. SPb., 1994
Ilyin A. Lend-Lease Allied Aircraft. - International life. 1995, No. 7
Allies in the War 1941–1945 M., 1995
Kashcheev L.B., Reminsky V.A. Lend-Lease cars. Kharkov, 1998
Sokolov B.V. The truth about the Great Patriotic War (Collection of articles). - St. Petersburg: Aleteyya, 1989. Book on the site: http://militera.lib.ru/research/sokolov1/index.html

Almost everyone knows about American deliveries to the USSR during the Great Patriotic War. The Studebakers and the American stew, nicknamed the “second front” by the Soviet soldiers, immediately pop up in my memory. But these are, rather, artistic and emotional symbols, which are actually the tip of the iceberg. The purpose of this article is to create a general idea of Lend-Lease and its role in the Great Victory.

In the initial period of World War II, the so-called neutrality act was in force in the United States, according to which the only way to provide assistance to any of the warring parties was the sale of weapons and materials exclusively for cash, and transportation was also assigned to the customer - the "pay and take" system (cash and carry). Great Britain then became the main consumer of military products in the United States, but very soon it exhausted its foreign exchange funds. At the same time, President Franklin Roosevelt was well aware that in the current situation, the best way out for the United States was to provide all possible economic support to the countries fighting against Nazi Germany. Therefore, he actually "pushed through" on March 11, 1941 in Congress the "Law to ensure the protection of the United States", also called the Lend-Lease Act. Now any country whose defense was recognized as vital to the United States, and strategic raw materials were provided on the following conditions:

1. Weapons and materials lost in the course of hostilities are not subject to payment.

2. The property left after the end of the war, suitable for civilian purposes, must be paid in whole or in part on the basis of long-term loans provided by the United States.

3. Equipment not lost after the war must be returned to the United States.

Joseph Stalin and Harry Hopkins, 1941

After the German attack on the USSR, Roosevelt sent his closest aide, Harry Hopkins, to Moscow, as he wanted to find out "how long Russia would hold out." This was important, since in the United States at that time the prevailing opinion was that the resistance of the USSR would not be able to provide significant resistance to the Germans, and the supplied weapons and materials would simply fall into the hands of the enemy. On July 31, Harry Hopkins met with Vyacheslav Molotov and Joseph Stalin. As a result, the American politician left for Washington with the firm conviction that the Germans would not have a quick victory and that the supply of weapons to Moscow could have a significant impact on the course of hostilities.

However, the inclusion of the USSR in the Lend-Lease program took place only in October-November 1941 (until that moment, our country paid for all American military supplies). Roosevelt needed such a long period of time to overcome the resistance of a sufficiently large number of American politicians.

Signed on October 1, 1941, the first (Moscow) protocol provided for the supply of aircraft (fighters and bombers), tanks, anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns, trucks, as well as aluminum, toluene, TNT, oil products, wheat and sugar. Further, the number and range of deliveries were constantly expanding.

Delivery of goods took place along three main routes: the Pacific, Trans-Iranian and Arctic. The fastest, but at the same time dangerous, was the Arctic route to Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. The escort of the ships was carried out by the British fleet, and on the approaches to Murmansk the security was reinforced by the ships of the Soviet Northern Fleet. At first, the Germans practically did not pay attention to the northern convoys - their confidence in an early victory remained so great, but as the hostilities became protracted, the German command pulled more and more forces to the bases in Norway. The result was not long in coming.

In July 1942, the German fleet, in close cooperation with aviation, practically defeated the PQ-17 convoy: 22 transport ships out of 35 were killed. Heavy losses, as well as the need to attract a large number of ships to escort ships with supplies for the besieged Malta, and then prepare the landing North Africa forced the British to stop escorting the northern convoys before the polar night. Beginning in 1943, the balance of power in Arctic waters gradually began to shift towards the Allies. There were more convoys, and their wiring was accompanied by fewer losses. In total, there are 4027 thousand tons of cargo along the Arctic route in the USSR. Losses did not exceed 7% of the total.

The Pacific route was less dangerous, along which 8376 thousand tons were delivered. Transportation could only be carried out by ships flying the Soviet flag (the USSR, unlike the United States, did not fight Japan at that time). Further, the received cargo had to be transported by rail almost through the entire territory of Russia.

The trans-Iranian route served as a definite alternative to the northern convoys. American transport ships delivered cargo to the ports of the Persian Gulf, and then they were delivered to Russia using rail and road transport. In order to ensure full control over transport routes in August 1941, the USSR and Great Britain occupied Iran.

To increase the throughput, they carried out a large-scale modernization of the ports of the Persian Gulf and the Trans-Iranian railway. Also, General Motors built two factories in Iran, where cars intended for delivery to the USSR were assembled. In total, during the war years, these enterprises manufactured and sent 184,112 cars to our country. The total cargo flow through the ports of the Persian Gulf for the entire period of the existence of the trans-Iranian route amounted to 4227 thousand tons.

Aircraft under the lend-lease program

Since the beginning of 1945, after the liberation of Greece, the Black Sea route began to function. In this way, the USSR received 459 thousand tons of cargo.

In addition to those noted above, there were two more air routes along which aircraft were ferried "under their own power" in the USSR. The most famous was the Alsib air bridge (Alaska - Siberia), through which 7925 aircraft were transferred. Also, planes flew from the USA to the USSR through the South Atlantic, Africa and the Persian Gulf (993 aircraft).

For many years, in the works of Russian historians, it was indicated that Lend-Lease deliveries accounted for only about 4% of the total output of Soviet industry and agriculture. And, although there is no reason to doubt the reliability of this figure, nevertheless, "the devil is in the details."

It is well known that the strength of a chain as a whole is determined by the strength of its weakest link. Therefore, when determining the range of American supplies, the Soviet leadership sought, first of all, to close the "weak points" in the army and industry. This is especially evident when analyzing the volumes of strategic raw materials supplied to the USSR. In particular, 295.6 thousand tons of explosives received by our country accounted for 53% of all produced at domestic enterprises. Even more impressive is the ratio of copper - 76%, aluminum - 106%, tin - 223%, cobalt - 138%, wool - 102%, sugar - 66% and canned meat - 480%.

General A.M. Korolev and Major General Donald Connelly shake hands in front of a Lend-Lease train.

The analysis of deliveries of automotive equipment deserves no less close attention. In total, the USSR received 447,785 vehicles under Lend-Lease.
It is significant that during the war years the Soviet industry produced only 265,000 vehicles. Thus, the number of vehicles received from the Allies exceeded their own production by more than 1.5 times. In addition, these were real army vehicles adapted for operation in front-line conditions, while the domestic industry supplied the army with ordinary national economic vehicles.

The role of Lend-Lease vehicles in combat operations can hardly be overestimated. To a large extent, they ensured the success of the victorious operations of 1944, which were included in the “ten Stalinist blows”.

A considerable merit of allied deliveries is also in the successful functioning of the Soviet railway transport during the war years. The USSR received 1,900 steam locomotives and 66 diesel-electric locomotives (these figures look especially clear against the background of its own production for 1942-1945 in 92 locomotives), as well as 11,075 wagons (own production - 1,087 wagons).

In parallel, the "reverse Lend-Lease" functioned. During the war years, the Allies received from the USSR 300 thousand tons of chromium and 32 thousand tons of manganese ore, as well as wood, gold and platinum.

During discussions on the topic “Could the USSR do without Lend-Lease?” many copies were broken. The author believes that, most likely, he could. Another thing is that now it is not possible to calculate what the price of this would be. If the volume of weapons supplied by the allies to one degree or another could well be compensated by the domestic industry, then with regard to transport, as well as the production of a number of types of strategic raw materials, without the supply of allies, the situation would very quickly turn into a critical one.

The lack of rail and road transport could easily paralyze the supply of the army and deprive it of mobility, and this, in turn, would slow down the pace of operations and increase the growth of losses. A shortage of non-ferrous metals, especially aluminum, would lead to a decrease in the production of weapons, and without food supplies, it would be much more difficult to fight hunger. Surely our country would be able to survive and win even in such a situation, but it is not possible to determine how much the price of victory would increase.

The lend-lease program was terminated at the initiative of the American government on August 21, 1945, although the USSR requested to continue deliveries on a loan (it was necessary to restore the country destroyed by the war). However, by that time F. Roosevelt was no longer among the living, and a new era of the Cold War was loudly knocking on the door.

During the war, no Lend-Lease payments were made. In 1947, the United States estimated the USSR's debt for supplies at $2.6 billion, but a year later the amount was reduced to $1.3 billion. It was planned that repayment would be made within 30 years with an accrual of 2.3% per annum. I.V. Stalin rejected these accounts, saying that "the USSR paid off its Lend-Lease debts in full with blood." As a justification for its point of view, the USSR cited the precedent of writing off debts for Lend-Lease deliveries to other countries. In addition, I.V. Stalin, quite reasonably, did not want to give the funds of a country devastated by the war to a potential enemy in the Third World War.

An agreement on the procedure for repaying debts was only concluded in 1972. The USSR undertook to pay $722 million by 2001. But after the transfer of $48 million, the payments stopped again due to the adoption by the United States of the discriminatory Jackson-Vanik Amendment.

Again, this issue was raised in 1990 at a meeting of the presidents of the USSR and the USA. A new amount was set - $674 million - and a final maturity date of 2030. After the collapse of the USSR, obligations on this debt passed to Russia.

Summing up, we can conclude that for the United States, lend-lease was, first of all, according to F. Roosevelt, "a profitable investment of capital." Moreover, it is not the profits directly from supplies that should be assessed, but the numerous indirect benefits that the American economy received after the end of World War II. History was pleased to dispose that the post-war well-being of the United States was to a large extent paid for by the blood of Soviet soldiers. For the USSR, lend-lease became practically the only way to reduce the number of victims on the way to Victory. Here's a "marriage of convenience" ...

Portal for the student. Self-training

What is it -"Lend-Lease"?

The volume of deliveries and the significance of lend-lease

Routes and volumes of deliveries

Importance of supplies

Lend-Lease debts and their payment

Now it's easy to say that Lend-Lease meant nothing - you can't check

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Southern Lend-Lease Route

Victory without allies?

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