Lend Lease

Germany will have nothing to eat in a few years. Europe, except Great Britain, was rapidly falling at the feet of the Great Reich. Even powerful and large France resisted for a month.
Germany needed the war because resources were running out and in 20-30 years there would be nothing to eat in Germany.
Hitler was sure that the USSR would fall in 2-3 months.
Three months before the war, Roosevelt had developed a system of assistance. Then he said, if a neighbor is fighting a fire, then will I really charge him for a hose if the fire is out? He will give me back only the hose.
It was based only on technical assistance, and not on people.
In the face of Hitler's aggression, there was only Great Britain. In June 1941, the USSR became Britain's ally. And as Churchill said, Great Britain would help as much as it could. And on August 14, the Atlantic Charter was signed. And in September, the USSR joined the charter.
The first convoys were already in October 1941 through V.B. Dervish was the first. The author had the chance to attend Dervish's 50th birthday, many warm words were said and vodka and whiskey were drunk.
It was decided
1 all settlements after the war
2 only the remaining weapons are paid for
3 the remaining weapons were paid for in 3 years.
There were 3 routes
1 across the Atlantic Ocean to the Far East
2 Tehran to the Caspian Sea.
3 The shortest was the Arctic convoy. From Great Britain to Murmansk or Arkhangelsk.
There was a problem here - a shortage of ships. To solve it, the Americans developed huge 145-meter Liberty-type ships. They took 10,000 tons of cargo on board and were built in a month! (on average, a ship was built in a year)
There were built   2,750 ships . One was in St. Petersburg until the 1990s on the English Embankment under the name Kharkov.
After Pearl Harbor, the beginning of the war with Japan, there were no more Lend-Lease supplies. The Germans were stand at Moscow and it was not clear who would win. Truman generally said that if Germany wins, then Russia should be helped, and if Russia wins, then Germany should be helped, like, let them kill each other...
However, it was noticeable that after our victories, Lend-Lease supplies increased.
Already in 1942, German p/l wolf packs were hunting for convoys. The hunt began off the coast of Norway. In June 42 PQ-17. Its life was the most dramatic. Of the 37 ships, 24 were destroyed.
In total, about 600 tanks, 200 aircraft and 3,000 cars went to the bottom.


During the war, about 14,000 sailors from the United States, Canada and Great Britain died.
To protect the convoys, the Americans built and transferred to us 202 torpedo boats and several minesweepers and destroyers. They were transferred to the fleets of the USSR.
America supplied us with aluminum, copper and steel ingots. They supplied 4 times more copper than we produced. During the war, we produced 8 thousand locomotives, and the USA - 22,000! American planes did not fly on our gasoline! (low octane numbers) By the way, every fifth or 20 percent of planes were English or American. (Victory Day, some official statistics),
Especially at the beginning of the war, our planes were made of delta wood. It burned poorly, but was heavier than aluminum alloys. This was not done for the good life. The Germans bombed all the factories and the USA supplied us with aluminum alloys and helped restore the aluminum industry.
50 thousand SUVs, 376 thousand trucks and about 1,000,000 car tires were imported to our country. My father told me that in El Alamey there was a former German armored car with tires Made at the Gorky Automobile Plant. In general, in 1944, the army had the most of our cars. But, they tried to install the famous "Katyusha" on Studebaker.
I happened to talk to one driver who, after the war, in the fifties, worked on a ZIS-155. According to him, the post-war Russian ZIS was inferior to Studebaker.
US aid in food products is enormous! The USSR was not threatened by hunger. Our soldiers called canned stewed meat the Second Front.
It is surprising that Jewish communities in the USSR, the USA and Great Britain raised money for medical care and ambulances. By the way, penicillin, the first antibiotics, were supplied under Lend-Lease and this gave 72 thousand wounded the opportunity to recover and return to the front. Magazines and films about the USSR were often very pro-Russian.
The war lasted 1418 days, and we lost 27.5 million people, while the allies on all fronts lost no more than 1 million. The USSR paid the USA, Canada and Great Britain with Russian blood. One Russian soldier saved the lives of 8.
The war changed the position of the USA. After the Great Depression, an industrial boom began. New jobs appeared in previously unknown firms. The dollar strengthened and became an international currency
Here, the Voznesensky representative of the State Planning Committee said that Lend Lease is only 4 percent.
42 countries received aid under Lend Lease. Great Britain received the most aid - $31 million, and we received $11 million. There was also the Cold War and all sorts of sanctions, which only in 1972 we agreed on $722,000 until 2001.

After the collapse of the USSR, only Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. $674 million was the last payment under Lend Lease in 2006.

You shouldn't think that without aid we would not have defeated fascism. By the way, already in 1942 our industry was superior to Germany's. In general, we would have defeated Germany, but there would have been more losses.

I. Stalin: "If it weren't for Lend Lease, the victory would have been much I. Stalin: "If it weren't for Lend Lease, the victory would have been much difficult"

Перед этим по- русски написано. По- английски написано для неговорящих по русски.