By the summer of 1940, France had fallen to the Nazis and Britain was fighting virtually alone against Germany on land, at sea and in the air. After the new British Prime Minister Winston Churchill personally asked Roosevelt for help, the US president agreed to exchange more than 50 obsolete American destroyers for 99-year-old leases at British bases in the Caribbean and Newfoundland for use as US air and naval bases. (RCAF Station Gander) at Gander International Airport, built in Newfoundland in 1936, was leased by Britain to Canada for 99 years, as there was an urgent need to bring fighter and bomber aircraft to Britain. [84] The lease became redundant when Newfoundland became the tenth province of Canada in 1949. The Lend-Lease Policy, officially titled An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States (Pub.L. 77–11, H.R. 1776, 55 Stat. 31, promulgated August 11. March 1941[1] was a program under which the United States provided food, oil, and materials to the United Kingdom (and the British Commonwealth), Free France, the Republic of China, and later the Soviet Union and other allied countries between 1941 and August 1945. These included warships and warplanes, as well as other weapons. It was signed on March 11, 1941 and ended in September 1945. In general, aid was free, although some equipment (such as ships) was returned after the war. In return, the United States received leases for military and naval bases on Allied territory during the war.

Canada operated a similar, smaller program called Mutual Aid. Just as RAF operations against Germany and the invasion coasts in their current scope would not have been possible without the loan and lease agreements, so the day missions of the Eighth and Ninth United States Air Forces from Britain would not have been possible without the reverse loan and lease agreements. Our forts and liberators take off from huge air bases that are built, equipped and maintained under reverse loan and lease agreements, costing them hundreds of millions of dollars. Many of our pilots fly Spitfires built in England, many others fly American fighter jets powered by British Rolls Royce Merlin engines that were given to us by the British. And many of the supplies our Air Force needs are purchased from us for free through reverse rental. In fact, our armed forces in Britain, both on the ground and in the air, receive a third of all the supplies and equipment they currently need without payment from us in the form of reverse leases, Britain provides 90% of its medical care and, despite its food shortage, 20% of its food. [76] In a November 1943 report to Congress, President Roosevelt stated about Allied involvement in reverse lend-lease: In March 1941, the Lend-Lease Act was enacted. The United States could lend ships and other military equipment to a belligerent (mainly to Britain and China, and later to the Soviet Union). By this time, the old CASH-in-transit provision, introduced in 1939, had lost its usefulness for the British, who no longer had cash to make purchases. The Lend-Lease Act technically met some of the neutrality requirements because, again, it was not a matter of lending money, although it appeared to ignore the previous requirement of cash payment for war materiel.

Lend-lease aid to the USSR was nominally administered by Stettinius. Roosevelt`s Soviet Protocol Committee was dominated by Harry Hopkins and General John York, who fully sympathized with the provision of “unconditional aid.” Few Americans rejected Soviet aid until 1943. [30] Canada had its own version of Lend-Lease for the United Kingdom. [78] [79] Canada gave Britain $3.5 billion in grants during the war, plus an interest-free loan of $1 billion; Britain used this money to buy Canadian food and war supplies. [80] [81] [82] Canada lent Britain $1.2 billion on a long-term basis immediately after the war; these loans were repaid in full by the end of 2006. [83] In late 1941, the lend-lease policy was extended to other U.S. allies, including China and the Soviet Union. By the end of World War II, the United States would provide a total of about $50 billion in aid to more than 30 countries around the world, from the Free France Movement led by Charles de Gaulle and the governments-in-exile of Poland, the Netherlands and Norway to Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Paraguay and Peru. President Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Act on March 11, 1941.

This allowed him to “sell, transfer, title, exchange, rent, lend, or otherwise dispose of such a government [whose defense is considered by the president to be essential to the defense of the United States].” In April, this policy was extended to China[20] and in October to the Soviet Union. Roosevelt approved $1 billion in lend-lease assistance to Britain in late October 1941. In mid-December 1940, Roosevelt introduced a new policy initiative under which the United States would lend British military supplies to fight Germany instead of selling them. Payment for supplies would be deferred and could be made in any form Roosevelt deemed satisfactory. “We buy. no loan. We buy our own security while we prepare,” Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Because of our backwardness over the past six years, as Germany prepared, we see ourselves unprepared and disarmed in the face of a well-prepared and armed potential enemy.

The British Commonwealth`s spending on reverse loans and leases in the United States and on the extension of this program to the export of materials and food on behalf of the United Kingdom and British colonial authorities underscores the contribution that the British Commonwealth has made to the defence of the United States. while he took his place on the battle fronts. This is an indication of the extent to which the British have been able to pool their resources with ours, so that the necessary weapon can be in the hands of that soldier – regardless of nationality – who can use it as effectively as possible at the right time to defeat our common enemies. [74] The Arctic route was the shortest and most direct route for loans and leases to the USSR, although it was also the most dangerous, passing through German-occupied Norway. Approximately 3,964,000 tonnes of cargo were shipped on the Arctic route; 7% were lost, while 93% arrived safe and sound. [53] This represented about 23% of the total aid to the USSR during the war. . The sum of defence materials and services that Canada received through loans and leases was approximately $419,500,000. Reverse lend-lease was the provision of equipment and services to the United States. Nearly $8 billion in war materiel (the equivalent of $124 billion today) was made available to the United States. Forces of their allies, 90% of this sum came from the British Empire.

[73] Mutual contributions included the Austin K2/Y military ambulance, British aviation spark plugs used in B-17 flying fortresses,[73] Canadian Fairmile launches used in anti-submarine warfare, Mosquito photo reconnaissance aircraft, and Indian petroleum products. [74] Australia and New Zealand provided most of the food to the U.S. armed forces in the South Pacific. [73] [75] During the same period, the U.S. government began mobilizing for all-out war by introducing the first peacetime conscription and increasing the defense budget fivefold (from $2 billion to $10 billion). [8] In the meantime, the UK ran out of liquid currency and was asked not to be forced to sell UK assets. On December 7, 1940, Prime Minister Winston Churchill urged President Roosevelt to seek U.S. help in a 15-page letter. [nb 2] [9] Roosevelt sympathized with the plight of the British, but was hampered by public opinion and neutrality laws, forbade arms sales on credit or loans to belligerent nations, and eventually came up with the idea of “lend-lease.” As one of Roosevelt`s biographers described: “If there was no practical alternative, there was certainly no moral alternative.

Britain and the Commonwealth fought for all civilization, and the overwhelming majority of Americans, led by the late election of their president, wanted to help them. [10] As the president himself said, “There can be no dispute with incendiary bombs. [11] Nikita Khrushchev, who had served as military commissar and mediator between Stalin and his generals during the war, directly addressed the importance of lend-lease aid in his memoirs: Roosevelt, who sought to secure public approval of this controversial plan, explained to the public and the press that his plan was comparable to that of a neighbor lending a garden hose to another. to extinguish a fire in his house. .