The Lend-Lease

Were the americans pretty much in the war already when they supplied arms to the UK, france and soviet union in early 1941 and would have inevitably had to fight nazi germany even if pearl harbor didn't happen where germany declared war on the US? So when Churchill talks about how he was so relieved when pearl harbor was attacked, because it meant the US would have to enter the war, that was all bullshit because it would have happened anyawy since they were alread supplying arms to the allies?
Also, just how extensive were these armament contributions?

Other urls found in this thread:

ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/LL-Ship/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

Why would the USA be supplying the Vichy Regime and what makes you think the USSR were receiving supplies before the USSR was even in the war?

>Vichy Regime
Who said anything about the Vichy Regime? The supplies were going to the exile government led by de Gaulle.
>what makes you think the USSR were receiving supplies before the USSR was even in the war?
Naturally they weren't all supplied at the same time. Supplies to Britain started in March of 41, and supplies to the soviets after operation Barbarossa had started in june. Still leaves you a good 5-6 months before pearl harbor happens in the soviet case, and almost a year of supplies to britain.

The supplies sent before the US entered the war were fairly limited, as they were having to work around limitations set by Congress. Most of the pre-'42 aircraft they received from America would not be Lend-Lease but aircraft ordered before the war by the Anglo-French purchasing commission.

Lend Lease officially became law in March 1941, but it took until 1942 for it to really ramp up. The contribution to the Soviet War effort is always controversial. What I've read seems to show that most Lend Lease weapons didn't make it to the front until the Kuban Campaign in the immediate aftermath of Stalingrad. You had a few Hurricanes or P-40s flying a bit earlier, but planes like P-39s didn't make a showing until 1943.

Although the weapons get all the attention, the real contribution Lend Lease made to the Soviet war effort was logistics and strategic materials. Lend Lease supplied the Soviets with thousands of trucks, train cars, and locomotives. Strategic materials like steel, clothes, and food were also major components of the aid.

The general idea of this focus was that it's better for the recipient to get logistic and material support but letting them continue to create their own weapons, as they already know how to use them. In the case of the Soviets, it also helped that we were weary of giving them our top of the line equipment.

Thanks for the reply. Would you say that though the supplies were smaller at first and only really got speed in '42, this still removed the US neutrality? Or did nazi germany really only view it as small humanitarian efforts and nothing else until pearl harbor happened where they declared war on the US?

Basically, had Pearl harbor never happened, would nazi germany still had viewed these contributions as the US having already broken their neutrality and war with them would have been inevtiable anyway?

June isn't early 1941 and virtually no supplies went from the USA to the USSR until 1942, virtually nothing went to the UK either in early 1941.

>Although the weapons get all the attention, the real contribution Lend Lease made to the Soviet war effort was logistics and strategic materials. Lend Lease supplied the Soviets with thousands of trucks, train cars, and locomotives. Strategic materials like steel, clothes, and food were also major components of the aid.
To be honest, ammunition was probably more important than either of them,, and was the plurality of LL to the USSR by weight.

Not him, but if you dig through Wages of Destruction and his take on various powers armament plans, German policymakers were already concerned about U.S. intervention with material aid to Europe before the war even started. They were pretty much viewing the U.S. as unfriendly since January or February of 1939.

They never viewed the Americans as neutral.

Not him but I think I've some statistics showcasing how much aluminum and other shit the USSR received yearly. I might find it in a moment.

Apparently it only shows how much yearly the USSR produced, rather than how much yearly was sent by the west, but obligatory anyway:
>overall production of motor vehicles can be fixed at 265,000. During the war years, 409,500 motor vehicles were supplied from the US to the USSR, which exceeded Soviet production for the war years by 1.5 times. By the end of the war on 1 May 1945, 32.8 per cent of the machines making up the Red Army's vehicle park had been supplied by Lend- Lease.

>The summary production of aluminium for the period from mid-1941 to mid-1945 at 263,000 tons.
>Western deliveries of aluminium to the USSR in 1941-45 amounted to 328,100 tons.
>The Soviet aviation industry, the chief consumer of aluminium, operated primarily because of Western deliveries.We should also mention that aluminium was used in the production of motors for the famous Soviet T-34 tanks.

The Soviets started receiving supplies almost immediately after Barbarossa started.

From Britain, they received virtually nothing from the US until 1942 and I was querying the claim made by OP that supplies were sent to the USSR from the USA in early 1941.

>German policymakers were already concerned about U.S. intervention with material aid to Europe before the war even started. They were pretty much viewing the U.S. as unfriendly since January or February of 1939.
>June isn't early 1941 and virtually no supplies went from the USA to the USSR until 1942, virtually nothing went to the UK either in early 1941.


People in this thread seem to be of two minds regarding this with some of you saying that the supplies weren't of great numbers before the US were at war so it wasn't a big deal and then others say that Germany were worried by armaments coming from the US right from the start and viewed them as enemies from that moment on.

I haven't made any claims about what was a "big deal" or not. I said the premise of the thread is simply factually incorrect. The USA was not sending supplies to the Soviet Union in early 1941, I also disagree that the Free French can be described as 'France'. I also additionally pointed out that (while it is technically correct they were "receiving supplies") the UK wasn't receiving that much in the way of supplies from the US in "early 1941" either. I don't know when the Free French started receiving supplies but during the entire war they didn't get that much from the USA so I doubt they were receiving much of significance in early 1941 either.

Your point is taken. But I suspect you brought up the fact that they didn't receive many supplies for a reason, perhaps implying that the small amount of supplies would mean that Hitler would take US helping the allies in this way less seriously?

The war with Germany was already planned. US didn't enter in 1939 because it didn't have to and wanted to revamp its military first. Also US wanted to force Japan into the war as a condition of helping the Euros, that's how the US got the Dutch and the Brits to join in the embargo.

One of the things people forget is how they managed to get the lend lease there, the merchant shipping constantly got sunk by Uboats but enough made it though to help Britain survive, 1940-41 the krigsmarine called "happy hunting season" or something due to the tonnage they managed to sink. The sailors where absolute legends to be able to continuely brave the waters to get supplies out

It's quite amazing that as well as arming its own considerable armed forces, Amerifats were also arming the Chinese, the Soviets, and the European allies.

Like, two of those have armies the size of their own or greater (Chinese forces, Russia).

A lecture i listened to recently spoke of 1 wermacht soldier's diary entry where his company aquired an entire convoy of americam lend lease supplies en route to stalingrad south west of mamayev hill.

The supplies ranged from cans of spam, fuel, medicine, and even .45 acp rounds (they probably blew these up since they couldnt use them).

While we lack the paper work outlining the exact quantity of supplies sent, accounts such as this suggest the influence of lend lease was in effect long before the soviet offensives in late 1942.

ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/LL-Ship/

What I mentioned was the weapons and equipment - particularly aircraft - taking a while to get to the front. It would definitely make sense for logistical supplies and ammo to arrive in larger numbers first, as it's far easier to get those to the front.

As far as aircraft go, the progression I've seen is
>Hurricanes are first
>P-40s first from the brits then from US
>A bunch of different types in late '42 and get tested over Kuban
>VVS settles on P-39, A-20, and a few other types

ITT everyone forgets Destroyers for Bases.

Yes, americans would've faked an attack on one of their ships like always and joined the war against Germany and Japan sooner than later.

Arming an army is expensive, harder when your country is ravaged by war. On top of being an economic powerhouse the USA has never really been ravaged by war since their civil war ended. Amazing would've been Peru doing it.

Yes but you said that the supplies were limited, I'm pointing out that while we don't know exactly how much was sent, we do know it was very significant.

What neither side likes to talk about are the sheer quantity of supplies that the soviets failed to destroy before their capture and the quantity of supplies the Germans used because of their own supply shortages.

The master agreements governing Lend-Lease weren't actually signed until 1942. Since the point was to bypass financial obligation, it applied both to future shipments and retrospectively to aid already received. From the perspective of December 7th 1941, the only real "aid" being provided was in the form of billion-dollar loans, not arms. Even the first protocol LL shipments to the USSR (Oct 41-June 42) were arms manufactured and delivered by the Brits, the US only providing financing.

While it isn't true neutrality, it's not much different than what countries like Switzerland and Sweden were doing w/ the Germans.