Newsreel: Help for Democracy - 1940's

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Lend-Lease was the name of the program under which the United States of America supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China, France and other Allied nations with vast amounts of war material between 1941 and 1945. It was signed into law on 11 March 1941, over 18 months after the outbreak of the European war in September 1939, but before the U.S. entrance into the war in December 1941. It was called An Act Further to Promote the Defense of the United States. This act also ended the pretense of the neutrality of the United States. Hitler recognized this and consequently had submarines attack US ships such as the SS Robin Moor, an unarmed merchant steamship destroyed by a German U-boat on 21 May 1941 outside of the war zone.

Franklin D. Roosevelt set up the Office of Lend-Lease Administration in 1941, appointing steel executive Edward R. Stettinius as head. In September 1943 he was promoted to Undersecretary of State, and FDIC director Leo Crowley became head of the Foreign Economic Administration  which absorbed responsibility for Lend-Lease.

Lend-Lease was a critical factor in the eventual success of the Allies in World War II, particularly in the early years when the United States was not directly involved and the entire burden of the fighting fell on other nations, notably those of the Commonwealth and, after June 1941, the Soviet Union.

Although the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Axis Declarations of War brought the US into the war in December 1941, the task of recruiting, training, and equipping U.S. forces and transporting them to war zones could not be completed immediately.

Through 1942, and to a lesser extent 1943, the other Allies continued to be responsible for most of the fighting and the supply of military equipment under Lend-Lease was a significant part of their success. In 1943-44, about a quarter of all British munitions came through Lend-Lease. Aircraft (in particular transport aircraft) comprised about a quarter of the shipments to Britain, followed by food, land vehicles and ships.

Lend-Lease aid to Russia was nominally managed by Stettinius. Roosevelt's Soviet Protocol Committee, dominated by Harry Hopkins and General John York, who were totally sympathetic to the provision of "unconditional aid." Until 1943, few Americans objected to Russian aid.

This program was a decisive step away from American non-interventionism since the end of World War I and towards international involvement. The Americans forgave this debt for all 38 nations except the UK and the USSR, and it took until 2006 for the UK government to settle its debt to the USA.