Lend and Lease. Pomoc Stanów Zjednoczonych dla państw walczących w latach 1939-1945

Abstract

The project of Lend-Lease Act was prepared by a young lawyer from the Ministry of Finances, Oscar Cox. On the 6th of January 1941 the consultation concerned with its formulation began in the White House. After the text had been adjusted, according to the constitution, by both the House of Representatives and the Upper House, the Congress finally passed the Act on the 11th of March 1941. According to the original reading of the text the Lend-Lease Act was to remain obligatory up to the 30th of June 1943. However, thanks to the progress of the war, the US Congress in January 1943 began to consider the proposal of its prolongation for one year more. It was prolonged for one year on the 9th of March 1943, as a result of voting in the House of Representatives; 407 votes were for it against 6 votes. Time showed that even these expectations of the end of the war did not prove, true so in 1944 the Act had to be prolonged again. The United States paid during the five years of the war 50 milliards 244 millions of dollars due to Lend-Lease. They received in the form of „Returnable Lend-Lease” 7 milliards of dollars, 80% of which came from Great Britain. Lend-Lease played an important part in the defeating of the Powers of the Axis though at the beginning of the application of the Act it did not satisfy wholly the needs of the respective allies. Even Stalin had to acknowledge it. In the letter of the 11th of June 1945 he wrote to Truman: „This agreement according to which during all the time of the war in Europe the United States of North America supplied the USSR with weapons, food, and strategic materials on the principles of Lend-Lease played an important part in and to a great extent determined the victory over the mutual enemy, the Nazist Germany”.