On 11th
March 1941, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act. The legislation gave
President Franklin
D. Roosevelt the
powers to sell, transfer, exchange, lend equipment to any country
to help it defend itself against the Axis powers.
A sum of
$50 billion was appropriated by Congress for Lend-Lease. The money
went to 38 different countries with Britain
receiving over $31 billion. Over the next few years the British government
repaid $650 million of this sum.
(1)
Anthony Eden, Memoirs: The Reckoning
(1965)
The ability of the Royal Navy to escort the convoys upon which Britain's
life depended was tried to the limit during this summer. Matters were
made worse because the Government had not laid down any destroyers
during 1938, apparently owing to Treasury pressure for economy which,
almost unbelievably, was accepted. The United States Government were
now straining neutrality in our favour and Mr. Churchill was continually
pressing them to further efforts. He asked, among other things, for
the loan of fifty or sixty destroyers, and this scheme was discussed
between London and Washington.
The negotiations
did not go smoothly, nor did I altogether approve of the details of
the final settlement. At one time the suggestion was put forward in
Washington that the entire British West Indies should be handed over
for the cancellation of our war debts. I thought this less than friendly
bargaining. At another, the destroyers were to be exchanged for a
public assurance that the British fleet would sail to North American
waters if Hitler gained control of the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister
rightly protested that such an announcement would have a 'disastrous
effect' on British morale. The West Indian bases alone were certainly
worth more than fifty or sixty old destroyers.
The sweeping
nature of the first American demands caused some delay in the negotiations.
Local patriotism in the West Indies was justifiably affronted. By
August 14th, however, the agreement was settled, to be ratified at
the beginning of the following month. Our desperate straits alone
could justify its terms. The age and condition of the fifty destroyers
made unexpectedly large demands upon our dockyards. Only nine ships
were available before the end of 1940, by which time our own naval
construction was catching up on our losses.
Help on
a larger scale was soon to be forthcoming. Reelected President on
November 5th, Mr. Roosevelt suggested almost at once plans to open
'the Arsenal of Democracy' for Great Britain. In March 1941 the cash-and-carry
basis of British purchasing in the United States was abolished, and
the principle of lend-lease sanctioned by Congress. Later the same
month documents handing over bases in Newfoundland, Bermuda and the
West Indies were signed.
(2)
James F. Byrnes, was a strong advocate
in the Senate of financial support for the Allies in their fight against
Nazi Germany. In his autobiography
he explained the Lend-Lease Act.
Shortly before Christmas, 1940, President Roosevelt disclosed at a
press conference his plan "to eliminate the dollar sign"
from our aid to those fighting against Hitler. The idea was elaborated
still further by the President when he appeared before the new Congress
on January 8, 1941, to deliver his message on The State of the Union.
Meanwhile, work had begun on drafting legislation to put the plan
into action. A draft prepared by Oscar S. Cox, then an assistant to
the general counsel of the Treasury, was used as a basis for soliciting
advice and suggestions from many people.
On January
10, the bill was introduced simultaneously in the Senate and House
by Senator Alben W. Barkley and Representative John W. McCormack,
the majority leaders. In the House the symbolic number, H.R. 1776,
was attached to what finally became, on March 11, the Lend-Lease Act.
(3)
Franklin
D. Roosevelt first
told the American public about Lend-Lease
in a radio broadcast on 17th December, 1940.
In the
present world situation of course there is absolutely no doubt in
the mind of a very overwhelming number of Americans that the best
immediate defence of the United States is the success of Great Britain
in defending itself; and that, therefore, quite aside from our historic
and current interest in the survival of democracy in the world as
a whole, it is equally important, from a selfish point of view of
American defence, that we should do everything to help the British
Empire to defend itself.
It isn't
merely a question of doing things the traditional way; there are lots
of other ways of doing them. I am just talking background, informally;
I haven't prepared any of this - I go back to the idea that the one
thing necessary for American national defence is additional productive
facilities; and the more we increase those facilities - factories,
shipbuilding ways, munition plants, et cetera, and so on - the stronger
American national defence is.
I have
been exploring other methods of continuing the building up of our
productive facilities and continuing automatically the flow of munitions
to Great Britain. I will just put it this way, not as an exclusive
alternative method but as one of several other possible methods that
might be devised toward that end.
It is possible
- I will put it that way - for the United States to take over British
orders and, because they are essentially the same kind of munitions
that we use ourselves, turn them into American orders. We have enough
money to do it. And there-upon, as to such portion of them as the
military events of the future determine to be right and proper for
us to allow to go to the other side, either lease or sell the materials,
subject to mortgage, to the people on the other side. That would be
on the general theory that it may still prove true that the best defence
of Great Britain is the best defence of the United States, and therefore
that these materials would be more useful to the defence of the United
States if they were used in Great Britain than if they were kept in
storage here.
Now, what
I am trying to do is to eliminate the dollar sign. That is something
brand new in the thoughts of practically everybody in this room, I
think - get rid of the silly, foolish old dollar sign. Well, let me
give you an illustration: Suppose my neighbor's home catches fire,
and I have a length of garden hose 400 or 500 feet away. If he can
take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, I may help
him to put out his fire. Now, what do I do? I don't say to him before
that operation, "Neighbor, my garden hose cost me $15; you have
to pay me $15 for it." What is the transaction that goes on?
I don't want $15 - I want my garden hose back after the fire is over.
All right. If it goes through the fire all right, intact, without
any damage to it, he gives it back to me and thanks me very much for
the use of it. But suppose it gets smashed up - holes in it - during
the fire; we don't have to have too much formality about it, but I
say to him, "I was glad to lend you that hose; I see I can't
use it any more, it's all smashed up." He says, "How many
feet of it were there?" I tell him, "There were 150 feet
of it." He says, "All right, I will replace it." Now,
if I get a nice garden hose back, I am in pretty good shape.
In other
words, if you lend certain munitions and get the munitions back at
the end of the war, if they are intact - haven't been hurt - you are
all right; if they have been damaged or have deteriorated or have
been lost completely, it seems to me you come out pretty well if you
have them replaced by the fellow to whom you have lent them.
I can't
go into details; and there is no use asking legal questions about
how you would do it, because that is the thing that is now under study;
but the thought is that we would take over not all, but a very large
number of, future British orders; and when they came off the line,
whether they were planes or guns or something else, we would enter
into some kind of arrangement for their use by the British on the
ground that it was the best thing for American defence, with the understanding
that when the show was over, we would get repaid sometime in kind,
thereby leaving out the dollar mark in the form of a dollar debt and
substituting for it a gentleman's obligation to repay in kind. I think
you all get it.
(4)
Franklin
D. Roosevelt, message
to Congress (6th January, 1941)
I have
called for personal sacrifice. I am assured of the willingness of
almost all Americans to respond to that call. A part of the sacrifice
means the payment of more money in taxes. In my budget message I recommend
that a greater portion of this great defense e program be paid for
from taxation than we are paying today. No person should try, or be
allowed, to get rich out of this program; and the principle of tax
payments in accordance with ability to pay should be constantly before
our eyes to guide our legislation. If the Congress maintains these
principles, the voters, putting patriotism ahead of pocketbooks, will
give you their applause.
In the
future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world
founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first
is freedom of speech and expression everywhere in the world.
The second
is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way everywhere
in the world.
The third
is freedom from want, which translated into world terms, means economic
understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime
life for its inhabitants everywhere in the world.
The fourth
is freedom from fear - which, translated into world terms, means a
worldwide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough
fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical
aggression against any neighbor - anywhere in the world.
That is
no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind
of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world
is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which
the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
To that
new order we oppose the greater conception - the moral order. A good
society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions
alike without fear.
Since the
beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in change
- in a perpetual peaceful revolution - a revolution which goes on
steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions - without
the concentration camp or the quicklime in the ditch. The world order
which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together
in a friendly, civilized society.
This nation
has placed its destiny in the hands and hearts of its millions of
free men and women, and its faith in freedom under the guidance of
God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support
goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them. Our
strength is in our unity of purpose. To that high concept there can
be no end save victory.
(5)
Burton K. Wheeler
of Montana led the attacks on Lend-Lease
in the Senate when it was debated on 12th January 1941.
The lend-lease
policy translated into legislative form, stunned a Congress and a
nation wholly sympathetic to the cause of Great Britain. The Kaiser's
blank check to Austria-Hungary in the First World War was a piker
compared to the Roosevelt blank check of World War II. It warranted
my worst fears for the future of America, and it definitely stamps
the President as war-minded.
The lend-lease-give
program is the New Deal's triple-A foreign policy; it will plow under
every fourth American boy. Never before have the American people been
asked or compelled to give so bounteously and so completely of their
tax dollars to any foreign nation. Never before has the Congress of
the United States been asked by any President to violate international
law. Never before has this nation resorted to duplicity in the conduct
of its foreign affairs. Never before has the United States given to
one man the power to strip this nation of its defenses. Never before
has a Congress coldly and flatly been asked to abdicate.
If the
American people want a dictatorship - if they want a totalitarian
form of government and if they want war - this
bill should be steam-rollered through Congress, as is the wont of
President Roosevelt.
Approval
of this legislation means war, open and complete warfare. I, therefore,
ask the American people before they supinely accept it - Was the last
World War worthwhile?
If it were,
then we should lend and lease war materials. If it were, then we should
lend and lease American boys. President Roosevelt has said we would
be repaid by England. We will be. We will be repaid, just as England
repaid her war debts of the First World War - repaid those dollars
wrung from the sweat of labor and the toil of farmers with cries of
"Uncle Shylock." Our boys will be returned - returned in
caskets, maybe; returned with bodies maimed; returned with minds warped
and twisted by sights of horrors and the scream and shriek of high-powered
shells.
(6)
William Knox, Secretary of the Navy, argued
in favour of Lend-Lease in a statement
made before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (27th January,
1941)
Before
coming here, your chairman advised me that he would permit me to develop
further some of the points which I made in my statement before the
House Foreign Affairs Committee on Bill 1776, Lend-Lease Bill.
In Europe
the military situation is far from stable, and I believe that there
are few British who would care to accept German peace commitments
at their face value. I should like to quote three short paragraphs
from my statement given before the House committee:
"To
keep our land secure we must prevent the establishment of strong aggressive
military power in any pan of the New World. We can keep non-American
military power out of our hemisphere only through being able to control
the seas that surround its shores. Once we lose the power to control
even a part of those seas, inevitably the wars of Europe and Asia
will be transferred to the Americas. We need time to build ships and
to train their crews. We need time to build up our outlying bases
so that we can operate our fleets as a screen for our continent. We
need time to train our armies, to accumulate war stores, to gear our
industry for defense. Only Great Britain and its fleet can give us
that time. And they need our help to survive."
I reiterate
here my belief that the chief question that confronts us is whether
we shall now take steps to keep Europe's wars in Europe, or shall
drift along and permit those wars to be transferred to the Americas.
We need time to get ready to meet out at sea a strong, aggressive
Germany if we are to keep the fighting away from the lands of this
hemisphere. You may remember that in my statement before the House
committee I gave a comparative table of naval tonnage which might
oppose us, both in the immediate future and over the next several
years, if Britain does not survive Germany's attack. I would not have
you draw the implication from my statement and from those figures
that I fear that the United States will not fully realize in time
the danger that confronts them. But they have no time to waste and
must act at once.
In public
speeches I have warned the American people that if Britain is defeated,
we ought then to be fully prepared to repel attempts by Germany to
seize bases on this side of the Atlantic. Germany would use these
bases either to attack us directly or else first to establish herself
solidly in South America. Many of our people and many of the speakers
who have opposed giving ample aid to Great Britain apparently believe
it fantastic to think that there is any real danger of invasion. I
disagree with such people and believe that a victorious Germany would
move over to this hemisphere just as soon as she could accumulate
the strength to do so, and certainly very soon unless we now take
the steps to check her career of reckless aggression.
Admiral
General Raeder, chief of the German Navy, recently made a speech to
the shipyard workers in Bremen. The significant portion of his speech
to the United States was a promise that after the war Germany would
have - I quote -
A fleet developed and enlarged to a size befitting a world power,
and overseas naval bases where there would be plenty of work of all
kinds. There can be little doubt as to German ambitions for world
sea power in the event of victory.
The existence
of the British Navy and a balance of power in Europe have operated
to give us military security against aggressions from that region.
For many years we actually have had the benefits of a two-ocean Navy
instead of only the one-ocean Navy that flies the American flag. The
defeat of Great Britain would definitely carry with it the destruction
of the British Fleet or would transfer it to German hands to be used
against us when Germany has trainee German naval personnel to operate
it.
(7)
Robert M. Hutchins, the president of
the University of Chicago, was another opponent of Lend-Lease. In
a speech made on 23rd January, 1941, Hutchins argued that the American
government should devote its resources to the task of making good
on its age-old promises of freedom and abundance for all.
It is
impossible to listen to Mr. Roosevelt's recent speeches, to study
the Lease-Lend Bill, and to read the testimony of Cabinet officers
upon it without coming to the conclusion that the President now requires
us to underwrite a British victory, and apparently a Chinese and a
Greek victory, too. We are going to try to produce the victory by
supplying our friends with the materials of war. But what if this
is not enough? We have abandoned all pretense of neutrality. We are
to turn our ports into British naval bases. But what if this is not
enough? Then we must send the navy, the air force, and, if Mr. Churchill
wants it, the army. We must guarantee the victory.
If we stay
out of war, we may perhaps some day understand and practise freedom
of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from
fear. We may even be able to comprehend and support justice, democracy,
the moral order, and the supremacy of human rights. Today we have
barely begun to grasp the meaning of the words.
Those beginnings
are important. They place us ahead of where we were at the end of
the last century. They raise us, in accomplishment as well as in ideals,
far above the accomplishment and ideals of totalitarian powers. They
leave us, however, a good deal short of that level of excellence which
entitles us to convert the world by force of arms.
Have we
freedom of speech and freedom of worship in this country? We do have
freedom to say what everybody else is saying and freedom of worship
if we do not take our religion too seriously. But teachers who do
not conform to the established canons of social thought lose their
jobs. People who are called "radicals" have mysterious difficulties
in renting halls. Labor organizers sometimes get beaten up and ridden
out of town on a rail. Norman Thomas had some troubles in Jersey City.
And the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let Marian
Anderson sing in the national capital in a building called Constitution
Hall.
If we regard
these exceptions as minor, reflecting the attitude of the more backward
and illiterate parts of the country, what are we to say of freedom
from want and freedom from fear? What of the moral order and justice
and the supremacy of human rights? What of democracy in the United
States?
Words like
these have no meaning unless we believe in human dignity. Human dignity
means that every man is an end in himself. No man can be exploited
by another. Think of these things and then think of the sharecroppers,
the Okies, the Negroes, the slumdwellers, downtrodden and oppressed
for gain. They have neither freedom from want nor freedom from fear.
They hardly know they are living in a moral order or in a democracy
where justice and human rights are supreme.
We have
it on the highest authority that one-third of the nation is ill-fed,
ill-clothed, and ill-housed. The latest figures of the National Resources
Board show that almost precisely 55 percent of our people are living
on family incomes of less than $1,25O a year. This sum, says Fortune
magazine, will not support a family of four. On this basis more than
half our people are living below the minimum level of subsistence.
More than half the army which will defend democracy will be drawn
from those who have had this experience of the economic benefits of
"the American way of life."
We know
that we have had till lately 9 million unemployed and that we should
have them still if it were not for our military preparations. When
our military preparations cease, we shall, for all we know, have 9
million unemployed again. In his speech on December 29, Mr. Roosevelt
said, "After the present needs of our defense are past, a proper
handling of the country's peacetime needs will require all of the
new productive capacity - if not still more." For ten years we
have not known how to use the productive capacity we had. Now suddenly
we are to believe that by some miracle, after the war is over, we
shall know what to do with our old productive capacity and what to
do in addition with the tremendous increases which are now being made.
We have want and fear today. We shall have want and fear "when
the present needs of our defense are past."
As for
democracy, we know that millions of men and women are disfranchised
in this country because of their race, color, or condition of economic
servitude. We know that many municipal governments are models of corruption.
Some state governments are merely the shadows of big city machines.
Our national government is a government by pressure groups. Almost
the last question an American is expected to ask about a proposal
is whether it is just. The question is how much pressure is there
behind it or how strong are the interests against it. On this basis
are settled such great issues as monopoly, the organization of agriculture,
the relation of labor and capital, whether bonuses should be paid
to veterans, and whether a tariff policy based on greed should be
modified by reciprocal trade agreements.
To have
a community men must work together. They must have common principles
and purposes. If some men are tearing down a house while others are
building it, we do not say they are working together. If some men
are robbing, cheating, and oppressing others, we should not say they
are a community. The aims of a democratic community are moral. United
by devotion to law, equality, and justice, the democratic community
works together for the happiness of all the citizens. I leave to you
the decision whether we have yet achieved a democratic community in
the United States. In the speech in which Mr. Roosevelt.
(8)
Charles A. Lindbergh,
speech in New York (23rd April, 1941)
I have
said before and I will say again that I believe it will be a tragedy
to the entire world if the British Empire collapses. That is one of
the main reasons why I opposed this war before it was declared and
why I have constantly advocated a negotiated peace. I did not feel
that England and France had a reasonable chance of winning.
France
has now been defeated; and despite the propaganda and confusion of
recent months, it is now obvious that England is losing the war. I
believe this is realized even by the British government. But they
have one last desperate plan remaining. They hope that they may be
able to persuade us to send another American Expeditionary Force to
Europe and to share with England militarily as well as financially
the fiasco of this war.
I do not
blame England for this hope, or for asking for our assistance. But
we now know that she declared a war under circumstances which led
to the defeat of every nation that sided with her, from Poland to
Greece. We know that in the desperation of war England promised to
all those nations armed assistance that she could not send. We know
that she misinformed them, as she has misinformed us, concerning her
state of preparation, her military strength, and the progress of the
war.
In time
of war, truth is always replaced by propaganda. I do not believe we
should be too quick to criticize the actions of a belligerent nation.
There is always the question whether we, ourselves, would do better
under similar circumstances. But we in this country have a right to
think of the welfare of America first, just as the people in England
thought first of their own country when they encouraged the smaller
nations of Europe to fight against hopeless odds. When England asks
us to enter this war, she is considering her own future and that of
her Empire. In making our reply, I believe we should consider the
future of the United States and that of the Western Hemisphere.
It is not
only our right but it is our obligation as American citizens to look
at this war objectively and to weigh our chances for success if we
should enter it. I have attempted to do this, especially from the
standpoint of aviation; and I have been forced to the conclusion that
we cannot win this war for England, regardless of how much assistance
we extend.
I ask you
to look at the map of Europe today and see if you can suggest any
way in which we could win this war if we entered it. Suppose we had
a large army in America, trained and equipped. Where would we send
it to fight? The campaigns of the war . show only too clearly how
difficult it is to force a landing, or to maintain an army, on a hostile
coast.
Suppose
we took our Navy from the Pacific and used it to convoy British shipping.
That would not win the war for England. It would, at best, permit
her to exist under the constant bombing of the German air fleet. Suppose
we had an air force that we could send to Europe. Where could it operate?
Some of our squadrons might be based in the British Isles, but it
is physically impossible to base enough aircraft in the British Isles
alone to equal in strength the aircraft that can be based on the continent
of Europe.
(9)
George
Norris wrote about Lend
Lease in his autobiography, Fighting Liberal (1945)
No single piece of legislation attracted my attention more than the
program of Lend-Lease. I took a great interest in its passage by Congress;
and I believe that it not only has shortened the war, perhaps by years,
but may have saved the free peoples of the world.
In the Senate the Lend-Lease
bill produced one of the bitterest struggles of a bitter period. I
never could understand from the arguments developed in the debate
why any member of the Senate objected to the passage of the act. In
all of the discussion, it seemed to me, the opposition to Lend-Lease
closed its eyes and refused to recognize the circumstances responsible
for the proposal.
Hitler's triumphs had
simplified America's choice. Either this country could accept him
and try to get along with him, or it had to stem the march of his
armies in his plan of world conquest. I place no faith in his protestation
of a peaceful attitude toward the countries of the western hemisphere.
His every deed and utterance established that once he had made himself
supreme in Europe, Africa, and Asia the next step would be conquest
of the Americas.
When I voted for Lend-Lease,
under which the President was authorized to make contracts with the
governments of nations opposing the Axis powers for weapons and supplies
of war, it was a very minor consideration to me whether the beneficiaries
of Lend-Lease made repayment for the material furnished them. I felt
strongly that the United States should be glad to furnish this assistance,
even if it never was repaid, because the sacrifice of human life which
our ultimate allies made was infinitely greater than the financial
sacrifice involved.
(10)
Harold
Wilson,
Memoirs: 1916-1964 (1986)
Lend-Lease also involved Britain's surrender of her rights and royalties
in a series of British technological achievements. Although the British
performance in industrial techniques in the inter-war years had been
marked by a period of more general decline, the achievements of our
scientists and technologists had equalled the most remarkable eras
of British inventive greatness. Radar, antibiotics, jet aircraft and
British advances in nuclear research had created an industrial revolution
all over the developed world. Under Lend-Lease, these inventions were
surrendered as part of
the inter-Allied war effort, free of any royalty or other payments
from the United States.
Had Churchill been able to insist on adequate royalties for these
inventions, both our wartime and our post-war balance of payments
would have been very different.
The Attlee Government
had to face the consequences of this surrender of our technological
patrimony, but there was worse to come. Congress had voted Lend-Lease
until the end of the war with Germany and Japan and no longer. When
the European war ended, most people expected the conflict with Japan
to last for another year or so. The atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima
ended that assumption. Almost within the hour, President Truman, unwillingly
no doubt, but without any choice in the matter, notified Attlee that
Lend-Lease was being cut off. At that time it was worth £2,000
million a year. There was no possible
means of increasing our exports to the United States to earn that
sort of sum. Britain was in pawn, at the very time that Attlee was
fighting to exert some influence on the postwar European settlement.
The only solution was to negotiate a huge American loan, the repayment
and servicing of which placed a burden on Britain's balance of payments
right into the twenty-first century.
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