The Most Unsordid Act

The Most Unsordid Act
Author: Warren F. Kimball
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2019-12-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 142143105X

Originally published in 1969. In The Most Unsordid Act, Warren Kimball provides a history of the Lend-Lease idea. The genesis and development of the Lend-Lease idea, although spanning less than two years, offers a subject of the broadest significance for major questions of democratic government and society. The story begins with the United States' growing recognition of the British monetary and gold shortage and ends with the passage of the Lend-Lease Act and the American commitment that it involved. Dr. Kimball's narrative—chronological, detailed, and dramatic—includes analyses of the domestic and international concerns on both sides of the Atlantic and of the roles of the leading protagonists: President F. D. Roosevelt and Treasury Secretary Morgenthau, as well as Stimson, Hull, Churchill, and key British representatives. He also examines the possibility that Lend-Lease was designed to benefit the American economy at Britain's expense. A central question animates Kimball's account: How could a president who recognized the ultimate threat of Nazi Germany, but shared his nation's desire to avoid war, find a way to help an ally? The portrait of Roosevelt that emerges is instructive in view of revisionist histories that present him as a Machiavellian figure disingenuously leading his country to war. Kimball sees him, rather, as an essentially domestic president whose experiences and interests evolved from national concerns—as a man unschooled in international affairs, eager to avoid confrontation with his congressional opposition, wary of the British penchant for power politics, given to procrastination when faced with difficult problems, and anxious to avoid full-scale war. Yet, the administration's legislative strategy and the debate over the Lend-Lease Act clearly demonstrated that the president, his closest advisers, and the Congress were aware that the legislation would inevitably mean war with Germany. Based on such sources as the diaries of Morgenthau, the State Department Archives, Foreign Economic Administration records, the Stimson papers, and interviews with participants, this study provides insights that raise central questions about the functioning of the American system of government.

Russia's Life-Saver

Russia's Life-Saver
Author: Albert L. Weeks
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2004-01-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 0739160540

'The United States is a country of machines. Without the use of these machines through Lend-Lease, we would lose this war.' —Josef Stalin (1943), quoted in W. Averell Harriman and Elie Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941-1946, Random House, N.Y., 1975, p. 277 The United States shipped more than $12 billion in Lend-Lease aid to Stalin's Russia during World War II. Materials lent, beginning in late 1941 before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, included airplanes and tanks, locomotives and rails, construction materials, entire military production assembly lines, food and clothing, aviation fuel, and much else. Lend-Lease is now recognized by post-Soviet Russian historians as essential to the Soviet war effort. Wielding many facts and statistics never before published in the U.S., author Albert L. Weeks keenly analyzes the diplomatic rationale for and results of this assistance. Russia's Life-Saver is a brilliant contribution to the study of U.S.-Soviet relations and its role in World War II.

Lend-Lease and Soviet Aviation in the Second World War

Lend-Lease and Soviet Aviation in the Second World War
Author: Vladimir Kotelnikov
Publisher: Helion
Total Pages: 576
Release: 2021-12-15
Genre:
ISBN: 9781914059599

Seventy years have passed since the Second World War yet the books and articles still keep coming in a never-ending stream discussing the question of what role the deliveries of arms and materials by Soviet allies played in the victory of the Red Army. In Russia, the American Bell P-39 Airacobra fighter along with the Studebaker US6 truck and canned stewed meat became the symbols of Allied help to the USSR during the Second World War. Other aircraft which arrived to the country under the Lend-Lease program are less known but also made a valuable contribution to the victory. The author of this book for the first time has assembled a huge volume of information related to the delivery of aviation equipment from the UK and USA. Based on documents from Russian and foreign archives, museums, and veterans' recollections, the author has made a qualitative and quantitative appraisal of the influence of these deliveries upon the Soviet war effort and airpower during the conflict. The book details the routes of the aircraft deliveries to Russia, the modifications which were done in order to suit the demands of the Russian climate and specifics of their front-line use, as well as the process of the new aircraft being mastered by the units of the Red Army Air Force. The first foreign aircraft arrived in the Soviet Union with No. 151 Wing RAF in 1941, and their use expanded rapidly - they took part in the counteroffensive near Moscow, the battles for Stalingrad and the Kursk salient, and operations of the war up to the battle for Berlin and the capitulation of Japanese forces in the North China. The author includes the results of the combat assessments of the aircraft, which were done at the Scientific Testing Institute of the Air Force, as well as reports from front-line regiments, and multiple combat episodes, detailing the views of the Soviet designers and pilots on the British and American aircraft. A separate chapter provides information about the aircraft which were not officially delivered but appeared in the Soviet Union accidentally. For the first time an attempt has been made to assess the influence of the deliveries of material and equipment upon the Soviet aviation industry and war effort. The author's impressive text is supported by nearly 700 color and b/w photographs, 100 color aircraft profiles, plus maps, charts etc.

Soviet Lend-Lease Fighter Aces of World War 2

Soviet Lend-Lease Fighter Aces of World War 2
Author: George Mellinger
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 147
Release: 2012-10-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1782005544

The Soviet government tried to minimize the importance of Lend-lease fighters well into the 1980s. Only in recent years have these pilots felt free to admit what they flew, and now the fascinating story of these men can emerge. By the end of 1941 the Soviet Union was near collapse and its air force almost annihilated, leaving large numbers of surviving pilots with no aircraft to fly. To help prevent this collapse the UK eventually supplied a total of 4300 Hurricanes and Spitfires to the USSR. After the United States entered the war, the Americans extended Lend-lease to include direct supply to the Soviets as well as the British, and among the aircraft sent were almost 10,000 fighters. Although the aircraft were outdated and often unsuitable to Russian conditions, they served when they were needed, and this book tells how a number of Russian pilots became Heroes of the Soviet Union flying Lend-lease aircraft.

Those Angry Days

Those Angry Days
Author: Lynne Olson
Publisher: Random House Incorporated
Total Pages: 577
Release: 2013
Genre: History
ISBN: 1400069742

Traces the crisis period leading up to America's entry in World War II, describing the nation's polarized interventionist and isolation factions as represented by the government, in the press and on the streets, in an account that explores the forefront roles of British-supporter President Roosevelt and isolationist Charles Lindbergh. (This book was previously featured in Forecast.)

Waste into Weapons

Waste into Weapons
Author: Peter Thorsheim
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2015-08-31
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1316395502

During the Second World War, the United Kingdom faced severe shortages of essential raw materials. To keep its armaments factories running, the British government enlisted millions of people in efforts to recycle a wide range of materials for use in munitions production. Recycling not only supplied British munitions factories with much-needed raw materials - it also played a key role in the efforts of the British government to maintain the morale of its citizens, to secure billions of dollars in Lend-Lease aid from the United States, and to uncover foreign intelligence. However, Britain's wartime recycling campaign came at a cost: it consumed items that would never have been destroyed under normal circumstances, including significant parts of the nation's cultural heritage. Based on extensive archival research, Peter Thorsheim examines the relationship between armaments production, civil liberties, cultural preservation, and diplomacy, making Waste into Weapons the first in-depth history of twentieth-century recycling in Britain.