Comment by brickfaced

4 days ago

The USSR never did pay us back for the massive, unprecedented, war-winning aid we delivered to them under Lend-Lease. Half a million trucks, thousands of tanks, tens of thousands of airplanes, millions of tons of food. And what did we get out of it? An implacable evil empire that sat like a boot on the neck of Eastern Europe for another 50 years after our "victory."

2 comments

brickfaced

defrost 4 days ago

  A total of $50.1 billion (equivalent to $672 billion in 2023 when accounting for inflation) worth of supplies was shipped, or 17% of the total war expenditures of the U.S.

  In all, $31.4 billion went to the United Kingdom, $11.3 billion to the Soviet Union, $3.2 billion to France, $1.6 billion to China, and the remaining $2.6 billion to other Allies.

  Material delivered under the act was supplied at no cost, to be used until returned or destroyed.

  In practice, most equipment was destroyed, although some hardware (such as ships) was returned after the war.

  Supplies that arrived after the termination date were sold to the United Kingdom at a large discount for £1.075 billion, using long-term loans from the United States, which were finally repaid in 2006.

  Similarly, the Soviet Union repaid $722 million in 1971, with the remainder of the debt written off.

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease

lostlogin 4 days ago

This is all correct. It’s also hard to believe that any other country could have sustained the casualties the USSR took and it saved lives for the other allies by diverting troops to the Eastern Front. The US had nearly 500k deaths, the USSR (post war borders) had something like 26 million.

Both sides needed each other. From a US perspective, trading money for lives likely seemed worth it.

The USSR was an objectively terrible regime, and most the Russian governments that have followed on from it have been too. Underestimating the deaths Russian leadership is willing to tolerate has proven unwise a few too many times.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties