Name: WW2: The Resource War - Lend-Lease - Extra History - #2（WW2: The Resource War - Lend-Lease - Extra History - #2）
Uploaded: 2022-06-25T11:04:16.000Z
Duration: 7 min 14 s
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World War II is entering its third year, France has collapsed, and Great Britain is barely holding on.

A last bulwark of democracy against the tide of fascism.

Dictatorship rules Europe, and the sleeping giant of the United States has yet to wake.

With the collapse of France in 1940, the situation in Europe becomes clear.

Without resources from the U.S, all resistance to the Nazi military machine would collapse.

No matter how bravely the small island nation of Britain tried to hold out.

But America was opposed to war. In fact it goes further.

America was opposed to any intervention at all.

In the 1930s, the U.S had passed the Neutrality Act.

Which not only established that it wasn't going to get involved with foreign wars,

But went further, with the prevailing American isolationism of the time,

and declared that America wasn't going to sell arms  to nations at war.

President Roosevelt saw the threat that Nazi Germany posed,

and desperately wanted to find ways to support the British war effort.

But the Neutrality Act kept his hands tied.

When Czechoslovakia fell, he lobbied Congress to renew an old prevision in the Neutrality Act,

Finally, on November 5th, 1939, Cash and Carry was renewed.

But, Cash and Carry was a limited provision.

It allowed for the sale of material to Britain and France, but only if they paid in cash for the material,

and transported it all back to Europe themselves.

At first, this worked. But as the years dragged on, and France fell,

Britain found itself hemorrhaging its reserves.

The Battle of Britain, and the campaigning in North Africa had been bleeding it dry.

There simply was no more cash in the U.K.

And even the British Fleet was being stretched thin.

In 1940, Roosevelt established a policy allowing the trade of destroyers to the British,

in exchange for bases in British colonies.

This policy was definitely pushing the limits of the Neutrality Act,

But, technically, it wasn't violating the terms of Cash and Carry.

Because the British were trading for the ships rather than buying them,

and, hey, ships do a pretty good job of transporting themselves.

This deal really shows the desperation of the situation though.

Roosevelt risked a potentially illegal action, because everyone:

His staff, and even much of the British staff, saw the capitulation of the British Empire as inevitable.

In 1940, everyone thought Britain was on the ropes,

And so, as a last "Hail Mary", this destroyers-for-bases deal put U.S bases on British colonies,

so that they wouldn't simply fall into Nazi hands.

But, fortunately, the Battle of Britain was won,

And now, the U.S had to enter into more long term thinking.

This is one of the critical turning points in the second World War.

It's right up there with the German invasion of the Soviet Union,

and the United States finally deciding to fully commit to war.

the U.K almost certainly would have fallen.

Fascists would gain control over all of Europe,

and even if the U.S later decided to enter the war,

they'd have no jumping-off point for a European Campaign.

meant that the complete industrial power of the U.S

would be committed to combating the Nazi War Machine.

With Lend-Lease, the U.S had finally picked a side.

Y'see, the idea behind Lend-Lease was simple.

The U.S would give its strategic partners-

And I say "strategic partners" because they're not Allies yet-

massive amounts of war material for the duration of the war.

After which, these "strategic partners" were supposed to give that material back.

not a lot of it tends to come back in the same condition you lent it out in.

This was essentially the largest donation of war material in the history of mankind.

Heck, the U.S even shipped 2000 locomotives and 11,000 train cars

over to the USSR to bolster their rail infrastructure.

This was a huge portion of the U.S economy

going to cover the material cost of the war.

While other nations were carrying the bulk of the human cost.

And the sheer size of this effort is indescribable.

It helped to drag the U.S out of the Great Depression,

It meant sending millions of tons overseas,

shipping on a scale heretofore unimaginable during times of war.

than the entire world would have been able to produce annually

this decision wasn't as straightforward as we sometimes like to think of it.

it's easy to see the results of this Herculean task

and how fully America threw herself into the effort,

and just assume that the entire nation was unified behind this cause.

But democracies are, by design, messy things,

voting in the U.S Congress was split almost exactly down party lines.

To be the engine of war for the anti-fascist world.