- World War II began in 1938. Although the U.S. remained officially neutral until it entered the war after the Pearl Harbor attack, Roosevelt sought a way to help the Allies and other nations to resist the Axis powers. The Lend-Lease Act was passed only after two months of contentious debate in both houses of Congress. The debate centered on two points of contention -- whether the act gave the president too much power and whether it would entangle the U.S. in WWII.
- The Lend-Lease Act allowed the president to provide billions of dollars in assistance to any nation in the world he deemed to be under direct or indirect threat from the Axis powers. By 1945, the U.S. had given more than $50 billion in aid to Britain, China, Russia, Brazil and other nations. This aid included both military supplies and other items such as food. In 1940, for example, the U.S. provided Britain with 50 warships in exchange for long-term leases on British military bases in the Caribbean and Newfoundland.
- The Lend-Lease Act essentially ended U.S. neutrality in WWII, although the U.S. did not declare war on Germany and Japan for several more months. Its major achievement was allowing Britain to resist Germany until the U.S. entered the war, preserving an island base from which to launch the D-Day invasion in 1944. Domestically, it set a precedent that greatly expanded the power of the president to run foreign affairs, a trend that continued until Congress passed the War Powers Resolution in 1973.
- Initially, Congress contemplated that recipients of U.S. aid would return the lend-lease items after the war. Britain was the major recipient, and after the war the government expressed a desire to keep some of the items provided, particularly warships. The U.S. responded by selling these items to Britain at a 90 percent discount and allowing repayment over a period of decades. The last lend-lease repayment was made by Britain in 2006.
Background
Content
Significance
Repayment
SHARE
