Lend-Lease Scheme
The establishment of Lend-Lease was a political act of great generosity and imagination, skilfully combining altruism with national self-interest. Roosevelt had to persuade an American public and Congress to abandon their traditional isolationist attitude to European political troubles and accept the national need to support the Allies against the Axis. Some historians have argued that the scheme acted as an instrument of American power, imposing conditions which disabled Britain as a postwar commercial competitor, and preparing the ground for United States hegemony. It was certain that the United States would want some sort of return for her generosity, and the economic pressures put on Britain only reflected historical reality in the changing fortunes of the two countries. Aid to the USSR was also plentiful, despite US anti-communist sentiments, but came to an end as the Cold War became inevitable. The whole scheme was the product of the idealistic streak in the American identity, which has continued to color US foreign policy since 1945.
Roosevelt’s sentiments were strongly pro-Ally, even while his political instincts remained American. He clearly hated the Nazi regime, and in 1940 a Gallup poll indicated that public feeling was very much with him. The poll “revealed that 84 per cent of the people hoped for an Allied victory; 14 per cent had no opinion; only 2 per cent were willing to declare they wanted a Nazi triumph” (Hamby, 30). Ed Murrow’s broadcasts from London, with the thud of bombs and explosion of anti-aircraft fire in the background, gave the American public an immediate impression of the European conflict, and Michael Carew (2002) has argued for the importance of the role of Time/Life magazines in swaying opinion in support of Roosevelt’s 1941 decision to aid the Allies. While people were suspicious of government propaganda, and the press were generally hostile to Roosevelt and his third candidacy in 1940, journalists in Time/Life convincingly described the magnitude of the Allied defeats in 1940 to a mass audience, and prepared the ground for Roosevelt’s destroyer deal with the British. “This unprecedented, and probably unconstitutional, transfer was accomplished six weeks… after perfervid advocacy in all the Time/Life magazines had generated broad public support for the naval transfer” (Carew, 2002, 5).
By the end of 1940 British dollar reserves were nearing exhaustion, and Roosevelt felt compelled to act, and to present quite radical action in a manner which would be acceptable to the American people. His argument famously used the image of the hosepipe. If your neighbor’s house was on fire you would willingly lend him your hosepipe to put the fire out. You would not insist on him paying you for the hosepipe at that moment, because you would know that he would return it later. As Patrick Renshaw (2004) says:
The difference was that when the war was over arms lent would either be destroyed or obsolete. That Congress accepted such transparent argument was a sign of changed priorities. Lend-Lease alone cost more than the entire US defence budget [of 1940]. (Renshaw, 166).
In a Fireside Chat two weeks later, Roosevelt spoke of the threat to America in a Nazi victory, claiming that the best way to keep American soldiers out of the war was for the United States to become “the great arsenal of the democracies”. In Congress in January 1941 he spoke of the Four Freedoms that America stood for; freedom of expression, religious freedom, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. All the time there was a mixture of idealism and practicality. There can be no doubt of Roosevelt’s moral conviction here. The Lend-Lease plan, says Dallek, “was strictly the product of Roosevelt’s fertile political imagination” (Dallek, 255). It was a decision of real political maturity because it combined the moral notion of American resistance to the dark forces of the world with the practical aim of defending the homeland. The bill to set up Lend-Lease was designated “H.R.1776” and entitled “An Act To Further Promote the Defense of the United States, and for Other Purposes”. It gave the President complete freedom to supply war and other materials to any ally he felt was important to the defense of the United States.
Traditional neutrality was by-passed, but public support was strong. In early 1941 opinion polls showed 60 to 70 per cent support for the President’s policy and the “proposition that it was more important to help England than to stay out of the war” (Hamby, 40). After the Germans attacked Russia in June 1941, even a fervent ant-communist like Churchill could insist that “Any man or state who fights on against Nazism will have our aid”, and Roosevelt understood the importance to Britain and the United States of assisting the Russians, despite American horror of communism. Moving cautiously, he nevertheless announced aid to the Soviets, setting aside the Neutrality Acts, completing a Lend-Lease plan by November 1941.
Although public support was ensured, the voices of doubt, and of outright hostility, were manifold. The whole issue sparked debate, said Roosevelt, “in every newspaper, on every wavelength – over every cracker barrel in all the land” (Herring, 4). Senator Arthur Vandenberg said “We have torn up 150 years of traditional American foreign policy. We have tossed Washington’s Farewell Address in the discard” (Herring, 5). The isolationists were a numerous and oddly heterogeneous group. Ted Morgan (1985) says
“You would have to knock a lot of people down if you wanted to get at the isolationists, for they were indeed a formidable array, stretching in political coloration form extreme right to extreme left, across the board.” (Morgan, 580).
They included German- and Italian-Americans, most Irish-Americans (who hated the British), socialists (who saw the war as a capitalist struggle), midwestern conservatives who hated Roosevelt anyway, and, of course, Charles Lindbergh. Roosevelt continued to press the argument that the policy was primarily in the American interest. When Emory S. Land, the chairman of the US Maritime Commission wrote to Roosevelt wondering whether the British would grab everything, and that we might “find the White House en route to England, with the Washington Monument as a steering oar”, the President’s reply was characteristic:
Which would you rather do, give away the White House and the Washington Monument and save civilization including American independence and the democratic system or have the White House and the Washington Monument taken over by people under a different regime? Think it over. (Morgan, 380).
Similarly Charles A Beard responded to a senator who was opposed to Lend-Lease with the plea to “preserve one stronghold of order and sanity against the gates of hell” (Schulzinger, 1984, p.173). The alternative, Roosevelt argued, was to stay aloof, “submit tamely to an axis victory, and wait our turn to be the object of attack in another war later on” (Dallek, 256). Dallek quotes Isaiah Berlin, who argued that Roosevelt’s actions, and the moral standing that they represented, have “no parallel… Mr Roosevelt’s example strengthened democracy everywhere” (Dallek, 530), and he claims that the President’s deep understanding of the significance of events abroad and his success in overcoming American reluctance to abandon neutrality “were among the great presidential achievements of [the twentieth century]” (ibid.)
There was never any secret of American self-interest in the Lend-Lease scheme. Churchill himself wrote
What we had lent or leased to us was because our continued resistance to the Hitler tyranny was deemed to be of vital interest to the great Republic. According to President Roosevelt, the defence of the United States and not dollars was henceforth to determine where American weapons were to go. (Churchill, 1949, p.503).
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