Feeding the Bear: American Aid to the Soviet Union, 1941-1945

(Hardback)

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When the German army invaded Russia in June 1941, the United States' Lend-Lease system was already in place to aid friendly powers at war and thereby promote the defense of the US. Enacted so that US could "lend" war material to Britain, the system allowed the transfer of weapons, machinery, agricultural products and other defence items. Although politically and practically difficult, Lend-Lease was also extended to the Soviets, and in "Feeding the Bear", van Tuyll studies the subject of the military impact of Lend-Lease on Russian efforts to repel the Nazi invaders. Van Tuyll uses data from many sources, including some from the substantial Military Mission files, declassified as recently as 1983, to assess the issue of the actual impact of Lend-Lease aid on Soviet victory on the Eastern Front. By synthesizing the many types of technical information, economic data and statistics, van Tuyll is able to formulate conclusions regarding the program's impact. The difficulty in making this assessment was compounded not only by an almost 50-year perspective, but also because Soviet information on its military situation, army or internal economic conditions was scarce and often dismissive of foreign aid. The Germans viewed their failure as due to weather, numbers, Hitler's errors, inadequate intelligence or lack of gasoline and not to Soviet expertise in the immense offensives of 1943-1945. Among the 10 chapters there are considerations of the complicated Soviet view of Lend-Lease, analyses of the technical aspects and explorations not only of the overall impact but also of the effect on the decisive battles such as Stalingrad and Berlin. The introduction provides a grounding in the background of the Lend-Lease program and surveys other treatments of the subject. The appendix contains over 45 tables that provide data on every aspect of Lend-Lease, including exports by region, value of US shipments to the Soviet Union, deliveries of food, clothing and medicine, and estimated Soviet production capacity, among others.

Reviews

Works concerning US aid to the Soviet Union during WW II have tended to focus more on its diplomatic repercussions rather than on its impact on the battlefield. For example, George Herring's Aid to Russia 1941-1946; Strategy Diplomacy and the Origins of the Cold War, as its subtitle implies, dealt with the aid question primarily in terms of its effect on events leading up to 1947. Van Tuyll has produced a well-written monograph attempting to measure American aid as it influenced military events. Although he claims that US aid certainly guaranteed an earlier Soviet triumph over Germany, it was not decisive in bringing about victory. This he credits to the Soviet production effort, although he concedes that Allied shipments of precious commodities such as aviation fuel and equipment such as aircraft and trucks helped fill important gaps in Russia's war effort. He concludes, The Soviet Union most likely would have survived without Lend Lease . . . but the war would have been much longer, the alliance less firm and the victory less complete.' A good contribution to the literature. Recommended to any student of the history of WW II.-Choice
"Works concerning US aid to the Soviet Union during WW II have tended to focus more on its diplomatic repercussions rather than on its impact on the battlefield. For example, George Herring's Aid to Russia 1941-1946; Strategy Diplomacy and the Origins of the Cold War, as its subtitle implies, dealt with the aid question primarily in terms of its effect on events leading up to 1947. Van Tuyll has produced a well-written monograph attempting to measure American aid as it influenced military events. Although he claims that US aid certainly guaranteed an earlier Soviet triumph over Germany, it was not decisive in bringing about victory. This he credits to the Soviet production effort, although he concedes that Allied shipments of precious commodities such as aviation fuel and equipment such as aircraft and trucks helped fill important gaps in Russia's war effort. He concludes, The Soviet Union most likely would have survived without Lend Lease . . . but the war would have been much longer, the alliance less firm and the victory less complete.' A good contribution to the literature. Recommended to any student of the history of WW II."-Choice

Author Bio

HUBERT P. VAN TUYLL is Associate Professor of History at Union College, Barbourville, Kentucky. He has published articles in the Social Science Perspectives Journal.