What was Lend/Lease?
The Lend-lease Act of March 11, 1941 permitted the President of the United States to “sell, transfer title to, exchange, lease, lend, or otherwise dispose of, to any such government [whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States] any defense article”. It thus extended Cash and Carry and obliterated any sense of neutrality. The value of the items to be lent were not to exceed $1,300,000,000 in total. US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt approved US$1 billion in Lend-lease aid to the Soviet Union on October 30, 1941. The act is generally known as lend-lease in the US but lease-lend in the UK. In fact neither term appears in the true title of the act, which is “Further to promote the defense of the United States, and for other purposes.
