Lend-Lease Act

Context

In the months and years after the Great War of 1914–1918, now called World War I, many Americans were wary of commitments that might involve them in another expensive and bloody conflict. Immediately after the war, Congress rejected President Woodrow Wilson's efforts to have the United States join the new League of Nations. By the 1930s, during the Great Depression, isolationist and pacifist sentiment was stronger than ever. In 1935 Congress passed the first in a series of neutrality acts, which prohibited the country from supplying foreign nations at war. Meanwhile, a prominent Senate committee held hearings to determine whether arms contractors had collected excessive profits or improperly influenced the country's entry into World War I. In late 1939, after the beginning of World War II in Asia and Europe, public opinion polls found that a significant majority of Americans believed it had been a mistake to enter World War I. At this point only a tiny minority of Americans said they wanted to join France and Britain in going to war against Adolf Hitler's Germany.

As authoritarian regimes in Germany and Japan began to conquer their neighbors, however, Americans and their leaders became less comfortable with neutrality. In November 1939 Congress revised the Neutrality Act to allow “cash and carry” arms sales. This meant that foreign nations at war could now buy weapons in the United States, but only if they paid for them in cash and transported them in their own ships. Although it technically preserved American neutrality, this policy promised to benefit Britain and France, which had more shipping capacity and cash than their enemies. Then, in the spring and summer of 1940, there were stunning new developments in Europe. In April, Germany invaded Denmark. France fell in June. In the late summer and fall British citieswere bombed by German planes. Thanks to a nonaggression pact signed in August 1939 between Hitler and the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, Germany seemed free to concentrate its energies on defeating Britain. Americans were now faced with the possibility that they might soon be left alone to deal with a powerful military alliance consisting of Germany, Italy, and Japan.

By the autumn of 1940 President Roosevelt was leading the country closer to fighting an indirect war against Germany by aiding its enemies. As Britain prepared for a possible invasion by German forces, the new prime minister Winston Churchill appealed to a sympathetic Roosevelt for more help. In his first letter to Roosevelt as prime minister, dated May 15, 1940, Churchill asked for forty or fifty American destroyers from World War I as well as aircraft and other munitions. In the same letter, Churchill suggested that the Americans should prepare for a day when Britain would not be able to pay for such supplies. The prime minister audaciously wrote, “We shall go on paying dollars as long as we can but I should like to feel reasonably sure that when we can pay no more,you will give us the stuff all the same” (Kimball, 1969, p. 43). Churchill soon got his fifty destroyers. In an agreement signed on September 2, 1940, the old American ships were exchanged for ninety-nine-year leases of land in the Caribbean, suitable for the construction of new U.S. military bases. On September 14 Congress passed the Selective Service Act, the first peacetime draft law in American history. On September 27 Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, solidifying a military alliance between the so-called Axis forces. As Japan made preparations to attack the United States, American ships were already participating, without public knowledge, in the naval war in the Atlantic.

In December 1940, just after he was elected to an unprecedented third term as president, Roosevelt introduced the concept of lend-lease to the American public. As usual, Roosevelt's actions were influenced by Churchill, who in a long letter of December 7 had warned, “The moment approaches when we shall no longer be able to pay cash for shipping and other supplies” (Kennedy, p. 468). In a press conference on December 17, Roosevelt likened the country's situation to that of a homeowner whose neighbor's house was on fire. The president explained that in such a situation, simple self-interest dictated that one would quickly lend the neighbor a hose without demanding cash on the spot. Twelve days later, in one of his so-called fireside chats (nationally broadcast radio addresses to the American people), Roosevelt made clear that he intended to support Britain by allowing it to tap the vast industrial capacity of the United States. Roosevelt declared, “We must be the great arsenal of democracy” (On the “Arsenal of Democracy”).

Less than a week after Roosevelt's “Arsenal of Democracy” fireside chat of December 29, 1940, Treasury Department lawyers started to draft the bill that would become the Lend-Lease Act. Congressional hearings on the bill began on January 10, 1941. Over the next two months, the spirited debates over the lend-lease idea in Congress were followed closely by the press, the American public, and many interested parties abroad. In the hearings, several members of Roosevelt's cabinet defended the bill; lend-lease was attacked by such well-known public figures as the aviator Charles A. Lindbergh and the socialist and pacifist Norman Thomas. Congressional opponents of the bill criticized it as a dangerous step toward full participation in a costly war and anunwise grant of power to President Roosevelt. But these critics failed to win over the public, a majority of which—according to public opinion polls—supported the bill. As Congress debated the bill, Churchill used a radio address to imply that lend-lease would allow the United States to avoid war. On February 9, the prime minister promised, “Give us the tools and we will finish the job” (Kimball, 1969, p. 179). In early March the bill easily passed Congress; the vote was 62 to 33 in the Senate and 317 to 71 in the House. On March 11, the same day as the House vote, a pleased President Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Act.