Lend-Lease Act

Questions for Further Study

• 1. When the lend-lease bill was being debated in early 1941, opponents criticized it for granting vast, excessive powers to the president. To what extent were these criticisms reasonable? As you carefully read the text of the final act, consider any limits or counterbalances to presidential authority it may offer as well as the powers it gives the chief executive.
• 2. On December 7, 1941, nearly nine months after the passage of the Lend-Lease Act, the attack by Japanese forces at Pearl Harbor led the United States to declare war and fully enter the conflict. How does our knowledge of Pearl Harbor and other important subsequent developments make our understanding of the text different from the understanding of those who read it in March 1941?
• 3. The act left it up to the president to decide what kind of repayment to ask of Lend-Lease recipients. We know that the United States received $6 billion in reverse Lend-Lease from the British Empire, including several hundreds of millions of dollars in monetary payments and significant postwar trade concessions, among other things. The United States also enjoyed a variety of benefits from the winning of a war in which much of the fighting was done by Soviet and British forces. What, if anything, should the United States have asked for in return for the $50 billion worth of shipments it made under the act?