Saturday 19 April 2014

Lend-Lease for Two

Here are some papers of interest, exchanged between Roosevelt and Churchill just as German tanks were rolling into the USSR. Thankfully, they write in English, so I don't even have to do anything!

NARA 194907

NARA 194988

NARA 194895

NARA 194794

NARA 194891


3 comments:

  1. "former naval person" - wow! so riddle, much mystery, many enigma!

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  2. Yeah, I really don't get why are they refering to each other in code while divulging strategic information.

    But man that steep increase in production. I don't know how that compares to ther nations in gross terms but the ramp up is impressive. And all this while providing all of them with trucks and other materiel.

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    1. The US had so much industrial muscle it's not even funny. They shipped metric crapload of everything conceivable as Lend-Lease, armed any amount of Free Whatever troops (if often with older kit from reserve stocks), eventually sustained no fewer than four separate war theaters across two different oceans, on the side carried through with at least two ruinously expensive bleeding-edge "superweapon" programs (notably the Manhattan Project and the B-29)... and IIRC never actually had to put the national economy onto actual war footing to do all that.

      Economies of scale indeed.

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