Lend-Lease Act

The depressing and disillusioning outcome of World War I, the isolationism of the 1920s, and the struggle of overcoming the worldwide economic depression all led to American resistance to involvement in the Second World War. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president who helped lead Americans out of the Great Depression, however, disagreed with Congress and the general public and sought to revise previously enacted neutrality legislation by instead allowing cash-and-carry trade with belligerents. As German forces continued beating down on the Allies, Roosevelt gained further ground on the road toward war with such initiatives as the policy of allowing all-out aid to the Allies and the Destroyer Deal. Eventually, the public came to agree with the interventionists--the opponents of isolationists who wanted to help the Allies so as to protect American security. This change of opinion spurred Roosevelt to attempt to truly make American the "arsenal of democracy."

Roosevelt proposed this action January 1941. The act delineated that the United States would lend and lease "defense article[s]" to the "government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States." This plan also included an appropriation of $7 billion dollars, effectively eliminating any financial obstacles Great Britain might have faced in accessing the American arsenal. After this piece of legislation, America was just short of entering the war themselves, and the Allies would have to wait until later that year--after the bombing of Pearl Harbor--to receive assistance in combat from the United States.

Divine, Robert A., T. H. Breen, George M. Fredrickson, and R. Hal Williams. America Past and Present. Revised Sixth Edition, AP* Edition . Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc., 2003. 798-9. Print.

Lend Lease Bill, dated January 10, 1941. Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, HR 77A-D13, Record Group 233, National Archives.

"Total Lend-Lease Aid to April 30, 1943." Web. 27 Apr 2011. <http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/LL-AllForOne/img/LL-AllForOne-p5.jpg>.