Lend-Lease

The legal basis for American wartime supplies

From March 1941

Lend-Lease was a US legal mechanism for supplying countries whose defence was considered vital to the defence of the United States. Congress passed the act on 11 March 1941. It developed wartime cooperation before American entry that December.

What the act allowed

The president could authorise defence articles to be manufactured or procured for selected countries, and to be sold, transferred, exchanged, leased or lent. The name therefore does not mean that every item was literally a loan of weapons. The legislation also covered components, materials and other defence commodities.

Assistance and neutrality

Roosevelt proposed the bill in January 1941. After debate in Congress, the act allowed supplies for Britain while the United States remained officially neutral. Distinguishing direct participation in fighting from assistance to another country is essential to understanding 1941.

The Soviet Union as a recipient

After the German invasion and Hopkins’s talks in Moscow, supplies also began moving to the Soviet Union; the first were on their way by the end of October 1941. Assistance supplemented recipients’ military efforts. It did not establish agreement between their political systems or replace every other resource and form of aid.

Explore further

• Moscow

  Negotiations over aid in 1941.

• Allied strategy

  Material assistance within the wider Allied cooperation.