Lend-Lease (Public Law 77-11)

Lend-Lease (Public Law 77-11). “An Act Further to Promote the Defense of the United States”. Perhaps inspired by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's homey metaphor of a person lending a neighbor a garden hose to extinguish his burning house then getting it back when the fire is out, the initiative that came to be known as Lend Lease was conceived by FDR, Harry Hopkins, and other advisers to allow the United States, still neutral until Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 and Hitler's declaration of war on 11 December, to provide a broad range of war materials to the United Kingdom, Soviet Union, France, China, and other embattled nations. Proposed as the heading of this tablet implies, to impede the potential threat totalitarian ambition represented to the United States, the act received congressional approval, and President Roosevelt signed it into law on 11 March 1941. He did so not a moment too soon, for Japan had invaded China in November of 1937 and Europe had been at war with Germany for eighteen months. Any doubts Hitler may have nurtured about America's neutrality before the bill became law vanished altogether with its signing, and merchant vessels such as SS Robin Moor, sunk in open seas a few months later by a German U-boat, became fair game. , , In a matter of months, the United States would enter the war as an ally of the nations it was aiding through Lend-Lease, and it would continue to aid them until the end of the war. The scope of that undertaking had no precedent, and expressed in terms of 2010 dollars, the total amounted to some $800 billion. The actual expenditure of $50 billion still staggers the imagination today, especially when considered against what was the increasing likelihood that the United States, with its own need for war materials, would soon join the fight. , , Lend-Lease made a vital contribution to the ability of its beneficiaries to carry on - indeed, to their continued existence as nations - especially when they were in the fight alone. The program's relevance to D-Day is this: without Lend-Lease, the Allies that landed and fought in Normandy and beyond would not have had the tools they needed to succeed on 6 June 1944. Likewise, the Soviet allies engaging the German army on the Eastern front would not have had the tools they needed to keep the enemy from turning west. By D-Day some Allies had become self-sufficient in such things as fighter aircraft, armor, and artillery, but Lend-Lease supplemented their arsenals and provided a wide array of essential logistical supplies, to include thousands of wheeled vehicles. , , President Roosevelt established the Office of Lend-Lease Administration in 1941 and appointed Edward R. Stettinius Jr, to head it until he became Undersecretary of State in September 1943 and Secretary of State in December 1944. Leo Crowley, the founding head of the Foreign Economic Administration, absorbed responsibility for Lend-Lease. , In memory of Edward R. Stettinius Jr. (1900-1949). Given by his family.