Lend-Lease+Act

courtesy of http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1600.html  Early in [|World War II] the United States devised a plan, dubbed Lend-Lease, to assist the nations that were then fighting the Axis powers (Germany, Japan and Italy). The Lend-Lease Act was passed by Congress on March 11, 1941. It provided that the [|president] could ship weapons, food, or equipment to any country whose struggle against the Axis assisted U.S. defense. By retooling U.S. industrial output to the demands of war, Lend-Lease formally eliminated any semblance of neutrality. President [|__Franklin D.__ __Roosevelt__] __s__ummarized the Lend-Lease Act as "helping to put out the fire in your neighbor's house //before// your own house caught fire and burned down." In effect, it turned the U.S. into an "arsenal of democracy" following the eruption of hostilities. At the outset, $7 billion worth of American matérial was shipped to Great Britain, China, Russia, Brazil and eventually many other countries. The expenditure grew to $50 billion by 1945. Each of those nations was assumed to be fighting not only in its own defense, but in that of the United States as well.* By permitting the president to ship war equipment and supplies to a besieged Britain, without payback as stipulated by the 1939 Neutrality Act, Lend-Lease empowered the British to resist the German onslaught until [|Pearl Harbor] spurred America into the conflict. In addition, it avoided the prickly issues of post-World War I __[|war debts].__  Lend-lease advanced the United States to the edge of war. Such Isolationists as Republican senator Robert Taft spoke against it. The bill would "...give the president power to carry on a kind of undeclared war all over the world, in which America would do everything except actually put soldiers in the frontline trenches where the fighting is," he correctly observed. Following World War II, no decision was arrived at for the return of Lend-Lease goods by recipient nations. Some countries, notably Great Britain, had previously offset part of their indebtedness by providing U.S. GIs with goods and services. Many believed that calling for the return of lent goods would hurt stateside manufacturers economically. Some authorities maintained that all nations fighting the Axis powers had given their all to vanquishing the enemy. They argued that American Lend-Lease contributions were offset by the other Allies' sacrifices.