In 1941, much of the world was engaged in World War II (1939–45).
In the United States, there was a lot of pressure on President Franklin
D. Roosevelt (1882–1945; served 1933–45) to avoid involvement:
World War I (1914–18) was still fresh in the memories of the citizens,
and few were willing to go through the horrors of war again.
In 1934, the U.S. Congress had passed the Johnson Debt-Default
Act, which required nations at war to pay cash for any goods purchased
in the United States. During World War II, Great Britain and China
were both struggling to get the cash needed to purchase supplies for their
forces. By 1940, Roosevelt was determined to find a way to provide assistance to the Allies without risking public outrage or direct U.S. involvement in the war. His answer was the Lend-Lease program.
The Lend-Lease Act gave the president power to sell, transfer, lend,
or lease supplies to nations whose defense was vital to U.S. interests.
President Roosevelt explained the act by comparing it to lending a garden hose to a neighbor to enable him to extinguish a house fire. The
public supported this concept, and Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act
in March 1941.
Under the program, the United States provided economic and military aid by lending food, tanks, airplanes, weapons, and raw materials to
Allied countries. Repayment for this aid was to be decided by the president. In the end, many of the debts were forgiven without being paid.
After the United States entered the war, Allied nations gave U.S. troops
abroad about $8 billion in aid. After the war, President Harry S. Truman
(1884–1972; served 1945–53) considered the military efforts of the
recipients as fair trade for the lend-lease assistance they had received.
The Lend-Lease program ended in 1945. Over the course of the
program’s four-year existence, the United States provided more than
forty countries with aid. Most of it went to Great Britain, the Soviet
Union, and China. By the end of the war, the United States had given
more than $49 billion in aid to support the Allied efforts through the Lend-Lease program.