Official U.S. policy on the war in Europe had reached a turning point in late 1940, when Churchill wrote of the perilous situation his country faced and its need for urgent assistance.90 FDR responded by introducing the Lend-Lease program to get around the continuing isolationist sentiment in the country, and on January 10, 1941, Congress began deliberations on the bill. It would grant an interest-free loan for purchase of goods made in the United States. In anticipation, the president sent Harry Hopkins and Wendell Willkie to London to assist Churchill in crafting an acceptance speech assuring Americans they would not be dragged into European problems. That point was aptly conveyed by the prime minister’s gem of a phrase: “Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.” In spite of some congressional opposition, the legislation passed, and Roosevelt signed it on March 11.91
Shortly thereafter Harry Hopkins, FDR’s emissary and confidant, flew to London for a meeting with Churchill. FDR also needed to know whether the Soviets could hold out, and so on July 27 Hopkins traveled on to Moscow, where he was impressed, especially when Stalin said they would be taking the fight to the Germans in the spring. He was a clever actor and was bluffing; in reality he was still looking for ways to appease Hitler. Hopkins was not in Moscow long enough to ascertain how undecided things really were, but Stalin was encouraged to hear of Roosevelt’s support and then typically made exaggerated demands for arms and supplies.92 Hopkins was well regarded in the Kremlin, so much so that some in the United States thought he was a Soviet spy, a groundless suspicion.93
Once he was assured by what he heard, he left and, though ill, joined Churchill aboard the Prince of Wales for the transatlantic voyage. They met up with FDR in scenic Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. While the prime minister wanted Roosevelt to declare war on Germany, given the American people’s isolationist mood, that was out of the question. The two sent a message to Stalin offering “the very maximum of supplies that you most urgently need” and proposed a strategy meeting to be held in Moscow in the near future.94 Stalin would wait, however, until the situation on the battlefront was more to his liking before he showed interest in any such discussions.
One product of the meeting in Newfoundland was the Atlantic Charter, issued on August 14. It represented Allied war aims and the principles of a postwar settlement. The American and British leaders said they sought no territorial aggrandizement, nor any changes that “did not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned.” They respected “the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live” and sought to return self-government to those who had been deprived of it. They favored the economic freedoms, including freedom of the seas. Also mentioned were hopes for an enduring peace and security after the destruction of “Nazi tyranny.”95 On September 24, representatives of the Soviet Union, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, and the Free French signed the charter at a meeting in London. It would be mentioned often in the disputes that arose later.96
In spite of the offers of Western assistance, Stalin desperately tried to make peace with Germany, already in July and again in October, just as Lenin had done in 1918. Our evidence for these peace feelers is fragmentary; those involved were threatened with death if they ever leaked a word. In any event, nothing came of Stalin’s efforts, serious or otherwise, because Hitler was convinced that complete victory was only moments away.97
In September, Stalin admitted something of the precarious situation to Roosevelt’s envoy Averell Harriman and to Churchill’s representative Lord Beaverbrook when they visited. The dictator taunted Beaverbrook because Britain had not opened a second front, an action that was then completely out of the question. At one stage he said the paucity of supplies they were sending “proved” they wanted his country defeated. With the talks about to fail, Stalin turned on the charm, but to frighten his guests he conceded that Hitler could have taken Moscow and that if he had done so, it “would have destroyed the nerve center of the nation.” In fact, the staffs at the American and British embassies thought the talks were bound to break down. Harriman and Beaverbrook kept these doubters at arm’s length while in Moscow because Roosevelt and Churchill had already decided that at all costs they had to support the Soviet Union. On October 1, when they signed the Moscow Protocol, which outlined the aid to come from the United States and Great Britain, Stalin gushed out his gratitude.98
The history of distrust between the United States and USSR went back to 1917, and we have no need to review that here. What changed the relationship was Hitler (appointed in January 1933), together with the rise of Japan. FDR’s modest conditions for granting formal recognition of the Soviet Union had been that Moscow provide legal and religious protections to Americans in the USSR and that it cease directing the American Communist Party. On November 17, 1933, Soviet representative Maxim Litvinov signed documents in Washington that restored diplomatic relations. The immediate effects were minimal, and even trade between the two countries stagnated in the years that followed.99
Nevertheless, the president decided, long before America entered the war, that all possible assistance should be given to the enemies of Nazism. Once Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, Roosevelt prepared more earnestly. Not a month later, on July 9, he instructed that a contingency plan be drawn up.
The “Victory Program” established strategic goals and laid down how they would be attained. It would take two full years to mobilize, train, and equip sufficient armed forces for war against Germany and possibly also Japan. The program called for 215 divisions (or 8.7 million men) at a cost of $150 billion. The underlying assumption was that it would be necessary to mobilize such a large force because the Soviet Union would likely be knocked out of the war before very long. The United States hoped that generous aid would keep it in the fight, and it was a pleasant surprise when the Red Army showed its mettle at Stalingrad and won there in early 1943. Although the U.S. soon scaled back the number of troops it would need to call up for service from 215 divisions to 90, the eventual cost of the war would escalate to nearly $300 billion.
Roosevelt had extended Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union on October 1, 1941. Under that federal program, the Allied nations were provided with war matériel and granted loans to pay for it at favorable rates. In making the extension, the president faced opposition from Secretary of War Henry Stimson and U.S. Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall. Both despised the Soviet system, but FDR was right to go against their advice.100
On October 3 and again on November 4, Stalin wrote the president to express his “heartfelt gratitude” for the interest-free loan and the promise of war matériel. A large sum for those times, one billion dollars, was to be given under the Lend-Lease program.101 Although the supplies barely trickled through before year’s end, in those first months of the war “even bare promises were important” and provided a badly needed morale booster.102 The economic aid itself arrived mainly after January 1943 and contributed both to the shoring up of the Soviet home front and to the great counteroffensives the Red Army mounted in the second part of the war.103 Soviet leaders were aware that their people, not Americans, would have to do most of the dying to win the war. Nikita Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs that the United States was “using our hands and letting us shed our blood to fight Nazi Germany. They paid us so that we could keep fighting; they paid us with weapons and other matériel.”104