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Precision Software Appli…tions Silver Collection 1
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Precision Software Applications Silver Collection Volume One (PSM) (1993).iso
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T2MOLOT.DOC
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1992-10-06
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73 lines
Wartime Alliance
Despite deep-seated mistrust and hostility between the
Soviet Union and the Western democracies, Nazi Germany's invasion
of the Soviet Union in June 1941 created an instant alliance
between the Soviets and the two greatest powers in what the
Soviet leaders had long called the "imperialist camp": Britain
and the United States. Three months after the invasion, the
United States extended assistance to the Soviet Union through its
Lend-Lease Act of March 1941. Before September 1941, trade
between the United States and the Soviet Union had been conducted
primarily through the Soviet Buying Commission in the United
States.
Lend-Lease was the most visible sign of wartime cooperation
between the United States and the Soviet Union. About $11
billion in war matriel was sent to the Soviet Union under that
program. Additional assistance came from U.S. Russian War Relief
(a private, nonprofit organization) and the Red Cross. About
seventy percent of the aid reached the Soviet Union via the
Persian Gulf through Iran; the remainder went across the Pacific
to Vladivostok and across the North Atlantic to Murmansk. Lend-
Lease to the Soviet Union officially ended in September 1945.
Joseph Stalin never revealed to his own people the full
contributions of Lend-Lease to their country's survival, but he
referred to the program at the 1945 Yalta Conference saying,
"Lend-Lease is one of Franklin Roosevelt's most remarkable and
vital achievements in the formation of the anti-Hitler alliance."
Lend-Lease matriel was welcomed by the Soviet Union, and
President Roosevelt attached the highest priority to using it to
keep the Soviet Union in the war against Germany. Nevertheless,
the program did not prevent friction from developing between the
Soviet Union and the other members of the anti-Hitler alliance.
The Soviet Union was annoyed at what seemed to it to be a long
delay by the allies in opening a "second front" of the Allied
offensive against Germany. As the war in the east turned in
favor of the Soviet Union, and despite the successful Allied
landings in Normandy in 1944, the earlier friction intensified
over irreconcilable differences about postwar aims within the
anti-Axis coalition. Lend-Lease helped the Soviet Union push the
Germans out of its territory and Eastern Europe, thus
accelerating the end of the war. With Stalin's takeover of
Eastern Europe, the wartime alliance ended, and the Cold War
began.
[Overwritten, top of document:]
The information is fairly good
(a rarity for the People's Commissariat
of Foreign Affairs!)
Must distribute to those to whom
we send cipherings.
V. Molotov 23 Sept. SECRET
item no. 2
September 1942
TO CHAIRMAN OF THE STATE COMMITTEE OF DEFENSE
Comrade J. V. Stalin
TO PEOPLE'S COMMISSAR OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Comrade V. M. Molotov
I am sending you a detailed testimonial of Wendell Wilkie. I
direct your attention to the demagogic announcement by Wilkie on 23
August, reported by the newspapers before his U.S. departure.
Wilkie deliberately demonstrates his anti-fascism because of his
German background and fears that he will be accused of insufficient
American patriotism. All of his pro-Soviet declarations carry a
clear campaign message, since he hopes to ride a wave of sympathy
towards the Soviet Union to the presidential elections in 1944.
...