НАУЧНО-ПРАКТИЧЕСКАЯ КОНФЕРЕНЦИЯ ПРОЕКТНЫХ РАБОТ
ШКОЛ ФРУНЗЕНСКОГО РАЙОНА
Филологическая секция
(Иностранные языки)
«The big three. United we win»
Выполнили: ученики ГБОУ гимназии № 587
6 «а» класса Сорокина Любовь, Карапетян Натали, Яковлева Екатерина, Баданова Софья
Руководители: учителя английского
языка ГБОУ гимназии № 587
Сорокина Марина Геннадьевна
Сторчак Наталья Владимировна
Санкт-Петербург 2020г.
Content
Introduction. 3
1. Cooperation with the USA.. 3
2. Anglo-Soviet relations. 5
3. The Three Big. 6
4. Lend-Lease. 8
Conclusion. 12
Sources. 13
Appendix 1. 14
Appendix 2. 15
Appendix 3. 16
Introduction
The Nazi invasion of the USSR in June 1941 heralded the beginning of the most titanic battle in the history of humanity. The war ended in complete defeat for Nazi Germany less than four years later with the fall of Berlin on May 9, 1945. Over 20,000,000 Soviet citizens and soldiers died in the struggle to liberate the Motherland from the fascist aggressors. The victory in the Great Patriotic War is a triumph of the Russian people and all the peoples of the Soviet Union, and this will remain in the historical memory of Russian citizens forever.
However, it’s impossible to forget that Nazi Germany was a great threat not only for our country but for the whole world. Consequently, other countries were also interested in destroying the common enemy and their contribution to the victory can’t be underestimated. That is the reason why we decided to choose such topic for our research and to investigate the role of allies who struggled against fascism in the World War II. Historians discuss the question of the necessity of foreign supplies to the USSR. There are arguments whether the USSR could win the war without additional help. The answer is yes but what price of that victory it would have been. The extent to which three allied members influenced the outcome of the war and were involved into it was a curious fact which we wanted to find out and to look into closer and it became the aim of our project.
According to the above stated aim we set up the following tasks:
- to estimate the fruitfulness of the cooperation between the USSR, the USA and Britain
- to realize the reasons of the Alliance of the three counties
- to study the amount and the content of supplies of each country to the USSR
- to investigate the contribution of each country to the great victory
In our work we:
- had a look at the cooperation and relations between the three allied countries
- paid special attention to the significant figures of the leaders of allied countries who were not only grand personalities but also played a great role in shaping strategic decisions and in planning and leading the course of the war
- studied the process of Lend-Lease
In the process of our work on the project we looked through different websites, studied some available documents, found the posters of the war times.
Cooperation with the USA
As late as 1939, it seemed highly improbable that the United States and the Soviet Union would forge an alliance. U.S.-Soviet relations had soured significantly following Stalin’s decision to sign a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany in August of 1939. The Soviet occupation of eastern Poland in September and the “Winter War” against Finland in December led President Franklin Roosevelt to condemn the Soviet Union publicly as a “dictatorship as absolute as any other dictatorship in the world,” and to impose a “moral embargo” on the export of certain products to the Soviets. Nevertheless, in spite of intense pressure to sever relations with the Soviet Union, Roosevelt never lost sight of the fact that Nazi Germany, not the Soviet Union, posed the greatest threat to world peace. In order to defeat that threat, Roosevelt confided that he “would hold hands with the devil” if necessary.
Following the Nazi defeat of France in June of 1940, Roosevelt grew wary of the increasing aggression of the Germans and made some diplomatic moves to improve relations with the Soviets. Beginning in July of 1940, a series of negotiations took place in Washington between Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles and Soviet Ambassador Constantine Oumansky. Welles refused to accede to Soviet demands that the United States recognize the changed borders of the Soviet Union after the Soviet seizure of territory in Finland, Poland, and Romania and the reincorporation of the Baltic Republics in August 1940, but the U.S. Government did lift the embargo in January 1941. Furthermore, in March of 1941, Welles warned Oumansky of a future Nazi attack against the Soviet Union. Finally, during the Congressional debate concerning the passage of the Lend-Lease bill in early 1941, Roosevelt blocked attempts to exclude the Soviet Union from receiving U.S. assistance.
The most important factor in swaying the Soviets eventually to enter into an alliance with the United States was the Nazi decision to launch its invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. President Roosevelt responded by dispatching his trusted aide Harry Lloyd Hopkins to Moscow in order to assess the Soviet military situation. Although the War Department had warned the President that the Soviets would not last more than six weeks, after two one-on-one meetings with Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, Hopkins urged Roosevelt to assist the Soviets. By the end of October, the first Lend-Lease aid to the Soviet Union was on its way. The United States entered the war as a belligerent in late 1941 and thus began coordinating directly with the Soviets, and the British, as allies.
The United States and the U. S. S. R. are cooperating in World War II under an agreement “on the principles applying to mutual aid in the prosecution of the war against aggression” signed between Secretary of State Hull and Soviet Ambassador Maxim Litvinoff on June 11, 1942. Soviet Foreign Commissar Molotov, who had completed a five-day visit to Washington on June 4, participated in the shaping of the Russian-American agreement. Molotov had flown to Washington from London, where he had negotiated a 20-year mutual assistance treaty with Great Britain.
The document signed at Washington pledged the continued adherence of the United States and Soviet Russia to the principles of the Atlantic Charter. It acknowledged, on the part of the Government of the United States, “that the defense of the U. S. S. R. against aggression is vital to the defense of the United States of America,” and accordingly provided for speeding the flow of materials for defense to the Soviet Union under the lend-lease system. In return, the U. S. S. R. was pledged to provide “such articles, services, facilities or information as it may be in a position to supply.”
In the first paragraph of the Washington agreement, the two governments declared “that they are engaged in a cooperative undertaking, together with every other nation or people of like mind, to the end of laying the bases of a just and enduring world peace securing order under law to themselves and all nations.”
In making public the text of the Soviet-American agreement, the White House issued a statement on the conversations between President Roosevelt and Foreign Commissar Molotov which said that “full understanding was reached with regard to the urgent tasks of creating a second front in Europe in 1942.” On this point, on measures for increasing the flow of war supplies from the United States, and on the problems of “safeguarding peace and security to the freedom-loving peoples after the war,” the White House statement said “both sides state with satisfaction the unity of views.” President Roosevelt sent a message to Stalin that “the conversations have been most useful in establishing a basis for fruitful and closer relationships between the two governments in the pursuit of the common objectives of the United Nations.”
Apparently the Russian-American agreement of June 11, 1942, has operated satisfactorily. Shipments of supplies from the United States to Russia have been increased, notably during the early months of 1943. Lend-lease aid to the U. S. S. R., which actually began as far back as October, 1941, amounted by March 1, 1943, to $1,824 million, more than half of this sum being represented by shipments of warplanes, tanks, motor vehicles, and munitions. Reciprocally, the Red Army has provided “services” that have effectively engaged the bulk of the armed forces of Nazi Germany and of Hitler's European allies. During their 1942–43 winter offensive, the Soviet armies regained nearly two-thirds of the 750,000 square miles of Soviet territory occupied by the Axis allies at the point of their farthest advance in October, 1942. The benefits to the United States from the great sacrifices of human material involved in the Russian winter offensive have been fully acknowledged by President Roosevelt and other American leaders.
Unfortunately, soon after the war, the alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union began to unravel as the two nations faced complex postwar decisions.
Anglo-Soviet relations
When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 it also threw the latter into a temporary alliance with Britain. Anglo-Soviet relations since the Russian revolution of 1917 had never been good, It was too much to expect the atmosphere of suspicion to vanish overnight. Although Winston Churchill's famous broadcast speech on the day of the German invasion proclaimed that '[a]ny man or state who fights on against Nazidom will have our aid', and that '[i]t follows therefore that we shall give whatever help we can to Russia and the Russian people', Churchill, for one, was therefore always pleased to deal with Stalin directly. 'If only I could dine with Stalin once a week,' he said in January 1944, 'there would be no trouble at all. We get on like a house on fire. '
Since Hitler precipitated the U. S. S. R. into the war by invading that country in June, 1941, the governments of Great Britain and the Soviet Union have gravitated toward a close community of purposes—not only for war objectives, but also for cooperation in achieving and maintaining order and stability in Europe after the war. On July 12, 1941, a month after Nazi forces had moved into Soviet territory, the British and Soviet governments signed an agreement for mutual support in the conflict, in which each pledged itself to make no separate peace with the common enemy. The agreement was signed by diplomats Sir Stafford Cripps and Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov.
Sir Stafford Cripps was British Ambassador in Russia from June 1940 to January 1942 and was crucial in negotiating the entry of Russia into the war on the side of the Allies. On May 26, 1942, a formal treaty was concluded in which the Anglo-Soviet war alliance was expanded into a pledge of mutual assistance and cooperation to extend far into the postwar period.
The two governments affirmed their desire to unite with the governments of other countries to preserve peace and resist aggression in the period after the war. Pending the hoped-for agreements with other states, the two signatories promised to “take all measures in their power to prevent further aggression in Europe by Germany or her allies.” Each pledged full military support should the other again become involved in war with Germany after the conclusion of the present conflict. They agreed “to work together in close and friendly cooperation … for the organization of security and economic prosperity in Europe.” They pledged themselves against territorial aggrandizement and to noninterference in the internal affairs of other states. Each party agreed to render the other all possible economic assistance after the war. The postwar provisions of the treaty were to run for 20 years, with no clauses for cancellation short of that period.
The fact remains that the degree of co-operation between Britain and the Soviet Union never even remotely approached that between Britain and the United States, before or after the latter entered the war in December 1941.
The Three Big
The leaders of those allied countries (Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union) were referred to as the Big 3 WWII. They were Winston Churchill, Franklin D Roosevelt and Josef Stalin respectively. Their combined intellectual and military might helped to defeat the Axis powers. Who exactly, were the Big Three?
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill took office as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1940. He had been a vocal opponent of the policy of appeasement by which European nations gave in to acts of Nazi aggression in the hope that Hitler's Germany would go no further. His bulldog spirit and refusal to accept defeat, particularly in the wake of the Dunkirk evacuation and the Luftwaffe onslaught during the Battle of Britain, were inspirational to the British people. The speeches and radio broadcasts he made were crucial rallying cries for the nation. He built a rapport with US President Franklin D Roosevelt, eventually securing essential American supplies and munitions before the US entered the war in 1941.While an avowed anti-Communist, Churchill provided munitions and tanks to the Soviet Union after the German invasion in 1941 to ensure that Hitler was fighting a European war on two fronts.
Franklin D Roosevelt
Franklin D Roosevelt, known as FDR, was the only American president to serve more than two terms. He led the US through the Great Depression of the 1930s, through initial neutrality as the Second World War began in 1939, and then, with the other Big Three Leaders, to eventual victory over the Axis powers. In the face of opposition from US isolationists, FDR began rearmament in the late 1930s as war in Europe appeared inevitable. He also extended aid to the Soviet Union after the Nazi invasion. FDR worked in secret with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to devise a post-war world policy before America joined the conflict. In December 1941, the US declared war after the Japanese attacked the US fleet in Pearl Harbor. FDR had met Churchill many times but the first time the WWII Big Three came together was at the Tehran conference in 1943. At this conference, the long-term aims of a post-war policy were on the agenda among all three nations.
Joseph Stalin
A foot soldier in the 1917 October Revolution, Josef Stalin had climbed the Bolshevik Party ranks to inherit most of the Soviet leadership after Lenin's death in 1924. The Soviets had signed a non-aggression pact with Germany in 1939, one month before the Nazis invaded Poland. The pact was a secret division of Eastern Europe into areas of Soviet Influence and areas of Nazi Influence. Consequently, the Soviets invaded territories of modern Western Ukraine and Eastern Poland soon after the German invasion. In June 1941, the pact was breached by Hitler with his decision to invade the Soviet Union. The Nazi advance resulted in 4.3 million Soviet casualties before 1942. Stalin entered into an agreement with Britain for assistance and eventually formally an alliance with the UK and US, thereby making himself the third member of the Big Three.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said, “The only thing worse than having allies is not having them.” In World War II, the three great Allied powers—Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union—formed a Grand Alliance that was the key to victory. But the alliance partners did not share common political aims, and did not always agree on how the war should be fought.
Churchill and US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been working together for some time when the United States entered the war in 1941. Roosevelt believed a British victory over the Axis was in America’s best interests, while Churchill believed such a victory was not possible without American assistance. In 1940, the two leaders worked to find ways for America to help Britain hold on without violating its neutrality. The following year they met off the coast of Newfoundland to begin planning, in sweeping terms, the postwar world. Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin was a late addition to the Big Three. On New Year’s Day 1942, representatives of all three nations signed the United Nations Declaration, pledging to join hands to defeat the Axis powers.
The Big Three faced considerable challenges in coordinating their efforts. Thousands of miles separated their capitals, which meant important decisions often had to be made by telephone or telegraph. Although their representatives met frequently during the war, Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill only met twice in person.
Politics and history also made the relationship difficult. Stalin was deeply suspicious, to the point of paranoia, of both Roosevelt and Churchill. He knew his capitalist allies would likely oppose any attempt to expand Soviet influence in eastern Europe when the war ended. Stalin also complained incessantly about the Allied failure to mount a second front in western Europe before June 1944. This front, he said, would reduce pressure on the Soviet Union by forcing Hitler to transfer forces from Russia to meet the Anglo-American invasion.
Planning for the postwar era further strained relations between the Allied leaders. By the time the Big Three gathered for the last time at Yalta in February 1945, the Allies were closing in on Germany from both the east and west. Several major questions had to be settled, chief among them the fate of Poland, which was then occupied by Soviet troops that were advancing on Berlin. Stalin demanded that part of Poland be transferred to the Soviet Union and that a Soviet-friendly communist government in the city of Lublin control the remainder of the country. He also insisted that each of the Soviet Union’s satellite republics in eastern Europe receive separate votes in the newly created United Nations, even though these countries were controlled from Moscow. This alarmed Roosevelt and Churchill, but they were powerless to force Stalin to guarantee a democratic and independent Poland. Stalin’s armies already occupied most of the region, and the Western allies could not force them out without fighting the Soviet Union. Furthermore, Roosevelt hoped to have Stalin’s help in finishing off Japan.
The Yalta Conference ended in a compromise. Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to Stalin’s demands regarding Poland and the United Nations. Stalin, in return, agreed to hold elections in Poland so its people could choose their own government. He also agreed to declare war against Japan shortly after the German surrender.
The end of the war marked the end of the Grand Alliance. Roosevelt died in April 1945 and was succeeded by his vice president, Harry S. Truman, a committed anticommunist. Churchill met briefly with Stalin at the Potsdam Conference, but was replaced halfway through it by a newly elected prime minister, Clement Attlee. Ongoing disputes between the Soviets and the democratic allies about how to organize the postwar world eventually killed the alliance. Stalin continued to expand Soviet influence in eastern Europe, while America and Britain were determined to stop him without provoking another war. This tense standoff between the former allies, which became known as the Cold War, would last for decades.
Lend-Lease
The Lend-Lease Act stated that the U.S. government could lend or lease (rather than sell) war supplies to any nation deemed “vital to the defense of the United States.” Under this policy, the United States was able to supply military aid to its foreign allies during World War II while still remaining officially neutral in the conflict. Most importantly, passage of the Lend-Lease Act enabled a struggling Great Britain to continue fighting against Germany virtually on its own until the United States entered World War II late in 1941.
In the decades following World War I, many Americans remained extremely wary of becoming involved in another costly international conflict. Even as fascist regimes like Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler took aggressive action in Europe the 1930s, isolationist members of Congress pushed through a series of laws limiting how the United States could respond.
But after Germany invaded Poland in 1939, and full-scale war broke out again in Europe, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that while the United States would remain neutral by law, it was impossible “that every American remain neutral in thought as well.”
Before passage of the Neutrality Act of 1939, Roosevelt persuaded Congress to allow the sale of military supplies to allies like France and Britain on a “cash-and-carry” basis: They had to pay cash for American-made supplies, and then transport the supplies on their own ships.
By the summer of 1940, France had fallen to the Nazis, and Britain was fighting virtually alone against Germany on land, at sea and in the air. After the new British prime minister, Winston Churchill, appealed personally to Roosevelt for help, the U.S. president agreed to exchange more than 50 outdated American destroyers for 99-year leases on British bases in the Caribbean and Newfoundland, which would be used as U.S. air and naval bases.
That December, with Britain’s currency and gold reserves dwindling, Churchill warned Roosevelt that his country would not be able to pay cash for military supplies or shipping much longer. Though he had recently been re-elected on a platform promising to keep America out of World War II, Roosevelt wanted to support Great Britain against Germany. After hearing Churchill’s appeal, he began working to convince Congress (and the American public) that providing more direct aid to Britain was in the nation’s own interest.
In mid-December 1940, Roosevelt introduced a new policy initiative whereby the United States would lend, rather than sell, military supplies to Great Britain or to any nation deemed “vital to the defense of the United States” for use in the fight against Germany. Payment for the supplies could come in any form Roosevelt deemed satisfactory. Under this policy, the United States was able to supply military aid to its foreign allies during World War II while still remaining officially neutral in the conflict. Most importantly, passage of the Lend-Lease Act enabled a struggling Great Britain to continue fighting against Germany virtually on its own until the United States entered World War II late in 1941.
“We must be the great arsenal of democracy,” Roosevelt declared in one of his signature “fireside chats” on December 29, 1940. “For us this is an emergency as serious as war itself. We must apply ourselves to our task with the same resolution, the same sense of urgency, the same spirit of patriotism and sacrifice as we would show were we at war.”
American deliveries
Lend-Lease, as Roosevelt’s plan became known, ran into strong opposition among isolationist members of Congress, as well as those who believed the policy gave the president himself too much power. During the debate over the bill, which continued for two months, Roosevelt’s administration and supporters in Congress argued that providing aid to allies like Great Britain was a military necessity for the United States.
“We are buying...not lending. We are buying our own security while we prepare,” Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “By our delay during the past six years, while Germany was preparing, we find ourselves unprepared and unarmed, facing a thoroughly prepared and armed potential enemy.”
In March 1941, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act (subtitled “An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States”) and Roosevelt signed it into law.
Roosevelt soon took advantage of his authority under the new law, ordering large quantities of U.S. food and war materials to be shipped to Britain from U.S. ports through the new Office of Lend-Lease Administration. The supplies dispersed under the Lend-Lease Act ranged from tanks, aircraft, ships, weapons and road building supplies to clothing, chemicals and food.
By the end of 1941, the lend-lease policy was extended to include other U.S. allies, including China and the Soviet Union. By the end of World War II the United States would use it to provide a total of some $50 billion in aid to more than 30 nations around the globe, from the Free French movement led by Charles de Gaulle and the governments-in-exile of Poland, the Netherlands and Norway to Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Paraguay and Peru.
For Roosevelt, Lend-Lease was not motivated primarily by altruism or generosity, but was intended to serve the interest of the United States by helping to defeat Nazi Germany without entering the war outright—at least not until the nation was prepared for it, both militarily and in terms of public opinion. Through Lend-Lease, the United States also succeeded in becoming the “arsenal of democracy” during World War II, thus securing its preeminent place in the international economic and political order once the war drew to a close.
If Germany defeated the Soviet Union, the most significant front in Europe would be closed. Roosevelt believed that if the Soviets were defeated the Allies would be far more likely to lose. Roosevelt concluded that the United States needed to help the Soviets fight against the Germans.
Soviet Ambassador Maxim Litvinov significantly contributed to the Lend-Lease agreement of 1941. American deliveries to the Soviet Union can be divided into the following phases:
- "Pre Lend-lease" June 22, 1941, to September 30, 1941 (paid for in gold and other minerals)
- First protocol period from October 1, 1941, to June 30, 1942 (signed October 7, 1941),these supplies were to be manufactured and delivered by the UK with US credit financing.
- Second protocol period from July 1, 1942, to June 30, 1943 (signed October 6, 1942)
- Third protocol period from July 1, 1943, to June 30, 1944 (signed October 19, 1943)
- Fourth protocol period from July 1, 1944 (signed April 17, 1945), formally ended May 12, 1945, but deliveries continued for the duration of the war with Japan (which the Soviet Union entered on August 8, 1945) under the "Milepost" agreement until September 2, 1945, when Japan capitulated. On September 20, 1945, all Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union was terminated.
Delivery was via the Arctic Convoys, the Persian Corridor, and the Pacific Route.
The Arctic route was the shortest and most direct route for lend-lease aid to the USSR, though it was also the most dangerous as it involved sailing past German-occupied Norway. Some 3,964,000 tons of goods were shipped by the Arctic route; 7% was lost, while 93% arrived safely. This constituted some 23% of the total aid to the USSR during the war.
The Persian Corridor was the longest route, and was not fully operational until mid-1942. Thereafter it saw the passage of 4,160,000 tons of goods, 27% of the total.
The Pacific Route opened in August 1941, but was affected by the start of hostilities between Japan and the U.S.; after December 1941, only Soviet ships could be used, and, as Japan and the USSR observed a strict neutrality towards each other, only non-military goods could be transported. Nevertheless, some 8,244,000 tons of goods went by this route, 50% of the total.
In total, the U.S. deliveries to the USSR through Lend-Lease amounted to $11 billion in materials: over 400,000 jeeps and trucks; 12,000 armored vehicles (including 7,000 tanks, about 1,386 of which were M3 Lees and 4,102 M4 Shermans);11,400 aircraft (4,719 of which were Bell P-39 Airacobras) and 1.75 million tons of food.
Restrictions in the supply of weapons from the United States were mainly limited to supply of heavy bombers. The United States did not provide heavy bombers to the USSR when requested. For example, in the 4 Ottawa Protocol (July 1, 1944-30 June 1945) the USSR requested 240 B-17 bombers and 300 B-24 bombers, none of which were supplied. Heavy bombers had not been mentioned in previous protocols.
The production of heavy bombers in the United States until 1945 amounted to more than 30 thousand. The USSR had a small number of heavy bombers. The only modern heavy bomber the USSR had was the Petlyakov Pe-8, and it only had 27 such bombers at the start of the war, with fewer than 100 produced until 1945.