The Americans keep saying that they gave us supplies in world war two but did'nt we have to buy them?

Alex H

Yeah we (Britain) did have to pay them. A MASSIVE amount. In fact it cost so much that the British government only finished paying back the loan last year.
Some Americans have a skewed view of WWII (I'm not at all anti-American, by the way, I think its a great country). They forget the role of Britain (and the Soviet Union), and that Britain was getting hammered from 1939 whereas the Americans only got involved half-way through.

Doctor Feelgood

I just had to laugh till it hurts after reading the most arrogant comment I have ever read.

Tom_p198
How do you figure in that fish bowl on top of your shoulders that every American man, woman and children should be charged for your wars across the pond?. Germans were the ones who attacked you, not us. Shouldn't be them getting charged instead of us?.

If you are paying for our mistakes now, that makes us even since we paid for yours in thousands of American soldiers' lives when you ignored Hitler's growing threat until he was knocking on your doors with his Panzer tanks.

Edit:
After reading comments about charging Americans for every Brit killed in Iraq, his reply about Normandy was spot on. You were just pulling at straws, sarcastic or not. Not like I need to justify it to you, either.

Charlie Farlie

The lent us Â£5000. million of supplies without the help of the USA.we would have lost the war, all the money has now been
paid back

Julie F

That's right, the Brits did have to pay for a lot of supplies. If I remember correctly, there was a news story a few years ago talking about the British debt (to the U.S.) being finally paid off.

CEILING CAT!!!

Yeah of course! Nothing is free

minerva

yep and then there was the Marshall plan which we only finished paying recently

Snowy

It was a scheme called Lend Lease and basically it meant that the US gave us equipment and we paid them either over time or in kind.

One of the first examples was fleet of 50 out of date old destroyers half of which either broke down or sank in transit across the ocean. The rest were next to useless except one which we re-named the Campbeltown, which we used to ram a dockyard in France and blow up in order to stop the Germans using it.

in exchange for those ships we gave the U.S our naval bases in the west indies.

The rest of what they sent us amounted to a huge debt which we finally finished paying off in 2006.

Nothing comes for free, particulalry when you are desperate!

Heavy M ( and the rest of America) - why dont you take a history lesson and learn that on D-day in Normandy there were TWO American Invasion beaches, AND TWO British invasion beaches AND a Canadian Invasion beach....

The first allied boots on the ground that day were BRITISH paratroopers who took Pegasus Bridge (even your anti British historian Steven Ambrose admits that).

Half of the American landing craft were manned by Royal Navy crewmen.

Why on earth do you think that it was only Americans who stormed the beaches that day?

Could it be that you learn your history from Hollywood who have carefully airbrushed everyone else out of the picture?

mactheboat

Yes! In fact the last payment for some of the lend/lease ships was only made within the last couple of years!!

Heavy Metal God

Unbelievable how ungrateful you despicable brits are. We lost American lives to send you all those supplies when German ships intercepted some of the cargo and sank them and you complaint how you had to pay us back. If you want to charge us for British soldiers killed in Iraq, then maybe we should charge you for every American soldier killed at Normandy, which should be -Oh, I don't know- like 50 times the amount of British casualties in the Gulf to this day?.

You are so lousy welcome.

Edit-
Tom_p198
Hold on....Did I read that right?. Charge us for not getting involved in YOUR fight??. Just what kind of idiotic thought process did you use to reach that ludicrous conclusion?. We didn't start WWII, we didn't sign any treaty with you that would force us to come to your aid, you never aided us on any war prior WWII, so we didn't even owe you any favors either, you dolt. So how, in your infinite ignorance, do you think WE owe you ANYTHING for not coming sooner, dumbass!.

Tom_p198
Considering how many stupid comments I read from brits here so far since I joined Yahoo answers, one can hardly be blamed for taking your brainless sarcasm seriously if you follow the pattern of answers from brits in Yahoo.

Iraq wasn't your fight, just like Normandy wasn't ours. But since we came to your aid at the expense of many American soldiers lives, Iraq was the very, very, least you could do for us.

"We shall remember that when Iran opens a can on your GI's then? Or maybe you had hoped that the Axis would win? They would be perfect bedfellows for you Americans afterall."

And we shall remember British comments here when Germany bombs the crap out of you again. You would be perfect bedfellows with Germans since you got acquainted so well in the past.

"I'm highlighting the "we saved your asses" remarks that you Yanks like to pull out of thin-air when it wasn't the case. You didn't owe us anything, like we didn't owe you anything, but then we get a bill saying we did owe you for us repelling the Nazi War Machine."

Then I would like to highlight the "what kept you?" remarks that you brits like to pull out of thin air as well. If you have a beef about the bill, you could have graciously rejected the aid and fight the well-trained Germans with (literally) tooth and nail. We are not the f*ckin' Red Cross or Salvation Army, we are a country with an economy and your aid did not come cheap. But as someone said it before, you ended up paying billions less than the original cost.

Edit
Snowy-
And why don't you learn how to read?.
I'm not saying we were the ONLY ones fighting on D-Day. The fact that the British were there too and taking the reigns doesn't change the fact that we lost THOUSANDS of Americans lives that day. British were fighting and dying for their own homeland, our soldiers were fighting and dying on someone else's homeland. British didn't have a choice, we did.

Larry1

your father is correct, the americans did led the Allies weapons money etc, however when the war came to an end the Americans wanted it back. Which meant that the Allies had to pay back their millions of $ debts. So indirectly we did have to pay at the end.

Chris W

Yes you're correct. It was called the lend lease programme. The USA made the UK pay for every bullet and every weapon used in the war. In fact, we have only just paid off the debt owed to America very recently (I think it was 2006.)

john313181

YES ,your dad is correct,we in the UK have been paying of this loan to the the USA since the end of WW2, and was finally paid of in full last year,thank god.

Grace

Yes it is and we paid that debt back either last year or the year before.

PAUL C

yes that is correct i think it was called the lend lease scheme but don't quote me on that and as far as i know we haven't long paid them back

aires69uk OFFICIAL

Listen they didn't GIVE us anything - we paid it all back right up until the mid-50's.

EDIT
____
I stand corrected - we only finished off paying last year!

nosdda

Yes we did have to pay for them. I can't remember if the deal was called "The Marshall Plan " or not. It did take us years to pay for all the goods we had.

Croxx

We had to pay for it all. After the War they screwed over a loan that we have (2 years ago I think) just paid off...

We should be sending the US a bill for our mercenary actions in Iraq! No fault of our steadfast soldiers!

cheechalini

There isnt nothing in the world that is free. They put it on an installment plan. It was a way of the US backing allied countries without entering the war, that was until 1941.

Esmerelda

Most Americans feel we gave you the lives and limbs of our people. So maybe we can be excused if we don't feel real bad about the lend/lease program.

You know, I realize its in vogue to hate America these days across the Atlantic and just about everywhere else. Yes, we have an idiot for a leader and yes we are involved in a war that should never have happened. But lets keep it current. World War II was a horrible thing as was WW I and the fact of the matter is that a whole lot of Americans sacrificed their lives, their limbs and at home, we rationed just about everything to support the Allied effort. Is it now your purpose to try and say that American has never been anything but an opportunistic slug feeding on other's misfortune? It's not true any more than the idea that the British Empire was a travesty of colonialism that nearly ruined every society it invaded and left poverty and civil war behind it.

Quit generalizing here on this casual forum and if you're interested in history, read a history book or better yet, go talk to some senior citizens in your own country and ask them how grateful they were for the American flyers that showed up in Britain long before America was officially at war.

My grandfather's left eye was gone when he came home on the Queen Mary and so was some of his spirit. He left most of his buddies dead in Belgium. My parents ate meagerly and my mom did without her dad for 3 years. Did your country every send us a dime to pay for that?

But then, its always easier to kick a giant when they're down, isn't it........ so go ahead and bash America. We can take it. But remember, it was your leader who caved and went with us down to Iraq. So put the blame where it belongs.

mariner31

ABSOLUTELY WRONG: I'm guessing this is asked by one of my British cousins... we loaned you $31.4 billion of supplies, and you ONLY had to repay on $2 billion which was loaned following the END of the war. That $2 billion is for supplies loaned at 10% of cost, and the terms of repayment was 50 years at 2% interest.

SO, you got $28 billion FREE... for the 50 year use of some of your Caribbean bases. Oh, and you all didn't have to learn German.

Here are the hard figures:

A total of $50.1 billion (equivalent to nearly $700 billion at 2007 prices) worth of supplies were shipped: $31.4 billion to Britain, $11.3 billion to the Soviet Union, $3.2 billion to France and $1.6 billion to China. Reverse Lend Lease comprised services (like rent on air bases) that went to the U.S. It totaled $7.8 billion, of which $6.8 billion came from the British and the Commonwealth.

Apart from that, there were no repayments of supplies that arrived before the termination date, the terms of the agreement providing for their return or destruction. (Supplies after that date were sold to Britain at a discount (10 cents to the dollar), for Â£1,075 million, using long-term loans from the U.S.)

Large quantities of goods were in Britain or in transit when Washington suddenly and unexpectedly terminated Lend-Lease on 2 September 1945. Britain needed to retain some of this equipment in the immediate post war period. As a result the Anglo-American loan came about. Lend-lease items retained were sold to Britain at the knockdown price of about 10 cents on the dollar giving an initial value of Â£1,075 million. Payment was to be stretched out over 50 years at 2% interest. [9] . The final payment of $83.3 million (Â£42.5 million) due on 31 December 2006 (repayment having been deferred on several occasions) was made on 29 December 2006, it being the last working day of the year. After this final payment Britain's Economic Secretary, Ed Balls, formally thanked the US for its wartime support.

Monty

Yes it is.

Well, kinda. You did have to pay, but it was hardly at full price. In fact it was really, really cheap. The U.S. never really ended up making any money from the deal, and the U.K. hardly went into any sort of debt because of it. Also, if we had just given you the stuff for free, we would have been officially declared as entering the war, which we were not ready to do at that time.

Also, there were other "things" that we gave you. British ships took rest in many American ports in 1940 and 1941 for repairs and whatnot. Many RAF pilots trained in Florida. Our Navy gave many of your passenger ships safe passage from Britain to elsewhere. American pilots flew with the RAF before we were officially in the war.

Although, if you have a problem with any of this, speak up and say the word, and we won't ever again bother you with trivial things like supplies and whatnot.

Ollie

My dad said the same.They fleeced our country the debt was finally paid off only a couple of years ago.

Gavin T

Yes, we had a loan agreement that we paid off last year I believe. We owe them nothing!

SteveLaw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease

GunnyC

Te name of the program was Lend-Lease; some of the equioment was sold to the British and other equipment was given to them. Reason for this was very simple-the U.S. was coming out of a depression and was not very rich and the American people would not have been happy paying taxes for the government to buy things to turn around and give away for nothing-the government had to recoup costs. As a neutral country it would have difficult to justify giving weapons to England and Russia and not giving them to the Germans. The Germans actually tried to force the U.S. to sell them goods and under the laws that govern such things the U.S. had to comply but the sticker was the U.S. did not have to transport and the Germans had no merchant fleet. The U.S. did provide both transport and escort warships to the British to about Iceland during this time of being neutral-legally this was a little shakey since we did attack and sink German U-Boats threatening not just U.S. ships but also british, Dutch, and the other allied countries. So yes the Americans did sell a lot ofthe material to the British but there was no other way to provide it-the dollar value of the goods was huge and would have bankrupt the U.S. and the trnasportation and support provided was done free as scheduled exercises. The U.S. governemnt at the time did what it could but did have to be careful politically because of the isolationalist in this country who were even against those actions. It appears to be popular right now to bash America for everything it has ever done-World War Two should have never happend and if the British had stood up to the french during the Versailles Treaty negotiatons it might not have and if they and the French had stood up to Hitler pror to the invasion of Poland it would have never happend. In many ways the other European countries (primarily France through wanting to punish and Britian taking a let the French do what they want to do attitude) brought Hitler to power and caused the war so why would the Americans half a world away been expected to help? That was the thinking of the majority of Americans up until the bombing of Pearl Harbor and it was not that different in England or France until the invasion of Poland-Let Hitler have the Ruhr back, Sudentland, Austria and so on it isn't worth fighting over. To answer your question some were sold and some were given.

MikeGolf

Over 50 billion (WWII dollars) worth of material was supplied to Great Britain under Lend-Lease. After WWII ended Great Britain agreed to a debt of just over 1 billion - and to take 50 years to repay it.

So in effect Great Britain only had to repay 10% of their war debt (and the 2% interest rate was in effect another form of finacial subsidy).

So - when are we getting the rest of our money back?

Destrier

From the te general 'comments' in this thread... you sound like some ungratefull people.

I guess we should have just given you anything you wanted with little thought to it?

Perhaps tossing in a thank you for the blood we spilled aiding you would be appropriate.

When the debt was paid off, I recall a conversation my parents had and how they felt it was honorable that 'your nation' had done it.... when so many countries in Europe have done nothing since to return the vast sums of resources that were utilized.

Regardless, your welcome.

Victor Bout

The Marshall Plan rebuilt Europe and prevented most of Europe from starving.

Regardless, seeing that you're currently not speaking German is proof enough...

http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/marshallplan/

Enter Your Message or Comment

User Name:
User Email:
Post a comment: