Press Release Issued by the Foreign Economic Administration, November 30, 194462
Leo T. Crowley, Foreign Economic Administrator, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Secretary of the Treasury, and Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., [Page 81] Acting Secretary of State, acting as a special committee of the Government on Lend-Lease and reverse Lend-Lease discussions with the British following up the Quebec Conference, today made the following statement:—
Throughout the war the Lend-Lease and reverse Lend-Lease requirements of the United Nations have been reviewed from time to time in the light of the military strategy for the war against Germany and Japan.
Such a review has been carried out in discussions now concluded between the appropriate military, naval, air and civilian representatives of the United States and United Kingdom Governments. These discussions concerned the Lend-Lease and reverse Lend-Lease aid required to enable the carrying out of the strategic decisions made at Quebec for winning victory over both Germany and Japan at the earliest possible moment.
The programmes of Lend-Lease and reverse Lend-Lease aid should be continued in accordance with the fundamental principle laid down by the President that: “Until the unconditional surrender of both Japan and Germany, we should continue the Lend-Lease programme on whatever scale is necessary to make the combined striking power of all the United Nations against our enemies as overwhelming and as effective as we can make it.”63
The amounts and types of supplies required continue to be subject, as always, to adjustment from time to time in accordance with the changing conditions of the war. When finished munitions are produced and available for delivery, they are assigned by the Munitions Assignments Board under directives of the Combined Chiefs of Staff in the light of the strategic considerations prevailing at the time of the assignment. Similar procedures are and will continue to be in effect for other war supplies that each country may make available to the other.
From the beginning of the Lend-Lease programme in March 1941, Lend-Lease aid has been extended for one purpose—and for one purpose only—the defence of the United States and to enable our Allies to bring the full weight of their men and resources to bear against our common enemies. That policy will be continued without change.
Since Lend-Lease aid is made available to our Allies only when it contributes directly to the winning of the war, Lend-Lease articles have from the beginning not been available for re-export commercially. That policy will also be continued without change. There will be no change in the principle as laid down by the Government of [Page 82] the United Kingdom in its White Paper of September 1941, that no articles received under Lend-Lease from the United States shall be exported commercially.
After the defeat of Germany, there will be no impediment to the United Kingdom’s exporting articles, so far as war conditions permit, which are no longer supplied under Lend-Lease and are obtained out of their own production or purchased from this country for cash.
To some degree Lend-Lease aid for the United Kingdom will be reduced even before the defeat of Germany. It is now expected that some raw and semi-fabricated materials, such as iron and steel, will no longer be provided by the United States to the United Kingdom under Lend-Lease after the 1st January, 1945. This will have the effect, under the terms of the White Paper itself, of removing products made from such materials from limitations that will continue to apply to articles received under Lend-Lease. Such materials no longer obtained under Lend-Lease will, of course, be available to the United Kingdom in commercial exports only after the overriding considerations of war supply and war shipping are met.
The Committee understands that, as in the past, the United States and the United Kingdom will both endeavour to insure, to the extent practicable, that neither United States nor United Kingdom exporters receive undue competitive advantage over the other as a result of the war situation.
It appeared in the discussions that, in the period immediately following the defeat of Germany, the British need for Lend-Lease assistance would be not much more than one-half of that currently furnished in 1944.
After the defeat of Germany the United Kingdom and the United States will both use all the fighting power that is required for the earliest possible defeat of Japan. It is likely, however, that both the United Kingdom and the United States will be able to reconvert art of their resources on an equitable basis to meet essential civilian needs in the period between the defeat of Germany and the defeat of Japan. As a result of such a partial and equitable reconversion there will be some improvement in the conditions of life of the British people. For six years, first standing alone against the enemy and later fighting alongside our own forces on battlefields, on seas and in the sky all over the world, they have endured privation in diet, had their houses destroyed about them and have been sent to distant parts of the country to work wherever the needs of war called them. After the defeat of Germany, it is necessary that their inadequate diet be improved, temporary emergency housing be provided, and such other measures adopted as may relieve in some degree their present extremely difficult circumstances.
[Page 83]This committee believes that a programme which will help in achieving this objective is a matter of necessity for the most effective prosecution of the war against Japan, and that it expresses in some measure the common bond which has carried our countries through the hard days of the war to approaching victory.
Since Lend-Lease and reverse Lend-Lease are concerned solely with war supply, problems of post-war foreign trade throughout the world did not enter into the review of these programmes. Economic and financial co-operation by all the United Nations in many different forms will be required to meet these separate post-war problems. Effective measures in this field will require both international and national action by the respective governments, including in many cases, legislative action.
November 30, 1944.
- Copied from the History of Lend Lease, Part II, Chapter II, Box; 64, Document 62, Section III, No. 63.↩
- Quotation is from a letter from President Roosevelt to Congress, August 23, 1944, transmitting the 16th Quarterly Report on Lend-Lease; for complete text of the letter, see Department of State Bulletin, August 27, 1944, p. 205.↩