Cash and carry was a diplomatic trade policy set in place by the FDR administration; it was crafted during a special session of the U.S. Congress on September 21, 1939, as a result of the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe. It replaced the Neutrality Act of 1937, by which belligerent parties would purchase only non-military goods from the United States so long as the client states in question paid in cash at the time of purchase and assumed full responsibility for transportation. The 1939 Cash and carry revision allowed for the purchasing of military arms to belligerents on the same cash-and-carry basis. The purpose of the policy was to maintain neutrality between the United States and European nations while giving aid to Britain by allowing them to buy non war materials.
Shortly after the 1940 election, British Prime Minister Churchill told FDR that Britain could no longer afford to buy military supplies under the code of cash and carry and a new agreement needed to be agreed upon. The President then persuaded Congress to swap cash-and-carry with Lend-Lease - a new piece of legislation that granted the president authority to sell, exchange, lend, or lease war materiel to any nation whose defense was vital to U.S. security.
The third most popular Lend-Lease export item was the Tommy Gun - click here to read more..
Click here to read about the lend-lease program for Stalin's Russia... Here is an article that was written on the third anniversary of the passage of the Lend-Lease Act and it lists the numerous munitions that were made available to the allied nations who signed the agreement:
"By January, 1944, $19,986,000,000 in American aid had gone out - 14 percent of our total expenditures. To the original recipients - Britain and Greece - had been added China, Russia, Latin America, the Free French and a host of smaller nations."
A 1939 article about Lend-Lease can be read here... "The capture of the Eternal City - first Axis capital to fall to the Allies - came on the 275 day of the Italian invasion and realized the political and psychological objective of the entire campaign. Yet, for the Allied Armies, the fall of Rome was rather the beginning than the end of the job. Paced by the air forces, without a pause the troops rolled on through the city and across the Tiber in a drive aimed at smashing completely the retreating German forces." Taking into consideration the state of Germany's military forces on land, air and sea, as well as the fragile state of the German populace after three years of steady bombardment, this 1944 NEWSWEEK MAGAZINE article concluded that Germany's end was nigh - really, really nigh:
"Thus on the face of it, Germany's situation is desperate. She is encircled by powerful nations that are allied against her. Her chance of creating dissension to split those allies is gone. She is being beaten on every front and in every phase of the fighting. Her last chance to win has disappeared."
Germany would fight on for another sixteen months.
"The Yank is not expert at deception, but he can change his plans rapidly. He is a wizard at handling machinery and he can build airfields, roads and advance bases with uncanny speed."
- so wrote one of the bewildered Japanese Army generals concerning his experiences with the American military in the Pacific. "At the beginning of World War II, our army was a mixture of callow boys and and domesticated men. The older men were homesick for wives and children...There were plenty of lonely wives, too, and it soon became evident that a fair number of them were committed to the belief that continence was bad for women."
Marriage vows were one of the unsung casualties of the Second World War: by 1944 many married women who hadn't seen their drafted husbands in years began producing babies; you can read about that here...
In 1943 a woman on the home front introduced a sexual component that she believed would bring an end to the problem of industrial absenteeism - click here to read about her idea...
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