This argument is at best ignorant and incomplete, and at worst willfully wrong.
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While there's essentially no chance that the Harvard-educated Douthat is unaware of the importance of lend-lease as material aid, it's quite likely he doesn't know how important it was in ensuring an ideologically liberal triumph.
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So, as you know, the "revolutionary Bolshevik," Stalin, signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany in 1939. World War II then began in Europe.
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During the time of the Nazi-Soviet pact, the Germans overran much of central and eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and Western Europe, and by the summer of 1940 Britain stood essentially alone against the Axis in Europe.
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Douthat's "reactionary imperialist" Churchill did play a vital role in setting British policy: stand off the Germans even if it meant death.
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Now, if you only know about this period from That Movie Which Shall Remain Unnamed, you might imagine Churchill did this solely by force of (obnoxious) will.
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(Thread on That Movie here: https://twitter.com/rauchway/status/950814211264757760 … )
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If you see that movie, or hear any of many edited versions of Churchill's great "never surrender" speech, you might miss its major point, because often people cut it off after the words "never surrender."
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The speech is directed at the administration and the radio audience across the ocean, in the United States: after "never surrender," there's
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"and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle,
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"until, in God’s good time, THE NEW WORLD, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old."
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That speech is a plea for American materiel, inasmuch as much British materiel—"the first-fruits of all that our industry had to give"—was left on the beach at Dunkirk. https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1940-the-finest-hour/we-shall-fight-on-the-beaches/ …
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The "reactionary imperialist" needed American aid.
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Certain elements didn’t want him to have it: the America First organization tried to portray Roosevelt as a warmonger for rendering aid short of war to Britain, and the Willkie campaign in 1940 followed suit.
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The US, under Roosevelt, was already stretching the neutrality laws to provide material aid to Britain in the summer and autumn of 1940.
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The Nazis financed anti-Roosevelt propaganda in the US and even tried to set up a credible left alternative to him in the 1940 election, knowing that of all US politicians, Roosevelt was the worst news for them.
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Roosevelt, as you know, won reelection anyway—and shortly afterward, learning that Britain's cash reserves were depleted, announced a new policy of lend-lease.
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It meant in-kind loans to the British for fighting the Germans—not financial loans. Roosevelt's analogy was lending a garden hose to a neighbor whose house was on fire. http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/odllpc2.html
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"what I am trying to do is to eliminate the dollar sign. That is something brand new in the thoughts of practically everybody in this room, I think—get rid of the silly, foolish old dollar sign."
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Lend-lease was essentially a system of barter accounts, aid to a cash-strapped nation. Anything the British might render the Americans overseas could be set off against the munitions the US sent to Britain.
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There's a reason Churchill referred to lend-lease as "the most unsordid act."
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Lend-lease became law in March 1941. On June 22, 1941, the Germans invaded the USSR, ending the Nazi-Soviet pact.
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The US immediately offered material aid to the Soviets on a cash basis under the terms of the neutrality laws, and unfroze tens of millions of dollars in Soviet assets held in the US that it had previously blocked.
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The Soviets began ordering goods from the Americans on June 30, 1941—just over a week after the Nazis invaded the USSR.
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While the US was still dealing with the Soviets on a cash basis, Britain offered aid to the USSR on lend-lease terms.
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Allied “aid” to the USSR meant fighters, bombers, tanks, anti-aircraft guns, aluminum, rubber, and various other weapons systems and raw material; perhaps most importantly, if unglamorously, trucks (lorries) and food.
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Britain got cashless aid from the US and rendered cashless aid to the USSR; the USSR bought goods with cash from the US—until
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In the autumn of 1941, Congress amended the lend-lease law of March, allowing Roosevelt to designate recipients of such aid, and in November, he declared the defense of the USSR as vital to the US and brought the Soviets into lend-lease.
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How important was this aid? Later, during the Cold War the Soviets tried to minimize it, for obvious ideological reasons, and blocked relevant archives from researchers.
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