Australia USA Lend Lease

[Hanno Spoelstra]

This surely makes for interesting reading. Convinced now more than before that Lend-Lease was used as a money-making scheme for some of the actors in the "value chain". Also think of (mainly US?) companies with overseas plants in occupied countries making equipment for the enemy...

Read the Canadian perspective here: Canadian Economy: US and British Wartime Aid by David Hayward

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[Ed Storey]

While Lend Lease certainly paved the way for the Allied victory in the SWW, it also helped open up global markets that were closed to US manufacturers as it was tied to the European powers dismantling their overseas empires in the post-war era.

[Mike Cecil]

250M pounds of wool = between 600,000 and 950,000 bales depending on quality/packing density = much less than a year's Australian wool clip. By June 1942, the US stock of wool from all global sources exceeded 2.7 million Bales of wool. It is why, by 1945, with all the difficulties of selling and exporting wool during the war years, there was over 5Million bales in storage in Australia, most owned by Australia.

The British purchased wool in large quantities in the years 1939 to end 1941 for strategic reasons: (1) to prevent Aust wool being sold to the Japanese and (2) to prevent Aust wool being sold to third countries which could then on-sell to Germany by importation through Russia. By the end of 1941, both strategic reasons had vanished. The Brits sold some of their Aust wool in storage to the US in late 1941 (agreement reached in September) to provide the British with much needed US$ but as noted above, the quantity was not even a single year's Australian clip. So ships heading to the USA in late 1941 and early 1942 may well have carried wool on the return journey.

But did wool and wheat vector into the LL-RLL formaula? Nothing I have found supports that contention. As detailed in Butlin and Schedvin's volume of the official history, the LL-RLL account did not include unprocessed commodities.

The Canadian Mutual Aid agreement - now that's a whole different bag of worms!!



Mike

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally Posted by Ed Storey

While Lend Lease certainly paved the way for the Allied victory in the SWW, it also helped open up global markets that were closed to US manufacturers as it was tied to the European powers dismantling their overseas empires in the post-war era.

And who was demanding the European countries to dismantle their overseas empires? Right...

[Ed Storey]

Yeah, its amazing how that works. If you look at current events, as the market in Afghanistan for western manufactured weapons closed, another quickly opened in Ukraine. Ah, there is nothing like a good war to make money off of.