Chapter 27: Aid to the USSR in the Later War Years
Aid to the USSR continued during the last two years of the war to absorb its share of both American supplies and shipping. By mid-1943 any imminent danger of Soviet collapse had passed and the Red Army had assumed the offensive all along the Eastern Front; nevertheless, the Soviet Union continued to press for aid on the largest possible scale and the United States to grant it in the most generous measure of which it was capable. Responsible American officials were compelled to view the continuing contribution of the Red Army in the war against Germany as an indispensable condition to the success of the Anglo-American assault from the west. Moreover, they expected the USSR to enter the war against Japan at a propitious moment after the defeat of Germany and to play an important role in the defeat of the Asiatic member of the Axis. Having accepted, very early in the war, these premises as to the essential character of the Soviet contribution to victory in both Europe and Asia, there was little tendency to use the USSR’s need for American supplies as a bargaining lever. During the first two years after the German attack in 1941 the urgency of Soviet needs had been so great, the threat of Soviet collapse so imminent and foreboding for the Allied cause, that almost any effort or sacrifice seemed justified in order to deliver supplies. This sense of urgency died hard even under the changed conditions of the last half of the war when victory over Germany and Japan seemed assured. The postwar implications of thus helping to strengthen the Soviet position in Europe and Asia were either not foreseen or ignored.
The Soviet Aid Program continued until the end of the war in Europe to be based on annual diplomatic protocols, supply agreements at the governmental level, and was thus far more rigid than were the lend-lease programs for the British, French, and others. The Third Protocol covered the period from 1 July 1943 through 30 June 1944, the Fourth the period from 1 July 1944 through 30 June 1945.1 No fifth protocol was ever signed, but arrangements were made to supply materials to the Soviet Union for a campaign against Japan in Manchuria.
The formulation and administration of the protocols fell to the President’s Soviet Protocol Committee (PSPC), an organization directly responsible to the President, composed of representatives of the War, Navy, State, Treasury, and Agriculture Departments, and of the War Production Board, Foreign Economic Administration, War Shipping
Administration, and the Petroleum Administrator for War. General Somervell was the War Department representative on the committee. Harry Hopkins was officially its chairman but because of his ill health General York, executive of the committee, functioned in that capacity most of the time. The Protocol Committee worked principally through its two subcommittees, one for supply and the other for shipping. The Army was represented on the first by the International Division, ASF, and on the second by the Transportation Corps. In addition, in formulating policy on Soviet supply, the Protocol Committee normally consulted the Joint Chiefs of Staff. All these arrangements insured that military interests would have proper consideration in the administration of the protocols, but the basic protocol agreements transcended military authority. The guidelines for military policy on supplying the USSR emanated from the President himself.
Supply to the USSR continued to be a collaborative effort with the British, but the British contribution declined in relative importance as U.S. aid increased in volume. Canada also associated itself with the United States and Great Britain in the Third and Fourth Protocols. They were thus four-cornered political agreements, but each country offered its own schedule of supplies separately and the U.S. schedule overshadowed the others. Collaboration centered mainly in framing the conditions under which supplies would be granted, in preventing duplication among the various schedules, and in arranging convoys over the northern route and through the Mediterranean (for both of which the British were responsible).
In terms purely of logistics, the flow of supplies to the USSR was far smoother during the later war years. By mid-1943 the main obstacles to a large-scale Soviet supply program had been overcome. The commitments for Soviet aid had been fitted into American supply programs and the growing output of American factories was making it possible to meet them without significant sacrifice to the U.S. military effort. The shipping situation was vastly improved. Most important of all, there was now adequate capacity on the routes of delivery. Inability to maintain convoys over the northern route in the face of heavy losses, inadequate facilities in the Persian Gulf, and insufficient Soviet flag shipping in the Pacific had all combined to frustrate every effort to meet commitments under the First and Second Protocols. But by mid-1943 a capacity of well over 200,000 short tons monthly was in sight in the Persian Gulf, and the transfer of vessels to the Soviet flag in the Pacific had created a fleet capable of transporting an even greater tonnage to Vladivostok. There was no further need to accept prohibitive losses on the northern route, although there remained a good chance that it, too, could be used whenever the British could spare naval convoys from other operations.2
Formulation of the Third Protocol
The outlook was hardly so optimistic when consideration of the Third Protocol first began. In January 1943 deliveries
on the Second Protocol were more than a million short tons in arrears. The President, in ordering an intensive effort to overcome this deficit, also asked for preparation of offerings for a Third Protocol on the assumption that “Russian continuance in the war is of cardinal importance and therefore it must be a basic factor in our strategy to provide her with a maximum amount of supplies that can be delivered to her ports.”3 At Casablanca, the CCS endorsed this concept and approved a shipping schedule that envisaged bringing Soviet aid shipments up to protocol commitments by the end of 1943, assuming that the commitments under the Third Protocol would be the same as those for the Second (4,400,000 short tons).4
The Casablanca schedule for the first six months of 1943 proved impossible of fulfillment. In March shipments over the northern route had to be suspended to permit preparations for the Sicily invasion. Capacity in the Persian Gulf increased much more slowly than anticipated. With these difficulties coming on top of previous embarrassments in fulfilling protocol schedules, the Americans sought to confine the commitment under the Third Protocol to realizable proportions. In March and April 1943 WSA formulated a shipping program providing for movement of 150,000 short tons monthly through the Persian Gulf and 225,000 monthly over the Pacific route, or a total of 4,500,000 short tons during the Third Protocol year, approximately the same volume of supplies originally promised under the Second. The WSA program left the northern route entirely out of consideration and even assumed that the bulk of British supplies (approximately 50,000 tons monthly) would move through the Persian Corridor. The Second Protocol deficit, now looming larger than it had at Casablanca, was to be quietly forgotten.5
Meanwhile, the departments and agencies reviewing Soviet requests came up with a total offering of 7,080,000 short tons of supplies, exclusive of vessels and fly-away planes, but including materials expected to be delivered but unshipped at the end of the Second Protocol period. When a small commitment of the Canadian government was added, the total came to one-and-onehalf times the tonnage of the WSA shipping program. The Protocol Committee decided to offer the USSR the whole amount and ask that they select from the list 4,500,000 short tons to fit the maximum shipping available.6
The Soviet Government, unimpressed by the generosity of the American offer, insisted that the Soviet war effort required the import of much more than 4.5 million tons of supplies. The United States could, Soviet representatives said, by exerting itself, deliver at least 6 million tons—1.4 over the northern route during the fall and winter months, 2.6
instead of 1.8 by the Persian Corridor, but only 2 million via the Pacific where turnaround time would inevitably be greater than the 75 days WSA had assumed in its calculations. The Soviet maneuver was obviously aimed at securing an additional commitment for reopening the preferred northern route. The Americans agreed to go only part of the way. In view of the vast improvement in the shipping situation since the WSA calculations in March, the President’s Soviet Protocol Committee, after consultation with the JCS, agreed to increase the total commitment for the Atlantic routes from 150,000 to 200,000 tons monthly, to be shipped either over the northern route or by way of the Persian Gulf “whichever in the light of changing conditions proves from time to time to be more efficient.” The committee, while agreeing that the turnaround time in the Pacific should be 90 rather than 75 days, insisted that the Pacific route was capable of handling 225,000 tons monthly since it was currently operating at that level. A provision that the Soviet flag ships in the Pacific should be transferred to the Atlantic in case of Japanese interference with that route was also included in the final draft of the protocol.
The final American offer was thus set at 5,100,000 short tons for the Third Protocol period, 2,700,000 by the Pacific route and 2,400,000 by the Atlantic, with a provision that, if conditions permitted, the United States, Great Britain, and Canada would “gladly review the schedules from time to time for the purpose of increasing the quantities to be provided and delivered.” Soviet representatives were also to be permitted to include a 500,000-ton stockpile in their selections, making a total of 5,600,000 short tons. The USSR accepted this compromise. On 1 September 1943 Soviet representatives notified the State Department that they would take the military and industrial equipment offered at full rates and made specific deductions in their requirements for foodstuffs, metals, petroleum products, and chemicals. The logic behind this move is obvious. Advance planning was necessary for procurement of military and industrial equipment while there was always a possibility of drawing from existing stockpiles of foodstuffs, petroleum, and raw materials if shipping could be found to move them. On 19 October 1943 the Third Protocol was formally signed in London. Long before that date, on 1 July 1943, it had gone into effect as the practical program under which the United States, Great Britain, and Canada were continuing to send supplies to the USSR.7
The military requirements of the USSR under the Third Protocol clearly reflected the change in the Soviet position. They emphasized aircraft, specialized types of transportation and communication equipment, clothing, medical supplies, and bulk explosives, rather than the tanks, artillery, and ammunition emphasized earlier. This shift, already foreshadowed by cancellations under the Second Protocol, was to become
even more pronounced as the Soviet offensive gained momentum. In the sphere of civilian supplies, the shift was even more marked, moving toward industrial equipment and other materials needed for reconstruction and rehabilitation of devastated areas in the wake of the German retreat.
War Department offerings, totaling approximately 1,700,000 short tons, substantially met Soviet requests in almost all categories except aircraft. The Russians asked for 500 fighter planes, 100 light bombers, 50 medium bombers, and 30 transport planes monthly—a total of 8,160 planes. General Arnold refused to agree to any substantial augmentation over Second Protocol schedules—100 fighters (P-39), 100 light bombers, 12 medium bombers, and 20 transports monthly—with an additional 150 P-39’s going on British account each month, or a total of 4,344. As a result of a special pledge of the President to Stalin, 600 older type P-40-N fighters were added and the number of B-25 bombers raised from 144 to 222, but otherwise Arnold’s views prevailed.
In contrast, requests for 20,000 jeeps, 3,000 artillery prime movers, and 100,000 field telephones were met in full, and 2,000 medium tanks (M4A2) offered and accepted for which the Soviets had stated no requirement. A commitment was made for 132,000 trucks against a request for 144,000. A requirement for 10,000 railroad flatcars was accepted in its entirety, but only 500 to 700 locomotives could be offered against a request for 2,000 to 3,000. Certain types of signal equipment—radio locators and direction finders—were reserved for future consideration because of the old problem of proper specifications. A Soviet request for teletype apparatus was initially turned down.8
By agreement with the British and Canadians, certain conditions were placed on the aid pledged in the Third Protocol, though in order to meet Soviet objections the USSR was assured that they would not be invoked unless absolutely necessary. The shipping promised was to be subject to reduction “if shipping losses, lack of escorts, deficiencies in the anticipated capacity of available routes, the necessities of other operations, or the exigencies of the situation render their fulfillment impracticable,” and the lists of supplies were to be subject to readjustment “to meet unforeseen developments in the war situation.”9
Military efforts to secure some small quid pro quo from the USSR were less successful. The War Department desired a pledge from the Soviet Union that it would extend American observers the same facilities for visits and information in the USSR that were accorded Soviet representatives in the United States, and the British Chiefs of Staff wanted a pledge of Russian assistance in defending the northern convoy route. The Protocol Committee ruled against inclusion of either of these conditions, remarking that:
In the experience of those engaged in the execution of previous Protocols, the Soviets are very difficult to deal with on a bargaining basis, but respond most satisfactorily in performing their share of an
understanding when a generous offer is made, and which does not force the Soviets into a bargaining position.10
In the face of this attitude the JCS and CCS decided not to insist.
The Swelling Flow of Aid to the USSR
Even before the Third Protocol was formally signed in October, the improved situation on the delivery routes was evident. By the end of September 1943 shipments on the proposed protocol were 15 percent ahead of schedule. In September, shipments over the Pacific route mounted to a new high of 345,000 short tons and those to the Persian Gulf reached 207,000 short tons. Brig. Gen. Donald H. Connolly, head of the Persian Gulf Command, reported that a continuing capacity of 242,000 short tons per month could be anticipated on that route under existing plans for development.
Shipments via the Pacific route, however, soon began to decline because of difficulties of winter navigation, reaching a nadir of 102,000 short tons in January 1944. The possibility of Japanese interference forced most Soviet flag shipping in the Pacific to proceed by way of Kamchatka, Petropavlovsk, and the Strait of Tartary rather than directly through La Perouse Strait close to the northernmost Japanese island of Hokkaido. The route was difficult in winter, and many ships were icebound for long periods when even icebreakers could not get through the packed ice. Several Liberty ships cracked up in the ice and had to be replaced; most returned to the west coast in need of extensive repairs. Despite these difficulties the Russians were completely unresponsive to WSA suggestions that some of the Soviet flag shipping be transferred temporarily to the Alaska and Hawaii run, an attitude that discouraged any further transfers of American shipping to the Soviet Pacific fleet.
In the face of declining Pacific shipments and continuing danger of Japanese interruption of that route, further augmentation of the capacity of the Persian Gulf was seriously considered. In September 1943 General Connolly offered alternate plans for an increase from 216,000 long tons (242,000 short tons) monthly to 244,000 and 260,000 long tons respectively. The first goal, he said, could be achieved with a small personnel increment, simply by putting 450 more railroad cars on the Trans-Iranian Railway and setting up two new mobile truck assembly plants. The second goal would be more difficult, requiring additional major port construction and a considerable augmentation of the motor transport service. The Protocol Committee decided that the additional rail and truck assembly equipment should be sent to provide a standby capacity for 244,000 long tons, but that no additional personnel should go and no commitment should be accepted for the increase.11
Liberty Ship with supplies for the USSR at the port of Khorramshar, Iran
Negotiations were already under way for reopening the northern route, and this undoubtedly influenced the decision of the committee. In September 1943 the Soviet Union began to press urgently for resumption of the northern convoys, which had been suspended since March. Soviet spokesmen insisted that the northern route was the only one over which supplies destined for use on the northern front could be delivered in time to serve their intended purposes. Moreover, much of the Third Protocol cargo consisted of heavy and bulky equipment such as locomotives, power and construction equipment, and industrial machinery—articles that for the most part, because of their bulk and ultimate destination in the USSR, could not be handled in the Persian Gulf. In the Pacific there were insufficient ships equipped to handle locomotives; transport of other types of heavy equipment across the Trans-Siberian Railway was difficult.12
Resumption of the northern convoys depended on the ability of the British to furnish naval escort. Churchill was willing to run convoys from November
1943 through February 1944 at an average rate of 35 ships per month, but would make no contract or bargain on the point and sought as a quid pro quo a Soviet promise to relax restrictions on the numbers and movement of British personnel in the USSR. Stalin insisted on a binding commitment without conditions. After an acrimonious exchange of messages in which neither side would give way, a modus vivendi was reached at the Foreign Ministers meeting in Moscow in late October and the convoys were reinstituted on schedule in November. Churchill made no specific pledge for their continuance, nor did Stalin make any concessions on the matter of British personnel in the USSR.13
The scheduled convoys sailed in November, December, January, and February, and a fifth was added in March. In February and March WSA found it necessary to cut shipments to the Persian Gulf in order to provide ships for the northern route, since heavy shipments to England in preparation for OVERLORD were placing a strain on the Atlantic shipping pool. When the northern convoys were suspended in April to allow naval preparations for OVERLORD, shipments to the Persian Gulf were correspondingly increased, reaching a peak of 289,000 long tons in May. With the return of the icebound fleet, shipments once again mounted to large proportions in the Pacific in May and June. By the end of the Third Protocol period on 30 June 1944, the calculations of the capacities of both the Pacific and Persian Corridor routes had been vindicated. Total tonnage by each route was slightly in excess of the protocol commitment for the Atlantic and Pacific respectively. With nearly one million short tons more moving over the northern route, the Third Protocol commitment of 5.1 million short tons was exceeded by approximately 25 percent. Delivery of aircraft was also maintained at protocol rates.14
Meanwhile, negotiations for a fourth protocol were under way. On 14 February 1944, the President issued one of his periodic directives on the Soviet supply program to the interested departments and agencies:
Russia continues to be a major factor in achieving the defeat of Germany. We must therefore continue to support the USSR by providing the maximum amount of supplies which can be delivered to her ports. This is a matter of paramount importance.
…
The USSR has been requested to state requirements for a Fourth Protocol, to cover the period from July 1, 1944 to June 30, 1945. It is desired that within the limitations of available resources, every effort be made to meet these requirements. ...15
The initial American supply offering, compiled in the same way as previous protocols, was 7,383,073 short tons of supplies, including a carry-over of stockpiles from the Third Protocol. The Canadian offering amounted to 491,371 short tons. The shipping commitment was initially set at 5,400,000 short tons, equally divided between the Atlantic and Pacific. Again the USSR felt that the offering was too low and pressed for a commitment of 7,000,000 short tons.
Maj. Gen. Sidney P. Spalding, head of the Lend-Lease Supply Mission to the USSR, thought the figure not “unduly high” in view of the extensive destruction in the USSR and the valiant war effort the Soviet people were exerting.16
The principal issue, once more, was the northern route. At the insistence of the Russians, supported by the U.S. Joint Chiefs, the British agreed to start convoys over the route again in August 1944, but it was still uncertain whether the convoys would continue to run monthly. With demands for OVERLORD forces mounting, WSA was unwilling to make a binding commitment of too much shipping in the Atlantic. In the end the Russians had to settle for a definite increase of only 300,000 short tons in the shipping commitment via the Atlantic (raising the total to 5,700,000 short tons), and a promise that more would be shipped if possible. Again they were permitted to include a stockpile, this time of 600,000 tons, in their selections. Actually, in the light of experience under the Third Protocol, Soviet officials could have had little doubt that the United States would exert itself to exceed protocol quotas.17
The conditions on Soviet aid and the escape clauses were generally the same as those in the Third Protocol. War Department offerings made up approximately the same proportion with heavy types of equipment needed to rehabilitate transportation, communication, and other facilities predominating. Railway materials included 1,735 locomotives and 12,244 flatcars; truck offerings showed larger numbers of the very heavy types, including for the first time 40-ton tank transporters. Another important addition was mobile construction equipment for roads and airports. The War Department had also, during the Third Protocol period, accepted responsibility for certain types of industrial equipment (industrial lift trucks and tractors, cranes, power shovels, teletype apparatus, and the like), and considerable quantities of these items were included in the Fourth Protocol as part of a total offering of industrial equipment valued at $1,132,453,000.
The main change in aircraft schedules under the Fourth Protocol was the elimination of light bombers and a corresponding increase in the number of pursuit planes (from 1,200 to 2,450,) and medium bombers (from 222 to 300). Soviet bids for heavy bombers (B-17 and B-24) and for newer, larger types of transports (C-46 and C-54) were refused. Plans called for delivery of nearly all aircraft via the Alaska-Siberian ferry route, rendering the aircraft assembly facilities in Iran of little further use.18
The Fourth Protocol was not formally signed until April 1945 because of difficulties over terms of payment for industrial materials. The State Department adopted the general formula that no Soviet requirements that would be more than 18 months in production could be financed under lend-lease, on the assumption that such materials were for postwar rehabilitation rather than for the war effort. Much of the industrial equipment fell into this category. The Fourth Protocol was signed without any final agreement on this issue. Delivery of industrial equipment was made subject to future settlement of terms of payment and, indeed, most of it was never delivered, owing mainly to Soviet intransigence over the interest rate.19
Despite the delay in signing, the Fourth Protocol went into practical effect with the expiration of the Third on 1 July 1944, following a precedent established earlier. Shipping rates were soon exceeding the high ones of the previous year. Availability of supplies and shipping, principally the latter, had now become the limiting factors on aid to the USSR rather than capacity of the routes of delivery. The British proved able to maintain the northern convoys without interruption, and with inconsequential losses, from August 1944 through the end of the war in Europe in May 1945. Shipments via Vladivostok and the Soviet Arctic ports were pushed vigorously during the summer and fall of 1944, and the diminution in the winter of 1944-45 was less than the previous year. In this situation the Persian Corridor assumed the status of an auxiliary route except for the delivery of unassembled trucks. During the last half of 1944 shipments through Iran were well below the capacity of the Trans-Iranian Railroad, and no appreciable tonnage was moved by truck. In midyear the Army and the Protocol Committee proposed disbanding the motor transport service in the area so as to free about 8,000 service troops for duty elsewhere; but the Russians urged delaying the move to preserve a reserve capacity in case the Japanese should interfere with the Pacific route or the northern convoys again be suspended. Not until November 1944 was the move finally accomplished, concomitant with the discontinuance of air assembly in Iran.20
By September 1944 the Russians had regained complete control of the north shores of the Black Sea, and it was apparent that great economies in both U.S. military shipping and Soviet rail transportation could be effected by shifting the lines of supply from the Persian Gulf. The Turks agreed to allow passage of the Dardanelles, and the British agreed to provide convoy escort through
the Aegean Sea. By American standards, however, the Russians moved very slowly in performing the essentials in their own territory—arranging convoys in the Black Sea, rehabilitating damaged ports, and setting up truck assembly plants. Though they asked for necessary equipment from the United States, they were at first unwilling to allow U.S. personnel to visit Odessa, the main port of entry contemplated. After the usual tortuous course of negotiations, these matters were ironed out, a start made on rehabilitation, and shipments through the Black Sea inaugurated in January 1945. The first ships leaving the United States carried with them port cranes necessary to put the port of Odessa in condition to handle the heavier cargo that followed in other vessels. Two truck assembly plants were rushed to Odessa from the Persian Gulf. And despite some port congestion in the beginning, the Black Sea route soon supplanted the Persian Corridor. Few supplies were shipped from the United States to Iranian ports after January 1945, and activity in the Persian Gulf Command after that date was confined mostly to cleaning up the backlog of supplies on hand, transporting oil from the Abadan refineries to the Soviet Zone, and liquidation of facilities. Liquidation proceeded slowly, nonetheless, because of reluctance to give up the insurance the Persian Corridor route offered against the failure of the others. American port and railroad facilities in Iran remained virtually intact until after V-E Day. Much of the material made surplus by the declining need for the Iranian route, in addition to the truck assembly plants, was set up for delivery to the USSR. Several port cranes, assorted rails and accessories, and 792 10-ton trucks had been delivered by V-E Day, and 3,663 rail cars were scheduled for transfer.21
Even with the Persian Corridor fading rapidly from the picture, American aid under the Fourth Protocol had already surpassed the original 5.7-million short ton shipping commitment by the end of the war in Europe in May 1945. Flight delivery of aircraft was also ahead of schedule.22
The War Department and the Protocols
During the period from July 1943 to May 1945, when U.S. aid to the USSR mounted to its highest point, War Department supply agencies were generally successful in discharging their responsibilities under the protocols. Their relations with Soviet representatives, also, were more cordial and smooth than earlier. Yet certain problems persisted. Although total shipments under the Third and Fourth Protocols generally ran ahead of schedule, the War Department was usually slightly behind in meeting the supply commitments for which it was
responsible. Against Third Protocol schedules, the War Department made available 84 percent of its offerings and in May 1945 had furnished 79 percent of its share of the Fourth Protocol, as opposed to a scheduled 82 percent.23 The cause of this lag was not any lack of will or effort on the part of the ASF in procurement and delivery of material or any considerable retentions to meet requirements of U.S. military forces. It lay rather in the difficulty of programing Soviet requirements for timely production and in the fact that shipping was not always adequate to move certain heavier types of equipment, notably locomotives and trucks.
The Army Supply Program was drawn up by calendar year, with a major revision semiannually. The protocols covered a fiscal year. They were never made final until well after the period they were to cover had begun, and requirements frequently changed in the interim. Under this system, it was difficult to plan Soviet aid in the Army Supply Program, particularly where nonstandard items with special specifications were involved. In December 1943, General Clay proposed that the protocols be put on a calendar year basis to match the Army Supply Program, but the Protocol Committee was reluctant to recommend a change on the ground that it might be disturbing to the Soviet Union at that stage of the war.
The greatest difficulties in production planning arose in the case of signal equipment—such as radio stations, radar (where the issue of military secrecy was also involved), measuring and testing equipment—and in certain types of engineering, transportation, and industrial supplies. All these materials were normally related to special projects and dependent upon the development of the military situation in the USSR. Soviet representatives in Washington, dependent on advice from supply commissars in Moscow who themselves were not in direct touch with the battlefronts, were slow in developing and presenting both requirements and specifications. For both the Third and Fourth Protocols the ASF found it necessary to make its own advance estimates of Soviet needs in order to place contracts for timely procurement, and the estimates had to be based, not on any knowledge of conditions on the Eastern Front, but merely on previous Soviet requests and other fragmentary information. Adjustments and new requests subsequently presented by Soviet representatives proved difficult to handle. The ASF, following the Presidential directives to make all possible supplies available to the USSR, did, time after time, find the means to meet emergency Soviet requests despite the mushrooming of U.S. Army overseas requirements for special project materials in 1944 and 1945. Nevertheless, there were certain delays in procurement of special needs of the USSR, and in April 1945 the War Department was encountering difficulties in meeting commitments for construction machinery, landing mat, specialized types of trucks and tractors, rotary snow plows, ice plants, cloth, tarpaulins, and medical supplies, either
because of delayed placement of contracts or competition with U.S. needs.24
The Soviet Union almost invariably accepted War Department offerings at their full rate in order to obtain the advantages of advance procurement planning, and then, under changing conditions, sometimes gave preference to other supplies for shipment. Increases in Third Protocol tonnage as a result of the improved shipping situation were made, at Soviet request, mainly in food, steel, aluminum, nickel, and alcohol.25 Much of the reason for this lay in the nature of available shipping space. Total tonnage in itself was never an adequate measure of ability to ship specific items. Normally more shipping space for bulk bottom cargo was obtainable than for finished equipment, which in many cases required deck loading or special facilities for packing and handling. Shipment of petroleum products, toluol, alcohol, and other liquid cargo depended upon the availability of tankers, not dry cargo ships. The Russians often desired particular cargo only by a particular route of delivery, and there were other factors influencing the nature of cargo on each route. Finished military equipment was excluded from the Vladivostok route, though items such as petroleum, foodstuffs, trucks, locomotives, and engineering equipment of either military or civilian end-use moved over it. Before the opening of the Black Sea, the Persian Gulf, because of its superior assembly facilities, had to be the principal reliance for shipment of unassembled trucks. Medium tanks had to be shipped almost entirely over the northern route. The Iranian ports could not handle locomotives and there were too few ships on any of the routes equipped to carry them. In these circumstances, shipment of some types of military cargo lagged behind, and this lag, rather than difficulty in procurement, was the principal reason why the War Department failed to meet protocol schedules. For instance, under the Third Protocol 121,620 trucks were shipped instead of the 132,000 promised and 1,802 medium tanks instead of 2,000. Similarly, though at the Tehran Conference the greatest Russian emphasis had been put on locomotives, many still had to be held back under the Third Protocol because of lack of ships capable of delivering them. Movement of locomotives was speeded up, beginning shortly after the Tehran Conference, by adaptation of Soviet flag vessels in the Pacific and performance under the Fourth Protocol was better.26
Regulation of assignments to the USSR was normally accomplished at the production end rather than in distribution. The protocol schedules were, at least as long as the war in Europe continued, virtually ironclad commitments
for delivery. Military materials were formally assigned by the Munitions Assignments Board, but that body’s practical jurisdiction over the protocols was limited mainly to adjustments in the rate of delivery and to decisions on Soviet bids for critical equipment that arose outside the protocol commitments. The responsibility for preventing interference with deliveries for the U.S. Army rested for the most part with the ASF agencies that drew up the protocol schedules and reviewed extra-protocol requests for War Department materials.
Under this system, regulation of USSR stockpiles was a major problem. Because of the difficulties caused by excessive backlogs during the first two protocol periods, the Army placed the greatest emphasis on limiting the stockpiles to reasonable proportions. Under the Third Protocol the Soviet Union was to be allowed a stockpile of 500,000 tons and under the Fourth 600,000 tons. However, the Russians began the Third Protocol period in July 1943 with a stockpile of 1,200,000 tons and, in fact, never brought it down to the stipulated figures. General Wright, head of the International Division, ASF, secured a clause in the Third Protocol, one that was continued in the Fourth, reserving to the United States “the right to limit the size of individual stockpiles, either by control of production or diversion of product, or both, when in its judgment such action is in the best interest of the common cause,” but the clause was hedged by another provision which said that making up resulting arrearages was to be given “all possible consideration.”27
In an effort to give practical effect to this principle, the ASF attempted in fall 1943 to secure application of its own stock control procedures to all supplies for the USSR, but the Protocol Committee was unwilling to go this far. The committee did institute a program for controlling the flow of supplies at the production end, essaying in each case to get Soviet representatives in Washington to cut back programs of their own free will when it was apparent that materials would pile up in storage. Large backlogs of trucks and locomotives were forestalled in this manner. Along the same line, the committee adopted the principle that when the Russians made requests for new materials, they must cancel part of their existing requirements to provide the necessary shipping space. As an example, during the Third Protocol period, the Russians canceled requirements on the War Department for ammunition and scout cars in order to permit extra-protocol shipments of pipeline, 40-mm. antiaircraft guns, artillery pieces, and explosives. Only in extreme instances did the War Department resort to the repossession procedures administered by the MAB, and then Soviet representatives were given many warnings and several extensions before any repossession action was taken. Only in the case of 48 wreckers, repossessed in June 1944 after eight months in storage, did the USSR suffer any serious inconvenience, for U.S. Army requirements prevented resupply of these wreckers when the USSR bid for them again.28
In general, adjustment of the Soviet program to both shipping capabilities and the changing war situation in the USSR itself was a difficult matter. Soviet representatives in the United States could take little action without constant reference to Moscow, and U.S. representatives in or out of the Soviet Union were permitted to get little firsthand information on Soviet needs on which to base their own conclusions.
The Deane-Spalding Mission
The main effort to gain more firsthand information on Soviet needs and on the use of American supplies in the USSR was made by the U.S. Military Mission established in Moscow in October 1943. At that time the United States reorganized its representation in the Soviet Union. Averell Harriman replaced Admiral William H. Standley as Ambassador, and at Harriman’s suggestion the military mission was created with General Deane, formerly U.S. Secretary of the CCS, as its head. The military mission was to work with the Embassy in promoting the closest possible coordination of the military efforts of the United States and USSR. The old Supply Mission to the USSR under Col. Philip Faymonville, which had handled lend-lease matters independently in the Soviet Union since October 1941, was supplanted by a new lend-lease mission headed by Brig. Gen. Sidney P. Spalding, long assistant to Maj. Gen. James H. Burns on the Munitions Assignments Board and the President’s Soviet Protocol Committee. Spalding’s mission was subject to the over-all coordination of the Ambassador and the chief of the military mission, although he reported directly to the Protocol Committee. In practice his group functioned virtually as a part of Deane’s mission. Though both missions were expected to render such technical assistance as the Russians requested, neither was given any power or authority to investigate or make more than informal recommendations on lend-lease requests. The United States Government had evidently decided, after its bitter experience with the Greely mission in early 1942, that the USSR would hardly permit any group charged with the latter functions to enter the country.29
Both General Deane and Ambassador Harriman soon became convinced that the United States should establish a closer control over the flow of supplies to the USSR now that the crisis in the Russo-German War had passed. They did not, at least in the beginning, want power to screen all Soviet requests as MacArthur screened Australian requests or Stilwell did those of the Chinese; they merely wished to force Soviet officials to give them fuller information on, and justification for, their requirements for critical items. In January 1944 Deane learned that many lend-lease diesel marine engines were rusting in storage
because the Soviet Union had not prepared hulls for their installation, a circumstance that gave rise to the suspicion that much other lend-lease material might be similarly misused. The USSR was, at the time, pressing for an increase in protocol tonnages of aluminum, nickel, alcohol, and copper wire, all materials vital to American war production. A. I. Mikoyan, Soviet Commissar for Foreign Trade, turned aside lightly all queries as to the use the Russians intended to make of the materials, promising information in the near future but intimating clearly that he thought Soviet representatives in Washington could secure the materials without such specific justification as requested. In mid-January 1944, Deane and Harriman both recommended to Washington that before items in critical supply were allocated to the USSR, the military mission should be required to obtain information and submit recommendations that would indicate the relative urgency of the Soviet need.30
In Washington, the War Department and the JCS readily agreed to the application of the Deane-Harriman proposals, but it proved impossible to overcome the pronounced fear of wounding Soviet sensibilities that prevailed in circles close to the President. The JCS drafted a memorandum for the President on 17 January 1944, asking approval of Deane’s recommendations. When it was discussed with Isadore Lubin, statistician on the MAB and an intimate of Harry Hopkins, Lubin indicated that there would be political objections. He recognized “some merit” in the proposal, but felt that “if it were put into effect it should be done gradually and not with a full broadside at the Soviets.”31 Admiral Leahy decided that the memorandum should not be sent to the President pending word from Hopkins who at that time was in the hospital and not permitted to have visitors. Somervell proposed to talk to Hopkins as soon as he could, but there is no record that the conversation took place.
At any rate, the military representatives were overruled in conferences between Hopkins, Leo Crowley, head of FEA, and Edward Stettinius, Acting Secretary of State. On 25 February 1944 the Protocol Committee informed Harriman that it would be “inadvisable to subject USSR requirements to screening in Moscow or to reject Soviet requests because of failure to provide operational or other justification” to the military mission. They argued that limitations on ocean tonnage still had the effect of forcing the Russians to give “continuous preference to badly needed high priority items,” and that final determination of offerings to the USSR must be made in Washington rather than in Moscow since complete information on overall U.N. requirements, resources, and shipping were available only to the authorities there.32
Harriman protested that his proposals had been misunderstood, that neither he nor Deane had contemplated any far-reaching decisions on the scope of the Soviet Aid Program in Moscow, only a limited screening as a lever to get information on Soviet requirements. He did not feel that limitations on ocean tonnage would necessarily continue in the future, as they had in the past, to restrict Soviet requests to their more urgent needs. “We lay ourselves wide open to just criticism at home,” Harriman wrote, “unless we now begin to get at least some knowledge of the purposes for which they are using our shipments.”33
Harriman and Deane continued to urge on every suitable occasion that the military mission be permitted to screen Soviet requests for critical materials. In August 1944 Deane indicated he wanted to go much further and have the mission screen all military requirements for the USSR. In December 1944 he expressed to General Marshall his disgust at the lack of any positive action on any of the proposals: “The situation has changed but our policy has not. We still meet their requests to the limit of our ability, and they meet ours to the minimum that will keep us sweet.”34
Despite the barriers placed in their way, Deane and Spalding did furnish some information on Soviet requirements, using intuition, common sense, and the little knowledge they could glean from their own contacts and those of members of their respective missions. The information had at least some influence on the formulation of the Fourth Protocol schedules. The mission, however, had no lever with which to force Soviet officials to give operational justification for their supply needs as long as the normal channel for transmission of requests stayed in the Soviet Government Purchasing Commission in Washington. The Soviet officials probably lost more than they gained by their attitude. Deane and Harriman were prepared to support Soviet requests if justified by “little more than a sob story.” General Spalding, who had particular responsibility for lend-lease, was never overly critical of Soviet requests. On the few occasions that Spalding and Deane were permitted to travel and observe, they obtained or speeded up shipments of items such as DUKW’s, trucks, landing mat, and port cranes sorely needed in the areas they visited.35
Milepost: Supply for the USSR’s War Against Japan
One of the primary tasks of the Deane mission was to arrange for military collaboration with the USSR in the war against Japan. At the Tehran Conference in December 1943, Stalin clearly indicated that the western Allies could count on the USSR entering the war against Japan at the propitious moment after the defeat of Germany. American military planners, if they did not consider Soviet entry an absolute essential to victory over Japan, did believe it highly desirable. The JCS view, as stated
to the President just before the Yalta Conference, was:
We desire Russian entry at the earliest possible date consistent with her ability to engage in offensive operations and are prepared to offer the maximum support possible without prejudice to our main effort against Japan.36
The Americans hoped to use Siberian bases in the strategic bombing of Japan and thought the Soviet Siberian Army could effectively prevent the withdrawal of the Japanese Kwantung Army from Manchuria to the home islands to oppose an American assault. It seems fair to say that, after late 1943, they counted more heavily on the USSR to defeat the Japanese on the continent of Asia than on either the Chinese or the British. All operations on the Asiatic mainland were, after the SEXTANT Conference, considered subsidiary to the main effort in the Pacific; but in the whole scale of subsidiary effort in Asia, the prospective Soviet contribution appears to have ranked highest in American eyes.
The value of Soviet military collaboration would, in the American view, clearly depend on genuinely combined Soviet-American advance planning and preparation. The U.S. staff reasoned that, once the USSR was at war with Japan, the Japanese Navy could certainly cut the supply line to Vladivostok and the Japanese Army could probably initially cut the Trans-Siberian rail line. An advance build-up of supplies in Siberia against these contingencies, to tide the Soviet Siberian Army over until one line or the other could be reopened, therefore seemed imperative. It seemed equally imperative to begin as soon as possible the even more elaborate build-up required for strategic bombing from Siberian air bases and to plan for maintaining at least a minimum flow of supplies across the Pacific to Siberia in the event of a Soviet-Japanese clash. Assuming that the United Nations could maintain control of the Sea of Okhotsk north of Vladivostok, the port of Nikolaevsk and certain smaller ports in the Amur River region could serve as supply bases, as could Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula. But these ports were relatively undeveloped, and were open only from June through October; inland clearance facilities were poor. In order to keep even this line open, the Americans postulated that a campaign to seize one of the Kurile Islands would be required, and to support such a campaign and subsequently run convoys through the Sea of Okhotsk, naval and air bases on Kamchatka must be prepared.37
Even after Stalin’s promise at Tehran, General Deane found Soviet officials curiously indifferent to any of these things, seemingly fearful of compromising their neutrality too early and of permitting Americans to make surveys in Soviet territory. On the matter of Siberian air bases, they blew hot and cold by turns. When in April 1944 the USSR requested 500 B-17 or B-24 bombers as part
of the Fourth Protocol, Deane and Harriman sought to use the request as a lever to force the Soviet hand, reasoning that commencement of preparation of the bases could be made a condition on furnishing the USSR a small strategic air force for use against Japan. After some persuasion the JCS reluctantly adopted this approach, but the Russians continued to delay any action, in part, Deane thought, because the Americans proposed to have six groups to their four. In the end no heavy bombers were included under the Fourth Protocol. Though negotiations continued afterward, the attitude of the Soviet officials remained an enigma and the day of preparation of the Siberian airfields was postponed time after time on one pretext or another.38
During the course of these frustrating negotiations, the military mission continued to press on other fronts for logistical preparations for eventual Soviet participation in the war against Japan. In April 1944 Deane urged that the northern convoys be reinstituted as soon as possible after OVERLORD to permit supply shipments via the Atlantic for that purpose. In May Spalding proposed that a special effort be made to ship large quantities of supplies to Vladivostok during the summer months while navigation conditions were best in order to provide a ready-made stockpile in Siberia. There was even consideration given to risking Japanese interference by shipping military supplies over the Pacific route. On 22 June, after having finally been permitted to visit Vladivostok, Spalding urged that additional ships be transferred to the Soviet flag in the Pacific during the summer months, the ships to be diverted to other services during the winter.
The JCS, on the advice of the Joint Military Transportation Committee, refused to consider further transfers to the Soviet flag in view of the shortage of cargo shipping in the Pacific and doubts that any greater tonnages could be unloaded expeditiously at Vladivostok. The best that could be done, they decided, would be to speed up the repair of vessels of the Soviet lend-lease fleet on the Pacific coast, an effort that was falling behind because of overcrowded facilities. It would be more practicable, the JMTC thought, for the Soviet Union to build its stockpile from supplies sent by the northern route and transshipped over the Trans-Siberian Railway.39
Shipments over the Pacific route were accelerated during the summer months but no more ships were transferred to the Soviet flag. Americans were not in a position to know to what extent materials shipped by either this or the northern route were used to augment stocks in Siberia. Indeed, there is no indication that Soviet officials showed any great enthusiasm for the Deane-Spalding proposals in the summer of 1944. Moreover, they gave out little information on what was being done to prepare facilities in the Amur River region or on Kamchatka, and they refused to allow any American survey
parties into those areas. Nevertheless, the American staff continued contingent planning for a North Pacific operation to open a route through the Kuriles with forces to be made available from Europe once Germany was defeated.
In conferences between Churchill, Stalin, Harriman, Deane, and Sir Alan Brooke during the British Prime Minister’s visit to Moscow in October 1944, Stalin temporarily cleared the air. He agreed definitely that the “Soviet Union would take the offensive against Japan three months after Germany’s defeat provided the United States would assist in building up necessary reserve supplies and provided the political aspects of Russia’s participation had been clarified.”40 Moreover, the Russian leader indicated that airfields in the Maritime Provinces and on Kamchatka would be provided, and he offered the use of Petropavlovsk as a naval base. He said that great improvements were under way at ports in the Amur River area and that a rail line would be built connecting the ports with the Komsomolsk area to the south in which the Americans had expressed interest as the site for their air bases. Staff planning on these matters could begin immediately. Stalin placed his primary emphasis, however, on the supply build-up for Soviet ground forces in the Far East, and Soviet representatives presented an additional list of supplies they wished delivered via the Pacific route before 30 June 1945. This list included 500 transport aircraft; 230,000 tons of POL supplies including liquid products, collapsible gas stations, tanks, and pipelines; 186,000 tons of food and fodder; 14,580 tons of clothing material and hospital supplies; 296,385 tons of automotive vehicles, road machinery, and airdrome equipment, including 1,000 DUKW’s and 32,000 trucks; 306,500 tons of railroad equipment, including 500 locomotives and 6,000 rail cars; 20,175 tons of miscellaneous engineer and signal equipment; medical supplies valued at $3 million; and 4,200 tons of small naval vessels and port equipment. All of these were semi-military types of supplies previously delivered over the Pacific route. The USSR evidently intended to build up its reserves of strictly military equipment by way of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The total requested from the United States came to 860,410 short tons of dry cargo and 206,000 tons of liquid POL, all over and above commitments already made under the Fourth Protocol.41
This formidable list of requirements, cabled to Washington by General Deane, arrived at a time when the fall shipping crisis was coining to a head.42 The Soviet program—designated MILEPOST—was originally treated as a military project and referred to the JCS rather than the Protocol Committee for decision. The Joint Logistics Committee undertook a study on the premise that affirmative action was desirable but that the Soviet requests were not to be met “at the expense of operations in Europe or those scheduled or projected in the Pacific.”43 The JLC concluded that the requirements should be accepted in principle, but only the part that could be furnished in 1945 should be scheduled
for production. On this basis, a commitment for only 46 percent, or about 400,000 tons, of the dry cargo could be undertaken. Certain items, such as locomotives, rolling stock, naval vessels, transport aircraft, and heavy trucks, were ruled out, but the entire POL requirement was accepted subject to availability of shipping. Shipping in any case would be the big problem, the JLC thought, since it would mean new transfers to the Soviet flag in the Pacific in the face of an over-all shortage of cargo shipping in that area and operations in winter when ice conditions lessened capacity on the Pacific route. The committee therefore thought the commitment could not “be based on a definite guarantee as to the time this tonnage will be moved,” and speculated that twenty sailings per month might be available beginning no earlier than March 1945. As an interim measure, the committee suggested that the USSR might be asked to substitute tonnage for MILEPOST for supplies already in the Fourth Protocol.44
The JCS accepted the JLC report as the basis for the MILEPOST project and asked that the Protocol Committee administer it. The ASF, to whom responsibility for procurement of most of the supplies was entrusted, soon reported that the proposed availability schedules could be improved considerably if the USSR were willing to accept certain substitutions and diversions from the Fourth Protocol, and if MILEPOST shipments were given an operational priority (A-1-b-5). Despite the fact that OPD ruled against the operational priority (it would have been higher than the A-2 priority granted U.S. troops on movement orders) and that the USSR refused many of the substitutions, the ASF still found that by adjustment of production or release schedules, use of Persian Gulf surplus, and diversions from the Fourth Protocol it could provide virtually all the material requested, not, it is true, by 30 June 1945 but by stretching out requirements to the end of the year. By February 1945 schedules calling for delivery of 840,000 short tons of dry cargo out of 914,000 requested (the USSR had meanwhile added a request for 54,000 tons of landing mat) had been set up. And since the original Fourth Protocol commitment for POL had been fulfilled by the end of 1944, further shipments by the Soviet tanker fleet in the Pacific in 1945 promised to surpass the MILEPOST targets for liquid cargo. Moreover, by February, it also appeared that the naval vessels could be made available later in the year. At Yalta General Deane was able to persuade the AAF to promise the USSR 150 C-47 transports to supplement the limited rail facilities in Siberia. On 3 April 1945 the entire revised MILEPOST list was formally added to the Fourth Protocol as Annex III.45
Meanwhile, a shipping program had been arranged in the face of even greater obstacles and competing demands. The general story of the steps taken to alleviate the shipping crisis in fall 1944 has been told elsewhere. In the proposals made by General Somervell in November, provision was made for 85 sailings for MILEPOST, beginning with the transfer of 16 ships to the Soviet flag in the Pacific in December 1944. Shipping for this purpose and for simultaneously reducing deficits for support of Pacific operations was to be made available from the Atlantic, mainly by reductions in the British Import Program and in protocol shipping via the Atlantic. The JCS accepted this solution subject to the proviso that “if the full number of ships proposed cannot be obtained from the Atlantic or other sources, the deficit will be applied to the proposed Russian requirement and not to shipping for Pacific areas.”46
WSA objected to cutting either British or Soviet quotas until the military services had cleared up stagnant pools of theater shipping, and the President, while agreeing to negotiation with the British on releases, forced the JCS to take positive action to reduce congestion. At the same time, he made no specific mention of cutting protocol shipments in the Atlantic and gave the MILEPOST program a high priority:
While the additional Russian request complicates the program still further, I am convinced we should move at once to get these supplies moving. Specifically, I wish that the 16 additional ships required for December for Russian account be made available and that prior to the 110th of December a decision be reached whether or not the ships required for Russian account in January can be allocated. I consider this a matter of utmost importance, second only to the operational requirements in the Pacific and Atlantic.47
WSA provided the 16 ships in December, taking them as far as possible not solely from the Atlantic but “from vessels ... not as adaptable to military needs as Liberty ships” in both the Atlantic and Pacific. Those from the Pacific were taken with the understanding that the tonnage was to be replaced. The MILEPOST program was inaugurated three months ahead of the March 1945 date the JLC had first predicted, and the ASF was hard put to it to get the necessary cargo to port to fill the ships. Some sailings were shifted to the east coast. By 10 December, also, the JMTC had agreed, despite the fact that “deficits will still exist,” to allocate twenty additional ships to the USSR from Atlantic services in January 1945.48 By the end of December a total of 50 ships had either been earmarked for, or had already been turned over to, the Soviet flag in the Pacific and 2 more were earmarked shortly afterward, against an ultimate target of 85.49
In the event, only 37 ships were actually transferred. As the Joint Logistics Committee had warned, the Pacific route
proved incapable of carrying the load imposed upon it during the winter months. Ice in Tartary and La Perouse Straits and congestion at Vladivostok convinced WSA by late February that the pace of the MILEPOST shipping program in the Pacific would have to be slowed down. Fifteen of the ships intended for MILEPOST were instead allocated to meet urgent Navy requirements for mounting the invasion of Okinawa. In compensation, fifteen additional sailings were allotted to Soviet Protocol account in the Atlantic. The goal of 85 ships was quietly abandoned, and a decision was reached that the 37 ships allocated could, by making repeated trips, fulfill any MILEPOST requirements that could not be met in Pacific shipping already turned over to the Soviet flag.50
MILEPOST shipments were not far behind schedule on V-E Day, and any deficits were more than remedied in May and June 1945. Meanwhile, regular Fourth Protocol shipments hardly suffered at all. The only month in which any appreciable cutback occurred was January 1945, and heavier shipments in the three months following more than made up for it. In November 1944 it was contemplated that, with MILEPOST shipments and the proposed reductions in the Atlantic, a total of 7,063,000 short tons of Soviet aid would be shipped by 30 June 1945. The actual total was 7,200,000 short tons, and this despite a rapid cutback in Atlantic shipments after 12 May.51
While the Americans were working so diligently to fulfill their supply obligations, Soviet officialdom continued as dilatory and obstructionist as before in getting any combined planning under way. With the effort at genuine collaboration stymied, General Deane turned his planning teams to studies of the very premises on which the Americans were operating—the actual value or necessity of both the Siberian air project and the proposed operation for opening a supply route through the North Pacific. The planners concluded that, this late in the war, the limited results to be obtained by establishing a U.S. Strategic Air Force in Siberia would not justify the high cost, and that the supply route would not be vital to Soviet success in a war against Japan though it would be insurance against initial reverses and prolongation of the war. Deane consequently recommended to the JCS that the United States withdraw from all these projects and await Soviet initiative to resume them. In mid-April 1945 the JCS approved. The only contingent planning that continued was for a naval operation to force passage of convoys through the North Pacific.
The whole broad plan for Soviet- American collaboration in the war against Japan died without any real regrets, it appears, on the Soviet side. In retrospect, it seems likely that all the Soviets had originally expected out of the negotiations was an extension of
their lend-lease supply program, and in this they were outstandingly successful.52
The Soviet Aid Program After V-E Day
On 30 September 1944, President Roosevelt informed the Secretary of State that the instructions issued on 9 September suspending all planning for lend-lease after V-E Day should not apply to “lend-lease negotiations current with the Government of the USSR.”53 Then on 5 January 1945 he issued the last of his directives on aid to the Soviet Union, ordering the formulation of a Fifth Protocol covering the period 1 July 1945 to 30 June 1946, and emphasizing the importance of aid to the USSR in almost precisely the same terms as a year earlier.54 Though the reason given continued to be the “defeat of Germany,” even the most pessimistic of prophets at the time hardly expected the war in Europe to continue until mid-1946. Roosevelt thus clearly implied that aid to the Soviet Union would continue uninterrupted after V-E Day, despite the fact that the USSR would not then be at war with Japan. Yet doubts and misgivings plagued the heads of all the agencies involved, and the opposition in Congress to supplying the USSR under lend-lease for any purpose other than the pursuit of the war was unmistakable. Roosevelt died on 12 April 1945 without having clarified his policy further.
The 5 January directive, meanwhile, had led to the usual negotiations with the Russians on their requirements for a Fifth Protocol. Planning was well along by mid-April, when it became obvious that final victory over Germany would not be long delayed. Averell Harriman and General Deane, both then in Washington, felt that a change in lend-lease policy was now imperative as a corollary to the change in policy on combined planning for Soviet entrance into the war against Japan. In conferences with the State Department and FEA, Harriman urged that no Fifth Protocol be signed, that the escape clauses in the Fourth be invoked on V-E Day, and that further aid to the USSR be limited to needs that could positively be justified for the war against Japan. Deane asked General Marshall to seek JCS support for these views. Meanwhile, General York, acting chairman of the Protocol Committee, urged on everyone the necessity for an early decision, for without it, he said, it would be impossible to stop the massive shipments for May and June—roughly 700,000 tons each month.
Nevertheless, V-E Day passed without a final decision. The Joint Logistics Committee on 2 May 1945 presented the JCS with a draft letter for the President embodying Deane’s views, but it was apparently held pending final decision in the State Department. That decision was made in a meeting of all interested agencies, including the Army and Navy, held at the State Department on 10 May 1945, when a more drastic policy than the one
proposed by the military authorities was drawn up and approved in principle.55
This policy, expressed in a memorandum sent on 11 May to the new President, Harry S. Truman, by Acting Secretary of State Joseph Grew and Leo Crowley of FEA, proposed that the supply program for the USSR be immediately and drastically curtailed. So long as it was anticipated that the USSR would enter the war against Japan, deliveries under Annex III of the Fourth Protocol should continue, as should supplies to complete industrial plants for which shipments had already begun; but other supplies on hand or on order for the Fourth Protocol should be delivered only when they were required to support military operations against Japan. “Other lend-lease supplies now programmed for the USSR should be cut off immediately as far as physically practicable, and such goods and the related shipping tonnage should be diverted to approved supply programs for western Europe.” There should be no Fifth Protocol. Future supply programs for the USSR should be designed to meet new military situations as they arose, “on the basis of reasonably adequate information regarding the essentiality of Soviet military supply requirements and in the light of all competing demands for supplies in the changing military situation.” The residuary Soviet aid program would continue to get existing priority ratings for production, and the Protocol Committee would continue to administer it as before. The Soviet Union would also be allowed to purchase other material for cash if it so desired.56
President Truman approved the policy on 11 May, informing Grew and Crowley that they should “proceed on the assumption that the USSR will enter the war against Japan.”57 The new policy, in its first expression, was even tougher than the policy Deane had long been urging. As General York succinctly put it, the new approach should be “when in doubt hold” instead of the former approach of “when in doubt give.”58
In interpretation and application, however, the new policy at first turned out to be somewhat less tough than it sounded. As General York had warned, it took time to reverse the momentum behind the protocol program. A literal interpretation of the State-FEA memorandum meant that even ships at sea should be turned around, supplies unloaded, and distinction made between those intended for the war against Japan and those for European Russia. The Protocol Committee at first proposed to so interpret the memorandum, though
military spokesmen protested vehemently that it would only lead to confusion and chaos. When Harriman, the principal architect of the new policy, also protested that he had not meant the phrase “cut off immediately” to be applied so literally, the Protocol Committee reversed itself and agreed that both ships at sea and those already loaded in port on 12 May should proceed. Material at port, en route, or in storage, however, was to be held for review to see that it was in fact intended for Soviet Far East programs. In successive Protocol Committee meetings, policy was defined as permitting shipments for Annex III (MILEPOST) , for a Trans-Siberian Airways project approved by the JCS in the fall of 1944, for the annual summer program to the Soviet Arctic, and for maintenance of material already shipped. However, because it was virtually impossible to conduct a real item by item review, the committee decided simply to permit all Pacific shipments to proceed as planned since about 90 percent of them involved the approved programs, and to cancel all further berthings in the Atlantic for the Black Sea, northern USSR, or the Persian Gulf. It is ironical that under these policies, owing to the large Pacific shipping program in May 1945, shipments for that month totaled 768,400 long tons, the most that had ever been shipped to the Soviet Union in any one month. It was not until June that the new policy was reflected by a fall to 329,200 long tons.59
These heavy shipments in May and June left only the remainder of the MILEPOST program (about 20 percent of the total) and miscellaneous small amounts of supplies scheduled for shipment during the rest of the year. Meanwhile, the USSR had been asked for its additional requests on the United States for the war against Japan, under a procedure whereby requests would be screened by the military mission in Moscow before presentation to the Protocol Committee by the Soviet Purchasing Commission in Washington. No allocations against them would be made until the military mission’s recommendations were known. Allocations of military material would be by the Munitions Assignments Board in the same manner as to the British and others.
It proved virtually impossible to carry out this procedure as intended. On 28 May Soviet officials presented in Moscow and in Washington a list of requirements approximating 1.8 million tons for the period 1 July through 31 December 1945. For the most part the list consisted of material ordered and not delivered under the Fourth Protocol and material on which the Russians had been negotiating for the Fifth Protocol. They contended that most of the material had really been destined for use in the Far East and that Annex III had not represented
their total requirements but was only a supplement to other requirements not positively identified under the Fourth Protocol.60 When Deane was asked to secure justification he ran into much the same blank wall as he had before. Soviet officials satisfied themselves with the statement that the 28 May list constituted “minimum requirements of the Far East in deliveries of equipment and material necessary in order to meet the urgent needs and strengthen the defense capabilities of the region and likewise for undertaking measures connected with-the Far East.”61
Despite the extremely vague justification, Deane and Spalding believed there was good reason to support the purpose of the Soviet program—the rapid buildup of Soviet reserves in Siberia for the war against Japan—and that Soviet officials were at least truthful in their insistence that part of the regular Fourth Protocol offering had been intended for the Far East. They thought enough material should be scheduled each month to use the full capacity of the Soviet merchant fleet in the Pacific.
We definitely believe that it is in the United States’ interest to make certain that our support is timely and effective even at the risk of supplying the Soviet Union some items over and above the needs which could be fully justified. For this reason we have selected a list of these items ... which we know will be required to support the purposes of Annex III, at least in some amount. In most cases, we cannot give full justification for the amounts requested and an effort to force the Soviet authorities to do so would be so time consuming as to destroy the effectiveness of our aid.62
The selected items approved included 30,000 trucks, 2.5 million yards of cotton cloth, 1.8 million yards of woolen goods, 6,000 tons of leather, 600,000 pairs of shoes, and 500 construction machines, all for procurement by the ASF, and naval supplies, industrial equipment, raw materials, and foodstuffs for procurement by other agencies.63
There was considerable opposition in Washington, among both civilian and military authorities, to acceptance of even the limited program proposed by Deane without specific justification in each case. Leo Crowley took the position that the USSR should pay for the nonmilitary supplies, and Admiral Leahy’s attitude was critical. General York, again in a quandary as the deadline for loading ships for July and August approached, pressed the JCS for a policy decision as to the military importance of the program. The JCS obliged on 23 June 1945, but limited its approval of assignment of military materials to those that could be shipped during July and August; the rest of Deane’s list was approved for production planning purposes only. The Joint Chiefs also expressed the opinion that a similar policy for nonmilitary materials was justifiable on the basis of military necessity. This policy, in its broader application, was accepted, and
the State Department so informed the Soviet Embassy on 27 June. Soviet ships ready for sailing in July and early August were filled. July shipments totaled 309,000 long tons.64
Neither Deane nor the authorities in Washington were able to secure any further justification for the Soviet requests for the rest of the year. Deane concluded that the Soviet authorities were incapable of providing “detailed adequate, military justification,” and that the mission “could not verify such justification if it were made available.” The best the mission could do was to obtain “impressions of urgency and sincerity.”65 With Harriman’s concurrence, Deane asked for continued shipping of such supplies as the mission recommended as long as the Pacific route stayed open. The time to revise the policy, Deane thought, would be when and if the Japanese closed the Pacific route, at which time a military decision would be required on the institution of convoys. The JCS, not completely satisfied, simply extended the existing policy for one month in order to fill ships loading in the month of September.66
At the Potsdam Conference, in July 1945, the problem of keeping a supply route open to the USSR after it entered the war with Japan was discussed, and Admiral King indicated that the U.S. Navy could push convoys through to the Amur River ports, but that Tsushima Strait could not be cleared until the Americans were established on Kyushu.67 By this time, however, it was not altogether clear whether even these limited operations in the North Pacific could be justified in terms of any approved supply program for the USSR. By the end of July the major portion of both the MILEPOST program and approved parts of the 28 May program had been met. General Deane on 8 August cabled that he did not believe the USSR could or would give adequate operational justification for many further shipments and that in proposing convoys the United States seemed to be “taking the initiative in setting up the means to deliver a supply program which under present policy we intend largely to curtail.”68
The dilemma never had to be resolved. Even before Deane’s message arrived in Washington the first atomic bomb had fallen on Hiroshima, and the Soviet Union’s entry into the war on 8 August came largely as an anticlimax.
On 14 August, the Japanese Government made known its desire to surrender, and three days later the President promulgated a new policy providing that, effective upon the official announcement of V-J Day, further lend-lease shipments to the USSR would be cut off. Only ships at sea and those already loaded would be allowed to proceed. Further supply to the Soviet Union after that date would be under other than lend-lease arrangements.69 In the interim, such cargo as was readily available at west coast ports continued to be loaded, but the loadings stopped on V-J Day. The President’s Soviet Protocol Committee was dissolved on 7 September 1945.70
The end of the Soviet aid program, announced five days before the general proclamation of the end of lend-lease, came as a climax to the shift in American policy toward supplying the USSR that had started belatedly with the end of the war in Europe. This policy change was one of the many harbingers of a new period in Soviet-American relations, a period when many Americans, in retrospect, would look back with a certain amazement at the whole heroic U.S. effort to supply the USSR during World War II.