Even before the United States entered World War II in December 1941, America was sending arms and equipment to the Soviet Union to help it defeat the Nazi invasion.
Although in August 1939 the Soviet Union and Germany had signed a nonaggression treaty, Germany’s June 1941 invasion of the USSR brought their alliance to an end, forcing the Soviets to confront the Nazis as enemies. President Franklin D. Roosevelt convinced Congress the U.S. should provide military aid to nations “vital to the defense of the United States.”
“We cannot, and we will not, tell [them] that they must surrender, merely because of present inability to pay for the weapons which we know they must have.”
Under the Lend-Lease Act, enacted nine months before the U.S. entered the war, Washington dispatched war supplies to Great Britain, China and the Soviet Union. While the U.S. and the USSR disagreed in other areas, the threat Hitler posed to the world brought them to a common objective.
