Conventional wisdoms

There is a long history of studies of Allied economic relations with the USSR during World War II. This has been the most widely examined aspect of Soviet wartime economic experience in the west. Most of these studies, however, were written from the viewpoint of diplomacy and strategy, and they were commonly influenced by a desire to search retrospectively for historical roots of the Cold War which followed.

Until quite recently, economic studies of wartime inter-Ally relations were much fewer, and little special reference was made to aid to the USSR. This is surprising since Lend-Lease was nothing if not a resource transfer, and it was the economic significance of the transfer to the USSR which fuelled controversy for so many years. Without independent economic analysis the controversy was unlikely ever to be resolved; it could never rise above the claim of the recipient that the scale of the transfer in cash and percentage terms was small, and of the donors that such overall totals were immaterial since it was the physical form of Allied aid which represented the critical ingredient in Soviet victory.

Allied aid to the USSR raises a distinctively economic problem. The core of the problem is to understand what would have happened without the transfer of resources. Our ability to recast historical alternatives by the use of ‘counterfactual hypotheses’ is limited, and many historians rightly flinch from overt speculation.