Lend /Lease Loan payments.......

[RattlesnakeBob]

I saw an interesting bit in the paper t'other day which I thought I'd share with you all regarding our Lend/Lease deal with the US during the war........

Apparently, we made the final payment on our 'loan' to the US on December the 29th 2006..... thereby finally clearing what we owed them....

....it struck a chord with something that had always interested and somewhat annoyed me....

......Over the years many folk have made much of Germany's 'economic miracle recovery' following the war..........These same folk conveniently ignore or perhaps are not aware of? a thing known as 'The Marshall Plan'....................

As I'm guessing most of you already know...The Marshall Plan funded more or less the complete rebuilding of Germany....not only her infrastructure but her industry too.......

I wonder if many folk know however..... that the Marshall Plan was basically a non refundable 'loan' that Germany never had to repay ?..

Please read on if this interests you at all..........

....The Marshall Plan also re-equiped & rebuilt (again the money did not have to be repaid ) factories & collieries etc etc belonging to the masssive German industrialists .......the same industrialists that had so fervently supported the Nazi regime not only by working for it but also by directly funding the Nazi party and Hitler.............

think thats bad enough?...........read on.......

.........with a little more digging thru the information available I found this..........

......... under the terms of the Marshall Plan, these same industrialists....a couple that come to mind is Krupps of Essen who made everything from tanks to guns and back again and supplied the steel to build just about everything else and..... IG Farben .....who I'm sure I do not need to tell you what they supplied...... .

well.....

............upon Nazi Germanys collapse......these companies and many many more, had 'unpaid invoices' for material supplied to the Nazi regime during the last 12 months or so of the war...

..and under the terms of the agreement with the US for what the Marshall Plan money could be used for.......these same companies were allowed to submit these unpaid invoices to the new fledgling German Democratic government...... and ......yep!... you got it!.....

these invoices were paid! .....not a bad 'economic miracle' was it???

.. Strange old world isn't it?....I thought we won????

as a footnote.........

I have to wonder....

.... just how well British Industry and this nation in general could have done through the 50s/60s/and 70s if all our costs for the war including all bomb damage etc had been paid for by someone else....

........... or at the very least, if the US had let us off paying for all the lend lease equiptment?.....

Most of which a lot of you own now anyways! hahahah!

Edited August 15, 2011 by RattlesnakeBob

[rog8811]

we made the final payment on our 'loan' to the US on December the 29th 2006

Soon after this the US economy went belly up and dropped us all in the mire!:-D

[Big ray]

I agree absolutely, but the Marshal Plan was to regenerate europe in order to provide world markets for the now peace time industries that had lost all of their work equiping the allies with war materials. War is a dirty business, all comes down to political jiggery pokery in the end. The atomic bomb and post war aid for Japan was to keep the russians out of that sphere. (The bomb undoubtably saved many lives in the long run, both american and japanese and so justified its use.) The U.S.A. was the only country to emerge from the second world war with more money than when it entered it. They were also the only country with a post war capability of defending / policing the free world, they have had their critics, but doesnt everyone who finds themselves in charge? I feel that overall we have a great deal to be thankful for. I was a schoolboy during the second world war and was conscripted into the army in the 1950s, but generally speaking my adult life has been spent free of any major conflicts ( I am 74 ) and that cannot be said for my predecessors. My generation have a great deal to be thankful for.

[Tony B]

Is it can o' worms night or what? :-D It was a stated war aim of the USA that the European Empires should be brocken up, especially India from Britian. As part of repatriations (Normally paid by the loser?) much advanced technology was handed over by the British goverment, everything from Computers (Collosus) to mobile phones (WS10)

[fesm_ndt]

Is it can o' worms night or what? :-D (WS10)

 

That about sums up all history, especially taught history as it is normally 'simplified' so that it is easier to learn but for every event there is typically multiple reasons behind it and even more conspiracies.

 

One other issue I think was a lot of funds were pumped into Germany and Japan as communism was seen to be the bigger threat at the end of the war. As far as I know Russia never repaid lend lease

 

I guess the biggest disgrace is that when the allies were executing war criminals, the US was hiring them. The German secret police was set up again as they had the best knowledge on spying on the Russians, so when it was set up they recruited their old buddies. One of these was Barbie.

 

One of the people on the space programs went to trial years later as he run a research facility using slave labour. When this came out US immigration policy was belatedly changed and anyone travelling to the states has to answer a question on the card "were you a former member of the Nazi party".

 

So yep a can of worms

[Stormin]

Certainly a great injustice as the nation that held off and fought the Nazi's longest arguably came out of the whole war the worst off.

 

I certainly think it's a good part of the reason, though not the whole, that our industry is in such a mess now, the fact that our competitors in europe and Japan have had such a financial leg-up.

 

I think we'd have been better off defaulting on the Yanks loan at the end of the War and starting from scratch, so what if we lost a future ally, how much good has it done us since.

[ArtistsRifles]

I spent my working life in the employ of a certain US vehicle manufacturer and this business of the US supporting Germany was at the core of virtually every problem between the US and the UK. US geographical knowledge is limited for most to inside the US coastline - the rest of the world is a blank page as is European history. Four years AFTER German Reunification we had execs stating corporate support had to be maintained to West Germany - I am not sure to this day whether the fact that East Germany and the Communist threat no longer exist has sunk into the executive collective.

 

The disparity in plants was down to the infamous plan too - the machines in the UK plant where I did my apprenticeship still carried the plates certifying they were to war standard whilst the buildings carried evidence of the Luftwaffes attempts to flatten them. Contrast this to the plants opposite number in Germany which was virtually a brand new facility... Bear in mind, too, that the US creamed off the profits from the UK company right up till the 1980's to bail out the German one (as German car buyers viewed the products as "Auslander" - non-German and would not buy them) thus restricting the UK companies ability to renew facilities.

Just into the new Century the US company made a one-off payment of several million Euro's to "atone" for the use of slave labour during the war years... No need to guess how that went down in the UK....

[RattlesnakeBob]

I guessed a lot of folk on here would be interested in this.......thanks for all your input....

.....I know what the ramifications were for us all after the First World War when we basically not only defeated Germany militarily but then also continued to 'kick them hard' with the very harsh war reparations....we all know what that led directly to but..

.it's very hard to swallow for someone of my generation , so to someone that was around and fought in the Second war it must be absolutely infuriating.............

and ..

just to add a little fuel to a fire thats already burning nicely!.......

I wonder how many folk are also aware that soldiers who served in the Wehrmacht during the last war.... even if it was only for the last few months or so.....including SS veterans ........ are now entitled to draw a full army veterans pension from the modern German government for their 'service'........

.which incidentally ......

..is a helluva lot more per week than any services veteran of the british forces from the second world war will ever be entitled to........

tis a strange ol' world indeed..........

[ArtistsRifles]

On the topic of fuel and fires... The reason I was out in Berlin when the wall came down was to plan and oversee the installation of a new banding machine for cartons of instrument panels. The plant manager - commonly known both in the UK and Germany as "The poisoned Dwarf" would not have been out of place in late 1930's Germany and made our lives hell. So much so that, when he tried to corrupt the sealed bid quote system we had to call in a senior UK manager to handle things as they went way out of our pay grades responsibilities.

Guy turned up the next day not best pleased at being dragged away from the golf course and sat everyone around the table - inc a couple of strangers. We started discussing the quotes receive with the plant staff who were quite nice guys when the plant manager took the bid envelope, skated them over the table to the 2 strangers and told them to beat them. For a moment you could have heard a pin drop then the UK manager asked who they were - apparently they were from a local firm who had done business with the plant manager before. UK manager just looked at them and said "Get out. Now". He then turned to us and said "Gentleman - please leave the room I need to have a private conversation with herr xxxx" - so we left; just far enough so we could all - British & German - hear what was going on.

What went on was the mother of all b*ll*ckings by the UK manager but at the end the plant guy ran true to form and started demanding to know why the UK guy thought he knew best about German matters and he should leave them to Germans to organise. To which the UK replied "The reason why is the hours I spent in the air dropping tons of explosive to make sure a lttle jerk with a similar attitude to you did not rule the world. You lost that one and if you don't shut the f*ck up not only will you lose this one but I'll have you thrown out of the plant - you might twist the US around your fingers but they take a VERY dim view of those who commit financial misdemeanors."

We found out after he flew Stirling's then Halifax's during the war....

 

Life after that was a little quieter for us - but that was one assignment I was glad when it ended

[Tony B]

Apparently we are now lending the US money. :-D

[RattlesnakeBob]

Apparently we are now lending the US money. :-D

 

well when you consider they're in debt to the tune of.....I dunno, lets say 10,000 billion or so.....and we're in the hole to the tune of maybe only 500 billion...in actual fact that makes the UK far wealthier than the US...!

I should have been an accountant heheheheh!

[ashley]

But it wasn`t only monies that were taken by the US as Britian had to surrender several key land bases, (and basically break up the commonwealth) also land belived to contain rich mineral / fosil fuel deposits and even to the shutting down of the British space misile program post war which was very far advanced, one well known base which was on the Isle of Wight.

 

There was quite a good TV programme about this topic a few years ago where the goverment of the time literally sold out the U.K beliving that the US would not want to collect after thr conclusion of the hostilities as allies but they were greatly mistaken.

 

Ashley

[Stefano]

American policy was focused on pushing England to the sidelines well before WW2, and it must be said that they have pursued this policy with varying degrees of determination ever since.

They engineered the demise of the Anglo-Japanese naval agreement in 1921 (admittedly helped along by the Canadians) which in turn was to cause all sorts of anguish a few years later, and the subsequent Washington naval treaty nobbled to Royal Navy to such an extent that it almost cost Britain the war.

The appointment of the rabidly anti-british Joseph Kennedy as ambassador to Great Britain showed beyond any doubt FDR's thoughts of his future ally, and even lend lease was a joke. The premise was that the war in the Pacific was going to last for a considerable time - probably into 1947, and this would have greatly eased Great Britain's debt to the USA. As we all know, the war was finished off in 1945 with a pair of B29's dropping nuclear weapons (to a large extent developed by the British) on the Japanese, and no countenance was given to writing off any of the debt due in light of the changed circumstances.

However, as so often, it also cuts both ways. The United States reneged on their agreement to share all Nuclear research with Great Britain when they found out that the Attlee government had crated up a few Rolls Royce Nenes along with the relative blueprints and sent them off to Joe Stalin with true socialist gratitude. When the Americans encountered the Mig 15 in Korea a few years later it's easy to understand that they were not best pleased...

And finally, although this might not prove a popular aside, by far the greatest recipient of Marshall aid was in fact Great Britain, to the tune of some 3,297 million dollars between 1948 and 1951, which represented something like 43% more than the France got, and a whopping 127% more than that received by the Germans.

Nothing is ever really as simple as it seems, alas

[Tony B]

Any American built unit or supply used by British or Commonwealth forces was paid for. Any British built or supplied unit used by the US forces wasn't paid for. As For Joseph P Kennedy, he was a rabid Anglophobe, claiming very tenuous Irish extraction, he was a poisonus litttle articale, his daughter Rosemary sufferd from mental illness. In order not to blight his political ambitions he described her as 'Mentally Retarded', then had her subjected to a Lobotomy, which went badly wrong condemming the poor woman to liflong disability (she lived to the age of 83) Then He would not allow her name to be mentioned in his house! There is also some doubt as to wether he passed on, as requested, being the Ambasador to the Court of St James at the time the US was neutral the mesage to the Nazi Forign Office the note that the Channel Island's had bene demilitirised, resulting in the Islands being bombed. He was forced to resign his position as Ambassador after making a public stament that 'Democracy is finished in England, and probably over here (US) as well'.

[berna2vm]

Let us not forget though that the harsh treatment metered out to Germany after the Great war, mostly at France's insistance caused the fall of the democratic Weimar republic and a certain gentleman from Austria to rise to prominance...The Marshall plan was designed to make Germany economically viable and help nurture a democratic system.Keeping German citizens happy must have been considered as being more important than us because we were a safe and stable democratic state. I have to say that it stinks though and with austerity measures allied to rationing into the fifties we must have questioned what we fought for......

[Tony B]

For once Bern it appears the French WERN'T to balme. Papers released over the last few years show it was manily the Australian's that wanted the cash, on the grounds they wern't going to benifit from the land grab! France was more than hapy to get Alsacse and Lorraine back. The usual British answer, blame the Frogs! British troops were subject to overall French command during WW1, something that was kept very quiet and British Generals get a lot of stick from being forced to comply with French and UK political pressure to carry out operations they knew had no hope. If the Triple Alliance hadn't crossed Belgium territory, thus triggering the treaty obligation, Britian may well not have got involved.

[Stefano]

Foch assumed overall command of the Anglo-French forces during the period of the last "push" of the tripartate alliance, and considering what those morons were up to in Whitehall it must have come as a relief to Haig that he no longer had worry about the antics of Loyd George and his merry men. To think that the Smuts overhaul of the RFC and RNAS into the RAF came during operation Michael beggars all belief...

In any case if we go down this road obviously it becomes a freefall of what if's: The French were desperate for reparations because the USA demanded that their loans to France be repaid pronto (surprise surprise) - Great Britain tried to restore the prewar exchange rate with the dollar, thereby deflating it's economy to a suicidal extent and almost wiping out it's productive base - The Weimar Republic tried inflation to lessen the burden, it got out of hand (in this context look what happened to Austria), the middle classes were completely wiped out and they consequently hailed the arrival of Herr Schickelgruber (can you really blame them?) and the rest as we say is history.

The what if's are awesome in their extent. If the Bolsheviks hadn't come to power, if Mussolini hadn't had his nose put out of joint by the British closing down the Gibralter straights after Italy invaded Abissinia, if the Anglo-Japanese alliance hadn't been sunk by the USA, if Britain had gone to war over Czecoslovakia instead of Poland...if, if, if.

The fact is that, unpalatable as it may seem, a great amount of Britain's misfortunes were wished upon itself by the conceited ineptitude of it's politicians and it all comes down to the sad realisation that the British Empire should never have fought and won the First World War (because that is exactly what it did, American feelings notwithstanding).

That it did should be an everlasting testimonial to it's greatness, but if it had left the French, the Russians, the Italians and the Serbiens to their collective destiny the chances are that everybody would have been better off in the long run (even the Armenians, sadly, as that particular genocide was going to happen whatever the British decided to do). After all, when the French were defeated at Sedan it was hardly the end of the world...

The fact is, that although given the gift of hindsight, we will never know how things might have gone, all we know is how they went...

Edited August 18, 2011 by Stefano
bits 'n pieces