There’s a bit of folklore that the only country to pay back its WW2 Lend-Lease debt to the US was Finland. Is this true?
Not that it matters, really. I always understood FDR’s claim that the US was only lending or leasing military equipment to the Allies, not giving it to them, was a cover story, intended to get the legislation past the isolationist faction in Congress in the pre-Pearl-Harbor era. But it would be nice to know if there’s any truth to the story of some country taking it seriously.
I know that there was no way that a lot of nations could ever pay back the US given their wrecked, post-military economies, so they threw in a lot of other things that they had as part of the payback. Fulbrite scholarships in England, for example, were very popular with American students in post WWII, and at that point England had more colleges than cash.
Other nations had other methods of paying it back with what little they had. But as I understand it Endlagn had the biggest debt to pay off.
Mind you, what did Finland have to pay off? A couple hundred Brewster Buffallos that would have been scrapped anyway?
Finland was the only country to pay off its World War I debt, as most countries defaulted. I think hungary might have renegotiated its loans for more time and defaulted later. I think they paid in gold, for what that’s worth, maybe that was typical of the times though.
hold on the lend lease from UKs WWII thing the US was allowed to use all of the UK and her empires ports and airports without the need to pay duty for 50 years and it expired in 1996 which heh then americans comming here had to pay lots more
My understanding is that Finland received no Lend-Lease materials during WW II. They did purchase, in 1939, 44 Brewster Buffalo aircraft (that arrived too late for the Winter War).
They would have been an unlikely candidate for Lend-Lease as they were allied with Nazi Germany (not so much taken with Hitler; more of a “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” deal) against a recipient of much Lend-Lease aid, the U.S.’ then ally, Russia.
UK net borrowing (there was some two-way activity) via Lend-Lease was approx. $30 Billion – repaid in full within about 20 years. I believe all the Empire countries also fully repaid their debt (if memory serves the Aussies also got quite a bill).
I believe the USSR didn’t repay initially but a deal was struck in the early 1970’s that settled the account.
No cites but I’m going to look because it’s quite interesting…
"…in relation to Finland and the people of Finland, all sums due or paid on and after August 24, 1949, by the Republic of Finland to the United States as interest on or in retirement of the principal of the debt incurred under the Act of February 25, 1919, as refunded by the agreement dated May 1, 1923, pursuant to the authority contained in the Act of February 9, 1922, or of any other indebtedness incurred by that Republic and owing to the United States as a result of World War I.
Summary: It’s repaid and the US ended up with pretty well all the world’s gold plus a combination of raw materials (payment in kind) with any surplus National Product from the Allied countries for a couple of decades.
It’s my understanding that the UK had to “mine” the coinage in order to pay the US back after the 2nd war to end all wars. They no longer had silver coinage after they’d recalled them from circulation. The US pulled a similar stunt not too long after in the 1960’s.
But no, it’s not folklore by any means. Finland was the only country to pay her Great War debt to the US.