lend-lease

United States [1941]
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Also known as: Lend-Lease Act

lend-lease, system by which the United States aided its World War II allies with war materials, such as ammunition, tanks, airplanes, and trucks, and with food and other raw materials. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt had committed the United States in June 1940 to materially aiding the opponents of fascism, but, under existing U.S. law, the United Kingdom had to pay for its growing arms purchases from the United States with cash, popularly known as cash-and-carry. By the summer of 1940, the new British prime minister, Winston Churchill, was warning that his country could not pay cash for war materials much ...(100 of 270 words)