I'm not too up on the history either. I do know that militqry equipment was provided on lend-lease, which meant that if it was still around after the war, the Brits had to give it back.
So a month or so after V-J day, the U.S. under the influence of Congress said "OK, time's up, give it back." So they did. The Americans then proceeded to dump a lot of the returned equipment (aircraft for example) into the sea. A lot of naval aircraft then had to be replaced by the impoverished Brits from new production in Britain. A lot of consumables had been paid for by loans if I recall correctly. The Americans refused to make much in the way of new loans for this purpose, although the British had committed their economy to the war effort to an extent far beyond the U.S. and needed a long time to re-adjust. They also wanted repayment to start forthwith. Part of the nasty U.S. attitude was due to the fact that Roosevelt was dead, and the people in the Administration and Congress didn't realize that Britain had made an enormous effort not only to maintain her independence from Hitler but to save the civilized world, and had provided the U.S, with much priceless technology (the jet engine, the cavity magnetron (radar), nuclear science and technology) on her own initiative without asking for payment. For example, Congress ignored commitments the U.S. had made on nuclear information. Part of it was due to traditional American attitudes (Brits were colonialist exploiters), part of ot due to the fact that the British were spending money on introducing a mild form of socialism, and partly due to a wish that the U.K. should be finished as a world power, to be replaced by the U.S. Lend-lease and the loans didn't start until the UK had spent all its foreign assets, was flat broke, and would otherwise have had to wind down its war effort, and probably make a deal with Hitler since she wouldn't have been able to defend herself. Of course the Labour government in Britain didn't exactly cover itself in glory in managing the economy after the war, for example it dealt with the coal crisis quite incompetently. Doug Woodard St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada On Sun, 3 Apr 2005, malcolm maclure wrote: > Won't argue with your figures, & I ain't a historian so please if anyone > knows different please say so, but to my knowledge the assistance provided > by the US to Britain during WWII was not "free". It had to be paid back, at > least in part, which is why rationing continued in Britain for so long, well > after the end of the war. > > Regards > > Malcolm [snip] _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://wwia.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuel archives at Infoarchive.net (searchable): http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/
