This book presents a comprehensive comparison of economic aid programs by the United States and the Soviet Union to less developed countries. It examines aid to many of the non-Communist nations of Asia, Africa, the Near East, Latin America. Robert S. Walters views aid programs in terms of their objectives, the size and structure of disbursements, and operational and administrative principles. In addition he examines the delicate balance between trade policy and general foreign policy, and the difficulties and results experienced by the U.S. and Soviet Union in their respective programs.

When the German army invaded Russia in June 1941, the United States' Lend-Lease system was already in place to aid friendly powers at war and thereby promote the defense of the U.S. Enacted so that the U.S. could lend war material to Britain, the system allowed the transfer of weapons, machinery, agricultural products, and other defense items. Although politically and practically difficult, Lend-Lease was also extended to the Soviets, and in Feeding the Bear, van Tuyll studies the rarely scrutinized subject of the military impact of Lend-Lease on Russian efforts to repel the Nazi invaders. In the post-war period, many histories, memoirs, scholarly studies, and polemics on the Eastern Front by German, American, and Soviet authors have appeared but no comprehensive American official history of the Lend-Lease program was ever published. Van Tuyll uses a wealth of data from many sources including some from the substantial Military Mission files, declassified as recently as 1983, to assess the long-neglected issue of the actual impact of Lend-Lease aid on Soviet victory on the Eastern Front. By synthesizing the many types of technical information, economic data, and statistics, van Tuyll is able to formulate challenging conclusions regarding the program's impact. The difficulty in making this assessment was compounded not only by an almost fifty-year perspective, but also because Soviet information on its military situation, army, or internal economic conditions was scarce and often dismissive of foreign aid. The Germans viewed their failure as due to weather, numbers, Hitler's errors, inadequate intelligence, or lack of gasoline and not to Soviet expertise in the immense offensives of 1943-1945. Among the ten chapters there are considerations of the complicated Soviet view of Lend-Lease, analyses of the technical aspects, and explorations not only of the overall impact but also of the effect on decisive battles such as Stalingrad and Berlin. The introduction provides a thorough grounding in the background of the Lend-Lease program and surveys other treatments of the subject. The appendix contains over 45 valuable tables that provide data on every aspect of Lend-Lease, including exports by region, value of U.S. shipments to the Soviet Union, deliveries of food, clothing, and medicine, and estimated Soviet production capacity, among others. This is truly a landmark volume that will be consulted and read avidly by students and scholars of European and American History, and World War II in particular, as well as those involved with Military History, Soviet Studies, Soviet Economic History, and U.S.-Soviet Relations.

'The United States is a country of machines. Without the use of these machines through Lend-Lease, we would lose this war.' —Josef Stalin (1943), quoted in W. Averell Harriman and Elie Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941-1946, Random House, N.Y., 1975, p. 277 The United States shipped more than $12 billion in Lend-Lease aid to Stalin's Russia during World War II. Materials lent, beginning in late 1941 before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, included airplanes and tanks, locomotives and rails, construction materials, entire military production assembly lines, food and clothing, aviation fuel, and much else. Lend-Lease is now recognized by post-Soviet Russian historians as essential to the Soviet war effort. Wielding many facts and statistics never before published in the U.S., author Albert L. Weeks keenly analyzes the diplomatic rationale for and results of this assistance. Russia's Life-Saver is a brilliant contribution to the study of U.S.-Soviet relations and its role in World War II.

Afsnit: The "Detente" aggression cycle; More trade, more casualities; Censorship and our military assistance to the Soviet Union; Construction of the Soviet military-industrial complex; Direct supply of weapons and military assistance to the soviets; American-built plants for Soviet tanks and armored cars; American assistance for Soviet military vehicles; Peaceful explosives, ammunition, and guns; Helping the Russians at sea; From the "Ilya Mourometz" to the Supersonic "Konkordskiy"; Space, missiles, and military instrumentation; Congress and the bureaucrats; Why national suicide - some answers; Appendix A: Some background information about "National Suicide"; Appendix B: Testimony of the Author Before Subcommittee VII of the Platform Commitee of the Republican Party at Miami Beach, Florida, August 15, 1972, at 2:30 P.M.; Appendix C: Specifications of the ninety-six Soviet ships identified transportating weapons and supplies to North Vietnam, 1966-1971