U.S.

-Soviet Alliance, 1941–1945
Although relations between the Soviet Union and the United States had been strained in
the years before World War II, the U.S.-Soviet alliance of 1941–1945 was marked by a
great degree of cooperation and was essential to securing the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Without the remarkable efforts of the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front, the United
States and Great Britain would have been hard pressed to score a decisive military
victory over Nazi Germany.

Department of Defense Pro-Soviet Poster

As late as 1939, it seemed highly improbable that the United States and the Soviet Union
would forge an alliance. U.S.-Soviet relations had soured significantly following Stalin’s
decision to sign a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany in August of 1939. The Soviet
occupation of eastern Poland in September and the “Winter War” against Finland in
December led President Franklin Roosevelt to condemn the Soviet Union publicly as a
“dictatorship as absolute as any other dictatorship in the world,” and to impose a “moral
embargo” on the export of certain products to the Soviets. Nevertheless, in spite of
intense pressure to sever relations with the Soviet Union, Roosevelt never lost sight of
the fact that Nazi Germany, not the Soviet Union, posed the greatest threat to world
peace. In order to defeat that threat, Roosevelt confided that he “would hold hands with
the devil” if necessary.
Following the Nazi defeat of France in June of 1940, Roosevelt grew wary of the
increasing aggression of the Germans and made some diplomatic moves to improve
relations with the Soviets. Beginning in July of 1940, a series of negotiations took place
in Washington between Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles and Soviet Ambassador
Constantine Oumansky. Welles refused to accede to Soviet demands that the United
States recognize the changed borders of the Soviet Union after the Soviet seizure of
territory in Finland, Poland, and Romania and the reincorporation of the Baltic
Republics in August 1940, but the U.S. Government did lift the embargo in January 1941.
Furthermore, in March of 1941, Welles warned Oumansky of a future Nazi attack against
the Soviet Union. Finally, during the Congressional debate concerning the passage of the
Lend-Lease bill in early 1941, Roosevelt blocked attempts to exclude the Soviet Union
from receiving U.S. assistance.
Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles
The most important factor in swaying the Soviets eventually to enter into an alliance
with the United States was the Nazi decision to launch its invasion of the Soviet Union in
June 1941. President Roosevelt responded by dispatching his trusted aide Harry Lloyd
Hopkins to Moscow in order to assess the Soviet military situation. Although the War
Department had warned the President that the Soviets would not last more than six
weeks, after two one-on-one meetings with Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, Hopkins urged
Roosevelt to assist the Soviets. By the end of October, the first Lend-Lease aid to the
Soviet Union was on its way. The United States entered the war as a belligerent in late
1941 and thus began coordinating directly with the Soviets, and the British, as allies.