Who won the war? There is a strong argument that without massive American production of ships, ‘planes, guns and munitions (materiel), Germany would have won the war; even Stalin thought so.
It is 30th November 1943, Churchill’s 69th birthday. He is staying, with Franklin Roosevelt and their large entourages, at the Soviet Embassy in Teheran as the guest of Stalin. There were many toasts and speeches. Here is part of Stalin’s contribution.
”I want to tell you, from the Russian point of view, what the President and the United States have done to win the war. The most important things in this war are machines. The United States has proven that it can turn out from 8,000 to 10,000 airplanes per month. Russia can only turn out, at most, 3,000 a month. England turns out 3,000 to 3,500 … The United States, therefore, is the country of machines. Without the use of these machines, through Lend-Lease, we would lose the war.”
It was gracious of Stalin to acknowledge the US contribution. Has anyone ever called Stalin gracious? I doubt it. It was an amazing achievement by Roosevelt’s government to create such a mighty war machine from a very low base in 1939. It had unexpected consequences. It was good for the economy, still recovering from the Depression, and women and coloured people got jobs. It was particularly significant for coloured people who were given equality in the armed services. That this progress did not continue after the war is a mystery to me and more so that it is an issue today.
There will be unexpected consequences of the pandemic. One of the less obvious ones is that to shore up the finances of my club, members are encouraged to take ladies to lunch. Hitherto this was not the custom, although not actually forbidden. Another is early closing of restaurants; super, I like long lunches and early nights.
I saw Patti LuPone singing this in the West End in December 2018 – you can too.