The most scarce resource during the Great Patriotic War in the Soviet Union was food. Before the outbreak of the Soviet-German war, the Soviet Union was in a chronic shortage of food. After the outbreak of the Soviet-German war, the Soviet Union's food problems also suddenly became serious. Not only was the food consumption on the battlefield huge, but also because the Soviet army was defeated too quickly at first, forty percent of the grain-producing areas and eighty percent of the sugar-producing areas were almost all under the iron hooves of the German army. The Soviet Union's food supply was once in an unprecedentedly difficult situation. Although the Soviet Union established a "food card system" during the war, people received food by card. But after the outbreak of war, food prices soared.
For example, the price of potatoes, which in January 1942 was 1.6 roubles per kilogram, soared to 12 roubles in January 1943. And the price of eggs, which sold for more than 50 rubles in January 1942 for ten, soared a year later to nearly 200 rubles per ten. The increase in other foods is even more terrifying.
Great Patriotic War of the SOVIET Union
Finally, at the Tripartite Meeting in Moscow from September to October 1941, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Britain signed a declaration that the Soviet Union, which was fighting bloody battles, would henceforth receive 200,000 tons of wheat and 70,000 tons of sugar per month. Of course, in the first year of this declaration, the Soviet Union did not actually receive so much material. But by July of the following year, the Soviet Union had also received 390,000 tons of food aid from Britain and the United States. These foods included large quantities of American canned and egg powder, which were therefore dubbed "Roosevelt egg powder" by the Soviet front.
With the reversal of the situation in the Soviet-German war, Britain and the United States also became more and more active in food and material assistance to the Soviet Union. Countries such as Canada have also come to join in the fun. So much so that the Soviet army, which had been firmly entrenched in Leningrad, by the end of 1942, was able to eat American chocolate and continue to fight. From the summer of 1942 to the beginning of 1943, the grain supplies of Britain and the United States to the Soviet Union had increased threefold from the first year of the Soviet-German war, accounting for seventeen percent of the Soviet army's food supplies.
Finally, in the Battle of Stalingrad, the Soviet army won the turning point of World War II in one fell swoop, so the assistance provided to the Soviet Union by Britain and the United States and other countries was also more powerful.
In 1943, an unprecedented drought broke out in the rear areas of the Soviet Union, reducing grain production by as much as one-third. In July 1943 alone, the Soviet Union received aid of 1.06 million tons of grain. In the course of the Red Army's subsequent victory and crushing Germany step by step, the pork that the United States assisted the Soviet Union every year accounted for a quarter of the annual production of Pork in the United States.
At the complete end of the European battlefield, the Soviet army, which had made great sacrifices, received food aid at that time, which was not only huge in amount, but also very rich in "content". Not only grain meat and eggs, but also a large number of juices, fruits and vegetables, these precious materials helped a large number of Soviet wounded in the hospital to get rid of scurvy. There are also a large number of tractors and grain varieties.
Of the aid the Soviet Union received during the war, food aid was only one of them. From the United States alone, the Soviet Union received fourteen thousand aircraft, a large number of metal plates and communications equipment that could be used to build field airfields, and 672 ships, including landing craft submarine hunting and other important equipment. And more than 12,000 armored vehicles, more than 500,000 non-armored transport vehicles, 30,000 motorcycles, nearly 8,000 anti-aircraft guns and more than 1.3 million tons of explosives. Each of these played an important role in the course of the Eastern Front of World War II.
Such a huge amount of aid also caused a lot of opposition in the United States at that time. However, whether it was the joint obstruction of MacArthur and others, or the cynicism of Congress, it was suppressed by President Roosevelt, not because President Roosevelt had any good feelings for the Soviet Union, but because he, as well as the "giants" such as Churchill of the same era, understood that the achievements of the Red Army were an important guarantee for victory in World War II.