Anglo-Soviet Invasion of Persia and American Aid to the Soviet Union

Tehran Conference codenamed Eureka: Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill

SS-Division Wiking in Caucasus

Caucasus Waffen-SS Veterans of Finland

The Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran was the joint invasion of Iran by the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union in August 1941. The invasion's strategic purpose was to ensure the safety of Allied supply lines to the USSR, the Persian Corridor, secure Iranian oil fields and limit German influence in Iran that was considered friendly to the German Reich. On March 11 1941 American President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease bill, which permitted the U.S. to supply its anti-Hitler coalition allies with materiel. The first convoys with American goods were sent to the USSR in August 1941. During the war German submarines and torpedoes sank about 80 cargo ships destined for the Soviets. More than 14,000 U.S. airplanes were given to the Soviet Union in the course of the war. The Soviets received a total of 44,000 American jeeps, 375,883 cargo trucks, 8,071 tractors and 12,700 tanks. Additionally, 1,541,590 blankets, 331,066 liters of alcohol, 15,417,000 pairs of army boots, 106,893 tons of cotton, 2,670,000 tons of petroleum products and 4,478,000 tons of food supplies made their way into the Soviet Union. Credit: Wikipedia inter alia. The English military history, Basil Liddell Hart, wrote the following concerning the German failure in the Caucasus: An important factor in the failure was that the Russians had hundreds of bombers stationed at the airfields in the vicinity of Grozny. American help through the Persian Gulf, which reached the southern portion of the desperate fighting conducted by the Soviets, also became appreciable for the first time. The commander of the Wiking tank battalion, later wrote: It was during the fighting down in the Caucasus that American weapons appeared in large numbers for the first time. Some Russian tank units were equipped entirely with Shermans, American Dodge trucks and jeeps. Even the uniforms that the Russian soldiers wore, especially the equipment issued to the Russian alpine forces, were of American origin. Even the rations that we pulled out of the rations containers on knocked-out fighting vehicles were American. The only thing left on the Russian soldier that was Russian was the soldier himself. Everything else was of American origin. Credit: the Wiking and Frundsberg veteran SS-Stubaf. Ewald Klapdor, Viking Panzers. Top image: Soviet Communist dictator Joseph Stalin, U.S. President Franklin D Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during the Tehran Conference after the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in August 1941. FDR Presidential Library. FU. Middle image: a battle-weary MG team of the Wiking in the Caucasus 1942. The man carrying the ammo crate with a yellow brassard is a Soviet Hiwi (voluntary helper). The Waffen-SS trained and deployed Soviet collaborationists from Sept. 1941. PD. Bottom image: Finnish SS company and battalion non-commissioned officers pictured before their service with the Wiking in Caucasus in 1942. Credit: Jussi Luostarinen. PD.