March 11, 1941: President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Bill, providing war supplies to countries fighting the Axis powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan. Between 1941 and the war's end in 1945, the U.S. shipped $50 billion in supplies (equal to some $650 billion today) to Great Britain, the Soviet Union, China, Free France, and other Allied nations. Formally titled An Act to Further Promote the Defense of the United States, the act effectively ended any American pretense of being neutral during World War II — which the U.S. would, of course, enter nine months later.
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