The US Government sent $11 billion in war material to the Soviet Union under Lend-Lease in 1941 – ( $17.4 trillion in 2012 dollars according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator).*
Hamilton Watches were part of the aid Americans contributed to the Soviet Union during World War II. The Russian War Relief Fund, a non-profit organization, purchased Hamilton watches like the one pictured below. (1)
The translated inscription says:
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| World War II Hamilton OD -1 Military Watch issued to Russia – USSR |
First, everyone needs to know that the Soviets did not invent Hamilton watches. They invented everything else: phones, automobiles, paint, computers, washing machines, soap, polio vaccine, penicillin, tanks, the English Spitefire Fighter, panty hose and of course the General Theory of Relativity. They didn’t invent Hamilton watches, though they did clone them and violate the patents.
Records of the number of Hamilton watches sent to Russian are sketchy since many came from the Russian Relief Fund.
Hamilton Records, however, show standard models shipped between 1942-1945 at 3,000 units to the Russian Government/Soviet Union.
Russian War Relief (also known as the Russian War Relief Fund, and The American Committee for Russian War Relief) was an alleged Communist front group.
On July 29, 1941, one month after Germany’s attack on Russia, a group met in New York and established Russian War Relief, Inc incorporated in New York on September 12, 1941. Fred Myers, who later founded the Humane Society of the United States, served as director of public relations and was later promoted to Executive Director.
According to a 1943 FBI report, the group was “infiltrated with known Communists, Communist leaders, fellow travelers, and front organizations.” The chairman of Russian War Relief was Edward C. Carter, chairman of the National Committee for Medical Aid to the Soviet Union a member of the Executive Committee of the American Russian Institute and secretary general of the Institute of Pacific Relations. From 1942, the fund was headed by Allen Wardwell.
Reports from different sources say that Russian medical teams received Hamilton military watches with 987a movements during this period.
(This is an interesting video – not how the Russians invented another American Product – Electric Watches. This is a clone of Hamilton’s 505 movement.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_HTKioOcTYQ#at=10
(1) World War II: Wartime Alliance and Hamilton Military Watches
The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 created an alliance between the Soviets, Britain and the United States. The United States extended assistance to the Soviet Union through its Lend-Lease Act of March 1941.
The US Government sent $11 billion in war material to the Soviet Union under Lend-Lease. U.S. Russian War Relief and the Red Cross sent war materials. The US used routes through Iran accessed through the Persian Gulf across the Pacific to Vladivostok and across the North Atlantic to Murmansk. Lend- Lease to the Soviet Union officially ended in September 1945. Joseph Stalin never told the people of the USSR about the contributions of Lend-Lease. At the 1945 Yalta Conference he said, “Lend-Lease is one of Franklin Roosevelt’s most remarkable and vital achievements in the formation of the anti-Hitler alliance.”
Lend-Lease helped the Soviet Union push the Germans out of the USSR and Eastern Europe accelerated the end of the war. When Stalin’s Red Army walked into Eastern Europe, the wartime alliance ended, and the Cold War began.
* Do you think Stalin started the Cold War so he didn’t have to pay the US back the money we gave them.?
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