aged by the leaders of both the United States and the Soviet
Union. Stalin himself paid glowing tribute to the American
contribution to Soviet military victories. Numerous com-
mentators, both Russian and American, expressed their be-
lief that lend-lease had helped to promote a mutual trust
and understanding that could be extended into the postwar
era. To give substance to these hopes, officials in both na-
tions developed plans for American aid to assist Russia's re-
construction from the devastation of war. ¹

The dreams of wartime began to fade even before the bat-
tles had ended, however, and were soon replaced by
disillusionment, growing bitterness, and mutual antagonism.
Military collaboration had only covered over, not removed,
the long legacy of suspicion and hostility between the two
nations, and the efforts of the leaders of the Grand Alliance
to resolve fundamental--perhaps irreconcilable--disputes
over postwar objectives came to naught. The defeat of the
enemy in 1945 removed the most binding tie that had held
the allies together. Within two years after the day of victory,
Soviet-American hostility had deepened into that conflict
known as the Cold War. The abrupt termination of lend-
lease assistance at the end of the war and the quick break-
down of negotiations on a postwar loan contributed to the
rising conflict and symbolized the transition from alliance to
enmity.

"Inevitably," Robert A. Divine has written, "the Cold
War cast its shadow over the historiography of World War
II." ² Economic assistance, which had been so important in
the wartime relationship, became an issue of great contro-
versy in historical accounts of the development and break-
down of the Grand Alliance. Within three years after the
end of the war, Soviet government spokesmen and official
historians began to minimize the importance of lend-lease in
the triumph over Nazi Germany. As early as February, 1948,
the trade union newspaper Trud observed that the arms re-
ceived from the United States during the war were "by far
poorer in quality" than Russian-made weapons. Subsequent
Russian accounts of World War II either played down or ig-

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