ABSTRACT
Lend-lease was an ingenious solution to a major problem facing Franklin D. Roosevelt as he prepared to begin an unprecedented third term as the nation's chief executive. The novelty of the lend-lease idea had been acclaimed in many circles and some saw it as a natural instrument for postwar rehabilitation and reconstruction. Congress continued to express its interest and reassert its prerogatives in the related areas of settlements and postwar benefits to be obtained from lend-lease. In the context of imminent victory in Europe and their own renascence as an active branch of the government they therefore moved, in the third and final extension of lend-lease, to put into law limitations that would provide the protection they wanted. Lend-Lease was an exceptional program—a wartime expedient hastily assembled for an uncertain duration, its bureaucratic structure a jerry-built jumble of overlapping agencies and committees.
