Lessons of the of Alaska–Siberia Air Route
By ALEXANDER DOLITSKY
One of the decisive factors leading to the victory of the world’s peace-seeking nations in the Second World War was the effective cooperation of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition.
Today, after the passage of 80 years, it is vital once again to recall this unique episode, when the Allied countries, despite sharply divergent governing structures and ideologies, managed to reach agreement on a shared global imperative—to present a unified front against the powers that promulgated fascism and militarism.
A great example of the war cooperation between two great nations is the wartime Lend-Lease Agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union, signed in Washington, DC on June 11, 1942, allowed the two countries to provide mutual assistance in fighting a war against aggression. One of the unique examples of such cooperation was the establishment of the Alaska–Siberia Air Route (ALSIB), on which approximately 8,000 combat and transport aircraft were delivered from the United States of America to the Soviet–German warfronts between September 1942 and October 1945.
Soviet and American pilots flew the Alaska–Siberia Air Route to deliver combat planes halfway around the world, traversing more than 12 time zones, from Great Falls, Montana, to the Russian warfronts. Much of the route lay over remote and roadless wilderness where pilots made their way in stages from the safety of one hastily built airfield to the next. Alaska served as the exchange location for transferring the planes to the Soviet Union.
United States Army Air Corps pilots from the 7th Ferrying Group and Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) flew combat planes from their points of manufacture in the U.S. to Great Falls, Montana, where male pilots of the 7th Ferrying Group flew them across Canada to Ladd Army Airfield, now Fort Wainwright, near Fairbanks, Alaska.
From there, pilots of the USSR’s Air Force flew the planes over western Alaska and across Siberia to the warfronts. Due to severe weather conditions, mechanical problems, and other adverse circumstances, 133 of these airplanes crashed in North America and 44 went down in Siberia along the Alaska–Siberia Air Route. During their time of service, 38 WASPs died and many more were wounded in the line of duty in the United States while delivering planes to Great Falls.
In the process of transferring aircraft in Alaska, Soviets and Americans got acquainted, and many became sincere friends, carrying on in friendship for the rest of their lives what had begun as a purely strategic alliance. The friendship and cooperation between the two nations during this period of history is now little remembered in the wake of 45 years of ill will fostered during the Cold War (1946 to 1991), and recent resurging tensions between Russia and the United States.
Yet, in many ways, our two countries continue to rediscover the benefits of cooperation, as the rebuilding of economic and social bridges continues. Today, therefore, it is important to remind Alaskans and other peace-seeking citizens of the U.S. Lend-Lease Program and Soviet–American war cooperation of the 1940s. Beyond the achievement of victory in World War II, the Alaska–Siberia Lend-Lease Program established a tradition of cooperation across the Bering Strait that continues to this day in the form of various intergovernmental agreements, including the Shared Beringian Heritage Program of the U.S. National Park Service, and numerous ongoing people-to-people cultural and economic exchanges.
At the present time, both in Russia and the United States, much research has been conducted and many documentary films, books, scholarly works, and popular articles have been released that shed light on the U.S. Lend-Lease Program, including the unique Alaska–Siberia Air ferry route, which was unprecedented in world history prior to World War II and has not been duplicated since.
Undoubtedly, the program played a vital part in the defeat of Nazi Germany and its Axis powers. The architects of the hallmark Lend-Lease Agreement and Protocols and conceived the ALSIB route deserve modern-day accolades, as do the American and Russian veterans who risked their lives to ensure the Lend-Lease deliveries were completed.
In a letter dated March 22, 2001, to US Senators Ted Stevens and Frank Murkowski in support of the construction of the WWII Alaska-Siberia Lend-Lease Memorial in Fairbanks, Stanley B. Gwizdak, Jr., then Acting Chairman of the Interior Veteran’s Coalition of Alaska, wrote:
“It is important, I believe, for the Russian and American people to recall and to celebrate a common heroic effort in combating a treacherous enemy during a daunting and terrible time when the outcome of that war was very much in doubt for both of us. This was not just the effort of Armies, Navies and Air Forces, but also the entire mobilization of both nations industrially, politically and spiritually. Our group still has those who remember this war and we are proud to endorse the Fairbanks memorial as well as all others.”
The heroism of American and Soviet pilots who flew Lend-Lease combat aircraft from the United States to the Soviet Union during World War II, and of all who participated in this endeavor, will always be remembered.
Alexander Dolitsky was born and raised in Kiev in the former Soviet Union. He received an M.A. in history from Kiev Pedagogical Institute, Ukraine in 1976; an M.A. in anthropology and archaeology from Brown University in 1983; and enrolled in the Ph.D. program in anthropology at Bryn Mawr College from 1983 to 1985, where he was also lecturer in the Russian Center. In the USSR, he was a social studies teacher for three years and an archaeologist for five years for the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. In 1978, he settled in the United States. Dolitsky visited Alaska for the first time in 1981, while conducting field research for graduate school at Brown. He then settled first in Sitka in 1985 and then in Juneau in 1986. From 1985 to 1987, he was U.S. Forest Service archaeologist and social scientist. He was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Alaska Southeast from 1985 to 1999; Social Studies Instructor at the Alyeska Central School, Alaska Department of Education and Yukon-Koyukuk School District from 1988 to 2006; and Director of the Alaska-Siberia Research Center from 1990 to 2022. From 2006 to 2010, Alexander Dolitsky served as a Delegate of the Russian Federation in the United States for the Russian Compatriots program. He has done 30 field studies in various areas of the former Soviet Union (including Siberia), Central Asia, South America, Eastern Europe and the United States (including Alaska). Dolitsky was a lecturer on the World Discoverer, Spirit of Oceanus, and Clipper Odyssey vessels in the Arctic and Sub-Arctic regions. He was a Project Manager for the WWII Alaska-Siberia Lend Lease Memorial, which was erected in Fairbanks in 2006. Dolitsky has published extensively in the fields of anthropology, history, archaeology and ethnography. His more recent publications include Fairy Tales and Myths of the Bering Strait Chukchi, Ancient Tales of Kamchatka, Tales and Legends of the Yupik Eskimos of Siberia, Old Russia in Modern America: Living Traditions of the Russian Old Believers in Alaska, Allies in Wartime: The Alaska-Siberia Airway During World War II, Spirit of the Siberian Tiger: Folktales of the Russian Far East, Living Wisdom of the Russian Far East: Tales and Legends from Chukotka and Alaska, and Pipeline to Russia: The Alaska-Siberia Air Route in World War II.
The author again writes perspicaciously; exemplary of the potential thinking and experiences vital for forging a culture of working together in future humanity. We all need to maintain the balance of historical remembrance, while carving out a sense of strong parenting predicated on conscience, truth, decency. Our communities still need to be armed with a strong sense of protecting democracy, while expanding human resource usage.
A few years ago with my son, we visited the building in Potsdam in which its upper windows appear like half-closed eyes from which it looks out of its historical place in East Germany where the so-called ‘spoils’ of war were divied up and carved out in unilateral ‘agreements’. The word ‘allies’ hardly fits the actuality of those scavengers.
First of all Potsdam has not been in “East Germany” since October 1990 when the former Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR) dissolved and Germany reunited. It is the capital of the Bundestaat (German regional state) Brandenburg!
Scavengers, really? You had 70-85 million war dead, whole cities in ruins and no way to feed populations. The responsibilities were enormous. To top it of the other issue was to not repeat the wholesale pillaging of Germany like after WWI, which clearly contributed to the rise of Hitler.
While during the war the Soviet Union and Western powers worked together to eliminate a common threat (and let’s not forget that Stalin’s victory at Stalingrad was the first decisive blow to Hitler’s forces), the post-war tensions can not be denied, mostly due to Stalin’s paranoia (in my opinion).
It is sad that you missed the entire message of the article of unprecedented cooperation between individuals and nations, who had (and still have) vastly different philosophies on how to govern and view their citizens.
Accurate comments,
in fact Russia was the only country in Europe that had the ability to create a large enough land based military to defeat the Wermacht and its’ allied militaries. The war produced some of history’s most brilliant generals, Zhukov and Timoshenko amongst others.
Along with the industrial infrastructure (all of which was remarkably moved east of the Ural Mountains during a war), capable of surge capacity sufficient to out produce Germany along with the advanced military industrial zones they occupied in places like Czechoslovakia.
Along with the decisive strategic victory in Volgograd (Stalingrad), the stubborn defense of St. Petersburg (Lenningrad) tied up large units of the Wermacht along with their Finnish allies, and Moscow was never lost.
The Kursk Campaign permanently broke the back of the Wermacht’s strategic offensive capability.
Operation Bagration ended the Wermacht’s ability for strategic defense of occupied territories. The catastrophic critical loss of their best units allowed for a successful Normandy landing and insuring the western allied forces could maintain and expand their bridgehead in France. It is no accident that the timing of the Normandy landings coincided with Bagration.
If the full might of the Wermacht was available for deployment in France (instead of being annihilated in the east), the west had no chance to prevail with amphibious landings. Our servicemen faced largely conscript, 2nd tier units.
We owe an eternal debt to our merchant seamen in the Atlantic and pilots ferrying aircraft to Alaska in the east who gave their lives to supply matèrial to Russia. Russia took the overwhelming brunt of casualties to destroy the well trained, armed but fanatical invaders. We would have lost tens of millions of casualties if Russia was taken out.
Fast forward to the present, our enemy is right here in every city and state, a menace we cannot seem to get rid of, illegal aliens.
Might be interesting to contrast with Operation Keelhaul and the “Western Betrayal”, what happened half a world away, as U.S. and U.K militaries repatriated displaced persons to the Soviets, then failed to support them during the 1953 German Democratic Republic uprising, the 1956 Hungarian uprising, and the 1968 Prague Spring uprising against their Soviet Communist rulers.
.
Those poor souls were Soviet citizens, POWs of Germany, Russian Liberation Army members, and others under Allied control. Through no fault of theirs, they were forcibly repatriated to Soviet Russia to be murdered, imprisoned, enslaved by a despotic regime even worse than Hitler’s. More than a few chose suicide over repatriation.
.
One side of the world, the militaries team up to save a country, the other side, the same militaries team up to kill its people. Why?
We enjoyed the Lend Lease Memorial Dedication in Fairbanks, Aug., 27, 2006, attended by US Sec Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Ivanov. I took a photo with Minister Ivanov, turned it into a postcard and mailed it to friends in Russia.
The amusing part of this story, was the postmistress, who for the first-time ever, walked up 5 flights of stairs to deliver the picture postcard. She admonished us for sending a photo of such an important person without using an envelope to protect his image. She obviously wasn’t referring to me! Ha.
That’s a cultural difference I won’t forget!
“despite sharply divergent governing structures and ideologies” Ironic how one government was killing your ancestors through mass starvation and other means just a few short years prior. I’m sure they never continued it after, did they? We simply bailed out one murderous regime to destroy another. But who’s counting bodies?
Would the author consider doing a revue of the movie ‘Mr. Jones’?
“We simply bailed out” is an inaccurate interpretation of the purpose of Lend Lease.
We, America and Britain, were in no position to defeat Germany, and Britain itself would have been lost if Russia was taken out of the war.
It was in our vital interest to do all possible to keep Russia in the war and assist the Red Army in grinding down a war machine the likes never seen before.
There is no room for denial that the Soviet State, particularly under Stalin, was not a murderous, hell on earth, nightmare. That said the 27 million Russians who died in the strategic defeat of the Wermacht spared us of losing millions of our young men. We had no way to gain a foothold on the European Continent if the Red Army had not already crushed the backbone of the German Army. Essentially the Russians bailed us out using their flesh and blood, not manufactured goods.
Our concern should be the ongoing modern day blight on our country is the fact that since 1990, we have never ceased to start undeclared wars and interventions worldwide. Which have killed millions, in a swath of failed states. The list is dozens of countries long.
Trump has been in office 3 months yet we continue to fund, arm, command and support a murderous regime in Ukraine, which we installed to this day. The goal was to end the sovereignty of the RF, take their resources and destroy their society by bringing the woke, lgbqt2 (whatever) and other social mental illnesses on their people.
Our ruling elite bails themselves out using public monies and indebting us, the common citizens, to an untenable debt/GDP levels.
“We, America and Britain, were in no position to defeat Germany”, At least while the Soviets were aligned with the Nazis, both of whom we shared no cherished ideals or principles. 27 million Soviet dead? What comes around goes around.
Ya, I’m against a lend-lease to Ukraine also. A murderous regime, like the Soviet Union was. So, what is wrong with one murderous regime grinding down another like the original Lend-Lease? It would seem being a part of NATO is somewhat a permanent lend-lease.
I really like George Washington’s farewell address. Especially the part about unstable alliances.
Couldn’t be better put. Obama’s 2014 blood-thirsty coup of an elected leader who wanted to remain neutral and trade with both sides started this march to WWIII. All to bring Ukraine into NATO to stage nuclear missiles within 5 minutes of Moscow. It also shred the past relationships with Russia, which supported the American Revolution by having most Europeans countries of that time swear neutrality (Catherine II). Russia also told the British to make peace during the 1812 War when the Brits burned down Washington DC (Alexander I). During the US Civil War Russian ships guarded both coasts – New York and San Francisco – and also sent spy masters to help build intelligence networks (Alexander II). No, we haven’t always been enemies; more often we were friends. We need to remember this when those among us insist that we have always been enemies. Know our history and who helped us when we need it.
I agree completely. The EU is devolving into autocratic chaos. The more we sanction, and remain in an active proxy war with Russia, the closer we push them towards ties with China. Russia has good relations with Iran and can facilitate storing their enriched uranium outside of Iran. Russia can become a reliable trade partner and work on joint projects to keep the Arctic sea lanes neutral and create energy/mineral extraction projects.
The basis of neutrality or friendships are strong economic ties. Alliance entanglements create costly constant wars for us, with no tangible benefits to anyone.
“inaccurate interpretation of the purpose” I was describing the result.