Britain will pay back the last of its World War Two debt to the US by the end of 2006, reports the Telegraph.
There is apparently £346m left of the $4.3bn which Britain borrowed back in 1945 following the end of the Lend-Lease program when the war ended. That amount is about $102bn in today’s money.
The irony is that much of the money had been spent within the first two years by Clement Attlee’s government on the distinctly socialist notions of nationalization of the railways, and the coal and steel industries things that probably did not go down too well with President Truman’s administration.
Most other countries had paid their debts back to the US a while back, but they didnt incur the sort of costs that Britain did during the war. Nor did they nave such a large Empire to try and maintain.