What for? We paid you back for everything you either sold or lent us; every last penny-with interest. You had no choice but to enter the war, and you did it for selfish reasons, no altruism involved. I expect you know that Hitler had plans for America too?
Not exactly. Most of lend-lease was an accounting fiction, a fig-leaf for aid that was never really given with expectation that the US would be fully compensated. The British Empire got over 31 billion in aid (60 percent of all lend lease), but only several billion was actually repaid (the "return" of useable war material was negligible, and the material retained by the UK was "sold" to them at a 90 percent discount).
Even the interest on the post-war loan was insubstantial, at 2 percent per year.
Of course the U.S. initially had a choice to enter or not enter the war, but it was then a choice settled by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Germany's declaration of war on the U.S (three says later). If the Japanese had only struck British and Dutch outposts in the Pacific, who knows if the US would have ever entered the war or what the outcome for the UK might have been?
Although I am American by birth, I don't expect a another "Thanks USA" nod, thanks have been given more than once by British officials (including in 2006, when the last payoff for a loan was made). But I would expect a little more historical understanding from you. Until WWII the U.S. was not a world power, it had enormous potential BUT Americans were more or less isolationist, they did not view themselves as part of the old world and its bitter rivalries. Europeans were "them": elitist, aristocratic, feuding, often undemocratic, colonialist, and in the habit of falling into major continental warfare at least once or twice every century. The "common man" of the US had little desire for foreign entanglements outside of the new world. If the European Kraut, Frogs, and Limey's wanted to kill each other, who were "we" to get involved in their ancient animosities?
So yes, the fact that the US got sucked into a European war many had attempted to dodge AND then generously devoted a great deal of its GDP to protecting Western Europe and British holdings in the Pacific and Asia did create an edge of resentment - as did the massive Marshall Plan provided to all of Europe (including the UK) after the war.
Still, US involvement in WII was certainty a blessing for western Europe, one that lasted till at least the collapse of Soviet communism. And it was probably a good thing for the US - a post-war world of a Europe occupied by Nazi Germany or Communist Russia being nearly unthinkable.
So you don't have to say thank you, but you do need to recognize that the US saved Europe more than Europe saved the US.
