For educational purposes
When war broke out in 1939, the USA was isolationist, but Britain ‘s near defeat in the war brought about a change of opinion.
As debate raged between the interventionists and isolationists, President F D Roosevelt steered his country towards war.
By the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, America was ready to fight.
When war broke out in 1939, the USA was isolationist, but Britain ‘s near defeat in the war brought about a change of opinion.
As debate raged between the interventionists and isolationists, President F D Roosevelt steered his country towards war.
By the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, America was ready to fight.
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LearningTranscript
00:00Another war, and not for me. This time America should keep out, and I know I will.
00:13If war breaks out in Europe, I think that this country should heed the advice of its
00:18first president and avoid all foreign entanglements.
00:21I am the slightest idea of European affairs.
00:27It was a surprise attack that brought a reluctant America into the war in 1941. For most of
00:33the previous twenty years, the United States had been an island, cut off by choice from
00:38the world's affairs.
00:39It was a surprise attack that brought a reluctant America into the war in 1941. For most of
01:09the previous twenty years, the United States had been an island, cut off by choice from the world's affairs.
01:34In 1917, the United States joined the First World War. In the following year, with fresh
01:40troops and new tactics, the Americans came to the rescue of the French and the British,
01:44who were exhausted by a long and bloody conflict and on the verge of defeat.
01:52America's intervention turned the tide. In November, Germany abandoned the war and sued
01:58for peace.
02:11The American president, Woodrow Wilson, had dictated the terms of the armistice and promised
02:15the Germans a magnanimous peace. In December, in France, ecstatic crowds welcomed Wilson
02:22as the peacemaker. But at the Versailles Peace Conference, France and Britain demanded
02:32retribution. At their insistence, the treaty imposed on the Germans was punitive. Wilson
02:39had given in, but he feared that the treaty contained the seeds of another war.
02:47There were Americans who had a deep abiding sense of isolationism, of distrust of Europe,
02:55and that distrust festered during World War I and was exacerbated by the terms of the
03:03peace. It was said that all Americans had gotten out of the war was the flu, the terrible
03:08influenza epidemic that took so many lives.
03:13The war had brought prosperity to American industry, supplying arms to the Allies. In
03:18peacetime, mass production fuelled domestic demand and brought riches to many. But America's
03:24wealth in the twenties was anything but evenly spread.
03:32Worst off were the farmers, a quarter of America's population. In the 1920s and again in the
03:38thirties, demand and prices fell drastically. There was a prolonged slump in the farming
03:43states, made worse by the drought. Millions of families were destitute. In 1929, the stock
03:59market collapsed. America, and much of the rest of the world, sank into the Great Depression.
04:05The tremendous crowds which you see gathered outside the Stock Exchange are due to the
04:10greatest crash in the history of the New York Stock Exchange and market prices.
04:15What had happened was that the economy had tilted out of balance. During the 1920s, wages
04:20had lagged far behind productivity and profits. Too many Americans could not afford to buy
04:25the goods they were producing.
04:32In 1932, the cruellest year of the Depression, wages of those who were in work dropped to
04:46as little as 20, 10 and even 5 cents an hour. That winter, according to an estimate by the
04:52magazine Fortune, a third of the population was without any income whatever, and the welfare
04:58system, such as it was, began to collapse.
05:12The United States, in the thirties, had the most serious depression this country had ever
05:17had. It started in 1929, of course, and it was steadily downhill until the spring of
05:241933. And it's hard to describe the situation where plants that were producing, say, radios
05:34were closed down, where the workers who wanted to work had no jobs, where the people who'd
05:38loved to have had a radio in their home couldn't buy them because they had no means, and it
05:43was just a complete stagnation. It was a paralysis. And it wasn't just that the economy
05:50created this kind of paralysis. It was terrible hardship. People that had been well off committed
05:55suicide, literally, out of the losses. They lost everything they had, and others sold
06:00apples on street corners. And the despair until the New Deal came was just profound
06:06and deep and seemingly hopeless.
06:10It was on everyone's mind constantly how to make a living, how to earn an extra nickel.
06:18The fear of losing your job, the difficulty of getting another one. I can remember tramping
06:23the streets of Minneapolis trying to get odd jobs, movie usher, shirt salesman. So you
06:30couldn't escape this, and we were struggling to survive in the richest country on earth.
06:39It didn't make any sense.
06:431932 was election year, and in Franklin D. Roosevelt and his concern for the forgotten
06:49man at the bottom of the economic pyramid, the Democrats found a leader and a theme.
06:54It looks, my friends, like a real landslide this time.
07:00Herbert Hoover leaves the White House for the last time as president to share the car
07:10of America's president-elect in the traditional ride down Pennsylvania Avenue to the steps
07:14of the Capitol and inauguration ceremonies.
07:18There was a less than cordial personal relationship between the outgoing and the incoming president.
07:24And the ride from the White House to the Capitol was almost entirely in silence, with
07:30the incoming president bowing and waving his hat and his hand to people, and the outgoing
07:34president looking as if he'd swallowed a banana.
07:40The outstanding thing that one would remember out of it was the serious and anxious look
07:46on people's faces as you rode to the Capitol for the ceremony and the realization that
07:55we lived in a country that could make this kind of fundamental change in a peaceful atmosphere
08:04and that when we were required to exert leadership, leadership was present and a program was forthcoming
08:12which did result in overcoming the main difficulties that we did encounter.
08:19This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly.
08:28Nor need we shrink from honestly...
08:31Unlike his predecessor in office, Roosevelt had ideas.
08:35The country, he said, demands bold, persistent experimentation in an emergency at least equal
08:41to war itself.
08:42So first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
09:00To take four million men from the breadlines and give them jobs which will provide for their families,
09:05President Roosevelt has allotted $400 million to the Civil Works Administration headed by Harry L. Hopkins.
09:11President Roosevelt has organized the Civil Works Administration.
09:16He has instructed me to put four million men to work in 30 days.
09:21These men will not receive charity but regular work, thereby becoming self-sustaining American citizens.
09:29Americans wanted leadership and change. Roosevelt gave them both.
09:34His New Deal, an all-out attack on the Depression, was the most intensive period of reform in American history.
09:41And for every man who gets a job, an average family of four will again become self-supporting,
09:46removing the specter of hunger from four million American homes.
09:53The key to unemployment was a huge public works program.
09:57For example, the Grand Coulee Dam.
10:00Well, the world has seven wonders that travelers always tell.
10:04Some gardens and some flowers, I guess you know them well.
10:09But now the greatest wonder in Uncle Sam's fair land, it's the King Columbia River and the Big Grand Coulee Dam.
10:17She heads up the Canadian mountains where the rippling waters glide,
10:21coming rumbling down the canyon just to meet the salty tide.
10:25There's a wild Pacific Ocean where the sun sets in the west,
10:28and the Big Grand Coulee country is the land I love the best.
10:33There's a monstrous big hole here, bigger than you can imagine,
10:37because when you went down there, everybody looked like flies in the hole.
10:41You know, every direction you looked, there was somebody working there, but it was so small.
10:46And you couldn't imagine how big it is today.
10:50At that time, you know, it didn't look like it would be this high or anything of this magnitude.
10:54The biggest thing ever built by human hands, on the King Columbia River, it's the Big Grand Coulee Dam.
11:01So what Roosevelt actually done in the New Deal was put new lifeblood into everybody.
11:07You know, there was something worth living for again.
11:11All of us weren't going to die. All we had to do was get off our butt and get on our feet and go to her.
11:18The New Deal, with its 30,000 projects, preoccupied Roosevelt to the exclusion of foreign affairs.
11:24In the Far East, Japan had invaded Manchuria, and in Germany, Hitler came to power.
11:31But for Roosevelt, pulling America out of the Depression took priority over everything else.
11:37During the 30s, Roosevelt, with his background and knowledge of the rest of the world,
11:45he himself, I think, was convinced that his problems were domestic,
11:50and that he shouldn't concern himself with what was going on in the rest of the world.
11:54And actually, when one looks back, it's hard to picture, except the emergence of Hitler and what he kept saying and doing,
12:03it's hard to picture places that demanded America's attention to the degree that America's domestic problems demanded attention.
12:14It wasn't only that America had pressing concerns of its own.
12:18This was a nation of immigrants, and in the heartland of America, the Midwest, isolationism was a way of life.
12:28These people that I knew and grew up with, the Upper Mississippi Valley,
12:33they'd come to get away from Europe, not only to get more land, but to be free of obligatory military service,
12:39to be free of the endless quarrels of Europe.
12:45There isn't a province of Europe that hasn't been soaked in blood one time or another.
12:52They wanted to build a new life. This looked like the promised land.
12:56And in any case, physically, the Mississippi Valley surely must have seemed the safest place on Earth,
13:04from the quarrels of nations.
13:07And I guess it was. It's not stupidity. It's not ignorance.
13:12It's a new way of trying to live. And I grew up in that.
13:16And the isolationist movement grew naturally out of that.
13:23A powerful stimulus was the memory of the First World War.
13:29Americans believed that they, alone among the belligerents, had gone to war for altruistic reasons.
13:38In the end, they felt they had been betrayed by the peace settlement,
13:43by the refusal of the Allies to pay their war debts,
13:46and by the Great Depression, for which many Americans vaguely blamed the Europeans.
13:56These ideas gave rise to strong emotions, reflected in Hollywood films.
14:08I remember going to a movie as a boy, early teens, and seeing All Quiet on the Western Front,
14:16and having a dreadful sense of the carnage of World War I,
14:21the sense of hopelessness on the face of the soldiers,
14:24and a deep feeling of resolve that never again would this country engage in such a terrible kind of event.
14:38The revulsion against foreign entanglements attracted 12 million Americans to the peace movement.
14:44An alliance of isolationists and pacifists became a coherent political force,
14:49with its own spokesman in the Congress.
14:51We want no war. We'll have no war, save in defense of our own people or our own honor.
15:00There is but one war that I would like to see this world engage in.
15:04That is a war which would find civilization making war against the private munitions makers the world over.
15:16Hollywood spread the notion that America had been tricked into the war
15:20by an unholy alliance of politicians, bankers, and munitions manufacturers.
15:28I don't like evasions. There's too much of that stuff going on right now.
15:32All right, then, let's get down to business.
15:34Munitions is our business, and it's up to us to make it America's business.
15:38What good are steel and shell and shrapnel if there's nothing to shoot at?
15:42There's too much sentimental talk about the last war.
15:45What did it really cost us?
15:47400,000 casualties, nothing.
15:50It gave us the greatest year of prosperity any nation's ever had.
15:54But that war is worn out.
15:56There's another one in Europe now, and every minute we delay getting into it is costing us a million dollars.
16:01As a matter of fact, all we need is a good slogan.
16:04The country's honor. There's your perfect slogan.
16:07Gigantic.
16:08That's just what we need.
16:09We plaster the country.
16:10Superb.
16:11The lifeblood of America.
16:12Save your country's honor.
16:13Save our industries.
16:15Save your country's honor.
16:35In 1934, the Senate set up an investigation of the entire munitions industry.
16:40Day after day, the merchants of death trooped into public hearings to answer charges that they had fermented war to boost their profits.
16:49I believe it was the peace movement that really stimulated the forming of that committee.
16:56The interest in munition makers came about when revelations of how they had operated during World War I came out,
17:06and it was felt that they were really evil influence.
17:10The hearings led Congress to pass a series of laws compelling the United States to remain neutral in other nations' wars.
17:18Roosevelt signed the Neutrality Acts.
17:21But to his dismay, they explicitly prevented him from discriminating between aggressors and victims.
17:28It sent the message that the isolationist sentiment in this country was very strong,
17:33that we had emerged from one great war, and we didn't want to get involved in another.
17:38And the idea was to let the world know that if there's another war in Europe, we expect to stay out of it.
17:45Overseas, the world order was collapsing.
17:48When Mussolini invaded Abyssinia in 1935, the Neutrality Act was applied to both sides.
17:56In the following year, Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland in flat defiance of the peace treaties.
18:05In China, Japanese forces had overrun Manchuria and were attacking Shanghai, where America had important commercial interests.
18:14Newsreel pictures of the bombing horrified Americans, but the Roosevelt administration took no action against the Japanese.
18:22I think all of us who were in China and saw what was going on were outraged.
18:30What should be done? Well, obviously we felt that it was wrong for us to not impose some sort of sanctions.
18:38We were supplying most of Japan's petroleum, or a good part of it.
18:41We were supplying Japan with all sorts of raw materials of war, scrap iron and so on.
18:45We were selling them, actually, aircraft engines, I think, and various things like that.
18:49But we thought the least we should do would be to stop supporting Japan in that way.
18:58In October 1937, in Chicago, the heartland of isolationism, Roosevelt tried to change course, to awaken America and warn aggressors.
19:07His message came to be known as the Quarantine Speech.
19:11War is a contagion, whether it be declared or undeclared.
19:18It can engulf states and peoples remote from the original scene of hostilities.
19:25And mark this well, when an epidemic of physical disease starts to spread, the community approves and joins in a quarantine of the patients.
19:42America hopes for peace. Therefore, America actively engages in the search for peace.
19:57One thing about the country was that it was isolationist.
20:01And I think my father knew this, and knew the dangers of it, and felt that the time had come to exert leadership through a speech.
20:08And that this was the occasion that was chosen, to make that speech, to make sure that the sentiment was changed and redirected and based upon a solid base.
20:17After he had made the speech, I think he wondered whether he had judged his timing.
20:25Roosevelt's supporters kept their heads down.
20:28Isolationist congressmen threatened to impeach him.
20:31He was too far ahead of public opinion.
20:35Only two months later, on the Yangtze River in China, Japanese aircraft attacked the American gunboat Panai.
20:43Roosevelt took no action.
20:46The first thing I knew was a big explosion.
20:50And the three heavy bombers flew over and dropped their entire load on us.
20:57There were a lot of injured lying around, and several of the men who were in the machine guns could not make it.
21:06I tried to load one of the machine guns myself, and as I did, I was hit in both hands.
21:16The captain was badly injured, broken hip.
21:21The captain was badly injured, broken hip, so I went on the bridge to take over command.
21:30The Japs had no reason to say they didn't know what they were doing.
21:34We had two large horizontal flags, one forward and one aft.
21:40They couldn't help but see who we were.
21:45Commander Anders was rescued after the attack, but two men had died in the bombing.
21:51Nevertheless, America accepted Japan's apology and its assurance that the attack was a mistake.
21:57More probably, it was a test of America's nerve.
22:01Commanding 70,000 troops of the First Army, General Huey Drum denounces an arm shortage that forces drill with wooden weapons,
22:09but points out that Germany before rearming trained millions with pasteboard cannon and make-believe machines.
22:17As one international crisis followed another, America began to look at its sadly neglected defenses.
22:23The army was smaller than Romania's.
22:26It numbered 227,000 men, but there was equipment for only a third of them.
22:32There is far to go.
22:34And with each silent non-firing of the non-loaded trench mortar guns,
22:38there is explosive appeal for speed in making this nation strong.
22:47When Chamberlain visited Hitler during the Czechoslovak crisis of 1938,
22:52America remained firmly on the sidelines.
22:55The Prime Minister of Great Britain on that visit without precedent.
22:59His desperate attempt to avert the catastrophe.
23:02Hitler demanding the Sudeten German portions of Czechoslovakia.
23:05Chamberlain seeking an arrangement.
23:09Eight months before, Chamberlain had rejected a proposal by Roosevelt for an international conference to save the peace.
23:16Chamberlain said it would cut across his territory,
23:20Chamberlain said it would cut across his plan for a measure of appeasement of Germany and Italy.
23:26Roosevelt had deep misgivings about appeasement.
23:29But though he wanted to influence events, he was not prepared to make commitments.
23:34Public opposition to foreign entanglements was still too strong in America.
23:40What transfixed Americans in 1939 was not the prospect of war, but the World's Fair in New York.
23:53I remember the World's Fair vividly.
23:56I was a 16-year-old high school boy and went to the fair, which was only about two or three miles from my home.
24:05I am a smart fellow, as I have a very fine brain.
24:13There was a keen sense of exuberance about the fair, a promise of the world of tomorrow.
24:20The particular exhibit that probably caught my attention,
24:27was the Futurama of General Motors.
24:31It was a sense of a utopian, urban civilization.
24:36And now we have arrived in this wonder world of 1960.
24:41The World's Fair exhibit, modeled with such artistry and skill,
24:47that we must continually remind ourselves, the world we are now seeing is a vision.
24:58I would suppose that a good deal of that sense of hope and exuberance
25:04came from the fact that the United States had a great deal of influence
25:10that a good deal of that sense of hope and exuberance
25:14came from the fact that the United States was protected, it thought,
25:20by 3,000 miles of ocean from the troubles of Europe.
25:24And it could look toward what kind of a tomorrow it wanted in this land, free of foreign concerns.
25:33I wonder if the years ahead will be as bright as this.
25:37We haven't seen anything yet, darling.
25:42Why, all this is merely a sample of the real world of tomorrow.
25:46By the outbreak of war in September 1939, public support for absolute neutrality was already waning.
26:12Now, on the day Britain and France declared war on Germany,
26:15Roosevelt spoke to what he called the whole of America.
26:23This nation will remain a neutral nation,
26:27but I cannot ask that every American remain neutral in thought as well.
26:34Even a neutral has a right to take account of facts.
26:39Even a neutral cannot be asked to close his mind or to close his conscience.
26:48Well, of course, his sympathies from the beginning were clearly with Britain and France and the Allies.
26:55And then, of course, when the war started, he began quietly, yet rather persistently,
27:03to help Britain and France as fast as he thought he could,
27:07taking into account the isolationist sentiment there was in this country.
27:12Warplane shipments begin immediately, and from many American factories,
27:16military aircraft ordered before the war are ready for their journey to Great Britain.
27:21One month after the Germans had overrun Poland,
27:24Roosevelt had the votes in Congress he needed to repeal the arms embargo.
27:29Under the so-called cash and carry law, Britain and the Allies could buy American arms,
27:35provided they were carried in non-American ships.
27:38The Allies have thus an inexhaustible supply of planes and other war materials.
27:45The isolationists fought on against direct involvement in Europe.
27:49Like so many Americans, I too am wishing for victory for one side engaged in Europe.
27:58But I am wishing more than for that, for the avoidance for my country of the waste,
28:07the cost, the debt, the futility, the deaths, the cripples, and the heartbreak
28:17that can be America's only reward for participation in another European mess.
28:26If they feel like a war on some foreign shore, let them keep it over there.
28:34If some fools want to fight and think might makes right, let them keep it over there.
28:43From coast to coast you'll hear a million mothers pray,
28:47whatever happens please don't send my boy away.
28:51Wherefore you Uncle Sam, but stay out of that jam.
28:56Let them keep it over there.
29:02In the summer of 1940, Britain stood alone against Germany.
29:07The insistent demand of the British public for action brings into power Winston Churchill, man of action.
29:14Winston Churchill appealed to Roosevelt for immediate aid for Britain's ill-equipped armed forces.
29:20Roosevelt temporized. He was running for re-election,
29:23and he was afraid that support for Britain would lose him votes.
29:29But Churchill cultivated Roosevelt in an exchange of letters,
29:33much to the frustration of the isolationists.
29:36Churchill was, of course, a great orator, and he played, we thought, played Roosevelt like a violin,
29:43because he knew exactly how to appeal to FDR,
29:46and he did a beautiful job with his correspondence, and he was a great leader.
29:51And we understood what his objective was.
29:54His objective, as he hoped for, prayed for, now he comes to pass,
29:57was to get the United States in at England's side,
30:00which is what a British leader should indeed want.
30:05To buttress their rearguard action, the isolationists formed a new movement, America First.
30:17America First
30:26Just as dictatorship rules in every nation now at war,
30:28our own country would become a military dictatorship the day we became involved.
30:32And lost, perhaps beyond recovery, would be the historic and hard-won liberties of our American way.
30:39Shall we again fight for dubious democracy abroad,
30:42or stay out and save genuine democracy at home?
30:45War's madness abroad, or payroll's peace and progress at home?
30:50That is our choice, nor is it a selfish choice.
30:54Congress is the servant of the people and must answer to our bidding.
30:58Millions of letters to our congressmen today must demand they pass no measure
31:03which would involve us in any way in Europe's or Asia's wars.
31:06Drive it home that an outraged people has risen in revolt against any force
31:10which would send our men or money into Europe's war.
31:13Let every train to Washington from every section of the nation carry our no-war command to Congress.
31:22The information we had about England's ability to survive
31:31led us to believe that there was a good chance England was not going to survive.
31:35And the basic thing I know in my mind was we're going to be on hand to help pick up the pieces.
31:42We hope we will be a strong, aloof country that can help reorganize the world.
31:50That was very, very basic in my thinking.
31:56In New York, Charles A. Lindbergh, who has since submitted his resignation as colonel in the Army Air Corps,
32:01speaks to a rally of the America First Committee.
32:05France has now been defeated, and despite the propaganda and confusion of recent months,
32:12it is now obvious that England is losing the war.
32:23And I have been forced to the conclusion that we cannot win this war for England
32:29regardless of how much assistance we send.
32:33That is why the America First Committee has been formed.
32:37It was a short-sightedness, selfishness, if I may say so,
32:42failure to observe what was really involved, how our interests would be endangered.
32:47We couldn't afford to let Hitler win the war.
32:50With Europe behind him, with Europe at his back, he could fight us all over the world for a generation.
33:02It was the course the war was taking, more than the appeals and arguments of politicians,
33:07that defeated the isolationists.
33:11With the bombing of Britain, a wave of sympathy spread across America.
33:17♪♪♪
33:30I'm speaking from London.
33:33It is late afternoon, and the people of London are preparing for the night.
33:39Everyone is anxious to get home before darkness falls,
33:43before our nightly visitors arrive.
33:48Here they come.
33:50♪♪♪
33:58These are not Hollywood sound effects.
34:01This is the music they play every night in London, the symphony of war.
34:08The blitz changed American opinion.
34:10The polls showed a clear majority prepared to aid Britain,
34:13even if it drew the United States into war.
34:17The British are heartened by inspiring news from America.
34:20Fifty destroyers are added to their fleet.
34:24In September 1940, Roosevelt bypassed Congressional opposition
34:28to an appeal from Churchill for fifty destroyers.
34:31They were exchanged for British bases.
34:34But 1940 was Roosevelt's re-election year.
34:38Campaigning in Boston for a third term of office,
34:41he was careful not to move too far ahead of public opinion again.
34:47What he said was, and I'll never forget it,
34:50and while I am talking to you, mothers and fathers,
34:53I give you one more assurance.
34:56I have said this before, but I shall say it again.
35:00I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again.
35:07Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.
35:13There was no except in case of attack, no but if, period.
35:18I remember hearing it at the time on the radio,
35:21and the applause that followed saying,
35:23by gosh, A, he must mean it,
35:25and B, how the hell is he going to get out of it?
35:28He did have a devious side,
35:30and that came out at no point more clearly
35:34than in these months of 1940 and 1941.
35:38In good part, I think, because he faced a situation
35:43where even if he never admitted this to himself,
35:47he was leading the nation toward war, and he couldn't say this.
35:52Shortly before election day, Roosevelt took a gamble
35:55that the voters would accept the introduction of conscription.
35:59The first number drawn by the Secretary of War
36:05is serial number 158.
36:11The first number and a mother's scream flash across the nation.
36:15In every walk of life, the muster has begun,
36:18and as the lottery goes on for 17 hours,
36:21a mighty manpower is created.
36:23Number 158 in Oakland, California,
36:26laundry worker Quang Quang Phu,
36:29San Francisco and senior class president William Bernard Parraman,
36:33San Lorenzo, and American-born Toshio Okado.
36:37At Palo Alto, John Kennedy, the ambassador's son,
36:40got the 18th number drawn.
36:43Soon after Roosevelt's victory,
36:45Britain's plight became desperate.
36:48Churchill wrote to Roosevelt to say that Britain was stripped
36:51to the bone, running out of supplies,
36:54and even worse, out of money to pay for more.
36:57She could not hold out much longer.
37:04Roosevelt was cruising with the Navy in the Caribbean.
37:07For two days, without consulting advisers,
37:10he applied his fertile mind to Britain's problem.
37:14He pondered this question at some length,
37:17and finally came up with this very ingenious solution.
37:21He said to newsmen when he returned,
37:24let's forget the silly old dollar sign.
37:27When a neighbor has a fire,
37:30and you have a garden hose that will help him put it out,
37:34obviously it's in your interest to let that person borrow your hose.
37:39Let's think about this problem that way.
37:43America has the goods.
37:45America needs the protection and security
37:48that a British fighting Britain can provide,
37:51and we lend Britain the goods,
37:54and they fight the battle in our behalf as well.
38:00The result, the Lend-Lease Bill,
38:02touched off a final epic battle between the interventionists
38:05and the isolationists,
38:07who accused Roosevelt of warmongering
38:09and exceeding his presidential powers.
38:12The present supporters fought back.
38:15Senator Pepper was Roosevelt's man in the Congress.
38:18The time has come when the decent,
38:21God-fearing nations of the earth
38:24must rise up and put down
38:26international brigandage and piracy,
38:29which have today made ours a lawless world.
38:34When I introduced the first Lend-Lease Bill
38:37and began to speak for it in the Senate and around over the country,
38:41one afternoon I got to my office from the Senate,
38:44and the superintendent of police called me.
38:47He said,
38:48Senator, what do you want me to do with your effigy?
38:50I said,
38:51With my what?
38:52Your effigy.
38:53He said,
38:54Didn't you know you were hanged in effigy
38:55out in front of the Capitol,
38:57the Senate wing of the Capitol this afternoon
38:59by a group of women?
39:00I said,
39:01No, I was on the floor.
39:02Well, he said,
39:03A group of women had an effigy of you.
39:05They had the Claude Benedict Arnold Pepper placard across the chest,
39:09and they tied a rope around the effigy's neck
39:12and strung him to a limb of the tree,
39:14and they were shaking their fists at it and all
39:16when the police went and cut it down.
39:19But in the Capitol, the historic bill is passed.
39:22A night session sees the Senate vote 60 to 31 for it.
39:26It was a bitter fight,
39:28and it was in many ways a major turning point in American foreign policy.
39:33The debate was, in a sense,
39:36the last cry, the last major stand of the isolationists.
39:41And when they were sharply outnumbered in the voting,
39:46it was very clear that their weight had really subsided
39:51in American councils of foreign policy.
39:54Lend-lease aid for Britain.
39:56Billions of dollars' worth of war materials underway.
39:59The crucial question was the escort of convoys.
40:03Every month, Britain was losing 400,000 tons of shipping to German U-boats.
40:08Gradually, the U.S. Navy became directly involved in the Battle of the Atlantic.
40:16Lieutenant Noah Adair was a watch officer
40:19in the first American ship hit by a German torpedo.
40:23I had finished my H-12 watch, and I was out on the bridge
40:28and looked down, and I saw a torpedo passing past our bow.
40:34And another man on the stern, I found out later on,
40:37had seen one pass a stern.
40:40And then, almost simultaneously with that,
40:43we ourselves were hit.
40:46The explosion hit right in the number one fire room,
40:51and it just destroyed the complete interior of the fire room
40:56and opened up a gash in the side of the ship
41:00from the water line right on down to the keel of the ship.
41:04There were 11 men that were killed,
41:07and about 21, I believe, that were wounded.
41:11And all those that were killed were in the fire room.
41:15As America prepares, the war comes ever closer.
41:18On the Atlantic, vast convoys brave sub-infested waters.
41:22U.S. patrol planes keep ceaseless vigilance.
41:25We were just exactly the same thing we would be doing
41:28if we were at war and we were on convoy duty.
41:32If we could get a sonar contact on a submarine,
41:35we would drop depth charges on them.
41:40It was quite similar to being at war.
41:48That summer, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill
41:51met in a remote bay in Newfoundland.
41:54For nearly two years, they'd kept up a lengthy
41:56and increasingly intimate correspondence.
41:59And now, together with their naval and military chiefs,
42:02they spent four days coordinating plans.
42:09They meet, and Mr. Churchill hands the president
42:12a letter from the king.
42:14The two greatest leaders of the freedom-loving world
42:17are ready for the historic conference.
42:21The meeting marked America's re-entry into the world
42:24and the end of two decades of isolation.
42:48Much of the discussion focused on Japan
42:50and what should be done if she were to join
42:52her two Axis partners in the war, Italy and Germany.
42:56In response to Japan's aggression in China,
42:58Roosevelt had already embargoed exports of scrap metal to Japan.
43:03When the Japanese occupied the whole of Indochina,
43:06he cut off the most vital commodity of all, oil.
43:13Japan sent negotiators to Washington.
43:16Simultaneously, the cabinet in Tokyo made plans for war.
43:20The negotiations dragged on fruitlessly.
43:23At the end of November, radio intercepts told Roosevelt
43:27that a Japanese attack was imminent,
43:30but no one knew where it would come.
43:37Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
43:47On each anniversary of Japan's attack,
43:51the band of the U.S. Pacific Fleet repeats the concert
43:54that was played on board the USS Arizona in 1941.
44:17For the soldiers, sailors, and airmen sent to Hawaii in that year,
44:21Pearl Harbor was an enjoyable posting.
44:24Despite warnings of the possibility of an attack,
44:27nobody believed that the Japanese forces
44:29could reach halfway across the Pacific.
44:36You know, Japan had a reputation in those days for being imitative.
44:41They copied everything but put it out as shoddy copy.
44:46Our military people were convinced
44:48that they couldn't build anything very well.
44:51They didn't believe that Japanese planes were very good,
44:54or their trucks were very good,
44:56their mechanical stuff very good.
44:59They didn't think they could be very good fighter pilots,
45:03or bombing pilots, really,
45:05because they couldn't see very well, they all wore glasses.
45:08And so there was a general tendency to look down on the Japanese,
45:11to sort of minimize them.
45:16EXPLOSION
45:18At 5 minutes to 8, on the morning of Sunday, December 7,
45:22Japanese carrier-borne aircraft launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
45:27Nineteen ships were sunk or disabled.
45:30188 American aircraft were destroyed on the ground,
45:34and 3,500 men were killed and wounded.
45:40It was a Sunday,
45:42and I was at home, resting,
45:45and I got a call from the White House
45:47saying that the President wanted me to come down right away.
45:50I threw things together and went down
45:53and walked into the White House and up to his study,
45:56and he was sitting up there shuffling his stamps around.
46:00And I had expected sort of a chaos and excitement and tension,
46:04and it was exactly the opposite.
46:06It was quiet, no confusion of any kind.
46:11And so I said to him,
46:12why did you get me to come on down here?
46:15He said, because war has begun.
46:18And yet there was a feeling that he wasn't surprised,
46:22he wasn't taken aback, and he wasn't worried.
46:27December 7, 1941,
46:33a date which will live in infamy.
46:39The United States of America
46:41was suddenly and deliberately attacked
46:45by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
46:52Four days after Pearl Harbor,
46:54Hitler declared war on the United States.
46:57A future Secretary of State remarked,
46:59at last our enemies, with unparalleled stupidity,
47:03resolved our dilemmas,
47:05clarified our doubts and uncertainties,
47:07and united our people for the long, hard course
47:11that the national interest required.
47:25The annual ceremony of remembrance
47:27above the remains of the battleship Arizona.
47:30More than a thousand of her crew had died
47:33when a bomb detonated her forward magazine.
47:38I think the differences just disappeared.
47:42That was the single example, I think,
47:45of a country that was widely divided
47:47being unified within almost minutes by a single stroke.
47:52And if you ask me if there had been no Pearl Harbor,
47:58would we have got into war?
48:00When would we have got into war?
48:02I couldn't answer it.
48:04I don't know.
48:06The Japanese just did the dumbest thing
48:09in all military history, and that did it.
48:13The Japanese just did the dumbest thing
48:16in all military history, and that did it.
48:43¶¶
49:13¶¶