FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT (F.D.R)

Every President of the United States takes an oath, to preserve, protect, and defend the Nation they serve. The pledge demands courageous and difficult decisions. When bold leaders risk all to do what they see as right, their choices can change the course of history. These are the decisions that shook the World.

"We all make tough choices, but when you are sitting in the Oval Office as President of the United States, the decisions you make will affect millions of people. Now as Americans are about to decide who is going to be our next President, we are going to look into the heart of some of the most crucial presidential decisions that shook our World. And still do.

Imaging it's 1940, and you are Flanklin Roosevelt, Hitler's Nazis have taken most of Europe, and Hitler is about to invade England. The British Prime Minister, Wiston Churchill, is pleading for help. But most Americans want to stay away from the war in Europe. Now you're about to run for re-election. If you answer England's cry for help, you may lose the Presidency. If you do nothing, you may hand the World to Adolf Hitler.

"There are those who say that the Axis powers would never have any desire to attack the Western Hemisphere. This is the same dangerous form of wishful thinking which has destroyed the power of resistance of so many conquered people."  --Roosevelt--

It is May of 1940, and Andolf Hitler is determined to conquer all of Europe. America remains on the sidelines. Still bitter over the huge loss of life during a Great War. In the final year of his second term, President Flanklin Roosevelt knows that, if Europe falls, America will be left alone to face Hitler. Roosevelt must decide if he is prepared to do whatever he deems necessary to preserve and protect the United States. Even if it means challenging the Courts, the Congress, and the American people.

"Civilization was on the line, freedom was on the line. The future of Europe and the World was on the line. He knew, sure, sooner or later, the American people would do the right thing. But they didn't and couldn't see the world the way he did. They couldn't have known what he knew." --Bill Clinton--

"In 1940, Franklin Roosevelt knew that he might have to skate to the edge of telling untruths, and even breaking the Law. He didn't want to do it. But if it was necessary, he was ready."

"As a matter of facts, he actually even faced the possibility of impeachment" --Walter Cronkite--

"He believed that desperate times required desperate measures. And sometimes, the Constitution, and the Congress had to catch up." --Jon Meacham, biographer--

"In 1938, Hitler promised peace in our time. If Britain and France would  give him that part of Czechoslovakia known as the Sudetenland.

As Hitler cemented his power, America barely appeared to notice. 95% felt that the United States should not take part, if another war were to break out in Europe.

"Americans had been through World War I. Many American had lost their lives. Others had survive, but their lungs had been gassed, they suffered for the rest of their lives. And by the 1930s, most Americans felt that  World War I had achieved almost nothing, had been a terrible mistake. America should never have done it. They did not want to see that mistake made once again."

"There were still fairy young men on crutches and in wheelchairs, in the streets of our cities, in the towns of our cities, victims of that War. And it was very vivid to us." --Walter Cronkite--

"Veterans, who had been psychologically hurt in World War I, came over to our home for a picnic. And as a kid, I saw what happened to these people. They were just empty - faced, empty - eyed. People just sitting there."

America had another reason to avoid the brewing storm. The nation was still crawling out from the Great Depression. Most people were more concerned with keeping their jobs, paying their bills, and simply getting by.

"There were a lot of negative feelings about big businesses and about corporate leadership. A lot of people tended to believe that we'd been dragged into World War I by the munitions makers.

"Many Americans felt that, in the end, World War I might have been sold to help American corporations, based on the blood of American boys. They did not want to see that happen again."

"We are prepared to defend the American Peace, to the fullest extent of our strength. Matching force to force." --F.D.R--

He didn't say to the American people: we may have to get into a war. He was able to present the idea of preparing for a war, as a way to stay out."

Many Americans were deeply suspicious of Roosevelt's intentions.

"He and his Wall - Streeters, whom he represents, become distorters of history. Gorb themselves in the raiment of patriotism."

Father Charles Coughlin was a priest in Detroit, whose weekly radio program reached millions of listeners. A staunch isolationist, he began painting President Roosevelt as a war-monger.

Father Coughlin, a Detroit priest, was berating anybody who would stand up and say that we ought to be doing something. --Cronkite--

"One of the thing he said over and over again was 'Franklin Roosevelt is trying to get us involved in a war, turn against him!' Americans were writing their members of Congress and saying: 'don't get into another war, make sure it never happens!'"

"The surest way to get peace is to mind our own business. And we are not minding our own business, when our leaders issue saber - rattling statements and keep the country in a white heat of war hysteria." --Sen.Styles Burgess --

"It's easy now, in some ways, to look back and say that we were being ostriches as Roosevelt himself once referred to isolationists."

"Didn't think we had any business going over there. I didn't think it was our war, and I didn't know much about what Hitler was doing, and I didn't care much. I was a typical American." -- Ardy Roomey --

Roosevelt knew he had to respond to his critics with public reassurances that war was not imminent.

"I have seen war on land and sea. I've seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen the dead in the mud. I hate war". -- F.D.R --

"But privately, even as Roosevelt was mouthing the words "I hate war", he knew that, one day, he may, have to take the American people into one."

In September of 1939, Hitler reveals his larger ambitions for European domination. With his infamous blitzkrieg against Poland. The surprise attacks shadows any promises of peace he has made, with England and France.

"On September 3rd, 1939, the day Britain declared war on Germany, Roosevelt gave a fireside chat from the White House, that Sunday evening."

"Until 4:30 o'clock this morning, I had hoped against hope that some miracle would prevent a devastating war in Europe. We are forced to realize that every battle that is fought does affect the American future."

Roosevelt knew that he may have to help if Britain was going to survive. And also if Hitler was going to be stopped from dominating the rest of the world.

On September 11th, just days after England and France declared war on Germany, Roosevelt reaches out to them Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, with a simple letter. "I shall at all times welcome it, if you will keep in touch personally with anything you want me to know about."

"Churchill, as he put it, responded with alacrity, which is a polite way of saying he wrote back as fast as he possibly could. Churchill always believed that, ultimately victory depended on America, on the new world."

It is the start of a correspondence between the two men that will amount to almost 2,000 exchanges. Ending only with President Roosevelt's death in 1945.

"Franklin Roosevelt began writing secret letters to Winston Churchill, and he knew, if it ever became public, Americans could quickly turn against him."

"Roosevelt knows he must find a way to help the British, or America could be the only nation left to stop Hitler from dominating the World."

"So long as war exists on Earth, there will be some danger, even to the nation that most ardently desires peace." -- F.D.R--

"Roosevelt was the first great leader, who said 'what I believe: which is that we live in a completely interdependent world. And we better learn how to live together. Otherwise we'll be driven apart.'" --Bill Clinton --

"Roosevelt grew up in Hyde Park to a patrician family. The people in Hyde Park almost treated him like a young Lord."

"He was comfortable in the halls of power. He'd, as a baby, sit on Grover Cleveland's knee. Teddy Roosevelt was his cousin." -- Bill Clinton --

"Franklin Roosevelt always believed he was born to lead. He once said to his mother, who had complained that he was being too bossy with other children in Hyde Park, saying: "Momy, if I didn't give the orders, nothing would happen'. He was infinitely confident of his own abilities in his own insights."

"He assumed that everything was fixed and secured, and that was something that gave him this enormous self - assurance that allowed him to feel that he always knew best. Sometimes, when he was wrong."

When Roosevelt was 39, and at the height of his Wall Street career, he was suddenly stricken with polio. After a four - day battle with the disease that nearly killed him, he would remain crippled for the rest of his life.

"He once said that the President had to be the America's greatest actor. And in so far, as he still knew, he hadn't overcome it, he knew, if he acted like he had, everyone would believe that he had." --Bill Clinton --

"He once said to  Orson Wells "You know, Orson, you and I are the two best actors in America. And, watching a newsreel of himself, once he said, 'that was the Garbo in me'."

"Goes to work in Wall Street for the first time, after two years of recuperation, and he falls with his heavy steel braces on a marble floor. And he won't let anybody pick him up. He pushes up with his powerful arms, throws his head back, laughs at himself on the floor and crawls over to the elevator and pulls himself up. I always think of that, when I think of Roosevelt." -- Bill Ctinton --

"It was fascinating to watch how he dealt with his disability. He moved back and forth, from foot to foot as he made the slow torturous progress toward the rostrum. And people watch this. And he had a kind of a tough look on his face, as though this is not easy. But then he got to the rostrum, he threw his arm up and that huge Roosevelt smile, and the place just went wild.

"Every single day of Roosevelt's life and presidency, this was a man, who could not walk, who rode in a wheelchair. Yet, took enormous precaution to make sure that Americans did not see that."

"Until I was assigned to the White House, I was unaware that he could not walk at all. As 99 - plus percent of the American people were unaware of it."

"This was a president, who didn't mind a bit, doing things in private and saying different from what the American people saw in public."

"This nation will remain a neutral nation. But I cannot ask that every American remain neutral in thought as well."  -- Roosevelt --

"What Roosevelt had to do was educate, but not, as Eleanor once put it, get too far ahead of his followers."

"Roosevelt was trying to convey a pretty complex idea, which was, number one: "I hate war, and I will try to keep us out of war". But number two, the best way to do that is to prepare, and build our defense."

"I am asking the Congress to levy sufficient additional taxes to meet the emergency spending for national defense." -- Roosevelt --

Roosevelt's tax increase hugely unpopular, but he believes it is critical to prepare America's defense industry, for the war he sees as inevitable.

"He found himself at the end of the second term, when, for most presidents, production goes way down, and leverage goes way down. Having to try to prepare the country to deal with Hitler, when the attitude was still 'the war was somebody else's problem'." -- Bill Clinton --.

Though most of America still considers Hitler to be Europe's problem, there are signs that the Fuhrers reach extended across the Atlantic. In February of 1939, thousands of Nazi sympathizers had gathered at a rally in Madison Square Garden. And reports are now growing of Nazi spies, operating on American soil.

"Now listen to a word from Mr Hoove, chief of the G-Men. The recent landing of saboteurs from Nazi submarines sounded a new alert for all Americans. They were apprehended before they could carry out their plans of destruction." - Roosevelt --

Even Hollywood tapped into America's growing fear of fascist influence, with the 1939 film: "Confessions of a Nazi Spy".

"Spies, saboteurs and traitors are the actors in this new strategy." --Roosevelt --

"Roosevelt believed very much in espionage. He loved spies. He loved the idea of what we would call 'the shadow war'."

"Roosevelt wanted to conduct surveillance. He tried to get the Supreme Court to agree to something so relatively inoffensive as wiretapping Nazi spies, operating in Washington."

In his zeal, to uncover acts of espionage, Roosevelt faces a problem: Congress had banned wiretapping, and the Supreme Court had ruled that wiretaps are inadmissible in a court of law. In May of 1940, Roosevelt chooses a course that, if discovered, could destroy his presidency. He writes a confidential memo to Attorney General Robert Jackson, instructing him to use listening devices to monitor people suspected of subversive activities. His rationale is that the Court ruling does not apply in great matter, involving the defense of the nation.

" Well, the question of civil liberty, or individual liberty, Roosevelt, like most politicians, talked a big line. I would have to say, though, whenever he faced a question of what he would call Liberty - versus - Security, he would go on the side of security."

The news from Europe goes from bad to worse. On May 9th, 1940, the Nazis begin marching into Holland and Belgium. British troops are unable to protect their European neighbours, and retreat with heavy losses. The next day, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who had sought to appease Hitler, is pressured to resign. He is replaced by a man who had recognized the Nazi threat early on: Winston Churchill.

"As he said, when he finally became Prime Minister on May 10th, 1940: 'I felt as if I was walking with destiny, and that all my life, had been but (only - Lucas) preparation for this hour and this trial."

"But nothing is more certain than that every trace of Hitler's footsteps, every stain of his infected and corroding fingers, will be sponged and purged and -- if need be -- blasted from the surface of the earth." -- Churchill --

"On that same afternoon, a note was brought to Franklin Roosevelt, saying Churchill had become Prime Minister. And Roosevelt was meeting with his cabinet, and looked around and said, 'Well, I supose Churchill as the best man England has, even if he is drunk half the time.' This did not begin well."

Nazis are marching ahead at the fastest speed a conquering army has moved in all history. All roads in France are choked with slow-moving masses of reffurees." --Radio Announcer Walter Winchell--

"By then, the British were fighting for their lives  against Adolf Hitler. And Roosevelt knew that he may have to help, if Britain was going to survive, and also, if Hitler was going to be stopped from dominating the rest of the World."

During Churchill's first two weeks in office, France falls to the Germans. British forces are pushed back to the banks of the English Channel. Retreating from Dunkirk, the British are forced to abandon their entire arsenal of tanks and guns. And with the loss of half their destroyer fleet, the island of Britain is left virtually unprotected. In a private letter to Roosevelt, a desperate Churchill writes: "I trust you realize, Mr. President that the voice and force of the United States may count for nothing, if they are withheld too long. You may have a completely subjugated, Nazified Europe, established with astonished swiftness. And the weight may be more than we can bear."

"Roosevelt was in a situation in which Americans were looking for almost any sign that he was doing something in secret, to drag them into a war. The kind of thing they would have worried about, was a secret correspondence between an American President and a British Prime Minister."

Churchill implores his American counterpart for help. Asking for tanks, guns, aircraft, and 40 - 50 destroyers. But Roosevelt's hands are tied. The law specifically forbid America from giving, or selling weapons to any nation at war. Again, ignoring Congress, Roosevelt develop a secret plan of action. He instructs the military to classify various military supplies as surplus. They can now be sold to US Steel - a private company, which can then turn around, and sell them to the British.

"Roosevelt was straining to try to do something to help the British. But he knew that it was very dangerous, because it would set off alarm bells among the isolationists. And also some member of Congress might have said it's the intention of Congress that the United States be neutral, you - Mr President have broken that intention, and therefore, you should be brought up before the Senate, perhaps even for impeachment."

"Roosevelt was pretty close to the edge of the law, a couple of times. But, it didn't constitute an abuse of power. An abuse of power is when a president violates the letter of the spirit of the law, for some narrow mean ends, or to increase his own position, or unfairly damage someone else. Roosevelt was trying to save America, and freedom." -- Bill Clinton --

While Churchill guides England through its darkest hour, Roosevelt has a decision to make about the upcoming election of 1940. No American President has ever run for a third term.

"I had no expectation that Roosevelt would even think of a third term. The two - term pattern was so firmly set that it was almost as if it were a constitutional requirement."

By the Democratic convention in July, Roosevelt still hasn't formally announced his candidacy. But, he does "arrange" to be nominated by acclamation.

"Roosevelt was not only happy to run for a third term, he was darned eager. The talk that he was being drafted, somewhat against, he will, and that he wanted, really, to go back and be a farmer at Hyde Park, was just so much nonsense."

"He understood that, in order to get a third term, the only rationale, the only conceivable rationale, was that, we had to do something really big, that we couldn't have a new hand on desk, to do." -- Bill Clinton --

But the President will face a tough opponent. New York businessman and lawyer, Wendell Willkie, plays to the country's isolationist fervor.

"He began a campaign in which he was saying: 'beware of Franklin Roosevelt. If you re-eclect him, he's going to take you into a war, after election day.' I will stop such a war."


"He's for a war for which this country is hopelessly unprepared. And which it emphatically does not want." --Wendell Willkie--



On October 23rd, Roosevelt responds to his detractors at a Philadelphia rally.

"One outrageously false charge, it is the charge that this administration wishes to lead this country in War. That charge is contrary to every fact, every purpose, of the past eight years." -- Roosevelt --

"All progressive presidents throughout history have been called unbelievable names by their critics on the Right. And lost of terrible things were said about Roosevelt. Lincoln once said, if he thought canibalism would get him the votes he needs, that he'd be fatterning up a minister on the White House lawn." -- Bill Clinton --

"By now, Churchill is pleading with Roosevelt: 'Mr President, please help us. If you don't, Britain will die, and you'll have to face Hitler yourselt.' But the danger for Roosevelt is that the timing was atrocious. Because, if he were to help Britain at this moment, that's just the kind of thing that Americans would see as a sign that he intended to get them into a war after election day. And he would very possibly lose the election."

Despite the political risks, Roosevelt finds a way to send Churchill the destroyers he needs so badly. He use a convenient loophole. The law said nothing about bartering with nations. Roosevelt signs a deal to send 50 destroyers to Great Britain, in exchange for leases on England's military base in the Carribean. He announces the deal only after it is done.

"If all of Roosevelt acts had been publicly known, there would have been cries for impeachment. He would have had trouble, real trouble."

"He knew it wouldn't amount to a hill of beans, if Americans had to live in a world dominated by Adofl Hitler." -- Bill Clinton --

"I think that we in America were first alarmed with the possibility that we might be drawn into the war in Europe, when it became apparent that England might fall." -- Cronkite --

On September 7th 1940, Germany unleashes a devastating air raid on London. Hundreds are killed in a matter of minutes.

"The terrible fate of nations whose weakness invited attack, is too well-known to us all. We must and we will marshal our great potential strength, to fend off War from our shores." --F.D.R--

A deeply-concerned Congress aproves America's first-ever peacetime draft. It requires all men, aged 18 to 35, to register for military service. Still, no mention is made of sending American boys to fight overseas.

"The first draft lottery was scheduled for a week before the presidental election. And Roosevelt had a choice. He could distance himself, and try to pretend that he had nothing to do with this, or he could go there and make it clear that, the draft is something he supported. And with great courage, he attended the ceremony, and, as the first number was called, the President was there, presiding."

"The second number, which has just been drawn by the Secretary of the Treasury, is serial number 192." --F.D.R--

"Yes, it was courageous. But, he understood his country and understood the rhythsms of politics as few people have." --Bill Clinton--

Roosevelt's advisers are worried that holding a draft so close to the election will spell disaster. The next day, at a campaign apperance in Boston, Roosevelt tries to reassure the nation.

"What I heard F.D.R at the height of the 1940 campaign, in the Boston Garden, say to the mothers of America: 'I promise you that I will never send your boys into a foreign war!' The fact that he would make that promise, which was really inconsistent with what he was doing throughout 1940, indicates how desperate Roosevelt feft at the end of that campaign. I should add that he did say "foreign" wars. And when war finally broke out, he said, 'Well, that's not a foreign war'. That's Roosevelt at his best Machiavellian."

On election night, he went home to Hyde Park. Roosevelt sat at the dining room table, looking at the early returns. Suddenly, he said to one of his aides, "I want everyone out of here. I mean everyone." They were all taken out of the room.

The door was closed. He must have seen some precinct that, he expected to be wildly pro-Roosevelt, which was either not so, or even against him. He knew that if that piece of paper was right, it wouldn't only mean that he would lose the election, and no longer be President. From his point of view, the next President would have been  Wendell Willkie, and you can imagine that, he was sitting there alone,  facing the idea that, perhaps, he was about to see the end of Western Civilization.

"I thought the election, the '40 election, was going to be terribly close, so close that I didn't, uh, wasn't willing to try and predict myself, whether it would be Roosevelt or Willkie." --George Elsey--

"Polls showed Willkie almost even with him. I don't recall that Willkie ever got ahead. But it was a very close race, by the polls." --Cronkite--

On election night of 1940, traditional Democratic area in New England, that should be pro-Roosevelt, are coming out for Willkie. Especially, the working-class Irish neighbourhoods, where anti-British sentiment runs high.

"People, who are Irish-American were very worried about getting into a war, especially to help the hated British. Of course, as the returns then came in, Roosevelt ultimately won the election."

"By votes of the majority of the citizens of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt is elected President!"

Roosevelt become America's first three-term president.

"After the election, he feels a lot more free. He knows that Americans will be worried if he does anything overtly to help the British. But at the very least, the can't lose the election."

"There will be no bottlenecks in our determination to aid Great Britain. We must be the Great of arsenal of Democracy. For us, this is an emergency, as serious as war itself." --Roosevelt--

"Roosevelt now came up with what was called "The lend-lease program". Another way of getting more military aid to Britain, in a way that looked like a good deal for the United States. And he makes the point to Americans "don't worry, this is not being done to take you into a war. It to try to brace the British, so that they can stand up to Hitler, rather than Americans."

Roosevelt lays out his program to Congress in his 1941 state of the Union address. It will be called "The lend-lease Act".

"They do not need manpower. But they do need billions of dollars worth of the weapons of defense. We cannot, and we will not, tell them that they must surrender, merely because of present inability to pay for the weapons which we know they must have." --F.D.R--

"It was a complicated program, by which ships, guns, food, oil, all sorts of things, went from the United States to Britain. Basically, on account, on credit. Winston Churchill was given a very large Visa card."

"The opponents of this legislation intend to keep up the fight, to keep American boys out of the Holocaust of Europe's war." --Sen Burton Wheeler--

"Roosevelt decides to send an envoy to Winston Churchill, to assure Churchill of American help. And he sends, of all people (The least likely person), Wendell Willkie."

Willkie carries with him a handwritten note from Roosevelt to Churchill. It reads, in part "Wendell Willkie will give you this. He's truly helping to help politics out, over here." Roosevelt's political gambit is a success. When Willkie returns in early February, the former isolationist addresses Congress on behalf of Roosevelt's lend-lease Act.

"Now, I am as much opposed as any man in America to undue concentration of power in the Chief executive. And may I say that I did my best to remove that power from the present executive. I would much prefer to have the impetus to come from Congress. If this bill could be adopted with a non-partisan, and almost a unanimous, vote."

On March 8th, after bitter debate, Congress approves the plan. Churchill will get his arsenal. That summer, Roosevelt escalates the drive for preparedness. He orders US warships to accompany British vessels crossing the Atlantic, claiming it is his prerogative as commander - in - chief.

"In the middle of 1941, he finally extended, essentially the protected zone of sea traffic. He was very worried about U-boat warfare, the German submarines that were in the Atlantic, taking shots at our supply ships and troop ships."

"Roosevelt was skating on very thin ice. With the assignments he gave to our Navy to escort British ships, he might well have been violating the Neutrality Act and various other statutes on the books."

"If an American ship had been hit by a German submarine, which was very possible, that would have created an incident that would have allowed Roosevelt to say: "We're essentially at war with Germany." And, in the wake of that, most Americans would have felt that America was attacked and we were in a righteous cause. Whether Roosevelt was doing that with that intention, we'll never know."

In August of 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to hold a top-secret meeting at sea, just off the coast of Newfoundland. Though they have been corresponding for almost two years. It is the first time the President and Prime Minister have met as leaders.

"Churchill said: It was a great hour to live. Every word seemed to stir the heart.'"

This was, in many ways, a marriage ceremony, between the British Navy and the American Navy. And the British Prime Minister and the American Prime Minister.

Together, they issued that would become the foundation of the historic British - American friendship: The Atlantic Charter.

"It's a document that belongs in the same line as the Magna Carta, and the Declaration of Independence. It was why we were fighting.

"All of the nations of the world, must come to the abandonment of the use of force. Such a peace should enable all men to traverse the high seas, and oceans, without hindrance."

--- The Sinking of the Reuben James --

On October 31st, 1941, a German submarine sinks the American destroyer Reuben James, killing all 76 on board.

"Hitler has attacked shipping, within areas close to The Americas (the whole continent). We have wished to avoid shooting. But the shooting has started."  -- Roosevelt --

"That was only part of the story. We'd been chasing that submarine for some little time. And I think the first attack was by us, not by the Germans. Had all the facts of the assignment of Atlantic ship fleets been known, Roosevelt would have had a very rough time of it, on Capitol Hill."

"History has recorded who fired the first shot. In the long run, however, all that will matter is who fired the last shot!"  --F.D.R--

But even this heinous act is not enough to convince Americans of the need to go to war. That would come just over a month later, on the day that will live in infamy.

News of the Japanese attack on Pearl Habour reaches Roosevelt shortly after 2 pm. The White House is immediately thrown into chaos.

"We sat there, sort of baffled. It was too much to comprehend. Partly because everything had been German. It was the Germans supposed to attack us, not the Japanese."

It was the longest Sunday of Franklin Roosevelt's life. And at the very end of the evening, George Marshall left. And, as he left the White House, someone said: "General, how do things look?" And Marshall said: "I don't know. We're in the fog of war now." And we should be in the fog of war for nearly five years.

"Pearl Habour didn't change my mind. I still thought we were wrong, going into Europe. Because this was the Japanese. This was an evil act, they perpetrated. But it had nothing to do with my opinion, that we were wrong going into the war, in Europe. It did not strike me with great force until I got into the war and saw what the Germans had done. And then I was just devastated." --Andy Rooney--

"No matter how long it may take us, to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might, will win through, to absolute victory!" --F.D.R--

In the wake of Roosevelt's stirring speech, all opposition, to war vanishes. Congress officially approved a Declaration of War with Japan.

"Isolationism was essentially dead. The nation was essentially united, in response to this terrible attack. And, not only united, but prepared."

The capital had been utterly transformed from a bastion of isolationism, looking inward, into a wartime, go-get-them capital.

"Put our Navy into the Atlantic, instantly. As if, it had been in the starting gate, for sometime, which it probably had been. Thanks to Roosevelt. Pearl Habour just really saved the British, in that respect."

"Churchill arrived in Washington on the 22nd of December 1941."

"At this moment, when you are entering the war, the proof that, with proper weapons, and proper organization, we are able to beat the life out of the savage Nazi."  --Churchill--

"And the room was electric. One of the reporters point and said that the effect was instantaneous. And that Roosevelt seemed delighted, like an old trooper, who was pleased to see a protege master a stage he had so long dominated."

The coming war will spur America into a tremendous demonstration of industrial might.

"We must increase production facilities for everything needed, for the army and Navy, for National defense. I believe that this nation should plan at this time. A program that will provide us with 50,000 military and naval planes."  --F.D.R--

And though the road will be long, the outcome is assured.

"In a way, the war years were easier, because we knew what we had to do. We knew the road to Berlin, and we knew the road to Tokyo./After December, 1941, Roosevelt's genius was that, he understood where those roads were, beforehand."

"I think Roosevelt's greatness as a president was his ability to look way into the future. He knew that we were truly in the world./There was no way we could be isolationist by ourselves. His risky behaviour in '40 and '41 is completely forgotten at this point. And if not forgotten, it's forgiven."
-- George Elsay--

"This is where it calls for enormous judgement. Not just courage, not just standing up. But really looking at a political situation, and figuring out: "Is this really a threat to American security?". It's very easy for later presidents to misuse Roosevelt, to apply him to almost any issue that comes up. Whether it's in Iraq or Vietnam, or whatnot. And that's where the American people have to make their own decision."

"Whether you look at something in history, you're always looking at ends versus means. We now know that Franklin Roosevelt came very close to breaking the law, telling lies to the American people, doing other pretty bad things. But did so, in order to protect Western Civilization."

"I think it's always a temptation for a President, who knows the intricacies of international affairs, to make a private decision: "This action needs to be taken". And, even though it might be contrary to existing technical law, in my judgement, it's better strategically for the safety, and well-being, and security of my own nation. I think this was the case, with Roosevelt."  --Jimmy Carter--

"Presidents have a way of rising to the occasion, without regard to their past limitations. Well we did so much better, and the world was so much better off, because Roosevelt was there." -- Bill Clinton --

"Had Roosevelt not done what he did, in the way that he did it, this country, the United States, the entire World, would be a very ugly place. I think it's not too much to say that thanks to Franklin Roosevelt, Western Civilization was saved."