Franklin Roosevelt: Preparing for War

In 1940, Nazi Germany overran France. Britain looked to be the next target. President Franklin Roosevelt understood he needed to prepare America for war. How? Arthur Herman, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and author of Freedom’s Forge, tells the fantastic story.

SUBSCRIBE https://www.prageru.com/join

#fdr #roosevelt #ww 2.

Script:.

In May 1940 the Nazi Blitzkrieg was overrunning France. Fantastic Britain would be next.

British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill sent a telegram to the American President, Franklin Roosevelt.

” I trust you realize,” Churchill wrote, “the voice and the force of the United States may count for absolutely nothing if they are kept too long.”.

Roosevelt was a former Assistant Secretary of the Navy and a student of marine strategy. He would take control of the Atlantic if Hitler were to take control of Britain. This, Roosevelt understood, would present a severe risk to America.

Roosevelt likewise understood America wasn’t prepared for war– not psychologically (most Americans didn’t want to get involved in a conflict on the other side of the ocean) and not militarily.

The United States had the world’s eighteenth biggest army. Hungary and even Holland had bigger armies, while Hitler commanded the most advanced military machine ever seen.

The Army’s Chief of Staff General George Marshall told Roosevelt that if Hitler overran Europe and landed 7 departments on the East Coast, there was nothing anybody could do to stop him.

With all this staring Roosevelt in the face, it would have been careless for the Commander in Chief not to equip the United States for war.

However how?

Numerous in his administration believed then, as lots of Americans believe now, that the only way to deal with an extreme crisis was to provide the government as much power and authority as possible.

FDR had the insight to understand that a huge wartime buildup during what was still peacetime wouldn’t succeed unless he utilized the efficient power of American business; that is to state, American complimentary market industrialism.

The federal government might assist coordinate industry’s efforts; it might make certain resources like steel and aluminum got to the locations where they were most needed, however otherwise the government would need to withdraw.

To the president who had actually created an alphabet soup of Federal agencies to dig the country out of the Great Depression, this was about as un-Roosevelt as you might get.

But to his everlasting credit, the President recognized that what he and the Democrats had actually tried with the Depression and failed– to manage the economy through government decree– wasn’t going to work when it pertained to getting ready for war.

The guy Roosevelt called for aid was General Motors CEO William Knudsen, a Danish-born immigrant who had actually worked his way up from the Brooklyn shipyards to head the biggest automobile business worldwide.

Knudsen told the president that if he gave him 18 months, America would have more planes, tanks, and warships than it would know what to do with.

Roosevelt gave Knudsen what he wanted. In one of his most famous radio speeches in December 1940, a year before Pearl Harbor, the President told the American people that “we must be the great arsenal of democracy.” He backed up his words with action.

For the complete script, visit: https://www.prageru.com/video/franklin-roosevelt-preparing-for-war.

source

In 1940, Nazi Germany overran France. President Franklin Roosevelt knew he had to prepare America for war. Roosevelt was a former Assistant Secretary of the Navy and a trainee of marine technique. This, Roosevelt knew, would position a serious hazard to America.

Roosevelt offered Knudsen what he wanted.