Restrained by neutrality laws passed in the late 1930s that did not
distinguish between aggressor and victim, FDR could do little to assist the targets of
aggression. But he understood the need for American leadership in opposition to fascism,
and so began a long, eloquent campaign of popular education designed to awaken the American
people from their isolationist slumber. "Let no one imagine," he warned, "that America may
expect mercy" in the event that the fascists in Europe and Asia should prevail. Indeed, it was
sheer folly, he insisted, to believe as the isolationists did, that the United States could
survive "as a lone island in a world dominated by force...handcuffed, hungry and fed through
the bars from day to day by the contemptuous, unpitying masters of other continents."
As the German Army stormed across Poland, Norway, Denmark, the Low Countries
and France in 1939-40 at the outbreak of the Second World War, FDR turned the United States into
the "arsenal of democracy." When Great Britain stood alone, and few thought she could survive,
he rejected the advice of his own Chiefs of Staff and insisted that American arms shipments to
the British must not only continue, but expand, resulting in the passage of the Lend-Lease Act in
March 1941. He also began a massive rearmament campaign the results of which were nothing short of
remarkable. In June 1939, the United States possessed an army of a mere 186,000 men that ranked 19th
among nations. By mid 1943, the total number of men and women under arms in the United States stood at
twelve million, the largest and most powerful assembly of land, sea, and air forces the world had ever seen.
Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and American entry into the war, FDR assembled
a remarkable team of generals and admirals, and with Churchill, crafted the 'Grand Alliance' that ultimately
destroyed the twin evils of German Nazism and Japanese militarism. As the instigator of the Manhattan
project, he became the father of the nuclear age. Determined not to let America once again revert to
isolationism after the war, FDR committed the United States to a host of international mechanisms in
1944, such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, that would guarantee American involvement
in the wider world and ultimately give rise to the "global economy." Finally, and most importantly,
through his call for a world based on the "Four Freedoms"—Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship,
Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear—and his determination to establish a United Nations
committed to collective security, human rights, national self determination, and economic justice,
FDR provided the vision and framework for the world we live in today.
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