I love to quote Saul Bellow on this, the great novelist. Roosevelt was able to establish a rapport with the American public that went back to the crucible of the depression. Jeremi Suri explains this connection and its meaning. Many times in these РІР‚Сљfireside chats,РІР‚Сњ as they came to be known, he talked with a type of candor. Roosevelt connected with Americans in an unprecedented way: he spoke to them over the radio. It's going to mean other countries as well. And in Asia, it means the Chinese, and it's going to mean other powers, as Hitler seemingly never met a neighboring power he didn't want to invade. And that means, for example, the British.

An arsenal of democracy, which would then be used to arm those powers who are in the front lines. So you wouldn't really have to do anything except produce, all you needed to do was become an arsenal.Р”В«ut not an arsenal of an army or a navy or a Coast Guard. We've been depressed, we're not going to be depressed anymore, we're going to produce our way out of the depression. Americans are proud of that, in fact, part of Roosevelt's appeal is that he's constantly been promising to bring that back. No one can match the efficiency of American industry in the 1940s. All they had to do was go to their factory jobs and continue to produce the hyper-efficient level of production that they had already achieved in the previous decades. The first thing that he did was to convince Americans that they wouldn't necessarily have to fight in order to really impact this global struggle for freedom, all they had to do was go to work. Rob Citino and how Roosevelt set about convincing the Nation of the importance of becoming the РІР‚Сљarsenal of democracy.РІР‚Сњ Rob Citino the Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian at The National WWII Museum. Jeremi Suri, the Mack Brown Distinguished Professor for Global Leadership, History, and Public Policy at the University of Texas at Austin, and Dr. This week, President Roosevelt hears the drums of war descending on the US doorstep but still must convince a nation that it must be the РІР‚Сљarsenal of democracy.РІР‚Сњ All the while, Britain and China struggle to hold back the Axis. This is part 2, РІР‚СљA Day of Infamy.РІР‚Сњ IРІР‚в„ўm your host, Dr. YouРІР‚в„ўre listening to РІР‚СљTo the Best of My Ability: FDR and the Road to Pearl HarborРІР‚Сњ from The National WWII Museum in New Orleans. РІР‚СљI Franklin Delano Roosevelt do solemnly swear to faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God.РІР‚Сњ War is brewing and it will spill over soon.Р”Р„rchival Audio - FDR Taking the Oath of Office In Japan a new Prime Minister, Hideki Tojo, will come to power, sending a message of aggression to the US. Still, he had to contend with the isolationists and did so with a clever tactic, the РІР‚СљLend-LeaseРІР‚Сњ law which provided weapons support to Allies.

The Axis powers threatened more than the US, they threatened democracy itself.

The 1940 election ended and Roosevelt proved victorious, but he had no chance to rest. We don't like it-we didn't want to get in it-but we are in it and we're going to fight it with everything we've got. It was a thoroughly dishonorable deed, but we must face the fact that modern warfare as conducted in the Nazi manner is a dirty business. We may acknowledge that our enemies have performed a brilliant feat of deception, perfectly timed and executed with great skill. We have learned that our ocean-girt hemisphere is not immune from severe attack-that we cannot measure our safety in terms of miles on any map any more. There is no such thing as impregnable defense against powerful aggressors who sneak up in the dark and strike without warning. There is no such thing as security for any nation-or any individual-in a world ruled by the principles of gangsterism. It is our obligation to our dead-it is our sacred obligation to their children and to our children-that we must never forget what we have learned.

We must share together the bad news and the good news, the defeats and the victories-the changing fortunes of war. Every single man, woman and child is a partner in the most tremendous undertaking of our American history. It is actual collaboration so well calculated that all the continents of the world, and all the oceans, are now considered by the Axis strategists as one gigantic battlefield. Today, it has become far more than a parallel. The course that Japan has followed for the past ten years in Asia has paralleled the course of Hitler and Mussolini in Europe and in Africa. Archival Audio - FDR December 9, 1941: Fireside Chat 19: On the War with Japan

Day of infamy ww2