All language subtitles for S01E06 The Common Cause (1939-1944) IMDB 8.5

In the late summer of 1939,

the growing threat of war
was not enough to deter

President Franklin
Roosevelt's 85-year-old mother,

Sara delano Roosevelt, from
undertaking her annual visit

to see her sister Dora in Paris.

It's an old story to Mrs. Roosevelt.

Finance minister bonnet greets her

and she is entertained by high officials

of the French government at a special...

But when the
state department realized

war was about to begin

and warned all Americans to leave Europe,

she reluctantly agreed to sail for home.

Reporters met her on the dock at Marseille.

Mrs. Roosevelt, what do you think

of the international situation?

I can only hope for peace,

but I must say that after seeing

that wonderful review yesterday,

I feel that France is
prepared for anything.

And can only hope and
pray that it will be peace.

Will the president
run for a third term?

I have never even heard
him speak of a third term.

He always considers the pleasure

of returning to his home in Hyde Park

after the present term is over.

Franklin Roosevelt
was more than halfway through

his second 4 years as
president in the summer of 1939.

None of his predecessors had dared defy

the precedent set by George Washington

and run for a third term.

At first, FDR did not
expect to do so, either.

Work had begun on a
presidential library at Hyde Park

where he planned to store his
papers and write his memoirs,

and he had built himself
a hilltop cottage nearby

where he could get away from visitors

and where both his close
personal secretary Missy Lehand

and his devoted distant
cousin Daisy Suckley

separately hoped to live with him.

He told another relative,
"I am a tired and weary man."

He loved to go
there with Daisy Suckley

and just talk and watch
the sunset over the Hudson

and enjoy himself.

And he would serve tea in
the afternoon, um, himself.

They would bring him a toaster

and he would toast the bread for his guests

and then he could hand them the toast.

And he thought it was a wonderful gesture

and he loved being able to do it
all by himself, no servants involved.

And they thought it
was a wonderful gesture,

which made it even more wonderful.

And he was himself there.

It was not his mother's house.

It was not his wife's house
and it was totally accessible.

Eleanor Roosevelt was weary, too.

"There is no end to the appointments, teas,

social obligations," she wrote.

That year alone, she would
entertain 323 overnight guests,

oversee dinner for 4,729 more visitors,

preside over tea for over 9,000,

and shake hands with another 14,000...

all that while dictating a daily
column, delivering 45 lectures,

conducting a weekly radio program,

and trying to focus on
the host of social issues

that took her all over the country.

She did not want 4 more years
of it, she told an old friend,

and couldn't wait for the day
when she could at long last

"take on a job and see it through

to a conclusion" on her own.

If FDR didn't leave
the White House in 1941,

she had warned her
daughter Anna, she would.

Then, just two days after
the president's mother

got back to New York, everything changed.

September 2, 1939.

At 500 this morning, our telephone

at a friend's apartment in New York rang,

and it was my husband in Washington

to tell me the sad news that
Germany had invaded Poland

and that her planes were
bombing Polish cities.

I feel no bitterness
against the German people.

I am deeply sorry for
them, as I am for the people

of all other European nations
facing this horrible crisis.

But for Hitler, the man who has

taken this responsibility on his shoulders,

I can feel little pity.

It is hard to see how
he can sleep at night...

And think of the many
people in many nations

whom he may send to their deaths.

When the Great War
had broken out in 1914,

Woodrow Wilson had called upon
all Americans to remain neutral

"in thought as well as deed."

As the Second World War began,

FDR was careful not to
make the same request.

This nation will
remain a neutral nation,

but I cannot ask that every American

remain neutral in thought as well.

Even a neutral has a right
to take account of facts.

Even a neutral cannot be asked

to close his mind or close his conscience.

Roosevelt and
most of his fellow citizens

sympathized with Hitler's victims...

and with France and England

when they went to war to stop him.

But an even bigger majority was opposed to

any American involvement
overseas for fear that

- _
- the allies would pull the United States

into another war.

To keep out of the fight.

I think we should stay
out of this entirely.

Another war, not for me.

This time America should
keep out and I know I will.

The American suspicion
of British intentions,

American reluctance and isolationism

to go into yet another foreign war,

were deep and real forces
that constrained FDR.

FDR's leadership from
'39 through Pearl Harbor,

was, you know, one step forward

and try not to have to take two back.

And it was a game of inches.

Let no man or woman,
thoughtlessly or falsely,

talk of sending American
armies to European fields.

The United States was
poorly prepared for conflict.

The army was smaller
than that of Romania's;

fewer than 174,000 men in uniform,

fitted out with tin hats and leggings

issued during the Great War

and carrying rifles designed in 1903.

The army still owned tens of
thousands of cavalry horses.

Even Roosevelt's beloved Navy
was only marginally bigger than

it had been when he took office.

On the day the war in Europe began,

General George C. Marshall took the oath

as Army Chief of Staff.

He was able, taciturn, and so blunt

that after he had vigorously
disagreed with the president,

his fellow generals
assumed his career was over.

Instead, when the time
came, FDR reached down

past the names of 34 of them to
put George Marshall in charge.

There's a wonderful
upside to massive egotism

and that is a confidence
in having the most powerful,

strong-minded people around you.

The question
became how far Roosevelt

dared go to help the allies.

3 weeks after Hitler invaded Poland,

FDR called upon Congress
to revise the Neutrality Act

and end the embargo on the
sale of arms to belligerents...

but only by arguing that
the stronger the allies got

the less likely it was the United States

would ever have to go to war.

After 6 bitter weeks of debate,
Congress did lift the ban,

but insisted that arms could only be sold

on a "cash and carry basis."

Most of the progressive
midwestern Republicans,

who had once supported
new deal legislation,

were isolationists opposed
to any aid to the allies.

Roosevelt found himself more
dependent than ever before

on the conservative Southern
Democrats he'd once tried

to purge from his party.

After the Nazis devastated Poland,

a shadowy, 7-month lull
settled over Europe.

Senator William Borah, an
isolationist from Idaho,

dubbed it the "Phony War."

Then, in the spring of 1940,

the Phony War became real once again.

In April, the Nazis
invaded Denmark and Norway.

On May 10, German bombers
filled the skies over brussels,

Amsterdam, Rotterdam...

And German troops invaded
the Netherlands, Luxembourg,

Belgium, and France.

The following day, Winston Churchill,

who had warned for years of
the Nazi threat to Britain,

became prime minister.

One of the mysteries
of history is why is it

do certain moments produce
exactly the right human beings.

And we were incredibly fortunate.

Churchill did something FDR couldn't do;

Churchill stood alone, stared
across the Channel, and said,

"Hitler has gone that far
and he will go no farther."

Roosevelt did something
that Churchill couldn't do.

He shrewdly managed American
public opinion to a moment when

the world's greatest democracy
was willing to project force

to defend its values in a distant land.

They couldn't have done what
they did without each other.

And we wouldn't be who we
are without the two of them.

By early June,
the Germans would force

338,000 British and French troops

across the English Channel,
leaving behind at Dunkirk

hundreds of thousands of tons

of armaments and heavy equipment.

"The scene has darkened swiftly,"

Churchill told Roosevelt
in the first of a series

of nearly 2,000 secret wartime messages

between the prime
minister and the president.

"The small countries are
simply smashed up, one by one,

like matchwood," he said.

"We expect to be attacked here ourselves.

If necessary, we shall
continue the war alone,

and we are not afraid of that."

But unless the united
states would sell Britain

several hundred aircraft and
lend her 40 to 50 destroyers,

he could not promise to hold out for long.

Roosevelt had been corresponding
quietly with Churchill for almost a year.

He had been first lord of the
admiralty then, but Roosevelt

had understood he might well
be Prime Minister one day.

FDR reached out
to him, interestingly.

Almost never happened for the
head of state of one nation

to write a cabinet minister.

FDR wrote in his usual
way, very breezy, saying,

"if you have anything
you would like me to know,

please send it and I will answer.

Stay in touch with me directly.

Stay in touch with me directly."

Roosevelt and Churchill
shared a love of ships.

They understood naval power.

And Churchill recognized that as he put it,

"the new world was going to have to

step forth to the rescue
and liberation of the old."

To him the new world was
embodied in Franklin Roosevelt.

Roosevelt did all
that he felt he could to help.

Members of the Senate

and of the House of Representatives.

These are ominous days... days whose

swift and shocking developments

force every neutral nation
to look to its defenses

in the light of new factors.

The brutal force of modern offensive war

has been loosed in all its horror.

The president asked for

half a million more men for the army

and then called for the building of

50,000 warplanes within the next 12 months,

enough planes to outstrip
the German air force

in a single year...

and to provide sufficient
additional aircraft

for sale to Britain.

... $896 million.

Critics
thought he was delusional.

50,000 planes was 10 times
the country's current capacity.

We'll work at top speed.

People said, "it's
impossible. It can't be done."

He said, "the American
people like to be challenged

to do the impossible.

Then they do the possible."

There are some
who say that democracy

cannot cope with the new
techniques of government

developed in recent
years by a few countries

which deny the freedoms that we maintain

are essential to our
Democratic way of life.

That I reject.

He understood that
without political power,

without the marshaling of it,
without the cultivation of it,

all the high principles and all
the soaring rhetoric in the world

wouldn't make any difference.

And I would argue that
hi... his finest hour

was the run-up to the Second World War

because he was leading a
nation that would just as soon

had thrown him out of
office as fight the forces

of the Third Reich.

And yet he got, got us there.

June 20, 1940.

Anna darling The Republican
convention seems so "usual"

and the times so "unusual"

that I find it hard to reconcile the two.

France is crushed.

What will be Hitler's next move?

South America or the U.S.A.?

And will Japan be acting
with them in a concerted plan?

It looks that way just
now. What a sad world.

Two days after
France surrendered to the Nazis,

the Republicans met at
Philadelphia to choose

their presidential nominee.

The front-runners were
mostly isolationists.

But the events in Europe shook
the delegates and in the end

they chose an unlikely
but remarkable dark-horse

A big, rumpled, corporate
attorney from the midwest

who had once been a democrat
and who also believed

the United States had a
crucial role to play abroad...

Wendell Willkie.

FDR believed him "the
most formidable candidate"

the Republicans could possibly have chosen.

... and the preservation
of American democracy.

Roosevelt
continued to remain silent

about whether or not

he would break with tradition
and run for a third term.

He continued to keep his own counsel,

did nothing to discourage others

from announcing their candidacies,

including his own former
campaign manager Jim Farley.

And he refused to attend the upcoming

Democratic convention in Chicago,

claiming the international
situation was far too grave.

Instead, he dispatched his
close advisor Harry Hopkins

to try to organize a
supposedly spontaneous "draft."

Many delegates... Southern
conservatives, Farley loyalists,

those opposed to a
third term for any man...

felt used and angry.

Labor secretary Frances
Perkins called FDR from Chicago,

pleading with him to appear personally

and calm things down.

If he didn't, she said, he wouldn't have

the party behind him in the fall.

He refused to come, but
suggested she ask his wife

if she would appear on his behalf.

Eleanor Roosevelt was at Val-Kill,

listening to the convention on the radio.

There had been changes in her inner circle.

Her friendship with Nancy
cook and Marion Dickerman,

with whom she'd built
her cottage, had cooled.

She saw less of Lorena
Hickok and Earl Miller, too.

But with her this evening was
a new friend and confidant,

a former youth leader named Joseph Lash,

who had become a sort of surrogate son.

The Democrats were in
trouble, she told him.

They hadn't ended unemployment.

They now seemed about to
break the no-third-term ban,

which she believed was
"a very great tradition."

And she felt that her
husband had already served

his purpose in history.

The phone rang.

It was Frances Perkins.

Would she go to Chicago?

Only if the president asked
her himself, she answered.

She wanted to be coaxed... and she wanted

Franklin to do the coaxing.

She spoke to FDR.

"Well, would you like to go?" He asked.

"No, I wouldn't like to go. I'm very busy.

Do you really want me to go?"

Yes, he finally answered.

"Perhaps it would be a good idea."

She boarded a plane and headed to Chicago.

Meanwhile, as the nominations began,

Senator Alben Barkley of Kentucky,

the convention chairman, told
the delegates he had a message

for them from the president.

The president has never had,

and has not today, any
desire or purpose to continue

in the office of president, to
be a candidate for that office,

or to be nominated by the
convention for that office.

He wishes, he wishes in all
earnestness and sincerity

to make it clear that all of
the delegates to this convention

are free to vote for any candidate.

As Barkley finished, a
single disembodied voice began a chant.

We want Roosevelt. We want Roosevelt.

Delegates joined in.

[Delegates chanting "We want Roosevelt"]

It was later discovered that

the chanting was led by the
Chicago superintendent of sewers,

broadcasting from
somewhere in the basement.

... Roosevelt!

Roosevelt was
re-nominated on the first ballot.

But then word came that FDR wanted

Agriculture Secretary Henry
Wallace as his vice president.

A rebellion began to brew.

Wallace was too liberal
for many conservatives;

he had never run for office;

and he had once been a Republican.

FDR wouldn't budge. "Damn
it to hell," he said.

"They will go for Wallace or I won't run."

To emphasize that he meant
it, he wrote out a statement

If the Democrats could not
unite behind a liberal ticket,

he would decline the
honor of their nomination.

Eleanor arrived just before

the vice presidential nominations began

and took a seat beside Mrs. Wallace.

When Wallace's name was introduced,

delegates booed and jeered.

Then, just before the
vote, Eleanor rose to speak.

The convention fell silent.

No first lady had ever spoken

to a national convention before.

She thanked Jim Farley for his

lifetime of service to the Democratic Party

and then called upon the
delegates to rally to a cause

greater than themselves.

This is no ordinary time,

no time for weighing anything
except what we can best do

for the country as a whole.

This is only carried by a united
people who love their country

and who will live for it to
the fullest of their ability,

with the highest ideals, with
a termination and through doing

what this country can, to bring the world

to a safer and happier condition.

After Eleanor's speech,
a united convention

nominated Henry Wallace for vice president

on the first ballot.

The audience had been
"just like lambs," she said.

When Harry Hopkins escorted her

back to the airport for the
flight home, she told him,

"you young things don't know politics."

FDR frequently does not

credit Eleanor Roosevelt
or thank her to her face

but he'll thank her publicly.

Like the Democratic convention in 1940.

He tells people how wonderful she was.

And she says out loud and
in public and on the radio,

"well, he never told me
that he thought that."

And so there's a little tension
always and a little hurt always.

But there's an abiding respect
and admiration and love.

I am deeply appreciative.

I'm overwhelmed.

It's just the beginning of the battle.

It's the beginning of the battle
for the preservation of America.

The homecoming for Wendell Willkie,

its most distinguished son,

and the waiting throngs
get their first glimpse

of the candidate and Mrs. Willkie

shaking hands with old
friends along the way.

Willkie comes back home to Indiana.

As Willkie barnstormed

back and forth across the country,

Roosevelt tried to remain
above the political battle.

As a sign of bipartisanship,
he named two eminent Republicans

to his cabinet... Henry L.
Stimson, as Secretary of War,

and as secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox,

who had fought alongside Theodore Roosevelt

as a Rough Rider.

Two issues demanded immediate attention,

and either one could have
lost him the election.

First he needed a military draft...

it would be the first military
draft in peacetime in U.S. history.

But initially, he didn't dare
publicly support a bill for it,

that was working its way through Congress,

for fear of Republican attack.

Opponents besieged Capitol Hill...

mothers' groups, college
students, clergymen.

"If you pass this bill," said

Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana,

"you slit the throat of the
last democracy still living."

We must face a
brutal but a terrible fact...

Then, Wendell Willkie defied his advisors

and many in his own party

and came out in favor of the draft bill

as the best way to shore
up the nation's defenses.

A relieved Roosevelt now
enthusiastically endorsed it, too;

it was, he said, "America's
answer to Hitlerism."

More than 16 million men
between the ages of 21 and 35

were registered on the draft rolls.

But Roosevelt also needed
to find a way to respond

to Winston Churchill's
desperate calls for help.

German bombs were now falling on London.

An all-out German assault across
the English Channel seemed likely.

Arming Britain was
"nothing more than a guess,"

FDR admitted to a member of his cabinet.

If he guessed wrong and Britain fell,

he would have accomplished nothing

except further to enrage Hitler.

Joseph Kennedy, Roosevelt's
ambassador in London,

believed Britain's surrender "inevitable."

So did the president's
top military commanders.

They argued that America's military needs

should take precedence over
those of any foreign power.

In 1940, when we were only 18th

in military power, isolationist country,

no one here wanting us to
get involved in Europe's wars,

he took the enormous
chance of giving England

everything he could despite
the joint chiefs saying to him,

"if you do this and England
falls, you'll be impeached."

FDR overruled them all.

On September 2, 1940, he signed
an executive order transferring

50 overage destroyers to
Britain in exchange for

leases on British bases
in the Western hemisphere.

Congress was not consulted.

Isolationists were outraged.

There was talk again of impeachment.

Students at Yale University formed

the America first committee

dedicated to "impregnable
national defense"...

but no help whatsoever
for embattled Britain.

Hundreds of thousands signed up,

including Charles Lindbergh
and the actress Lillian Gish;

the poet Robert Frost and
the composer Charles Ives

and two Ivy Leaguers... Gerald
Ford and John F. Kennedy.

He was governing a country peopled by

the descendants of people who came here

to get away from there, to
get away from the old world

and its entanglements and its
bloodshed and all the rest.

"Broad oceans, placid neighbors,

what do we care about
those people over there?"

And he had to be very careful
to the point of assuring people

late in the 1940 campaign
that American boys

would not die in foreign wars.

He knew better probably by that time.

The Oyster Bay Roosevelts,

like the rest of the country,
were divided over the issue.

Kermit Roosevelt, who had always

remained friendly with
Franklin and Eleanor,

was already serving in the British army.

But Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.
campaigned against U.S. involvement.

And when Alice Roosevelt
Longworth told a reporter

that rather than vote for
a third term for Franklin,

she'd cast her ballot for Hitler,

the president told Eleanor he didn't want

"to have anything to do with
that damned woman again."

We don't have to have a third term.

Republicans tried to
keep the third-term issue alive,

but both sides realized
the real issue was the war.

England will not only
survive, England will win.

The efforts of this administration

to arm itself adequately
for purposes of defense.

Roosevelt had
always been careful to say that

the United States would never go to war...

"except in case of attack."

In Boston, where many Irish voters

opposed any aid to Britain,

he deliberately dropped
even that qualifier.

And while I'm talking to you

fathers and mothers, I
give you one more assurance.

I have said this before, but I shall say it

again, and again, and again.

Your boys are not going to
be sent into any foreign war.

"That hypocritical son of a bitch!"

Willkie said when he heard
Roosevelt's Boston pledge.

"This is going to beat me."

Today, no
one can honestly promise you

peace at home or abroad.

All any human being can
do is to promise that

he will do his utmost
to prevent his country

from being involved in war.

While the battle is still raging,

Republican headquarters...

On election night
at Springwood, the returns were

at first so close that even FDR's optimism

faltered momentarily, and
he asked to be left alone.

But by the end of the evening,
the tide had once again

turned toward Roosevelt.

He won 449 electoral
votes to Willkie's 82.

At midnight, he was brought
outside to greet his neighbors.

"We, of course, face difficult
days in this country," he told them.

"But I think you will find me in the future

just the same Franklin
Roosevelt you have known

a great many years."

"My heart has always been here.

It always will be."

Because this
is the first time a president

has been elected for a third term,

I looked at my children,
at the president's mother,

and then at the president himself,

and wondered what each one was feeling

down in their heart of hearts.

I feel that any citizen should be willing

to give all that he has
to give to his country

in work or sacrifice in times of crisis.

Roosevelt saw the Second World War

as the Great War of national liberations.

That democracies were gonna
spring up around the world

and they would be looking to America

for some paternal guidance,

perhaps some of the old Wilson in him.

But it was Roosevelt's capacity and ability

to talk about the world as a neighborhood

that really began to change
how Americans saw the world.

Roosevelt was dictating his
"four freedoms" speech and said,

"we shall be for freedom of
speech everywhere in the world.

We shall be for freedom from
want everywhere in the world."

And Harry Hopkins interrupted him and said,

"Mr. President, I don't
think you should say

everywhere in the world
because Americans aren't gonna

give a damn about people in Java."

And FDR came right back at him and he said,

"well, you know Harry, they're
gonna have to give a damn

about people in Java from now on."

In his State of
the Union message for 1941,

Roosevelt tried to
describe the kind of world

he hoped would emerge from the war.

First is freedom
of speech and expression...

everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person

to worship God in his own
way... everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want...

which means economic
understandings which will

secure to every nation
a healthy peacetime life

for its inhabitants...
everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear...

which, translated into world terms,

means a worldwide reduction
of armaments to such a point

and in such a thorough fashion

that no nation will be
in a position to commit

an act of physical aggression
against any neighbor...

anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium.

It is a definite basis for a kind of world

attainable in our own time and generation.

That kind of world is the very antithesis

of the so-called new order of tyranny,

which the dictators seek to create

with the crash of a bomb.

He had a gift that
Theodore didn't have

and that was the gift of eloquence,

of being able to deliver
speeches that made people

want to rise to do better
than they thought they could.

And very few presidents have had that.

Now Roosevelt
redoubled his efforts

at aiding Hitler's enemies.

We shall send
in ever increasing numbers

ships, planes, tanks, guns.

That is our purpose and our pledge.

When Britain
could no longer pay for arms,

he devised "lend-lease,"

allowing him to continue providing

those ships, planes, tanks, and guns...

so long as the British
promised to return them

when the war was over.

Roosevelt compared it to
lending a neighbor a garden hose.

Lend-lease was deft politics

in the virtuous dissembling of a man

determined to gently and
for the best of motives

trick the country into
moving in a direction

it did not want to go.

It was shrewd.

It was tiny cat feet tip-toeing
into an international conflict

by almost imperceptible and utterly

unthreatening increments.

The Teutonic Hordes have fallen upon

the Russian land once again...

After Hitler sent his legions

into the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941,

Roosevelt persuaded Congress to
extend lend-lease to Russia, as well.

The Red Army would now be
trying to repel the invaders

with trucks made by the Ford Motor Company.

And when Nazi submarines preyed on convoys

carrying American supplies
in the North Atlantic,

he first ordered naval
vessels to shoot on sight

and then got Congress to
arm American merchant ships.

Soon, the United States would be engaged

in a deadly but undeclared war at sea.

Roosevelt faced a threat from

the other side of the world, as well,

where he feared Japan
was about to make good

on Theodore Roosevelt's old prophecy

of an attack on American
holdings in the Pacific

that would lead to what TR had called

"one of the most disastrous conflicts

the world has ever seen."

Japan's military leaders had
been on the move for a decade.

They had attacked China,

taken advantage of the war in Europe

to sign a defense pact
with Germany and Italy,

and stationed troops in French Indochina.

Roosevelt warned them to go no further.

He halted the sale of
aviation fuel and scrap metal

and, when that did not work,

froze their assets in the United States

to prevent the purchase
of the American supplies

they needed to continue their advance.

And, as a deterrent, he dispatched

a large part of the
Pacific fleet to Hawaii,

to the naval base at Pearl Harbor.

And if you were to ask me,

I would tell you frankly...

In domestic
policy, Eleanor Roosevelt,

having the luxury of not being
responsible to constituencies,

not having complicated
presidential relationships

with a complicated party
that controlled Congress,

being emancipated from
these practicalities,

she could peer over the
horizon and she saw rather well

the coming issues of race and of poverty.

If we turn away from the needs of others,

we align ourselves with those forces

which are bringing about this suffering.

In part it was her dependability

that people who believed in liberal values

knew she would stand up at every
moment in time for those values.

People who were poor knew that
she'd be fighting for them;

people who were migrant
workers knew she'd be there;

people who were miners knew
that she'd climb down to a mine

and then tell FDR what he needed to do;

and most importantly, I think,
African Americans knew that

she would be their champion.

The growth of defense industries

put 6 million Americans
to work in just 12 months,

with thousands more signing on every day.

The focus on defense
had revived the economy,

and Eleanor Roosevelt
shared her husband's wish

to ready the country for the
war both feared was coming.

But she was concerned that

hundreds of thousands of Americans,

through no fault of their
own, were being left out.

Firms that had never hired black workers

saw no reason to change their policy.

"We have not had a negro
worker in 25 years,"

said the standard steel
corporation of Kansas City,

"and do not plan to start now."

African Americans had voted overwhelmingly

for Franklin Roosevelt in 1940,

and were bitterly disappointed
when the president backed away

from what they had thought
was a private pledge

to end the old policy of
segregating the armed forces

and allow black and white Americans

to fight for their country, side by side.

Discrimination in defense
jobs was the last straw.

In the spring of 1941, A. Philip Randolph,

president of the Brotherhood
of Sleeping Car Porters,

threatened to bring
100,000 black protestors

to Washington on July 1 unless
something was done about it.

FDR feared bloodshed.

Washington was a Jim Crow city.

Randolph refused to back down.

The president asked his wife
to see what she could do.

The first lady had advocated
an anti-lynching bill

her husband had not been able to support;

had outraged white southerners
by visiting black colleges

and posing with their students;

and when a Birmingham,
Alabama policeman told her

she could not sit among black citizens

at a segregated meeting,

she had moved her chair between
the black and white sections

to demonstrate the
absurdity of the situation.

Now she did as her husband suggested.

"You know where I
stand," she told Randolph.

But, she went on, the march
would be "a very grave mistake.

I am afraid it will set back

the progress which is being made

Towards better opportunities
and less segregation."

Randolph respectfully refused to back off.

His deadline grew closer.

The first lady persuaded FDR

that he had better meet with Randolph

and her friend Walter White
of the National Association

for the Advancement of Colored People.

Together, they helped negotiate

the language of a new executive order.

It created a fair employment
practices commission

to combat discrimination in defense plants.

The FEPC had no enforcement powers.

It could only investigate
complaints and issue directives

asking that discrimination be eliminated.

But it represented the first
federal action on civil rights

since reconstruction.

Randolph called off his march.

When Eleanor Roosevelt got word

she wired him "I hope from this first step

we may go on to others."

A woman wrote to the commission

and told them how her son
was discriminated against.

And in the letter she added,

"please let me hear from you
at once, because, Mr. President,

if you cannot do anything,

I need to write to Mrs. Roosevelt." Ha ha!

So there was that confidence that
Mrs. Roosevelt would get it done.

But she was also ahead of people

in trying to open up opportunity.

When Franklin Roosevelt
signed the executive order

that forced companies through
incentives and sanctions

to open their doors to black Americans,

it had a huge impact on the whole

civil rights movement
for the future because

young black men and women
got jobs at skill levels

they had never enjoyed before.

And they were part of that
sense of accomplishment

that the country felt when they
saw those ships being produced,

when they saw those tanks being made

or the planes being
rolled out onto the field.

They knew they'd been part of that energy.

On June 5,
1941, a new name appeared

on FDR's appointment
calendar "Mrs. Paul Johnson."

Only Missy Lehand and a few other members

of the president's innermost
circle knew her true identity.

Back in 1918, Roosevelt
had promised his wife

he would never see his
old love Lucy Mercer again

and she had married winthrop rutherfurd,

a wealthy widower far older than she.

But she and the president
had quietly kept in touch.

He'd made sure she had a ticket
to each of his inaugurations.

White House operators
had orders to put through

calls from "Mrs. Johnson."

Now Lucy's husband, whom she had
cared for faithfully for years,

had been incapacitated by illness,

and Franklin had invited her to
come and see him at the White House.

Eleanor was away.

Lucy was discreetly led in a back way

and ushered into the family
quarters for a quiet dinner.

The evening before Mrs.
Rutherfurd's first visit,

the president's personal
secretary Missy Lehand,

who had always seen herself
as the closest person

to the man she called F.D.,

had suddenly collapsed at a staff party.

She had suffered the first of two strokes

that would rob her of the power of speech.

She was put to bed in her room

on the third floor of the White House.

Roosevelt was wheeled
in every day to visit.

She did not improve,
was sent to Warm Springs,

brought back to the White House,

finally moved back in with her family

in Somerville, Massachusetts.

As always, Roosevelt hid his feelings.

But he quietly called in his lawyer

and had his will changed so
that in the event of his death,

half of his estate would
go to pay for her care.

"I owed her that much,"
he told his son James.

"She served me so well for so long

and asked so little in return."

Meanwhile, Lucy Rutherfurd

continued to come to the White House

from time to time for tea or dinner,

and sometimes she and the
president took quiet rides

together through Rock Creek Park...

always when Eleanor was out of town.

New London,
Connecticut. August 3, 1941.

Dropping the cares of official duties

for a long-sought rest at sea,

president Roosevelt sailed tonight

from the new London submarine base

for a week's salt-water vacation.

The presidential yacht "Potomac"
headed into Long Island sound

in the afterglow of sunset
to take the chief executive

away from the tension of duties

which the critical international situation

has made unusually wearing.

"The New York Times."

August 5.

Dear Daisy, even at my ripe old age,

I feel a thrill in making a getaway...

especially from the American press.

Curiously enough, the
"Potomac" still flies my flag

and tonight will be seen by thousands

as she passes through the Cape Cod canal,

while in fact the president
will be about 250 miles away.

All his life, FDR loved knowing

secrets no one else knew

and nothing pleased
him more than to be able

to sail north undetected to
rendezvous for the first time

with the Prime Minister of Great Britain.

Argentia Bay, Newfoundland.

Saturday, August 9, 1941.

Dear Daisy, the huge new
H.M.S. "Prince of Wales"

came up the bay with
two escorting corvettes

and anchored alongside of us at 9:30.

Winston Churchill came on board at 11.

We all met on the top deck
and were duly photographed

and then Churchill stayed on board

and lunched with me alone.

He is a tremendously vital
person and in many ways

is an English mayor Laguardia.

Don't say I said so!

I like him... and lunching
alone broke the ice both ways.

In August, 1941,
Churchill is desperate

to figure out how to engage FDR's heart.

How do you get him into
the struggle which Churchill

is basically fighting alone?

He decides to use the language
and imagery of faith...

the world of groton, of St. James Church,

the high anglican world
from which Roosevelt came.

Churchill picked 3 hymns...
"Eternal father strong to save,"

"Oh God our help in ages past,"
and "Onward Christian soldiers."

♪ ... Soldiers
marching as to war ♪

On the way back from the service,

FDR said to his son Elliott,

with no expectation that
it would be repeated,

"Onward Christian soldiers,"
we are Christian soldiers,

"and we will go on with God's help.

If nothing else had
happened while we were here,

that would have cemented us."

Roosevelt still
could not commit American forces

to the struggle against Hitler.

But he and Churchill issued
what came to be called

the Atlantic Charter.

It called for "the final
destruction of the Nazi tyranny."

It also pledged a postwar world

in which every nation
controlled its own destiny,

an end to the kind of colonialism

Winston Churchill had
stood for all his life.

As the conference at sea ended,

back in Washington Congress
extended the service of draftees

from one year to 2 1/2 years...

but by just a single vote.

Had it not done so, it would
have dangerously weakened

the newly-built army.

On Saturday morning, September 6, 1941,

FDR made an unscheduled
visit to Springwood.

Sara Delano Roosevelt, now 86, was failing.

As always, she was eager to see him.

"When my son comes and sits there beside me

with the smile that is not
reserved for the voters,"

she'd once told a friend,

"I just look at his face and
think it has everything...

wisdom, goodness, and sweetness."

He was rolled into her room
and spent the day with her,

telling her about his talks with Churchill,

talking over old times,
pausing only to read

dispatches from the White House.

Late that evening, she lapsed into a coma.

She died of heart failure
the following afternoon.

A few minutes later, without
wind or rain or lightning,

the greatest of all the great oak trees

on the Roosevelt estate groaned
and toppled to the ground.

Geologists would later blame an
especially thin layer of earth

that blanketed a base of solid rock,

but those who had known
Sara Delano Roosevelt

were not so sure.

She was buried in the little graveyard

behind St. James Church
where her husband had been

laid to rest 41 years earlier.

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote a friend
that while she personally felt

"no deep affection or sense of loss"

at her mother-in-law's death,

"it is hard on Franklin."

It was hard... and whenever
he could in the coming years,

he, and sometimes his daughter Anna,

would stop by the grave of the mother

who had taught him to
believe he would succeed

at whatever he set out to do,

that no task was too
great for him to take on.

That big house
without his mother

seems awfully big and bare.

She gave him that personal affection

which his friends and secretaries
cannot do in the same way.

He was always "my boy," and he seems to me

often rather pathetic,

and hungry for just that kind of thing.

Daisy Suckley.

Daisy Suckley, the
president's worshipful cousin,

had once dreamed of living with Franklin

in the hilltop cottage
she'd helped him plan.

The war and the third term
had shattered that dream.

But FDR gave her a job as
archivist in his new library

so that she could be
with him whenever he felt

the need of quiet, admiring company.

And she looked after Fala,
the mischievous Scotty

that had been her gift to him

and that would become the
most famous dog on earth.

His wife
is a wonderful person,

but she lacks the ability to give him

the things his mother gave him.

She is away so much, and when she is here

she has so many people around...

the splendid people who are trying

to do good and improve the world...

the "uplifters," the
president calls them...

that he cannot relax and really rest.

Eleanor Roosevelt suffered
a loss of her own that same month.

Hall Roosevelt, the
younger brother for whom

she'd felt responsible since the
early deaths of their parents,

died in a Washington hospital as
she sat helpless at his bedside.

He had been bright and
promising when young,

filled with all the Roosevelt energy,

and had become an able
engineer and city official.

But the curse of alcoholism
that had killed his father

destroyed him, too.

"My idea of hell if I believed in it,"

Eleanor confided to her friend
Joe Lash before the end came,

"would be to sit and watch
someone breathing hard,

struggling for words, when a
gleam of consciousness returns

and thinking," this was once the little boy

"I played with and scolded.

He could have been so much
and this is what he is."

On the morning of September 29...

less than two weeks after
her mother-in-law died,

just two days after burying her brother...

Eleanor left the White House
grounds without an escort

and walked 8 blocks north to Dupont Circle

to a brand-new office and a brand-new job.

I'm so happy to welcome...

New York
mayor Fiorello Laguardia,

director of the newly created
Office of Civil Defense,

had asked her to become
his unsalaried assistant

in charge of civilian volunteers.

She saw her new job as a chance

to keep the spirit of the new deal alive...

even under the threat of war.

Effective defense, she insisted, demanded

"better nutrition, better housing,

better day-to-day medical care,

better education, better
recreation for every age."

But she quickly ran into trouble.

Federal agencies resisted
incursions onto their territory.

Southern mayors resented
her determination to recruit

black as well as white volunteers.

When she hired a dancer friend
to help with physical training,

Congress passed a resolution
meant to ridicule her

by banning the use of public
funds for "fan-dancing."

"Mrs. Roosevelt," a
Michigan woman wrote to her,

"you would be doing a great
service if you would simply

go home and sew for the Red Cross.

"Every time you open your mouth,

the people of this country
dislike and mistrust you more."

Within 4 months, Eleanor
Roosevelt would feel

she had no choice but to resign.

People can
understand that an individual,

even if she is a president's wife,

may have independent
views and must be allowed

the expression of an opinion.

But actual participation in
the work of the government,

we are not yet able to accept.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I'm speaking to you at a very
serious moment in our history.

The cabinet is convening
and the leaders in Congress

are meeting with the president.

The State Department and
army and Navy officials

have been with the president all afternoon.

On Sunday
morning, December 7, 1941,

Japanese planes had attacked Pearl Harbor.

All afternoon, news reports repeated

the same meager information.

The president did not
plan to address Congress

until the following day.

But that evening, on
her weekly radio program,

it fell to the first lady of
the United States of America

to try to reassure her
frightened fellow citizens

about what lay ahead.

For months now the knowledge

that something of this kind might happen

has been hanging over our heads

and yet it seemed impossible to believe,

impossible to drop the
everyday things of life

and feel that there was only
one thing which was important...

preparation to meet an enemy
no matter where he struck.

That is all over now and
there is no more uncertainty.

We know what we have to face

and we know that we are ready to face it.

I should like to say

just a word to the women
in the country tonight.

I have a boy at sea on a destroyer.

For all I know, he may be
on his way to the Pacific.

Many of you all over this country

have boys in the services who will
now be called upon to go into action.

You cannot escape a clutch
of fear at your heart

and yet I hope you will
rise above these fears.

Whatever is asked of us I
am sure we can accomplish it.

We are the free and unconquerable people

of the United States of America.

Meanwhile, the
president was grim but relieved.

"You know," the secretary of
the Navy said to Frances Perkins,

"I think the boss must have
a great load off his mind.

I thought the load on his mind
was just going to kill him.

At least we know what to do now."

Americans had broken the Japanese code.

Roosevelt knew an attack
in the Pacific was imminent.

But he expected it to be launched against

British and Dutch outposts, not Hawaii.

This wasn't simply
the way he was gonna

get the United States into war.

This was a debacle of the first order.

And for Roosevelt this
was supremely personal.

Roosevelt had laid the
keel for the battleship

that became the USS "Arizona."

Roosevelt looked on those
ships at Pearl Harbor

as though they were his babies.

And it was said that the calmest person

in the room in the White House that day

was Franklin Roosevelt.

Absorbing the information as it came in,

slowly figuring out what to do,

giving that unflappability to
the people around him so that

they then got strength
from his own strength.

It was one of those moments
when you saw what he was made of.

A date which will live in infamy.

Last night, Japanese forces

attacked Hong Kong.

Last night, Japanese forces attacked Guam.

Last night, Japanese forces
attacked the Philippine Islands.

Last night, the Japanese
attacked Wake Island.

And this morning, the Japanese
attacked Midway Island.

Japan has therefore undertaken
a surprise offensive,

extending throughout the Pacific area.

I ask that the Congress declare
a state of war has existed

between the United States
and the Japanese empire.

The following day,
wearing a mourning armband

in memory of his mother,

FDR would sign the declaration of war.

On December 11, Hitler and Mussolini,

siding with their Japanese ally,

declared war on the United States.

He got a big assist from Hitler, who,

in a fit of absent-mindedness
and contempt,

declared war on a spin
without thinking it through.

And that is a sign of FDR's

political skill and deftness that he waited

and made Hitler take the first
move against the United States

so there could be no
public reluctance at all

in our ultimate struggle to get to Berlin.

All 4 of the
president's sons had volunteered.

So did all 3 of Theodore
Roosevelt's surviving sons.

6 of TR's grandsons, who
were old enough to serve,

also signed on.

With the country under attack,

political differences were forgotten.

"It seems to me," Archie
Roosevelt wrote FDR,

"that regardless of the bitterness

that many people feel

toward the "Hyde Park" Roosevelts

or the "Oyster Bay" Roosevelts,

they have to admit that the whole clan

has turned out to a man."

"It is something in
which I think we can take

a certain amount of pride."

Washington. December 24, 1941.

The president, who has been
very mysterious as to what was

going to happen over the holidays,

finally decided to tell me
that the British Prime Minister,

Mr. Winston Churchill, and his party

were arriving sometime in
the late afternoon or evening.

It had not occurred to
him this might require

certain moving of furniture to adapt rooms

for the purposes for which the
Prime Minister wished to use them.

♪ o little town of Bethlehem ♪

The White House
had changed since December 7.

Armed sentries now stood guard

to keep tourists off the grounds.

There were machine gun
emplacements on the roof

and blackout curtains over the windows.

But FDR had refused to
allow the Secret Service

to camouflage the White House,

and insisted that the annual
Christmas tree ceremony

take place as scheduled as a sign of

continuity in wartime.

The Prime Minister of
Great Britain concurred.

♪ The hopes and
fears of all the years ♪

♪ are met in thee tonight ♪

[Churchill:]
Let the children have

their night of fun and laughter.

Let the gifts of father
Christmas delight their play.

Let us grown-ups share...

They were brought together by

force of circumstance.

They were men who, as
C.S. Lewis once put it,

"we picture lovers face-to-face
but friends side-by-side.

Their eyes look ahead."

They shared a common
interest, a common bond...

the defeat of Hitler and
the security of their own

places in history.

They both saw themselves
as great historical actors,

as great heirs of familial and
national political traditions.

One was the cousin of a president,

the other was the son
of, of a man who had been

an enormously important,
ah, Victorian politician.

Churchill was a Marlborough,
Roosevelt was a Roosevelt.

They heard the music of
history in their heads

and they were devoted to the idea

that they could save the world.

These same children shall not be

robbed of their inheritance
or denied their right

to live in a free and decent world.

And so in God's mercy, a
Happy Christmas to you all.

The message from
that whole visit at Christmas

was that the forces of
democracy were at last together.

And FDR, in a toast at dinner

when Churchill was in the White House said,

"to the common cause,
which I can now truly say

is a common cause."

The Prime Minister was
the Roosevelts' guest for 3 weeks.

Night after night, FDR sat up with him

till two or 3 in the morning.

Churchill needed little
sleep but lots of alcohol:

Sherry before breakfast;
scotch and soda before lunch;

champagne and brandy in the evening.

Eleanor Roosevelt disapproved of
the drinking and the late hours

and she worried about the prime
minister's unshakable devotion

to the sprawling British empire

which both she and her husband
believed should not be allowed

to survive long after the war.

But she liked him.

He and her husband, she said,

"looked like boys playing soldier.

They seemed to be having a wonderful time."

Once, according to Harry Hopkins,

the president came up with what
he thought was a grand idea:

The 26 countries now pledged to subscribe

to the principles of the Atlantic Charter

should be called the "United Nations."

He had himself wheeled across the hall

and entered his distinguished
guest's bedroom without knocking

so that he could tell him about it.

Churchill had just
climbed out of the bathtub,

naked, pink and gleaming.

FDR apologized for bursting in.

Nothing to apologize for, Churchill said.

"The prime minister of Great
Britain has nothing to conceal

from the president of the United States."

On the Pacific front, bad news
was coming in from everywhere.

Roosevelt and Churchill
received the dispatches together.

Japanese troops had landed
in Thailand and Singapore,

Burma and Borneo, Hong
Kong and the Philippines...

where they were driving American forces

down the Bataan peninsula.

The American public was
clamoring for revenge.

On the other side of the globe,

the Germans occupied almost all of Europe,

were threatening Egypt and
the Suez canal in North Africa,

and were moving steadily toward Moscow

Along a thousand-mile front.

Back in the White House,
Roosevelt and Churchill agreed

that Germany, with its vast armies

and mighty industrial machine,
would have to be defeated first.

But that would take time:
To mobilize, train, and equip

a force powerful enough
to destroy Hitler's armies.

Until that time, the
allies would have to remain

on the defensive in the Pacific.

In which we are constantly
being challenged by our enemies.

We must all face the hard
fact that our job now...

In February of '42,
the country was at

a very low ebb of morale.

We were losing battles in the Pacific.

So Roosevelt decided he
was gonna give a speech...

... Take out
and spread before you

a map of the whole earth.

And he asked everybody
to get a map before them

so he could tell them the
far-flung battles of the war.

The man who ran C.S.
Hammond's map store in New York

said he sold more maps that single week

than he'd sold an entire year.

Roosevelt gets on the radio.

Everybody's sitting there with
their maps spread before them.

He explains the battles.

The broad oceans
which have been heralded...

But most importantly, what
he does is to warn people

that there will be failures
before there is victory.

We will have losses before we have wins.

Then he reminded people that Washington

had stood by at Valley Forge

when the supplies were almost done,

the pioneers going over
the Rocky Mountains,

the early days of the civil war.

We will get through this.

From Berlin, and Tokyo and Rome,

we have been described as
a nation of weaklings...

"Playboys"... who would
hire British soldiers,

or Russian soldiers, or Chinese soldiers

to do our fighting for us.

Let them tell that to
General MacArthur and his men.

Let them tell that to the marines!

And there were so many telegrams

that came into the White House that night,

that speech was so
effective, that they said,

"you've gotta go on the radio every day.

It's the only way morale
will be sustained."

But he wrote back with knowing insight.

He said, "if my speeches
ever become routine,

they will lose their effectiveness."

So he only delivered 30
fireside chats in his 12 years,

which meant that everybody listened

when those chats were delivered.

Saul bellow said you
could walk down the street

on a hot Chicago night and everybody would

have the radio on so you could hear it

coming out of the windows of the cars,

coming out of the windows of the houses

and not miss a word of his speech.

If he had done it too often,
he would have lost that.

We Americans
will contribute unified...

The initial German
invasion of the Soviet Union

had stalled outside Moscow...

But a spring offensive in 1942
sent 225 fresh divisions...

more than 4 1/2 million men...
racing across Russia.

And Josef Stalin, the Soviet premier,

demanded the allies open a
second front in Western Europe

to relieve the pressure
on his beleaguered people.

American planners had
a straightforward idea

of how to beat the Germans...

invade France in the spring of 1943

and drive right for Berlin.

But the British, haunted by memories

of the butchery on the
Western front in the Great War,

were wary of moving so fast.

A defeat on the French
coast, Churchill warned,

was "the only way in which we
could possibly lose this war."

Instead, he favored attacking

German and Italian forces in North Africa

to keep Egypt and the oil
fields of the Middle East

from falling into enemy hands.

American commanders thought invading Africa

would be a dangerous, wasteful diversion.

Rather than accept the British
plan, General Marshall proposed

that the United States abandon
the Germany-first strategy

and go on the offensive in the Pacific.

Roosevelt overruled him.

A premature attack in the Pacific

was exactly what Germany wanted, he wrote;

it would only mean the
recapture of a "lot of islands,"

and would do nothing to help the Russians.

The proposal was therefore "disapproved."

He signed his response:
"Roosevelt, Commander in Chief."

The invasion of occupied
France would have to be delayed.

Preparations began for American
troops to land in North Africa.

Meanwhile, the news from the
Pacific continued to be bad.

But even the president's critics
were astonished at his serenity.

Once he had made a decision,
nothing seemed to faze him.

Franklin had learned from
his struggle against polio,

his wife said, "that if there was nothing

you could do about a
situation, then you'd better try

to put it out of your mind."

The president worked
at his stamp collection,

chatted with visitors, presided over

a carefree cocktail hour every afternoon.

He established his own secret map room

in a former ladies' cloakroom
in the White House basement

so that he could personally
follow the movements

of American ships and armies.

A special pin marked the
whereabouts of the destroyer

aboard which his son Franklin was serving.

When Roosevelt was rolled into
the map room every morning,

that was always the
first pin he looked for.

Wartime security allowed the president

to spend as much time as
possible out of public sight

and away from the White House...

at the center for polio
patients he'd created

at Warm Springs, Georgia;

at a new hideaway in the
Catoctin Mountains of Maryland

that he called "Shangri-La,"

which would later come
to be called Camp David;

and at home at Springwood,
where the grounds were now

patrolled day and night.

He was there on may 6 when
he learned that Corregidor,

the last American outpost in
the Philippines, had surrendered.

Just 4 days later, before dawn,

he, Daisy Suckley, and a handful
of aides and secret servicemen

drove to a nearby pond to
take part in the annual census

of dutchess county birds.

From the back seat of his car,
a seemingly unconcerned FDR

claimed to have identified 108 species...

22 of them by their songs alone.

He seemed
really to enjoy every minute.

It is the kind of thing he
has privately given up any idea

of ever doing again, so
it did him lots of good.

In that far-off silent place,
with myriads of birds waking up,

it was quite impossible to
think much of the horrors of war.

I think Roosevelt handled it brilliantly

in the sense that the fundamental job

in the Second World War was to
mobilize the American economy.

Congress granted
Roosevelt sweeping wartime powers

to reorganize American industry,
and he made the most of them.

The result was improvised, inconsistent,

and often inefficient...

6 new federal agencies with
overlapping responsibilities

were established in a single year.

But it would make possible the defeat

of Germany, Italy, and Japan.

"If you're going to try to prepare

for war in a capitalist country,"

Secretary of War Stimson said,

"you have to let business
make money out of the process."

FDR now found himself
working hand-in-glove

with many of the "economic royalists"

whose hatred he'd welcomed
just 5 years earlier.

The biggest companies got
the biggest contracts...

and earned the biggest profits.

Antitrust laws were overlooked.

Taxes on ordinary Americans rose.

Again and again, he urged
industry to greater efforts.

When advisors handed him
estimates of what they thought

could realistically be achieved,

he crossed them out and wrote
in larger numbers of his own.

"The production people can do
it if they really try," he said.

They did try... and they did do it.

His role was
to mobilize the forces

of the American people behind the war.

Without the productivity that
this country was able to marshal

by 300,000 planes and two million trucks

and 5,000 cargo ships, we would
never have had the supplies

which we gave to our allies
in all far corners of the world

to win that war.

He was directly responsible
for getting this country

to hum again, to support the soldiers

at every step along the way.

Idle factories
were soon back in business.

Nearly all manufacturing was
converted to the war effort.

In 1941, more than 3 million cars

had been manufactured in the United States.

Only 139 more were made
during the entire war.

Instead, Chrysler made fuselages.

General Motors made airplane engines,

guns, trucks, and tanks.

And at its vast willow run
plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan...

67 acres of assembly
lines under a single roof

that one observer called "The Grand Canyon

of the mechanized world"...

the Ford Motor Company performed
something like a miracle...

24 hours a day.

The average Ford car had some 15,000 parts.

The B-24 liberator long-range
bomber had 1,550,000 parts.

One came off the line at
Willow Run every 63 minutes.

War mobilization would give the allies

the "crushing superiority" in arms

Roosevelt insisted they needed for victory.

It also brought the Great
Depression to an end,

creating so many new jobs so fast

that for the first time in
a generation there was soon

a labor shortage in the United States.

The great battles
of the Second World War,

the defeat of the Third Reich

was accomplished using American weapons.

So the job was to do
what the brain trusters

and the new deal mentality
wanted to do anyway,

which was mobilize the American people

into a great collective effort.

And that's what war is.

Eleanor feared when the war came

that she would no longer
have the centrality

that she'd enjoyed with
him during the 1930s.

Similar fears that when
she first became first lady

that she wouldn't be as needed or wanted.

But boy, she found a way once again.

Eleanor
Roosevelt continued to share

her husband's sense of
urgency about American defense

and, like any other mother, she had wept

when her boys went off to war.

But she was also unhappy
with what seemed to her

to be FDR's abandonment of reform.

The president was now consumed
with mobilization and the war.

He made only token objections
when Congress voted to end

the civilian conservation corps,

the works progress administration,

the national youth administration.

He was "Dr. Win-the-War" now, he explained,

no longer "Dr. New Deal."

Further domestic progress
would have to wait

till the fighting ended.

Eleanor Roosevelt would not
easily accept that decision.

If he were no longer
interested in listening

to other new dealers,
she would speak for them.

"No one who ever saw Eleanor
Roosevelt facing her husband,"

an aide remembered, "and,
holding his eye firmly,"

say to him, "Franklin,
I think you should... "

Or, "Franklin, surely you will not... "

Will ever forget the experience."

She initially supported FDR's decision

to inter behind barbed wire
some 110,000 Japanese-Americans

who happened to live
along the west coast...

2/3 of them American citizens.

"I recognize," she told a
friend, "it has to be done."

But when she realized that stories of

internee disloyalty were untrue,
that they were being singled out

only because of their race,

she made an unannounced
visit to one of their camps,

lobbied her husband to close them all,

and was only dissuaded from
bringing an interned family home

to live in the White House when he told her

the secret service would not allow it.

It is blood on your
hands, Mrs. Roosevelt.

You have been personally
proclaiming and practicing

social equality at the white
house and wherever you go.

"Jackson, Mississippi Daily News."

During the war,
hundreds of thousands of

black Americans moved north,

where they found defense jobs...

and trouble from a society not
yet willing to accommodate them.

In 1943 alone, there were
race riots in 47 cities.

35 people died in Detroit.

"I suppose," the first lady said,

"when one is forced to realize

that an unwelcome change is coming,

one must blame it on one or something."

She was painfully aware of the absurdity

of continuing to ask
young African Americans

to fight for democracy
while serving in armed forces

that were still segregated.

"Unless we make the country
worth fighting for by negroes,"

she wrote one of her critics,

"we will have nothing to offer the world

at the end of the war."

Eleanor Roosevelt had
also battled on behalf of

admitting Jewish refugees
to the United States

for as long as the Nazis were willing

to grant them exit visas.

Restrictive immigration
laws frustrated her.

So did the actions of obstructionists

within the state department,
some genuinely concerned that

German spies would slip into the country,

some blatantly anti-semitic.

And she had been unable to persuade FDR

to get rid of those bureaucrats.

He had been the only leader
of a Democratic nation

to dare denounce the
Nazi mistreatment of Jews

after Kristallnacht in 1938.

When news began to reach
him at the end of 1942

that the Germans had moved on

from mistreatment to mass murder,

he joined Churchill and Stalin

and 10 allied overnments-in-exile

in promising to prosecute and
punish those responsible for

what they called this "bestial policy

of cold-blooded extermination."

And he eventually created
the War Refugee Board

that provided funds and authorization

to help Jews flee from the
edges of the Nazi empire.

Roosevelt understood that
Hitler was the master of Europe.

Europe's Jews were his
prisoners and intended victims.

And, as he told a Jewish visitor,

we "cannot treat these
matters in normal ways.

We are dealing with an insane man."

There was nothing else to do, he believed,

other than to obliterate that
madman and his monstrous regime.

Saturday, November 8, 1942.

Shangri-La. A historic day.

After dinner, as we were
getting settled in chairs,

he said at 9 that "something
will break on the radio"...

And at 9 we got the news of the landing

of our troops on North Africa.

It was thrilling and for the president

it was a tremendous climax.

The landings went smoothly.

Casualties were low.

"Thank God!" Roosevelt said.

"Thank God!"

But the raw U.S. troops
soon found the fighting

far tougher than they'd expected.

It would take 7 bloody months

to drive the Germans from North Africa.

Elliott Roosevelt, who had pulled strings

to get into combat
despite his bad eyesight,

piloted unarmed reconnaissance planes

again and again over enemy territory.

In January of 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill

made their way into the war
zone to Casablanca in Morocco,

where FDR declared the
allies united in their goal...

nothing less than
"unconditional surrender."

In the Pacific, American naval
forces had already badly damaged

the Japanese fleet at midway.

The marines had captured
most of Guadalcanal...

though at a fearful cost... and
had raided Makin Island, too,

where the president's eldest
son, major James Roosevelt,

was awarded the Navy cross
for "extraordinary heroism."

Within a few weeks, the Nazi
invasion of the Soviet Union

would finally be halted at Stalingrad.

Allied troops would soon invade Sicily...

where Franklin, Jr.'s
destroyer would be badly damaged

and he would win the
Silver Star for carrying

one of his wounded sailors
to safety under fire.

Then the allies would have to begin

the long, bloody struggle to take Italy.

But the cross-channel invasion of France

that the Russians were demanding,

that everyone including
the enemy knew had to come,

had been postponed yet again and
was still more than a year away.

Major Kermit Roosevelt,
Theodore Roosevelt's second son,

who had accompanied him
on his last great adventure

in south America, had never recovered

from his father's death.

He continued to suffer
from crippling depression

and, like his Uncle
Elliott, drank too much.

His wife believed, as Theodore
Roosevelt had believed,

that depression would overwhelm
Kermit unless he had a mission.

Franklin Roosevelt gave
him a commission in the army

and sent him to an airbase in Alaska

where he was to help establish

a militia force of Aleuts and Eskimos

in case of Japanese invasion,

just the kind of assignment
his father would have relished.

It was too late.

On may 31, 1943, U.S. forces destroyed

the enemy garrison on the island
of Attu in the Aleutians.

The Japanese threat to
Alaska had been lifted.

4 days later, Kermit Roosevelt

put his service revolver under his chin

and pulled the trigger.

It was thought best to
tell his mother Edith...

81 years old and still
living at Sagamore Hill...

that he had died of a heart attack.

This trip to the South Pacific

will be attacked as a political gesture,

and I am so uncertain whether
or not I am doing the right thing

that I will start with a heavy heart.

I'll go because other
people think I should...

And where I do see our soldiers
I'll try to make them feel that

Franklin really wants to know about them.

In the summer of
1943, Eleanor Roosevelt undertook

a 5-week, 25,000-mile
trip to the South Pacific

on behalf of the Red Cross:

Hawaii, Australia, and
New Zealand and 17 islands,

including Bora Bora, Samoa, Fiji,

New Caledonia, Christmas Island,

and Guadalcanal, where she got to see

her young friend Joe Lash,
now a sergeant in the army.

Admiral William F. "Bull" Halsey,

commander in the South Pacific,
had been against her coming.

He had a war to fight, he said,
and no time to waste welcoming

a visiting "do-gooder."

But when the first lady
turned up and went to work,

Halsey quickly changed his mind.

Here is what
Eleanor Roosevelt did in 12 hours:

She inspected two Navy hospitals,

took a boat to an officer's
rest home and had lunch there,

returned and inspected an army hospital,

reviewed the 2nd marine raider battalion,

made a speech at a service club,

attended a reception,
and was guest of honor

at a dinner given by General Harmon.

When I say that she
inspected those hospitals,

I don't mean that she shook hands

with the chief medical officer,

glanced into a sunroom, and left.

I mean that she went into every
ward, stopped at every bed,

and spoke to every
patient: What was his name?

How did he feel?

Was there anything he needed?

Could she take a message home for him?

I marveled at her hardihood,
both physical and mental.

And she saw patients who were

grievously and gruesomely wounded.

But I marveled most at their expressions

as she leaned over them.

It was a sight I will never forget.

"Over here," one soldier said,

"she was something none of
us had seen in over a year,

an American mother."

The family of every wounded
soldier and sailor she visited

got a personal letter.

But, just as her experience with

the wounded of World
War I had affected her,

it took weeks for her
to get over the impact

of the horrors she had seen.

To the end of her life, she would remember

the smell of the burn wards.

When she got back, just
as she had predicted,

Republicans attacked her for junketeering

at the public's expense.

"The outcry in Congress is so great,"

she confided to a friend, "that FDR feels

I should not use government transportation

or even go on any long trips for awhile."

"Later, I'm sure he'll say go ahead again,

but just now it seems
he wants a little peace."

At the end of November, 1943,

the president traveled
8,000 miles to Tehran,

to confer again with Churchill...

and to meet for the first
time with the Soviet premier...

Josef Stalin.

Stalin was taciturn, guarded,
perpetually suspicious.

The bargaining was often tense.

Roosevelt hoped the United States, Russia,

Britain, and China could work
together once the war was over.

Stalin, whose Red Army was still

bearing the brunt of the fighting,

was determined to hold on to
the Eastern European countries

his men were capturing
as they pushed the Germans

back toward Berlin.

And he insisted upon the fastest
possible opening of a second front.

Churchill resisted, still
hoping an assault on France

could be delayed or
somehow avoided altogether.

Roosevelt, an aide remembered,

"sat in the middle, by common consent

the moderator, arbitrator,
and final authority."

In the end, the big three
set the stage for victory.

The Americans and British would invade
occupied France in the spring of 1944.

The Soviets would mount a
simultaneous offensive from the east.

The hope was that the Nazis
would be crushed between them.

But victory in Europe... and in Asia...

still seemed very far away.

March 26. Hyde Park.

The president had Mrs.
Rutherfurd for lunch,

showed her his library,
then to top cottage,

and she didn't get away until about 6:30.

At dinner he felt fever coming
on again and went to bed.

He has decided to go down
to Washington in the morning

to the naval hospital.

Roosevelt had
returned from Tehran exhausted

and suffering from what
admiral Ross McIntire,

his physician and surgeon
general, said was the flu.

Weeks went by. He did not get better.

Grace Tully, his longtime secretary

who had taken over for Missy Lehand,

noticed that his hands now shook so badly

he had trouble lighting his cigarette

and he sometimes seemed to doze
for a moment during dictation.

She and Daisy Suckley were worried.

So was the president's daughter Anna.

She had recently moved back into
the White House with her children,

and... with her mother away...

was now acting as her father's hostess.

All 3 women feared admiral
McIntire was not up to the job

of caring for the president.

His expertise was sinuses.

Something else was wrong.

Anna insisted on answers.

On march 27, 1944, her father agreed to be

wheeled into Bethesda Naval Hospital

for an off-the-record examination by

the chief of cardiology, Lt.
Commander Howard G. Bruenn.

Bruenn was horrified by what he found.

The president was suffering
from congestive heart failure.

His heart was dangerously enlarged;

he was short of breath;

and suffering from severe hypertension

for which there was then
no effective treatment.

4 days later, 3 senior physicians

confirmed the diagnosis.

To reduce and slow the heart
and to ease the strain on it,

FDR was prescribed
digitalis and put on a diet.

He was told to cut his smoking in half,

urged not to work more than 4 hours a day.

Everyone was sworn to
the strictest secrecy.

Admiral McIntire assured the press

that FDR just had a touch
of persistent bronchitis;

"for a man of 62-plus,"
he said, he was doing fine.

"I am more worried than I let anyone know,"

Daisy Suckley confided to her diary.

"There must be something definitely wrong

or they wouldn't have these consultations."

But, like a
great many other people,

I have had the flu.

1944 was another
presidential election year.

The cross-channel invasion of
Europe was still weeks away.

American forces had only
just begun to fight their way

island-by-island across
the Pacific toward Japan.

And, although just a
handful of people knew it,

the commander-in-chief...

the most powerful man on earth...

was seriously, perhaps fatally, ill.