America Prepares for War: FDR & WW2

American History Hit

History Hit

America, History

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 22 May 2023

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Was the USA already a superpower when it joined the Second World War? How did it turn from an isolationist nation to a force ready for action?

Today Don is joined by Craig Nelson to find out how President Franklin D. Roosevelt manoeuvred the country from the isolationism of the interwar years to supplying an arsenal and, eventually, manpower to its European allies.

Craig's new book is 'V Is For Victory: Franklin Roosevelt's American Revolution and the Triumph of World War 2'.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's June 1941.
0:02.0	Give it the 9-5 thing up to see if we can have this poor boy up on it.
0:07.0	It's June 1941.
0:10.0	We're in Michigan at Willow Run, the enormous new Ford Motor Company factory purpose built for
0:16.7	the production of components to be assembled into B24 liberators, heavy bombers destined for the skies over Europe.
0:25.1	Only a few months ago at the Rouge Plant, Ford workers fought violently to join the
0:29.4	UAW, United Auto Workers, against the wishes of Henry Ford himself.
0:34.0	Striking workers won, only to see many of these newly unionized
0:39.0	auto workers reassigned to the war effort, manufacturing plane parts.
0:44.0	Across the nation, there are those who strenuously object,
0:48.0	including Michigan's own Charles Lindbergh, the famous flyer.
0:52.0	In April 41, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, in front of an overflow crowd of 20,000,
0:59.0	Lindbergh called on all Americans to resist intervention in Europe.
1:03.6	But this rallying call will soon fall on deaf ears.
1:07.0	Led by FDR, the nation is moving inexorably
1:10.2	towards war.
1:11.7	America's great arsenal of democracy is underway. Hi everybody welcome to American history hit and I'm Don Wildman.
1:32.2	The 20th century is so often referred to as the American century.
1:36.0	Due to the Allied victory in World War II, largely attributable to American industrial and military might,
1:42.0	had we not joined that conflict in 1940. American industrial and military might.
1:42.7	Had we not joined that conflict in 1941 and supporting our allies beforehand, it's likely
1:48.4	we would be living in a very different world than the one we enjoy today.
	...

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