Transcript: Chapter 22

Narrator: Roosevelt would find his incident in the cold waters of the North Atlantic. By the middle of 1941, Nazi U-boats had sunk over 1,500 British ships, all but cutting England's lifeline to America. Without telling the American people, Roosevelt issued secret orders to the Navy to escort British convoys and, if necessary, sink Nazi submarines. The president was willing to risk war with Germany.

NEWSCASTER: On the morning of September 4, the United States destroyer Greer was attacked by a submarine, a German submarine.

President Franklin Roosevelt: I tell you the blunt fact that the German submarine fired first upon this American destroyer Greer, without warning and with deliberate design to sink her.

Robert Dallek: What he hides from the American public is the fact that the Greer had been tracking the German submarine to help a British seaplane which was going to try and sink it with depth charges.

Narrator: Roosevelt knew that the Greer had deliberately stalked the Nazi U-boat and that the British plane had fired first. "You know, I'm a juggler," he would later tell a friend, "and I never let my right hand know what my left hand does. I am perfectly willing to mislead and tell untruths if it will help win the war." Roosevelt did not ask Congress for a declaration of war, but he used the Greer incident to justify an undeclared war in the Atlantic where he was sure the real war would soon begin.

That same autumn, with her son at her side, the president's mother Sarah died. Minutes after her death, the largest oak tree at Hyde Park toppled to the ground. It was a clear, windless day. "You are constantly in my thoughts," Sarah had told her son toward the end, "and always in my heart. I think of you night and day."

Geoffrey Ward: He managed to get through the funeral without breaking down. A few days later, though, a secretary brought him a box with his mother's handwriting on it. He had no idea what was in it, and he found locks of his own hair and little childhood toys and his christening dress, each of them carefully labeled in her loving hand. And tears filled his eyes and he asked his secretaries to leave the room. No one on his staff had ever seen him cry before.

RADIO ANNOUNCER: We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin. The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii by air, President Roosevelt has just announced.

Narrator: On December 7, 1941, Roosevelt's long campaign to rally the American people against fascism came to a shocking and unexpected end. At 1:50pm, the president was told that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. At 2:28, the attack was confirmed.

Alonzo Fields: Now, when I went upstairs, they had set up in the bedroom and they were taking communications from what was going on. And Paul Watson came out and he had this message and he says, "Mr. President, the whole damn Navy is gone. What in the hell are we going to do?" And the president and Mr. Hopkins-- he said to Mr. Hopkins, he says, "My God, my God, how did it happen?" He had his head in hands and at his desk like this. He says, "How did it happen?" He says, "Now I'll go down in history disgraced."

Narrator: At a Cabinet meeting that night, Labor Secretary Frances Perkins found Roosevelt deeply shaken. "He was having actual physical difficulty in getting out the words that put him on record as knowing the Navy was caught unawares."

Alonzo Fields: He looked drawn. His face was kind of pale-ish-like and tired-like, and it seemed to be a maze around him, just a blind sort of fog around him. When I looked at him, I got that impression from him, that he was in a fog, and he was so despondent over the fact, he said, "We don't know what's out there."

President Franklin Roosevelt: Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

Alistair Cooke: The Monday after Pearl Harbor was very solemn. Roosevelt had a press conference and, looking back on it, I'm astounded that he was able to cover up the appalling extent of the damage. We knew that there'd been a few ships bombed. We had no conception that the whole Pacific fleet had been bombed to hell. You know, Roosevelt said, "We've suffered great losses," and so on, but he didn't specify. You wonder that he could even sort of face anybody. So he handled that with great confidence.

Narrator: Four days later, Germany, too, declared war on America. Now Roosevelt would have to wage war on both sides of the globe, across two oceans and three continents.

Hugh Gallagher: No man in history ever had a greater burden than Franklin Roosevelt did during World War II. He was leading the free world against Adolf Hitler and it wasn't at clear that we were going to win.

Narrator: The early news was all bad. Disaster followed on disaster. The Japanese swept through Southeast Asia, pushing the Allies out of most of the Pacific. The Germans had advanced deep into Russia, threatening Moscow and Leningrad. Just two weeks after Pearl Harbor, on December 22, Roosevelt received a secret visitor at the White House.

Alistair Cooke: We were at a regular press conference, always in the Oval Office, and so we all stormed in and were staggered to see sitting next to him in a chair was this rotund pink, pink Winston Churchill. And there was one of those sort of indescribable, strange noises between a rustle and a gasp and eventually a cheer. And Roosevelt said, "Mr. Prime Minister, get up there and let them see you," so Churchill got up, stood on the desk and gave the great victory sign.

Narrator: This time, the prime minister and the president met to plot military strategy. Their most important decision: who to fight first, the Germans in Europe or the Japanese in the Pacific. For nearly a month, they talked and planned. Churchill moved into the White House just down the hall from Roosevelt. The daily rub of living side by side would test their friendship and the future of the Alliance.

Doris Kearns Goodwin: When Churchill came, it was like a cyclone that hit the White House. His whole schedule was totally out of whack with Roosevelt's. He, of course, loved to stay up late at night, drinking, smoking cigars, and Roosevelt would sit there with him until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, smoking cigars.

Alonzo Fields: Before breakfast, he preferred a tumbler of sherry and he would have that as his eye-opener. For lunch, he started drinking scotch and soda and he'd drink scotch and soda until he'd take a nap. And at dinner, he had to have his champagne and 90-year-old brandy. Then he would go to work.

Doris Kearns Goodwin: Roosevelt relished, with all people, the chance to break through decorum and have a one-on-one friendly relationship. He was always calling people by their first name, even before he knew them. So I think that once he established with Churchill this kind of crazy informal relationship, he knew that it was a good omen for their friendship.

Lady Mary Soames: One will never know whether they would have been friends if there hadn't been a war, but maybe it needed a great cause to bring them together, and maybe it was a marriage of convenience, but then a lot of marriages of convenience are very successful, aren't they?

Narrator: By the end of the month, Roosevelt and Churchill had agreed to fight the Germans first, but January 1942, the Nazis dominated most of Europe and the Allies were still far too weak to invade the continent. Just two years earlier, American soldiers had been forced to train with cardboard weapons, firing flour instead of shells. Roosevelt had done all he could to build up the country's defenses, but he still had a long way to go.

Doris Kearns Goodwin: There aren't even private companies that are making very many weapons, so he's got to take companies that are making girdles, that are making cars, that are making all sorts of other things, and change over their production to making weapons for war.

President Franklin Roosevelt: In this year 1942, we shall produce 60,000 planes.

Narrator: Roosevelt began by setting war production goals which to many people seemed astronomical.

President Franklin Roosevelt: Next year, 1943, we shall produce 125,000 airplanes, including 100,000 combat planes.

Robert Nathan: Roosevelt says, "We are going to be the arsenal for democracy." All these numbers poured out and most people thought they were crazy.

David Ginsburg: How do you persuade Detroit to convert -- suddenly to stop making these profitable automobiles and begin making tanks, which somehow they've never made, don't know how to make and will have to learn how to make? It isn't easy, and it wasn't easy.

President Franklin Roosevelt: Even though it will mean the dislocation of the lives and occupations of millions of our own people, we must raise our sights all along the production lines. Let no man say it cannot be done. It must be done and we have undertaken to do it.

Narrator: As America prepared for war, Roosevelt was determined to strike at the Nazis by invading across the English Channel as soon as possible. Churchill wanted to wait.

George Elsey, Lieutenant, U.S. Naval Reserve: American military planners were all for a cross-channel assault on Germany at the earliest possible moment. The British, in effect, said, "We can't do it" -- we, being the Allies -- can't do it. "We don't have the landing craft, we don't have command of the air, we don't have control of the sea and '42 is just too soon." And Roosevelt's counter-argument was, "I have to show the American people that we're moving against Hitler. I've got to do something." And the "something" turned out to be Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa.

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