Franklin D. Roosevelt
Lead-up to the war

By late 1940, re-armament was in high gear, partly to expand and re-equip the Army and Navy and partly to become the " Arsenal of Democracy " for Britain and other countries. With his Four Freedoms speech in January 1941, which proposed four fundamental freedoms that people "everywhere in the world" ought to enjoy: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear, Roosevelt laid out the case for an Allied battle for basic rights throughout the world. Assisted by Willkie, Roosevelt won Congressional approval of the Lend-Lease program, which directed massive military and economic aid to Britain and China. In sharp contrast to the loans of World War I, there would be no repayment. As Roosevelt took a firmer stance against Japan, Germany, and Italy, American isolationists such as Charles Lindbergh and the America First Committee vehemently attacked Roosevelt as an irresponsible warmonger. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Roosevelt agreed to extend Lend-Lease to the Soviets. Thus, Roosevelt had committed the U.S. to the Allied side with a policy of "all aid short of war". By July 1941, Roosevelt authorized the creation of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs to counter perceived propaganda efforts in Latin America by Germany and Italy.

In August 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill conducted a secret bilateral meeting in which they drafted the Atlantic Charter, conceptually outlining global wartime and postwar goals. This would be the first of several wartime conferences; Churchill and Roosevelt would meet ten more times in person. Though Churchill pressed for an American declaration of war against Germany, Roosevelt believed that Congress would reject any attempt to bring the U.S. into the war. In September, a German submarine fired on the U.S. destroyer Greer, and Roosevelt declared that the U.S. Navy would assume an escort role for Allied convoys in the Atlantic as far east as Britain and would fire upon German ships or U-boats of the Kriegsmarine if they entered the U.S. Navy zone. This "shoot on sight" policy brought the U.S. Navy into direct conflict with German submarines and was favored by Americans by a margin of 2-to-1.
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