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Brits and fdr provoked 1941 war pretext for US

Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
   http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents/video/fdr_21.html#v122

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents/video/fdr_21.html#v122

The Juggler (15:25)

Roosevelt and Winston Churchill create Lend-Lease, a plan to help Great Britain fight the Germans, despite Congressional isolationism.

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Narrator: Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and leftists alike campaigned to keep America out of another European war. Charles Lindbergh expressed the concerns of many Americans across the country.

CHARLES LINDBERGH: I say it is they who are undermining the principles of democracy when they demand that we take a course to which more than 80 percent of our citizens are opposed.

Narrator: In fact, Lindbergh exaggerated, yet the American people were deeply divided, and Roosevelt, sending their indecision, was stymied. "It's a terrible thing," he later told an aide, "to look over your shoulder when you're trying to lead and to find no one there."

.....

Robert Dallek: What Churchill needed to do was to convince Roosevelt that Britain was not going to give up, and what Roosevelt was saying to Churchill was, "I understand what your needs are, I understand the importance of the danger to us, both of us, from Adolf Hitler, and we're going to stand together against this monster."

.....

Narrator: As the two men parted, a message flashed from the British battleship to the American cruiser: "God bless the president and the people of the United States."

When Churchill returned to England, he told his Cabinet that Roosevelt had made a secret promise that he would wage war against Nazi Germany but not declare it. Everything was to be done to force an incident.


http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents/video/fdr_22.html#v123

America Goes to War (13:12)

Provoking an incident with a German U-boat, FDR leads the U.S. into World War II. The Japanese attack the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor.

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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.


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