Original subtitles

We are in the midst of an emergency

at least equal to that of war.

When you talk like that, you sound like a president, Frank.

Franklin Roosevelt was elected in an hour of crisis.

Our fundamental economic infrastructure

had fallen apart.

This nation asks for action and action now.

FDR believed in bold experimentation.

Big programs were being passed, boom, boom, boom, boom.

We all know what we're up against,

but now it's our turn to fix it.

Franklin Roosevelt was the president

who had to face the Great Depression and World War II.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

He was ambitious and active, incredibly privileged,

but he suffered.

You've contracted infantile paralysis.

And he's had setbacks.

But through pain can come wisdom.

The country's on the edge of a cliff,

but we're not going to let it fall.

What do you plan to do with this power?

He has a vision to change the very soul of America.

I pledge myself to a New Deal for the American people.

American democracy was literally

resting on his shoulders.

This was zero hour.

[speaking german]

Get everybody in here.

He knew that he needed to project real strength.

He is the dealer and hope for the entire free world.

An invasion of France is courting disaster.

He took risks.

Again and again you see these moments of great daring.

ROOSEVELT: Success may not come with rushing speed,

but we shall return again and again.

Roosevelt led the grand alliance to victory

over fascism.

This was a tumultuous, complicated period of time.

It's a mistake to think that he somehow got everything right,

but there was something about that voice,

there was something about that smile.

That empathy, that humility, that resilience,

all those qualities that FDR just had triumphantly

built into his character.

By 1935, FDR is fighting the great economic depression

with the New Deal.

Well, did they start construction for the housing

yet?

He pushes forward with a whole new set of New Deal policies.

The White House had become the most

exclusive residential hotel you could possibly imagine.

Missy LeHand, his secretary, lived right there

with the family in the White House.

Tell the boss I'll be right there.

Louis Howe did as well.

Congress vote yet?

Not yet.

He wants you to rest.

People saw Louis Howe as a rumpled, gruff, unimpressive

person, but inside that person was political genius,

and FDR really relied on him.

The Senate is voting on the Social Security Bill now.

We'll know any moment.

Missy LeHand is his close confidant.

She basically comes to control access to the president

like a chief of staff.

Still waiting on the Senate, Boss.

The house did their job.

Now the Senate better not drop the ball.

Some of them have it in for me.

Harry Hopkins is involved with starting

a number of the big New Deal agencies,

and he became FDR's closest advisor.

Up until that point, people were essentially on their own.

Private charities, states could attend to the most vulnerable,

but the government was really there to get out of the way.

FDR is challenging the core assumption

that government has no role in helping the common man.

The federal government is now going to take responsibility

for helping people, for helping farmers, for helping banks,

for helping individuals, putting them back to work.

The New Deal rebuilt the infrastructure of America

at the same time as providing work for people

and giving them back the dignity and mastery of work.

It was an incredible accomplishment.

He created a sense of energy.

There was a sense of possibility, a sense of we're

trying this, that, and the other thing.

And Social Security was really important for FDR.

He felt enormous empathy for the older people

in that stage of their lives.

He's basically saying, we're going to create a system that

when you're old, .

You're not going to be destitute an enormous percentage

of the population who were over 65 at that point

lived in abject poverty.

But that Social Security Act was pretty radical at its time.

Many people denounced it as socialism.

They vote yet?

Louis, you should be in bed.

I'm fine.

Passed on a voice vote.

Ready to sign.

Congratulations, sir.

Thank you, sir.

That's it, Frank.

Social Security is law.

It'll change the lives of millions of Americans.

It's only the beginning.

The Republicans are going to beat you over the head with

this in '36.

And the Supreme Court wants to throw out the New Deal.

Oh, they'll have to wait in line.

It's going to be a tough campaign.

You know what to do.

Let them have it.

FDR changes the very character of what government should

be responsible for in the creation of a social safety

net.

He says, if the American people fall,

the government will catch you.

This is a vision that changes the very soul of America

and persists to this day.

Social Security almost entirely eliminated poverty

among the elderly.

It instantly reoriented the covenant between the state

and the people.

As the American people are benefiting from a stronger,

bigger American government and presidency

than they have in the past, there's also this concern of,

is he going to be too big?

Is he going to be too powerful?

It's a mistake to think that Franklin Roosevelt was

this majestic figure who somehow got everything right.

He was an active, tough politician.

He had active, tough opponents.

Newspaper publishers didn't like him.

The elite felt that FDR wasn't doing what

an American government is supposed to do,

which is help the wealthy.

Roosevelt was allowing a portion of the population

that they had very little respect for to gain power,

to gain a voice.

They called him a traitor to his class

and this sort of thing, because Roosevelt

should have been one of them.

He was born into money.

I think polio changed him fundamentally.

It taught him some of the virtues that he may not

have had naturally.

It taught him humility, as he himself said.

He began to feel that he could connect to other people

to whom fate had also dealt and unkind hand.

He was somebody who loved people, who

had a sense of social justice, and he gravitated

towards ordinary people.

It was just his heart and soul.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, the former Supreme Court justice,

famously said, FDR has a second class intellect

but a first rate temperament.

And he meant temperament is character.

Temperament's the way you treat other people.

It's the way you relate to problems.

It's your confidence.

It's your optimism.

Which is another case of a dream coming true.

It's all those qualities that FDR just had triumphantly

built into his character.

In the 1930s, as Americans are still dealing with the Great

Depression at home, things abroad

seem to be getting quite perilous.

Hitler has seized the Rhineland.

Italy under Mussolini has invaded Ethiopia.

Japan over in the Pacific has invaded China.

And all the while also, the Spanish Civil War is raging.

Franklin Roosevelt understood the Great Depression

as a crisis for democracy.

He is looking across the ocean and he's

seeing that when people have nothing

and they're not being given anything,

it is very easy to slide into dictatorship.

So for him, getting the state to take action

really is about saving democracy.

It's not about obliterating capitalism.

It's about saving it.

NEWSREADER: As election time draws near,

President Roosevelt speeds up his campaign

with a whirlwind trip covering 5,000 miles and 11 states.

During the 1936 presidential campaign for his second term,

FDR believed we needed a whole new partnership

between government and the people,

and it had come partway, but it had to outlast the Depression.

It had to be the permanent part of American life.

Big business was very actively campaigning against him.

They were trying to find ways to undermine him because they

feared that he was going to shift the balance of power.

They attack him personally, they attack his wife,

they attack everything he tries to do.

During this campaign, FDR talks about these economic royalists,

how they hate him, that there has never

been such a powerful coalition directing their hatred

towards a candidate before.

And I welcome their hatred.

He is mad at what they're saying about him,

he's mad at the criticisms being called,

Franklin Stalino Roosevelt, and being called

a communist and a socialist.

And at the Democratic National Convention,

he is really loaded for bear.

He's saying, I welcome the challenge.

Let's have this fight.

You want to fight with me?

Let's have this fight.

[cheering]

Hi, Jim.

FDR was giving the acceptance speech

at the Democratic convention, and he

had to be helped by his son Jimmy holding on to his arm.

There are all these fears that if people saw weakness in him,

they might discredit everything that he could do,

that any challenge to his physical strength

means the country is not strong.

Mr. President.

Adwell, how lovely to see you.

Pick me up.

Clean me up.

Don't step on my goddamn speech.

You OK?

I'm fine.

[cheering]

He said that that fall was the hardest few moments

in his life.

It was one of the few moments where you really see that anger

and frustration come out.

There's an outer FDR that the public sees as he's waving

and smiling, and then there's the inner FDR who's terrified

that at any moment he could fall over.

He was in pain from these steel braces on his leg.

But he got up, gets to the podium, and not a word

was said about his having fallen.

Not a picture was taken of him falling.

Photographers had a code of honor

that they would never show him in his wheelchair

with his braces.

I mean, here he's now president of the United States,

sprawled on the floor, speech rolled out,

and somehow able to put that together and get up

there and deliver one of the famous speeches

of American history.

To some generations, much is given.

Of the generations, much is expected.

This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

[cheering]

There was a huge challenge that

was facing this generation, and it wasn't simply getting

through the Depression.

He wanted to make an economy that would work from the ground

up rather than the top down, and that meant

changing the rules of the game.

It meant expanding the New Deal programs

and creating an economic system that was fairer, that would

have a safety net put under it.

We are fighting, fighting to save a great and precious form

of government for ourselves and for the world.

And so I join with you.

I am enlisted for for the duration of the war.

There's no question I think, when you read oral histories,

people felt that FDR had saved their lives,

saved their children's life, given them a chance

to go forward.

The public showed their gratitude in 1936

when he won it overwhelming victory.

Roosevelt wins everything except for two states.

It is the most dominant win of any modern president.

That we've seen thus far

After this huge victory, he feels

like I've got to be able to do whatever I need to do now

to keep the country moving forward.

When you feel that you are the person who's leading the people

and that you have a destiny, hubris can result from that.

And he decides to change the nature of the Supreme Court,

which had, in fact, been throwing out a lot of his New

Deal legislation.

And FDR was furious.

He called in a bunch of old men who weren't aware of what

was happening in this country.

Roosevelt's philosophy of political life

was you figure out your way around the obstacles in front

of you.

And at that point at the beginning of 1937,

the principal obstacle is the Supreme Court.

So Roosevelt began to talk in earnest with his attorney

general, Homer Cummings.

What could be done about the Supreme Court,

given that they are appointed for life?

So Cummings secretly within the Justice Department

began what he would refer to as a project of great importance

to push the old fossils off the court.

He's going to add five or six new justices to it.

Any justice who's over the age of 70

is going to have another judge appointed

to help with his workload.

The balance would be righted on the Supreme Court

and he could move on with the New Deal

and on with the recovery.

Very few people knew that he had been planning on this.

The proposal had been drafted in secret.

Big story for you today.

It's all spelled out in that document,

but no one leaves with it till I'm done.

It's a good thing we brought our lunches, sir.

Oh, I wouldn't want you to starve, Joe.

Oh, wait a minute.

Mr. President, this bill changes the entire makeup

of the Supreme Court.

Mr. President, this bill changes the entire makeup

of the Supreme Court.

The benefit of keeping things close to the vest

is that you don't have everybody in the world picking at it,

pulling it apart, and it keeps people interested in what you

have to say when you finally do say something.

But the Supreme Court, it's like, well, wait a minute.

Isn't this just another way for you to get more justices

on your side?

Is it even legal?

I'm not proposing anything that has not been done before.

Congress has changed the number of justices six times.

So you're going to force them to retire?

People aren't going to like this.

Look here, people voted for me because I have new ideas.

All I want to do is give people a chance

to get what they voted for.

Who's really behind this?

[people shouting questions]

What do you plan to do with this power?

The court packing episode was the biggest political mistake

of his life.

The problem was when he sprung it on the Congress

and sprung it on the American people, no one bought it.

For the first time, Roosevelt's golden touch

failed him, and Congress pushed back.

They did not let him pack the Supreme Court.

He'd gone a bridge too far.

He'd really become arrogant in a way that he had not before,

and this was a blow to him.

His power comes from the people, and he can't outrun his supply

lines, and he became more politically cautious

as a result.

It is really astonishing, when you

look at the political critique of FDR

in the late 1930s, the number of his critics

that referred to him as a dictator in the making.

He is going to make himself king,

he's going to seize all power if we don't stop him.

By this time, the economic instability

that had been felt in America had, of course, been shared

by countries all over the world, leading

in those other countries to political instability as well,

and Roosevelt is aware that this is looming abroad.

HITLER: [speaking german]

FDR spoke German and he could understand what Hitler

was actually saying.

And he was horrified by his vision for what the Third

Reich was going to do.

Adolf Hitler believed freedom was irrelevant.

He believed in the militarization of the economy.

He believed in the oppression of people

like the Jewish population in Germany.

He believed in the expansion, of taking control

of other countries to get more resources.

He believed that he was the only person who could accomplish

the great 1,000 year Reich.

Franklin Roosevelt believed the exact opposite.

He believed that the American people had a right to freedom

and democracy and that the American economy had

to be rebuilt to protect democracy itself.

The future of democracy was at risk,

and FDR was determined to save it.

Roosevelt was, by conviction, an internationalist.

He believed that what happened in the world

beyond American shores would have an effect on what happened

in the United States.

But he couldn't bring the American people yet along

to care.

They felt protected by their oceans.

They just wanted to focus on the problems that were here.

They'd been burned by World War I, what had come out

of that presumed war to save democracy when things only

seemed to have gotten worse.

And he said, it's a scary thing to see you're leading a parade

and you look back and nobody's following.

In the late 1930s, at the peak of isolationism,

Congress passed several neutrality acts that really

bound the hands of any president that they couldn't unilaterally

do things that would tend to pull the United States back

into another world war.

Europe has been hoping that Hitler will just go away.

The British and the French allow Hitler

to reoccupy the Rhineland, they allow him to occupy Austria.

So in 1938, as Hitler is expanding the Reich

and taking over neighboring countries,

the prime minister of England, Neville Chamberlain,

decides that the best policy is to appease Hitler.

If they can just sort of give him these territories

that he claims he wants, he's promised

that he won't take any more.

We regard the agreement signed last night as symbolic

of the desire of our two peoples never

to go to war with one another again.

[cheering]

Of course, Hitler has made promises in the past.

Winston Churchill has been telling

everyone who would listen, and even those who wouldn't,

about the threat he sees in Germany for years.

Winston Churchill had been the first Lord of the Admiralty

in World War I, but had been forced out

and had essentially been in political exile

for a number of years.

Churchill's regarded as eccentric.

People see Churchill as being this very bellicose, verbose

guy who always wants to go to war.

And even though Roosevelt did not especially like Churchill

the first time he met him during World War I,

he recognizes that Churchill has had great courage in speaking

up for what he believed was right for years.

FDR hated these dictatorships and what they were doing,

but he was the president of a country that was still

in the Great Depression.

This was nowhere near his priority number one.

But, by 1938, it was clear that Hitler might

want to dominate the world.

And the most horrific aspect of Hitler's regime

is his persecution of the Jews.

And Germany, the loser in World War I,

had been stuck with an enormous reparations bill,

and that was a perfect opportunity for somebody

to come in and say, who do you resent?

Who's to blame for this?

And Adolf Hitler said, the Jews were to blame.

In November 1938, Hitler launches Kristallnacht,

where his brown-shirted thugs destroyed synagogues,

businesses, incarcerate hundreds of Jews,

and send them off to ghettos.

But nobody wants to allow the Jewish refugees

into their country.

You cannot overstate how antisemitic America was at this

point.

Despite FDR's direct instructions to the State

Department to expedite Jewish visa requests

in these countries under German control,

the State Department, filled with antisemites, slow

walks it.

Without a question, it's heartbreaking

to imagine what might have happened if FDR had earlier

on been able to get more Jewish refugees into the country

before Hitler closed the doors forever.

The plight of refugees really tugged at the heartstrings

of Eleanor Roosevelt. She was always the champion

of the underdog, the champion of those

who were suffering the most.

She could be the agitator, always pushing him to do what

he couldn't do pragmatically because he

had to be the politician.

I don't think Franklin would have

been the kind of politician he was without Eleanor.

She would push the envelope.

He always said about her that she

was a welcome thorn in his side, always willing to argue

with him, always willing to question his assumptions.

But men would write in to Franklin,

can't you muzzle that wife of yours?

Can't you put her on a chain?

What's the matter with you?

She is constantly moving about the country,

supporting various causes, speaking

to women's organizations, reform organizations.

She gives public radio addresses.

These are all firsts.

No first lady has ever done anything like this,

and she takes controversial positions.

At this point, she's engaged with the African-American

community in ways that a lot of people did not expect her to be

or want her to be.

FDR was glad to have Eleanor in public talking

about civil rights.

It diverted attention from the fact

that FDR himself was never willing to antagonize the White

South to the point that he would never support even a bill

against lynching.

He needs Southern segregationist Democrats

in his corner if he's going to get the United States on a more

prepared footing for what appears to be

an impending war in Europe.

In 1938, Eleanor travels to Birmingham for the opening

of the Southern Conference on Human Welfare,

and the public safety official is

none other than the violent segregationist Eugene Bull

Connor.

Birmingham is segregated, ma'am.

You should take your seat on that side.

Mrs. Roosevelt, ma'am, you can't sit here.

I already am, Officer.

Ma'am, the law says I've got to arrest anybody who doesn't

comply, even you?

Really?

Appreciate it.

You've got to move to the White section.

I'm fine where I am.

Because she is a lightning rod and unapologetic about being

a lightning rod, it makes the work

that FDR does particularly as he is negotiating with Southern

Democrats all the more difficult.

--welcoming the Southern Conference for Human Welfare.

In the summer of 1939, FDR would still

like to stay out of war.

But it's becoming clear that appeasing Hitler doesn't work,

that Hitler is insatiable, and that the next step is going

to be into Poland.

And that's where Britain and France draw the line

and say, well, if you invade Poland

and try to take that territory back, we'll declare war.

Roosevelt is deeply concerned about the rising tension

in Europe and the inevitability of a big war.

[speaking german]

So one of the things he decides

to do is to invite the king and queen of England

to come to the United States, because if Hitler does,

in fact, take over Europe, then England will

be the last bulwark of defense.

At this point, the Americans are not particularly

fond of the royal family.

There's a large body of opinion in the United States

that's anti-British, that basically says the British

sucked us into World War I.

We had been duped.

We had been lured into a European war

and now they're back at it again.

So in a stroke of absolute brilliant political theater,

FDR invites the king and queen of England, the epitome

of aristocratic formality, to his home

in Hyde Park, New York.

Your Majesty, I wonder if you might swap partners so you can

meet a few of our neighbors.

Of course.

And he arranges a hot dog picnic.

My second.

Excellent.

And beer is perfect with it.

He wants to show a more human side of the royal family.

He also, of course, invites the press.

Might I say something dreadfully honest?

Nothing would make me happier.

I don't care for hot dogs.

Your secret is safe with me.

You know, Mr. President, I have been tasked with telling

you that we are going to need a great deal of assistance

if things go poorly, especially these devilish u-boats

threatening our ships.

Don't think I don't want to give you all we have, show

Hitler we intend to back you, but first I've got to tackle

the Congress, make them see we have to choose a side,

your side.

Mr. President, Your Majesty, how do you like our hot dogs?

They're delicious.

I've had two.

Roosevelt understood where the cameras were going to be

and they understood how this would play in the press.

So if the president of the United States

is smiling it up with the monarch of the United Kingdom,

that's going to play.

Roosevelt managed to weaponize for good his essential

deviousness.

He was very skilled at suggesting that he was in tune

with an isolationist nation while nudging us ever closer

to an interventionist stance.

The polling shows that popular support for the king and queen,

the increased and popular support

for the anti fascist forces also increased.

In August of 1939, Stalin agrees to a non-aggression pact

with Hitler.

They secretly agree to split Poland in exchange

for not invading each other.

Russia will take the eastern half

and Germany will take the western half.

Everybody is stunned by the Hitler-Stalin pact.

Now we're faced with possibly this sort of Soviet-German

juggernaut.

If not in alliance with each other,

at least they're going to let each other run.

The call came on September 1st, 1939

when Hitler invaded Poland.

On that occasion, FDR said, well, it's come at last,

God help us all.

And two days later, England and France

will declare war on Germany.

This is the start of the worst, most cataclysmic

military conflict in human history.

Germany has come up with a new form of war, blitzkrieg,

this lightning war.

And the blitzkrieg gave way to what was called the Sitzkrieg.

Germany is in occupation of Poland,

but nothing is happening, and everybody is waiting to see

what's going to happen next.

The phoney war, which is what they call the period of time

between September 1st and May 10th, 1940

came to a sudden end.

In one week's time, Germany rolled through Western Europe.

Holland, Luxembourg, Belgium all surrendered.

Hitler invades France on May 10th, 1940,

the same day that Churchill is named prime minister.

Even though the British throw an expeditionary army

onto the continent, soon they are overwhelmed

and the Germans will drive them to the coastline.

As the war in Europe is turning increasingly dismal,

FDR is confronted with a choice.

Does he step down as president or does

he run for an unprecedented third term?

Bad, all bad.

Calle fell last night.

Is there no hope for France?

If the British regroup--

France will still fall.

So what are you going to do?

Everybody needs to know, Franklin.

Will you run again?

Surely you know if you're going to run.

The situation in France changes everything.

There's no guarantee the British can hang on alone.

Why don't you say what you mean?

You want to run.

Why does it have to be you?

Babs, it's not as simple as--

Let me at least say what I mean.

I don't want you to.

Eight years is enough.

I've taken the country this far.

If the people want me, I'll not abandon them now.

In May of 1940, the Germans push across Europe

and they drive the British to the French coastline

and then to just a few pockets, one of which is Dunkirk.

NEWSREADER: Here in these scenes off the beaches of Dunkirk,

you have one of the dramatic pictures of the war.

The British and French armies of the north

were facing annihilation.

The English troops evacuated successfully from Dunkirk.

The German blitzkrieg had swept across Europe,

leaving England standing alone.

So it was a totally rational question

to wonder whether democracy could triumph over autocracy.

And Churchill said, never has a nation

been so naked before its foe.

CHURCHILL: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears,

and sweat.

FDR's heart is very much with Churchill and very much

with England, and he wants to do something to help them.

So he turns to George Marshall,

chief of the general staff.

Marshall is seen as being sincere, honest, credible,

trustworthy.

If Britain falls, we believe Hitler could try for Greenland.

And we are next.

Yes, sir, and we're not ready.

Germany has 7 million men in uniform.

We have a fraction of that.

And it's not just about men, sir.

It's planes and tanks and guns.

We've got a long way to go and no time.

President Roosevelt knew that in May of 1940,

the US stood only 18th in military power.

It became 17th only when Holland surrendered to Germany.

We had 500 fighter planes compared

to 5,000 in the German army.

We had more horses than tanks.

We had let the military establishment deteriorate

after World War I with the focus on the Depression.

We have to start producing more arms immediately.

But the way I see it, we need to send more

of what we produce to Britain.

No, sir.

We'd be throwing our guns away, and our boys

will be fighting storm troopers with broomsticks.

It would be a disaster of our making.

You mean of my own making?

I appreciate your point, General,

but we have to help Britain.

We can't.

The law is clear.

We can sell them arms for cash, and we can only give them

military gear if it's surplus, and we have no surplus to give.

Well, that's it, General.

That's it.

Surplus.

I want you to declare every gun and bullet you can a surplus

and get it over there.

You mean to say it's surplus?

Yes.

I'd have to go to church for a week

if I declared our weapons surplus when they're not.

Go to church for a month if you have to,

General, but get it done.

Franklin Roosevelt's particular strength as a leader

was his ability to assess a situation

and figure out what he could do, what incremental steps he could

make to move things forward.

So what he did was to designate a lot of weapons

as surplus and get them sent to England,

but several of his generals told him,

if those weapons are found after Germany captures England,

which we think they will in six months' time,

you will be not only impeached, you'll be hung by a lamppost.

That's what he had to fight against.

He knew he had to get America mobilized to produce

the ships and the tanks and the weapons and the planes

that we needed.

By 1940, he has gotten the machinery

rolling so that factories are transforming from cars

into planes and tanks.

We had that vision that something had to be done.

By this time, Hitler has crushed France.

The Germans, the Japanese, and the Italians

signed the Tripartite Pact in September 1940.

So after knocking out France, Hitler turns his attention

to Britain.

NEWSREADER: Everyone is anxious to get home before darkness

falls, before our nightly visitors arrive.

[siren blaring]

The Germans launched this air assault against Britain,

the so-called Battle of Britain.

It's continuous bombing in the city of London

to try to destroy British morale.

And Churchill, of course, emerges as this great leader

with some of the greatest wartime speeches ever given.

CHURCHILL: We shall fight on the beaches.

We shall fight on the landing grounds.

We shall fight in the fields and in the streets.

We shall never surrender.

And FDR sees in Churchill a kindred spirit, knowing

that I can work with him.

Together we can be a partnership that will defeat Hitler.

It's hard to imagine whether FDR

would have run for a third term had war not broken out

in Europe.

There's real concern about whether or not

he wants to look like the authoritarian figure they're

fighting against.

The framers did not want a king.

Washington himself was concerned about serving more than two

terms, and now we're talking about three terms.

He had seen what happened to Teddy Roosevelt

when he went for that third term,

that there was a wall against that.

But I think he thought that he was the only one who

had the experience of knowing how to mobilize

the American people at home through the Depression to get

the weapons and the tanks and the ships and the planes

ready to prepare us for war and to help England in the struggle

against Nazi Germany.

The news of FDR's decision to run for a third term

is not well received.

Even many Democrats turned against him,

and the Republicans were undermining

the people's confidence in FDR.

The president has courted a war for which this country is

hopelessly unprepared and which it emphatically does not want.

At the time of the 1940 election,

almost every American household was divided about FDR.

Was he someone who would keep us out of war

or was this someone who, as one critic said,

will plow under every fourth American boy

after election day?

Charles Lindbergh the great aviator that

flew across the Atlantic Ocean becomes the face of what's

called the America First movement.

The doctrine that we must enter the wars of Europe

in order to defend America will be fatal to our nation.

Some of them are German Americans who

are part of the American Bund.

Many of them are Americans who have latched on to this idea

that fascism is the wave of the future.

In the late 1930s, there was a pro-Hitler rally right there

in the heart of New York City at Madison Square Garden.

That's how perilous things were.

There's a real sense that FDR could lose,

and it affects him deeply because he feels, I think,

a deep responsibility.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt decides, I will break precedent

because it is necessary.

This is about the fate of humanity, Western civilization,

and democracy in particular.

The Japanese are sweeping through the Pacific,

Europe is in chaos, England is on the verge of collapse.

It's a real dangerous moment, and FDR fears that he's not

going to win the election.

He had real doubts that night.

You really don't need to worry, FD.

You're going to win.

What if I don't?

[cheering]

That's it.

He's done it.

Four years.

Sounds like you've gotten your wish.

I have.

God help me.

After Roosevelt is successfully

reelected for a third term, he decides

he's going to take a vacation aboard a Naval ship,

and so he goes out in the Caribbean

and he sits on the deck and he goes fishing

and he looks out at the water and he just thinks.

By then England desperately needed our weapons

to fight back against Germany.

And it looks as though Hitler might very well win,

and if the Germans take control of Britain,

then Germany will reign supreme basically from Poland

to the Atlantic Ocean.

Thank you.

From Churchill.

"We can't hold out much longer."

They're broke.

Winston always exaggerates.

Yes, but this feels different.

That damn neutrality law has us in a box.

Dammit.

Lend me yours, Hank.

A moment ago, I was out of fluid,

so you let me use your lighter.

I needed it.

You let me use it.

So we give Churchill tanks and planes instead of selling them.

Last time I checked, that would be illegal too.

No, we don't give them tanks and planes.

We lend them.

FDR was canny and cunning, and he knew how to get things done

through sleight of hand, and this worked for him perfectly

on what we came to call lend-lease.

Because the Allies can't pay for anything,

we can lend them military hardware,

we can lend them supplies, and at some unspecified point

in the future, they can pay for them.

And he has a wonderful metaphor for it.

He says, if your neighbor's house catches on fire,

you're going to loan him your garden hose to put it out,

and you're not going to charge for it.

When they started the lend-lease debate

in the Congress, it wasn't clear it could get through,

but Roosevelt was always moving step by step to get

the American public educated as to where they had to go.

First, in late December, he gives a fireside chat.

We must have more ships, more guns, more planes,

more of everything.

We must be the great arsenal of democracy.

He said, if we produce these ships and tanks and weapons

and planes and got them to England

and England was able to fight back against Germany, maybe

that would prevent us from getting into the war.

And then on January 6 1941, FDR

is delivering a State of the Union,

and he centers his speech around values, these four principles,

these four freedoms.

And he says, everyone is entitled to freedom of speech,

freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

Where do you stand?

Who are we going to be?

And when you put it that way, then of course

you're going to bring the country with you.

And it worked.

Congress said yes.

And so this allows for billions of dollars of greatly

needed supplies not only to go to Great Britain

but go to many other Allied powers

to be able to withstand the onslaught from the Axis powers.

Because of FDR's leadership, lend-lease was able to really

have an enormous impact in that war.

June of 1941, Hitler orders German troops

to attack the Soviet Union.

NEWSREADER: More than 2 million men plunged into a front 2,000

miles long.

Before all this began, the United States

was suspicious of the communists of the Soviet Union,

but now the Soviet Union is fighting against Germany,

and that changes things.

Churchill famously says, if Hitler invaded hell,

I'd support the devil.

But how can we give arms or aid to Soviet Russia, where Joseph

Stalin purges, kills, exiles hundreds of thousands

so he'd reign supreme?

FDR doesn't know much about Stalin.

Stalin's crimes are not well publicized.

And so FDR sends Harry Hopkins, his great friend and envoy

and all purpose aide to meet Stalin and take the measure

of him, and Hopkins comes back and reports to FDR

that Stalin is somebody you can do business with.

He's not presenting him as the great terrorist,

the great killer.

And so FDR is going to argue immediately to extend

lend-lease aid to the Soviet Union.

As German armies advanced east,

they committed unspeakable genocidal war crimes

against Jews as they found them in Poland, Belarus, Ukraine,

parts of the Soviet Union, and most of these killings

were done by special units of SS Gestapo personnel, who

were killing Jews with bullets, killing them any way that they

could.

At a meeting outside of Berlin, which

takes all of about 90 minutes including breakfast,

the Germans decide that the final solution

to the Jewish question will be the mass murders of Jews.

From the summer of 1941, FDR and Churchill

decide it's time for them to meet face to face,

so he announces at a press conference

that he's going to be cruising up the Atlantic seaboard

in the presidential yacht.

Sure enough, he waves to the people on the shoreline,

and that night he's transferred to the USS Augusta

and heads up for a secret rendezvous with Winston

Churchill in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland.

Churchill, meanwhile, crosses the German submarine-infested

North Atlantic to meet with Roosevelt. The Augusta is

at anchor, and literally out of the fog

emerges this great British battleship, the HMS Prince

of Wales.

It was an incredible moment that these two leaders were

in this place at that time .

Glad to have you aboard, Mr. Churchill.

At long last, Mr. President.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: The fate of the world

did depend on this relationship between the two men.

We're ready to carry on the load if we must.

I'm committed to sending everything you need.

In my view, you're fighting for all of us now.

Of course, I'd rather have a declaration of war from America

now and no supplies for six months than double the supply

and no declaration.

You know, Winston, that Congress declares war, not me,

and I'm on thin ice with them.

There's nothing I'd like better than to kick Hitler

in the teeth, you know that, but timing is everything.

Yes.

I know.

Churchill was the suitor.

FDR was the pursued.

Winston Churchill once said, "No lover ever

studied the whims of his mistress

as I did those of Franklin Roosevelt."

Churchill was not an elusive figure.

You knew what he was thinking, sometimes to a fault.

FDR was ironic, flexible, slippery in a way,

but they needed each other.

What about Japan?

Suppose they could attack one of our colonies in Asia?

Or one of yours/

America doesn't have colonies.

The Philippines, Guam.

Call them what you like.

Territory under your control.

And FDR was incredibly frustrating to Churchill.

Churchill is fighting for his life,

for the life of constitutional democracy,

and FDR is incredibly elusive.

If Japan does something like that,

I'll have to respond, of course, but it's

my opinion that would be the wrong war at the wrong time

and the wrong place.

I agree.

Europe comes first.

Churchill's dream since he was a little boy and his ideas

of heroism are often about saving something from collapse,

about saving the world as he knows it from disaster.

Meanwhile, Roosevelt is not an imperialist.

He is someone who is extremely idealistic politically,

and rather than wanting to save something historic in the past,

he really is looking to the future

and he wants to build something new.

Then the next morning, Roosevelt gets himself over

to the Prince of Wales ship.

The sailors are all there, the British and American sailors.

It's an incredible moment.

[singing]

And they sing hymns together, and somehow that

got to Roosevelt. The same language,

the same values, the same hymns.

Afterward, he turns to his son and said,

if nothing else had happened while we were here,

that would have cemented us.

The two of them become more than partners,

more than allies.

They become friends in a very deep way.

They share this passion for Naval history.

They share this ability to understand the global picture.

FDR said to Churchill, it's fun

to be in the same decade with you.

Churchill said about FDR, meeting

him was like opening your first bottle of champagne,

in Churchill's case of the day.

They disagree fundamentally on colonialism and the fate

of the British Empire, but they draft the Atlantic Charter,

which is this extraordinary statement that says,

here are the values that we believe are worth fighting for.

I think it was the most important diplomatic friendship

in the history of the world.

Roosevelt and Churchill were unique.

Their challenges were unique, and they rose to the occasion

together.

Summer of 1941 is a difficult time for FDR

because Miss LeHand, his closest assistant,

suffers a terrible stroke and has to leave the White House

and go into recuperation.

She'd been with him since he ran for vice president in 1920.

Then in September, his beloved mother Sara dies,

and this is an enormous blow to FDR.

Sara had been the rock for him for his entire life.

And he was with her when she died.

And the extraordinary thing is that five minutes later,

a giant oak at the Hyde Park estate collapsed on the ground.

Nobody knew why.

There was no wind.

And the thought was that giant oak was Sara Roosevelt.

And the thought was that giant oak was Sara Roosevelt.

We found it in your mother's room.

Thought you'd want to see.

She kept everything.

There's this extraordinary moment

when he's going through all the mementos

that she had kept for him over the years,

remembering, I'm sure, all those days that she had been

the center of his life.

I think she was the source of the confidence that he had,

and now she was gone.

He needed companionship.

Here's somebody who can't go out into the world

and he can't relax by playing golf or playing tennis.

He has to bring that world to him.

FDR loved and needed female adoration

throughout his adult life.

He was very dependent and very in need of people

like Missy LeHand, who idolized him.

So eventually this is when Lucy Mercer starts coming back

to the White House.

FDR broke his promise to Eleanor.

He continued to see Lucy.

She came to the White House under a pseudonym

when Eleanor was not there.

Not often, but to see her in the company of other people

as the pressures on him escalated.

People often focus on what was going on

in Europe, the rise of Mussolini, the rise of Hitler.

But while all this was happening,

there was a war playing out in the Pacific.

Japan had gone into Chinese Manchuria in 1931, turned it

into a puppet state.

They'd invaded China proper in 1937.

And then in 1940, they started pressing down

into French Indo-China.

The United States definitely does not want to provoke Japan

militarily, but they also want to be able to sanction Japan

for its behavior.

And so by 1941, they freeze Japanese assets

in the United States.

They also embargo supplies of gasoline.

These are pretty serious sanctions,

especially for an island nation like Japan

that depends on almost all of its fuel

coming in from the outside.

The tensions between Japan and America are very high,

and FDR is desperate to prevent this war from happening

because he feels Hitler is the greater threat.

Gentlemen, what have you got for me?

Mr. President, we have intelligence

which suggests the Japanese fleet is on the move.

What's the target?

It could be Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore.

Will they hit any of our bases?

If they go for us, it'd probably

be our base in the Philippines.

Let's make one more offer.

If they stop the aggression in Indo-China

and withdraw their troops on the mainland,

we'll end the embargo.

I want it clear that we made every effort to stop this.

All clear.

Keep watching.

I'll get coffee.

It's a beautiful day.

It's an early morning.

It's a Sunday.

Most people, either military or civilian, are still in bed.

And it seems like another placid day in Hawaii in the Pacific.

The United States does have many indications that something

is going to happen.

They've broken the Japanese codes.

They know that the Japanese ambassadors are going

to come to Washington at a very specific time on December 7th

to present their rejection of FDR's final proposal.

And therefore we should be on alert, because something's

going to happen.

But the Japanese start planning the attack on Pearl Harbor

long before the breakdown in relations.

They're going to keep radio silence.

Six aircraft carriers, 33 ships, 414 aircraft.

They're going to cover 3,500 miles worth of northern Pacific

Ocean and arrive about 200 miles off the northern part of Hawaii

on the morning of December 7th.

6 o'clock in the morning, they're

going to launch 189 planes in a first wave.

Lieutenant, something's happening.

They keep coming, sir.

There's a squadron of B-17 replacements due from

California.

This must be them.

Relax.

Pearl Harbor at this point houses the great majority

of the Pacific fleet.

Its majority of its destroyers, its battleships.

Jeez, you guys hear that?

[plane engines approaching]

FDR is sitting in his study with his stamps.

He's there with his close advisor

Harry Hopkins, who lives in the White House.

[phone rings]

Yes?

Knox, what is it?

No.

They've attacked Pearl Harbor.

That can't be right.

[siren wailing]

It must be a mistake.

The Japanese do not have the guts.

Or they have while their so-called diplomats sitting

with our secretary of state.

Get everybody in here.

There were so many blunders at Pearl Harbor,

like we bumped into a Japanese midget submarine

before the attack and thought nothing of it.

Our radar stations on Pearl Harbor

picked up the incoming first wave of Japanese fighters

and dismissed it.

The Japanese see that the harbor is filled with sitting

ducks, these great vessels filled with crewmembers, filled

with ammunition, and they're all tied up

and they're all right next to each other.

So it's like shooting fish in a barrel.

They're attacking with a second wave right now.

How many?

It's battleship row.

They hit them all.

Eight sunk or incapacitated.

The Arizona lost with all hands.

Why in god's name were they all tied up in dock?

Given how surprised they were and how ill-prepared they were,

the Americans really put up a pretty brave fight.

The one great failure of Japanese intelligence

is that they don't know the aircraft carriers aren't there,

so the three American carriers end up escaping this attack.

But it's too little too late.

18 ships are sunk or heavily damaged.

2,402 military personnel are killed.

Another 1,247 are wounded.

Nearly 60 civilians are killed.

They take out hundreds of American aircraft

and they destroyed critical airfields and wharves.

The shock was then amplified by the series of attacks.

Pearl Harbor was just one of more than 10 invasions

and attacks that happened all across the Pacific,

including Singapore and Malay and eventually the Philippines.

The Japanese seemed unstoppable.

This is the worst day in FDR's life.

He was so committed to the US Navy.

When he was Assistant Secretary of the Navy,

he was actually at the keel laying ceremony for the USS

Arizona, and now it lay on the bottom of Pearl Harbor.

After Pearl Harbor, everyone who

was in the White House on that day

said FDR exhibited a deadly calm.

While aides are running in and out with one report worse

than the next report in a panic, he just remained calm.

Eleanor said that at times of great crisis,

he could actually be an iceberg, but that anger

and those feelings were inside.

Maybe 2,000 of our boys dead.

More than 100 planes lost.

God knows how many ships.

You cannot blame yourself.

It was on my watch.

[phone rings]

Hello?

Prime Minister Churchill.

Winston.

CHURCHILL (ON PHONE): President,

what's this about Japan?

They've attacked us at Pearl Harbor.

We're all in the same boat now.

Well, this simplifies things.

It certainly does.

Sunday, December 7th, 1941.

Late in the afternoon, he lights a cigarette,

calls Grace Tully, his secretary,

and dictates the great speech with punctuation.

Yesterday, comma, December 7th, 1941, comma,

a date which will live in world history was the first line.

And he makes one of the most extraordinary edits

and he crosses out world history.

Yesterday, December 7th, 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.

When he goes to the joint session of Congress,

that anger and fury are underneath the resolve

and determination, and it was just exactly what people

needed to hear.

This is treachery.

This will not stand.

I ask that the Congress declare

that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan,

a state of war has existed between the United

States and the Japanese empire.

[applause]

Most people are completely shocked by crisis,

either economic crisis or war.

FDR was not shocked.

He'd been through the crisis of his own loss of his limbs.

Most people think they don't have the confidence to deal

with these terrible things.

FDR had a lot of confidence.

The average American went to bed on December 6th lukewarm

about the prospect of going to war.

By the afternoon of December 7th, many of them

believed what Admiral Nimitz says as he steams back

into Pearl Harbor.

When we're done with those people,

the only place that they will speak the Japanese language

is in hell.

And effectively what they do is they wake a sleeping giant.

December 8th, we declare war on Japan.

Ironically, on the 11th of December,

Germany declares war on the United States.

And then finally we can declare war on them.

That was the war he knew he needed to happen.

Roosevelt can take off the gloves

and he can lead Americans openly and honestly into war

against fascism, which was the greatest threat democracy

had ever faced.

All of our allies, they're looking at us for leadership.

It's not just about leadership within the country.

It's now leadership in the world.

Looking all around him, it would have

been easy to be pessimistic.

But Napoleon reminds us all leaders are dealers in hope,

and as an optimist, it's his responsibility

to give not only the United States hope, but also England

and the Soviet Union, who are fighting Germany.

He is the dealer in hope for the entire free world, not

an inconsequential responsibility.

One very important feature of World War II

is the sense of shared sacrifice.

It's the same spirit during the Great Depression,

that same idea that we're all in this together.

The story of America's mobilization in World War II

is really astonishing, taking an army of just a couple 100,000

and building it up to 12 million people in uniform.

It was considered cowardly and shameful and unpatriotic

for someone of military age not to try

to serve in the military, and that kind of sensibility

reached sons of very wealthy, prominent people, who all enter

the military in incredible numbers.

A large percentage of people in Congress

have sons who are fighting.

And presidents have to set an example for the country,

and I think it was important for him

to know that his four boys wanted to go into World War II.

So Elliott joins the Air Force and Franklin and John

join the Navy, and then James joins the Marines.

Franklin was particularly close to James his oldest son,

and James played a critical role during Franklin's recovery

from polio.

When do you start this new assignment?

Marine Raiders, Pa, in January.

So you ought to be a guerrilla fighter.

When you ship out, I'll keep track of you.

I don't see how.

I don't even know where I'll be sent.

Jimmy, he is the president.

I intend to keep my eye on the whereabouts of all of my sons.

There's coffee in the study.

You're all allowed one cup.

It'll be rationed soon, so you'd better get used to it.

They all want to be like their Uncle Ted,

go charging into battle.

Babs, you should be proud.

Each of our boys is doing that part.

Oh, I am proud.

What are the odds of all four coming home?

I refuse to think that way.

It's Christmastime 1941.

The United States has just suffered enormous losses

with the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Churchill

has come to meet FDR in person to have a conference together

in Washington.

Winston, are you here?

I think I've got it.

We'll call it the United Nations.

Yes, sounds good.

I like it.

Winston.

Oh, Franklin, my dear, I do beg your pardon.

No need to go.

The prime minister of Great Britain

has nothing to hide from the president of the United States.

Join me for a drink.

Churchill's coming just set everything in an uproar.

Churchill would stay up late at night with Roosevelt. They'd

stay up drinking and smoking until 2:00 AM,

and then Roosevelt would have to get up in the morning

and run the country, and Churchill would go take a nap.

They have these long hours spent together

talking about the world, two men speaking heart

to heart about the war.

Japan's main force just landed in the Philippines.

Our boys are being pushed back.

Manila's in jeopardy.

Franklin, I need your assurance

that you won't divert resources to the Pacific

from us in Europe.

I have no intention of stopping aid to Britain.

In fact, I want American forces on the ground as soon

as possible.

Hitler could take Moscow any day,

so the sooner we give Stalin relief, the better.

We'll open up a second front in France in the north or perhaps

through the Mediterranean.

What about here?

North Africa.

We're already toe to toe with the Germans there.

Where your colonies are.

Yes, but also where the Suez Canal is.

We've got to keep that pipeline out of Nazi hands.

During the last war, leadership was a muddle.

We lost time and lives.

This time, someone has got to be in charge.

We've been in this longer.

The British Empire should lead.

Winston, they're our tanks and planes.

America will lead.

And what comes out of that is the Germany first policy.

We're going to fight Germany.

That's the major threat to civilization.

But once Japan strikes Pearl Harbor, that's US territory.

If they could strike Pearl Harbor then

surely the next place is the West Coast,

so there's panic across the West Coast.

There will be a report of imminent attacks against San

Diego and Los Angeles.

There was all this prejudice against Japanese-Americans,

and when Pearl Harbor came, the reaction was intensified.

On the street, they were yelled at, spat at,

called horrible names.

Eleanor flies to San Francisco,

and she walks without military escort, without Secret Service,

in Japanese-American communities.

She said, we must not be stampeded

by the hysteria of the times.

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT: America is a nation of nations,

and therein lies our strength.

When she comes back to D.C., it's very clear that FDR is

determined to issue an executive order interning the Japanese.

Eleanor is absolutely adamantly against it.

That morning of terror I will never forget.

I was by the front window when suddenly we saw two soldiers

marching up our driveway.

They carried rifles with shiny bayonets on them.

They stomped up the front porch and with their fists

began banging on the door.

We were loaded onto trucks with other Japanese-American

families that had been gathered, and we were driven out

to Santa Anita racetrack in the outer fringes of Los Angeles.

President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066

and we were taken away.

Eleanor, how's New York?

I need to speak to Franklin.

You signed it.

Yes.

Everyone advised I should.

Not everyone.

I was just on the radio boasting like a fool

that we here in America protect the rights of all people.

This is a matter of national security.

I had no choice.

You're the president.

And I don't see you locking up any German Americans.

There are 5 million of them.

Where would I put them?

These are families you're targeting, American citizens.

Innocent people are going to be deeply affected by this.

They did this to themselves.

Look what they did to Pearl.

They pretended to negotiate while they bombed us.

But how can you shout about freedom out there

and do this at home?

It's done.

I'm going back to New York tomorrow

to see Franklin Jr. at the hospital.

Yes.

He called to let me know he doesn't miss his appendix

at all.

Yes, that sounds like him.

I expect he'll be back at sea soon enough.

The beginning of 1942, if you looked across the Pacific,

there's nothing going well.

The Japanese have taken most of the Dutch East Indies

as well as Singapore, Wake Island, Guam.

As the Japanese attack the Philippines,

the US forces will retreat down the Bataan Peninsula.

Disease is rampant.

Men are underfed.

[cheering]

There's a real problem with morale

in the country at that point.

FDR had to explain that this was a different kind of war

and that the oceans no longer protected us.

So he gave a fireside chat where he asks everybody to get a map

and spread it before them so they can follow

the progress of the war, and it's incredible

how they respond.

I mean, the guy who was the head of CS Maps Store

said he sold more maps in that one week

than he had sold in an entire year.

5, 4, 3.

This war is a new kind of war.

It is warfare in terms of every continent, every island,

every sea, every airlane in the world.

That is why I have asked you to take out and spread before you

a map of the whole Earth and follow with me.

Everybody's listening on the radio,

having their maps in front of them.

He's saying, we've been through these tough times in America

before. We've come through.

Them we're going to come to them again.

From Berlin, Rome, and Tokyo, we

have been described as a nation of weaklings.

Let them repeat that now.

Let them tell that to General MacArthur and his men.

Let them tell that to the sailors who today are hitting

hard in the far waters of the Pacific.

Let them tell that to the Marines.

And then the spirit rose.

The people believed in him.

They believed in his word.

He would say to them, you've got to trust that the government is

giving you the right information,

and I have to trust that you will hear it without flinching.

So that was the reciprocal bond that he

created with the people.

FDR knew that waiting month after month after month

with nothing but bad news coming out of the Pacific

was going to be deeply demoralizing to the American

people, and so FDR presses the military for some way

to strike at Japan, even if it's just a symbolic strike,

and that leads to the famous Doolittle Raid.

Named for Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle, one

of the great pilots in American history,

the plan is they're going to take B-25s,

these massive bombers, and they're going to fly them off

of an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Pacific

and hit Tokyo during training.

It's so secret, the men involved do not

know what their mission is.

They're going to fly treetop level,

they're going to strike Tokyo and four other cities.

They don't do much material damage.

But psychologically it's a game changer.

Maybe more psychologically damaging on the Japanese side

is Japan home island and Tokyo had been struck.

He has a press conference afterward to explain what had

happened and the reporters asked,

where do these B-25s 25s come from?

And of course he's not going to reveal that because that's

top secret information, so he rather impishly

says, Shangri-La.

He's poking fun at the Japanese,

and the Americans love it.

FDR knows a small but symbolically powerful

strike like the Doolittle Raid will have immense benefits

for the war effort.

For the Japanese, the chief impact

is they realize just how vulnerable they are.

This makes Japan more determined than ever

to keep the Americans at arm's length

so they can't penetrate into Japanese airspace and rain

bombs on Tokyo and the other cities

as they did during the Doolittle Raid.

Japan is looking for ways to finish the job that it began

at Pearl Harbor.

Midway Island, it's halfway between America and Asia,

and it was like critical base for the US Navy

to be able to provide supplies for American vessels

in the Pacific.

Japanese Admiral Yamamoto forms a huge flotilla

of about 200 vessels and sends them to Midway Island.

The Japanese believe that if they can threaten it,

it will bring those US carriers that weren't at Pearl Harbor

out and they can destroy them in one climactic battle.

Good afternoon, Mr. President.

General Marshall, what have you got for me?

Our team cracked it.

They fooled the Japanese into identifying their target.

They're going to hit us at Midway, sir.

So what are we looking at?

They'll move a task force in, carriers, the works.

We have to expect an invasion force of 60,000.

60,000?

But, sir, we know where they're going to be,

so we can lay a trap.

If we move our carriers in here, we can hit the Japanese

from the air.

Admiral Yamamoto does not know that the Americans have broken

the Japanese code.

Admiral Chester Nimitz, leading the American forces

in the Pacific, knows that Yamamoto's force is heading

towards Midway Island, and he begins to set a trap.

But the American forces could lose Midway Island

and untold assets in terms of airplanes and Naval vessels.

He took risks.

Again and again, you see these moments of great daring.

So we've got a chance to even up the odds in the Pacific.

If we do not succeed, they will overrun our base,

but we have Marine reinforcements come in Midway

as we speak.

Whatever happens, we'll put up a hell of a fight.

See this ship, General?

It's got Marines aboard heading for Midway.

My son Jimmy is one of them.

So he's with Carlson then?

He's going to be in the thick of it, isn't he?

Yes, sir.

He will.

God bless them all.

Summer of '42, the Battle of the Atlantic still rages.

The Germans are 500 miles into the Soviet Union at this point.

The Mediterranean is still a battleground.

How could this happen?

It's one defeat.

It's not over.

FDR's responsibility is to be the global optimist

for Western civilization.

Marshal Stalin, what's he really like?

[non-english], President.

We need to strike in France now.

I'm not certain your Yanks are ready for that.

To say that there's a lot riding on D-Day is a massive

understatement.

Our sons, pride of our nation, this day

have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle

to preserve our republic and our civilization.