Even the people of defeated Germany, defeated Italy and defeated Japan emerged as winners because they shifted after the war to democratic governments. The big losers were the people of the U.S.S.R. Their terroristic government survived. They continued to risk prison or death over the next 40 years if they criticized their regime.
The Allies, meaning mostly the U.S. and Britain, formed an alliance of expediency with the U.S.S.R.'s leader, Josef Stalin, after Hitler turned on him. It thus took until the 1980s for that nation to shed its totalitarian yoke. Unwilling to challenge it militarily, we settled for Cold War confrontation until it collapsed from within under our external pressures.
If World War II had seen Hitler triumph in Europe and Japan's militarists expand their conquests in Asia, very little of the world might be free today.
America's entry into the war was essential to the Allied victory. History should forever honor us for entering.
We became the arsenal of democracy. Our factories built the biggest fleets of planes, ships and weapons the world has ever seen. Millions of civilians went into war production plants. Millions more went into the armed services. When invasions took place our ships stretched from horizon to horizon. We produced, fortunately ahead of the Germans, a nuclear bomb.
As never since, Americans were totally committed, totally believing the cause was just. And history proves us right. But our entry into the war was politically difficult.
We were lucky at many points. We were lucky to have a president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who early recognized the danger of a conquest of Europe by Hitler. Roosevelt, however, had to deal with a populace still bitterly anti-war after World War I, bitter against munition makers, and wanting to stay out of "Europe's war."
Roosevelt didn't let the polls guide him. He led. He took us via politically possible small steps into closer support of Winston Churchill. The two made agreements for us to give ships and naval base support to Britain while we stayed out of active combat.
Roosevelt got a pre-war civilian draft bill through Congress by a hairline single vote. Then on Dec. 7, 1941, he got lucky. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt seized the moment, proclaimed "A Day That Will Live in Infamy" and at last united America in the defense of freedom. Germany helped Roosevelt by declaring war on us the day after Japan did, a dumb move because it undermined our pro-Nazis.
AFTER that it was all-out on the home and war fronts until final victory in 1945.
Roosevelt had goaded Japan with supply embargoes to protest its intrusions in China, but could not have brought the American people to fight wholeheartedly if Japan had not done him the favor of attacking us. Maybe he wanted it that way.
I was at a Dec. 7, 1941, meeting in Pittsburgh, Pa., of the pro-Nazi America First movement. When the Pearl Harbor attack news startled the meeting, Roosevelt was denounced for just that tactic - getting us into the war in Europe through the back door of Asia. If that was Roosevelt's overall plan, my hat is off to him, yet I don't believe he knew their attack would come at Pearl Harbor.
Not many people think we should be thankful for Pearl Harbor. But the zones of peace and freedom in the world today are much wider because of it.