Prof.Wizard said:
Roosevelt was a neutral president. What did he do that's so special? Declare war on Japan? It was the natural course of action...
Not so, Prof. FDR, like Churchill before him, had the vision to see that the appeasers were hopelessly naieve, that Hitler and Tojo and their minor lickspittles would never stop demanding ever more, would never content themselves with any amount of conquest, and that their threat was so great that nothing less than the united effort of the entire free world would be sufficient to defeat them.
FDR saw this at a time when most of the USA was convinced that affairs in Poland or Austria or Eithopia or Manchuria were minor foreign matter and of no concern to them, when public opinion strongly favoured no involvement by the US in the war that the English and the Greeks and the Austrailians and the South Africans and the Poles were fighting, when most of the US still believed that the oceans would protect them from the fascist jackboots, and that if any fighting were needful, then the English and the Poles and the Greeks could do it for them.
Very like Lincoln, he was ahead of his time, and just like Lincoln, he had vision and he had paitence. He had the wisdom to see that if he simply came out with a full statement of his views (entirely correct though they were later proved to be), he would be marginalised and rendered powerless. If Roosevelt had said "we must help fight the Fascists" in 1939, when he himself became aware of the peril that threatened, he would be remembered, if at all, simply as a man who was correct in his judgement but utterly powerless to do anything to stop the slide into the abyss. In fact, it's doubtful that he would be remembered at all, for it took the united effort of the United States, England, the Commonwealth, the remnants of occupied Europe, and the USSR as well to defeat Hitler and Tojo. Without America's very generous aid to England, England would have fallen in 1941, without the English and Commonwealth forces at their backs to draw off resources, Hitler would quite probably have defeated the Soviets; without American munitions and the heroic bravery of the US Navy, Australia too would have fallen, sometime in 1942, and without a base anywhere nearer than Pearl Harbour, America would have been powerless against the Japanese. Without FDR, the USA would have been left alone, with only Canada to stand beside it. And it is ludicrous to fantasise that North America could have long withstood the military machine that took the united and desperate efforts of the Soviet Union (who did the bulk of the fighting, let us not forget) America, the entire Commonwealth, England, and the surviving parts of Europe to defeat.
So, had FDR stepped off the tightrope in either direction - urged war before his people were ready to accept it, or on the other hand failed to give all possible aid short of war as early as he did, and failed to prepare his unready country as best he could - then there is no room to doubt that the Allies would have lost. And in that case, then FDR would not be remembered at all by history, for there would be no history, bar the lies and gross distortions of Gobbels and Tokyo Rose.
Instead, FDR showed wisdom and phenomenal paitence. As Flagreen said, he was a leader who
led, and he was also a man who was either very lucky or very wise in his choice of subordinates: Marshall was simply the best organiser the military world has ever seen; King was badly flawed but nonetheless capable of learning from his gross mistakes early in the war, and Nimitz, who ran most of the American war against the Japanese more-or-less on his own, was superb.
If it were not for FDR's support of the British during the time when they stood entirely alone in Europe, and his tireless wearing away of shortsighted and foolish domestic opposition, it is very doubtful that you and I would be having this conversation - certainly not in English. As a world leader of the 20th Century, Roosevelt stands second only to Churchill.