James Holland

Then you have the fireside chat.

Then you have the State of the Nation address.

What's really interesting is that State of the Nation address was written by him.

He wrote it himself.

And one of his aides says, you know, this is all well and good, but are the people of Arkansas going to care about what happens about the Javans in Java, for example?

Yeah.

And FDR replies, I'm afraid they'll have to be.

The world is getting so small that even the people in Java are getting to be our neighbors now.

So he's gone from that good neighbor policy with which he opens his inaugural address in March 1933 to this global position.

There are, and particularly from a point of view of America, because you don't want to be producing all these arms if they're then going to be sunk halfway across the Atlantic.

You don't want to be supporting a losing side.

Because if America is going to bail out Britain in terms of material supplies, he needs to know that they're going to get there.

If you're losing 50%, that's a massive downer.

It's another layer of why the Atlantic battle is so important, why those early successes in the spring of 1941 are so important.

Never ever again.

And so that's a massive win for the British.

And what it means, what it shows America is that

Britain can cope on the sea.

It's doing all right on that point.

Where it's struggling is on land.