it could be something that we can adapt to. but if you take that idea that society can adapt, it leaves us with the question of even if we can, is this kind of world do we want to live in with the extreme heat, the droughts, the sea level rising. so many things that we care about our endangered by the changes are happening. and we do have a choice about this. ..

only through the collaboration of men and women throughout the country did factories produce 325,000 aircraft by 1945 and at the height of production, one b 24 bomber hour. this is about an hour. of [applause] >> thank you, john. of pleasure to be here and to talk about this subject which has been on my mind for those last few years. this is a strange topic in the sense that nobody had really done a book of this type. i wondered why. i would like to claim credit for the subject but the fact is the real credit belonged to my editor, refine editor who had asked me almost ten years ago if

i had been interested in doing a book like this because he always thought there was a story here that need to be told and he had never seen it told and i looked into it at the time and i said let me think of it. i thought about it, i didn't see what i could do with it and i said i don't entire am the person for this and we went on and did another book and i had to do another book i had committed to. at the end of the second book peter came back and said might you still now be interested in this book and i said let me look at it again. and for whatever reason, i did this time see a story and the reason for seeing a story is that every book particularly in history, has what i would like to call scaffolding which is the structure that holds everything together and makes sense of it.

this story has so many elements to it that there is no obvious scaffolding be on the chronology from 1939 to 1945 but within that, what do you do? the second time around i saw some scaffolding not all of it. evolve as i went along. but i am very grateful to peter for being so persistent because at the end an ended up with a book i had no idea i was going to right and that is the one i would like to tell you about. why does it matter? because world war ii literally shook the world we live in today. it preserved -- easy to forget this because it always sounds like a cliche but it reserved the world for democracy. world war i which we will mention in a moment, had the slogan woodrow wilson called making the world safe for democracy. didn't work out that way. it made the world ready for yet

another war but in this case if the actress had gained more momentum they might well have snuffed out the largest democratic society in the world. that is one element of it. it also ended the depression. the new deal had failed to do that despite very strenuous attempts, but the start of large expenditures in may of 1940 is what finally started putting the depression to bed and from that point on the economy grew by leaps and bounds because of the war effort and in doing that, it put a whole generation of unemployed americans back to work and then some and a lot of people who had never worked. when we talk about sacrifice which we will in a couple of minutes, it is an ironic things that full war made a lot of americans much better off than

they had been in the past because they had gone through, a lot of them had gone through some very hard times. it created all kinds of modern institutions. everything from the tax system to social security which was on the books then, but which was nailed down during the war. it created what we now call the industrial military complex and it created literally the american military. if that is away that this war turned out, nobody saw this pretty much at the beginning. that is where the story starts. i want to make two or three basic points that governed where the book went. the first of these is there is

really two year as a with we are talking about here and they are very very different. the first one which we call preparedness' begins when hitler invaded poland, september of 1939 and goes to pearl harbor. that 27 months is the most difficult time of all because we are not in the war, we don't want to be in the war, we went in many cases to pretend we have nothing to do with the work and i will explain why in a moment and as a result it was very difficult to get america to start mobilizing its defenses so this period is full of conflicts, disputes, denials and so forth. the second point is one of the reasons you have this kind of difference is the legacy of

world war i. the end of world war i left a bad taste in americans's mouth. didn't come out the way it was supposed to. the idealism got crushed. ended up with a cynical treaty of verisign which set the stage for world war ii. there's that old joke about we'd be the germans in 1917 and they have hardly bothered us since. they bothered us very much in the years to come. more important for americans was how the war ended at home. number one, we sometimes forget this, the tail end of the war came the worst epidemic in modern history, the great flu epidemic in 1918-19. which killed over twenty million people worldwide and quite a number of americans. that was a sidebar. number 2, the american economy had ramped up to produce

armaments for the war. ironically most of those never got in the war. when we went into the war in april of 1917 we used mostly european weapons. we started building airplanes, not a single american airplane got in the war or a single american tank got in the war. end of grenades and ammunition we bought from the british. but we had by 1918 the largest armament industry in the world. almost immediately after the armistice and the end of the war the government started canceling contracts. when i say canceling 19 just like this. without warning they pull some, factories were left literally with production line still have full. thousands of workers were let go without warning. a state like connecticut really

felt this because it had so many of these. companies were left with buildings, factories, plants they had built to produce armaments. they said you got to do something for us. what we going to do with these buildings that all the machinery at the very least give us a tax credit so we can carry these in case there ever needed again. government wouldn't do it. and the result was in almost every case these companies, everybody from remington arms to you name it simply tour down the factories, gutted some because they didn't want to carry the expense. the result was the by the time you get to 1939, we have no armament industry. when the war breaks out in europe the are in very pitiful shape. the u.s. army is 28 in the

world. when it went on maneuvers in 1940, which were kind of a farce, time magazine said that after looking at these it appeared as if they might give a good battle to group of boy scouts and not much more. all of this coupled with the scandals that emerged after the 20s and the 30s over munitions contracts, bankers, developed this whole idea which became very popular that the war had been brought on by the bankers and munitions manufacturers simply for profits. and that weighed very heavily so that when it came time in the 1939-40 period to talk about mobilizing, preparedness, one of the themes was always we are not going to make another generation

of instant millionaires. franklin roosevelt was very sensitive to this because he obviously had his conflicts with the business community and he wasn't about to let that happen. at the same time he had to get this process moving and that was one of his many dilemmas after the invasion of poland. the third thing i think confuses the way we look at this, the way in which the past gets in crested in some kind of mythologies that shapes the way we see it. in this case that methodology is the greatest generation. the notion that somehow this generation of americans linked arms, march forward, did the patriotic thing, stepped up to the plate, choose your own cliche.

that didn't happen. it didn't happen first of all because there's no such thing as the greatest generation. there is no way to measure what is great about a generation. what you measure is human behavior. history repeats itself -- history never repeats itself but historical patterns do because those historical patterns are based on human behavior and if you go through the generations you will see human behavior runs the whole gamut from the ultimate givers to the ultimate takers. that is no different from this generation than any other, though every patriot who went out there and tried to enlist the service country, there was more than one that was doing anything to get out of getting out of the military. for everybody who cheerfully accepted rationing and did their bit collecting shortages there were people who simply thumb

their noses and visited mr. black, the black market. mr. black was one of the busiest business men throughout these years and there was no way to contain it. if you want to call this generation anything i call from the unluckiest generation because they found themselves having to deal with the worst economic crisis in american history, literally threatened the american dream, only then to deal with the colossal war on an unprecedented scale that threatened the existence of democracy itself. not many generations have to deal with that much within the short span of time. in looking at how they did what they did it is important to realize why and how we managed

to win this war. first of all as john pointed out no warheads even remotely approach the scale of this one. is truly a world war. it is fought on three continents, virtually every ocean, the fact the we are split between a war in europe and the war in the pacific vastly complicates not only the production of goods but the delivery of goods, the problem in the atlantic is getting them through the german submarines that were taking an incredible toll of ships first with the british and then when we got into the war they were literally and down the american coast and in that post from some places you could literally see ships being torpedoed and sunk and if you went to the beach in those days you might very often find everything from body parts to pieces of a ship washed ashore.

it was a very ugly scene. end it didn't exist on a tiny scale except in the pacific. the problem was sheared distance. how do you get stuff all the way to where it was going? in trying to mobilize the country, roosevelt, who had not, as far as we know, this seems to be the case, had not planned to run again in 1940. he thought that if we could mobilize industry to start preparing war goods that we would be in a position to help the allies once the war started. the problem was many americans didn't want to help the allies. didn't care who they were.

you had some in the extreme like henry ford to suggested let britain fight it out with germany and maybe they will kill them both off, and henry ford's attitude was during this period after the european war broke out, the french and the british rushed to the united states with orders because they too were behind in their armaments and they wanted to buy stuff from us and we were cheerfully ready to sell them this and one of the things they needed were aircraft engines for their planes. and henry's son was called to washington, we desperately need engines for the raf, can you make some? sure, we can turn out quite a few of those and went back, told his father what he had said and with an embarrassed face had to tell washington that we can't do it because my father will not

build any goods for foreign governments. he will make them for americans but not for foreign governments so that order ended up with chrysler. the opposition to the war, to getting not only into it, that was widespread, even helping the allies was incredibly strong and roosevelt had to literally walk a tight rope. the first thing he ended up doing was running for president for an unprecedented third term because he did not want to leave the country bereft of leadership. and he did not announce that he was going to run for the third term until the democratic convention met in july of 1940

and everybody was playing will he or won't he, the great washington lottery of the spring of 1940. when he finally did inform the convention that he would be a candidate they breathed a sigh of relief because they didn't have a strong candidate and he couldn't campaign because he had so much else to do so his campaign consisted of seven speeches and his traditional for of the neighborhood on election eve. roosevelt had a difficult time campaigning anyway because he had to go by train. he hated to fly. he had only flown once in his life and that was to accept the nomination in 1942 -- 1932. never did it again. he had a large entourage as a president does. so to the extent he could give

speeches they had to be within 12 hours of washington. that was just part of the political game for him. what helped him immensely in 1940 and what helped of process we are talking about about bringing american opinion around was that he happened to be at the edge of a revolution in the republican party. the republican party was pretty much bankrupt of ideas and new blood in 1940, so much so that an outsider, a utilities executive had once been a democrat, managed to get wendell willkie the nomination in 1940. wendell willkie like roosevelt was an internationalist, believed that the allies should be helped.

by taking that position, took that out of the campaign. which was a great help. and other issues out of the campaign and have a hard time finding something to run on and that is why the campaign got personal and nasty by the end. when the result was elected, he could move forward more boldly. what he proceeded to do was step-by-step increase american aid to the allies, increase the buildup of american armaments and in every way possible find out what's that would increase the finances available for all of this because this was going to be an unprecedented set of expenditure, revolutionized

during the war. the way it was revolutionize is a way that might surprise you. it was not a case of soaking the rich. it was more occasions of moving the exemption down farther and farther until millions of people who never had to pay taxes did have to pay taxes. not just the middle but the lower middle and even below now found themselves having to pay taxes and that never went away. that is where you can thank that part of the tax code. it was a strange time and estranged way of doing things because in polls, americans say they should be taxed. they didn't really think about it. the hard part was finding ways of getting goods to the allies

and creating an organization that would ramp up production. the key to getting good to the allies turned out to be one of the most powerful bills ever passed by congress. at this time it was said this act gave the president more power than any act passed by congress and roosevelt never hesitated to make use of the power. and he had difficulties even then. for example when hitler invaded russia, the russians win in need of weapons. roosevelt was perfectly happy to furnish them if he could get to them that there was a lot of opposition in this country to giving weapons to the dog lost communists and this was on the

heels of all the stalinist purges of the 1930s. there was a lot of had dancing around that issue. the argument of roosevelt and others is simple. every nazi soldier the russians killed we don't have to deal with. every nazi tank they describe we don't have to deal with and if they can do it, let them do it. the only question is how long could they holdout because remember what hitler had done, he had taken poland quickly in 1939 and nothing happened. it was called the phony war. when he invaded poland, american businesses cents -- encouraged to build up their inventories and they did build up their inventories and nothing happens, business went flat again for the

next several months and everybody thought there is not going to be any further work, not until may of 1940 when hitler launched boat real. krieg and took over the lowlands, france, and eventually other countries as well, not only planted the german flag over most of the european continent but collected gold resources of those countries and those were considerable. germany is short of a lot of resources and this was one way that he could get them. in a sense, germany owned europe, where would they go next? and a lot of people warned that it would be south america or even north america. we actually at one point,

roosevelt sent troops to greenland to make sure that they didn't go there because that would have been that nice steppingstone to this country. the real menace when hitler began pounding great britain was if great britain fell, not only with hitler get its resources, maybe even its navy, but that is the navy we counted on to control the atlantic. the american fleet is all in the pacific as pearl harbor demonstrated and as a result, what would happen if ineffective lawyer controlled the atlantic? we would have no trade routes, no capacity for getting out of our own ports, and at that time we didn't have the two ocean navy. that was one of the things that had to be built up. this is a very serious situation. how often did we meet it?

we met it largely by utilizing one thing americans have always done best which was mass production. we invented it. we invented it in the auto industry. this is the first wholesale mechanized war in history and you are talking about in a country, the united states, that is basically on wheels, way more americans own cars and car drivers than europe. has resulted, we have not only the scale of our productive capacity but the technical know-how. all we had to do was organize it. all we had to do. that is basically what the book is about. if in fact we could do that, the

goal was literally to bury the axis in weapons. the germans had better weapons. they had superior weapons in many cases. i will give you one exception in a moment but they didn't have nearly as many. and the result of that was once we got production moving and that did not occur until 1943, the tide of the war could change and it did change and we made the decisions that we would focus on europe and even though the first attack had come in the pacific we would fight a holding action. a couple quick examples how ill-equipped we were to do this. there's a shipbuilder named andrew jackson higgins in new orleans. higgins built for landing craft. he had a originally built small

boats because new orleans in the shallow waters and so forth and he got a very nice start first by building fast small boats the coast guard could use to chase rumrunners and then by building slightly faster ones to sell to the rumrunners and he did pretty well at this, but nobody could match his boats. the navy hated his boats because the navy's bureau of construction wanted to design its own boats and when they designed them and put them in the competition against higgins's boats they died. they absolutely died, had no chance. nevertheless, they were very reluctant to give higgins' contracts. the marines were entirely different. the marines said we need landing craft and we need them badly

because we have virtually none. and they are part of the navy. to which the navy said you don't need to landing craft. what are you going to use them for? their idea was world war i. in world more i if you have to land stuff you simply go to the nearest port in france or wherever and offload it, no problem. only problem now is, number one, hitler has all those ports. there is no place to off load. number 2, the war in the pacific is going to be an island war. how are you going to get to those islands. they are already in japanese hands, you are going to need landing craft. the marines understood this, the navy didn't and finally they begin to private boats out of a reluctant navy. there is a wonderful letter that i quote written by general

holland smith to higgins saying i don't know what we would have done if it had not been for you and the marvelous ships you built and we are forever grateful for that. .. so he and his engineers went to the rock island arsenal. there was a tank. they had never seen one. none of the engineers had seen a tank.

they took the tank apart piece by piece. they made drawings from which they could do blueprints so they could have every piece. we're talking mass production then they left the pieces for the local engineers to put together again. then they went back, and they made wooden copies of each one of those pieces so they could fit together a model because what they're trying do when you're doing mass production is you've got build machine tools that can turn these out in quantity. and you have to know what each of those pieces are. you lirmly -- literally end up with thousand of parts. none of thement had seen a tank before. by the time they got through this, they were building tanks. they were not as good as of the german tank.

they were much weaker than the german tanks. there was so much more of them. the way mass production works is and most people didn't understand it. they would come to chrysler and ford and say you carry out a thousand cars, you know, a week. why can't you just turn out a thousand tanks? welt, number one, a tank is not at all like a car. it's totally different. number two, they're not set up to make tanks. they're set to do that you don't say, okay, stop making fords and start running tanks down the line. it you need a new set of machinery. they have to take everything out that is there, and put new machines in, or you have to build a new plant, which in most kaleses -- cases is what happened. lots of new plants got built. it takes time because you have to go through the process i just described. you have to first break down

what it is you're making, make it in a form that the engineers can understand, then find and demean machine tools that can manufacture the parts in large numbers. then you have to design how the machine tools are going to fit on the factory floor so the product can flow from one station to another. that's a very complicated piece of engineering. and only then of course you have to bring in the raw material. only then can you start production. in other words what i'm saying is it's a very slow start-up once you're there, it rolls. because it was slow there was a lot of criticism particularly in 1942 when not a lot of was has beening. -- happening. everybody was saying where the planes, the ships, the tacks? nobody tried to build plane on

an assembly line before. the guy who was run of the instrumental people in working that out was charles ford because automobile makers knew how to do mass production. he went to the aircraft plants which are basically beau teen operations. you build planes one at the time. piece by piece. before long, there were assembly lines turning out planes. henry keiser did the same thing for ships for at least liberty ships, and a great engineer and architect was helping in do it for that value vessels. there are two navies. the ma convene curable because everything has to go overseas. you have to have a lot of ships to carry the stuff.

so that, in essence, is what won the war. the ability to solve these incredibly complex problems, and design a couple of new weapons, which range -- changed the world in the every sense. the two weapons that were truly unique to us b29 bofmer and the atomic bomber which, of course, the b29 bomber carried. it may surprise you to know the single most expensive weapons project was not the atomic bomb which cons money. it was the b29. it was so difficult to design and radical a concept. it had so many problems. it had familiar -- particularly engine problems. theres a wonderful quote by the

pilot that said i wore more free engine time on that plane. the b17 which was around for awhile most pie loves loved. they called it the queen of the skies. and by the time the war started, it was already at phase four. there is an example, i'll give you one more before we go questions. which was something little known that won the battle of britain for the raf. if you wonder how did so few pilot and few planes ward off so many german planes, the answer was 100 of course -- ofoctober octane gasoline. the germans didn't have it. they don't have a oil industry. europe and places like that is important to them. and so share planes did not have

a 100ocfane. why did it matter it takes off in a shorter distance, it can fly faster, can fly higher, it can carry heavier stuff. it's far more efficient fighting machine. that's what the made the british spit fire. the pilots too, of course, that's what made formedble weapons in the sky. that gasoline, as i said, came from the united states 100 of course contain gasoline was the one commodity that we never succeeded in making enough of during the war. there was always a shortfall of it. even since synthetic rubber, which we had to do from scratch, well to the war, say' 43-' 44

this was never a shortage. but there was a shortage of gas. the far, by the way, the more moved the more gasoline we needed. in the pacific, that's a long, long way. so that's just kind of a little preview of a very complex story. one of the things that i did in this book of to tell the individual stories of the lot of ordinary people. the sorry for the story is one of the things that enabled me to find the scafling for the book. they were the magazine of the period. they had incredibly good writers. i would like to have acknowledged them. very often they don't have a byline. you don't even know who wrote the articles. if you should happen to get a copy, and you look at some of the footnote you'll see how many

of the citations come back to the magazine. you'll meet a wonderful collection of people. i certainly enjoyed my spending time with them. i loved knowing what they did after the war. all of the curses of doing what i do is that your knowledge wall stops where the book stops. if you want to take it beyond, you have to do something else like another book. [laughter] so let me see if you have any questions. >> wait for them. wait for the mic. >> yes, i would like to ask you if you can expand a little bit on the role of henry j keiser how efficient he was with the boat building. >> keiser became -- i'm not sure if you know how he got his start. he got his start building hoover dam. that got him in to the concrete

business. he was a guy that sort of moved from one business to another and he played some part -- i'm sorry, hoover -- no, '02 right. it's -- he never built boats. he didn't know very much about him. his partner said and there was a consortium of them. together they bid for contracts for merchant ships. faa got keiser interested. what keiser was very interested in. this is where his home base was, so to speak. was developing west. he gave the west a cement plant. he gave it its first steel mill. he gave it a magnesium plant and host of shipyards up-and-down the pacific coast, and once he went in to this business, he had this group of talented young

engineers. and he could -- i'm not exaggerating, then was a young guy, i think in the middle 20s named cia. one of them, by the way, was his son. he calls up clay who had keiser built it knew how he worked. clay, we're going build a ship yard. he didn't know a shipyard from a banana boat. he knew his boss, but okay where? richmond, california. there was nothing there. before long there were three shipyards there. richmond one, richmond two, richmond three. his son edgar went up the coast to vancouver and there were two more. what keiser did if you look at the existing shipyards they were cramped for space.

you -- built a ship you tbilt piece by piece. it's another boutique operation. you have all the people trying to fall all over each other. it's inefficient. it would drive a production manager crazy. keiser changed all of that. he said, you build them from the bottom up. first of all, you break them down in to as large parts as you can make. number the parts and they literally do this, you know, it's like puzzle. what determined how large a part you can make, two or three factor. one, how much would the crane lift? without that you're in big trouble. and two, the parts are being made and assembled here, what is the railroad -- how much clearance does it have? can it get true? in california there was a a --

wasn't a problem. they could fabricate the parts here and have the ways where you build the ships here, and they literally built them, first, he took out of the water and put them on dry land, and they would build them on dry land. they would build them, i think i have a picture in the book. there's just a role, and they're going down and each person is doing their job. just like an assembly line. it's a very different assembly line. if you look over in this part of any shipyard, you'll see the parts. and the labeling. we need this, we need this. grab one of those. stick it on the crane and get over there. that's how to went from building one ship at the time to turning out a ship at one point. sector and clay had a little con tee to see who could build one

the fastest by setting everything up. everybody thought it was a publicity stunt help the people who came to see them and gave them idea on what to do. clay built one in ten days. the whole liberty ship. edgar turned around and did one in five. and after that, they went back to normal production. but, i mean, this is, you know, you have all the crews set up everything is just in place. but that's basically what keiser did. if you ask what is his role? it's not doing all that stuff. that's his boys. his role he learned to become the ultimate washingtoned inner. so he knew where to go, who to talk to, he had, for example, an idea that one of the weapons for submarine warfare would be baby flat carriers.

because one way to fight the submarines, their belief, you could only go from the land base. what did you have these minicarrier. they called them baby carrier and you could put the ships at sea to go after submarines. what finally ended the submarine men nice which was not convoy -- the navy leadership was spore rottic, to say the least. the head of the navy insisted the only way to fight was with a convoy. finally beat them was a combination of lots of new type of destroyer, as for destroyers, and airplanes. especially modified b-2s, when sought out the submarine when nay had to surface and knock them out then. he got that --

the navy said no, we don't want these. keiser went to roosevelt and saidlet build some. that's the kind of thing he could do. that was his ultimate talent, finally. he got so much publicity he became, you know, the celebrity of the production process. anyone else? >> would you speak briefly about the rationing necessarying with and price control? >> one of the biggest problems you have in wartime, and it was a horrible problem in world war i, was inflation. there's a couple of ways to fight inflation. the best way -- but kept getting bogged down in politics is taxes. remembers, americans are making more than they've made in ages.

if you have to tax them to do that. they are willing to be taxed. but congress was reluctant to do this. the other way is by rationing goods so that there are goods available to buy. the military kept growing; therefore, kept absorbing more good. the rationing started on a modest scale, and it e eventually exsended to a large number of products. when it first started, i'll give you one example so you can see how they evolve. let say shoe were rationed, which they were. okay. '02 spite -- you're entitled to x number of dollar worth of shoes. well, that could be a $5 pair of shoes or what if you want a better pair of shoes? the way they went about it, family, when they saw that wasn't working was your entitled to a pair of shoes.

what they are, it's up to you. in the case of strategic foods, stamp books basically, when they finally evolved to the final form, every food on the liberalized had a point. the point thing was revived according to what the supfully was. let say you wanted beans, canned beans. that might cost you 5 points. every person had a ration book with x number of points for that month. and you can spend the points any way you wanted. originally, say that try to ration it by commodity, that was incredibly cumbersome and awkward. this way, you know, if you want to blow it all on a piece of beef, do that. beef was the scarest thing. but let me say in addition to

that, food in general is the hardest possible thing to control or ration. the government had to control it. price control were necessary to keep the inflation from literally eating up the economy. that would take a little while to explain. it's a serious menace in 19 134eu too. a lot of food ultimately particularly meat, which was the hardest thing of all. i go in to considerable detail on that. a lot of that stuff, mr. black did very well. mr. black made out like a bandit . the black market worth a book itself. it's the way it worked during the war. anybody else? yes, sir? >> i would like to know how rose

investment was able to get them to the isolationist congress? >> by a very familiar tactic. he had the voice -- i'm sorry he had the votes. they made the noise, but he knew going in that in this particular case he had the votes. in other words, enough republicans support who saw in a necessity for it. and it was not a particularly close vote. let me describe another vote which was just as important. one of the most controversial acts thats passed was our first peacetime draft. now, how are you going get american to accept a draft at the time when we're not in a war and convinced we're not going in this war? but it got passed. and when it was passed, people were called up for one year. that year came to a close, to

have not renewed it, in other words, not extend the term of service of these people would literally gutted the army. i mean, literally gutted it. and george marshall, the chief of staff was besides himself at this possibility. but had become a political issue. we made a promise to the boys they could go after a year. we have to honor that promise. and this went around and around and around, and when it came -- the bill to extend came before congress in the senate, it passed by a few votes, in the house one vote. authoritily after this happened the reporter of walking to one of the british citizens in london which is getting bombed unmercifully at this time, and the brit said, you know, the americans are a curious people.

one day they talk about extending freedom and democracy everywhere. the next day they decide by one vote they go on having an army. [laughter] in other questions? yes, sir? in looking at american, do you look how russia formed in building their armament up? were they as fully prepared as they were? if they were, how did they address it? >> no. you may remember the world was shocked when stalin and hitler signed a nonaggression pact, the reason for that from stalin's point of view, he knew he was pretty sure an innovation was coming. and basically he was buying time.

time to build up. the russian industrial plant insofar that existed, it wasn't too bad was in pretty good shape when the war started. the problem is a lot in western russia which is basically what they were overrunning. the russians having to pack up plant and equipment and machinery and moving farther inland. what roosevelt wanted to know what we could do help them, and he didn't know stalin yet. he said, hair -- center harry hopkins who was sick but underwent the tortuous flight to russia. he met stalin and asked what he needed. he said basically machine guns and anti-war craft gun now. tack -- tanks and airplanes later. and hopkins got a feel for stalin. it was a pretty good one. he told roosevelt it's worth doing. and roosevelt, but roosevelt had

to push had is own cabinet to get it done even after that. at one point, it was reported in henry's diary. on one point he went on tirade. the only time you can remember roosevelt -- because he wanted it done and wanted it done now. it's not as if the stuff was lying around. to get some of the plane to russia, we borrowed them from british planes in storage and replaced those. over here. any other questions? so now you know everything. not quite, maybe. let me leave you with one interesting fact stuns people when you talk about sacrifices

people made. it is true that more americans had a rising standard of living during the war. however, it may surprise you to know that more americans died in industrial accidents during the war than died in combat. when you consider there's about 11 million in the military. there's about 40 some million or 30 some million in the work force, but if you look at the factory and look at all of these people working under really tough conditions it won't surprise you. that's a shocking statistic. i thank thank you very much. [applause]

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>> as i began to walk the beaches with the veterans, many of whom i was meeting for the first time, they were schoolteachers and preachers and lawyers from south new jersey. and from across section of american life, as i began to walk those beaches with those men and meet their wives, i was emotionally brought to my knees by what i was hering. not about what played out that day. but by the bond, the unspoken bond that existed between them. many of them had not met each other before. two had been on the same landing craft. subsequently we found them and put them back together again. they were modest beyond my ability to describe their modest city. and they were proud of what they had done. they were willing to come and tell their story only if i asked

the question and almost all they would respond, i didn't do anything more here than anyone else did. they had stories had buddies that didn't make it or maimed. they came back to america, many from small town, lower house their father at an early age. they came back and took the g.i. bill and found professions in foreign families, went to college in record numbers. they were the underpitting of the marshall plan. they rebuilt their enemies in japan and germany. they were involved in a long difficult cold war. they withstood the culture ranches in the '60s. they were too quick in the beginning to say vietnam was a good idea. once they got it, swiftly many of them, they said it was a terrible idea. they were reluctant about women leave eking the house.

they grew up in an all many of -- -male environment. once they got that encouraged not just their wives but daughters to take their place in the world. they never wined and whimpered. ..