Chapter 6 Summary

The Summer of 1940 presented several challenges to President Roosevelt. The British were urgently asking for help in the form of destroyers. He needed to pass an unpopular law reinstating another military draft and he needed to win a third-term election in November.

His solution to the first problem was ingenious. He would give the British destroyers, if the British agreed to give the United States the right to use nine strategic bases. It would look as if the Americans had gotten the better end of the deal: nine bases in exchange for fifty destroyers. Prime Minister Winston Churchill had no choice, but to agree. Newspapers and public opinion was in support of the deal, even though it made America more vulnerable to war with Germany. Clearly, America was not neutral.

Reinstating a military draft was a hard sell to Americans. Americans did not...