Arsenal of Democracy

• 1. Introduction

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  Arsenal of Democracy is the phrase Franklin D. Roosevelt used in a radio broadcast on the threat to national security. He delivered it on the 29th of December 1940, nearly a year before the United States entered the Second World War. Roosevelt told his audience, 'We must be the great arsenal of democracy.' At the time, Germany had occupied much of Europe and threatened Britain, while Italy and Japan stood beside it as the Axis powers. Roosevelt's promise was specific. The United States would sell military supplies to the United Kingdom while staying out of the actual fighting.

  Where had this phrase come from before Roosevelt used it in that broadcast? And once he called American industry into service, what did that service actually look like?

• 2. Origins Of A Phrase

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  In 1918, Doubleday executive Herbert S. Houston published an article titled 'Blocking New Wars,' analyzing the First World War. He called American business the 'Protector of Democracy.' He described the free press as 'one of the most effective weapons in the arsenal of democracy.'

  Writing in German on the 30th of April 1928, Joseph Goebbels used the same phrase in his newspaper Der Angriff, whose name meant The Attack. He used it to describe turning democratic institutions against themselves. 'We enter the Reichstag to use the arsenal of democracy in order to assault it with its own weapons,' he wrote.

  The idea of America itself as an arsenal traces to playwright Robert E. Sherwood, quoted in the New York Times on the 12th of May 1940. He said, 'this country is already, in effect, an arsenal for the democratic Allies.' French economist Jean Monnet used a similar phrase later that year, but Felix Frankfurter urged him to stop, so Roosevelt could use it himself. Credit for suggesting the phrase to Roosevelt usually goes to his advisor Harry Hopkins. Another account claims Roosevelt borrowed it from Detroit auto executive William S. Knudsen, the man he had tapped to lead the nation's war material production.

  Whichever account is true, Roosevelt built an entire radio address around the phrase within months of Sherwood's remark.

• 3. Making The Case

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  'Some of us like to believe that even if Britain falls, we are still safe, because of the broad expanse of the Atlantic and of the Pacific.' That comfort was exactly what Roosevelt set out to dismantle. He pointed to modern technology instead, describing 'planes that could fly from the British Isles to New England and back again without refueling.' He also referenced a telegram urging him to soften his tone, summarizing its message as 'Please, Mr. President, don't frighten us by telling us the facts.'

  The central idea Roosevelt wanted Americans to grasp was what he called the geopolitical Heartland theory. 'If Great Britain goes down, the Axis powers will control the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australasia, and the high seas; and they will be in a position to bring enormous military and naval resources against this hemisphere.' He described occupied nations as living 'at the point of a Nazi gun.' He also dismissed Britain's prewar policy of appeasement as ineffective, citing examples from other European countries. Assisting Britain, which he called 'the spearhead of resistance to world conquest,' was, in his telling, the only option left while it remained possible.

  'Our national policy is not directed toward war,' Roosevelt said, though he stopped short of an outright promise to stay out of the war. He argued that helping Britain now would spare Americans from fighting later. 'You can, therefore, nail-nail any talk about sending armies to Europe as deliberate untruth,' he told his listeners. Europe, Roosevelt said, was not asking Americans to do their fighting. It was asking, he said, for 'the implements of war, the planes, the tanks, the guns, the freighters which will enable them to fight for their liberty and for our security.'

  Having ruled out sending troops, Roosevelt turned next to what he would ask Americans to build instead.

• 4. The Home Front Pledge

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  Roosevelt insisted, 'the strength of this nation shall not be diluted by the failure of the Government to protect the economic well-being of its citizens.' He spent several paragraphs describing what he called 'splendid cooperation between the Government and industry and labor.' He explained how American workers would shape the fight far from any battlefield. He warned bluntly against work stoppages: 'The nation expects our defense industries to continue operation without interruption by strikes or lockouts.' He added that management and workers were expected to settle their differences 'by voluntary or legal means.'

  'We must be the great arsenal of democracy,' Roosevelt declared, treating the moment as gravely as if the country were already at war. 'For us this is an emergency as serious as war itself,' he said. He called for 'the same resolution, the same sense of urgency, the same spirit of patriotism and sacrifice as we would show were we at war.' He closed the broadcast on a note of reassurance: 'I believe that the Axis powers are not going to win this war.'

  That reassurance closed an address that would be tested against real numbers within the year.

• 5. A Nation Rearms

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  On the day Roosevelt spoke, only 458,365 non-Coast Guard military personnel served on active duty in the United States armed forces. Of those, 259,028 served in the Army, 160,997 in the Navy, and 28,345 in the Marine Corps. At the time, the Navy alone was widely thought to guarantee the safety of the Western Hemisphere. Within a year, that total had nearly quadrupled to 1,801,101 personnel. That included 1,462,315 in the Army, 284,437 in the Navy, and 54,359 in the Marine Corps.

  The address arrived after policies like the Neutrality Acts had already begun giving way to deeper support for the Allies. The cash and carry policy started in 1939, and the Destroyers for Bases Agreement followed in September 1940. The Lend-Lease program began in March 1941, several months after the Arsenal of Democracy broadcast. Less than a year after Roosevelt's address, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on the 7th of December 1941, and the United States entered the war.

  None of that growth, in troops or in policy, was possible without a matching surge in what American factories could produce.

• 6. The Industrial Engine

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  Aircraft accounted for 32 percent of wartime military production spending, the largest single share. Ships took 14.8 percent, and ordnance, meaning guns, ammunition, and military vehicles, took 25.6 percent. Electronics accounted for 4.9 percent, with the remaining 22.7 percent spent on fuels, clothing, construction materials, and food. Production costs also fell steadily as the war went on. The same item cost far less to build in 1945 than it had in 1942.

  That production concentrated heavily in a handful of established industrial centers: Detroit, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Rochester, Chicago, New York, and Pittsburgh, among other cities.

  Ranked by the total value of munitions produced from June 1940 through September 1944, General Motors led the list, building trucks, tanks, and aircraft parts. Curtiss-Wright made aircraft engines, while Ford Motor Company built trucks and aircraft. Convair, Douglas Aircraft Company, United Aircraft, Lockheed Corporation, and North American Aviation all built aircraft or aircraft parts. So did Boeing, Glenn L. Martin Company, Bendix Aviation, Packard, Grumman, Republic Aviation, Bell Aircraft, Avco, and Continental Motors.

  Bethlehem Steel, Kaiser Shipyards, Newport News Shipbuilding, Todd Shipyards, Consolidated Steel Corporation, and Permanente Metals built ships, with Permanente also producing incendiary bombs. Chrysler built tanks, electronics, and trucks. American Locomotive Company, American Car and Foundry Company, Baldwin Locomotive Works, and Pressed Steel Car Company all made tanks as well. Studebaker and International Harvester built trucks, while Nash-Kelvinator supplied parts.

  General Electric supplied electrical parts and engines, and Westinghouse Electric Company supplied parts as well. AT&T Corporation made telephones, DuPont produced chemicals, ammunition, and parts for the atomic bomb, and U.S. Steel supplied steel. Sperry Corporation and RCA made electronics and radios, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company made tires, and United States Rubber Company made rubber parts. Esso and Sunoco supplied gasoline and oil. Western Cartridge Company made ammunition, while Caterpillar Inc. and Allis-Chalmers rounded out the list with tanks and other parts.

  Even these giants depended on a wider web of suppliers. The aircraft companies alone assembled parts built by thousands of smaller firms across the country.