[narrator] 22nd of June 1941.
Dawn has yet to break.
Three million German troops
storm the Russian border as the Nazis launch
the biggest military assault in history.
Stalin has retreated to his dacha.
The country's leader
and one of the world's most feared dictators
drinks himself into a stupor for nine days
as the Wehrmacht gorges itself on his beloved motherland.
[explosion]
Despite warnings
from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill
and the U. S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt
that the invasion was imminent,
Stalin dismissed their warnings as a "capitalist plot,"
designed to undermine the pact he'd made
two years earlier with Adolf Hitler.
Only as the iron columns of the Wehrmacht
poured over Russia's borders,
did he realise how utterly he'd been betrayed.
[boom]
Before the year is out,
another of the world's great powers
will be similarly surprised by the enemy.
President Roosevelt has done his utmost
to keep American out of the war,
confident in his belief that the Axis Powers
would never dare to take on the might of the United States.
On the morning of Sunday the 7th of December,
he, like Stalin, will be undone by a devastating strike
designed to inflict maximum damage and loss of life
in the shortest possible time.
While the President is enjoying Sunday lunch at the White House,
an Imperial Japanese strike force torpedoes
America's Pacific Fleet stationed at Pearl Harbour
in Hawaii.
In a matter of minutes, Roosevelt's hopes
of staying out of the war are destroyed.
An aerial assault by the Japanese
and a land invasion by a supposed ally
have caught Roosevelt and Stalin completely by surprise.
Now these ideologically opposed leaders
need to somehow work together
if they're to have any hope of defeating
the combined might of Nazi Germany,
Imperial Japan and Fascist Italy.
[theme music]
[engines roar]
[slides clicking]
‐[explosions] ‐[troops marching]
[bombs hiss]
[ominous music]
[narrator] The morning of Sunday the 7th of December, 1941,
would change history.
A date which will live in infamy.
The United States of America
was suddenly and deliberately attacked.
[narrator] In a matter of minutes,
two devastating attacks by hundreds of Japanese planes
carrying bombs and aerial torpedoes
left 18 American warships in smoking ruin.
2,403 U. S. service personnel dead.
And 188 aircraft destroyed.
Yet at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbour,
America was not at war.
The President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
had won the 1940 U. S. election
on a promise that the country would remain neutral.
A series of neutrality acts was passed by the U. S. Congress
which banned American citizens from trading
with any nations at war,
a move intended to keep the U. S.
out of any international disputes.
Essentially, what they do is they say
if a war is declared,
and particularly, if the president
says that there is a war ongoing,
then it limits the abilities of the United States
to trade with those nations.
In a sense, it's trying to constrain the United States,
but it's also especially trying to constrain
the President as well,
because they're sort of looking back to World War I,
when Woodrow Wilson was president,
and they had an attitude that Woodrow Wilson
had sort of overstepped the mark and made the United States
more likely to be drawn into this European war.
[narrator] With the country only just emerging
from The Great Depression, many felt America
had enough problems of her own,
and Roosevelt, an astute politician,
was only too aware of public opinion.
[Andrew] Roosevelt does not want another war
and he believes, up until really the last minute,
that Hitler can be appeased in some way,
or certainly up to the time of the Munich Agreement.
Therefore, he supports Chamberlain
in his policies of appeasement.
Famously, after Munich in September 1938,
he sends Chamberlain a two‐word telegram: "Good man."
He believes, against expectations,
perhaps, that Hitler, in some way,
can be constrained and that he can be controlled.
I hope the United States will keep out of this war.
I believe that it will.
And I give you assurance and reassurance
that every effort of your government
will be directed toward that end.
[narrator] Roosevelt, a Democrat,
had decided to stand for a third term as President,
something no one had ever achieved in U. S. history.
This was despite the partial paralysis
he had suffered from contracting polio
when he was 39, leaving him wheelchair‐bound.
Roosevelt is a fascinating character
and one of the most wily politicians
of the twentieth century.
And the way he behaved,
and the way he got himself re‐elected in December 1940,
is an absolute masterclass of politics.
He could present himself as someone who was not scared
of getting involved in Europe
if the circumstances required it.
He's quite clever, really, in that he stays out of it
for a large part. He sends proxies out
to do most of the work for him.
And what that is doing, of course, is shielding him,
but it's also allowing him to be presidential,
to show that he is doing the job,
that he is standing up for the United States
and he's trying to keep the U. S. out of the war.
[narrator] His Republican opponent,
businessman Wendell Willkie,
played on the public's fear of war,
arguing that a Roosevelt victory would mean
wooden crosses for American boys.
The polls swung against FDR, and he was forced to insist
there would be "no foreign wars,"
carefully chosen words that, crucially,
did not preclude responding to an attack
on American territory.
Roosevelt had to make a famous promise at Boston
days before the election,
that he would not let American boys
fight in a foreign war,
and he did not add the usual condition
"unless we are attacked first."
[narrator] To keep voters happy,
America needed to remain neutral.
But when war broke out in Europe,
Roosevelt's speech to the nation revealed his personal beliefs.
This nation will remain a neutral nation.
But I cannot ask that every American
remain neutral in thought as well.
Even a neutral has a right to take account of facts.
Even a neutral cannot be asked
to close his mind or to close his conscience.
[narrator] We now know his personal thoughts
were far from neutral.
He'd corresponded secretly with Churchill
about how Hitler could be defeated
even before Churchill had become Prime Minister.
Roosevelt did hope that he could allow
aid to the Allies to win the war,
but not get the United States involved.
So it was a very fine line that he was walking,
that wasn't quite isolationist,
but wasn't quite interventionist.
It was non‐active intervention,
which is a very complex idea, but very typical of the way
that Roosevelt conceived of things.
[narrator] In November 1939,
Roosevelt introduced a "cash‐and‐carry" policy,
allowing Britain to buy and collect weapons from America
in their own ships,
in order that they might gain access to materials and supplies
as quickly as possible.
Whatever his public statements,
many historians now believe that Roosevelt's actions
suggest he privately wanted America to enter the war.
After Churchill became Prime Minister,
the U. S. president resupplied the troops
rescued from Dunkirk and leased Britain 50 destroyers,
saying that he wanted America
to be the "great arsenal of democracy."
In 1940, the United States still had
10 million people unemployed,
and war orders from France and from Britain
from the other Allies helped to drag the American economy
finally out of recession,
so that the arsenal of the democracy idea
was clearly self‐interested,
clearly served domestic American goals
and Roosevelt's own political goals,
but also, I think seemed, to him,
the way in which the United States
could contribute most clearly to the Allied war effort
and wouldn't involve all the complications
of America entering the war.
[narrator] This also suited Churchill.
[Martin] It was very important for the British,
both in terms of the material itself,
and in some crucial areas, the Americans were supplying
things that the British simply couldn't supply.
[narrator] Churchill had been pushing the men's friendship
to breaking point, as he lobbied continually
for America's entry into the war.
The U. S. was helping Britain and buying itself time.
As Secretary of War Henry Stimson admitted:
"We find ourselves unprepared and unarmed,
facing a thoroughly prepared and armed potential enemy."
Neutrality wasn't just about a principle,
it was about survival.
[explosion]
[narrator] By late 1940,
Britain had defied the odds to win the Battle of Britain.
But people were now enduring nightly bombings
as the Blitz hit towns and cities all over the country.
And as a result of being at war for more than a year,
Britain was now almost bankrupt.
[Martin] Churchill put as much pressure
on Roosevelt as he could,
by pleading with Roosevelt,
by a number of public speeches
where he tried to align the British cause
with American interests.
But by the end of 1940
when Britain's financial situation
was getting very bad,
Britain simply couldn't afford to pay for the aid.
And up to that point,
they'd have to pay for it in cash.
Churchill begins to pressure Roosevelt
in a different way, by essentially dangling over him
the prospect that Britain's going to have to give in,
because it simply cannot afford to buy
American aid anymore.
And that of course, as Churchill knew,
confronted Roosevelt with having to go and tell
the American public, who had very nicely paid jobs
supplying all this material for the British,
that they would now lose those jobs
because Britain was no longer
going to be able to provide the money.
[narrator] Between September 1940 and May 1941,
43,000 British civilians were killed
and 139,000 wounded in the Blitz.
The Germans hoped these bombing raids
on towns and cities
would not only destroy British infrastructure,
but also her morale.
I think aerial bombardment of civilians,
which is basically what the Blitz was...
you can have perhaps
one of two outcomes.
One is the...
psychological surrender of those suffering the bombing,
or the opposite.
Stiffening their resolve:
"To hell with you, we're not giving in to this."
And I think it was the latter reaction
which found its place
in London, Coventry and all the other cities bombed.
[narrator] Churchill pleaded with FDR
to "give us the tools and we'll finish the job."
Churchill very much set out to, as he later said,
"Woo Roosevelt like a maid"
and persuade Roosevelt to take action.
And Roosevelt knew perfectly well
that that was what Churchill was doing.
[narrator] How could FDR
balance Britain's desperate need for supplies on credit
with the pressure to appear neutral?
Ingeniously, he disinterred an old law from 1892
and repurposed it as "Lend‐Lease,"
an idea he compared to lending something to your neighbour.
The Americans were not allowed to lend money
to people who were at war.
That's what the American Neutrality Acts
were really about.
So Lend‐Lease was a way of getting around that,
exploiting a loophole in the legislation, effectively,
whereby they would be... rather than lending money
to Britain, they would be paying
for the use of certain British assets,
bases in Bermuda, the Caribbean, these sorts of things.
Lend‐Lease meant, as Roosevelt explained,
both in a press conference and in one of his fireside chats
was that you don't actually require payment in cash.
When your neighbour asked to borrow your hose
to put out a fire in your home,
you say: "Certainly, you can use the hose.
And when the fire is put out, you can either return it to me,
or if it's been destroyed, you can buy another hose
and give me that."
But a good neighbour will not ask
for immediate payment in cash.
[narrator] Lend‐lease led to a ferocious debate
in Congress.
Britain still owed the U. S. money from the First World War,
but Roosevelt won the day.
And in March, 1941, $7 billion was agreed.
For Churchill, that was a heavy price to be paid.
The U. S. commandeered
what was left of Britain's gold reserves
and overseas investments, due to the nature
of the cash‐and‐carry agreement.
Lend‐lease was the only method that could now aid Britain
in the war.
Britain was not the only beneficiary of the new policy.
Our most useful and immediate role
is to act as an arsenal for them as well as for ourselves.
[applause]
[narrator] The Molotov‐Ribbentrop Pact
of August 1939
had enabled Hitler to occupy much of Europe
without fear of Russian reprisals.
but when it was torn asunder by the German invasion
of Russia in June 1941, known as Operation Barbarossa,
Stalin's unprepared military was caught
entirely by surprise.
And many in the West were concerned
there was a genuine risk that the Nazis could gain
complete control of the world's largest country.
[tense music]
[Andrew] The Americans did take great interest
in the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
But the interest and the attitude
sort of depended really on whether people thought
that the Soviet Union needed to be helped
to defend themselves against the Nazis,
or, in fact, that they sort of deserved everything
that they got for doing the Pact with the Nazis
in the first place.
[narrator] However, when Stalin finally emerged
from a week of drunken despair, he didn't capitulate.
He turned to the capitalists and asked to join Lend‐Lease.
This was actually a big compromise on his part
because for the years before the start of the war,
Stalin had seen Britain and America as major enemies.
This fit with his ideological view
of the world that saw things in a very black or white sense.
It was communism versus capitalism.
But now he had to make a deal with capitalist powers
in order to beat Hitler.
[narrator] Roosevelt granted him
$1 billion of interest‐free credit
in supplies and raw materials.
Stalin expressed his "heartfelt gratitude"
for this urgent aid in the fight
against the common enemy, "bloodthirsty Hitlerism."
I think that Stalin saw Allied aid central
to Soviet victory in the war.
This is because so much of the Soviet economy
had been turned over to military production
and fighting the Nazis.
Without Allied aid,
the Soviet Union would not have been able
to feed its people.
And this is why it's of central importance.
Stalin understood this. So the real contribution
from the Americans and British,
aside from the, you know, military resources
that they did send over, was the food supply.
[narrator] But despite the aid agreements,
the Big Three were by no means aligned
in their aims and ambitions.
By the summer of 1941,
Stalin's Russia was battling for its life
against the largest land invasion in history.
Churchill's Britain was bombed and near bankrupt.
While militarily, Roosevelt's America
still stood on the side‐lines.
By contrast, Hitler and Mussolini's alliance
was holding strong,
and they took pleasure in parading
their close relationship in front of the cameras,
in a series of highly publicized meetings.
To strengthen Anglo‐American relations,
Churchill felt it was essential that he meet Roosevelt
face to face.
In August 1941,
the Battle of the Atlantic was at its height,
with German U‐boats, Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine
viciously patrolling the ocean.
The journey was considered so dangerous
Churchill had to seek the King's permission first.
But despite the dangers,
Churchill secretly boarded the HMS Prince of Wales
at Falmouth and set sail to meet the U. S. President.
Churchill very much hoped, when he crossed the Atlantic,
to finally meet Roosevelt,
that Roosevelt's agreeing
to the meeting signalled the fact
that Roosevelt had finally decided
to bite the bullet and join in the war.
So he was hoping for a declaration of war
or the promise that the United States
would become properly active in the war.
He, of course, was quite disappointed.
[narrator] It was the first
had met as heads of government.
Over four days
from the 9th to the 12th of August 1941,
Roosevelt and Churchill had a series
of secret meetings aboard naval ships
off the coast of Newfoundland.
[Jonathan] Roosevelt didn't want the American public to know
until he'd had the meeting,
because he wanted to make sure
that he could get the result he wanted,
which was the Atlantic declaration.
[narrator] Churchill arrived with a long wish list
of munitions and supplies,
but he also had a burning desire to bring America
into the war immediately,
a point he emphasised by having Roosevelt join him
in singing the hymn
"Onward Christian Soldiers, Marching As to War"
in front of the news cameras.
[crowd singing] ♪... Christian soldiers ♪
♪ Marching as to war ♪
♪ With the cross of Jesus ♪
♪ Going on before ♪
[narrator] But Roosevelt had his own agenda.
Roosevelt wanted grand objectives
to justify the war towards which
he was gradually guiding America,
an idealistic plan for the post‐war world,
a special relationship between the men and their countries.
When they met together at Placentia Bay,
and met for the first time...
since they had originally met in the First World War,
or after the First World War,
and they sang hymns,
and a genuine friendship started to grow from that moment,
because they were able to sit down
and recognise in each other
what it is exactly they wanted to happen.
And they were very happy to work together.
[Martin] It's quite clear that they enjoyed
each other's company, and in a war that was run
by some very significant close personal relationships
between very powerful leaders,
having a relaxed personal relationship
was very important,
when a lot of the communication, of course,
has to be conducted at a distance,
by telephone call, and by letter and by telegram.
Famously when Winston Churchill went to visit the White House
after the bombing of Pearl Harbour
and he stood up... by accident,
the president walked on him in the bath,
and he stood up and he said, without his towel,
and he said: "I have nothing to hide
from the President of the United States."
[narrator] The trouble was that Churchill and Roosevelt
saw the world in very different ways.
Churchill wanted to protect the British Empire,
whereas Roosevelt wanted to end European Imperialism
and open the world up to American influence.
To remain allies, they had to find common ground, quickly.
The two men worked together behind the scenes
to devise what was to become known
as The Atlantic Charter.
The agreement rejected territorial aggrandizement,
affirmed national self‐determination,
promised "improved labour standards,
economic advancement, and social security."
And against Churchill's wishes to the contrary,
an end to colonialism.
Ultimately, what he was hinting at
is that he wants to get rid of empires,
and that's the real point of controversy
between him and Churchill.
When they meet,
and Churchill has a little clause inserted
trying to sort of make out the present regimes,
the imperial regimes, will sort of be allowed to stay,
but Churchill knows that ultimately Roosevelt
wants to end them.
Basically one of the main planks of it
was to articulate the wish of self‐determination.
But in Churchill's interpretation,
that meant Europe.
And Roosevelt meant the wider colonial world.
[narrator] Despite their differences,
the Newfoundland meeting cemented their friendship.
Roosevelt cabled Churchill after the meeting:
"It is fun to be in the same decade with you."
Churchill later wrote: "I felt I was in contact
with a very great man
who was also a warm‐hearted friend."
So much of the war aims as articulated
in several of their discussions, as well with Stalin,
involved thinking of liberating Europe
from, if you like, the Nazi fascist empire.
But then, of course, the ramification of that
would mean, potentially,
especially in Roosevelt's understanding,
that would also mean self‐determination
for the British Empire as well, for places like India,
but also Africa and other parts
where that could be the implication taken.
And with the Atlantic Charter,
this was a point of contention between Churchill and Roosevelt.
[narrator] They chose to repeat this successful meeting.
Newfoundland was to be
the first of nine face‐to‐face conferences.
The Atlantic Charter was signed on September 24, 1941,
by the USSR
and the nine exiled governments of occupied Europe:
Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg,
the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Yugoslavia,
and by the representatives of General de Gaulle of France.
It's an important document in that it sets out
these aims for the post‐war world,
and in many ways, what it's doing is
it's picking up where the United States left off
after World War I.
And Woodrow Wilson had his 14 points,
which he articulated for the post‐World War I order,
and so Roosevelt's really taking some of those
and saying that what he wants to achieve is a freer world,
a freer world economically.
He wants a freer democratic system.
[Jonathan] The Atlantic Charter was what we're fighting for.
And although America was not yet in the war,
it was the Anglo‐American way of saying the world
we want to live in after the war
is one where we don't have Hitlerism or Italian Fascism.
[narrator] But despite the success of the meeting,
the Atlantic Charter failed to persuade
the American public that the U. S. should join the war.
Supporters saw it as ground‐breaking
and world‐changing.
But leading isolationists saw the Charter as evidence
of a secret commitment by Roosevelt
to pull the United States into the war.
But the U. S. was about to become the victim
of an unexpected and devastating attack.
[narrator] Getting 12 nations to sign an agreement
as far‐reaching as the Atlantic Charter
was a remarkable achievement.
But Roosevelt, like Churchill, appreciated the addition
to the Allied cause of Soviet power.
He couldn't promise American material aid quite yet,
because he'd have to persuade Congress to extend Lend‐Lease
to the Soviet Union,
but very early on indicates to the Soviets
that they can expect that as soon as he can manage it,
and most significantly,
he sends his right‐hand man, Harry Hopkins,
to the Soviet Union towards the end of July
to see Joseph Stalin, to actually make an assessment
as to whether the Soviet Union is going to survive,
and to open up relations.
And Harry Hopkins comes back
and reports in a very positive way about the Soviet war effort
and about the Soviet determination,
despite their earlier defeats, to carry on fighting.
[military music]
[narrator] For his part, Churchill lost no time
in condemning the invasion of the Soviet Union.
The night after it began, in June 1941,
he addressed the British nation,
describing Barbarossa as an "outrage"
and a "turning point" in the war.
[Churchill on radio] The invasion of Russia
is no more than a prelude
to the attempted invasion of the British Isles.
I think what Churchill saw,
and again, this goes back to Churchill being pragmatic,
was an opportunity.
And that is, that he recognised
that this was a moment to bring Joseph Stalin in
on his own side.
I think Churchill quite early on recognised
that Soviet Russia was less of a threat
than Nazi Germany.
[narrator] While Churchill was extending
his friendship and support to Stalin,
Hitler, who only weeks before had been Russia's ally,
was now waging what he called a "war of destruction"
against a nation of "sub‐humans."
[artillery fire]
[Peter] The Germans make very quick gains in 1941,
partly because Stalin had done so little preparation.
He'd ordered his troops not to do anything provocative,
not to give Hitler a reason to launch the attack,
and so that means that the Germans
could just go like a knife through butter
through the European parts of the Soviet Union.
[narrator] The Germans were carrying out
a three‐pronged attack on the USSR.
Their southern assault was on the Ukraine region.
The northern advance tore through
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia,
powering on to its main objective: Leningrad,
while the central part of the attack
was the route to Moscow.
Between 17 and 25 million Soviet citizens
were forced to flee
from the western borders of the country
to the east and south.
Stalin's refusal to plan for a Nazi betrayal
meant there were insufficient resources
and many evacuees suffered from exposure and malnutrition.
As the Germans advanced towards the Soviet capital,
they killed or captured
more than 500,000 Soviet soldiers
near the cities of Bryansk and Vyazma,
the last substantial strongholds of the Red Army
that stood between the Germans and Moscow.
But despite the heavy losses,
the Soviets were proving resilient.
The USSR fielded more than a million soldiers
and a thousand tanks to defend Moscow.
Women and children joined their menfolk
to dig multiple defensive lines.
The Nazis would not be gifted Moscow.
Another Soviet success
in the immediate aftermath of the invasion
was the rapid relocation of 1,500 large factories
to preserve vital resources for the war effort.
A lot of this had to be dismantled, in fact,
from the western side of the Soviet Union,
put on trains, and then rebuilt
in the eastern part of the Soviet Union,
which is one of the reasons why they managed
to claw things back in the end.
[narrator] Meanwhile, The Nazi attack
became increasingly focused on Leningrad,
a city of strategic significance.
The city's prime position on the Neva River
offered easy access to the sea.
It was the base of Russia's Baltic Fleet
of warships, destroyers, aircraft,
torpedo boats, and submarines.
And with more than 600 factories,
Leningrad was second only to Moscow
in industrial output.
It was also of symbolic importance.
Hitler was determined to destroy Leningrad,
which he hated for its very name.
This was the birthplace of the Russian Revolution.
It was named after Lenin.
[narrator] As the Nazi forces advanced,
Leningrad's terrified civilians
raced to build trenches and anti‐tank fortifications.
[tense music]
The Nazis were advancing at speed,
and the Russian Red Army and volunteer forces
could not build their defences quickly enough.
The city was almost completely encircled by the Germans
with their Finnish allies to the north.
By the 8th of September,
the only way in or out of Leningrad
was by water, via the vast Lake Ladoga.
[news commentator] The camera can show but little
of the suffering and death and horror
that has reigned upon this heroic city
in the long months during which the Nazis
have vainly smashed at Leningrad's gates.
[narrator] Eventually, though, the frantic trench building
by Leningrad's inhabitants paid off.
[man shouting]
[narrator] Soviet forces managed to bottle‐up the Germans
in the city's suburbs.
Hitler decided his forces would no longer continue
to fight their way in to Leningrad.
Instead, he settled in for a siege.
Hitler had no qualms about shelling
and starving civilians to death.
Any requests for surrender negotiations were to be ignored.
The Nazis didn't want to feed 3 million Russians.
Much now depended on the endurance
of the inhabitants.
If Leningrad fell, the Soviet Union's fate
was all but sealed.
.
In a matter of minutes,
two waves of almost 200 Japanese planes
appeared above Pearl Harbour in Hawaii,
killing 2,403 U. S. service personnel,
destroying 188 aircraft,
and torpedoing 18 American warships.
It was the worst disaster in American military history.
Roosevelt could not have been less prepared.
It was supposed to be a quiet Sunday
at the White House.
The President had just finished lunch
and was about to attend to his vast stamp collection
when he learned of the Pearl Harbour attack.
His advisors warned that Japan could be planning
to follow up with an attack on America's West Coast.
Roosevelt had no time to hesitate.
His wife, Eleanor, described him as "deadly calm"
as he decided he had no choice
but to rally the nation behind a war
many had hoped to avoid.
Well, I think the Japanese...
bombing of Pearl Harbour, as Roosevelt famously said,
"a day that will live in infamy,"
was as big a turning point as you can have, almost,
in the wider history of the Second World War.
Up to that point,
you could argue that for Roosevelt
and for the isolationists
within the American Cabinet and the American Congress,
did not want to be involved in what they saw
as a European conflict,
and did not want to become an active military player
in the Second World War.
With the bombing of Pearl Harbour,
of the American fleet in Hawaii,
this, of course, literally brought the war
to American shores.
[narrator] The attack on Pearl Harbour
shocked the world.
Roosevelt wasted no time in making it clear
that U. S. neutrality was over.
The American people, in their righteous might,
will win through to absolute victory.
[applause and cheers]
I think a lot of people were scared.
A lot of people were happy
about having to fight.
Yeah, I think people were very scared
that it could happen so close.
Pearl Harbour happened on our land.
A lot of people said: "Let's go, let's get them.
I'm ready to go, and I'm ready to get these guys."
[narrator] Had Roosevelt misjudged the national mood,
his entire presidency would have been in jeopardy.
The vast majority of the American public
recognises that now the United States
has had war brought to its shores, essentially,
and it has to respond to that, as indeed Roosevelt does.
[narrator] Roosevelt's declaration of war
was passed within minutes.
With only one vote against,
it was clear America was no longer wedded
to isolationism.
So Pearl Harbour is a significant defeat
for the American forces in the Pacific,
severely damages their ability to respond
to the Japanese.
But what it does do, of course,
is unites American public opinion,
that all of those doubts as to whether
the war going on in Europe was part of America's business,
and whether America was best keeping out of wars,
were swept away,
because of the way that they'd been attacked.
[narrator] At last, Churchill had got what he wanted.
But for Churchill, this was the wrong war.
The U. S. was at war in the Pacific fighting Japan.
And Britain desperately needed the U. S.
to join the fight against Hitler.
For three long days, this remained in doubt.
Japan also wanted the Germans to declare war on the U. S.
On December the 8th, 1941, Japanese Ambassador Oshima
visited Nazi Foreign Minister Von Ribbentrop
to request this.
But Von Ribbentrop stalled.
He feared that U. S. involvement in Europe
would tip the balance of power against the Axis.
Roosevelt and Hitler's personal brinkmanship
forced matters to a head.
[Martin] Hitler makes his own decision
to declare war on the United States.
Roosevelt does try and provoke him to doing so
by making a fireside chat on the 8th of December
where he says some very rude things about Hitler.
He accuses Hitler
of all sorts of aggressive actions,
of conspiring with the Japanese
and basically being behind what the Japanese had done.
[narrator] Three days after the attack on Pearl Harbour,
first Mussolini, then Hitler, declared war on America,
claiming their "pact of steel"
would bring about a "new world order."
Hitler couldn't stand Roosevelt.
He'd been very rude about him before,
and if you listen to the speech that Hitler makes
to the Reichstag when he declares war,
he just rants about Roosevelt.
Roosevelt clearly has got him on the raw,
which I think was what Roosevelt intended to do.
There was a good reason. Again, in Hitler's world view
for attacking America, for declaring war on America,
and that was that, in his view,
Jews were at the centre of everything that was wrong
with the world.
And America, and particularly New York finance,
with large number of Jews in banks and investment banks
in New York, of course, were at the centre of that.
And therefore, in a perverse kind of logic...
[scoffs]
...this was going to be part of his final settlement,
final solution of the Jewish problem,
would be taking on and defeating America as well.
[narrator] Roosevelt responded,
arguing that the Axis powers
were "endeavouring to enslave the entire world"
and calling on all nations to unite against
the "forces of savagery and of barbarism."
The American Congress and Senate were unanimous.
In just four days, America went from glorious isolation
to waging war on two fronts.
The Japanese did arrange for a submarine
to lob shells towards Los Angeles
when Roosevelt was giving
one of his early wartime fireside chats,
but by and large, they posed no threat
to the American mainland.
But it shocked Americans out of this sense
that we can steer clear of war.
[narrator] Japan was already proving a deadly enemy.
[tense music]
Hours after Pearl Harbour, Japanese planes struck airfields
north of Manila in the Philippines,
destroying more than half the fighters and bombers
of the U. S. Army's Far East Air Force.
Two days later,
further strikes obliterated Cavite Naval Yard,
the Americans' only ship repair facility
in the Philippines.
The Americans were not the only victims
of the Japanese attacks.
As the Japanese blitzed through Asia,
they singled out the British in Singapore,
sinking the HMS Repulse and the HMS Prince of Wales
on which Churchill had crossed the Atlantic to meet Roosevelt,
resulting in 840 British casualties.
Over the course of seven hours on 8th December,
the Japanese launched simultaneous attacks
on the British‐held colonies of Malaya,
Hong Kong, and Singapore.
In one knock‐out blow,
the Japanese sought to cripple the Western Allies
and gain total mastery over Southeast Asia.
The issue that is absorbing the Japanese government
right from 1931 onwards
is how to sort out the China problem.
They're at war there throughout the 1930s,
undeclared at first, then declared,
on an ever‐increasing scale
and, of course, China just pulls in resources
and pulls in difficulties, creates difficulties for Japan.
But that's the number one problem so far as they see it,
is how to solve the Chinese problem.
[narrator] Two weeks after Pearl Harbour
on December 22nd, 1941,
Churchill arrived in Washington, D. C.,
to attend the Arcadia Conference.
Stalin, who hated travelling, did not attend,
and sent the Russian ambassador to the U. S.,
Maxim Litvinov.
On New Year's Day 1942,
all three countries signed the United Nations Declaration,
pledging to use all available resources
to defeat the Axis powers,
and to create an organization dedicated
to ensuring "life, liberty, independence,
religious freedom, the rights of man, and justice."
Representatives of 26 other countries
fighting the Axis signed the next day,
but, crucially, the declaration was driven by The Big Three.
As 1941 drew to a close,
the Axis powers were ravaging the globe.
[crowd] Heil! Sieg Heil!
[narrator] Could a communist, a capitalist and a colonialist
cooperate and defeat the Axis?
[theme music]
Next time on Race to Victory.
Britain and America needed to build a united front
against the Axis powers by creating a blueprint
to defeat fascism as well as a post‐war vision.
U. S. troops join the British for the first time to battle
the Axis forces in North Africa.
Churchill makes the famous quote about
this not been "the beginning of the end,
this is the end of the beginning."
[narrator] While the Soviets
continue to fight on the motherland.
The people of Leningrad were soon forced
to start eating cats, mice, dogs, leather,
whatever they could find to sustain themselves.
There were cases of cannibalism.
[narrator] And would America's reluctant entry
into the war make enough of a difference
to clinch victory?
[theme music]