The year is 1941.

World War II is entering its third year, France has collapsed, and Great Britain is barely holding on.

A last bulwark of democracy against the tide of fascism.

Dictatorship rules Europe, and the sleeping giant of the United States has yet to wake.

With the collapse of France in 1940, the situation in Europe becomes clear.

Without resources from the U.S, all resistance to the Nazi military machine would collapse.

No matter how bravely the small island nation of Britain tried to hold out.

But America was opposed to war. In fact it goes further.

America was opposed to any intervention at all.

In the 1930s, the U.S had passed the Neutrality Act.

Which not only established that it wasn't going to get involved with foreign wars,

But went further, with the prevailing American isolationism of the time,

and declared that America wasn't going to sell arms to nations at war.

President Roosevelt saw the threat that Nazi Germany posed,

and desperately wanted to find ways to support the British war effort.

But the Neutrality Act kept his hands tied.

When Czechoslovakia fell, he lobbied Congress to renew an old prevision in the Neutrality Act,

called Cash and Carry.

But, his efforts were rebuffed.

Then, Poland fell.

And things started to look grim.

Finally, on November 5th, 1939, Cash and Carry was renewed.

But, Cash and Carry was a limited provision.

It allowed for the sale of material to Britain and France, but only if they paid in cash for the material,

and transported it all back to Europe themselves.

No U.S ship was to enter a war zone.

At first, this worked. But as the years dragged on, and France fell,

Britain found itself hemorrhaging its reserves.

The Battle of Britain, and the campaigning in North Africa had been bleeding it dry.

There simply was no more cash in the U.K.

And even the British Fleet was being stretched thin.

In 1940, Roosevelt established a policy allowing the trade of destroyers to the British,

in exchange for bases in British colonies.

This policy was definitely pushing the limits of the Neutrality Act,

But, technically, it wasn't violating the terms of Cash and Carry.

Because the British were trading for the ships rather than buying them,

and, hey, ships do a pretty good job of transporting themselves.

So... there ya go.

This deal really shows the desperation of the situation though.

Roosevelt risked a potentially illegal action, because everyone:

His staff, and even much of the British staff, saw the capitulation of the British Empire as inevitable.

In 1940, everyone thought Britain was on the ropes,

mere weeks from being taken down.

And so, as a last "Hail Mary", this destroyers-for-bases deal put U.S bases on British colonies,

so that they wouldn't simply fall into Nazi hands.

But, fortunately, the Battle of Britain was won,

And now, the U.S had to enter into more long term thinking.

It was time for Lend-Lease.

This is one of the critical turning points in the second World War.

It's right up there with the German invasion of the Soviet Union,

and the United States finally deciding to fully commit to war.

Without Lend-Lease,

the U.K almost certainly would have fallen.

Fascists would gain control over all of Europe,

and even if the U.S later decided to enter the war,

they'd have no jumping-off point for a European Campaign.

But, Lend-Lease, at last

meant that the complete industrial power of the U.S

would be committed to combating the Nazi War Machine.

With Lend-Lease, the U.S had finally picked a side.

Y'see, the idea behind Lend-Lease was simple.

The U.S would give its strategic partners-

And I say "strategic partners" because they're not Allies yet-

massive amounts of war material for the duration of the war.

After which, these "strategic partners" were supposed to give that material back.

Funny thing about war material though,

not a lot of it tends to come back in the same condition you lent it out in.

And the U.S knew this.

This was essentially the largest donation of war material in the history of mankind.

And it wasn't just tanks and bombs.

It was foodstuffs and telephone cabling.

It was trucks and clothing.

Heck, the U.S even shipped 2000 locomotives and 11,000 train cars

over to the USSR to bolster their rail infrastructure.

This was a huge portion of the U.S economy

going to cover the material cost of the war.

While other nations were carrying the bulk of the human cost.

And the sheer size of this effort is indescribable.

It helped to drag the U.S out of the Great Depression,

and galvanized American production.

It meant sending millions of tons overseas,

shipping on a scale heretofore unimaginable during times of war.

It meant giving away more goods

than the entire world would have been able to produce annually

a mere 75 years before.

But, like all things,

this decision wasn't as straightforward as we sometimes like to think of it.

Looking back on it today,

it's easy to see the results of this Herculean task

and how fully America threw herself into the effort,

and just assume that the entire nation was unified behind this cause.

That it had broad support.

But democracies are, by design, messy things,

and even on the issue of Lend-Lease,

voting in the U.S Congress was split almost exactly down party lines.

But once the measure was passed,

America really did embrace this decision

to truly be the arsenal of democracy.

To be the engine of war for the anti-fascist world.

And that leads me to a particular group I'd like to talk about.

A group who's too rarely remembered and celebrated.

A group whose battles were rarely glorious.

They never took cities or gained territory,

but they're the group of Americans who risked their lives earliest.

And sacrificed the most.

They had higher casualty percentages than any of the other American Armed Services during the war.

And they, very arguably, saved the free world.

I would like to take this moment to acknowledge the service of the Merchant Marine.

These are the men and women who serve as sailors to transport goods during wartime.

They served in unarmed civilian ships,

hauling necessary supplies to Allied Forces throughout the war.

Sailing the Atlantic,

everyday they faced the harrowing dread of the submarine.

At any moment, they might lose their lives

to an unseen and invisible vessel far below the waves.

They served simply as prey.

Unable to fight back against an enemy that might-

at any time-

strike without warning.

To die asphyxiating in a steel tomb, or

freezing in the unforgiving waters of the Atlantic,

are horrors that no one would want to face.

And yet, these sailors faced that everyday.

Not for glory, but simply because it was a job that needed to be done.

And these threats were so real and omnipresent,

that the Merchant Marine became one of the first uses of statistical operations research.

The frequency of attacks on the Merchant Marine

presented enough data for decisions to be made about the optimal size of a convoy,

And the escort it might require.

Evidence all gathered off the backs of broken ships,

and drowned sailors.

But despite all of this,

many of the men and women of the Merchant Marines

signed up for voyage after voyage.

Returning to the seas to make sure that the material of Lend-Lease

always got through.

And though the U.S wouldn't officially enter the war for nine more months,

Lend-Lease made members of the Merchant Marines

some of the first U.S citizens to give their lives

for the Allied Cause in World War II.

And in doing so,

though their sacrifice is rarely celebrated,

they helped change the course of history.

Join us next week, as we look more closely at how

the lack of specific natural resources drove Axis policy.

And explore how many of the synthetic

products we know today

came to be during the second world war.

[Ending Music]