"There Can Be No Appeasement with Ruthlessness …We Must Be the Great Arsenal of Democracy" …4

"The President Proclaims That an Unlimited National Emergency Confronts the Country, Proclamation No. 2487" …15

"We Are Going to Win the War and We Are Going to Win the Peace That Follows" …22

In 1939, the year that World War II (1939–45) began in Europe, America was just beginning to emerge from the Great Depression (1929–41). The Great Depression was the longest and worst economic crisis in U.S. history. During the early 1930s, twelve million American workers, approximately 25 percent of the workforce, were jobless. Among people who were employed, incomes dropped an average of 40 percent between 1929 and 1932. In 1939 between eight million and ten million willing workers, roughly 17 percent of the workforce, were still unemployed. The Great Depression did not end until 1941, when the United States stepped up its mobilization efforts for World War II...