jan 1, 1940 - National Defense Advisory COmmision

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The success of America First caused Roosevelt to proceed cautiously as he moved the United States closer to involvement. The president did not want war, but he believed that most Americans “greatly underestimate the serious implications to our own future,” as he confided to White. In May, Roosevelt created the National Defense Advisory Commission, which engaged in early war planning, and brought two prominent Republicans, Henry Stimson and Frank Knox, into his cabinet as secretaries of war and the navy, respectively. In the summer of 1940, the president traded fifty World War I-era destroyers to Great Britain in exchange for the right to build military bases on British possessions in the Atlantic, circumventing neutrality laws by using an executive order. In October 1940, a bipartisan vote in Congress approved a large increase in defense spending and instituted the first peacetime draft in American history. Acknowledging that Britain and the United States stood alone against fascism, FDR declared, “We must be the great arsenal of democracy.”

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