Franklin D. Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt and Admiral Halsey

By John Wukovits

Prim, proper, and lacking any trace of braggadocio, the first lady of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt, preferred placid pastimes and exchanging letters with close friends. Read more

Franklin D. Roosevelt

To Casablanca By Air

By Eric Niderost

On the afternoon of January 7, 1943, Boeing 314s Dixie Clipper and Atlantic Clipper took off from the Marine Air Terminal, La Guardia Airport in New York, their destination Miami. Read more

Franklin D. Roosevelt

New Mexico: Atomic Spy Capital

By Richard Higgins

New Mexico and its capital of Santa Fe bring to mind some beautiful images. Stunning sunsets, unlimited vistas, a plethora of art galleries, the spectacular food enlivened with the local green chile, an ancient Native American culture that still thrives, and a Spanish heritage tradition going back to within 50 years of Columbus’s arrival all make for a unique cultural and physical environment. Read more

Franklin D. Roosevelt

B-29 Production

By Joe Kirby

When Maj. Gen. Curtis Lemay, the hard-driving commander of the Twentieth U.S. Air Force based in Guam, decided to change tactics in early 1945 to boost the effectiveness of the B-29 Superfortress, it was the Bell Aircraft plant in Marietta, Georgia, that ultimately provided him with the stripped-down bombers that played such a key role in ending the war in the Pacific. Read more

Against the odds, Detroit defied reality to help win World War II.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Ford’s Willow Run Factory

By Samantha L. Quigley

They said it couldn’t be done. Doubters chided Henry Ford for declaring that his Willow Run Bomber Plant could turn out a B-24 Liberator heavy bomber every hour. Read more

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Rationing on the U.S. Home Front

By Herb Kugel

In 1941-1942, British journalist Alistair Cooke traveled through the United States. In his description of his trip, American Home Front 1941-1942, he reported stopping for breakfast at a restaurant in West Virginia where, “the sugar was rationed at breakfast, and there was a note on the menu requesting that … in the interests of ‘national defense,’ keep to one cup of coffee.” Read more

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Japanese Internment: Behind the Barbed Wire in America

By Richard Higgins

“We were stunned when we entered the camp,” Yoshio “Yosh” Nakamura said, remembering the day when he and his family, from El Monte, California, were herded through the main gate at the Gila River Relocation Center—a Japanese American internment camp 30 miles southeast of Phoenix, Arizona—carrying only suitcases into which their worldly possessions had been crammed. Read more

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The Men Against the Bomb

By Andrew J. Rotter

The men and women who imagined and then built the atomic bomb thought they were doing something different from what makers of “conventional” weapons did. Read more

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Pearl Harbor: The Sleeping Giant Awoken

By Flint Whitlock

It was, as the phrase goes, another perfect day in paradise. As the sun rose above the Pacific in the clear, cloudless sky east of the Hawaiian Islands, on December 7, 1941, the giant U.S. Read more

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The Irish Brigade in WWII

By Tim Newark

It was a letter in the London Times that caught the attention of British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Read more

Franklin D. Roosevelt

4 Unsolved Mysteries of the Jimmy Doolittle Raid on Tokyo

By Susan Zimmerman

April 18, 1942, will forever live in American military glory as the date of the Jimmy Doolittle Raid on Tokyo––a gutsy, never-before-attempted combat mission to fly North American B-25 Mitchell bombers off the deck of an aircraft carrier and attack an enemy capital. Read more

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The Brazilian Expeditionary Force Invades Italy

By Nathan N. Prefer

The term “United Nations” was in large part derived from the large number of nations that joined in common cause between 1939 and 1945 to defeat the Axis powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy during World War II. Read more