Because the “Spigot is the ‘Spigot, let’s note before the calendar changes that today is December 7, the anniversary (on this side of the International Date Line) of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, the event that finally dragged the United States into the global conflict that had already cost millions of lives in Europe and Asia. The same week of the attack on the U.S. fleet in Hawaii, the Soviets stopped the German advance on Moscow — German units made it into outlying areas of the capital –and threw the invaders into a retreat that nearly became a rout.
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Dan,
The Writer’s Almanac of 12/7, talks about FDR’s refusal to enter the conflict raging overseas until the Pearl Harbor attack. The word they used,”refused”, is poorly used, I believe.
It should be remembered that the first peace time draft, was signed into law in September of 1940, and Lend-Lease was instituted in early 1941. Both acts to bolster the Allies. There was a great amount of isolationism in the general populace at that time, with Charles Lindbergh running around saying that Hitler wasn’t such a bad guy, and Colonel McCormick of the Chicago Tribune saying, ‘don’t pull Britain’s chestnuts out of the fire”. FDR knew in his wisdom, that you shouldn’t enter a conflict unless the populace was behind the decision. Something “Bushkinds” didn’t learn.
Dad