Narrator: United Nations war council. President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill at the White House meet Allied leaders to
map the strategy of the war. Climax of Mr. Churchill’s seven-day visit: a spectacular display of America’s ever-growing armed might.
Today, with invasion by air the most feared assault, Mr. Churchill evinces keen interest in the paratroopers and their equipment.
These are men trained to fight a modern war. Listening in by two-way portable radio, he hears paratroop commanders aloft give their
orders to bail out. Diving into space, mushrooming down in a demonstration of attack by vertical assault. Not scores but hundreds of sky soldiers launching
a mass attack. They simulate the capture of an enemy airdrome. Lessons learned from the fall of France, of Belgium, of Holland, of Crete.
Today, the United States Air Force shows that it, too, can fight a modern war and has the weapons it takes to win. Britain’s prime minister said:
“It is the most impressive demonstration I have ever seen.” A sky full of fighters floating to Earth, grim preparation for the day that is to come.
Narrator: Aboard the Portuguese liner Serpa Pinto, the war’s youngest refugees arrive in America to begin life anew.
Wanderers upon the face of the Earth, they come from Poland, from Czechoslovakia, from Spain, some even from Germany, and all
are made welcome. Today, under auspices of the United States Committee for the Care of European Children, they finally reach a haven of safety.
The Red Cross meets hungry stomachs with food and fresh milk, a language that any child understands.
Yes, after months of an insufficient diet, this to them is truly the Promised Land.
Narrator: A fighting father welcomes home his seven fighting sons, six of whom served aboard the ill-fated carrier Lexington.
When their country was attacked, they all joined the Navy. This is their first furlough back in their home port.
Quite a family. Although the boys were all of draft age, they didn’t wait to be called, they volunteered. Father and seven sons, all in the service.
And now the eighth brother is joining up. Only 17, he’s eager to get in the fight. Home port reunion
aboard one of the big guns of the fleet. The largest single family of fighting men in the entire United States Navy.
Narrator: Physical exercise is an important phase in the training of U.S. aerial gunners. Strong arms and strong hands are needed to fire the
powerful guns of a bomber. Hands and fingers that must be quick on the trigger. Blind-folded, they learn to take apart and reassemble each weapon.
Climbing aboard a fast fighter plane, they’re ready for the final test aloft. Guns equipped with camera instead of bullets to check the
accuracy of their aim. Flying in formation, the gunners see the enemy exactly as they would from the tail of a bomber. Their job is
to protect their ship from assault by diving fighters like this. Score one. And when they land, the camera guns tell the story.
King Peter, boy ruler of Yugoslavia, meets President Roosevelt for the first time. Only 19, the young king comes to seek aid for Yugoslav guerillas waging war
against the Axis. He meets the president’s Cabinet and also, for the first time, faces a barrage of American newspapermen. A king without a country.
But communiqués from the Balkans say his guerilla troops are keeping busy many German divisions. King Peter’s Yugoslavia is still very much in the fight.
In Canada, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands sees Princess Juliana and her granddaughters for the first time since the Nazis
invaded their homeland. For the 62-year-old queen, the transatlantic crossing was her first and, incidentally, her first time in a plane.
A queen for more than 50 years, Wilhelmina ruled an empire of 75 million subjects. Now she lives for the day the House of Orange will rise again.
Narrator: Here is the arsenal of democracy at work, one plant among thousands dotted across the vast United States. Plants that build tanks like these –
huge, lumbering juggernauts – in numbers that stagger the imagination. Six months ago, President Roosevelt called for 120,000 tanks, tanks of all sizes.
And overnight the automobile industry of America transformed its plants, reshaped its tools, to become the greatest tank arsenal the world has ever known.
An industry geared to produce the 32 million automobiles on which America rides now engaged solely in the task of turning out tanks and more tanks.
This is mass production as only American engineers know how. Here are figures of yesterday’s newspapers, realities today.
Logistics at work in industry. From vast stockpiles like these American tanks take shape. Each stockpile assembled in such a way that scores of subassemblies
reach their proper place, each at the proper time. Steel, rubber, aluminum, tin; forgings, moldings, castings; 30,000 parts to build one engine of destruction.
Like shrouded ghosts, they roll out on trains of flat cars and are headed for the sea. Some to the Atlantic, some to the Pacific, bound for Africa,
for Asia, bound for the battlefields of Europe: reinforcements for the armies of the United Nations. At unnamed ports, unnamed ships take
aboard their cargos of death. This too is a part of the job and America is seeing it through. Every week, every month, American tanks are
finding their way to the fighting fronts. Wherever they’re needed, there they will go. This is total war, and this is America’s answer.