Revisionist history, Little Hawk.

FDR's programs such as the WPA and the CCC—along with the establishment of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the imposition of regulations on the excesses of Wall Street had pretty well put an end to the Depression, and some of the causes of it, which Reagan went about reversing, which was largely responsible for getting us into the current mess.

The war was a separate issue. The Depression was well on the wane by the onset of the 1940s. I was a little kid at the time, but I knew what was going on.

There was considerable outrage over the fact that the United States was shipping scrap metal to Japan, who were in turn using it to make weapons with which they were savaging the Chinese. FDR stopped trade with Japan—as had many other countries.

Japan sent a diplomatic mission to Washington, D. C. with the ostensible intention of trying to talk the U. S. into reopening trade. While the Japanese diplomats were smiling and bowing in D. C., the Japanese navy attacked Pearl Harbor.

Feint and sucker-punch!

The idea that FDR drove the Japanese into attack us is a spurious piece of history, much favored by the American Far Right in an effort to besmirch FDR's accomplishments.

As I said, I was a little kid at the time, but I knew what was going on. And looking back on it, I consider the original source of the claims that FDR ended the Depression, not through his programs and regulations, but by causing the Japanese to attack us, thereby getting us into the war. Granted, the Japanese were pissed at the embargo, but the attack on Pearl Harbor had been in their play-book for a long time. Part of their agenda. They were going to do it anyway.

The Republicans LOVE that bit of spurious "history." Not unlike their constant attempts to blame Obama for the current economic mess.

Don Firth