| Activity | President of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. He came to know Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst through his wife Eleanor's friendship with Dorothy. Before his return to England in 1939 Leonard met with Roosevelt who asked Leonard to contact him personally if he learnt of a specific requirement that the United States could provide for Britain. Early in 1940, Leonard visited his brother Tommy who was at that time head of an intelligence department at the Air Ministry and who was only too aware of the strength of the German air power that was preparing to bomb Britain. Leonard telephoned Roosevelt with Tommy's request for fifty fighter planes and aircraft carriers. Roosevelt felt unable to send such a force from a country which at that time was determinedly neutral, but against great opposition from his government, he did send fifty old US destroyers to the British Navy. Roosevelt tried to persuade his country to join Britain in the fight against Hitler, but the vast majority were determined to remain uninvolved. It took the bombing of Pearl Harbour by the Japanese on 7th December, 1941 (the evening of which day Dorothy and Leonard spent with Eleanor Roosevelt at the White House), to bring America round. Three days later Germany declared war on the United States. |