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You stated:

FDR is the guy who failed to end the depression in two terms as president (he served three terms and was elected to a fourth). Despite the fact that Hitler took power in 1933, about the same time FDR took office, and the Japanese started their march about the same time, by the end of his second term when we were hit at Pearl Harbor FDR had done nothing to prepare us for war. Our guys were still training with sticks and our ships were sitting in harbor to save fuel.

I’m pretty far back in line if you’re looking for someone to promote the sainthood of FDR, but I recently read a book

Freedom's Forge:
How American Business Produced Victory in World War II
Arthur Herman

which presents an entirely different take on American preparedness. Stipulate that WWII ended the Depression, but by what mechanism? My #29 is a synopsis of what I learned earlier reading The New Dealers’ War. But Forge is informative about US preparedness policy during the two years or so between the start of British rearmament and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. During that period, the British (and until May 1940 the French) effort to obtain weaponry of all sorts and from wherever they might be available produced a spike in export business for American arms/aircraft businesses. After Dunkirk British ground forces were essentially unarmed, for example - and as the US Army was adopting the M-1 Garand, it was able to surplus a lot of Springfield rifles which were made for WWI but had never been shipped to Europe before Armistice Day and had been warehoused. These were sold to the British.
FDR was deeply worried about the possible fall of Britain, and Churchill did what he could to promote that. Including warning that if Britain fell, there was no knowing what Churchill’s successors might find it necessary to do with the Royal Navy. The point, in this discussion, is that American preparedness efforts were limited by a very antiwar public opinion, and what efforts were made were - in the early days - fully funded by British money. Until that ran out. Then FDR came up with Lend-Lease as a way of sidestepping public opposition. But the crucial fact is that in 1939 America not only was not prepared for war, it was unprepared to prepare for war. And FDR knew it. He had as under Secretary of the Navy during WWI seen the US utterly fail to produce weaponry and get it to the Front.
He knew that the US couldn’t afford to enter WWII in the same condition. So he called the one person who had impressed FDR during the WWI armaments fiasco - Bernard Baruch. When FDR asked him to organize an industrial preparedness program, Baruch demurred because of his age. Asked who he should tap for the job, Baruch replied, “Three names: Bill Knudsen, Bill Knudsen, and Bill Knudsen.” A former right hand man of Henry Ford, Knudsen had quit in a huff in 1920 - and been hired at a tenth of his previous salary by a struggling car maker named General Motors. He took over Chevrolet, and brought it from nowhere up to parity with Ford. So in American industry, no one had more respect than Bill Knudsen.
Knudsen accepted the mission, and was able to implement a plan whereby the US accumulated the machine tools (long pole in the tent) and facilities, as much as possible using British money until that ran out. The upshot was that when Pearl Harbor hit most of its actual military product of the preceding 2 years had gone to Britain. America was not armed, but it was prepared to rapidly arm itself. In short order military production was ramping up to such an extent that there were actual production cutbacks long before the end of WWII - and even well before V-E day. The facilities had been put in place or at least started, and everything was mass produced.
There is a very suspicious coincidence involved in that. When Knudsen took the job, he warned FDR that it would take18 months to prepare the necessary facilities and machinery. And the time from the Fall of France to the bombing of Pearl was only a little more than 18 months. Those who think that FDR deliberately provoked the Japanese attack could certainly use that as grist for their mill. I think there’s little doubt that FDR wanted to enter the war.
AND that FDR helped Stalin more than he had to. In that respect it was interesting to learn that because finished vehicles were about eight times more trouble to ship than the tonnage of their parts, GM actually built a truck assembly plant in Iran and shipped the truck components on the Liberty ships. In Iran the trucks were assembled, loaded with (other) military supplies, and the keys were handed to the Russian drivers to convoy through Iran to the USSR.

Thanks for the post, very interesting.

I have always been amazed at the way we went from no fleet to the largest fleet the world had ever seen, in just a couple years time. Essentially no air force to the largest ever seen in months. It boggles the mind how quickly we did that. Your point that we had actually started to build our capabilities in support of Britain and Russia certainly is very much on point. It is the right answer. It is still I think unprecedented in history, the speed at which a broken economy spat out fleets and armies and rebuilt itself almost over night.

When you realize our active declared participation in the war was only about three years time, what we did was miraculous. We took on two huge armies simultaneously that were well prepared to take us on, and beat them decisively, starting with nothing. No one in history has ever done what we did.

It doesn’t change what I think of FDR by much, except perhaps my last sentence is open for revision. I do give him credit for his decision to fight it all out and no holds barred. We haven’t seen a war president like that since him.