World War II
In December 1939, Monnet was sent to London to oversee the collectivization of British and French war production capacities. Monnet's influence inspired Charles de Gaulle and Winston Churchill to accept a plan for a union of France and the United Kingdom to rival the Pact of Steel alliance between Germany and Italy.
In August 1940, Monnet was sent to the United States by the British Government as a member of the British Supply Council, in order to negotiate the purchase of war supplies. Soon after his arrival in Washington, D.C., he became an advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Convinced that America could serve as "the great arsenal of democracy," he persuaded the president to launch a massive arms production program to supply the Allies with military material. Shortly thereafter, in 1941, Roosevelt, with Churchill's agreement, launched the Victory Program, which represented the entry of the United States into the war effort. After the war, British economist, John Maynard Keynes, was to say that through his co-ordinating, Monnet had probably shortened World War II by one year.
In 1943, Monnet became a member of the National Liberation Committee, the would-be French government in exile in Algiers. During a meeting on 5 August 1943, Monnet declared to the Committee:
"There will be no peace in Europe, if the states are reconstituted on the basis of national sovereignty... The countries of Europe are too small to guarantee their peoples the necessary prosperity and social development. The European states must constitute themselves into a federation..."
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Famous quotes containing the words war ii, world and/or war:
“Today we know that World War II began not in 1939 or 1941 but in the 1920s and 1930s when those who should have known better persuaded themselves that they were not their brothers keeper.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (19111978)
“For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible. Our science has always desired to monitor, measure, abstract, and castrate meaning, forgetting that life is full of noise and that death alone is silent: work noise, noise of man, and noise of beast. Noise bought, sold, or prohibited. Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise.”
—Jacques Attali (b. 1943)
“The trumpets sound, the banners fly,
The glittering spears are ranked ready;
The shouts o war are heard afar,
The battle closes thick and bloody;
But its no the roar o sea or shore
Wad mak me langer wish to tarry;
Nor shout o war thats heard afar,
Its leaving thee, my bonnie Mary.”
—Robert Burns (17591796)