Franklin Roosevelt was the President of the United States during Pearl Harbor. He was just completing the first year of his third term in office, having been reelected in 1940. Pearl Harbor was the disastrous culmination of a lengthy balancing act for Roosevelt, who tried to keep the United States out of war while simultaneously helping Great Britain and China fight the Germans and Japanese respectively. He had always wanted the United States to be more active in supporting the enemies of the Axis, but was restrained by some isolationist forces within Congress and American society as a whole. Pearl Harbor put to rest any hope that the United States could stay out of the conflict. Roosevelt would finish his third term and win reelection again in 1944. He died in 1945, just before the end of the war in Europe, and was replaced by his Vice President Harry Truman.
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