Newspaper headlines
All headlines are from 1941, the year the Lend-Lease Act was agreed.
Rhetoric such as 'Roosevelt's speech will not please our enemies' and 'America land of hope' showed an increasing drive from British newspapers to cultivate support for Anglo-American cooperation. Due to print media being a primary source of information for the general public during the War, the news projected through each newspaper was extremely important for public morale. The collection of headlines collated indicate a largely pro-American stance adopted by British newspapers in 1941.
On 23 October 1941, the American Senate passed a supplemental Lend-Lease Bill increasing aid budget significantly to 5.8 billion dollars. This was due to a certain amount of political pressure exerted on the American government by propaganda drives from British newspapers at the encouragement of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. American print media outlets were often hostile towards Roosevelt's ideology and policies. However, due to his connections within the American media industry, such as the magazine 'Newsweek', (which was owned by a close friend of the Roosevelt family - Vincent Astor) he often influenced favourable pieces about interventionism.
In his book ' The Power to Persuade: FDR, the Newsmagazines, and Going to War, 1939-1941' Michael Carew explains how Roosevelt used four magazines: 'Life', 'Look', 'Time' and 'Newsweek', with a collective weekly readership of 40 million readers, to influence the public to support his policy of interventionism. This shows just how influential print media was in shaping the course of the Second World War.