episode
Just prior to America's involvement in World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) called on the country to become 'an arsenal of democracy', to start producing war materiel and defeat the Axis powers. Through firsthand accounts, declassified films, and period images, A CITY AT WAR: CHICAGO explores how the Windy City answered that call, and how a friendship between FDR and Chicago mayor Ed Kelly, a 'Big City Boss', helped to set everything in motion. The documentary reveals how Chicagoland was transformed into a well-oiled production machine; with every racial, ethnic and religious group and every man, woman and child mobilizing to support the war effort. And perhaps the most definitive and chilling contribution Chicago made to the war effort was the birth of the atomic bomb.
