The majority of academic literature regarding American war-time sentiments, despite its eloquence and scholarship, cannot do the same justice as a colloquialism from an American president. FDR, in his Annual Message to Congress (January 6, 1942), romantically uses this phrase, "They know that victory for us means victory for..." Freedom, democracy, family, decency, humanity, and religion--these are the hopeful spoils from a war with the Nazis, the Japanese, and the "Fascists." Reinhold Niebuhr, however, believes that the Christian American, and "the common guilt which makes him and his enemy kin," must invoke an understanding of mercy. I wonder, then, how did such feelings toward ultimate action (whether it to justice or mercy, or both) shape the physical nature of the war?