"There had been little in his background to prepare him for running a war. He had never worn a uniform or received any military education. True, he had served with much enthusiasm in the Navy Department during the first war; but his profession had always been strictly politics. It was a line of work few men were better at, and perhaps because of that, he recognized from the first that victory would depend on unity among the Allies. "The United Nations" was his phrase, and he used it often with great effect. But he also knew that real unity would take some tall doing. Stalin wanted a second front right away; Churchill did not, and there was strong feeling at home for punishing the Japanese first. Roosevelt decided that Stalin would get something close to what he wanted in 1942. It was a second front in Africa instead of Europe, but American soldiers were fighting Germans in less than a year after Pearl Harbor, and there was going to be no American straying from the beat-Germany-first strategy. Furthermore, Franklin Roosevelt seemed to know how to judge men. Whatever he may have lacked for the job of Commander in Chief was more than made up for by the group of men he called on to help him."