and massive increases in the flow of American weapons, and he became known for arguing “Better ten thousand tanks too many than one tank too few." Soon after his arrival in Washington, D.C., Monnet became an advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Convinced that America could serve as "the great arsenal of democracy", he persuaded the President to launch a massive arms production program, both as an economic stimulus and to supply the Allies with military resources. Unlike De Gaulle, Monnet was popular with the Americans and the English. A co-worker of his claims that sometimes he would help Churchill to write a message to Roosevelt and then on the next day help Roosevelt to compose the response. According to Edward R. Kantowicz, Monnet was impressed by the American organizational energy and saw cooperation with the new superpower as Europe's only chance to reorganize and recover itself. In 1941, Roosevelt, with Churchill's agreement, launched the Victory Program, which represented the involvement of the United States in the war effort. After the war, British economist John Maynard Keynes stated that Monnet, through his coordination work, had probably shortened World War II by a year. While in Washington, Monnet and his family lived in a comfortable house built in 1934 at 2415 Foxhall Road NW, which was later home to Adlai Stevenson III and James Baker. He worked from an office of the British Mission at the Willard Hotel. In 1943, Monnet became a member of the National Liberation Committee, De Gaulle's French government-in-exile, stationed in Algiers, being designated Commissaire à l'Armement (Minister of Armaments). During a meeting on 5 August of that year, Monnet declared to the Committee: "There will be no peace in Europe if the States are reconstituted on the basis of national sovereignty, with all that that entails in terms of prestige politics and economic protectionism. The countries of Europe are too small to guarantee their peoples the prosperity that modern conditions make possible and consequently necessary. Prosperity for the States of Europe and the social developments that must go with it will only be possible if they form a federation or a "European entity" that makes them into a common economic unit.” The Blum-Byrnes Agreement In 1946, Monnet successfully negotiated the Blum–Byrnes agreement with the United States, which cleared France from a $2.8 billion debt (mostly World War I loans) and provided the country with an additional