He contributed to WWll the only way he was allowed to, by acting in military training films and such.

According to Peggy Noonan ;
Reagan was big. As a boss, he was terrific. Once, I wrote a speech that was too long and showy and rather off point. He cut it and rewrote. But he knew I was a new speechwriter, and he didn't want to hurt my feelings, so instead of saying, "Boy, this is bad," he wrote a note saying, "Sorry I had to cut the speech, it was just a little too long." Reagan spent decades writing his own commentaries and speeches.

His one on one conversations with leaders of the world and there praise for him are testament that he was a great man and a great leader that could express his own feelings about his views.

I think he used his experience as an actor in the best way one could.

From the famous quote ; "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this Wall!"

There is a school of thought that Ronald Reagan managed to look good only because he had clever writers putting words into his mouth. (Perhaps the leading exponent is my former colleague Peggy Noonan, who while a Reagan speechwriter appeared in a magazine article under a caption that said just that: "The woman who puts the words in the president's mouth.") There is a basic problem with this view. Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, George Bush, and Bob Dole all had clever writers. Why wasn't one of them the Great Communicator?

Because we, his speechwriters, were not creating Reagan; we were stealing from him. Reagan's policies were straightforward--he had been articulating them for two decades. When the State Department and the National Security Council began attempting to block my draft by submitting alternative drafts, they weakened their own case. Their drafts lacked boldness. They conveyed no sense of conviction. They had not stolen, as I had, from Frau Elz--and from Ronald Reagan.