President Roosevelt delivering a fireside chat. His address of May 27, 1941, obtained the largest share of a radio audience, 65%, of all time.
President Franklin Roosevelt, in his 17th Fireside Chat, declared an unlimited national emergency on this day in 1941.
I am speaking tonight from the White House in the presence of
the Governing Board of the Pan American Union, the Canadian Minister, and their
families. The members of this Board are the Ambassadors and Ministers of the
American Republics in Washington. It is appropriate that I do this for now, as
never before, the unity of the American Republics is of supreme importance to
each and every one of us and to the cause of freedom throughout the world. Our
future independence is bound up with the future independence of all of our
sister Republics.
The pressing problems that confront us are
military and naval problems. We cannot afford to approach them from the point
of view of wishful thinkers or sentimentalists. What we face is cold, hard fact.
The first and fundamental fact is that what
started as a European war has developed, as the Nazis always intended it should
develop, into a world war for world domination.
Adolf Hitler never considered the domination of
Europe as an end in itself. European conquest was but a step toward ultimate
goals in all the other continents. It is unmistakably apparent to all of us
that, unless the advance of Hitlerism is forcibly checked now, the Western
Hemisphere will be within range of the Nazi weapons of destruction.
For our own defense we have accordingly undertaken
certain obviously necessary measures:
First, we have joined in concluding a series of
agreements with all the other American Republics. This further solidified our
hemisphere against the common danger.
And then, a year ago, we launched, and are
successfully carrying out, the largest armament production program we have ever
undertaken.
We have added substantially to our splendid Navy,
and we have mustered our manpower to build up a new Army which is already
worthy of the highest traditions of our military service.
We instituted a policy of aid for the democracies
-- the Nations which have fought for the continuation of human liberties.
This policy had its origin in the first month of
the war, when I urged upon the Congress repeal of the arms embargo provisions
in the old Neutrality Law, and in that message of September 3, 1939, I said,
"I should like to be able to offer the hope that the shadow over the world
might swiftly pass. I cannot. The facts compel my stating, with candor, that
darker periods may lie ahead."
In the subsequent months, the shadows deepened and
lengthened. And the night spread over Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium,
Luxembourg, and France.
In June, 1940, Britain stood alone, faced by the
same machine of terror which had overwhelmed her allies. Our Government rushed
arms to meet her desperate needs.
In September, 1940, an agreement was completed
with Great Britain for the trade of fifty destroyers for eight important
offshore bases.
And in March, 1941, the Congress passed the
Lend-Lease Bill and an appropriation of seven billion dollars to implement it.
This law realistically provided for material aid "for the government of
any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the
United States."
Our whole program of aid for the democracies has
been based on hard-headed concern for our own security and for the kind of safe
and civilized world in which we wish to live. Every dollar of material that we
send helps to keep the dictators away from our own hemisphere, and every day
that they are held off gives us time to build more guns and tanks and planes
and ships.
We have made no pretense about our own self-interest
in this aid. Great Britain understands it -- and so does Nazi Germany.
And now -- after a year -- Britain still fights
gallantly, on a "far-flung battle line." We have doubled and
redoubled our vast production, increasing, month by month, our material supply
of the tools of war for ourselves and for Britain and for China- and eventually
for all the democracies.
The supply of these tools will not fail -- it will
increase.
With greatly augmented strength, the United States
and the other American Republics now chart their course in the situation of
today.
Your Government knows what terms Hitler, if
victorious, would impose. They are, indeed, the only terms on which he would
accept a so-called "negotiated" peace.
And, under those terms, Germany would literally
parcel out the world -- hoisting the swastika itself over vast territories and
populations, and setting up puppet governments of its own choosing, wholly
subject to the will and the policy of a conqueror.
To the people of the Americas, a triumphant Hitler
would say, as he said after the seizure of Austria, and as he said after
Munich, and as he said after the seizure of Czechoslovakia: "I am now
completely satisfied. This is the last territorial readjustment I will
seek." And he would of course add: "All we want is peace, friendship,
and profitable trade relations with you in the New World."
Were any of us in the Americas so incredibly
simple and forgetful as to accept those honeyed words, what would then happen?
Those in the New World who were seeking profits
would be urging that all that the dictatorships desired was "peace."
They would oppose toil and taxes for more American armament. And meanwhile, the
dictatorships would be forcing the enslaved peoples of their Old World
conquests into a system they are even now organizing to build a naval and air
force intended to gain and hold and be master of the Atlantic and the Pacific
as well.
They would fasten an economic stranglehold upon
our several Nations. Quislings would be found to subvert the governments in our
Republics; and the Nazis would back their fifth columns with invasion, if
necessary.
No, I am not speculating about all this. I merely
repeat what is already in the Nazi book of world conquest. They plan to treat
the Latin American Nations as they are now treating the Balkans. They plan then
to strangle the United States of America and the Dominion of Canada.
The American laborer would have to compete with
slave labor in the rest of the world. Minimum wages, maximum hours? Nonsense!
Wages and hours would be fixed by Hitler. The dignity and power and standard of
living of the American worker and farmer would be gone. Trade unions would
become historical relics, and collective bargaining a joke.
Farm income? What happens to all farm surpluses without
any foreign trade? The American farmer would get for his products exactly what
Hitler wanted to give. The farmer would face obvious disaster and complete
regimentation.
Tariff walls -- Chinese walls of isolation --
would be futile. Freedom to trade is essential to our economic life. We do not
eat all the food we can produce; and we do not burn all the oil we can pump; we
do not use all the goods we can manufacture. It would not be an American wall
to keep Nazi goods out; it would be a Nazi wall to keep us in.
The whole fabric of working life as we know it --
business and manufacturing, mining and agriculture -- all would be mangled and
crippled under such a system. Yet to maintain even that crippled independence
would require permanent conscription of our manpower; it would curtail the
funds we could spend on education, on housing, on public works, on flood
control, on health and, instead, we should be permanently pouring our resources
into armaments; and, year in and year out, standing day and night watch against
the destruction of our cities.
Yes, even our right of worship would be
threatened. The Nazi world does not recognize any God except Hitler; for the
Nazis are as ruthless as the Communists in the denial of God. What place has
religion which preaches the dignity of the human being, the majesty of the
human soul, in a world where moral standards are measured by treachery and
bribery and fifth columnists? Will our children, too, wander off,
goose-stepping in search of new gods?
We do not accept, we will not permit, this Nazi
"shape of things to come." It will never be forced upon us, if we act
in this present crisis with the wisdom and the courage which have distinguished
our country in all the crises of the past.
Today, the Nazis have taken military possession of
the greater part of Europe. In Africa they have occupied Tripoli and Libya, and
they are threatening Egypt, the Suez Canal, and the Near East. But their plans
do not stop there, for the Indian Ocean is the gateway to the farther East.
They also have the armed power at any moment to
occupy Spain and Portugal; and that threat extends not only to French North
Africa and the western end of the Mediterranean but it extends also to the
Atlantic fortress of Dakar, and to the island outposts of the New World -- the
Azores and Cape Verde Islands.
The Cape Verde Islands are only seven hours'
distance from Brazil by bomber or troop -- carrying planes. They dominate
shipping routes to and from the South Atlantic.
The war is approaching the brink of the Western
Hemisphere itself. It is coming very close to home.
Control or occupation by Nazi forces of any of the
islands of the Atlantic would jeopardize the immediate safety of portions of
North and South America, and of the island possessions of the United States,
and, therefore, the ultimate safety of the continental United States itself.
Hitler's plan of world domination would be near
its accomplishment today, were it not for two factors: One is the epic
resistance of Britain, her colonies, and the great Dominions, fighting not only
to maintain the existence of the Island of Britain, but also to hold the Near
East and Africa. The other is the magnificent defense of China, which will, I
have reason to believe, increase in strength. All of these, together, are
preventing the Axis from winning control of the seas by ships and aircraft.
The Axis Powers can never achieve their objective
of world domination unless they first obtain control of the seas. That is their
supreme purpose today; and to achieve it, they must capture Great Britain.
They could then have the power to dictate to the
Western Hemisphere. No spurious argument, no appeal to sentiment, no false
pledges like those given by Hitler at Munich, can deceive the American people
into believing that he and his Axis partners would not, with Britain defeated,
close in relentlessly on this hemisphere of ours.
But if the Axis Powers fail to gain control of the
seas, then they are certainly defeated. Their dreams of world domination will
then go by the board; and the criminal leaders who started this war will suffer
inevitable disaster.
Both they and their people know this- and they and
their people are afraid. That is why they are risking everything they have,
conducting desperate attempts to break through to the command of the ocean.
Once they are limited to a continuing land war, their cruel forces of
occupation will be unable to keep their heel on the necks of the millions of
innocent, oppressed peoples on the continent of Europe; and in the end, their
whole structure will break into little pieces. And let us remember, the wider
the Nazi land effort, the greater is their ultimate danger.
We do not forget the silenced peoples. The masters
of Germany have marked these silenced peoples and their children's children for
slavery- those, at least, who have not been assassinated or escaped to free
soil. But those people -- spiritually unconquered: Austrians, Czechs, Poles,
Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians, Frenchmen, Greeks, Southern Slavs -- yes, even
those Italians and Germans who themselves have been enslaved -- will prove to
be a powerful force in the final disruption of the Nazi system.
All freedom- meaning freedom to live, and not
freedom to conquer and subjugate other peoples-depends on freedom of the seas.
All of American history—North, Central, and South American history -- has been
inevitably tied up with those words, "freedom of the seas."
Since 1799, 142 years ago, when our infant Navy
made the West Indies and the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico safe for American
ships; since 1804 and 1805 when we made all peaceful commerce safe from the
depredations of the Barbary pirates; since the War of 1812, which was fought
for the preservation of sailors' rights; since 1867, when our sea power made it
possible for the Mexicans to expel the French Army of Louis Napoleon, we have
striven and fought in defense of freedom of the seas for our own shipping, for
the commerce of our sister Republics, for the right of all Nations to use the
highways of world trade -- and for our own safety.
During the first World War we were able to escort
merchant ships by the use of small cruisers, gunboats, and destroyers; and that
type, called a convoy, was effective against submarines. In this second World
War, however, the problem is greater. It is different because the attack on the
freedom of the seas is now fourfold: first -- the improved submarine; second --
the much greater use of the heavily armed raiding cruiser or the hit-and-run
battleship; third -- the bombing airplane, which is capable of destroying
merchant ships seven or eight hundred miles from its nearest base; and fourth
-- the destruction of merchant ships in those ports of the world that are
accessible to bombing attack.
The Battle of the Atlantic now extends from the
icy waters of the North Pole to the frozen continent of the Antarctic.
Throughout this huge area, there have been sinkings of merchant ships in
alarming and increasing numbers by Nazi raiders or submarines. There have been
sinkings even of ships carrying neutral flags. There have been sinkings in the
South Atlantic, off West Africa and the Cape Verde Islands; between the Azores
and the islands off the American coast; and between Greenland and Iceland.
Great numbers of these sinkings have been actually within the waters of the
Western Hemisphere itself.
The blunt truth is this -- and I reveal this with
the full knowledge of the British Government: the present rate of Nazi sinkings
of merchant ships is more than three times as high as the capacity of British
shipyards to replace them; it is more than twice the combined British and
American output of merchant ships today.
We can answer this peril by two simultaneous
measures: first, by speeding up and increasing our own great shipbuilding
program; and second, by helping to cut down the losses on the high seas.
Attacks on shipping off the very shores of land
which we are determined to protect, present an actual military danger to the
Americas. And that danger has recently been heavily underlined by the presence
in Western Hemisphere waters of a Nazi battleship of great striking power.
You remember that most of the supplies for Britain
go by a northerly route, which comes close to Greenland and the nearby island
of Iceland. Germany's heaviest attack is on that route. Nazi occupation of
Iceland or bases in Greenland would bring the war close to our own continental
shores, because those places are stepping-stones to Labrador and Newfoundland,
to Nova Scotia, yes, to the northern United States itself, including the great
industrial centers of the North, the East, and the Middle West.
Equally, the Azores and the Cape Verde Islands, if
occupied or controlled by Germany, would directly endanger the freedom of the
Atlantic and our own American physical safety. Under German domination those
islands would become bases for submarines, warships, and airplanes raiding the
waters that lie immediately off our own coasts and attacking the shipping in
the South Atlantic. They would provide a springboard for actual attack against
the integrity and the independence of Brazil and her neighboring Republics.
I have said on many occasions that the United
States is mustering its men and its resources only for purposes of defense-
only to repel attack. I repeat that statement now. But we must be realistic when
we use the word "attack"; we have to relate it to the lightning speed
of modern warfare.
Some people seem to think that we are not attacked
until bombs actually drop in the streets of New York or San Francisco or New
Orleans or Chicago. But they are simply shutting their eyes to the lesson that
we must learn from the fate of every Nation that the Nazis have conquered.
The attack on Czechoslovakia began with the
conquest of Austria. The attack on Norway began with the occupation of Denmark.
The attack on Greece began with occupation of Albania and Bulgaria. The attack
on the Suez Canal began with the invasion of the Balkans and North Africa, and
the attack on the United States can begin with the domination of any base which
menaces our security—north or south.
Nobody can foretell tonight just when the acts of
the dictators will ripen into attack on this hemisphere and us. But we know
enough by now to realize that it would be suicide to wait until they are in our
front yard.
When your enemy comes at you in a tank or a
bombing plane, if you hold your fire until you see the whites of his eyes, you
will never know what hit you. Our Bunker Hill of tomorrow may be several
thousand miles from Boston.
Anyone with an atlas, anyone with a reasonable
knowledge of the sudden striking force of modern war, knows that it is stupid
to wait until a probable enemy has gained a foothold from which to attack.
Old-fashioned common sense calls for the use of a strategy that will prevent
such an enemy from gaining a foothold in the first place.
We have, accordingly, extended our patrol in North
and South Atlantic waters. We are steadily adding more and more ships and
planes to that patrol. It is well known that the strength of the Atlantic Fleet
has been greatly increased during the past year, and that it is constantly
being built up.
These ships and planes warn of the presence of
attacking raiders, on the sea, under the sea, and above the sea. The danger
from these raiders is, of course, greatly lessened if their location is definitely
known. We are thus being forewarned. We shall be on our guard against efforts
to establish Nazi bases closer to our hemisphere.
The deadly facts of war compel Nations, for simple
self-preservation, to make stern choices. It does not make sense, for instance,
to say, "I believe in the defense of all the Western Hemisphere," and
in the next breath to say, "I will not fight for that defense until the
enemy has landed on our shores." If we believe in the independence and the
integrity of the Americas, we must be willing to fight, to fight to defend them
just as much as we would to fight for the safety of our own homes.
It is time for us to realize that the safety of
American homes even in the center of this our own country has a very definite
relationship to the continued safety of homes in Nova Scotia or Trinidad or
Brazil.
Our national policy today, therefore, is this:
First, we shall actively resist wherever
necessary, and with all our resources, every attempt by Hitler to extend his
Nazi domination to the Western Hemisphere, or to threaten it. We shall actively
resist his every attempt to gain control of the seas. We insist upon the vital
importance of keeping Hitlerism away from any point in the world which could be
used or would be used as a base of attack against the Americas.
Second, from the point of view of strict naval and
military necessity, we shall give every possible assistance to Britain and to
all who, with Britain, are resisting Hitlerism or its equivalent with force of
arms. Our patrols are helping now to insure delivery of the needed supplies to
Britain. All additional measures necessary to deliver the goods will be taken.
Any and all further methods or combination of methods, which can or should be
utilized, are being devised by our military and naval technicians, who, with
me, will work out and put into effect such new and additional safeguards as may
be needed.
I say that the delivery of needed supplies to
Britain is imperative. I say that this can be done; it must be done; and it
will be done.
To the other American Nations- twenty Republics
and the Dominion of Canada—I say this: the United States does not merely
propose these purposes, but is actively engaged today in carrying them out.
I say to them further: you may disregard those few
citizens of the United States who contend that we are disunited and cannot act.
There are some timid ones among us who say that we
must preserve peace at any price- lest we lose our liberties forever.
To them I say this: never in the history of the
world has a Nation lost its democracy by a successful struggle to defend its
democracy. We must not be defeated by the fear of the very danger which we are
preparing to resist. Our freedom has shown its ability to survive war, but our
freedom would never survive surrender. "The only thing we have to fear is
fear itself."
There is, of course, a small group of sincere,
patriotic men and women whose real passion for peace has shut their eyes to the
ugly realities of international banditry and to the need to resist it at all
costs. I am sure they are embarrassed by the sinister support they are
receiving from the enemies of democracy in our midst the Bundists, the
Fascists, and Communists, and every group devoted to bigotry and racial and
religious intolerance. It is no mere coincidence that all the arguments put
forward by these enemies of democracy -- all their attempts to confuse and
divide our people and to destroy public confidence in our Government -- all
their defeatist forebodings that Britain and democracy are already beaten --
all their selfish promises that we can "do business" with Hitler --
all of these are but echoes of the words that have been poured out from the
Axis bureaus of propaganda. Those same words have been used before in other
countries -- to scare them, to divide them, to soften them up. Invariably,
those same words have formed the advance guard of physical attack.
Your Government has the right to expect of all
citizens that they take part in the common work of our common defense take
loyal part from this moment forward.
I have recently set up the machinery for civilian
defense. It will rapidly organize, locality by locality. It will depend on the
organized effort of men and women everywhere. All will have opportunities and
responsibilities to fulfill.
Defense today means more than merely fighting. It
means morale, civilian as well as military; it means using every available
resource; it means enlarging every useful plant. It means the use of a greater
American common sense in discarding rumor and distorted statement. It means
recognizing, for what they are, racketeers and fifth columnists, who are the
incendiary bombs in this country of the moment.
All of us know that we have made very great social
progress in recent years. We propose to maintain that progress and strengthen
it. When the Nation is threatened from without, however, as it is today, the
actual production and transportation of the machinery of defense must not be
interrupted by disputes between capital and capital, labor and labor, or capital
and labor. The future of all free enterprise -- of capital and labor alike --
is at stake.
This is no time for capital to make, or be allowed
to retain, excess profits. Articles of defense must have undisputed right of
way in every industrial plant in the country.
A Nation-wide machinery for conciliation and
mediation of industrial disputes has been set up. That machinery must be used
promptly -- and without stoppage of work. Collective bargaining will be
retained, but the American people expect that impartial recommendations of our
Government conciliation and mediation services will be followed both by capital
and by labor.
The overwhelming majority of our citizens expect
their Government to see that the tools of defense are built; and for the very purpose
of preserving the democratic safeguards of both labor and management, this
Government is determined to use all of its power to express the will of its
people, and to prevent interference with the production of materials essential
to our Nation's security.
Today the whole world is divided between human
slavery and human freedom—between pagan brutality and the Christian ideal.
We choose human freedom—which is the Christian
ideal.
No one of us can waver for a moment in his courage
or his faith.
We will not accept a Hitler-dominated world. And
we will not accept a world, like the postwar world of the 1920's, in which the
seeds of Hitlerism can again be planted and allowed to grow.
We will accept only a world consecrated to freedom
of speech and expression—freedom of every person to worship God in his own
way—freedom from want—and freedom from terror.
Is such a world impossible of attainment?
Magna Charta, the Declaration of Independence, the
Constitution of the United States, the Emancipation Proclamation, and every
other milestone in human progress -- all were ideals which seemed impossible of
attainment -- and yet they were attained.
As a military force, we were weak when we
established our independence, but we successfully stood off tyrants, powerful
in their day, tyrants who are now lost in the dust of history.
Odds meant nothing to us then. Shall we now, with
all our potential strength, hesitate to take every single measure necessary to
maintain our American liberties?
Our people and our Government will not hesitate to
meet that challenge.
As the President of a united and determined
people, I say solemnly:
We reassert the ancient American doctrine of
freedom of the seas.
We reassert the solidarity of the twenty-one
American Republics and the Dominion of Canada in the preservation of the
independence of the hemisphere.
We have pledged material support to the other
democracies of the world -- and we will fulfill that pledge.
We in the Americas will decide for ourselves
whether, and when, and where, our American interests are attacked or our
security is threatened.
We are placing our armed forces in strategic
military position.
We will not hesitate to use our armed forces to
repel attack.
We reassert our abiding faith in the vitality of
our constitutional Republic as a perpetual home of freedom, of tolerance, and
of devotion to the word of God.
Therefore, with profound consciousness of my
responsibilities to my countrymen and to my country's cause, I have tonight
issued a proclamation that an unlimited national emergency exists and requires
the strengthening of our defense to the extreme limit of our national power and
authority.
The Nation will expect all individuals and all
groups to play their full parts, without stint, and without selfishness, and
without doubt that our democracy will triumphantly survive.
I repeat the words of the signers of the
Declaration of Independence -- that little band of patriots, fighting long ago
against overwhelming odds, but certain, as we are now, of ultimate victory:
"With a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually
pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."
The US was now really rapidly rolling towards war with the Germans having issued what amounted to a warning only days prior that US escort actions were an act of war. German restraint, oddly enough, was keeping a full declared war from breaking out as at this point the Germans were still afraid of what that would mean, and moreover, were getting ready to attack the Soviet Union. Hitler had officially taken the position that Germany would not enter into a war with the US until the Soviet Union was defeated, something he was confident would shortly occur.
On this day in 1941 the Bismarck was sunk by the Royal Navy off of Ireland.
The story is literally famous in story and song, and has been made into movies as well. It was a real victory for the Royal Navy.
It was also an airborne victory as British torpedo bombers, haplessly obsolete biplanes at the time, had damages the ships rudder the day prior, and the day prior to that its location had been spotted by a Catalina flying out of Northern Ireland, with the spotting done by a U.S. Navy officer on a training assignment to the Royal Navy.
The Bismarck and Prinz Eugen had broken out into the North Atlantic to act as surface raiders, a threat the British took seriously, as they needed to, but which was frankly an odd use for the small battleship. Indeed, the enter episode was an anachronistic.
Surface raiding had been done extensively in World War One and would be done in World War Two as well, in much the same fashion. But advances in radar and the development of long range aircraft, and indeed aircraft alone, we're rapidly making it a thing of the past. The engagement that brought the Bismarck to its end in some ways closed the episode out, showing that the ship could not run from a concentrated air and sea search. As the entire event was mere months away from Pearl Harbor, the obvious final dominance of aircraft was about to occur.
Indeed, sometimes missed by those who look back on the Battle of the Atlantic, the British were about to deploy the first Escort Carrier, a class of ship that would make submarine attacks much riskier.
While the battle was a victory for the British, on the same day the British Army reported Crete lost and recommended evacuation. The British would temporarily halt German advances on the island in the Battle of 42nd Street, fought this day, but the obvious end was in sight.
The British took the last Italian position in Ethiopia, thereby conclusively ending the Italian presence in that region. They lost, however, Halfaya Pass in Libya to the Germans. They were advancing on Baghdad.
