22. FDR - Arsenal of Democracy
My friends:
This is not a fireside chat on war. It is a talk on national security. because the nub of the
whole purpose of your President is to keep you now, and your children later, and your grandchildren
much later, out of a lastditch war for the preservation of American independence, and all of the things that American
independence means to you and to me and to ours.
Tonight, in the presence of a world crisis, my mind goes back eight years to a night in the
midst of a domestic crisis. It was a time when the wheels of American
industry were grinding to a full stop, when the whole banking system of our country had
ceased to function. I well remember that while I sat in my study in the White House, preparing to
talk with the people of the United States, I
had before my eyes the picture of all those Americans with whom I was talking. I saw
the workmen in the mills, the mines, the factories, the girl behind the counter,
the small shopkeeper, the farmer doing his Spring plowing, the widows and the old men
wondering about their life"s savings. I tried to convey to the great mass of American people
what the banking crisis meant to them in their daily lives.
Tonight, I want to do the same thing, with the same people, in this new crisis which faces
America. We met the issue of 1933 with courage and realism. We face this new crisis, this
new threat to the security of our nation, with the same courage and realism. Never before
since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock has our American civilization been in such danger as now.
For on September 27th, 1940 this year by an agreement signed in Berlin, three powerful
nations, two in Europe and one in Asia, joined themselves together in the threat that
if the United States of America interfered with or blocked the expansion program of these three
nations a program aimed at world control they would unite in ultimate action against the
United States.
The Nazi masters of Germany have made it clear that they intend not only to dominate all life and thought
in their own country, but also to enslave the whole of Europe, and then to use the resources of Europe to dominate the rest of the world. It was only three weeks ago that their leader stated this: "There are two worlds that stand opposed to
each other." And then in defiant reply to his opponents he said this: "Others are correct when
they say: "With this world we cannot ever reconcile ourselves.""" I can beat any other power in the world." So said
the leader of the Nazis.
In other words, the Axis not merely admits but the Axis proclaims that there can be no
ultimate peace between their philosophy their philosophy of government and
our philosophy of government. In view of the nature of this undeniable threat, it can be asserted,
properly and categorically, that the United States has no right or reason to
encourage talk of peace until the day shall come when there is a clear intention on the part of the aggressor
nations to abandon all thought of dominating or conquering the world.
At this moment the forces of the States that are leagued against all peoples who live in
freedom are being held away from our shores. The Germans and the Italians are being
blocked on the other side of the Atlantic by the British and by the Greeks, and by thousands of
soldiers and sailors who were able to escape from subjugated countries. In Asia the Japanese
are being engaged by the Chinese nation in another great defense. In the Pacific Ocean is our fleet.
Some of our people like to believe that wars in Europe and in Asia are of no concern to us. But it is a matter of most
vital concern to us that European and Asiatic warmakers
should not gain control of the oceans which lead to this hemisphere. One hundred and seventeen years
ago the Monroe Doctrine was conceived by our government as a measure of defense in the
face of a threat against this hemisphere by an alliance in Continental Europe. Thereafter, we
stood guard in the Atlantic, with the British as neighbors. There was no
treaty. There was no "unwritten agreement." And yet there was the feeling, proven correct by history, that we as
neighbors could settle any disputes in peaceful fashion. And the fact is that during the whole of this time the
Western Hemisphere has remained free from aggression from Europe or from
Asia.
Does anyone seriously believe that we need to fear attack anywhere in the Americas while a
free Britain remains our most powerful naval neighbor in the Atlantic? And does anyone
seriously believe, on the other hand, that we could rest easy if the Axis powers were our
neighbors there? If Great Britain goes down, the Axis powers will control
the Continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, AustralAsia, and the high seas. And they will be in a position to bring
enormous military and naval resources against this hemisphere.
It is no exaggeration to say that all of us in all the Americas would be living at the point of a gun
a gun loaded with explosive bullets, economic as well as military. We should enter upon
a new and terrible era in which the whole world, our hemisphere included, would be run by
threats of brute force.
And to survive in such a world, we would have to convert ourselves permanently into a militaristic power on
the basis of war economy.
Some of us like to believe that even if Britain falls, we are still safe, because of the broad
expanse of the Atlantic and of the Pacific. But the width of those oceans is not what
it was in the days of clipper ships. At one point between
Africa and Brazil the distance is less than
it is from Washington to Denver, Colorado, five hours for the latest type of bomber. And at the
north end of the Pacific Ocean, America and Asia almost
touch each other. Why, even
today
we have planes that could fly from the British Isles to New England and back again without
refueling. And remember that the range of the modern bomber is ever being increased.
During the past week many people in all parts of the nation
have told me what
they wanted
me to say tonight. Almost all of them expressed a courageous desire to
hear the plain
truth
about
the gravity of the situation. One telegram, however, expressed the attitude of the small
minority who want to see no evil and hear no evil, even
though they know in their hearts that
evil exists. That
telegram begged me not
to tell
again of the ease with which our American
cities could be bombed by any hostile power which
had gained bases in this Western
Hemisphere. The gist of that telegram was: "Please, Mr. President, don"t frighten
us by telling
us the facts." Frankly and definitely there is danger ahead danger
against which we must
prepare. But we well know
that we cannot escape danger, or the fear of danger, by crawling
into bed and pulling the covers over our heads.
Some nations of Europe were bound by solemn
nonintervention pacts with
Germany. Other
nations were assured by Germany that
they need never fear invasion. Nonintervention pact or
not, the fact
remains that
they were attacked, overrun, thrown
into
modern slavery at an
hour"s notice or
even without any notice at all. As an
exiled leader of one of these nations
said to me the other day, "The notice was a minus quantity. It was given
to my government
two hours after German troops had poured into
my country in a hundred places." The fate of
these nations tells us what
it means to
live at
the point of a Nazi gun.
The Nazis have justified such actions by various pious frauds.
One of these frauds is the claim
that
they are occupying a nation for the purpose of "restoring order." Another is that
they are
occupying or controlling a nation on the excuse
that
they are "protecting it" against the
aggression of somebody else. For example, Germany has said that she was occupying Belgium
to save the Belgians from the British. Would she then hesitate to say to any South
American
country: "We are occupying you to
protect
you from aggression by the United States"?
Belgium today is being used as an
invasion base against Britain, now fighting for its life. And
any
South American country, in Nazi
hands, would always constitute a jumping off place for
German attack on any one of the other republics of this hemisphere.
Analyze for yourselves the future of two other places even nearer to
Germany if the Nazis
won. Could Ireland hold out? Would Irish freedom be permitted as an amazing pet exception
in
an unfree world? Or the islands of the Azores, which still fly the flag of Portugal after five
centuries? You and I
think of Hawaii as an outpost of defense in
the Pacific. And yet
the
Azores are closer to our shores in the Atlantic than Hawaii
is on
the other side.
There are those who say that
the Axis powers would never have any desire to attack the
Western
Hemisphere. That is the same dangerous form of wishful
thinking which
has
destroyed the powers of resistance of so
many conquered peoples. The plain facts are that the
Nazis
have proclaimed,
time and again, that all
other races are their inferiors and therefore
subject
to their orders. And most
important of all, the vast resources and wealth of this
American
hemisphere constitute the most tempting loot
in all of the round world.
Let
us no longer blind ourselves to
the undeniable fact that the evil forces which
have crushed
and undermined and corrupted so many others are already within our own gates. Your
government
knows much about
them and every day is ferreting them out. Their secret
emissaries are active in our own and in neighboring countries. They seek to stir up suspicion
and dissension, to cause internal strife. They try to
turn
capital against
labor, and vice versa.
They try to reawaken long slumbering racial and religious enmities which should have no place
in this country. They are active in every group that promotes intolerance. They exploit for
their own ends our own
natural abhorrence of war. These troublebreeders
have but one
purpose. It
is to divide our people, to divide them into hostile groups and to destroy our unity
and shatter our will to defend ourselves.
There are also American citizens, many of them
in high places, who, unwittingly in most
cases, are aiding and abetting the work of these agents. I do
not
charge these American
citizens with being foreign agents. But
I do
charge them with doing exactly the kind of work
that
the dictators want done in
the United States. These people not only believe that we can
save our own skins by shutting our eyes to
the fate of other nations. Some of them go much
further than
that. They say that we can and should become the friends and even
the partners
of the Axis powers. Some of them even
suggest
that we should imitate the methods of the
dictatorships. But
Americans never can and never will do that.
The experience of the past
two years has proven beyond doubt that no nation can appease
the Nazis. No man can
tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it. There can be no appeasement
with ruthlessness. There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb.
We know
now that a
nation
can have peace with
the Nazis only at the price of total
surrender. Even
the people of
Italy have been
forced to become accomplices of the Nazis. but at
this moment
they do
not
know
how soon
they will be embraced to death
by their allies.
The American appeasers ignore the warning to be found in the fate of Austria, Czechoslovakia,
Poland, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and France. They tell you
that
the Axis
powers are going to win anyway. that all of this bloodshed in the world could be saved,
that
the United States might just as well throw
its influence into the scale of a dictated peace and
get the best out of it that we can. They call it a
"negotiated peace." Nonsense!
Is it a negotiated peace if a gang of outlaws surrounds your community and on threat of
extermination
makes you pay tribute to
save your own skins? For such a dictated peace would
be no peace at all. It would be only another armistice, leading to the most gigantic armament
race and the most devastating trade wars in all
history. And in these contests the Americas
would offer the only real resistance to
the Axis power. With all their vaunted efficiency, with
all
their parade of pious purpose in this war, there are still
in
their background the
concentration
camp and the servants of God in chains.
The history of recent years proves that the shootings and the chains and the concentration
camps are not
simply the transient
tools but the very altars of modern dictatorships. They
may talk of a "new order" in the world, but what they have in mind is only a revival of the
oldest and the worst tyranny. In
that
there is no liberty, no religion, no
hope. The proposed
"new order" is the very opposite of a United States of Europe or a United States of Asia.
It
is
not a government based upon
the consent of the governed.
It is not a union of ordinary,
selfrespecting
men and women
to protect
themselves and their freedom and their dignity from
oppression. It
is an unholy alliance of power and pelf to dominate and to enslave the human
race.
The British people and their allies today are conducting an active war against
this unholy
alliance. Our own future security is greatly dependent on
the outcome of that fight. Our ability
to "keep out of war" is going to be affected by that outcome. Thinking in
terms of today and
tomorrow, I make the direct statement to
the American people that
there is far less chance of
the United States getting into war if we do all we can now
to support
the nations defending
themselves against attack by the Axis than
if we acquiesce in
their defeat, submit
tamely to
an Axis victory, and wait our turn
to be the object of attack in another war later on.
If we are to be completely honest with ourselves, we must admit
that
there is risk in any
course we may take. But I deeply believe that the great majority of our people agree that
the
course that I advocate involves the least risk now and the greatest
hope for world peace in
the future.
The people of Europe who are defending themselves do not ask us to do
their fighting.
They
ask us for the implements of war, the planes, the tanks, the guns, the freighters which will
enable them to fight
for their liberty and for our security. Emphatically, we must get
these
weapons to them, get
them to them in sufficient volume and quickly enough so
that we and
our children will be saved the agony and suffering of war which others have had to
endure.
Let
not
the defeatists tell us that
it is too
late. It will
never be earlier. Tomorrow will be later
than
today.
Certain
facts are selfevident.
In a military sense Great Britain and the British
Empire are today the spearhead of resistance
to world conquest. And they are putting up a fight which will
live forever in the story of human
gallantry. There is no demand for sending an
American expeditionary force outside our own
borders.
There is no intention by any member of your government to
send such a force.
You
can
therefore,
nail, nail any talk about sending armies to
Europe as deliberate untruth. Our
national policy is not directed toward war. Its sole purpose is to
keep war away from our
country and away from our people.
Democracy"s fight against world conquest
is being greatly aided, and must be more greatly
aided, by the rearmament of the United States and by sending every ounce and every ton of
munitions and supplies that we can possibly spare to
help the defenders who are in the front
lines. And it is no
more unneutral
for us to
do that than it is for Sweden, Russia, and other
nations near Germany to send steel and ore and oil and other war materials into Germany
every day in the week.
We are planning our own defense with
the utmost
urgency, and in its vast scale we must
integrate the war needs of Britain and the other free nations which are resisting aggression.
This is not a matter of sentiment or of controversial personal opinion. It
is a matter of
realistic, practical
military policy, based on the advice of our military experts who are in close
touch with existing warfare. These military and
naval experts and the members of the
Congress and the Administration
have a singleminded
purpose: the defense of the United
States.
This nation is making a great effort to produce everything that
is necessary in this emergency,
and with all possible speed. And this great effort requires great sacrifice. I would ask no one
to defend a democracy which
in turn would not
defend every one in the nation against want
and privation. The strength of this nation
shall not be diluted by the failure of the government
to protect the economic wellbeing
of its citizens. If our capacity to produce is limited by
machines, it must ever be remembered that these machines are operated by the skill and the
stamina of the workers.
As
the government
is determined to protect the rights of the workers, so
the nation has a
right
to expect
that
the men who man the machines will discharge their full responsibilities to
the urgent
needs of defense. The worker possesses the same human dignity and is entitled to
the same security of position as the engineer or the manager or the owner. For the workers
provide the human power that turns out the destroyers, and the planes, and the tanks. The
nation
expects our defense industries to continue operation without
interruption
by strikes or
lockouts. It expects and insists that management and workers will reconcile their differences
by voluntary or legal
means, to continue to produce the supplies that are so
sorely needed.
And on the economic side of our great defense program, we are, as you know, bending every
effort to
maintain stability of prices and with that
the stability of the cost of living.
Nine days ago I announced the setting up of a more effective organization
to direct our
gigantic efforts to increase the production of munitions. The appropriation of vast
sums of
money and a wellcoordinated
executive direction of our defense efforts are not in themselves
enough. Guns, planes, ships and many other things have to
be built in the factories and the
arsenals of America.
They have to be produced by workers and managers and engineers with
the aid of machines
which
in
turn
have to be built by hundreds of thousands of workers throughout
the land. In
this great work there has been splendid cooperation between
the government and industry
and labor. And I am very thankful.
American
industrial genius, unmatched throughout all the world in the solution of production
problems, has been
called upon to bring its resources and its talents into action.
Manufacturers of watches, of farm implements, of Linotypes and cash registers and
automobiles, and sewing machines and lawn mowers and locomotives, are now making fuses
and bomb packing crates and telescope mounts and shells and pistols and tanks.
But all of our present
efforts are not
enough. We must
have more ships,
more guns, more
planes more
of everything. And this can be accomplished only if we discard the notion of
"business as usual." This job cannot be done merely by superimposing on
the existing
productive facilities the added requirements of the nation for defense. Our defense efforts
must
not be blocked by those who fear the future consequences of surplus plant capacity. The
possible consequences of failure of our defense
efforts now are much more to be feared. And
after the present
needs of our defense are past, a proper handling of the country"s peacetime
needs will require all of the new productive capacity, if not still
more. No pessimistic policy
about
the future of America shall
delay the immediate expansion of those industries essential
to defense.
We need them.
I want
to make it clear that it is the purpose of the nation to build now with all possible speed
every machine, every arsenal, every factory that we need to
manufacture our defense
material. We have the men, the skill, the wealth, and above all, the will. I am confident that if
and when production of consumer or luxury goods in
certain
industries requires the use of
machines and raw materials that are essential for defense purposes, then such production
must
yield, and will gladly yield,
to our primary
and compelling purpose.
So I appeal to
the owners of plants, to the managers, to the workers, to our own government
employees to put every ounce of effort
into producing these munitions swiftly and without
stint. With this appeal I give you the pledge that all of us who are officers of your government
will devote ourselves to the same wholehearted
extent
to the great
task that lies ahead.
As planes and ships and guns and shells are produced,
your government, with
its defense
experts, can
then determine how best
to
use them to defend this hemisphere. The decision as
to how
much shall be sent abroad and how much shall
remain at home must be made on the
basis of our overall military necessities.
We must be the great arsenal of democracy.
For us this is an emergency as serious as war itself. We must apply ourselves to our task with
the same resolution, the same sense of urgency, the same spirit of patriotism and sacrifice as
we would show were we at war.
We have furnished the British great material support and we will
furnish far more in
the
future. There will be no "bottlenecks" in our determination
to aid Great Britain. No dictator, no
combination of dictators, will weaken
that determination by threats of how
they will
construe
that determination. The British
have received invaluable military support
from the heroic
Greek Army and from the forces of all
the governments in exile. Their strength is growing.
It
is the strength of men and women who value their freedom more highly than
they value their
lives.
I believe that
the Axis powers are not going to
win
this war.
I base that belief on
the latest
and best of information.
We have no excuse for defeatism. We have every good reason for hope hope
for peace,
yes, and hope for the defense of our civilization
and for the building of a better civilization in
the future. I
have the profound conviction
that
the American people are now determined to
put forth a mightier effort
than
they have ever yet
made
to increase our production of all
the
implements of defense, to meet
the threat to our democratic faith.
As President of the United States, I
call for that
national effort. I
call
for it
in
the name of this
nation which we love and honor and which we are privileged and proud to serve. I call upon
our people with absolute confidence that our common cause will greatly succeed.
