Some of our people like to believe that wars in Europe and in Asia are of no concern to us. In Asia, the Japanese are being engaged by the Chinese nation in another great defense.
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 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.Īt this moment, the forces of the states that are leagued against all peoples who live in freedom, are being held away from our shores. 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. I can beat any other power in the world." So said the leader of the Nazis. 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. 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. Never before since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock has our American civilization been in such danger as now.įor, on Septem- 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. We face this new crisis-this new threat to the security of our nation-with the same courage and realism.
We met the issue of 1933 with courage and realism. Tonight, I want to do the same thing, with the same people, in this new crisis which faces America. I tried to convey to the great mass of American people what the banking crisis meant to them in their daily lives. 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 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.
#Fireside chats franklin roosevelt full#
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. 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 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 last-ditch war for the preservation of American independence and all the things that American independence means to you and to me and to ours. If not, it is preferably a URL if one is not available, please explain on the talk page. Ideally this will be a scanned copy of the original that can be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and proofread.
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