On May 27th 1941, in a historic “Fireside Chat “ broadcast from the White House the President proclaimed a state of “unlimited national emergency,” and called upon all the nationsof the Western Hemisphere to cooperate in repelling the deadly menace of the Axis Powers against their homes and their freedom.
What we face are cold hard facts.
The first fundamental fact is that what stared as a European war has develop, as the Nazi always intended it should develop into a world war for the world domination .
Adolf Hitler never considered the domination of Europe as an end in itself.
European conquest was but a step towards the ultimate goals in all 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 Nazi weapons of destruction….
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.
Under those terms Germany would literally parcel out of the world, hoisting the swastika itself over vast territories and populations , setting up puppet governments of it own choosing, wholly subject to the will and policy of a conqueror.
To the peoples of the Americas triumphant Hitler would say, as he said after the seizure of Austria, after Munich and after the seizure of Czechoslovakia.
I am now completely satisfied, this is the last territorial readjustment I seek and he, of course, would add.
All we what is peace, friendship and profitable trade relations with you of the New World.
And were any of us in the Americas so incredibly simple and forgetful as to accept those honeyed words, what would then happen?
Those of the New World who were seeking profits would be urging that all the dictatorships desired was “peace”.
They would oppose toil and taxes for American armament.
Meanwhile the dictatorships would be forcing the enslaved people of their Old World conquests into the system they are even now organizing to build a naval and air force intended to gain a hold and be master of the Atlantic and the Pacific as well.
They would fasten an economic stranglehold on our several nations.
Quislings would be found to subvert the Government of our Republics, and the Nazi would back their Fifth Columns with invasion if necessary.
I am not speculating about all this.
I merely repeat what is already in the Nazi book of world conquest…
The Axis Powers can never achieve their objective of world domination unless they first obtain control of the seas.
This is their supreme purpose today, and to achieve it they must capture Great Britain.
They would 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 his hemisphere.
But if the Axis fail to gain control of the seas 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 are afraid.
That is why they are risking everything they have in conducting desperate attempts to break through to command the ocean…
I have said on many occasions that the United States is mustering its men and resources only for the purpose of defence, only to repel attack.
I repeat that statement now.
But we have to be realistic. When we use the word attack we have to relate it to the lightning speed of modern warfare.
Nobody can foretell tonight just when the acts of the dictators will ripen into an 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 back yard…
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.
We will not accept a Hitler dominated world, and we will not accept a word like the post war world of the 1920, 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 and the freedom of every person to worship God in his own way, freedom from want and freedom from terrorism….
As President of a united, determined people I say solemnly.
We reassert the solidarity of the 21 AmericanRepublics 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 fulfil that pledge.
We in the Americas will decide for ourselves whether, when and where our American interests are attacked or our security threatened.
We are placing our armed forces in a strategic military position.
We will not hesitate to use our armed forces to repel attack.
Therefore with a profound consciousness of my responsibilities to my countrymen and my country’s cause I have tonight issued a proclamation that an unlimited national emergency exists and requires the strengthening of our defence to the extreme limit of our national power and authority.
Proclamation of Unlimited National Emergency.
Whereas a succession of events makes it plain that the objectives of the Axis belligerents in such (the present European) war are not confined to those avowed at its commencement, but include the overthrow throughout the world of the existing democratic order and the world wide domination of peoples and economies through the destruction of all resistance on land, sea, and in the air.
And whereas indifference on the part of the United States to the increasing menace would be perilous, and common prudence requires that for the security of this nation and of this Hemisphere we should pass from peacetime authorizations of military strength to such a basis as will enable us to cope instantly and decisively with any attempt at the hostile encirclement of this Hemisphere , or the establishment of any base for aggression against it, as well as to repel threat of predatory incursion by foreign agents into our territory and society.
Now therefore I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, do proclaim that an unlimited national emergency confronts this country which requires that its military, naval, air and civilian defences be put on a basis of readiness to repel any or all acts or threats of aggression directed towards any part of the Western Hemisphere.
I call upon all loyal citizens engaged in production for defence to give precedence to the needs of the nation to the end that a system of government that makes private enterprise possible may survive.
I call upon all loyal workmen, as well as employers, to merge their lesser differences in the larger effort to ensure the survival of the only kind of government which recognizes the rights of labour or capital.
I call upon loyal State and local leaders and officials to co-operate with the civilian defence agencies of the United States to assure our internal security against foreign directed subversion, and to put every community in order for a maximum of productive effort, a minimum of waste and unnecessary frictions.
I call upon all loyal citizens to place the nation’s needs first in mind and in action to the end that we may mobilize and have ready for instant defensive use all of the physical powers, all of the moral strength and all the material resources of this nation.
