10/28/2023 0 Comments Define fdr fireside chats![]() 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. 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. The fact is that during the whole of this time the Western Hemisphere has remained free from aggression from Europe or from Asia.ĭoes 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? Does anyone seriously believe, on the other hand, that we could rest easy if the Axis powers were our neighbors there? There was no “unwritten agreement.”Īnd yet, there was the feeling, proven correct by history, that we as neighbors could settle any disputes in peaceful fashion. Thereafter, we stood on guard in the Atlantic, with the British as neighbors. 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. ![]() But it is a matter of most vital concern to us that European and Asiatic war-makers should not gain control of the oceans which lead to this hemisphere. Some of our people like to believe that wars in Europe and in Asia are of no concern to us. Never before since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock has our American civilization been in such danger as now.įor, on September 27, 1940, 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 1. ![]() 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. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. Roosevelt: “Fireside Chat,” December 29, 1940.
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