armed force alone. What we face is a set of world-wide forces of
disintegration--vicious, ruthless, destructive of all the moral,
religious and political standards which mankind, after centuries of
struggle, has come to cherish most.
In these moral values, in these forces which have made our nation great,
we must actively and practically reassert our faith.
These words--“national unity”--must not be allowed to be come merely a
high-sounding phrase, a vague generality, a pious hope, to which
everyone can give lip-service. They must be made to have real meaning in
terms of the daily thoughts and acts of every man, woman and child in
our land during the coming year and during the years that lie ahead.
For national unity is, in a very real and a very deep sense, the
fundamental safeguard of all democracy.
Doctrines that set group against group, faith against faith, race
against race, class against class, fanning the fires of hatred in men
too despondent, too desperate to think for themselves, were used as
rabble-rousing slogans on which dictators could ride to power. And once
in power they could saddle their tyrannies on whole nations and on their
weaker neighbors.
This is the danger to which we in America must begin to be more alert.
For the apologists for foreign aggressors, and equally those selfish and
partisan groups at home who wrap themselves in a false mantle of
Americanism to promote their own economic, financial or political
advantage, are now trying European tricks upon us, seeking to muddy the
stream of our national thinking, weakening us in the face of danger, by
trying to set our own people to fighting among themselves. Such tactics
are what have helped to plunge Europe into war. We must combat them, as
we would the plague, if American integrity and American security are to
be preserved. We cannot afford to face the future as a disunited people.
We must as a united people keep ablaze on this continent the flames of
human liberty, of reason, of democracy and of fair play as living things
to be preserved for the better world that is to come.
Overstatement, bitterness, vituperation, and the beating of drums have
contributed mightily to ill-feeling and wars between nations. If these
unnecessary and unpleasant actions are harmful in the international
field, if they have hurt in other parts of the world, they are also
harmful in the domestic scene. Peace among ourselves would seem to have
some of the advantage of peace between us and other nations. In the long
run history amply demonstrates that angry controversy surely wins less
than calm discussion.
In the spirit, therefore, of a greater unselfishness, recognizing that
the world--including the United States of America--passes through
perilous times, I am very hopeful that the closing session of the
Seventy-sixth Congress will consider the needs of the nation and of
humanity with calmness, with tolerance and with cooperative wisdom.
May the year 1940 be pointed to by our children as another period when
democracy justified its existence as the best instrument of government
yet devised by mankind.
***
State of the Union Address
Franklin D. Roosevelt
January 6, 1941
Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Seventy-seventh Congress:
I address you, the Members of the Seventy-seventh Congress, at a moment
unprecedented in the history of the Union. I use the word
“unprecedented,” because at no previous time has American security been
as seriously threatened from without as it is today.
Since the permanent formation of our Government under the Constitution,
in 1789, most of the periods of crisis in our history have related to
our domestic affairs. Fortunately, only one of these--the four-year War
Between the States--ever threatened our national unity. Today, thank
God, one hundred and thirty million Americans, in forty-eight States,
have forgotten points of the compass in our national unity.
It is true that prior to 1914 the United States often had been disturbed
by events in other Continents. We had even engaged in two wars with
European nations and in a number of undeclared wars in the West Indies,
in the Mediterranean and in the Pacific for the maintenance of American
rights and for the principles of peaceful commerce. But in no case had a
serious threat been raised against our national safety or our continued
independence.
What I seek to convey is the historic truth that the United States as a
nation has at all times maintained clear, definite opposition, to any
attempt to lock us in behind an ancient Chinese wall while the
procession of civilization went past. Today, thinking of our children
and of their children, we oppose enforced isolation for ourselves or for
any other part of the Americas.
That determination of ours, extending over all these years, was proved,
for example, during the quarter century of wars following the French
Revolution.
While the Napoleonic struggles did threaten interests of the United
States because of the French foothold in the West Indies and in
Louisiana, and while we engaged in the War of 1812 to vindicate our
right to peaceful trade, it is nevertheless clear that neither France
nor Great Britain, nor any other nation, was aiming at domination of the
whole world.
In like fashion from 1815 to 1914--ninety-nine years--no single war in
Europe or in Asia constituted a real threat against our future or
against the future of any other American nation.
Except in the Maximilian interlude in Mexico, no foreign power sought to
establish itself in this Hemisphere; and the strength of the British
fleet in the Atlantic has been a friendly strength. It is still a
friendly strength.
Even when the World War broke out in 1914, it seemed to contain only
small threat of danger to our own American future. But, as time went on,
the American people began to visualize what the downfall of democratic
nations might mean to our own democracy.
We need not overemphasize imperfections in the Peace of Versailles. We
need not harp on failure of the democracies to deal with problems of
world reconstruction. We should remember that the Peace of 1919 was far
less unjust than the kind of “pacification” which began even before
Munich, and which is being carried on under the new order of tyranny
that seeks to spread over every continent today. The American people
have unalterably set their faces against that tyranny.
Every realist knows that the democratic way of life is at this moment
being directly assailed in every part of the world--assailed either by
arms, or by secret spreading of poisonous propaganda by those who seek
to destroy unity and promote discord in nations that are still at peace.
During sixteen long months this assault has blotted out the whole
pattern of democratic life in an appalling number of independent
nations, great and small. The assailants are still on the march,
threatening other nations, great and small.
Therefore, as your President, performing my constitutional duty to “give
to the Congress information of the state of the Union,” I find it,
unhappily, necessary to report that the future and the safety of our
country and of our democracy are overwhelmingly involved in events far
beyond our borders.
Armed defense of democratic existence is now being gallantly waged in
four continents. If that defense fails, all the population and all the
resources of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australasia will be dominated by
the conquerors. Let us remember that the total of those populations and
their resources in those four continents greatly exceeds the sum total
of the population and the resources of the whole of the Western
Hemisphere--many times over.
In times like these it is immature--and incidentally, untrue--for
anybody to brag that an unprepared America, single-handed, and with one
hand tied behind its back, can hold off the whole world.
No realistic American can expect from a dictator’s peace international
generosity, or return of true independence, or world disarmament, or
freedom of expression, or freedom of religion--or even good business.
Such a peace would bring no security for us or for our neighbors.
“Those, who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
As a nation, we may take pride in the fact that we are softhearted; but
we cannot afford to be soft-headed.
We must always be wary of those who with sounding brass and a tinkling
cymbal preach the “ism” of appeasement.
We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would
clip the wings of the American eagle in order to feather their own
nests.
I have recently pointed out how quickly the tempo of modern warfare
could bring into our very midst the physical attack which we must
eventually expect if the dictator nations win this war.
There is much loose talk of our immunity from immediate and direct
invasion from across the seas. Obviously, as long as the British Navy
retains its power, no such danger exists. Even if there were no British
Navy, it is not probable that any enemy would be stupid enough to attack
us by landing troops in the United States from across thousands of miles
of ocean, until it had acquired strategic bases from which to operate.
But we learn much from the lessons of the past years in
Europe--particularly the lesson of Norway, whose essential seaports were
captured by treachery and surprise built up over a series of years.
The first phase of the invasion of this Hemisphere would not be the
landing of regular troops. The necessary strategic points would be
occupied by secret agents and their dupes--and great numbers of them are
already here, and in Latin America.
As long as the aggressor nations maintain the offensive, they--not
we--will choose the time and the place and the method of their attack.
That is why the future of all the American Republics is today in serious
danger.
That is why this Annual Message to the Congress is unique in our
history.
That is why every member of the Executive Branch of the Government and
every member of the Congress faces great responsibility and great
accountability.
The need of the moment is that our actions and our policy should be
devoted primarily--almost exclusively--to meeting this foreign peril.
For all our domestic problems are now a part of the great emergency.
Just as our national policy in internal affairs has been based upon a
decent respect for the rights and the dignity of all our fellow men
within our gates, so our national policy in foreign affairs has been
based on a decent respect for the rights and dignity of all nations,
large and small. And the justice of morality must and will win in the
end.
Our national policy is this:
First, by an impressive expression of the public will and without regard
to partisanship, we are committed to all-inclusive national defense.
Second, by an impressive expression of the public will and without
regard to partisanship, we are committed to full support of all those
resolute peoples, everywhere, who are resisting aggression and are
thereby keeping war away from our Hemisphere. By this support, we
express our determination that the democratic cause shall prevail; and
we strengthen the defense and the security of our own nation.
Third, by an impressive expression of the public will and without regard
to partisanship, we are committed to the proposition that principles of
morality and considerations for our own security will never permit us to
acquiesce in a peace dictated by aggressors and sponsored by appeasers.
We know that enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other
people’s freedom.
In the recent national election there was no substantial difference
between the two great parties in respect to that national policy. No
issue was fought out on this line before the American electorate. Today
it is abundantly evident that American citizens everywhere are demanding
and supporting speedy and complete action in recognition of obvious
danger.
Therefore, the immediate need is a swift and driving increase in our
armament production.
Leaders of industry and labor have responded to our summons. Goals of
speed have been set. In some cases these goals are being reached ahead
of time; in some cases we are on schedule; in other cases there are
slight but not serious delays; and in some cases--and I am sorry to say
very important cases--we are all concerned by the slowness of the
accomplishment of our plans.
The Army and Navy, however, have made substantial progress during the
past year. Actual experience is improving and speeding up our methods of
production with every passing day. And today’s best is not good enough
for tomorrow.
I am not satisfied with the progress thus far made. The men in charge of
the program represent the best in training, in ability, and in
patriotism. They are not satisfied with the progress thus far made. None
of us will be satisfied until the job is done.
No matter whether the original goal was set too high or too low, our
objective is quicker and better results. To give you two illustrations:
We are behind schedule in turning out finished airplanes; we are working
day and night to solve the innumerable problems and to catch up.
We are ahead of schedule in building warships but we are working to get
even further ahead of that schedule.
To change a whole nation from a basis of peacetime production of
implements of peace to a basis of wartime production of implements of
war is no small task. And the greatest difficulty comes at the beginning
of the program, when new tools, new plant facilities, new assembly
lines, and new ship ways must first be constructed before the actual
materiel begins to flow steadily and speedily from them.
The Congress, of course, must rightly keep itself informed at all times
of the progress of the program. However, there is certain information,
as the Congress itself will readily recognize, which, in the interests
of our own security and those of the nations that we are supporting,
must of needs be kept in confidence.
New circumstances are constantly begetting new needs for our safety. I
shall ask this Congress for greatly increased new appropriations and
authorizations to carry on what we have begun.
I also ask this Congress for authority and for funds sufficient to
manufacture additional munitions and war supplies of many kinds, to be
turned over to those nations which are now in actual war with aggressor
nations.
Our most useful and immediate role is to act as an arsenal for them as
well as for ourselves. They do not need man power, but they do need
billions of dollars worth of the weapons of defense.
The time is near when they will not be able to pay for them all in ready
cash. We cannot, and we will not, tell them that they must surrender,
merely because of present inability to pay for the weapons which we know
they must have.
I do not recommend that we make them a loan of dollars with which to pay
for these weapons--a loan to be repaid in dollars.
I recommend that we make it possible for those nations to continue to
obtain war materials in the United States, fitting their orders into our
own program. Nearly all their materiel would, if the time ever came, be
useful for our own defense.
Taking counsel of expert military and naval authorities, considering
what is best for our own security, we are free to decide how much should
be kept here and how much should be sent abroad to our friends who by
their determined and heroic resistance are giving us time in which to
make ready our own defense.
For what we send abroad, we shall be repaid within a reasonable time
following the close of hostilities, in similar materials, or, at our
option, in other goods of many kinds, which they can produce and which
we need.
Let us say to the democracies: “We Americans are vitally concerned in
your defense of freedom. We are putting forth our energies, our
resources and our organizing powers to give you the strength to regain
and maintain a free world. We shall send you, in ever-increasing
numbers, ships, planes, tanks, guns. This is our purpose and our
pledge.”
In fulfillment of this purpose we will not be intimidated by the threats
of dictators that they will regard as a breach of international law or
as an act of war our aid to the democracies which dare to resist their
aggression. Such aid is not an act of war, even if a dictator should
unilaterally proclaim it so to be.
When the dictators, if the dictators, are ready to make war upon us,
they will not wait for an act of war on our part. They did not wait for
Norway or Belgium or the Netherlands to commit an act of war.
Their only interest is in a new one-way international law, which lacks
mutuality in its observance, and, therefore, becomes an instrument of
oppression.
The happiness of future generations of Americans may well depend upon
how effective and how immediate we can make our aid felt. No one can
tell the exact character of the emergency situations that we may be
called upon to meet. The Nation’s hands must not be tied when the
Nation’s life is in danger.
We must all prepare to make the sacrifices that the emergency--almost as
serious as war itself--demands. Whatever stands in the way of speed and
efficiency in defense preparations must give way to the national need.
A free nation has the right to expect full cooperation from all groups.
A free nation has the right to look to the leaders of business, of
labor, and of agriculture to take the lead in stimulating effort, not
among other groups but within their own groups.
The best way of dealing with the few slackers or trouble makers in our
midst is, first, to shame them by patriotic example, and, if that fails,
to use the sovereignty of Government to save Government.
As men do not live by bread alone, they do not fight by armaments alone.
Those who man our defenses, and those behind them who build our
defenses, must have the stamina and the courage which come from
unshakable belief in the manner of life which they are defending. The
mighty action that we are calling for cannot be based on a disregard of
all things worth fighting for.
The Nation takes great satisfaction and much strength from the things
which have been done to make its people conscious of their individual
stake in the preservation of democratic life in America. Those things
have toughened the fibre of our people, have renewed their faith and
strengthened their devotion to the institutions we make ready to
protect.
Certainly this is no time for any of us to stop thinking about the
social and economic problems which are the root cause of the social
revolution which is today a supreme factor in the world.
For there is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and
strong democracy. The basic things expected by our people of their
political and economic systems are simple. They are:
Equality of opportunity for youth and for others.
Jobs for those who can work.
Security for those who need it.
The ending of special privilege for the few.
The preservation of civil liberties for all.
The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and
constantly rising standard of living.
These are the simple, basic things that must never be lost sight of in
the turmoil and unbelievable complexity of our modern world. The inner
and abiding strength of our economic and political systems is dependent
upon the degree to which they fulfill these expectations.
Many subjects connected with our social economy call for immediate
improvement.
As examples:
We should bring more citizens under the coverage of old-age pensions and
unemployment insurance.
We should widen the opportunities for adequate medical care.
We should plan a better system by which persons deserving or needing
gainful employment may obtain it.
I have called for personal sacrifice. I am assured of the willingness of
almost all Americans to respond to that call.
A part of the sacrifice means the payment of more money in taxes. In my
Budget Message I shall recommend that a greater portion of this great
defense program be paid for from taxation than we are paying today. No
person should try, or be allowed, to get rich out of this program; and
the principle of tax payments in accordance with ability to pay should
be constantly before our eyes to guide our legislation.
If the Congress maintains these principles, the voters, putting
patriotism ahead of pocketbooks, will give you their applause.
In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a
world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression--everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own
way--everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want--which, translated into world terms,
means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a
healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants--everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear--which, translated into world terms,
means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a
thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act
of physical aggression against any neighbor--anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a
kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of
world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which
the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
To that new order we oppose the greater conception--the moral order. A
good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign
revolutions alike without fear.
Since the beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in
change--in a perpetual peaceful revolution--a revolution which goes on
steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions--without the
concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch. The world order which
we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a
friendly, civilized society.
This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of
its millions of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the
guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere.
Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep
them. Our strength is our unity of purpose. To that high concept there
can be no end save victory.
***
State of the Union Address
Franklin D. Roosevelt
January 6, 1942
In fulfilling my duty to report upon the State of the Union, I am proud
to say to you that the spirit of the American people was never higher
than it is today--the Union was never more closely knit together--this
country was never more deeply determined to face the solemn tasks before
it.
The response of the American people has been instantaneous, and it will
be sustained until our security is assured.
Exactly one year ago today I said to this Congress: “When the dictators.
. . are ready to make war upon us, they will not wait for an act of war
on our part. . . . They--not we--will choose the time and the place and
the method of their attack.”
We now know their choice of the time: a peaceful Sunday
morning--December 7, 1941.
We know their choice of the place: an American outpost in the Pacific.
We know their choice of the method: the method of Hitler himself.
Japan’s scheme of conquest goes back half a century. It was not merely a
policy of seeking living room: it was a plan which included the
subjugation of all the peoples in the Far East and in the islands of the
Pacific, and the domination of that ocean by Japanese military and naval
control of the western coasts of North, Central, and South America.
The development of this ambitious conspiracy was marked by the war
against China in 1894; the subsequent occupation of Korea; the war
against Russia in 1904; the illegal fortification of the mandated
Pacific islands following 1920; the seizure of Manchuria in 1931; and
the invasion of China in 1937.
A similar policy of criminal conquest was adopted by Italy. The Fascists
first revealed their imperial designs in Libya and Tripoli. In 1935 they
seized Abyssinia. Their goal was the domination of all North Africa,
Egypt, parts of France, and the entire Mediterranean world.
But the dreams of empire of the Japanese and Fascist leaders were modest
in comparison with the gargantuan aspirations of Hitler and his Nazis.
Even before they came to power in 1933, their plans for that conquest
had been drawn. Those plans provided for ultimate domination, not of any
one section of the world, but of the whole earth and all the oceans on
it.
When Hitler organized his Berlin-Rome-Tokyo alliance, all these plans of
conquest became a single plan. Under this, in addition to her own
schemes of conquest, Japan’s role was obviously to cut off our supply of
weapons of war to Britain, and Russia and China--weapons which
increasingly were speeding the day of Hitler’s doom. The act of Japan at
Pearl Harbor was intended to stun us--to terrify us to such an extent
that we would divert our industrial and military strength to the Pacific
area, or even to our own continental defense.
The plan has failed in its purpose. We have not been stunned. We have
not been terrified or confused. This very reassembling of the
Seventy-seventh Congress today is proof of that; for the mood of quiet,
grim resolution which here prevails bodes ill for those who conspired
and collaborated to murder world peace.
That mood is stronger than any mere desire for revenge. It expresses the
will of the American people to make very certain that the world will
never so suffer again.
Admittedly, we have been faced with hard choices. It was bitter, for
example, not to be able to relieve the heroic and historic defenders of
Wake Island. It was bitter for us not to be able to land a million men
in a thousand ships in the Philippine Islands.
But this adds only to our determination to see to it that the Stars and
Stripes will fly again over Wake and Guam. Yes, see to it that the brave
people of the Philippines will be rid of Japanese imperialism; and will
live in freedom, security, and independence.
Powerful and offensive actions must and will be taken in proper time.
The consolidation of the United Nations’ total war effort against our
common enemies is being achieved.
That was and is the purpose of conferences which have been held during
the past two weeks in Washington, and Moscow and Chungking. That is the
primary objective of the declaration of solidarity signed in Washington
on January 1, 1942, by 26 Nations united against the Axis powers.
Difficult choices may have to be made in the months to come. We do not
shrink from such decisions. We and those united with us will make those
decisions with courage and determination.
Plans have been laid here and in the other capitals for coordinated and
cooperative action by all the United Nations--military action and
economic action. Already we have established, as you know, unified
command of land, sea, and air forces in the southwestern Pacific theater
of war. There will be a continuation of conferences and consultations
among military staffs, so that the plans and operations of each will fit
into the general strategy designed to crush the enemy. We shall not
fight isolated wars--each Nation going its own way. These 26 Nations are
united--not in spirit and determination alone, but in the broad conduct
of the war in all its phases.
For the first time since the Japanese and the Fascists and the Nazis
started along their blood-stained course of conquest they now face the
fact that superior forces are assembling against them. Gone forever are
the days when the aggressors could attack and destroy their victims one
by one without unity of resistance. We of the United Nations will so
dispose our forces that we can strike at the common enemy wherever the
greatest damage can be done him.
The militarists of Berlin and Tokyo started this war. But the massed,
angered forces of common humanity will finish it.
Destruction of the material and spiritual centers of civilization--this
has been and still is the purpose of Hitler and his Italian and Japanese
chessmen. They would wreck the power of the British Commonwealth and
Russia and China and the Netherlands--and then combine all their forces
to achieve their ultimate goal, the conquest of the United States.
They know that victory for us means victory for freedom.
They know that victory for us means victory for the institution of
democracy--the ideal of the family, the simple principles of common
decency and humanity.
They know that victory for us means victory for religion. And they could
not tolerate that. The world is too small to provide adequate “living
room” for both Hitler and God. In proof of that, the Nazis have now
announced their plan for enforcing their new German, pagan religion all
over the world--a plan by which the Holy Bible and the Cross of Mercy
would be displaced by Mein Kampf and the swastika and the naked sword.
Our own objectives are clear; the objective of smashing the militarism
imposed by war lords upon their enslaved peoples the objective of
liberating the subjugated Nations--the objective of establishing and
securing freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and
freedom from fear everywhere in the world.
We shall not stop short of these objectives--nor shall we be satisfied
merely to gain them and then call it a day. I know that I speak for the
American people--and I have good reason to believe that I speak also for
all the other peoples who fight with us--when I say that this time we
are determined not only to win the war, but also to maintain the
security of the peace that will follow.
But we know that modern methods of warfare make it a task, not only of
shooting and fighting, but an even more urgent one of working and
producing.
Victory requires the actual weapons of war and the means of transporting
them to a dozen points of combat.
It will not be sufficient for us and the other United Nations to produce
a slightly superior supply of munitions to that of Germany, Japan,
Italy, and the stolen industries in the countries which they have
overrun.
The superiority of the United Nations in munitions and ships must be
overwhelming--so overwhelming that the Axis Nations can never hope to
catch up with it. And so, in order to attain this overwhelming
superiority the United States must build planes and tanks and guns and
ships to the utmost limit of our national capacity. We have the ability
and capacity to produce arms not only for our own forces, but also for
the armies, navies, and air forces fighting on our side.
And our overwhelming superiority of armament must be adequate to put
weapons of war at the proper time into the hands of those men in the
conquered Nations who stand ready to seize the first opportunity to
revolt against their German and Japanese oppressors, and against the
traitors in their own ranks, known by the already infamous name of
“Quislings.” And I think that it is a fair prophecy to say that, as we
get guns to the patriots in those lands, they too will fire shots heard
’round the world.
This production of ours in the United States must be raised far above
present levels, even though it will mean the dislocation of the lives
and occupations of millions of our own people. We must raise our sights
all along the production line. Let no man say it cannot be done. It must
be done--and we have undertaken to do it.
I have just sent a letter of directive to the appropriate departments
and agencies of our Government, ordering that immediate steps be taken:
First, to increase our production rate of airplanes so rapidly that in
this year, 1942, we shall produce 60,000 planes, 10,000 more than the
goal that we set a year and a half ago. This includes 45,000 combat
planes--bombers, dive bombers, pursuit planes. The rate of increase will
be maintained and continued so that next year, 1943, we shall produce
125,000 airplanes, including 100,000 combat planes.
Second, to increase our production rate of tanks so rapidly that in this
year, 1942, we shall produce 45,000 tanks; and to continue that increase
so that next year, 1943, we shall produce 75,000 tanks.
Third, to increase our production rate of anti-aircraft guns so rapidly
that in this year, 1942, we shall produce 20,000 of them; and to
continue that increase so that next year, 1943, we shall produce 35,000
anti-aircraft guns.
And fourth, to increase our production rate of merchant ships so rapidly
that in this year, 1942, we shall build 6,000,000 deadweight tons as
compared with a 1941 completed production of 1,100,000. And finally, we
shall continue that increase so that next year, 1943, we shall build
10,000,000 tons of shipping.
These figures and similar figures for a multitude of other implements of
war will give the Japanese and the Nazis a little idea of just what they
accomplished in the attack at Pearl Harbor.
And I rather hope that all these figures which I have given will become
common knowledge in Germany and Japan.
Our task is hard--our task is unprecedented--and the time is short. We
must strain every existing armament-producing facility to the utmost. We
must convert every available plant and tool to war production. That goes
all the way from the greatest plants to the smallest--from the huge
automobile industry to the village machine shop.
Production for war is based on men and women--the human hands and brains
which collectively we call Labor. Our workers stand ready to work long
hours; to turn out more in a day’s work; to keep the wheels turning and
the fires burning twenty-four hours a day, and seven days a week. They
realize well that on the speed and efficiency of their work depend the
lives of their sons and their brothers on the fighting fronts.
Production for war is based on metals and raw materials--steel, copper,
rubber, aluminum, zinc, tin. Greater and greater quantities of them will
have to be diverted to war purposes. Civilian use of them will have to
be cut further and still further--and, in many cases, completely
eliminated.
War costs money. So far, we have hardly even begun to pay for it. We
have devoted only 15 percent of our national income to national defense.
As will appear in my Budget Message tomorrow, our war program for the
coming fiscal year will cost 56 billion dollars or, in other words, more
than half of the estimated annual national income. That means taxes and
bonds and bonds and taxes. It means cutting luxuries and other
non-essentials. In a word, it means an “all-out” war by individual
effort and family effort in a united country.
Only this all-out scale of production will hasten the ultimate all-out
victory. Speed will count. Lost ground can always be regained--lost time
never. Speed will save lives; speed will save this Nation which is in
peril; speed will save our freedom and our civilization--and slowness
has never been an American characteristic.
As the United States goes into its full stride, we must always be on
guard against misconceptions which will arise, some of them naturally,
or which will be planted among us by our enemies.
We must guard against complacency. We must not underrate the enemy. He
is powerful and cunning--and cruel and ruthless. He will stop at nothing
that gives him a chance to kill and to destroy. He has trained his
people to believe that their highest perfection is achieved by waging
war. For many years he has prepared for this very conflict--planning,
and plotting, and training, arming, and fighting. We have already tasted
defeat. We may suffer further setbacks. We must face the fact of a hard
war, a long war, a bloody war, a costly war.
We must, on the other hand, guard against defeatism. That has been one
of the chief weapons of Hitler’s propaganda machine--used time and again
with deadly results. It will not be used successfully on the American
people.
We must guard against divisions among ourselves and among all the other
United Nations. We must be particularly vigilant against racial
discrimination in any of its ugly forms. Hitler will try again to breed
mistrust and suspicion between one individual and another, one group and
another, one race and another, one Government and another. He will try
to use the same technique of falsehood and rumor-mongering with which he
divided France from Britain. He is trying to do this with us even now.
But he will find a unity of will and purpose against him, which will
persevere until the destruction of all his black designs upon the
freedom and safety of the people of the world.
We cannot wage this war in a defensive spirit. As our power and our
resources are fully mobilized, we shall carry the attack against the
enemy--we shall hit him and hit him again wherever and whenever we can
reach him.
We must keep him far from our shores, for we intend to bring this battle
to him on his own home grounds.
American armed forces must be used at any place in all the world where
it seems advisable to engage the forces of the enemy. In some cases
these operations will be defensive, in order to protect key positions.
In other cases, these operations will be offensive, in order to strike
at the common enemy, with a view to his complete encirclement and
eventual total defeat.
American armed forces will operate at many points in the Far East.
American armed forces will be on all the oceans--helping to guard the
essential communications which are vital to the United Nations.
American land and air and sea forces will take stations in the British
Isles--which constitute an essential fortress in this great world
struggle.
American armed forces will help to protect this hemisphere--and also
help to protect bases outside this hemisphere, which could be used for
an attack on the Americas.
If any of our enemies, from Europe or from Asia, attempt long-range
raids by “suicide” squadrons of bombing planes, they will do so only in
the hope of terrorizing our people and disrupting our morale. Our people
are not afraid of that. We know that we may have to pay a heavy price
for freedom. We will pay this price with a will. Whatever the price, it
is a thousand times worth it. No matter what our enemies, in their
desperation, may attempt to do to us--we will say, as the people of
London have said, “We can take it.” And what’s more we can give it back
and we will give it back--with compound interest.
When our enemies challenged our country to stand up and fight, they
challenged each and every one of us. And each and every one of us has
accepted the challenge--for himself and for his Nation.
There were only some 400 United States Marines who in the heroic and
historic defense of Wake Island inflicted such great losses on the
enemy. Some of those men were killed in action; and others are now
prisoners of war. When the survivors of that great fight are liberated
and restored to their homes, they will learn that a hundred and thirty
million of their fellow citizens have been inspired to render their own
full share of service and sacrifice.
We can well say that our men on the fighting fronts have already proved
that Americans today are just as rugged and just as tough as any of the
heroes whose exploits we celebrate on the Fourth of July.
Many people ask, “When will this war end?” There is only one answer to
that. It will end just as soon as we make it end, by our combined
efforts, our combined strength, our combined determination to fight
through and work through until the end--the end of militarism in Germany
and Italy and Japan. Most certainly we shall not settle for less.
That is the spirit in which discussions have been conducted during the
visit of the British Prime Minister to Washington. Mr. Churchill and I
understand each other, our motives and our purposes. Together, during
the past two weeks, we have faced squarely the major military and
economic problems of this greatest world war.
All in our Nation have been cheered by Mr. Churchill’s visit. We have
been deeply stirred by his great message to us. He is welcome in our
midst, and we unite in wishing him a safe return to his home.
For we are fighting on the same side with the British people, who fought
alone for long, terrible months, and withstood the enemy with fortitude
and tenacity and skill.
We are fighting on the same side with the Russian people who have seen
the Nazi hordes swarm up to the very gates of Moscow, and who with
almost superhuman will and courage have forced the invaders back into
retreat.
We are fighting on the same side as the brave people of China--those
millions who for four and a half long years have withstood bombs and
starvation and have whipped the invaders time and again in spite of the
superior Japanese equipment and arms. Yes, we are fighting on the same
side as the indomitable Dutch. We are fighting on the same side as all
the other Governments in exile, whom Hitler and all his armies and all
his Gestapo have not been able to conquer.
But we of the United Nations are not making all this sacrifice of human
effort and human lives to return to the kind of world we had after the
last world war.
We are fighting today for security, for progress, and for peace, not
only for ourselves but for all men, not only for one generation but for
all generations. We are fighting to cleanse the world of ancient evils,
ancient ills.
Our enemies are guided by brutal cynicism, by unholy contempt for the
human race. We are inspired by a faith that goes back through all the
years to the first chapter of the Book of Genesis: “God created man in
His own image.”
We on our side are striving to be true to that divine heritage. We are
fighting, as our fathers have fought, to uphold the doctrine that all
men are equal in the sight of God. Those on the other side are striving
to destroy this deep belief and to create a world in their own image--a
world of tyranny and cruelty and serfdom.
That is the conflict that day and night now pervades our lives.
No compromise can end that conflict. There never has been--there never
can be--successful compromise between good and evil. Only total victory
can reward the champions of tolerance, and decency, and freedom, and
faith.
***
State of the Union Address
Franklin D. Roosevelt
January 7, 1943
Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Seventy-eighth Congress:
This Seventy-eighth Congress assembles in one of the great moments in
the history of the Nation. The past year was perhaps the most crucial
for modern civilization; the coming year will be filled with violent
conflicts-- yet with high promise of better things.
We must appraise the events of 1942 according to their relative
importance; we must exercise a sense of proportion.
First in importance in the American scene has been the inspiring proof
of the great qualities of our fighting men. They have demonstrated these
qualities in adversity as well as in victory. As long as our flag flies
over this Capitol, Americans will honor the soldiers, sailors, and
marines who fought our first battles of this war against overwhelming
odds the heroes, living and dead, of Wake and Bataan and Guadalcanal, of
the Java Sea and Midway and the North Atlantic convoys. Their
unconquerable spirit will live forever.
By far the largest and most important developments in the whole
world-wide strategic picture of 1942 were the events of the long fronts
in Russia: first, the implacable defense of Stalingrad; and, second, the
offensives by the Russian armies at various points that started in the
latter part of November and which still roll on with great force and
effectiveness.
The other major events of the year were: the series of Japanese advances
in the Philippines, the East Indies, Malaya, and Burma; the stopping of
that Japanese advance in the mid-Pacific, the South Pacific, and the
Indian Oceans; the successful defense of the Near East by the British
counterattack through Egypt and Libya; the American-British occupation
of North Africa. Of continuing importance in the year 1942 were the
unending and bitterly contested battles of the convoy routes, and the
gradual passing of air superiority from the Axis to the United Nations.
The Axis powers knew that they must win the war in 1942--or eventually
lose everything. I do not need to tell you that our enemies did not win
the war in 1942.
In the Pacific area, our most important victory in 1942 was the air and
naval battle off Midway Island. That action is historically important
because it secured for our use communication lines stretching thousands
of miles in every direction. In placing this emphasis on the Battle of
Midway, I am not unmindful of other successful actions in the Pacific,
in the air and on land and afloat--especially those on the Coral Sea and
New Guinea and in the Solomon Islands. But these actions were
essentially defensive. They were part of the delaying strategy that
characterized this phase of the war.
During this period we inflicted steady losses upon the enemy--great
losses of Japanese planes and naval vessels, transports and cargo ships.
As early as one year ago, we set as a primary task in the war of the
Pacific a day-by-day and week-by-week and month-by-month destruction of
more Japanese war materials than Japanese industry could replace. Most
certainly, that task has been and is being performed by our fighting
ships and planes. And a large part of this task has been accomplished by
the gallant crews of our American submarines who strike on the other
side of the Pacific at Japanese ships--right up at the very mouth of the
harbor of Yokohama.
We know that as each day goes by, Japanese strength in ships and planes
is going down and down, and American strength in ships and planes is
going up and up. And so I sometimes feel that the eventual outcome can
now be put on a mathematical basis. That will become evident to the
Japanese people themselves when we strike at their own home islands, and
bomb them constantly from the air.
And in the attacks against Japan, we shall be joined with the heroic
people of China--that great people whose ideals of peace are so closely
akin to our own. Even today we are flying as much lend-lease material
into China as ever traversed the Burma Road, flying it over mountains
17,000 feet high, flying blind through sleet and snow. We shall overcome
all the formidable obstacles, and get the battle equipment into China to
shatter the power of our common enemy. From this war, China will realize
the security, the prosperity and the dignity, which Japan has sought so
ruthlessly to destroy.
The period of our defensive attrition in the Pacific is drawing to a
close. Now our aim is to force the Japanese to fight. Last year, we
stopped them. This year, we intend to advance.
Turning now to the European theater of war, during this past year it was
clear that our first task was to lessen the concentrated pressure on the
Russian front by compelling Germany to divert part of her manpower and
equipment to another theater of war. After months of secret planning and
preparation in the utmost detail, an enormous amphibious expedition was
embarked for French North Africa from the United States and the United
Kingdom in literally hundreds of ships. It reached its objectives with
very small losses, and has already produced an important effect upon the
whole situation of the war. It has opened to attack what Mr. Churchill
well described as “the under-belly of the Axis,” and it has removed the
always dangerous threat of an Axis attack through West Africa against
the South Atlantic Ocean and the continent of South America itself.
The well-timed and splendidly executed offensive from Egypt by the
British Eighth Army was a part of the same major strategy of the United
Nations.
Great rains and appalling mud and very limited communications have
delayed the final battles of Tunisia. The Axis is reinforcing its strong
positions. But I am confident that though the fighting will be tough,
when the final Allied assault is made, the last vestige of Axis power
will be driven from the whole of the south shores of the Mediterranean.
Any review of the year 1942 must emphasize the magnitude and the
diversity of the military activities in which this Nation has become
engaged. As I speak to you, approximately one and a half million of our
soldiers, sailors, marines, and fliers are in service outside of our
continental limits, all through the world. Our merchant seamen, in
addition, are carrying supplies to them and to our allies over every sea
lane.
Few Americans realize the amazing growth of our air strength, though I
am sure our enemy does. Day in and day out our forces are bombing the
enemy and meeting him in combat on many different fronts in every part
of the world. And for those who question the quality of our aircraft and
the ability of our fliers, I point to the fact that, in Africa, we are
shooting down two enemy planes to every one we lose, and in the Pacific
and the Southwest Pacific we are shooting them down four to one.
We pay great tribute--the tribute of the United States of America--to
the fighting men of Russia and China and Britain and the various members
of the British Commonwealth--the millions of men who through the years
of this war have fought our common enemies, and have denied to them the
world conquest which they sought.
We pay tribute to the soldiers and fliers and seamen of others of the
United Nations whose countries have been overrun by Axis hordes.
As a result of the Allied occupation of North Africa, powerful units of
the French Army and Navy are going into action. They are in action with
the United Nations forces. We welcome them as allies and as friends.
They join with those Frenchmen who, since the dark days of June, 1940,
have been fighting valiantly for the liberation of their stricken
country.
We pay tribute to the fighting leaders of our allies, to Winston
Churchill, to Joseph Stalin, and to the Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.
Yes, there is a very great unanimity between the leaders of the United
Nations. This unity is effective in planning and carrying out the major
strategy of this war and in building up and in maintaining the lines of
supplies.
I cannot prophesy. I cannot tell you when or where the United Nations
are going to strike next in Europe. But we are going to strike--and
strike hard. I cannot tell you whether we are going to hit them in
Norway, or through the Low Countries, or in France, or through Sardinia
or Sicily, or through the Balkans, or through Poland--or at several
points simultaneously. But I can tell you that no matter where and when
we strike by land, we and the British and the Russians will hit them
from the air heavily and relentlessly. Day in and day out we shall heap
tons upon tons of high explosives on their war factories and utilities
and seaports.
Hitler and Mussolini will understand now the enormity of their
miscalculations--that the Nazis would always have the advantage of
superior air power as they did when they bombed Warsaw, and Rotterdam,
and London and Coventry. That superiority has gone--forever.
Yes, the Nazis and the Fascists have asked for it--and they are going to
get it.
Our forward progress in this war has depended upon our progress on the
production front.
There has been criticism of the management and conduct of our war
production. Much of this self-criticism has had a healthy effect. It has
spurred us on. It has reflected a normal American impatience to get on
with the job. We are the kind of people who are never quite satisfied
with anything short of miracles.
But there has been some criticism based on guesswork and even on
malicious falsification of fact. Such criticism creates doubts and
creates fears, and weakens our total effort.
I do not wish to suggest that we should be completely satisfied with our
production progress today, or next month, or ever. But I can report to
you with genuine pride on what has been accomplished in 1942.
A year ago we set certain production goals for 1942 and for 1943. Some
people, including some experts, thought that we had pulled some big
figures out of a hat just to frighten the Axis. But we had confidence in
the ability of our people to establish new records. And that confidence
has been justified.
Of course, we realized that some production objectives would have to be
changed--some of them adjusted upward, and others downward; some items
would be taken out of the program altogether, and others added. This was
inevitable as we gained battle experience, and as technological
improvements were made.
Our 1942 airplane production and tank production fell short,
numerically--stress the word numerically of the goals set a year ago.
Nevertheless, we have plenty of reason to be proud of our record for
1942. We produced 48,000 military planes--more than the airplane
production of Germany, Italy, and Japan put together. Last month, in
December, we produced 5,500 military planes and the rate is rapidly
rising. Furthermore, we must remember that as each month passes by, the
averages of our types weigh more, take more man-hours to make, and have
more striking power.
In tank production, we revised our schedule--and for good and sufficient
reasons. As a result of hard experience in battle, we have diverted a
portion of our tank-producing capacity to a stepped-up production of
new, deadly field weapons, especially self-propelled artillery.
Here are some other production figures:
In 1942, we produced 56,000 combat vehicles, such as tanks and
self-propelled artillery.
In 1942, we produced 670,000 machine guns, six times greater than our
production in 1941 and three times greater than our total production
during the year and a half of our participation in the first World War.
We produced 21,000 anti-tank guns, six times greater than our 1941
production.
We produced ten and a quarter billion rounds of small-arms ammunition,
five times greater than our 1941 production and three times greater than
our total production in the first World War.
We produced 181 million rounds of artillery ammunition, twelve times
greater than our 1941 production and ten times greater than our total
production in the first World War.
I think the arsenal of democracy is making good.
These facts and figures that I have given will give no great aid and
comfort to the enemy. On the contrary, I can imagine that they will give
him considerable discomfort. I suspect that Hitler and Tojo will find it
difficult to explain to the German and Japanese people just why it is
that “decadent, inefficient democracy” can produce such phenomenal
quantities of weapons and munitions--and fighting men.
We have given the lie to certain misconceptions--which is an extremely
polite word--especially the one which holds that the various blocs or
groups within a free country cannot forego their political and economic
differences in time of crisis and work together toward a common goal.
While we have been achieving this miracle of production, during the past
year our armed forces have grown from a little over 2,000,000 to
7,000,000. In other words, we have withdrawn from the labor force and
the farms some 5,000,000 of our younger workers. And in spite of this,
our farmers have contributed their share to the common effort by
producing the greatest quantity of food ever made available during a
single year in all our history.
I wonder is there any person among us so simple as to believe that all
this could have been done without creating some dislocations in our
normal national life, some inconveniences, and even some hardships?
Who can have hoped to have done this without burdensome Government
regulations which are a nuisance to everyone--including those who have
the thankless task of administering them?
We all know that there have been mistakes--mistakes due to the
inevitable process of trial and error inherent in doing big things for
the first time. We all know that there have been too many complicated
forms and questionnaires. I know about that. I have had to fill some of
them out myself.
But we are determined to see to it that our supplies of food and other
essential civilian goods are distributed on a fair and just basis--to
rich and poor, management and labor, farmer and city dweller alike. We
are determined to keep the cost of living at a stable level. All this
has required much information. These forms and questionnaires represent
an honest and sincere attempt by honest and sincere officials to obtain
this information.
We have learned by the mistakes that we have made.
Our experience will enable us during the coming year to improve the
necessary mechanisms of wartime economic controls, and to simplify
administrative procedures. But we do not intend to leave things so lax
that loopholes will be left for cheaters, for chiselers, or for the
manipulators of the black market.
Of course, there have been disturbances and inconveniences--and even
hardships. And there will be many, many more before we finally win. Yes,
1943 will not be an easy year for us on the home front. We shall feel in
many ways in our daily lives the sharp pinch of total war.
Fortunately, there are only a few Americans who place appetite above
patriotism. The overwhelming majority realize that the food we send
abroad is for essential military purposes, for our own and Allied
fighting forces, and for necessary help in areas that we occupy.
We Americans intend to do this great job together. In our common labors
we must build and fortify the very foundation of national
unity--confidence in one another.
It is often amusing, and it is sometimes politically profitable, to
picture the City of Washington as a madhouse, with the Congress and the
Administration disrupted with confusion and indecision and general
incompetence.
However--what matters most in war is results. And the one pertinent fact
is that after only a few years of preparation and only one year of
warfare, we are able to engage, spiritually as well as physically, in
the total waging of a total war.
Washington may be a madhouse--but only in the sense that it is the
Capital City of a Nation which is fighting mad. And I think that Berlin
and Rome and Tokyo, which had such contempt for the obsolete methods of
democracy, would now gladly use all they could get of that same brand of
madness.
And we must not forget that our achievements in production have been
relatively no greater than those of the Russians and the British and the
Chinese who have developed their own war industries under the incredible
difficulties of battle conditions. They have had to continue work
through bombings and blackouts. And they have never quit.
We Americans are in good, brave company in this war, and we are playing
our own, honorable part in the vast common effort.
As spokesmen for the United States Government, you and I take off our
hats to those responsible for our American production--to the owners,
managers, and supervisors, to the draftsmen and the engineers, and to
the workers-- men and women--in factories and arsenals and shipyards and
mines and mills and forests--and railroads and on highways.
We take off our hats to the farmers who have faced an unprecedented task
of feeding not only a great Nation but a great part of the world.
We take off our hats to all the loyal, anonymous, untiring men and women
who have worked in private employment and in Government and who have
endured rationing and other stringencies with good humor and good will.
Yes, we take off our hats to all Americans who have contributed so
magnificently to our common cause.
I have sought to emphasize a sense of proportion in this review of the
events of the war and the needs of the war.
We should never forget the things we are fighting for. But, at this
critical period of the war, we should confine ourselves to the larger
objectives and not get bogged down in argument over methods and details.
We, and all the United Nations, want a decent peace and a durable peace.
In the years between the end of the first World War and the beginning of
the second World War, we were not living under a decent or a durable
peace.
I have reason to know that our boys at the front are concerned with two
broad aims beyond the winning of the war; and their thinking and their
opinion coincide with what most Americans here back home are mulling
over. They know, and we know, that it would be inconceivable--it would,
indeed, be sacrilegious--if this Nation and the world did not attain
some real, lasting good out of all these efforts and sufferings and
bloodshed and death.
The men in our armed forces want a lasting peace, and, equally, they
want permanent employment for themselves, their families, and their
neighbors when they are mustered out at the end of the war.
Two years ago I spoke in my Annual Message of four freedoms. The
blessings of two of them--freedom of speech and freedom of religion--are
an essential part of the very life of this Nation; and we hope that
these blessings will be granted to all men everywhere.
‘The people at home, and the people at the front, are wondering a little
about the third freedom--freedom from want. To them it means that when
they are mustered out, when war production is converted to the economy
of peace, they will have the right to expect full employment--full
employment for themselves and for all able-bodied men and women in
America who want to work.
They expect the opportunity to work, to run their farms, their stores,
to earn decent wages. They are eager to face the risks inherent in our
system of free enterprise.
They do not want a postwar America which suffers from undernourishment
or slums--or the dole. They want no get-rich-quick era of bogus
“prosperity” which will end for them in selling apples on a street
corner, as happened after the bursting of the boom in 1929.
When you talk with our young men and our young women, you will find they
want to work for themselves and for their families; they consider that
they have the right to work; and they know that after the last war their
fathers did not gain that right.
When you talk with our young men and women, you will find that with the
opportunity for employment they want assurance against the evils of all
major economic hazards--assurance that will extend from the cradle to
the grave. And this great Government can and must provide this
assurance.
I have been told that this is no time to speak of a better America after
the war. I am told it is a grave error on my part.
I dissent.
And if the security of the individual citizen, or the family, should
become a subject of national debate, the country knows where I stand.
I say this now to this Seventy-eighth Congress, because it is wholly
possible that freedom from want--the right of employment, the right of
assurance against life’s hazards--will loom very large as a task of
America during the coming two years.
I trust it will not be regarded as an issue--but rather as a task for
all of us to study sympathetically, to work out with a constant regard
for the attainment of the objective, with fairness to all and with
injustice to none.
In this war of survival we must keep before our minds not only the evil
things we fight against but the good things we are fighting for. We
fight to retain a great past--and we fight to gain a greater future.
Let us remember, too, that economic safety for the America of the future
is threatened unless a greater economic stability comes to the rest of
the world. We cannot make America an island in either a military or an
economic sense. Hitlerism, like any other form of crime or disease, can
grow from the evil seeds of economic as well as military feudalism.
Victory in this war is the first and greatest goal before us. Victory in
the peace is the next. That means striving toward the enlargement of the
security of man here and throughout the world--and, finally, striving
for the fourth freedom--freedom from fear.
It is of little account for any of us to talk of essential human needs,
of attaining security, if we run the risk of another World War in ten or
twenty or fifty years. That is just plain common sense. Wars grow in
size, in death and destruction, and in the inevitability of engulfing
all Nations, in inverse ratio to the shrinking size of the world as a
result of the conquest of the air. I shudder to think of what will
happen to humanity, including ourselves, if this war ends in an
inconclusive peace, and another war breaks out when the babies of today
have grown to fighting age.
Every normal American prays that neither he nor his sons nor his
grandsons will be compelled to go through this horror again.
Undoubtedly a few Americans, even now, think that this Nation can end
this war comfortably and then climb back into an American hole and pull
the hole in after them.
But we have learned that we can never dig a hole so deep that it would
be safe against predatory animals. We have also learned that if we do
not pull the fangs of the predatory animals of this world, they will
multiply and grow in strength--and they will be at our throats again
once more in a short generation.
Most Americans realize more clearly than ever before that modern war
equipment in the hands of aggressor Nations can bring danger overnight
to our own national existence or to that of any other Nation--or
island--or continent.
It is clear to us that if Germany and Italy and Japan--or any one of
them-- remain armed at the end of this war, or are permitted to rearm,
they will again, and inevitably, embark upon an ambitious career of
world conquest. They must be disarmed and kept disarmed, and they must
abandon the philosophy, and the teaching of that philosophy, which has
brought so much suffering to the world.
After the first World War we tried to achieve a formula for permanent
peace, based on a magnificent idealism. We failed. But, by our failure,
we have learned that we cannot maintain peace at this stage of human
development by good intentions alone.
Today the United Nations are the mightiest military coalition in all
history. They represent an overwhelming majority of the population of
the world. Bound together in solemn agreement that they themselves will
not commit acts of aggression or conquest against any of their
neighbors, the United Nations can and must remain united for the
maintenance of peace by preventing any attempt to rearm in Germany, in
Japan, in Italy, or in any other Nation which seeks to violate the Tenth
Commandment--“Thou shalt not covet.”
There are cynics, there are skeptics who say it cannot be done. The
American people and all the freedom-loving peoples of this earth are now
demanding that it must be done. And the will of these people shall
prevail.
The very philosophy of the Axis powers is based on a profound contempt
for the human race. If, in the formation of our future policy, we were
guided by the same cynical contempt, then we should be surrendering to
the philosophy of our enemies, and our victory would turn to defeat.
The issue of this war is the basic issue between those who believe in
mankind and those who do not--the ancient issue between those who put
their faith in the people and those who put their faith in dictators and
tyrants. There have always been those who did not believe in the people,
who attempted to block their forward movement across history, to force
them back to servility and suffering and silence.
The people have now gathered their strength. They are moving forward in
their might and power--and no force, no combination of forces, no
trickery, deceit, or violence, can stop them now. They see before them
the hope of the world--a decent, secure, peaceful life for men
everywhere.
I do not prophesy when this war will end.
But I do believe that this year of 1943 will give to the United Nations
a very substantial advance along the roads that lead to Berlin and Rome
and Tokyo.
I tell you it is within the realm of possibility that this
Seventy-eighth Congress may have the historic privilege of helping
greatly to save the world from future fear.
Therefore, let us all have confidence, let us redouble our efforts.
A tremendous, costly, long-enduring task in peace as well as in war is
still ahead of us.
But, as we face that continuing task, we may know that the state of this
Nation is good--the heart of this Nation is sound--the spirit of this
Nation is strong--the faith of this Nation is eternal.
***
State of the Union Address
Franklin D. Roosevelt
January 11, 1944
To the Congress:
This Nation in the past two years has become an active partner in the
world’s greatest war against human slavery.
We have joined with like-minded people in order to defend ourselves in a
world that has been gravely threatened with gangster rule.
But I do not think that any of us Americans can be content with mere
survival. Sacrifices that we and our allies are making impose upon us
all a sacred obligation to see to it that out of this war we and our
children will gain something better than mere survival.
We are united in determination that this war shall not be followed by
another interim which leads to new disaster--that we shall not repeat
the tragic errors of ostrich isolationism--that we shall not repeat the
excesses of the wild twenties when this Nation went for a joy ride on a
roller coaster which ended in a tragic crash.
When Mr. Hull went to Moscow in October, and when I went to Cairo and
Teheran in November, we knew that we were in agreement with our allies
in our common determination to fight and win this war. But there were
many vital questions concerning the future peace, and they were
discussed in an atmosphere of complete candor and harmony.
In the last war such discussions, such meetings, did not even begin
until the shooting had stopped and the delegates began to assemble at
the peace table. There had been no previous opportunities for man-to-man
discussions which lead to meetings of minds. The result was a peace
which was not a peace.
That was a mistake which we are not repeating in this war.
And right here I want to address a word or two to some suspicious souls
who are fearful that Mr. Hull or I have made “commitments” for the
future which might pledge this Nation to secret treaties, or to enacting
the role of Santa Claus.
To such suspicious souls--using a polite terminology--I wish to say that
Mr. Churchill, and Marshal Stalin, and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek are
all thoroughly conversant with the provisions of our Constitution. And
so is Mr. Hull. And so am I.
Of course we made some commitments. We most certainly committed
ourselves to very large and very specific military plans which require
the use of all Allied forces to bring about the defeat of our enemies at
the earliest possible time.
But there were no secret treaties or political or financial commitments.
The one supreme objective for the future, which we discussed for each
Nation individually, and for all the United Nations, can be summed up in
one word: Security.
And that means not only physical security which provides safety from
attacks by aggressors. It means also economic security, social security,
moral security--in a family of Nations.
In the plain down-to-earth talks that I had with the Generalissimo and
Marshal Stalin and Prime Minister Churchill, it was abundantly clear
that they are all most deeply interested in the resumption of peaceful
progress by their own peoples--progress toward a better life. All our
allies want freedom to develop their lands and resources, to build up
industry, to increase education and individual opportunity, and to raise
standards of living.
All our allies have learned by bitter experience that real development
will not be possible if they are to be diverted from their purpose by
repeated wars--or even threats of war.
China and Russia are truly united with Britain and America in
recognition of this essential fact:
The best interests of each Nation, large and small, demand that all
freedom-loving Nations shall join together in a just and durable system
of peace. In the present world situation, evidenced by the actions of
Germany, Italy, and Japan, unquestioned military control over disturbers
of the peace is as necessary among Nations as it is among citizens in a
community. And an equally basic essential to peace is a decent standard
of living for all individual men and women and children in all Nations.
Freedom from fear is eternally linked with freedom from want.
There are people who burrow through our Nation like unseeing moles, and
attempt to spread the suspicion that if other Nations are encouraged to
raise their standards of living, our own American standard of living
must of necessity be depressed.
The fact is the very contrary. It has been shown time and again that if
the standard of living of any country goes up, so does its purchasing
power-- and that such a rise encourages a better standard of living in
neighboring countries with whom it trades. That is just plain common
sense--and it is the kind of plain common sense that provided the basis
for our discussions at Moscow, Cairo, and Teheran.
Returning from my journeyings, I must confess to a sense of “let-down”
when I found many evidences of faulty perspective here in Washington.
The faulty perspective consists in overemphasizing lesser problems and
thereby underemphasizing the first and greatest problem.
The overwhelming majority of our people have met the demands of this war
with magnificent courage and understanding. They have accepted
inconveniences; they have accepted hardships; they have accepted tragic
sacrifices. And they are ready and eager to make whatever further
contributions are needed to win the war as quickly as possible--if only
they are given the chance to know what is required of them.
However, while the majority goes on about its great work without
complaint, a noisy minority maintains an uproar of demands for special
favors for special groups. There are pests who swarm through the lobbies
of the Congress and the cocktail bars of Washington, representing these
special groups as opposed to the basic interests of the Nation as a
whole. They have come to look upon the war primarily as a chance to make
profits for themselves at the expense of their neighbors--profits in
money or in terms of political or social preferment.
Such selfish agitation can be highly dangerous in wartime. It creates
confusion. It damages morale. It hampers our national effort. It muddies
the waters and therefore prolongs the war.
If we analyze American history impartially, we cannot escape the fact
that in our past we have not always forgotten individual and selfish and
partisan interests in time of war--we have not always been united in
purpose and direction. We cannot overlook the serious dissensions and
the lack of unity in our war of the Revolution, in our War of 1812, or
in our War Between the States, when the survival of the Union itself was
at stake.
In the first World War we came closer to national unity than in any
previous war. But that war lasted only a year and a half, and increasing
signs of disunity began to appear during the final months of the
conflict.
In this war, we have been compelled to learn how interdependent upon
each other are all groups and sections of the population of America.
Increased food costs, for example, will bring new demands for wage
increases from all war workers, which will in turn raise all prices of
all things including those things which the farmers themselves have to
buy. Increased wages or prices will each in turn produce the same
results. They all have a particularly disastrous result on all fixed
income groups.
And I hope you will remember that all of us in this Government represent
the fixed income group just as much as we represent business owners,
workers, and farmers. This group of fixed income people includes:
teachers, clergy, policemen, firemen, widows and minors on fixed
incomes, wives and dependents of our soldiers and sailors, and old-age
pensioners. They and their families add up to one-quarter of our one
hundred and thirty million people. They have few or no high pressure
representatives at the Capitol. In a period of gross inflation they
would be the worst sufferers.
If ever there was a time to subordinate individual or group selfishness
to the national good, that time is now. Disunity at home--bickerings,
self-seeking partisanship, stoppages of work, inflation, business as
usual, politics as usual, luxury as usual these are the influences which
can undermine the morale of the brave men ready to die at the front for
us here.
Those who are doing most of the complaining are not deliberately
striving to sabotage the national war effort. They are laboring under
the delusion that the time is past when we must make prodigious
sacrifices--that the war is already won and we can begin to slacken off.
But the dangerous folly of that point of view can be measured by the
distance that separates our troops from their ultimate objectives in
Berlin and Tokyo--and by the sum of all the perils that lie along the
way.
Overconfidence and complacency are among our deadliest enemies. Last
spring--after notable victories at Stalingrad and in Tunisia and against
the U-boats on the high seas--overconfidence became so pronounced that
war production fell off. In two months, June and July, 1943, more than a
thousand airplanes that could have been made and should have been made
were not made. Those who failed to make them were not on strike. They
were merely saying, “The war’s in the bag--so let’s relax.”
That attitude on the part of anyone--Government or management or
labor--can lengthen this war. It can kill American boys.
Let us remember the lessons of 1918. In the summer of that year the tide
turned in favor of the allies. But this Government did not relax. In
fact, our national effort was stepped up. In August, 1918, the draft age
limits were broadened from 21-31 to 18-45. The President called for
“force to the utmost,” and his call was heeded. And in November, only
three months later, Germany surrendered.
That is the way to fight and win a war--all out--and not with
half-an-eye on the battlefronts abroad and the other eye-and-a-half on
personal, selfish, or political interests here at home.
Therefore, in order to concentrate all our energies and resources on
winning the war, and to maintain a fair and stable economy at home, I
recommend that the Congress adopt:
(1) A realistic tax law--which will tax all unreasonable profits, both
individual and corporate, and reduce the ultimate cost of the war to our
sons and daughters. The tax bill now under consideration by the Congress
does not begin to meet this test.
(2) A continuation of the law for the renegotiation of war
contracts--which will prevent exorbitant profits and assure fair prices
to the Government. For two long years I have pleaded with the Congress
to take undue profits out of war.
(3) A cost of food law--which will enable the Government (a) to place a
reasonable floor under the prices the farmer may expect for his
production; and (b) to place a ceiling on the prices a consumer will
have to pay for the food he buys. This should apply to necessities only;
and will require public funds to carry out. It will cost in
appropriations about one percent of the present annual cost of the war.
(4) Early reenactment of the stabilization statute of October, 1942.
This expires June 30, 1944, and if it is not extended well in advance,
the country might just as well expect price chaos by summer.
We cannot have stabilization by wishful thinking. We must take positive
action to maintain the integrity of the American dollar.
(5) A national service law--which, for the duration of the war, will
prevent strikes, and, with certain appropriate exceptions, will make
available for war production or for any other essential services every
able-bodied adult in this Nation.
These five measures together form a just and equitable whole. I would
not recommend a national service law unless the other laws were passed
to keep down the cost of living, to share equitably the burdens of
taxation, to hold the stabilization line, and to prevent undue profits.
The Federal Government already has the basic power to draft capital and
property of all kinds for war purposes on a basis of just compensation.
As you know, I have for three years hesitated to recommend a national
service act. Today, however, I am convinced of its necessity. Although I
believe that we and our allies can win the war without such a measure, I
am certain that nothing less than total mobilization of all our
resources of manpower and capital will guarantee an earlier victory, and
reduce the toll of suffering and sorrow and blood.
I have received a joint recommendation for this law from the heads of
the War Department, the Navy Department, and the Maritime Commission.
These are the men who bear responsibility for the procurement of the
necessary arms and equipment, and for the successful prosecution of the
war in the field. They say:
“When the very life of the Nation is in peril the responsibility for
service is common to all men and women. In such a time there can be no
discrimination between the men and women who are assigned by the
Government to its defense at the battlefront and the men and women
assigned to producing the vital materials essential to successful
military operations. A prompt enactment of a National Service Law would
be merely an expression of the universality of this responsibility.”
I believe the country will agree that those statements are the solemn
truth.
National service is the most democratic way to wage a war. Like
selective service for the armed forces, it rests on the obligation of
each citizen to serve his Nation to his utmost where he is best
qualified.
It does not mean reduction in wages. It does not mean loss of retirement
and seniority rights and benefits. It does not mean that any substantial
numbers of war workers will be disturbed in their present jobs. Let
these facts be wholly clear.
Experience in other democratic Nations at war--Britain, Canada,
Australia, and New Zealand--has shown that the very existence of
national service makes unnecessary the widespread use of compulsory
power. National service has proven to be a unifying moral force based on
an equal and comprehensive legal obligation of all people in a Nation at
war.
There are millions of American men and women who are not in this war at
all. It is not because they do not want to be in it. But they want to
know where they can best do their share. National service provides that
direction. It will be a means by which every man and woman can find that
inner satisfaction which comes from making the fullest possible
contribution to victory.
I know that all civilian war workers will be glad to be able to say many
years hence to their grandchildren: “Yes, I, too, was in service in the
great war. I was on duty in an airplane factory, and I helped make
hundreds of fighting planes. The Government told me that in doing that I
was performing my most useful work in the service of my country.”
It is argued that we have passed the stage in the war where national
service is necessary. But our soldiers and sailors know that this is not
true. We are going forward on a long, rough road--and, in all journeys,
the last miles are the hardest. And it is for that final effort--for the
total defeat of our enemies--that we must mobilize our total resources.
The national war program calls for the employment of more people in 1944
than in 1943.
It is my conviction that the American people will welcome this
win-the-war measure which is based on the eternally just principle of
“fair for one, fair for all.”
It will give our people at home the assurance that they are standing
four-square behind our soldiers and sailors. And it will give our
enemies demoralizing assurance that we mean business--that we,
130,000,000 Americans, are on the march to Rome, Berlin, and Tokyo.
I hope that the Congress will recognize that, although this is a
political year, national service is an issue which transcends politics.
Great power must be used for great purposes.
As to the machinery for this measure, the Congress itself should
determine its nature--but it should be wholly nonpartisan in its
make-up.
Our armed forces are valiantly fulfilling their responsibilities to our
country and our people. Now the Congress faces the responsibility for
taking those measures which are essential to national security in this
the most decisive phase of the Nation’s greatest war.
Several alleged reasons have prevented the enactment of legislation
which would preserve for our soldiers and sailors and marines the
fundamental prerogative of citizenship--the right to vote. No amount of
legalistic argument can becloud this issue in the eyes of these ten
million American citizens. Surely the signers of the Constitution did
not intend a document which, even in wartime, would be construed to take
away the franchise of any of those who are fighting to preserve the
Constitution itself.
Our soldiers and sailors and marines know that the overwhelming majority
of them will be deprived of the opportunity to vote, if the voting
machinery is left exclusively to the States under existing State
laws--and that there is no likelihood of these laws being changed in
time to enable them to vote at the next election. The Army and Navy have
reported that it will be impossible effectively to administer
forty-eight different soldier voting laws. It is the duty of the
Congress to remove this unjustifiable discrimination against the men and
women in our armed forces--and to do it as quickly as possible.
It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy
for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American
standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content,
no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some
fraction of our people--whether it be one-third or one-fifth or
one-tenth--is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill housed, and insecure.
This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under
the protection of certain inalienable political rights--among them the
right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom
from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life
and liberty.
As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however--as our industrial
economy expanded--these political rights proved inadequate to assure us
equality in the pursuit of happiness.
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual
freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.
“Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a
job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident.
We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new
basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless
of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or
farms or mines of the Nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and
recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return
which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an
atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by
monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and
enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age,
sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be
prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new
goals of human happiness and well-being.
America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how
fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our
citizens. For unless there is security here at home there cannot be
lasting peace in the world.
One of the great American industrialists of our day--a man who has
rendered yeoman service to his country in this crisis--recently
emphasized the grave dangers of “rightist reaction” in this Nation. All
clear-thinking businessmen share his concern. Indeed, if such reaction
should develop--if history were to repeat itself and we were to return
to the so-called “normalcy” of the 1920’s--then it is certain that even
though we shall have conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad,
we shall have yielded to the spirit of Fascism here at home.
I ask the Congress to explore the means for implementing this economic
bill of rights--for it is definitely the responsibility of the Congress
so to do. Many of these problems are already before committees of the
Congress in the form of proposed legislation. I shall from time to time
communicate with the Congress with respect to these and further
proposals. In the event that no adequate program of progress is evolved,
I am certain that the Nation will be conscious of the fact.
Our fighting men abroad--and their families at home--expect such a
program and have the right to insist upon it. It is to their demands
that this Government should pay heed rather than to the whining demands
of selfish pressure groups who seek to feather their nests while young
Americans are dying.
The foreign policy that we have been following--the policy that guided
us at Moscow, Cairo, and Teheran--is based on the common sense principle
which was best expressed by Benjamin Franklin on July 4, 1776: “We must
all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
I have often said that there are no two fronts for America in this war.
There is only one front. There is one line of unity which extends from
the hearts of the people at home to the men of our attacking forces in
our farthest outposts. When we speak of our total effort, we speak of
the factory and the field, and the mine as well as of the
battleground--we speak of the soldier and the civilian, the citizen and
his Government.
Each and every one of us has a solemn obligation under God to serve this
Nation in its most critical hour--to keep this Nation great--to make
this Nation greater in a better world.
***
State of the Union Address
Franklin D. Roosevelt
January 6, 1945
To the Congress:
In considering the State of the Union, the war and the peace that is to
follow are naturally uppermost in the minds of all of us.
This war must be waged--it is being waged--with the greatest and most
persistent intensity. Everything we are and have is at stake. Everything
we are and have will be given. American men, fighting far from home,
have already won victories which the world will never forget.
We have no question of the ultimate victory. We have no question of the
cost. Our losses will be heavy.
We and our allies will go on fighting together to ultimate total
victory.
We have seen a year marked, on the whole, by substantial progress toward
victory, even though the year ended with a setback for our arms, when
the Germans launched a ferocious counter-attack into Luxembourg and
Belgium with the obvious objective of cutting our line in the center.
Our men have fought with indescribable and unforgettable gallantry under
most difficult conditions, and our German enemies have sustained
considerable losses while failing to obtain their objectives.
The high tide of this German effort was reached two days after
Christmas. Since then we have reassumed the offensive, rescued the
isolated garrison at Bastogne, and forced a German withdrawal along the
whole line of the salient. The speed with which we recovered from this
savage attack was largely possible because we have one supreme commander
in complete control of all the Allied armies in France. General
Eisenhower has faced this period of trial with admirable calm and
resolution and with steadily increasing success. He has my complete
confidence.
Further desperate attempts may well be made to break our lines, to slow
our progress. We must never make the mistake of assuming that the
Germans are beaten until the last Nazi has surrendered.
And I would express another most serious warning against the poisonous
effects of enemy propaganda.
The wedge that the Germans attempted to drive in western Europe was less
dangerous in actual terms of winning the war than the wedges which they
are continually attempting to drive between ourselves and our allies.
Every little rumor which is intended to weaken our faith in our allies
is like an actual enemy agent in our midst--seeking to sabotage our war
effort. There are, here and there, evil and baseless rumors against the
Russians--rumors against the British--rumors against our own American
commanders in the field.
When you examine these rumors closely, you will observe that every one
of them bears the same trade-mark--“Made in Germany.”
We must resist this divisive propaganda--we must destroy it--with the
same strength and the same determination that our fighting men are
displaying as they resist and destroy the panzer divisions.
In Europe, we shall resume the attack and--despite temporary setbacks
here or there--we shall continue the attack relentlessly until Germany
is completely defeated.
It is appropriate at this time to review the basic strategy which has
guided us through three years of war, and which will lead, eventually,
to total victory.
The tremendous effort of the first years of this war was directed toward
the concentration of men and supplies in the various theaters of action
at the points where they could hurt our enemies most.
It was an effort--in the language of the military men--of deployment of
our forces. Many battles--essential battles--were fought; many
victories--vital victories--were won. But these battles and these
victories were fought and won to hold back the attacking enemy, and to
put us in positions from which we and our allies could deliver the
final, decisive blows.
In the beginning our most important military task was to prevent our
enemies--the strongest and most violently aggressive powers that ever
have threatened civilization--from winning decisive victories. But even
while we were conducting defensive, delaying actions, we were looking
forward to the time when we could wrest the initiative from our enemies
and place our superior resources of men and materials into direct
competition with them.
It was plain then that the defeat of either enemy would require the
massing of overwhelming forces--ground, sea, and air--in positions from
which we and our allies could strike directly against the enemy
homelands and destroy the Nazi and Japanese war machines.
In the case of Japan, we had to await the completion of extensive
preliminary operations--operations designed to establish secure supply
lines through the Japanese outer-zone defenses. This called for
overwhelming sea power and air power--supported by ground forces
strategically employed against isolated outpost garrisons.
Always--from the very day we were attacked--it was right militarily as
well as morally to reject the arguments of those shortsighted people who
would have had us throw Britain and Russia to the Nazi wolves and
concentrate against the Japanese. Such people urged that we fight a
purely defensive war against Japan while allowing the domination of all
the rest of the world by Nazism and Fascism.
In the European theater the necessary bases for the massing of ground
and air power against Germany were already available in Great Britain.
In the Mediterranean area we could begin ground operations against major
elements of the German Army as rapidly as we could put troops in the
field, first in North Africa and then in Italy.
Therefore, our decision was made to concentrate the bulk of our ground
and air forces against Germany until her utter defeat. That decision was
based on all these factors; and it was also based on the realization
that, of our two enemies, Germany would be more able to digest quickly
her conquests, the more able quickly to convert the manpower and
resources of her conquered territory into a war potential.
We had in Europe two active and indomitable allies--Britain and the
Soviet Union--and there were also the heroic resistance movements in the
occupied countries, constantly engaging and harassing the Germans. We
cannot forget how Britain held the line, alone, in 1940 and 1941; and at
the same time, despite ferocious bombardment from the air, built up a
tremendous armaments industry which enabled her to take the offensive at
El Alamein in 1942.
We cannot forget the heroic defense of Moscow and Leningrad and
Stalingrad, or the tremendous Russian offensives of 1943 and 1944 which
destroyed formidable German armies.
Nor can we forget how, for more than seven long years, the Chinese
people have been sustaining the barbarous attacks of the Japanese and
containing large enemy forces on the vast areas of the Asiatic mainland.
In the future we must never forget the lesson that we have learned--that
we must have friends who will work with us in peace as they have fought
at our side in war.
As a result of the combined effort of the Allied forces, great military
victories were achieved in 1944: The liberation of France, Belgium,
Greece, and parts of The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Yugoslavia, and
Czechoslovakia; the surrender of Rumania and Bulgaria; the invasion of
Germany itself and Hungary; the steady march through the Pacific islands
to the Philippines, Guam, and Saipan; and the beginnings of a mighty air
offensive against the Japanese islands.
Now, as this Seventy-ninth Congress meets, we have reached the most
critical phase of the war.
The greatest victory of the last year was, of course, the successful
breach on June 6, 1944, of the German “impregnable” seawall of Europe
and the victorious sweep of the Allied forces through France and Belgium
and Luxembourg--almost to the Rhine itself.
The cross-channel invasion of the Allied armies was the greatest
amphibious operation in the history of the world. It overshadowed all
other operations in this or any other war in its immensity. Its success
is a tribute to the fighting courage of the soldiers who stormed the
beaches--to the sailors and merchant seamen who put the soldiers ashore
and kept them supplied--and to the military and naval leaders who
achieved a real miracle of planning and execution. And it is also a
tribute to the ability of two Nations, Britain and America, to plan
together, and work together, and fight together in perfect cooperation
and perfect harmony.
This cross-channel invasion was followed in August by a second great
amphibious operation, landing troops in southern France. In this, the
same cooperation and the same harmony existed between the American,
French, and other Allied forces based in North Africa and Italy.
The success of the two invasions is a tribute also to the ability of
many men and women to maintain silence, when a few careless words would
have imperiled the lives of hundreds of thousands, and would have
jeopardized the whole vast undertakings.
These two great operations were made possible by success in the Battle
of the Atlantic.
Without this success over German submarines, we could not have built up
our invasion forces or air forces in Great Britain, nor could we have
kept a steady stream of supplies flowing to them after they had landed
in France.
The Nazis, however, may succeed in improving their submarines and their
crews. They have recently increased their U-boat activity. The Battle of
the Atlantic--like all campaigns in this war--demands eternal vigilance.
But the British, Canadian, and other Allied navies, together with our
own, are constantly on the alert.
The tremendous operations in western Europe have overshadowed in the
public mind the less spectacular but vitally important Italian front.
Its place in the strategic conduct of the war in Europe has been
obscured, and--by some people unfortunately--underrated.
It is important that any misconception on that score be corrected--now.
What the Allied forces in Italy are doing is a well-considered part in
our strategy in Europe, now aimed at only one objective--the total
defeat of the Germans. These valiant forces in Italy are continuing to
keep a substantial portion of the German Army under constant
pressure--including some 20 first-line German divisions and the
necessary supply and transport and replacement troops--all of which our
enemies need so badly elsewhere.
Over very difficult terrain and through adverse weather conditions, our
Fifth Army and the British Eighth Army--reinforced by units from other
United Nations, including a brave and well equipped unit of the
Brazilian Army--have, in the past year, pushed north through bloody
Cassino and the Anzio beachhead, and through Rome until now they occupy
heights overlooking the valley of the Po.
The greatest tribute which can be paid to the courage and fighting
ability of these splendid soldiers in Italy is to point out that
although their strength is about equal to that of the Germans they
oppose, the Allies have been continuously on the offensive.
That pressure, that offensive, by our troops in Italy will continue.
The American people--and every soldier now fighting in the
Apennines--should remember that the Italian front has not lost any of
the importance which it had in the days when it was the only Allied
front in Europe.
In the Pacific during the past year, we have conducted the
fastest-moving offensive in the history of modern warfare. We have
driven the enemy back more than 3,000 miles across the Central Pacific.
A year ago, our conquest of Tarawa was a little more than a month old.
A year ago, we were preparing for our invasion of Kwajalein, the second
of our great strides across the Central Pacific to the Philippines.
A year ago, General MacArthur was still fighting in New Guinea almost
1,500 miles from his present position in the Philippine Islands.
We now have firmly established bases in the Mariana Islands, from which
our Super fortresses bomb Tokyo itself--and will continue to blast Japan
in ever-increasing numbers.
Japanese forces in the Philippines have been cut in two. There is still
hard fighting ahead--costly fighting. But the liberation of the
Philippines will mean that Japan has been largely cut off from her
conquests in the East Indies.
The landing of our troops on Leyte was the largest amphibious operation
thus far conducted in the Pacific.
Moreover, these landings drew the Japanese Fleet into the first great
sea battle which Japan has risked in almost two years. Not since the
night engagements around Guadalcanal in November-December, 1942, had our
Navy been able to come to grips with major units of the Japanese Fleet.
We had brushed against their fleet in the first battle of the Philippine
Sea in June, 1944, but not until last October were we able really to
engage a major portion of the Japanese Navy in actual combat. The naval
engagement which raged for three days was the heaviest blow ever struck
against Japanese sea power.
As a result of that battle, much of what is left of the Japanese Fleet
has been driven behind the screen of islands that separates the Yellow
Sea, the China Sea, and the Sea of Japan from the Pacific.
Our Navy looks forward to any opportunity which the lords of the
Japanese Navy will give us to fight them again.
The people of this Nation have a right to be proud of the courage and
fighting ability of the men in the armed forces--on all fronts. They
also have a right to be proud of American leadership which has guided
their sons into battle.
The history of the generalship of this war has been a history of
teamwork and cooperation, of skill and daring. Let me give you one
example out of last year’s operations in the Pacific.
Last September Admiral Halsey led American naval task forces into
Philippine waters and north to the East China Sea, and struck heavy
blows at Japanese air and sea power.
At that time it was our plan to approach the Philippines by further
stages, taking islands which we may call A, C, and E. However, Admiral
Halsey reported that a direct attack on Leyte appeared feasible. When
General MacArthur received the reports from Admiral Halsey’s task
forces, he also concluded that it might be possible to attack the
Japanese in the Philippines directly--bypassing islands A, C, and E.
Admiral Nimitz thereupon offered to make available to General MacArthur
several divisions which had been scheduled to take the intermediate
objectives. These discussions, conducted at great distances, all took
place in one day.
General MacArthur immediately informed the Joint Chiefs of Staff here in
Washington that he was prepared to initiate plans for an attack on Leyte
in October. Approval of the change in plan was given on the same day.
Thus, within the space of 24 hours, a major change of plans was
accomplished which involved Army and Navy forces from two different
theaters of operations--a change which hastened the liberation of the
Philippines and the final day of victory--a change which saved lives
which would have been expended in the capture of islands which are now
neutralized far behind our lines.
Our over-all strategy has not neglected the important task of rendering
all possible aid to China. Despite almost insuperable difficulties, we
increased this aid during 1944. At present our aid to China must be
accomplished by air transport--there is no other way. By the end of
1944, the Air Transport Command was carrying into China a tonnage of
supplies three times as great as that delivered a year ago, and much
more, each month, than the Burma Road ever delivered at its peak.
Despite the loss of important bases in China, the tonnage delivered by
air transport has enabled General Chennault’s Fourteenth Air Force,
which includes many Chinese flyers, to wage an effective and aggressive
campaign against the Japanese. In 1944 aircraft of the Fourteenth Air
Force flew more than 35,000 sorties against the Japanese and sank
enormous tonnage of enemy shipping, greatly diminishing the usefulness
of the China Sea lanes.
British, Dominion, and Chinese forces together with our own have not
only held the line in Burma against determined Japanese attacks but have
gained bases of considerable importance to the supply line into China.
The Burma campaigns have involved incredible hardship, and have demanded
exceptional fortitude and determination. The officers and men who have
served with so much devotion in these far distant jungles and mountains
deserve high honor from their countrymen.
In all of the far-flung operations of our own armed forces--on land, and
sea and in the air--the final job, the toughest job, has been performed
by the average, easy-going, hard-fighting young American, who carries
the weight of battle on his own shoulders.
It is to him that we and all future generations of Americans must pay
grateful tribute.
But--it is of small satisfaction to him to know that monuments will be
raised to him in the future. He wants, he needs, and he is entitled to
insist upon, our full and active support--now.
Although unprecedented production figures have made possible our
victories, we shall have to increase our goals even more in certain
items.
Peak deliveries of supplies were made to the War Department in December,
1943. Due in part to cutbacks, we have not produced as much since then.
Deliveries of Army supplies were down by 15 percent by July, 1944,
before the upward trend was once more resumed.
Because of increased demands from overseas, the Army Service Forces in
the month of October, 1944, had to increase its estimate of required
production by 10 percent. But in November, one month later, the
requirements for 1945 had to be increased another 10 percent, sending
the production goal well above anything we have yet attained. Our armed
forces in combat have steadily increased their expenditure of medium and
heavy artillery ammunition. As we continue the decisive phases of this
war, the munitions that we expend will mount day by day.
In October, 1944, while some were saying the war in Europe was over, the
Army was shipping more men to Europe than in any previous month of the
war.
One of the most urgent immediate requirements of the armed forces is
more nurses. Last April the Army requirement for nurses was set at
50,000. Actual strength in nurses was then 40,000. Since that time the
Army has tried to raise the additional 10,000. Active recruiting has
been carried on, but the net gain in eight months has been only 2,000.
There are now 42,000 nurses in the Army.
Recent estimates have increased the total number needed to 60,000. That
means that 18,000 more nurses must be obtained for the Army alone and
the Navy now requires 2,000 additional nurses.
The present shortage of Army nurses is reflected in undue strain on the
existing force. More than a thousand nurses are now hospitalized, and
part of this is due to overwork. The shortage is also indicated by the
fact that 11 Army hospital units have been sent overseas without their
complement of nurses. At Army hospitals in the United States there is
only 1 nurse to 26 beds, instead of the recommended 1 to 15 beds.
It is tragic that the gallant women who have volunteered for service as
nurses should be so overworked. It is tragic that our wounded men should
ever want for the best possible nursing care.
The inability to get the needed nurses for the Army is not due to any
shortage of nurses; 280,000 registered nurses are now practicing in this
country. It has been estimated by the War Manpower Commission that
27,000 additional nurses could be made available to the armed forces
without interfering too seriously with the needs of the civilian
population for nurses.
Since volunteering has not produced the number of nurses required, I
urge that the Selective Service Act be amended to provide for the
induction of nurses into the armed forces. The need is too pressing to
await the outcome of further efforts at recruiting.
The care and treatment given to our wounded and sick soldiers have been
the best known to medical science. Those standards must be maintained at
all costs. We cannot tolerate a lowering of them by failure to provide
adequate nursing for the brave men who stand desperately in need of it.
In the continuing progress of this war we have constant need for new
types of weapons, for we cannot afford to fight the war of today or
tomorrow with the weapons of yesterday. For example, the American Army
now has developed a new tank with a gun more powerful than any yet
mounted on a fast-moving vehicle. The Army will need many thousands of
these new tanks in 1945.
Almost every month finds some new development in electronics which must
be put into production in order to maintain our technical
superiority--and in order to save lives. We have to work every day to
keep ahead of the enemy in radar. On D-Day, in France, with our superior
new equipment, we located and then put out of operation every warning
set which the Germans had along the French coast.
If we do not keep constantly ahead of our enemies in the development of
new weapons, we pay for our backwardness with the life’s blood of our
sons.
The only way to meet these increased needs for new weapons and more of
them is for every American engaged in war work to stay on his war
job--for additional American civilians, men and women, not engaged in
essential work, to go out and get a war job. Workers who are released
because their production is cut back should get another job where
production is being increased. This is no time to quit or change to less
essential jobs.
There is an old and true saying that the Lord hates a quitter. And this
Nation must pay for all those who leave their essential jobs--or all
those who lay down on their essential jobs for nonessential reasons.
And--again--that payment must be made with the life’s blood of our sons.
Many critical production programs with sharply rising needs are now
seriously hampered by manpower shortages. The most important Army needs
are artillery ammunition, cotton duck, bombs, tires, tanks, heavy
trucks, and even B-29’s. In each of these vital programs, present
production is behind requirements.