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FDR's 1940 "Arsenal of Democracy" Fireside Chat...
FDR's 1940 "Arsenal of Democracy" Fireside Chat...
Item # 725501
December 30, 1940
THE BETHLEHEM GLOBE-TIMES, Penn., December 30, 1940
* President Franklin D. Roosevelt speech
* "The Arsenal of Democracy" by radio
The top of the front page has a five column headline: "ROME, BERLIN CONSULT ON ANSWER TO ROOSEVELT'S DEFEAT AXIS TALK; NAZIS SAY HITLER WILL STRIKE BACK'" with subheads. The complete text of his speech continues on page 3, including: "We must be the great arsenal of democracy. For us this is an emergency as serious as war itself.
Complete with 18 pages, a little irregular along the spine, otherwise nice.
background: President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s "Arsenal of Democracy" address, delivered on December 29, 1940, served as a masterclass in political persuasion, strategically pivoting a hesitant American public toward supporting the Allied cause. By framing the conflict not as a distant European quarrel but as an existential threat to the "manifest destiny" and security of the United States, Roosevelt argued that if Great Britain fell, the Axis powers would eventually control the Atlantic and turn their sights toward the Western Hemisphere. He famously rejected the notion of appeasement—noting that "no man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it"—and called for a total mobilization of American industrial might. This speech effectively transformed the United States into a massive manufacturing engine, prioritizing the production of planes, tanks, and ships over consumer goods, and laid the ideological groundwork for the Lend-Lease Act, ensuring that America would support the fight for freedom through the power of its factories long before it committed its troops to the battlefield.
Category: The 20th Century
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