Everyone is aware of the day that lived in infamy on December 7, 1941, but what about December 29th, 1940?  On that day in one of his famed Fireside Chats, FDR declared that the U.S. would be a great arsenal of democracy against the global Axis threat.  It is noteworthy because of its realistic assessment of the threat posed by Germany and Japan, even as the United States avoided the war.  An interesting exercise here is to substitute any Axis reference with the terms such as Taliban, Afghanistan, and global jihadism.

FDR’s Arsenal of Democracy

This is not a fireside chat on war. It is a talk on national security; because the nub of the whole purpose of your President is to keep you now, and your children later, and your grandchildren much later, out of a last-ditch war for the preservation of American independence and all the things that American independence means to you and to me and to ours.

Tonight, in the presence of a world crisis, my mind goes back eight years to a night in the midst of a domestic crisis. It was a time when the wheels of American industry were grinding to a full stop, when the whole banking system of our country had ceased to function.

I well remember that while I sat in my study in the White House, preparing to talk with the people of the United States, I had before my eyes the picture of all those Americans with whom I was talking. I saw the workmen in the mills, the mines, the factories; the girl behind the counter; the small shopkeeper; the farmer doing his spring plowing; the widows and the old men wondering about their life’s savings.

I tried to convey to the great mass of American people what the banking crisis meant to them in their daily lives.

Tonight, I want to do the same thing, with the same people, in this new crisis which faces America. We met the issue of 1933 with courage and realism.

We face this new crisis—this new threat to the security of our nation—with the same courage and realism.

Never before since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock has our American civilization been in such danger as now.

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