In Japan a new Prime Minister, Hideki Tojo, will come to power, sending a message of aggression to the US. ![]() Still, he had to contend with the isolationists and did so with a clever tactic, the “Lend-Lease” law which provided weapons support to Allies. ![]() The Axis powers threatened more than the US, they threatened democracy itself. The 1940 election ended and Roosevelt proved victorious, but he had no chance to rest. We don't like it-we didn't want to get in it-but we are in it and we're going to fight it with everything we've got. It was a thoroughly dishonorable deed, but we must face the fact that modern warfare as conducted in the Nazi manner is a dirty business. We may acknowledge that our enemies have performed a brilliant feat of deception, perfectly timed and executed with great skill. We have learned that our ocean-girt hemisphere is not immune from severe attack-that we cannot measure our safety in terms of miles on any map any more. There is no such thing as impregnable defense against powerful aggressors who sneak up in the dark and strike without warning. There is no such thing as security for any nation-or any individual-in a world ruled by the principles of gangsterism. It is our obligation to our dead-it is our sacred obligation to their children and to our children-that we must never forget what we have learned. We must share together the bad news and the good news, the defeats and the victories-the changing fortunes of war. Every single man, woman and child is a partner in the most tremendous undertaking of our American history. It is actual collaboration so well calculated that all the continents of the world, and all the oceans, are now considered by the Axis strategists as one gigantic battlefield. Today, it has become far more than a parallel. ![]() The course that Japan has followed for the past ten years in Asia has paralleled the course of Hitler and Mussolini in Europe and in Africa. Archival Audio - FDR December 9, 1941: Fireside Chat 19: On the War with Japan
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