The Speech That Set Off the Debate About America’s Role in the World

By Josh Zeitz 

POLITICO - December 29, 2015

Seventy-five years ago this evening, on December 29, 1940, Franklin Delano Roosevelt—recently reelected to an unprecedented third term in office—took to the airwaves at 9:30 p.m. Eastern time to address an increasingly restive nation on the sobering topic of war mobilization. Across the Atlantic, Britain was engaged in a death struggle with Hitler’s Germany, which had already laid claim to vast regions of Europe, from France and the lowlands in the west to Poland in the east. In Asia, Japan had swallowed up large parts of China and cast a watchful eye toward the Central and South Pacific.  For over 36 minutes and 53 seconds, Roosevelt spoke to his captive audience about the imperative of American engagement in the conflict. Staying true to his campaign pledge of several weeks earlier, that America would not declare war on the Axis powers unless it were attacked, the president still made a forceful case for American military support to Britain. “If Great Britain goes down,” he warned, “the Axis powers will control the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and the high seas. … It is no exaggeration to say that all of us, in all the Americas, would be living at the point of a gun.”

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