FDR Calls for More Effort Toward Conquering Hitlerism

[Globalization41]

Hyde Park, Special to The New York Times,
By Frank Kluckhorn, Monday, September 1,
1941: "We shall do everything in our power
to crush Hitler and his Nazi forces," President
Roosevelt pledged today on the second
anniversary of the start of the war in Europe.
... He called on all the American people to
exert more energy and do their "full part"
toward conquering "the forces of insane
violence" let loose by Hitler upon the world,
warning that Hitlerism endangers the church
and education as well as the rights of both
labor and business and all other human rights.
... In a fighting speech, broadcast all over the
world from his study at the Franklin D.
Roosevelt Library, the President went further
than ever before to make clear that the United
States was determined to insure Hitler's
downfall, even though "the task of defeating
Hitler may be long and arduous." He left little
doubt that this country was virtually at war,
referring to Hitler as the "enemy" and pledging
"single-mindedness and sacrifice" by the
United States to speed armaments production.
... The Chief executive minced no words in
making an attack on "the few appeasers and
Nazi sympathizers" who say that Hitler cannot
be defeated. He declared that these persons
were seeking to make him a "modern Benedict
Arnold" to the cause of human freedom by
demanding that he seek peace with Hitler and
"pray for crumbs from his victorious table."
The fact was, the President asserted, that Hitler
must be defeated to defend "our fundamental
rights" threatened by the Nazi dictator's "violent
attempt to rule the world." ... Emphasizing the
importance of national unity and cooperation, the
President declared that we must step up our
armament production "and more greatly safeguard
it on its journey to the battlefields." ... "We cannot
hesitate, we cannot equivocate in the great task
before us," the President said. "The defense
of America's freedom must take precedence
over private aim and every private interest."
... This declaration was coupled with a sharp
warning against over-confidence about the
present situation. In this connection, Mr.
Roosevelt remarked that it was "a very
dangerous assumption" to believe that Hitler
had been "blocked and halted." [The Nazis
appeared to be stalled on the Eastern Front.]
Instead [Roosevelt] insisted, when an enemy
seemed to be making slower progress, it was
time "to strike him with redoubled force" and
encompass his defeat. [At the start of the Nazi-
Soviet War, Hitler's main Panzer strike forces
rapidly smashed deep into the central front
toward Moscow. The blitzkrieg formula of tank
concentrations supported by tactical air power,
as in Europe, continued to overwhelmed the
battlefield. But in August, Hitler, for sound
economic reasons, diverted his main punch
from the central front, against many of his top
generals' wishes, south to the Ukrainian sector.
The Eastern Front stabilized, somewhat, during
the redeployment. By Sept. the Nazis were
poised in the Ukraine for their greatest military
victories of the war, after which, in Oct.,
Germany's generals convinced a skeptical
Hitler to recontinue the drive on Moscow. It
seemed to some that either the Moscow or
Ukrainian objectives alone, without the lost
time due to strategy changes, might have
won the war. But, at all times the Soviet
government was in no danger of collapse while
Stalin was prepared to retreat into Russia's
vast interior and ruthlessly continue the war.]
Although Mr. Roosevelt indicated that
production and safe shipment of arms still
constituted the chief contribution of this
country toward the defeat of Hitlerism, he
recalled that American freedom was established
on the battlefield and subsequently had been
defended at home, abroad, and on the seven
seas. ... "There has never been a moment in
our history when Americans were not ready to
stand up as free men and fight for their rights,"
he declared. ... He emphasized that only
"together" with the British, Dutch, Norwegian,
and Russian Navies was the United States Navy
able today to guarantee "the freedom of the
seas" and remarked that America's enemies
"know that our Army is increasing daily in its all-
around strength." [Meanwhile, Albert Einstein, a
German of Jewish heritage who escaped from
Europe in the 1930's, had pointed out to F.D.R.
the significance of math formulas, discovered
by Einstein himself, showing that the latent
energy contained in a few grains of sand, if
instantly released, could vaporize a city block.]
... It was upon Hitler as the leader of world
forces of aggression that the President centered
his fire, mentioning the Nazi Dictator again
and again by name. He did not talk of Japan,
with whose representatives he is now having
conversations looking toward settlement of the
Far-Eastern situation and an end to the two-
ocean threat to this nation. Whether or not this
omission indicated that the Executive held a
hope that Japan might forsake aggression and
eventually leave the Axis, he did counsel that
if the British and Allied fleets were destroyed
"the American Navy cannot now nor in the
future maintain the freedom of the seas against
the rest of the world." ... This was a Labor
Day speech, delivered as part of an hour's
program arranged by the Office of Emergency
Management, and the President, whose address
followed talks by Ernest Bevin, British
Minister of Labor, and American labor leaders,
stressed that in Europe Hitler had abolished
trade unions as ruthlessly as he had made war
on religion. [Isolationists often pointed out
that Stalin was guilty of the same crimes.] ...
[Roosevelt] stated that the rights of organized
labor could not survive without the rights of
"free enterprise" but he made no reference
to the strikes which have hampered defense
production, asserting rather that "no group of
Americans has realized more clearly what Nazi
domination of the world means to their
standard of living, their freedom, their lives."
... His message to labor, however, was
incidental to the President's far-reaching
statement on the attitude of the United States
Government to the war and his appeal to
Americans of all classes to realize their "inter-
dependence" and work together. ... ... The
International Situation, The New York Times,
Sept. 1: British and Russian forces continued
the occupation of Iran and effected a junction.

[Stay tuned for late breaking war bulletins.
... Globalization41.]