July 4, 1941: Roosevelt’s Address to the Nation | The National WWII Museum

Top photo: Sewing the edge of an American flag at the Annin Flag Company, Verona, New Jersey, March 1943. Photo: Marjory Collins, Library of Congress. LC-USW3-018529-D

President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered an Independence Day address on July 4, 1941, five months before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

During the broadcast, Roosevelt warned: “The United States will never be able to survive as a happy and fertile oasis of freedom surrounded by a cruel desert of dictatorship.” And he added: “As we repeat the great pledge to our country and our flag, it must be our deep conviction that we also pledge our labor, our will, and, if necessary, our lives.”

From his perspective in the White House, by mid-1941, democracy was under attack both abroad and at home. In Europe and Asia, the onslaught of Nazi Germany and its Axis powers continued. In April and May, Crete, Greece, and Yugoslavia fell. In June, Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union. In East Asia, Japan’s war with China continued, and Japanese troops occupied northern French Indochina.

While the Lend-Lease Act came into force in March 1941 to support democratic states in their fight against aggression, German submarines in the North Atlantic threatened to destroy the achievements of the American arsenal of democracy.

Many Americans believed that the country would eventually enter the war against Nazi Germany. At the same time, Roosevelt faced growing criticism from the America First Committee (AFC), an antiwar organization with as many as 850,000 members. Rather than engaging in war, as the United States had done in 1917, this time the committee’s leaflets demanded, “Let us stay out of Europe’s war and make AMERICA safe for democracy.”

The AFC’s criticism grew increasingly fierce throughout the spring and summer of 1941. Pilot Charles Lindbergh joined the committee in April 1941 and soon became its most prominent voice. His increasingly harsh criticism brought new members to the anti-war group and its mass rallies.

On June 20, 1941, Lindbergh addressed 30,000 people in Los Angeles at a “Mass Meeting for Peace and Preparedness.” Lindbergh criticized the Roosevelt administration’s actions, which he believed led America into war. Lindbergh rejected the president’s assessment of the danger to America, saying the United States was in such a strong position as to be virtually impregnable. But a few months later, a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor virtually ended public debate about America’s isolationism, and the AFC was disbanded within days.

Video credit: Special thanks to the FDR Library for the audio recording of the July 4, 1941 address and the images of the President’s notes.

Below you will find a transcript of the broadcast:

On July 4, 1776, the representatives of each state met in Congress and declared our independence, stressing that respect for the opinion of mankind required that they explain the reasons for their actions. In this new crisis, we have a similar duty.

In 1776 we waged war for the great principle that government should derive its power from the consent of the governed – in other words, for representation chosen by free elections. During the next century and a half this cause of human liberty spread throughout the world.

But now, in our generation – in the last few years – a new resistance in the form of several new practices of tyranny has made such progress that the fundamental principles of 1776 are being destroyed abroad and are definitely in danger here.

It is indeed a fallacy, devoid of any logic, for Americans to assert that the rule of force can conquer human freedom in every other part of the world and enable it to survive in the United States alone. But it was this childish fantasy itself – this misguided belief – that led nation after nation to pursue its peaceful pursuits, trusting in the thought and even the promise that if force came in the way, they and their lives and their governments would live.

It is easy – I might even say naive – for us Americans to wave the flag, affirm our faith in the cause of freedom – and leave it at that.

But all of us who lie awake at night – all of us who are always learning – know very well that we cannot save freedom with pitchforks and muskets alone these days, when a combination of dictators has seized control of the rest of the world.

We also know that we cannot save freedom in our own midst, in our own country, if everyone around us – our neighboring peoples – have lost their freedom.

That is why we are earnest, forceful and united in the fight for the defense of the hemisphere and the freedom of the seas. We need not only loyalty and unity, we need speed and efficiency and hard work and an end to slander and an end to sabotage that goes far beyond blowing up munitions factories.

I solemnly say to the American people that the United States will never survive as a happy and fertile oasis of freedom surrounded by a cruel desert of dictatorship.

And when we repeat the great pledge to our country and our flag, it must be our deep conviction that we are also pledging our work, our will and, if necessary, our lives.