Posted on 02/23/2006 6:15:51 PM PST by wagglebee
Editor's note: The quotations below are taken from William J. Federer's new book "The Faith of FDR – From President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Public Papers 1933-1945," published by Amerisearch, Inc., P.O. Box 20163, St. Louis, MO 63123; www.Amerisearch.net, 1-888-USA-WORD. This 400-page book is also available as an ebook. In compiling these quotes, many statements were uncovered which seemed to have relevance to America's present War on Terror.
"We are united against those ... substituting terror for law"
-- FDR, March 12, 1942, Economic Club of New York
"We will accept only a world consecrated to ... freedom from terror."
-- FDR, May 27, 1941, radio address announcing an unlimited national emergency
"The present government of Germany ... is creating a world system based on force, on terror, and on murder ... domination by the sword: "You seek to throw our children ... into your form of terrorism ... You shall go no further."
-- FDR, Sept. 11, 1941, fireside chat
"Nazis spirit of terrorism ... depths of frightfulness which even they have never approached before ... acts of desperate men who know in their hearts that they cannot win. Frightfulness can never bring peace to Europe."
-- FDR, Oct. 25, 1941, denouncing the Nazi murder of French hostages
"No nation can appease the Nazis. No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it ... There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb."
-- FDR, Dec. 29, 1940, fireside chat
"The President: Certain things in regard to the defense of the United States that ... should be kept confidential; and that is why ... for national safety ... are spoken of only in secret or executive sessions.
Question: ... Isn't the final test what the government wants to give out?
The President: The test is what the commander in chief of the Army and Navy thinks would be harmful to the defense of this country to give out."
-- FDR, Feb. 21, 1941, press conference
"The brutal force of modern offensive war has been loosed in all its horror. New powers of destruction, incredibly swift and deadly, have been developed; and those who wield them are ruthless and daring ... Persons supposed to be peaceful visitors were actually a part of an enemy unit of occupation. Lightning attacks, capable of destroying airplane factories and munition works hundreds of miles behind the lines, are a part of the new technique of modern war."
-- FDR, May 16, 1940, Message to Congress on appropriations for national defense
"Today's threat to our national security is not a matter of military weapons alone. We know of new methods of attack. The Trojan Horse. The Fifth Column that betrays a nation unprepared for treachery. Spies, saboteurs and traitors are the actors in this new strategy. With all of these we must and will deal vigorously."
-- FDR, May 26, 1940, fireside chat
"Their secret emissaries are active in our own country ... They exploit for their own ends our natural abhorrence of war ... There are also American citizens, many of them in high places, who, unwittingly in most cases, are aiding and abetting the work of these agents. I do not charge these American citizens with being foreign agents. But I do charge them with doing exactly the kind of work that the dictators want done in the United States."
-- FDR, Dec. 29, 1940, fireside chat
"This great war effort must be carried through to its victorious conclusion ... It shall not be imperiled by the handful of noisy traitors ? betrayers of America, betrayers of Christianity itself ? would-be dictators who in their hearts and souls have yielded to Hitlerism and would have this Republic do likewise."
-- FDR, April 28, 1942, fireside chat
"We may acknowledge that our enemies have performed a brilliant feat of deception, perfectly timed and executed with great skill. 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 ... I do not think any American has any doubt of our ability to administer proper punishment to the perpetrators of these crimes."
-- FDR, Dec. 9, 1941, fireside chat
"We cannot wage this war in a defensive spirit ... We shall carry the attack against the enemy ... We must keep him far from our shores, for we intend to bring this battle to him on his own home grounds."
-- FDR, Oct. 27, 1944, address at Shibe Park, Philadelphia, Penn.
"In one of the blackest crimes of all history ... the Nazis ... wholesale systematic murder of the Jews of Europe goes on unabated every hour ... hundreds of thousands of Jews ... are now threatened with annihilation as Hitler's forces descend ... That these innocent people, who have already survived a decade of Hitler's fury, should perish ... would be a major tragedy."
-- FDR, March 24, 1944, on opening frontiers to war victims and justice for war crimes
"This nation is appalled by the systematic persecution of helpless minority groups by the Nazis ... As the hour of the final defeat of the Hitlerite forces draws closer, the fury of their insane desire to wipe out the Jewish race in Europe continues undiminished ... The Nazis are determined to complete their program of mass extermination."
-- FDR, June 12, 1944, message to Congress on refugees
"Our enemies are guided by ... unholy contempt for the human race. We are inspired by a faith that goes back through all the years to the first chapter of the book of Genesis: 'God created man in His own image.'"
--FDR, Jan. 6, 1942, State of the Union Address
"With confidence in our armed forces ? with the unbounding determination of our people ? we will gain the inevitable triumph ? so help us God."
-- FDR, Dec. 8, 1941, address to Congress requesting a Declaration of War with Japan
But Germany never attacked us. Roosevelt should have been impeached for his illegal war.
And I was being sarcastic.
And I am still being sarcastic.
So, if you're being sarcastic in saying that you were being sarcastic, then that means you weren't being sarcastic. But if you weren't being sarcastic, then that means... wait a minute, let me start over...
Is that like a double negative?
Really? Then what explains Harry Dexter White, Lauchlin Currie, Alger Hiss, Nathen Witt, Lawrence Duggin.....?
Unfortunately, FDR saw Stalin and the communists as our friends.
Grounds for impeachment talk today.
If Hitler was a perfect 10 on the evil scale, Stalin was 9.9999999999999999, but the reality is we would have had a lot tougher time doing what we did in Western Europe if the Russians hadn't done what they did against the Germans on the Eastern Front. In short, we had no alternative but to dance with that particular devil from late 1941 to the middle of 1945.
I don't think much of FDR's domestic policy. I respect the man as a wartime leader. I think he'd have been nauseated to see what his descendants in the Democratic Party are doing today in wartime.
Stalin was getting crushed by Hitler. Had we not aided Stalin, he would have been destroyed along with Hitler and in all likelihood the entire Cold War could have been avoided. Patton knew this and openly advocated it, this is probably one reason that Roosevelt never allowed Patton's career to advance as far as it should have.
FDR was a fool for so doing.
General Patton had every single right to defy FDR's agreement to hand Czechoslovakia over to the Soviets.
FDR sold them out, and I am certain that had we told Russia to piss off, the USA could have kept CZ and SK free.
If only we had taken from the Soviets; Poland, Ukraine, Baltics, the Check Republics, besides all of Germany in the summer of 1945 the world would be a much better place.
You are right, and I agree with you on every nation you mention.
But of all the ones that FDR should have freed, it should have been Czechoslovakia. In May 1945, General Patton's troops liberated Plzen from the Germans, and were geared toward taking Prague.
But FDR's posturing with Stalin gave the entire nation (along with Poland, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, etc) to the Communists.
Turning his back on Eastern Europe was FDR's biggest failure as President.
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