Primary Documents: American “Neutrality”
THE FOUR FREEDOMS – FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT (JANUARY 6, 1941)
During his State of the Union Address in 1941 FDR attempted to lay the philosophical groundwork for what he
believed was the impending entry of the United States into WWII. By that point in the war, Germany had conquered
France and was in the process of preparing for an invasion of the USSR. Though the Germans and Soviets were
technically still operating under the ten year Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact signed in 1939, it was becoming
increasingly clear that the USSR was likely Hitler’s next target. Similarly, Japan was in the middle of a full blown
invasion of China, having already taken over Manchuria, Korea, and Taiwan as well as parts of Southeast Asia. The
excerpt of his speech below is the critical moment during which FDR explained what the goals of the U.S. should be
in an increasingly interconnected and conflict world. This portion followed a lengthy exploration of historical
American foreign policy and political ideology.
Let us say to the democracies: "We Americans are vitally concerned in your defense of freedom. We are
putting forth our energies, our resources, and our organizing powers to give you the strength to regain and maintain a
free world. We shall send you in ever-increasing numbers, ships, planes, tanks, and guns. That is our purpose and our
pledge."
In fulfillment of this purpose we will not be intimidated by the threats of dictators that they will regard as a
breach of international law or as an act of war our aid to the democracies which dare to resist their aggression. Such
aid -- Such aid is not an act of war, even if a dictator should unilaterally proclaim it so to be.
And when the dictators -- if the dictators -- are ready to make war upon us, they will not wait for an act of war
on our part.
They did not wait for Norway or Belgium or the Netherlands to commit an act of war. Their only interest is in
a new one-way international law, which lacks mutuality in its observance and therefore becomes an instrument of
oppression. The happiness of future generations of Americans may well depend on how effective and how immediate
we can make our aid felt. No one can tell the exact character of the emergency situations that we may be called upon
to meet. The nation's hands must not be tied when the nation's life is in danger.
Yes, and we must prepare, all of us prepare, to make the sacrifices that the emergency -- almost as serious as
war itself -- demands. Whatever stands in the way of speed and efficiency in defense, in defense preparations of any
kind, must give way to the national need…
Certainly this is no time for any of us to stop thinking about the social and economic problems which are the
root cause of the social revolution which is today a supreme factor in the world. For there is nothing mysterious about
the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy…
In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential
human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which
will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of
armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of
physical aggression against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time
and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called “new order” of tyranny which the dictators
seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
To that new order we oppose the greater conception -- the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes
of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.
Since the beginning of our American history we have been engaged in change, in a perpetual, peaceful
revolution, a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly, adjusting itself to changing conditions without the
concentration camp or the quicklime [calcium oxide, which when exposed to water quickly reaches a temperature of
roughly 150° F, and is thus often used to destroy bodies] in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the
cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.
This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women,
and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our
support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights and keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose.
To that high concept there can be no end save victory.
QUOTES ABOUT THE LEND-LEASE ACT – U.S. CONGRESS AND FDR (MARCH 11, 1941)
Lend-Lease was the program under which the US supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China, Free
France, and other Allied nations with materiel between 1941 and 1945. It was signed into law a year and a half after
the outbreak of war in Europe in September 1939, but nine months before the U.S. entered the war in December 1941.
Formally titled An Act to Further Promote the Defense of the United States, the Act effectively ended the United
States' pretense of neutrality by supplying only one side in the conflict. The aid, primarily in the form of trucks,
railroad equipment, and supplies, though also some front line combat vehicles, began to flow to Great Britain
immediately, and to the other nations soon thereafter. The following are quotes regarding the policy, which, at the
time it was passed, was very controversial and not supported universally even by FDR’s own Democratic Party
.
“The Lend-Lease policy, translated into legislative form, stunned a Congress and a nation wholly sympathetic
to Great Britain. The Kaiser’s blank check to Austria-Hungary in the First World War was a piker [something done
cheaply] compared to the Roosevelt blank check of World War II. It warranted my worst fears for the future of
America, and it definitely stamps the president as war-minded....
Never before have the American people been asked or compelled to give... so completely of their tax dollars
to any foreign nation. Never before has the Congress of the United States been asked by any President to violate
international law. Never before has this nation resorted to duplicity in the conduct of its foreign affairs. Never before
has the United States given to one man the power to strip this nation of its defenses....
Approval of this legislation means war, open and complete warfare. I, therefore, ask the American people
before they supinely accept it — Was the last World War worthwhile?
If it were, then we should lend and lease war materials. If it were, then we should lend and lease American
boys. President Roosevelt has said we would be repaid by England. We will be.... Our boys will be returned —
returned in caskets, maybe; returned with bodies maimed; returned with minds warped and twisted by sights of
horrors and the scream and shriek of high-powered shells.”
- Burton K. Wheeler (D) – Senator from Montana
“It is possible—I will put it that way—for the United States to take over British orders, and, because they are
essentially the same kind of munitions that we use ourselves, turn them into American orders. We have enough money
to do it. And thereupon, as to such portion of them as the military events of the future determine to be right and proper
for us to allow to go to the other side, either lease or sell the materials, subject to mortgage, to the people on the other
side. That would be on the general theory that it may still prove true that the best defense of Great Britain is the best
defense of the United States, and therefore that these materials would be more useful to the defense of the United
States if they were used in Great Britain, than if they were kept in storage here.
Now, what I am trying to do is to eliminate the dollar sign. That is something brand new in the thoughts of
practically everybody in this room, I think—get rid of the silly, foolish old dollar sign.
Well, let me give you an illustration: Suppose my neighbor's home catches fire, and I have a length of garden
hose four or five hundred feet away. If he can take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, I may help him
to put out his fire. Now, what do I do? I don't say to him before that operation, "Neighbor, my garden hose cost me
$15; you have to pay me $15 for it." What is the transaction that goes on? I don't want $15—I want my garden hose
back after the fire is over. All right. If it goes through the fire all right, intact, without any damage to it, he gives it
back to me and thanks me very much for the use of it. But suppose it gets smashed up—holes in it—during the fire;
we don't have to have too much formality about it, but I say to him, "I was glad to lend you that hose; I see I can't use
it any more, it's all smashed up." He says, "How many feet of it were there?" I tell him, "There were 150 feet of it."
He says, "All right, I will replace it." Now, if I get a nice garden hose back, I am in pretty good shape.
In other words, if you lend certain munitions and get the munitions back at the end of the war, if they are
intact haven't been hurt—you are all right; if they have been damaged or have deteriorated or have been lost
completely, it seems to me you come out pretty well if you have them replaced by the fellow to whom you have lent
them.”
- President Franklin D. Roosevelt (D)
"Lending war equipment is a good deal like lending chewing gum. You don't want it back."
- Robert Alphonso Taft (R) – Senator from Ohio
"Without American production the United Nations could never have won the war."
- Joseph Stalin – Premier of the Soviet Union
THE ATLANTIC CHARTER – FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT AND WINSTON CHURCHILL (AUGUST 14, 1941)
The United States would not enter the war until after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, but
by the spring of 1941 Congress had approved the Lend-Lease program and the U.S. was clearly favoring the Allied
Powers. In July of 1941, Roosevelt and new British PM Winston Churchill met for the first time in Argentia Bay off
Newfoundland, Canada, to issue a joint declaration on the purposes of the war against fascism. Just as Wilson's
Fourteen Points delineated the first war, so the Atlantic Charter provided the criteria for the second. Originally the
Soviet Union, which had been attacked by Germany the month before, was to sign the charter as well. But, the notion
of "one world," in which nations abandoned their traditional beliefs and individual national sovereignty in favor of
military alliances and spheres of influence, did not appeal to Joseph Stalin. To some degree, Churchill was not
pleased with the idea either. Only Roosevelt, who had been a member of the Wilson administration, truly believed in
the possibility of a world governed by democratic processes, with an international organization serving as an arbiter
of disputes and protector of the peace.
The President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, representing His
Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, being met together, deem it right to make known certain common
principles in the national policies of their respective countries on which they base their hopes for a better future for the
world.
First, their countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other;
Second, they desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the
peoples concerned;
Third, they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and
they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them;
Fourth, they will endeavor, with due respect for their existing obligations, to further the enjoyment by all
States, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the
world which are needed for their economic prosperity;
Fifth, they desire to bring about the fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field with the
object of securing, for all, improved labor standards, economic advancement and social security;
Sixth, after the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace which will afford to
all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the
men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want;
Seventh, such a peace should enable all men to traverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance;
Eighth, they believe that all of the nations of the world, for realistic as well as spiritual reasons must come to
the abandonment of the use of force. Since no future peace can be maintained if land, sea or air armaments continue to
be employed by nations which threaten, or may threaten, aggression outside of their frontiers, they believe, pending
the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security, that the disarmament of such nations is
essential. They will likewise aid and encourage all other practicable measures which will lighten for peace-loving
peoples the crushing burden of armaments.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Winston S. Churchill
Primary Documents: American “Neutrality”
Directions: Read the primary documents and answer the questions.
The Four Freedoms – Franklin D. Roosevelt (January 6, 1941)
1. What does FDR promise to send to the democracies of the world? Whose threats does he say will not deter him
from sending this aid?
2. Some members of Congress were concerned that FDR was philosophically moving the U.S. closer to war with the
Axis Powers (which he was). What did he say in order to counter their claims that no action should be taken until a
declaration of war was made against the U.S.?
3. What does FDR say that all Americans must be prepared to do?
4. Summarize the Four Freedoms that FDR promised to the world. Do not simply copy them word for word – really
think about what he is saying and rewrite them in your own words.
5. FDR says that the dictatorships of the world want a new world order based on their domination of others. What
sort of new world order does FDR call for?
6. As Americans listened to the Four Freedoms Speech in January of 1941, possible U.S. involvement in WWII
loomed on the horizon. Most Americans recognized the correlation between the freedoms he discussed and our
founding ideals as a nation, but there was great debate as to whether it was our responsibility to protect/spread those
ideas worldwide, particularly if it would result in U.S. involvement in the deadliest war in history. Do you think that
it was the responsibility of the U.S. to preserve/provide the freedoms FDR described to other nations around the world
during WWII?
7. Many people point to this speech as the beginning of a foreign policy paradigm shift toward what is often called
“human security”. Proponents of “human security” argue that rather than focusing on national security (the protection
of individual notions), the UN and its member states should be focused on protecting the “inalienable natural human
rights” of all individuals regardless of the country they live in. Do you agree that the Four Freedom’s Speech lays the
foundation for this sort of thought? Or, do you believe that it is more about justifying possible future American
intervention in WWII in specific regard to the actions of Germany and Japan alone, and should not be taken in a
global sense? Explain.
Quotes About the Lend-Lease Act – The U.S. Congress and FDR (March 11, 1941)
8. Under what condition did Wheeler say that the U.S. should go forward with Lend-Lease?
9. How does Wheeler say that the U.S. will be repaid by Britain?
10. Explain FDR’s fire hose analogy. Do you agree with FDR’s analogy? Or is Robert Alphonso Taft’s statement
more accurate? Explain.
The Atlantic Charter – Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill (August 14, 1941)
11. Summarize the eight principles that Churchill and FDR state in the Atlantic Charter.
Reflective Questions
12. FDR maintained, through all of these policy actions and statements, that the U.S. was only doing these things in
order to ensure her neutrality. Do you agree that these will help maintain U.S. neutrality? Or did they, as some of his
contemporaries argued, bring the U.S. closer to war?