Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
I have taken occasion to speak to you tonight because
we have reached one of the climacterics of the war.
In the first of these intense turning points, a year ago,
(00:28):
France fell prostate under the German cammer and we had
to face the storm alone. The second was when the
Royal Air Force beat the hun Raiders out of the
Data idea and thus warded off the Nazi invasion of
(00:52):
our islands while we were still alarmed, and he will prepare.
The third turning point was when the President and Congress
of the United States passed the Leash and Lend Enactment,
(01:15):
devoting nearly two thousand millions sterling of the wealth of
the New World to help us defend our liberties and
their own rags were three climax The four is now
upon us. At four o'clock this morning, Hitler attacked and
(01:42):
invaded Russia. All his usual formalities of persiday were observed
with scrupulous technique. A non aggression treaty had been solemnly
signed and was in force between the two countries. No
(02:07):
complaint had been made by Germany of its non fulfillment.
Under its cloak of false confidence, the German armies drew
up in immense strength along a line which stretched from
the White Sea to the Black Seat, and their air
(02:31):
fleets and armored divisions slowly and methodically took up their station. Then, suddenly,
without declaration of war, without even and alti Matan, the
German bombs rained down from the sky upon the Russian cities.
(02:55):
The German coups violated the Russian frontiers, and an hour
later the German ambassador, who killed the night before, was
lavishing his assurances of friendship, almost of alliance upon the Russians,
called upon the Russian Foreign minister to tell him that
(03:19):
a state of war existed between Germany and Russia. Thus
was repeated on a far larger scale, the same kind
of outrage against every form of signed compact and international
(03:43):
faith which we have witnessed in Norway, in Denmark, in Holland,
in Belgium, and which Hitler's accomplice and jack O Mussolini
so faithfully imitated in the case of Greece. All this
(04:05):
was no surprise to me. In fact, I gave clear
and precise warnings to Stalin of what was coming. I
gave him warnings, as I have given warnings to others before.
I can only hope that these warnings did not fall unheeded.
(04:30):
All we know at present is that the Russian people
are defending their native soil, and that their leaders have
called upon them to resist to the utmost. Hitler is
a monster, a wickedness, insatiable in his lust for blood
(04:52):
and plunder. Not content with having all Europe under his
heels or else terrorized into various forms of object submission,
he must now carry his work of butchery and desolation
among the vast multitudes of Russia and of Asia. The
(05:16):
terrible military machines which we and the rest of the
civilized world so foolishly, so suprimely, so insensately allowed the
Nazi gangsters to build up year by year from almost nothing.
(05:37):
This machine cannot stand idle less, di rush or fall
the pieces. It must be in continual motion, grinding up
human lives and trampling down the homes and the rights
of hundreds of millions of men. Moreover, it must be said,
(06:01):
not only with flesh, but with oil. So now this
bloodthirsty gutter snipe must launch his leponine armies upon new
fields that slaughter, pillage, and devastation. Whereas are the Russian peasants, workmen,
(06:23):
and soldiers. He must steal from them their daily bread.
He must devour their harvests. We must rob them of
the oil which drives their flowers, and thus produce a
famine without example in human history. And even the carnage
(06:44):
and room which is victory, should he gain it, we
have not gained it yet will bring upon the Russian people.
Will itself be only a stepping stone to the attempt
to plunge the four or five hundred millions who live
(07:05):
in China and the three hundred and fifty millions who
live in India into that bottomless pit, a human degradation
over which the diabolic emblem of the fat speaker flaunts itself.
(07:25):
It is not too much to say here this summer
evening that the lives and happiness of a thousand million
additional human beings are now menaced with brutal Nazi violence.
That isn't us to make us hold our breath. But
(07:50):
presently I shall say something else that lies behind, and
something that touches very nearly the life of written and
of the United States. The Nazi regime is indistinguishable from
the worst features of communism. It is devoid of all
(08:13):
theme and principle except appetite and racial domination, if it
selves all forms of human wickedness. In the efficiency of
its purity and ferocious aggression, no one has been the
(08:34):
more consistent opponent of communism than I have for the
last twenty five years. I will unsay no word that
I've spoken about it. But all this fades away before
the spectacle which is now unfolding the past, with its crimes,
(08:55):
its follies, and its tragedies, lashes away. I see the
Russian soldiers standing on the threshold of their native land,
guarding the petals which their fathers have killed from time immemorial.
I see them guarding their homes, where mothers and wives pray. Ah, Yes,
(09:21):
for there are times when all pray for the safety
of their love, runs for the return of the breadwinner,
of the champion of their protector. I see the ten
thousand villages of Russia, where the means of existence who
run so hardly from the soil, but where there are
(09:44):
still pri module human joys, their maidens lot, and children play.
I see, advancing upon all this ihidious onslaught, the Nazi
warm is scene with its thanking heel clicking dandified pression officers,
(10:05):
the crafty expert agents fresh from the carrying and tying
down of a dozen countries. I see also the dull, ll, docile,
brutish messages of the hand soldiery flooding on like a
(10:25):
swarm of crawling locusts. I see the German bombers and
fighters in the sky, still smartings from many of British quipping,
not delighted to find what they believe isn't easier, and
a shaper pray. And behind all this glare, behind all
(10:48):
this storm, I see that small group of villainous men
who plan, organize and launch this cataract of horrors upon mankind.
And then my mind goes back across the yearns to
the days when the Russian armies were our allies against
(11:10):
the same deadly soul, when they fought with so much
valor and constantly, and helped to gain a victory from
all share in which alas they were through no fault
of ours, Natalie Gota, I've lived through all them, and
you will pardon me if I express my feelings and
(11:34):
the stir of old memory. But now I have to
declare the decision of his Majesty's government, and I feel
sure it is a decision in which the Great Dominions
will in due course concur that we must speak out
now at once, without a day's delay. I have to
(11:59):
make the declaration. But can you doubt what our policy
will be. We'll have but one aim and one single,
irrevocable purpose. We are resolved to destroy Hitler and every
vestige of the Nazi regime. From this nothing will turn
(12:23):
us nothing. We will never parley, we will never negotiate
with Hitler or any of his gang. We shall fight
him by land, we shall fight him by sea, we
shall fight him in the air, until, with God's help,
we're with the earth of his shadow and liberated its
(12:45):
people from his joke. Any man or state who fights
against Nazidom will have our aid. Any man or state
who marches with Hitler is our foe. This supply is
not only to organized states, but to all representatives of
(13:05):
that by race of quislings who make themselves that pools
and agents of the Nazi regime against their fellow countrymen
and against the lands of their birth. These quislings, like
the Nazi leaders themselves, if not disposed of by their
(13:26):
fellow countrymen, we could save. Trouble will be delivered by
us on the morrow of victory to the justice of
the Allied tribunals. That is our policy, and that is
our declaration. He follows therefore, that we shall give whatever
help we can to Russia and to the Russian people.
(13:51):
We shall appeal to all our friends and allies in
every part of the world to take the same course
and pursuit as we shall, faithfully and steadily to the end.
We have offered to the government of Soviet Russia any
technical or economic assistance which is in our power and
(14:12):
which is likely to be of service to them. We
shall bomb Germany by day as well as by night,
an ever increasing measure, casting upon them month by month,
a heavier discharge of bombs, and making the German people
take and gult each month a sharper dose of the
(14:35):
miseries they have showered upon mankind. It is noteworthy, but
only yesterday the Royal they are force fighting in land
over France cut down, with very small loss to themselves,
twenty eighth of the hun fighting machines in the air
(14:55):
above the French soil. They have invaded child and profess
to whole. But this is only a beginning. From now henceforward,
the main expansion of our air force proceeds with gathering speed.
In another six months, the weight of the help we
(15:18):
are receiving from the United States in war materials of
all kinds, especially in heavy bombers, will begin to tell.
This is no class war. This is a war in
which the whole British Empire and Commonwealth of Nations is engaged,
(15:38):
without distinction of race, creed, or party. It is not
for me to speak of the action of the United States,
but this I will say. If Hitler imagines that his
attack on Soviet Russia will cause the slightest division of
aim or single effort in the great democracies who are
(16:03):
insolved the police doing He's won't be a mistaken on
the contrary, which will be fortified and encouraged in our
efforts to rescue mankind from his tyranny. We shall be
strengthened and not weakened in our determination and in our resources.
(16:25):
This is no time to moralize upon the follies of
countries and governments which have allowed themselves to be struck
down one by one, when by United actions they could
so easily have saved themselves and saved the world from
this catastrophe. But when I spoke a few minutes ago
(16:50):
of sils, blood, lass and the hateful appetites which have
impelled or lured him on egress adventure, I've said there
wants one deeper votive behind with outrage. He wishes to
destroy the Russian power, because he hopes that he be
(17:12):
succeeds in this, he will be able to bring back
the main state of his army and air force from
the east and hurr it upon this island, which he
knows he must conquer or suffer the penalty of his crimes.
His invasion of Russia is no more than a prelude
(17:36):
to an attempted invasion of the British Isles. He hopes
no doubt that all this may be accomplished before the
winter comes, and that he can overwhelm Great Britain before
the fleets and airpower of the United States will intervene.
He hopes that he may once again repeat, upon a
(17:57):
greater scale than ever before, that process of destroying its
enemies one by one by which he has so long
thrived and prosper, and that then the scene will be
clear for the final act without which all his conquests
would be in vain, namely the subjugation of the Western
(18:19):
hemisphere to his rule and to his system. Russian danger
is therefore our danger, and the danger of the United States.
Just at the cause of any Russian fighting for his
heart and home is the cause of free men and
three people in every quarter of the road. Let us
(18:41):
learn the lessons already taught by such quel experience. Let
us redouble our exertions and strife with united strength, while
life and power remained
I have taken occasion to speak to you tonight because
we have reached one of the climacterics of the war.
In the first of these intense turning points, a year ago,
(00:28):
France fell prostate under the German cammer and we had
to face the storm alone. The second was when the
Royal Air Force beat the hun Raiders out of the
Data idea and thus warded off the Nazi invasion of
(00:52):
our islands while we were still alarmed, and he will prepare.
The third turning point was when the President and Congress
of the United States passed the Leash and Lend Enactment,
(01:15):
devoting nearly two thousand millions sterling of the wealth of
the New World to help us defend our liberties and
their own rags were three climax The four is now
upon us. At four o'clock this morning, Hitler attacked and
(01:42):
invaded Russia. All his usual formalities of persiday were observed
with scrupulous technique. A non aggression treaty had been solemnly
signed and was in force between the two countries. No
(02:07):
complaint had been made by Germany of its non fulfillment.
Under its cloak of false confidence, the German armies drew
up in immense strength along a line which stretched from
the White Sea to the Black Seat, and their air
(02:31):
fleets and armored divisions slowly and methodically took up their station. Then, suddenly,
without declaration of war, without even and alti Matan, the
German bombs rained down from the sky upon the Russian cities.
(02:55):
The German coups violated the Russian frontiers, and an hour
later the German ambassador, who killed the night before, was
lavishing his assurances of friendship, almost of alliance upon the Russians,
called upon the Russian Foreign minister to tell him that
(03:19):
a state of war existed between Germany and Russia. Thus
was repeated on a far larger scale, the same kind
of outrage against every form of signed compact and international
(03:43):
faith which we have witnessed in Norway, in Denmark, in Holland,
in Belgium, and which Hitler's accomplice and jack O Mussolini
so faithfully imitated in the case of Greece. All this
(04:05):
was no surprise to me. In fact, I gave clear
and precise warnings to Stalin of what was coming. I
gave him warnings, as I have given warnings to others before.
I can only hope that these warnings did not fall unheeded.
(04:30):
All we know at present is that the Russian people
are defending their native soil, and that their leaders have
called upon them to resist to the utmost. Hitler is
a monster, a wickedness, insatiable in his lust for blood
(04:52):
and plunder. Not content with having all Europe under his
heels or else terrorized into various forms of object submission,
he must now carry his work of butchery and desolation
among the vast multitudes of Russia and of Asia. The
(05:16):
terrible military machines which we and the rest of the
civilized world so foolishly, so suprimely, so insensately allowed the
Nazi gangsters to build up year by year from almost nothing.
(05:37):
This machine cannot stand idle less, di rush or fall
the pieces. It must be in continual motion, grinding up
human lives and trampling down the homes and the rights
of hundreds of millions of men. Moreover, it must be said,
(06:01):
not only with flesh, but with oil. So now this
bloodthirsty gutter snipe must launch his leponine armies upon new
fields that slaughter, pillage, and devastation. Whereas are the Russian peasants, workmen,
(06:23):
and soldiers. He must steal from them their daily bread.
He must devour their harvests. We must rob them of
the oil which drives their flowers, and thus produce a
famine without example in human history. And even the carnage
(06:44):
and room which is victory, should he gain it, we
have not gained it yet will bring upon the Russian people.
Will itself be only a stepping stone to the attempt
to plunge the four or five hundred millions who live
(07:05):
in China and the three hundred and fifty millions who
live in India into that bottomless pit, a human degradation
over which the diabolic emblem of the fat speaker flaunts itself.
(07:25):
It is not too much to say here this summer
evening that the lives and happiness of a thousand million
additional human beings are now menaced with brutal Nazi violence.
That isn't us to make us hold our breath. But
(07:50):
presently I shall say something else that lies behind, and
something that touches very nearly the life of written and
of the United States. The Nazi regime is indistinguishable from
the worst features of communism. It is devoid of all
(08:13):
theme and principle except appetite and racial domination, if it
selves all forms of human wickedness. In the efficiency of
its purity and ferocious aggression, no one has been the
(08:34):
more consistent opponent of communism than I have for the
last twenty five years. I will unsay no word that
I've spoken about it. But all this fades away before
the spectacle which is now unfolding the past, with its crimes,
(08:55):
its follies, and its tragedies, lashes away. I see the
Russian soldiers standing on the threshold of their native land,
guarding the petals which their fathers have killed from time immemorial.
I see them guarding their homes, where mothers and wives pray. Ah, Yes,
(09:21):
for there are times when all pray for the safety
of their love, runs for the return of the breadwinner,
of the champion of their protector. I see the ten
thousand villages of Russia, where the means of existence who
run so hardly from the soil, but where there are
(09:44):
still pri module human joys, their maidens lot, and children play.
I see, advancing upon all this ihidious onslaught, the Nazi
warm is scene with its thanking heel clicking dandified pression officers,
(10:05):
the crafty expert agents fresh from the carrying and tying
down of a dozen countries. I see also the dull, ll, docile,
brutish messages of the hand soldiery flooding on like a
(10:25):
swarm of crawling locusts. I see the German bombers and
fighters in the sky, still smartings from many of British quipping,
not delighted to find what they believe isn't easier, and
a shaper pray. And behind all this glare, behind all
(10:48):
this storm, I see that small group of villainous men
who plan, organize and launch this cataract of horrors upon mankind.
And then my mind goes back across the yearns to
the days when the Russian armies were our allies against
(11:10):
the same deadly soul, when they fought with so much
valor and constantly, and helped to gain a victory from
all share in which alas they were through no fault
of ours, Natalie Gota, I've lived through all them, and
you will pardon me if I express my feelings and
(11:34):
the stir of old memory. But now I have to
declare the decision of his Majesty's government, and I feel
sure it is a decision in which the Great Dominions
will in due course concur that we must speak out
now at once, without a day's delay. I have to
(11:59):
make the declaration. But can you doubt what our policy
will be. We'll have but one aim and one single,
irrevocable purpose. We are resolved to destroy Hitler and every
vestige of the Nazi regime. From this nothing will turn
(12:23):
us nothing. We will never parley, we will never negotiate
with Hitler or any of his gang. We shall fight
him by land, we shall fight him by sea, we
shall fight him in the air, until, with God's help,
we're with the earth of his shadow and liberated its
(12:45):
people from his joke. Any man or state who fights
against Nazidom will have our aid. Any man or state
who marches with Hitler is our foe. This supply is
not only to organized states, but to all representatives of
(13:05):
that by race of quislings who make themselves that pools
and agents of the Nazi regime against their fellow countrymen
and against the lands of their birth. These quislings, like
the Nazi leaders themselves, if not disposed of by their
(13:26):
fellow countrymen, we could save. Trouble will be delivered by
us on the morrow of victory to the justice of
the Allied tribunals. That is our policy, and that is
our declaration. He follows therefore, that we shall give whatever
help we can to Russia and to the Russian people.
(13:51):
We shall appeal to all our friends and allies in
every part of the world to take the same course
and pursuit as we shall, faithfully and steadily to the end.
We have offered to the government of Soviet Russia any
technical or economic assistance which is in our power and
(14:12):
which is likely to be of service to them. We
shall bomb Germany by day as well as by night,
an ever increasing measure, casting upon them month by month,
a heavier discharge of bombs, and making the German people
take and gult each month a sharper dose of the
(14:35):
miseries they have showered upon mankind. It is noteworthy, but
only yesterday the Royal they are force fighting in land
over France cut down, with very small loss to themselves,
twenty eighth of the hun fighting machines in the air
(14:55):
above the French soil. They have invaded child and profess
to whole. But this is only a beginning. From now henceforward,
the main expansion of our air force proceeds with gathering speed.
In another six months, the weight of the help we
(15:18):
are receiving from the United States in war materials of
all kinds, especially in heavy bombers, will begin to tell.
This is no class war. This is a war in
which the whole British Empire and Commonwealth of Nations is engaged,
(15:38):
without distinction of race, creed, or party. It is not
for me to speak of the action of the United States,
but this I will say. If Hitler imagines that his
attack on Soviet Russia will cause the slightest division of
aim or single effort in the great democracies who are
(16:03):
insolved the police doing He's won't be a mistaken on
the contrary, which will be fortified and encouraged in our
efforts to rescue mankind from his tyranny. We shall be
strengthened and not weakened in our determination and in our resources.
(16:25):
This is no time to moralize upon the follies of
countries and governments which have allowed themselves to be struck
down one by one, when by United actions they could
so easily have saved themselves and saved the world from
this catastrophe. But when I spoke a few minutes ago
(16:50):
of sils, blood, lass and the hateful appetites which have
impelled or lured him on egress adventure, I've said there
wants one deeper votive behind with outrage. He wishes to
destroy the Russian power, because he hopes that he be
(17:12):
succeeds in this, he will be able to bring back
the main state of his army and air force from
the east and hurr it upon this island, which he
knows he must conquer or suffer the penalty of his crimes.
His invasion of Russia is no more than a prelude
(17:36):
to an attempted invasion of the British Isles. He hopes
no doubt that all this may be accomplished before the
winter comes, and that he can overwhelm Great Britain before
the fleets and airpower of the United States will intervene.
He hopes that he may once again repeat, upon a
(17:57):
greater scale than ever before, that process of destroying its
enemies one by one by which he has so long
thrived and prosper, and that then the scene will be
clear for the final act without which all his conquests
would be in vain, namely the subjugation of the Western
(18:19):
hemisphere to his rule and to his system. Russian danger
is therefore our danger, and the danger of the United States.
Just at the cause of any Russian fighting for his
heart and home is the cause of free men and
three people in every quarter of the road. Let us
(18:41):
learn the lessons already taught by such quel experience. Let
us redouble our exertions and strife with united strength, while
life and power remained
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