Arsenal of Democracy

FDR—President Franklin Delano Roosevelt giving an address.

The Arsenal of Democracy is one of the most famous of 30 fireside chats broadcast on the radio by United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was read on December 29, 1940.

The speech was a disguised call to arms of the U.S. population as well as the obvious topic, "a call to arm and support" both Europe and to a lesser extent Asia's powers in their respective struggles against the fascist regimes. At the time it was broadcast the Axis powers were busily waging successful war on less capable nations as the last days of the Great Depression era came to a close, and that scaring experience still preoccupied the United States despite Foreign News.

In terms of leadership, the speech is frequently seen as the "next step" in a several stage process in awakening a somnolent, inward-looking country that had been isolationist and self-absorbed culturally for the preceding two decades. While the United States Navy seemed strong and was widely percieved to guarantee the Western Hemisphere safe from Axis aggressions– the United States Army numbered barely two hundred and fifty thousand officers and enlisted men as the 1930s came to a close – the foreign wars off in Europe, Africa, and Manchuria (China) seemed of little importance to the average American still reeling from the horrors of the depression.

This was one of several speeches and measures given by Roosevelt to awaken and mobilize America to the very real dangers of being too inward focused.

Time line of key preceding international events

This timeline presents the key saliant news experienced by those who later heard the call to arms of this speech by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The shear speed of the events and the large number of them is necessary to properly appreciate the climate of the times, and the historiocity of the speech to a generally dis-engaged, pascifist, and isolationist leaning nation that was galvanized by it's occurrence into the performances in industrial output and military arms that unquestionably reshaped the world events thereafter.

1938 events

• February 4 — Adolf Hitler creates the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (High Command of the Armed Forces), giving him direct control of the German military.
• February 10 — Carol II of Romania takes dictatorial powers
• February 12 — Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg of Austria meets Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgaden and, under threat of invasion, is forced to yield to German demands for greater Nazi participation in the Austrian government.
• March 28 1938 — Sudeten German leader Konrad Henlein offered the Sudeten-German Party (SdP) as the agent for Hitler's campaign to annex 'more-German' parts of Czechoslovakia during a meeting with Hitler in Berlin, and was instructed to raise demands unacceptable to the Czechoslovak government lead by president Tomáš Masaryk.
• May 5 — the Vatican recognizes Franco's government in Spain
• May 25 — bombing of Alicante, Spain, in the Spanish Civil War, with 313 dead.
• June 12–18 — Roma and Sinti (better known as Gypsies) in Germany and Austria are rounded up, beaten up and jailed. Similar Homophobic arrests are also made in the Third Reich over a long period.
• June 23 — the Civil Aeronautics Act is signed into law, forming the Civil Aeronautics Authority in the United States. This lead to a rapid expansion of numbers of US pilots and better organized airports— both would be of great aid in the war to come.
• July — building began of the concentration camp Mauthausen.
• General key event in September to October — Hitler's plans to gather the German race bear fruit in Czechoslovakia creating a Europewide crisis over German demands for annexation of Sudeten, a provincial border region of newly formed Czechoslovakia.
• September 29
  • Republic of Hatay declared in Syria
  • Italian mathematician Ettore Maiorana disappears.
• September
  • construction begun on the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg.
  • Adolf Hitler is named as Time magazine's "Man of the Year" (as most influential during the course of the year, not as best man of the year).
• September 29 — Munich agreement of German, Italian, British, and French leaders agree to German demands regarding annexation of Sudetenland, Churchill scorns the action calling it shameful to avoid war with Germany.
• October 1 — German troops march into Sudetenland, invading Czechoslovakia.
• October 5 — Edvard Beneš, president of Czechoslovakia, resigns leaving the burgeoning Nazi empire with another coup.
• October 17 — Jan Syrovy's puppet government begins in Czechoslovakia establishing the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and for a time ending Czechoslovakia. See Main article: Occupation of Czechoslovakia.
• October 31 — event seen in retrospect as the end the Great Depression: In an effort to try restore investor confidence, the New York Stock Exchange unveils a fifteen-point program aimed to upgrade protection for the investing public.
• November 9 — in Germany, Kristallnacht– the "night of broken glass" – begins as Nazi troops and sympathizers loot and burn Jewish businesses (the all-night affair saw 7,500 Jewish businesses destroyed, 267 synagogues burned, 91 Jews killed, and at least 25,000 Jewish men arrested).
• November 18 — trade union members elect John L. Lewis as the first president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the CIO of the influential evolutionary AFL-CIO.
• November 30 — the Czech parliament elects Emil Hácha as the new president of Czechoslovakia.

1939 events

Ongoing events:

• Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)
• Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945)
• Great Arab Revolt in the British mandate of Palestine (started 1936)

• January 26 — Spanish Civil War: troops loyal to Francisco Franco and aided by Italy take Barcelona.

• February 2 — Hungary joins Anti-Comintern Pact against the communists.

• February 10 — troops of the Falange, an authoritarian political party, take Catalonia helping Franco to a position of control in most of Spain.

• February 27 — United Kingdom and France recognize Franco's government.

• March 2 — Pius XII becomes Pope

• March 14 — Slovak provincial assembly proclaims independence - Monsignor Jozef Tiso becomes the president of independent Slovak government, a Nazi puppet state.

• March 15 — German troops occupy the remaining part of Bohemia and Moravia; Czechoslovakia ceases to exist; beginning hostilities leading to World War II

• March 22 — Germany takes port of Memel from Lithuania.

• March 28 — Franco conquers Madrid, ending the Spanish Civil War, and marking another victory in the ascendancy of authoritarian regimes.

• March — end of the Great Arab Revolt in the British mandate of Palestine (started 1936)

• April 7 — Fascist Italy invades Albania on the Adriatic coast of the Balkans; King Zog of Albania flees.

• April 11 — Hungary leaves the League of Nations.

• May 7 — Spain leaves the League of Nations.

• May 22 — Germany and Italy sign the Pact of Steel.

• June 23 — Turkey annexes Hatay (Syria)

File:WWII Poland Invasion 1939-09-01.jpg

German troops pull down the checkpoints on the German-Polish border, signalling the beginning of World War II

• July 4 — he concentration camp at Neuengamme, a forced slave-labor enterprise devoted to producing bricks, becomes autonomous from the SS.

• July 6 — the last remaining Jewish enterprises in Germany are closed.

• August 2 — Albert Einstein writes to President Roosevelt about developing the atomic bomb using uranium. This led to the creation of the Manhattan Project.

• August 23 — the Partition of Poland planning occurs, wherein Hitler and Stalin divide eastern Europe between themselves in a summit meeting. Finland, the Baltic states and eastern Poland to the USSR. Western Poland to Germany (See the: Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact)

• August 25 — an IRA bomb explodes in the centre of Coventry, England, killing five people.

• August 30 — Poland begins mobilization after finally heeding intellegence of the massing of troops on the German border.

• September 1 — World War II begins, with the Polish September Campaign; Nazi Germany attacks Poland, unveiling for the first time the combined arms techniques of "lightning war" — the Blitzkreig. This was the beginning the war which would spread to include all quadrants of the planet.

• September 2 — following the invasion of Poland, Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) is annexed to Germany.

• September 3 — France, the United Kingdom, and Australia declare war on Germany.

• September 3 — Roosevelt's fireside chat "On the European War".

• September 5 — the United States declares its neutrality in the war.

• September 6 — South Africa, one of the Commonwealth realms, declares war on Germany.

• September 10 — Canada, one of the Commonwealth realms, declares war on Germany.

• September 16 — cease-fire ending the undeclared Border War between the Soviet Union (and its Mongolian allies) and Japan.

• September 17 — the Soviet Union invades Poland, and occupies eastern Polish territories.

• September 27 — Warsaw surrenders to Germany; Modlin surrenders a day later; the last Polish large operational unit surrenders near Kock eight days later.

• October 8 — Germany annexes Western Poland.

• October 11 — U.S. President Roosevelt is presented with a letter signed by Albert Einstein urging the United States to develop the atomic bomb quickly.

• November 4 — Roosevelt orders the United States Customs Service to implement the Neutrality Act of 1939, allowing cash-and-carry purchases of weapons by belligerents.

• November 6 — Sonderaktion Krakau, the codename for a German action against scientists from the University of Kraków and other Kraków universities at the beginning of World War II.

• November 8 — in Munich, Hitler narrowly escapes an assassination attempt while celebrating the sixteenth anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch.

• November 30 — the Winter War begins: Soviet forces attack Finland and reach the Mannerheim Line, starting the war.

• December 14 — the League of Nations expels the USSR because of its attack on Finland.

1940 events

The year began with Hitler's Nazi Regime and Stalin's USSR seemingly allies and both nations in conflicts of expansion against weaker neighboring powers. Britain and it's Empire stood along side France against the Nazi aggression, and it was widely believed that once the allies were prepared, they'd knock Germany's armed forces into disarray and force Hitler to renounce his aquisitions. This prelude to unprecedented international shocks is now known as the Phony War. The term has cognates in many other languages, notably the German Sitzkrieg ("sitting war," a pun on Blitzkrieg), the French drôle de guerre (funny war or strange war) and the Polish dziwna wojna ("strange war"). In Britain the period was even referred to as the Bore War (a pun on Boer War).

1940 ongoing events

• Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)
• World War II (1939 - 1945).

• January 4 - World War II: Axis powers - Hermann Goering assumes control of all war industries in Germany.

• January 7 - World War II: Winter War - General Semyon Timoshenko takes command of all Russian forces.

• January 8 - World War II: Winter War - Russian 44th Assault Division destroyed by Finnish forces in Battle of Suomussalmi.

• January 25 - Canada - Parliament dissolved and election called for March 26.

• February 1 - World War II: Winter War - Russian forces launch major assault on Finnish troops on the Karelian Isthmus.

• February 16 - World War II - British destroyer Cossack pursues German freighter Altmark into Jossingfjord in southwestern Norway, resulting in freedom for 290 British sailors and seamen held as prisoners.

• March 3 - In Sweden, a time bomb destroys the office of Norrskenflamman newspaper of Swedish communists - 5 dead

• March 5- Members of Soviet politburo: Stalin, Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Mikhail Kalinin, Kliment Voroshilov and Lavrenty Beria, signed an order, prepared by Beria, for the execution of 25,700 Polish intelligentsia, including 14,700 Polish POWs. The action is known as the Katyn massacre.

• March 12 - Soviet Union and Finland sign a peace treaty in Moscow ending the Winter War. Finns, and world opinion, shocked by the harsh terms.

• March 18 - World War II: Axis powers - Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini meet at Brenner Pass in the Alps and agree to form an alliance against France and the United Kingdom.

• March 21 Édouard Daladier resigns as prime minister of France. He is replaced by Paul Reynaud.

• May 26 - fireside chat on National Defense
• April 4 - Prime minister of Greece, Aleksandros Korizis, shoots himself - initial official explanation is "heart attack"

• April 7 - Booker T. Washington becomes the first African American to be depicted on a United States postage stamp.

• April 9 - World War II: Germany invades Denmark and Norway in operation Weserübung. The British campaign in Norway is simultaneously commenced.

• April 12 - The Faroe Islands were occupied by British troops following the invasion of Denmark by Nazi Germany. This action was taken to avert a possible German occupation of the islands, which would have had very grave consequences for the course of the Battle of the Atlantic.

• April 15 - Opening day at Jamaica Racetrack features the use of pari-mutuel betting equipment, a departure from bookmaking heretofore used exclusively throughout New York state. Other NY tracks follow suit later in 1940.

• May 10 - World War II begins in earnest with the Battle of France — German forces invaded France and Low Countries proving the superior operational docterine of Blitzkrieg in its first real test against an enemy that was both numerically superior and better equipped. The rapid advance of the German forces leaves the allied forces reeling in disarray and within days, the government falls in the UK.

• May 10 - World War II: Iceland invaded by the United Kingdom to protect it from Nazi occupation. Also, with the resignation of Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

• May 13 - Winston Churchill, in his first address as Prime Minister, tells the House of Commons, "I have nothing to offer you but blood, toil, tears, and sweat."

• May 13 - World War II: German armies open 60-mile wide breach in Maginot Line at Sedan.

• May 14 - Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands and her government flee to London; Rotterdam subjected to savage terror bombing by the Luftwaffe - 980 killed, 20,000 buildings destroyed.

• May 14 - World War II: Recruitment begins in Britain for a home defense force (militia) - the Local Defence Volunteers, later known as the Home Guard, a non-traditional approach from the time of Charles I of England.

• May 15 - World War II: Dutch army surrenders.

• May 16 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, addressing a joint session of Congress, asks for an extraordinary credit of approximately $900 million to finance construction of at least 50,000 airplanes per year.

• May 18 - Marshal Henri Petain named vice-premier of France.

• May 19 - General Maxime Weygand replaces Maurice Gamelin as commander-in-chief of all French forces.

• May 20 - World War II: German forces, under General Erwin Rommel, reach the English Channel. Holocaust: concentration and death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau opens in Poland.
• May 22 - World War II - British Parliament passes Emergency Powers Act giving the government full control over all persons and property.
• May 26 - World War II: Dunkirk evacuation of British Expeditionary Force starts.
• May 28 - World War II: Belgium army surrenders.
• May 28 - Winston Churchill warns the House of Commons to, "...prepare itself for hard and heavy tidings."

• June 4 - World War II: Dunkirk evacuation ends - British forces complete evacuating 300,000 troops from Dunkirk in France.

In World War II, heavy fighting took place around Dunkirk during the German invasion in 1940, but a lull in the action unexpectedly allowed a large number of French and British soldiers to escape to England. 338,226 men were evacuated amidst constant bombing (the miracle of Dunkirk, as Winston Churchill called it). The British evacuation of Dunkirk through the English Canal was codenamed Operation Dynamo. During the war, Dunkirk was largely destroyed by bombing.

Location of Dunkirk's Operation Dynamo far to the north where the forces were surrounded, as opposed to the later and more relaxed Operation Ariel area of operation June 17-24th.

• June 9 - World War II: The British Commandos are created.
• June 10 - World War II: Italy declares war on France and the United Kingdom.
• June 10 - World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt denounces Italy's actions with "Stab in the Back" speech from the graduation ceremonies of the University of Virginia.
• June 10 - World War II: Canada declares war on Italy.
• June 10 - World War II: Norway surrenders to German forces.
• June 10 - World War II: French government flees to Tours.
• June 12 - World War II: 13,000 British and French troops surrender to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel at St. Valery-en-Caux.
• June 13 - World War II: Paris is declared an open city.
• June 14 - World War II: French government flees to Bordeaux.
• June 14 - World War II: Paris falls under German occupation.

• June 14 - World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Naval Expansion Act into law which aims to increase the United States Navy's tonnage by 11 %.

• June 14 - Holocaust: A group of 728 Polish political prisoners from Tarnów become the first residents of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

• June 15 - World War II: Verdun falls to German forces.

• June 17 - Henri Petain becomes Prime Minister of France and immediately asks Germany for peace terms.

• June 17 - The three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania fall under the occupation of the Soviet Union.

The Brittany Region relative to all of France evacutated in Operation Ariel.

• June 16—June 24 - World War II: Operation Ariel evacuates the balance of Allied troops from tottering France, following Germany's takeover of Paris and most of the nation.

• June 17 - World War II: Luftwaffe Junkers 88 bomber sinks British ship RMS Lancastria, that was evacuating troops from near Saint-Nazaire, France. Death toll is over 2500. Wartime censorship prevents the story going public.

• June 18 - Winston Churchill speaks to the House of Commons: "...the Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin."

• June 18 - General Charles DeGaulle broadcasts from London, calling on all French people to continue the fight against Nazi Germany: "France has lost a battle. But France has not lost the war."

• June 22 - World War II: France and Germany sign armistice at Compiegne in the same wagon-lit railroad car used by Marshal Ferdinand Foch to accept the surrender of Germany in 1918.

• June 23 - World War II: German leader Adolf Hitler surveys newly defeated Paris in now occupied France[1].

• June 24 - World War II: France signs armistice terms with Italy.

• June 28 - General Charles DeGaulle is officially recognized by Britain as "Leader of all Free Frenchmen, wherever they may be".

• June 30 - World War II: German forces land in Guernsey marking the start of the 5-year Occupation of the Channel Islands, a British possession.

• July 10 - World War II: Vichy France, generally considered a puppet regime of the Nazis', officially begins operations with a constitutional law where only 80 members of the parliament voted against.

• July 15 - U.S. politics: Democratic Party begins its national convention in Chicago and nominates Franklin D. Roosevelt for an unprecedented third term as president.

• July 19 - World War II: Adolf Hitler makes peace appeal to Britain in an address to the Reichstag.

• July 22 in a reply on broadcast radio, Lord Halifax, British foreign minister, flatly rejects peace terms, citing the abysmal record of the Nazi regime at keeping international agreements.

• August 3, 1940 Soviet Union annexes Baltic country Lithuania.
• August 5, 1940 Soviet Union annexes Baltic country Latvia.
• August 6, 1940 Soviet Union annexes Baltic country Estonia.

• August 20 - Winston Churchill pays tribute in the House of Commons to the Royal Air Force for work in the Battle of Britain. Speech Key words: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

• September - U.S. Army 45th Infantry Division (previously a National Guard Division in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Oklahoma), activated and ordered into federal service for one year to engage in a training program in Ft. Sill and Louisiana prior to serving in World War II.

• September 2 - World War II: Historic Lend-Lease agreement between United States and Great Britain announced, virtually giving fifty U.S. destroyers to the British Navy much needed for anti-Uboat escort work during the earliest desperate days of the years-long Battle of the Atlantic. In return, the United States gains 99-year leases on various British bases in and around the Atlantic, including in the West Indies and Bermuda. These would be useful when the US Navy overtly joined the Battle of the Atlantic, prior to actual war with Germany, and thereafter.

• September 7 - Treaty of Craiova: Romania loses Southern Dobrudja to Bulgaria.

• September 7 - World War II: Beginning of The Blitz a cultural landmark in the UK when Nazi Germany begins to rain bombs on London in an attempt to bomb the UK into submission. This will be the first of 57 consecutive nights of strategic bombing as Hitler was preoccupied with his warplans against the USSR, and desired to make peace with Britain, as he had hoped and planned since the Invasion of Poland.

• September 16 - World War II: Selective Service Act signed into law by Franklin D. Roosevelt, creating the first peacetime draft in U.S. history.

• September 27 - World War II: Germany, Italy and Japan sign secret Tripartite Pact forming the Axis powers driving world events during the balance of the war.

• October 9 - AA World War II: Battle of Britain - During a nighttime air raid by the German Luftwaffe, St. Paul's Cathedral is pierced by a bomb; Musician John Lennon is born during an air-raid in Liverpool, England.

• October 16 - World War II: Draft registration of approximately 16 million men begins in the United States.

• October 28 - World War II: Italy invades Greece.

• October 29 - World War II: Selective Service System lottery held in Washington, D.C..
• October 31 - World War II: Battle of Britain ends - The United Kingdom prevents Germany from invading Britain in this epic air battle, and Germany turns military efforts to the east to the hated USSR abandoning plans for a cross-channel invasion of the United Kingdom.

• November 5 - U.S. presidential election, 1940: Democrat incumbent Franklin D. Roosevelt defeats Republican challenger Wendell Willkie and becomes the United States' first and only three-term president, which he later bettered with a fourth elective term in the presidential elections of 1944.

• November 11 - World War II: Battle of Taranto - The Royal Navy launches the first aircraft carrier strike in history, on the Italian fleet at Taranto. This serves as the planning feasibility study for the more famous later attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy on Pearl Harbor.

• November 11 - World War II: The German Hilfskreuzer (cruiser) Atlantis captures top secret British mail, and sends it to Japan

• November 14 - World War II: In England, the city of Coventry is destroyed by 500 German Luftwaffe bombers (150,000 fire bombs, 503 tons of high explosives, 130 parachute mines leveled 60,000 of the city's 75,000 buildings; 568 people were killed).

• November 16 - World War II: In response to Germany leveling Coventry two days before, the Royal Air Force begins to bomb Hamburg (by war's end, 50,000 Hamburg residents died from Allied attacks).

• November 18 - World War II: German leader Adolf Hitler and Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano meet to discuss Benito Mussolini's disastrous invasion of Greece.

• November 20 - World War II: Hungary, Romania and Slovakia join the Axis Powers.

• November 27 - In Romania, coup leader General Ion Antonescu's Iron Guard arrests and executes over 60 of exiled king Carol II of Romania's aides. Among the dead is former minister and acclaimed historian Nicolae Iorga.

• November 27 - World War II: Royal Navy and Regia Marina fight the Battle of Cape Spartivento.

• December 12 & December 15 - World War II: The "Sheffield Blitz". The City of Sheffield is badly damaged by German air-raids.

• December 29 - Franklin D. Roosevelt, in a fireside chat to the nation, declares that the United States must become "...the great arsenal of Democracy."

The Speech, 29 December 1940

Please click here to view the speech

Before America enters the war

This is the resulting time line of key events up to the entry of the United States into what then became known as World War II in December 1941.