FDR vs Hitler

American History Hit

History Hit

America, History

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The leaders of the two most powerful nations fighting in the Second World War, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler, never met. They never even spoke.

In this episode, we explore the war of words between them, the involvement of each of their allies and when it became certain that war would break out between their two nations.

Don is joined by Charlie Laderman, Senior Lecturer in International History at King's College London. Charlie is the author of 'Sharing the Burden: Hitler's American Gamble: Pearl Harbor and the German March to Global War'.

Edited by Sophie Gee. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	We're in the White House, December 1940.
0:06.0	The diplomatic reception room hums with activity.
0:09.0	Men are positioned at tables crammed with bulky radio equipment,
0:13.0	whirring and buzzing, dials a glow.
0:17.0	At the center of all the activity is President Franklin Roosevelt at ease behind a desk, anticipating his cue.
0:25.6	A moment later, the room quiets as FDR speaks.
0:29.6	His words are captured by the microphones arrayed before him, then amplified and carried forth by cables,
0:35.6	sent out to a world far-flung awaiting his message.
0:39.7	In Iowa and Hawaii, Oregon, in the Pacific, elsewhere across the globe, his words will be
0:46.9	translated and broadcast to an occupied Paris, to fascist Italy, and communist Russia.
0:53.3	But above all, the signal reaches Nazi Germany and the Fuhr's own radio set,
0:59.3	where Hitler himself would hear FDR's grim declaration.
1:03.5	Never before since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock,
1:08.1	has our American civilization been in such danger as now?
1:14.6	He went on.
1:16.6	For on September 27th, 1940, this year, by an agreement signed in Berlin, three powerful nations, two in Europe and one in Asia, joined
1:31.7	themselves together in the threat that if the United States of America interfered with or blocked
1:40.8	the expansion program of these three nations, a program aimed at world control,
1:49.0	they would unite in ultimate action against the United States.
1:56.0	The Nazi masters of Germany have made it clear that they intend not only to dominate all life
2:04.6	and thought in their own country, but also to enslave the whole of Europe, and then to use
2:13.5	the resources of Europe to dominate the rest of the world.
	...

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