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| Four Freedoms SpeechThe "Four Freedoms" Speech Franklin D. Roosevelt was reelected to an unprecedented third term as U.S. president in November 1940. In late December of that year he delivered his "Arsenal of Democracy" fireside chat to the American people. He asked American industries to speed up their production of war materials, for U.S. military stockpiles and for shipment to Great Britain, whose armed forces were fighting against German aggression. Roosevelt addressed Congress and the nation in his State of the Union address on January 6, 1941, a week after his "Arsenal" speech. In the address he repeated his call for accelerated mobilization, saying "I am not satisfied with the progress thus far." Toward the end of the speech Roosevelt explained that mobilization was necessary to rid the world of dictatorships and military rule, the types of power wielded by Adolf Hitler in Germany, Benito Mussolini in Italy, and Japanese leaders in Southeast Asia. The president then eloquently described "four essential human freedoms" that the United States hoped to secure for the world community: freedom of speech and expression, religious freedom, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Posters illustrating the four freedoms were widely distributed across America. Hanging in homes and stores, these posters reminded Americans what the nation was fighting for in World War II. Here are President Roosevelt's famous words about the four freedoms: 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 worldwide 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 [the opposite] of the so-called "new order" of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb. —Reprinted from The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1940 Volume. Published in 1941. |
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