Franklin D. Roosevelt: “Pearl Harbor” Speech

Audience

President Roosevelt was greeted with loud cheers when he entered the House chamber to deliver his joint address to Congress. “Twelve times in a speech of only twenty-five sentences the president was interrupted by thunderous applause,” notes the historian Jean Edward Smith (p. 539). In less than seven minutes, with loud cheers breaking over his concluding remarks, Roosevelt effectively took command of the U.S. position regarding the war. One of his bitterest critics, the former president Herbert Hoover, announced  his  unqualified support of Roosevelt's declaration of war. Very few responded as Senator Gerald P. Nye did, alleging that the president had manipulated the nation into war. Even Nye, in fact, voted for the war resolution, which needed only thirty-three minutes to pass both houses of Congress.

Roosevelt's speech to Congress was swiftly followed by one to a radio audience estimated at 60 million. Therein, Roosevelt buttressed his congressional address by denouncing Japan's decade-long aggressive behavior, which he compared to the immoral actions of both the German leader Adolf Hitler and the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.  This linkage, which Roosevelt had not drawn in his speech to Congress, made the case for U.S. involvement in the European theater of war as well. Hitler's declaration of war on the United States relieved Roosevelt of his concern that  Americans would support a  conflict only with Japan. The sneak attack on Pearl Harbor was analogous to Germany's surprise invasion of Russia, Roosevelt told his radio audience. Telegrams to the White House actually indicated that Americans believed that they were now at war with the Axis powers—Germany and Italy and their client states—and not just Japan. Nevertheless, a number of isolationists were already arguing that the United States should limit its war to the Pacific. Hitler saved Roosevelt considerable trouble by declaring war on the United States first.

Clearly, President Roosevelt's address to Congress and his speech to the American people via radio were meant to galvanize public support for the war. Thus, the president concentrated on Japan's outrageous attack and why it constituted a direct threat to the United States. Above all, Roosevelt wanted to solidify American unity in the face of a formidable enemy.