 Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy. The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor, looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. Japan has therefore undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God. Bargo is far too great a security to American peace to permit its surrender with all the last-ditch fight. You people who oppose war and dictatorship do not be dismayed because the warmongers and the interventionists control most of the avenues of propaganda. At this critical moment in the world's history, when the democracies of Europe are facing the test of life or death, all Americans are of one mind. We want to resist the democracies in every way we can with materials and supplies. England is the last and only barrier between the United States and total war. Our aid must not come too late. Therefore, we must give President Roosevelt power to set in motion an industrial blitzkrieg that will make it possible for England to blast Hitlerism from the face of the earth. It was fully and clearly debate. Men were stamped interventionists and isolationists, and the debate grew better. Into this free debate tripped the agents of the aggressors, for they too were permitted to speak in our democracy. They wore Hitler's uniforms, but they wrapped themselves in the American flag. They preached the doctrine of racial and class hatred, for Hitler had said America could be conquered from within and fall as an overripe plum to the Nazi master race. How direct a combination? We let them speak. When occasionally a lone outrage dissenter wanted to wear his opposition, we provided police to preserve order. This was Madison Square Garden in New York City, and not Berlin, nor Nuremberg. Later, the speaker was arrested. It was the cause he had filched money from his deluded followers, and he was sent to sing-sing to brood upon the strange ways of democracy. America was at war. It had been at war, although few Americans realized it, for more than 10 years. Ever since September 18th, 1931, when Japan clawed Manchuria out of the body of China. While Hitler was still brawling in the streets of Munich, Japan had already begun weaving the pattern of aggression. Started with an incident. A Japanese train on the South Manchurian Railway had been dynamited. Promptly, Japanese battalions invaded Muckton. This was not mechanized warfare. By later standards, this war was primitive, small. Trivial, the Japanese cabinet officially labeled it when China protested to the League of Nations. Twelve Japanese planes bombed a Chinese city. Trivial. The League branded Japan an aggressor, and Japan resigned. Deeply hurt. Japan moved further into China. Pausing only for breath, Japan inflated the Muckton incident into the China incident. It was not war, the Japanese said. 400 million Chinese were caught up in this incident. China was looted and shelled and put to the torch. Chinese forces united under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek were pressed back by the invaders. China moved to armies in her Miga war industries far into the interior. The Chinese fought on not so much with weapons, as with space and time. And the warriors of Japan still breathing the spirit of the samurai in an era of machines adopted Western methods of warfare, as they had adopted Western clothes and architecture and music. And the Japanese warriors dreamt of a conquest of Asia and then of the world. And their emperor invoked the blessings of the divine upon this dream. Italy too had dreams of empire, so Italy too created an incident, in Ethiopia. Having achieved unity within by virtue of the club, castor oil and the concentration camp, Mussolini was ready. Two years after it had begun, the war was over. Italy had joined Japan in the partnership of aggression. I want to say hello to all the people of Japan. All Italians have founded an empire. March 13th, 1938, Hitler marched into Austria. The trinity of aggression was complete. For years, Hitler had planned and plotted. So Hitler marched into Austria. His conquest was bloodless. It was not entirely bloodless. German and Italian forces had been fighting in Spain. General Franco had revolted against the Republican government. He invited and received German and Italian aid. The duly elected government received some Russian aid. The democracies evolved a formula of non-intervention. The dictators brushed the society. Here was opportunity for a dress rehearsal for full-scale war. An excellent chance to test new weapons and tactics. The Spaniards were the guinea pigs. Men, women and children. It was a long war ended finally by hunger. Hitler was not content with Austria. At Munich he had said his theory of race and blood demanded the incorporation of all German-speaking peoples into the Reich. Hitler called upon Czechoslovakia to surrender the Sudetenland. That part of Czechoslovakia heavily populated by Germans. So Hitler, Prime Minister Chamberlain of Great Britain, Mussolini, Premier Dalladier of France, met in Munich. And because the democracies of Europe were hungry for peace, removed a thorn from Hitler's side. The Czech army and the little Maginot line. Hitler rolled into the Sudetenland. His people were jubilant. Hitler was the miracle man, they said. A man who conquered with words. This was a new kind of war. A delightful war. Bands and flowers and parade. Hitler told his people he was content. He wanted no more territory. He guaranteed the integrity of the mutilated Czechoslovak Republic. Upon the pause to rest and then marched into Prague, the republic was destroyed. The democracies had lost a valuable ally. On April 14, 1939, President Roosevelt appealed to Hitler and Mussolini for a 10-year guarantee of peace. And Hitler mocked as he called the role of his future victims. Poland, Estonia, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Russia, Ireland, Austria, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Poland, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia. The Reichstag roared. Hitler had signed a treaty of friendship with Poland. He had given Poland a slice of Czech territory. And now it was Poland's turn to ascend the sacrificial altar. Hitler didn't declare war. On September 1, 1939, he struck without warning, which is the way of the aggressor. You will soon see Hitler's own photographic record of the Blitz in Poland. The formula is simple enough. First, choose your victim. An army still living in the past. Few planes, fewer tanks, outmoded guns, and outmoded tactics. Choose an army relying upon courage rather than machines. Then, mass your bombers. Load with your biggest bomb. Boy, here's an adequate air force on the ground to escape out of the air. Strike again with your bombers. Wave after wave. It cannot move men and supply. Its arms are isolated against forces. Giant guns against sabers and rifles. Choose your time carefully, making sure the weather favors your machine. Strike at its city so that civilians will take to the roads, hampering the army, so that women and children will be killed in the streets, or in hastily contrived shelters. Strike again. Repeat the dose, day after day, and then add a drop of treachery in the form of fifth column. This was Warsaw. Repeat for 18 days. One Nazi pincer cuts the Polish corridor. Another races to Krakow. From East Prussia, another army moves on Warsaw. In circles, bombed, shelled and starved, Warsaw surrendered. Come over the roof of city, send your Luftwaffe sailing leisurely to photograph your handiwork, and on the ground, let the master race assemble the first of its slave populations. A stunned and shocked and hungry people whose sufferings do not end with the armistice, nor their resistance, waiting behind its marginal line, that vast underground fortress deemed impregnable by its military experts. Allied strategy relied upon starving the Reich into submission. Hitler's armies would collapse for lack of fuel and food and raw materials. Spring shattered this comfortable illusion. Norway and Denmark had staked their survival upon the strictest interpretation of neutrality to escape the war. Their sympathies were with the Allies, but they took extraordinary precautions to avoid offending Hitler. So on April 9th, Hitler invaded Denmark and Norway. Denmark was powerless to resist and didn't. Norway was stunned by an avalanche of force and treachery. Fifth columnists, led by major quisling and Norwegian traitors, spread panic and confusion. On May 9th, Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. This pictorial record you are watching was made by Nazi cameraman of the order of Dr. Gettling, the German propaganda minister. He showed this botanarian symphony of devastation to neutral nations in Europe and South America to frighten them into surrender. You will observe that here in Holland, for example, not one German soldier is killed or wounded or even suffers a fractured ankle in an avalanche of distress. Using tanks, dive bombers, big guns, the Nazi machine brought the back of Dutch resistance in four days. It was Rotterdam, bombed after the Dutch forces had surrendered. The Nazis said there had been an attack. The news had not reached the Luftwaffe in time. And the next morning, reconnaissance planes flew over the city as they had flown over Warsaw, recording for the propaganda ministry another tribute to the efficacy of the Luftwaffe. While Rotterdam buried its dead, as Warsaw had, and former negotiations for surrender were duly completed. It took 18 days more to engulf the Belgians and drive the Anglo-French army into the sea. It was the Belgian cathedral city of Louvre, scarred in the First World War and restored anew, and again it fell victim to the invasion.