FDR said ‘flag’ ten times on 9/11

President Bush speaks to the nation on Sept. 11, 2001
President Bush speaks to the nation on Sept. 11, 2001

Americans will soon mark the 15th anniversary of the 9/11/2001 attacks on the U.S. That night, backed by an American flag, President George W. Bush addressed the nation from the White House. Sixty years earlier, Americans listened to a similar speech from the White House, this time by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. During his 9/11/1941 talk, he used the word “flag” ten times.

President Roosevelt, wearing a mourning band for his late mother, speaks about freedom of the seas on the radio
President Roosevelt, wearing a mourning band for his late mother, speaks about freedom of the seas on the radio

Three months before Japan would attack Pearl Harbor and trigger America’s entry into World War II, a crisis arose involving a German submarine and a U.S. destroyer. Taking to the radio, a major medium he used to communicate with the populace, FDR explained what was at stake.

“My fellow Americans,” he began, “the Navy Department of the United States has reported to me that on the morning of September fourth the United States destroyer Greer [was] proceeding in full daylight towards Iceland,…carrying American mail [and] flying the American flag.”

USS Greer, flying an American flag astern
USS Greer, flying an American flag astern

The Greer was attacked by a German sub, the president continued, which “fired first…without warning and with deliberate design to sink her….This was piracy….It was not the first nor the last act of piracy which the Nazi Government has committed against the American flag in this war.”

The Robin Moor
The Robin Moor

Roosevelt listed other assaults, including how a German sub sank “an American flag merchant ship, the Robin Moor….No apology, no allegation of mistake, no offer of reparations has come from the Nazi Government.” He named more vessels that had been “sunk or attacked,” even though they “flew the American flag and were clearly identifiable. Two of these ships were warships of the American Navy.” In another instance, he continued, “the vessel sunk clearly carried the flag of our sister Republic of Panama.”

Panama's flag
Panama’s flag

FDR called the serial attacks a “Nazi design to abolish the freedom of the seas, and to acquire absolute control and domination of [the] these seas for themselves….It is time for all Americans…to stop being deluded by the romantic notion that the Americas can go on living happily and peacefully in a Nazi-dominated world.” He added, ominously, “We Americans are now face to face not with abstract theories but with cruel, relentless facts.”

Labeling the Nazi submarines “rattlesnakes of the seas,” the president said they threaten “our most precious rights when they attack ships of the American flag – symbols of our independence, our freedom, our very life….The time has come when the Americas themselves must now be defended.”

Roosevelt underscored that “my obligation as President is historic; it is clear….From now on, if German or Italian vessels of war enter the waters, the protection of which is necessary for American defense, they do so at their own peril.”

Rallying Americans, FDR noted that they “have faced other grave crises in their history – with American courage, with American resolution. [We] will do no less today.”

Front page of Indiana newspaper after FDR's address

(To read the full address, go to http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/091141.HTML. To listen to it, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLn7CwtH81s.)

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