CHRISTMAS IN ATLANTA, 1943
by Bob Foreman © 2013
Seventy Christmas Eves ago at 2:00 p.m. Central War Time, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a radio talk over “the greatest network of international radio facilities ever organized” so to carry his message “to service men and women in the far corners of the world,” stated the Atlanta Constitution. This Fireside Chat, excerpted below, was broadcast on all the Atlanta radio stations, of which there were four.
My friends: on this Christmas Eve there are over 10,000,000 men in the armed forces of the United States alone.
I have recently returned from extensive journeyings in the region of the Mediterranean and as far as the borders of Russia. There, the Cairo and Teheran Conferences gave Prime Minister Churchill and I our first opportunity to meet the Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and Marshal Stalin and to sit down at the table with these unconquerable men and talk with them face to face.
At Cairo we were able not only to settle upon definite military strategy, but it was also agreed that essential to all peace and security in the Pacific is the permanent elimination of the Empire of Japan as a potential force of aggression. Never again must our soldiers and sailors and marines be compelled to fight from island to island as they are fighting so gallantly and so successfully today.
At the Teheran Conference, Mr. Churchill and I met with Marshal Stalin. We agreed on every point concerned with the launching of a gigantic attack upon Germany. We intend to rid them once and for all of Nazism and Prussian militarism and the fantastic and disastrous notion that they constitute the "master race."
There have always been cheerful idiots in this country who believed that there would be no more war for us if everybody in America would only return into their homes and lock their front doors behind them. Assuming that their motives were of the highest, events have shown how unwilling they were to face the facts.
American boys are fighting today in snow-covered mountains, in malarial jungles, on blazing deserts; they are fighting on the far stretches of the sea and above the clouds, and fighting for the thing for which they struggle. I think it is best symbolized by the message that came out of Bethlehem.
On behalf of the American people-- your own people-- I send this Christmas message to you who are in our armed forces: in our hearts are prayers for you and for all your comrades in arms who fight to rid the world of evil.
We ask God's blessing upon you-- upon your fathers, mothers, wives and children-- all your loved ones at home.
We ask that the comfort of God's grace shall be granted to those who are sick and wounded, and to those who are prisoners of war in the hands of the enemy, waiting for the day when they will again be free.
And we ask that God receive and cherish those who have given their lives, and that He keep them in honor and in the grateful memory of their countrymen forever.
God bless all of you who fight our battles on this Christmas Eve.
God bless us all. Keep us strong in our faith that we fight for a better day for humankind-- here and everywhere.