FDR's First Inaugural Address Theme of Warfare

Students of history, given the gift of hindsight, can look back at the boom of the 1920s and depression of the 1930s as little more than a time-out between two brutal global conflicts. But in many ways, it seems obvious that by 1933, the world was well on its way to war.

At the same time that President Roosevelt was giving his 1933 inaugural address, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were tightening their grip on Germany. Soon enough they would envelop Europe, and everyone would be back at war again.

The United States was engaged in a different but no less dangerous kind of struggle. Roosevelt had a couple immediate tasks on the top of his list, but number one was getting people back to work.

Raymond Moley, his longtime speechwriter, came up with the idea of framing the inaugural address as a wartime speech for good reason. It would take the full mobilization of the country's resources to survive the deep depression they were currently in, so FDR's language might as well reflect that. The warfare motif is popular and strong throughout the address, and it reinforces the importance of the battles to come.

1. The most important question to ask of an appeal to action like this is: did it work? For the millions of Americans listening across the country, the answer was "heck, yes." But put yourself in their (probably threadbare) shoes: would this line of attack work for you?
2. Although he was now leader of the armed forces, President Roosevelt had a different sort of army to lead. How do you think his role as leader of an army of workers compares to a leader of soldiers? Are there any similarities?

Because warfare is unfortunately a much-too-common state of affairs, societies are well prepared to jump into action at a moment's notice. Roosevelt sought to hack into this preparedness by treating the economic turmoil as a foreign enemy, and like a general before a great battle, he used his inaugural address to motivate the public to victory.

Framing a fight against an ideal as a war to be waged is nothing new in the United States, from the war on drugs to the war on terror to Roosevelt's war on the economy. Using the language of warfare to motivate is one thing; spending manpower and resources to fix an unfixable problem is quite another.