James Holland

Well, of course, because at this point, the Soviets are still in cahoots with the Nazis.

It's brilliant.

It's showing extreme Machiavellian political acumen, I would say.

Yeah, but if you're going to be unconstitutional, do it for the moral good, not for personal gain.

That's my point.

Yes, this is his far side chat.

The experience of the past two years has proven beyond doubt that no nation can appease the Nazis.

No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it.

There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness.

There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb.

We know now that a nation can have peace with the Nazis at the price of total surrender.

So what he's doing is he's... So the press conference of the 17th of December and then his fireside chat.

And for those... You remember we talked about this, this mastery of the radio media in the 1930s, which Hitler does very well as well and Goebbels and so on in Nazi Germany.

But Roosevelt is also a master of this.

And what he adopts, which no one has ever done before him in America, is have this cozy kind of folksy, it's just you and I, we're chatting together in a room.

I'm explaining stuff in kind of sort of plain language.

I'm not using fancy acronyms and political jargon and business jargon.

I'm just talking to you like a fellow American citizen.

And this is what he does.

So he paves the way for Lend-Lease.