Time cover showing FDR as Man of the Year for 1941
January 6, 1941: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 2 weeks short of being sworn in for a record 3rd term, delivers a State of the Union Address before a Joint Session of the U.S. Congress.
It was a bad time for the world. Nazi Germany had taken over Europe, and, with the Soviet Union having signs a Non-Aggression Pact with them, Britain was alone in opposing them. Japan, the Nazis' partner in the Axis, had swarmed all over the Far East, and Britain seemed alone against them, too. Fascism was on the march, and freedom was in retreat.
FDR told Congress:
In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech, and expression — everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want — which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear — which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor — anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
And still, there were many Americans who weren't ready to go to war to protect those values around the world. It would take an attack on America itself, by the Axis, for Americans to believe that their own "Four Freedoms" were at risk from the Axis.
In the Winter of 1943, The Saturday Evening Post published, in consecutive issues, paintings depicting the Four Freedoms, by their leading artist, Norman Rockwell.
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January 6, 1941 was a Monday. Baseball and football were in their off-seasons. The NBA wouldn't be founded for another 5 years. And the NHL had no games scheduled for this day. So there were no scores on this historic day.
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