Diane’s farewell message
After 52 years at WAMU, Diane Rehm says goodbye.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House in Washington, D.C., delivering a national radio address on September 11, 1941, in which he said of the threat of the Nazi regime, "when you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him."
In 1939 fascism was on the march around the world and America found itself at a crossroads.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt believed Hitler and the Nazis posed an existential threat to democracy. But the American public, still reeling from the Great Depression, remained wary of getting involved.
Fascist sympathizers and powerful right-wing media groups egged on the isolationists. Famed aviator Charles Lindbergh became the voice of this opposition and over the ensuing two years a war of words played out between Lindbergh and Roosevelt.
Paul Sparrow, the former director of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, tells this story in a new book, “Awakening the Spirit of America.”
“Awakening the Spirit” will be on bookstore shelves on June 4, 2024.
Guests
- Paul Sparrow Author of "Awakening the Spirit of America: FDR's War of Words With Charles Lindbergh—and the Battle to Save Democracy"
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