FDR’s “Shoot-on-Sight” Fireside Chat and the Ethics of Misleading the Public

When most Americans think of World War II, the story starts on December 7, 1941, with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. But the United States had been edging toward war with Germany for several months before Japanese Zeros screamed over the Hawaiian Islands, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt made clear with his “shoot-on-sight” Fireside Chat to the nation on September 11, 1941.

What Americans listening to FDR on their radios did not know was that much of what he told them that night about a German U-boat firing on the USS Greer a week earlier was untrue. In seeking to build support among a reluctant public for taking more aggressive steps against Germany, FDR intentionally misrepresented the facts surrounding what he described as an unprovoked attack on the American destroyer. This raises a difficult question: Are presidential lies justifiable when done in the service of a laudable cause?

“A Rattlesnake Poised to Strike”

FDR got straight to the point with his Fireside Chat. He began:

The Navy Department of the United States has reported to me that on the morning of September fourth the United States destroyer Greer, proceeding in full daylight toward Iceland, had reached a point southeast of Greenland. She was carrying American mail to Iceland. She was flying the American flag. Her identity as an American ship was unmistakable.

She was then and there attacked by a submarine. Germany admits that it was a German submarine. The submarine deliberately fired a torpedo at the Greer, followed later by another torpedo attack. In spite of what Hitler’s propaganda bureau has invented, and in spite of what any American obstructionist organization may prefer to believe, I tell you the blunt fact that the German submarine fired first upon this American destroyer without warning, and with deliberate design to sink her.

Insisting that “it would be unworthy of a great Nation to exaggerate an isolated incident, or to become inflamed by some one act of violence,” Roosevelt detailed the many other instances in which Adolf Hitler’s Germany had attacked U.S. ships and violated U.S. sovereignty. He claimed that such transgressions were no accident but rather part of “the Nazi design to abolish the freedom of the seas, and to acquire absolute control and domination of these seas for themselves.” That domination would enable Germany to threaten U.S. trade and eventually the security of the Western Hemisphere. As a result, FDR argued, “it is time for all Americans, Americans of all the Americas to stop being deluded by the romantic notion that the Americas can go on living happily and peacefully in a Nazi-dominated world.”

The United States could not stand passively in the face of such a threat. It had to act:

When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him.

These Nazi submarines and raiders are the rattlesnakes of the Atlantic. They are a menace to the free pathways of the high seas. They are a challenge to our sovereignty. They hammer at our most precious rights when they attack ships of the American flag—symbols of our independence, our freedom, our very life.

To counter the German threat, FDR announced that he had ordered the U.S. military to “protect all merchant ships—not only American ships but ships of any flag—engaged in commerce in our defensive waters. They will protect them from submarines; they will protect them from surface raiders.” 

What Roosevelt said about Hitler’s ambitions was true. Most of what he said about the attack on the Greer was not. The U-boat attack was neither unprovoked nor unexpected.

“To Force an Incident”

FDR had decided months earlier that the U.S. entry into World War II was inevitable. Most of Western Europe had fallen to Germany, and Hitler’s ambitions seemingly had no bounds. In response, U.S. policy became increasingly hostile to Berlin. With the passage of the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941, the United States crept closer to being Britain’s co-belligerent. In April, FDR dispatched U.S. troops to Greenland (with the permission of the Danish ambassador to the United States) to keep it out of German hands and to provide protection for convoys ferrying materiel to Britain. In July, FDR went a step further and dispatched U.S. troops to Iceland (with the approval of the Icelandic government) to replace British forces that had invaded the island a year earlier, freeing them for missions elsewhere.

Things did not stop there. In August 1941, FDR met British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Argentia, Newfoundland, the site of one of the bases the United States acquired as part of the destroyers-for-bases deal a year earlier. The meeting became famous for producing the Atlantic Charter, which set forth the principles the United States and Britain said should govern the post-war world.

Just as important as what FDR and Churchill agreed to publicly was what they agreed to privately. FDR promised that he would take a more confrontational approach to Germany in the coming months. Churchill, as summarized in the minutes of his subsequent briefing to his war cabinet, described FDR’s pledge as follows:

The President had said he would wage war but not declare it and that he would become more and more provocative. If the Germans did not like it, they could attack American forces.

To that end, the U.S. Navy would now escort supply convoys across the North Atlantic.

The President’s orders to these escorts were to attack any U-boat which showed itself, even if it were 200 or 300 miles away from the convoy. Everything was to be done to force an incident.

As Secretary of War Henry Stimson later explained, FDR was seeking to “maneuver” Germany into “firing the first shot” and thereby win “the full support of the American people” for a war against a power that threatened their way of life.

The USS Greer

The attack on the Greer took place just three weeks after FDR and Churchill met. The destroyer was 175 miles southwest of Iceland headed toward Reykjavik to deliver mail and passengers when a nearby British plane spotted a German U-boat. The Greer and the British plane set off in hot pursuit. The plane eventually turned back, but not before dropping four depth charges. The Greer continued its hunt. After being pursued for three-and-a-half hours, the U-boat fired a torpedo that missed the Greer. After briefly losing track of the U-boat, the Greer relocated it and dropped depth charges. The explosive missed their target, which eluded the Greer again, ending the encounter.

Senior Navy officers told FDR that the conditions and the nature of the pursuit made it unlikely that the U-boat knew it had fired on a U.S. naval vessel. Indeed, Hitler had previously ordered German U-boat commander to avoid firing on U.S. ships. Germany had invaded the Soviet Union that summer and was eager not give the United States a reason to join the war.

A Rally ‘Round the Flag

Unaware of what actually had happened to the Greer, FDR’s shoot-on-sight order won broad public approval. Ironically, his remarks were broadcast to the 8,000 people waiting at an America First Committee event in Des Moines, Iowa, to hear Charles Lindbergh, the country’s most prominent anti-interventionist voice, make the case for staying out of the war in Europe. FDR’s impassioned speech no doubt explains why Lindbergh heard many boos when he took the stage to speak, though what he then said competed with FDR’s Fireside Chat for news headlines.

What most Americans did not realize as they went to bed on the night of September 11, 1941, was that the United States was now involved in an undeclared naval war in the North Atlantic. Although Hitler did not lift his restrictions on U-boat activity, on October 17, a German torpedo hit the destroyer USS Kearney just off the coast of Iceland,killing eleven sailors. Two weeks later, a U-boat sank the USS Reuben James, killing 115 sailors. FDR still did not ask Congress for a declaration of war, and congressional leaders did not demand that he seek it. The issue became moot four days after Pearl Harbor when Germany declared war on the United States. Within hours, Congress voted unanimously to declare war on Germany.

“You Play the Game”

Was FDR right to lie to the American public about the facts surrounding the attack on the Greer? He certainly thought so. When his eldest son later criticized him for his “dishonesty” before Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt justified his actions on the grounds that “I knew we were going to war. I was sure there was no way out of it.” As president, he “was in a position to know what was happening in the world much more than was the public or even members of Congress.” So the lesson was that “you play the game the way it has been played over the years, and you play to win.”

FDR’s defense is appealing. The United States faced an existential threat that many Americans and many members of Congress foolishly wished to deny. A few presidential distortions and mistruths were a small price to pay to save the United States from a potential calamity.

But another naval clash a quarter of a century later highlights the dangers of misleading the public in the service of a larger cause. That president, convinced he was serving the U.S. national interest, also misrepresented the facts of the encounter. But history has been far harsher in its judgment of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s handling of the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The discovery that his administration had deliberately misled the public gave birth to a credibility gap that plagues U.S. foreign policy to this day, helped along by subsequent presidents who thought the national interest justified withholding or distorting the truth.

Lie at your peril.

Oscar Berry assisted in the preparation of this article.

The United States celebrates its 250th anniversary in 2026. To mark that milestone, I am resurfacing essays I have written over the years about major events in U.S. foreign policy. A version of this essay was published on September 11, 2012.