For 2000 years, Shinto was the indigenous religion of Japan. The religion was primarily based upon the worship of nature, spirits and ancestors. But, beginning in the sixth century, Shinto taught that the first emperor was descended from the Sun God. In the late 1800s, Emperor Meiji was declared a direct descendant of the gods, this gave him inherent power to rule not only Japan but all the world. State Shinto became the official religion of Japan making the emperor commander-in-chief of the military. In the 1930s, the Japanese believed Emperor Hirohito to be a god, superior to all others and worthy of unquestioning obedience. School children bowed every morning before a photograph of the emperor.
In Germany, Nazi ideology under Hitler was becoming increasingly hostile to traditional Christianity. Hitler was raised catholic but rejected the Judaeo-Christian concept of God and religion. He ultimately believed that to be Christian was incompatible with being German. Beginning in 1933, Hitler began to bring churches under control of the Nazi state, but as the confessional churches protested, he began to confiscate church funds and arrest pastors. Beginning in 1936, Nazis removed crucifixes from shoools. In March of 1937, Pope Pius XI denounced aspects of Nazi idealogy, and Hitler responded with the imprisoning or drafting of clergy into the military, and banning of church publications. Even then, many at the time believed that Hitler was planning to replace the Bible and the Crucifix with Mein Kampf and the swastika.
In Italy, Benito Mussolini, also raised Catholic had proclaimed himself to be an atheist. He believed that science had proven there was no god and considered religion to be a disease of the mind. Mussolini had come to rise in Italy after WWI as the leader of the National Fascist Party and ruled as Prime minister from 1922 until 1943. In April 1938, Mussolini signed the Pact of Steel forming a "friendship and alliance" between Germany and Italy. Mussolini was an atheist, but realizing the influence of the Catholic church around the world decided to work with the Vatican rather than oppose it. He even declared Catholicism to be the official religion of Italy.
The year was 1940, and this 'Axis Alliance' was working together to secure their own expansionist interests. There was an Emperor who considered himself to be God, a Nazi who wanted to exterminate Jews and Christians, and an atheist masked in Catholicism. Roosevelt saw the dangers, and wanted all Americans to understand what was at stake. These three powers had one thing in common; they would deprive men of the truth that makes them free. In his 1940 annual address, he put aside all domestic issues to warn America of the dangers. It was not time for America to be ostriches. "Only an ostrich would look upon these wars through the eyes of cynicism or ridicule."
"We must look ahead and see the kind of lives our children would have to lead if a large part of the rest of the world were compelled to worship a god imposed by a military ruler, or were forbidden to worship God at all; if the rest of the world were forbidden to read and hear the facts—the daily news of their own and other nations—if they were deprived of the truth that makes men free.
We must look ahead and see the effect on our future generations if world trade is controlled by any nation or group of nations 'which sets up that control through military force.
It is, of course, true that the record of past centuries includes destruction of many small nations, the enslavement of peoples, and the building of empires on the foundation of force. But wholly apart from the greater international morality which we seek today, we recognize the practical fact that with modern weapons and modern conditions, modern man can no longer lead a civilized life if we are to go back to the practice of wars and conquests of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Summing up this need of looking ahead, and in words of common sense and good American citizenship. I hope that we shall have fewer American ostriches in our midst. It is not good for the ultimate health of ostriches to bury their heads in the sand.
Only an ostrich would look upon these wars through the eyes of cynicism or ridicule."
Several months later, on September 27, 1940, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Tripartite Pact, which became known as the Axis alliance.
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