Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941

by Ian Kershaw

  By the time the President returned to Washington on the evening of 16 December, tanned, in good spirits, thoroughly ‘refuelled’ (as Hopkins put it) from his sojourn on board the Tuscaloosa, there was an air of some expectancy in the American capital.201 Next day he told Morgenthau that he had been ‘thinking very hard on this trip about what we should do for England’, and had come to the conclusion ‘that the thing to do is to get away from the dollar sign’. He wanted neither sales nor money loans. Instead, he suggested that ‘we will say to England, we will give you the guns and the ships that you need, provided that when the war is over you will return to us in kind the guns and the ships that we have loaned to you’. ‘What do you think of it?’ the President asked. Morgenthau was instantly enthusiastic.202 He put it down to one of Roosevelt’s ‘brilliant flashes’.203 As we have seen, however, the idea had been forming in the President’s mind for some while. It certainly reached back to the time of the destroyer deal, when Roosevelt mused about leasing merchant ships to Britain. The original notion, it has been suggested, arose when the Treasury Department found that old statutes sanctioned the leasing of army property for up to five years if the goods were not necessary for public use.204 But if that was the case, the Treasury made nothing of the discovery. It took the President to recognize the full potential of the leasing idea. And on 17 December, he put it into the public domain in a way which was novel, clear and compelling.

  That afternoon, Roosevelt held a press conference. He began disarmingly by saying there was no particular news. But he thought there might be one thing worth mentioning. He gradually moved into his theme. No major war had been lost for lack of money, he stated. Giving the impression that he was thinking on his feet, he went on to put the case for increased aid to Britain. It was, he said, ‘important from a selfish point of view of American defense, that we should do everything to help the British Empire to defend itself’. He pointed out that British orders were ‘a tremendous asset to American defense’. He ruled out the need for any repeal of the Johnson or Neutrality Acts. But he thought it necessary to think beyond traditional terms about war finances. He claimed, with some exaggeration, that the administration had been working on the problem for some weeks. Then he advanced what he suggested was only one of a number of possible methods. The United States could take over British orders and ‘lease or sell’ to Great Britain part of munitions production. What he was trying to do, Roosevelt continued, was to ‘get rid of the silly, foolish old dollar sign’. He produced a folksy analogy to explain what he meant. A man would not say to a neighbour whose house was on fire: ‘Neighbor, my garden hose cost me fifteen dollars; you have to pay me fifteen dollars for it.’ He would lend the neighbour his hose, and get it back later. This was how the munitions problem had to be handled. The details were still to be clarified, the President said, but what he was going to do was to substitute for the dollar sign a ‘gentleman’s obligation to repay in kind’. ‘I think you all get it,’ he added. When reporters present asked him whether his scheme would take the country closer to war, Roosevelt was dismissive. But he accepted that Congress would have to give its approval, and that proposals for legislation would be forthcoming in the New Year.205

  It was a masterly performance; Roosevelt at his very best. The garden-hose parable was not, in fact, Roosevelt’s brainwave, as it appeared on the day. It had first been used by Harold Ickes four months earlier, but had evidently stuck in the President’s head and been stored away for future use.206 He had now deployed it, and to brilliant effect. ‘It may accurately be said that with that neighbourly analogy Roosevelt won the fight for Lend Lease,’ Robert Sherwood, one of the President’s speech-writing team, believed.207 It was still far from a programme. Roosevelt had provided no details; those would, however, all come out one way or the other in the passage of legislation through Congress. He batted away questions about the increased production necessary to provide the material for the British. The implications of ensuring safe delivery of the goods produced to the British armed forces were equally unclear. And there was an obvious flaw in the analogy, not lost on some who heard it. The ‘garden hose’, in this case, was unlikely to be returned, certainly not intact. But what the President had done with his parable, above all, was to reduce a highly complex, and controversial, issue to utter simplicity–to a story of good neighbourliness which anyone could understand and most would have sympathy with. The issue of aid to Britain was now fully in the public domain, open to rigorous scrutiny and debate on all sides.

  Roosevelt backed up his opening gambit with immediate and energetic executive action, approving as a matter of great urgency Stimson’s initiative to shake up the reorganization of defence production. The leaderless and hopelessly ineffectual Advisory Commission, set up in the spring, was now replaced by a smaller and more dynamic Office of Production Management with only four members: Stimson, Knox, the director and experienced business leader William Knudsen (head of General Motors), and, as co-director, ensuring the involvement of organized labour, Sidney Hillmann (president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers). The operational weaknesses of this new organization, too, would be fairly quickly exposed. For now, however, its institution was a clear indication that Roosevelt was anxious to drive ahead with the armaments aid programme, though on the linked question of convoy escorts he remained evasive and non-committal.208

  Twelve days after his pivotal press conference, on 29 December, Roosevelt was wheeled into the diplomatic reception room at the White House to deliver his first ‘fireside chat’ to the nation since his re-election. Many at the time, and since, have reckoned it to be among his best and most effective. It may at least in part have been prompted by the hostile response to the lend-lease idea in German foreign propaganda–a response aimed at shoring up the isolationists in the United States, but in fact having the opposite effect of prompting unexpected backing for the President’s initiative.209 However, the main impulse was Roosevelt’s wish to explain to the American people ‘the plain truth about the gravity of the situation’ in which the war had placed the United States,210 and to drive home the need to provide all-out aid to Britain–an induction into lend-lease.

  Roosevelt pulled no punches in elaborating the danger to the security of America. Referring to the Tripartite Pact signed the previous September between Germany, Italy and Japan and directed against the United States, he painted a stark dualistic picture of free, democratic peoples in mortal combat against ‘the evil forces’ of totalitarian tyranny, set on dominating and enslaving the human race. In an age of air power, the oceans, he went on, were no longer a protection for the United States. It was vital that they did not fall to hostile powers. In this, upholding the fighting potential of Britain (the struggle of the Greeks and the Chinese was also mentioned) was vital. For, ‘if Great Britain goes down, the Axis powers will control the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australasia, and the high seas–and they will be in a position to bring enormous military and naval resources against this hemisphere’. There was, therefore, great danger ahead, which had to be faced. Indirectly rounding on his isolationist opponents, the President dismissed the illusion ‘that we can save our own skins by shutting our eyes to the fate of other nations’. Appeasement, experience had shown, offered no solution. A ‘negotiated peace’ was ‘nonsense’; it would be no peace at all.

  The President turned to his second theme: the need to help Britain. The British were holding out against an ‘unholy alliance’. America’s future security depended upon the outcome of this struggle. Roosevelt stated categorically: ‘there is far less chance of the United States getting into war if we do all we can now to support the nations defending themselves against attack by the Axis than if we acquiesce in their defeat.’ He openly accepted that there was risk involved in any course adopted. But the course he was advocating carried, he said, the least risk. There was no demand for an American Expeditionary Force to be sent abroad, and no intention of sending one. ‘You can, therefore, nail any talk
about sending armies to Europe as deliberate untruth.’ But those engaged in the fighting were asking for ‘the implements of war’, and ‘emphatically we must get these weapons to them’. He repeated that his policy was not directed at war, but at keeping war away from America. He appealed to workers and to leaders of industry to redouble their efforts. ‘We must have more ships, more guns, more planes–more of everything.’ How much would be sent abroad would rest on the judgement of the government’s defence experts. The United States had furnished the British with great material support, and would provide more in future. The President concluded his powerful speech with words that had a lasting echo: ‘We must be the great arsenal of democracy.’211

  There was an overwhelming response to the ‘fireside chat’. Three-quarters of Americans had heard it, and of those over 60 per cent were in agreement. The White House was inundated with letters and telegrams on the speech–100 to 1 in favour. Roosevelt was delighted. It was far beyond his expectations. The disapproval, as to be expected, came from the dwindling force of isolationists, but even they were in part disarmed by the speech. Some of the most perceptive published reactions welcomed the clear and firm leadership at last displayed by the President, applauding the end of the uncertainty that had hung like a cloud over American policy during the previous months, and that Roosevelt had finally ‘clarified and crystallized America’s choice, a choice really made long ago’. The regret was only that ‘this approach was delayed at the expense of six months of vital preparation’.212

  December 1940 was the month in which the key decision–one of the most important of the war–was taken. It was a decision for a programme that amounted to ‘nothing short of a declaration of economic warfare on the Axis’.213 For the first time since well before his re-election, Roosevelt had led, rather than followed, opinion in the country. And opinion was shifting in line with his lead. Now, as many as 70 per cent of those questioned were ready to help Britain win, even at the risk of American involvement in the war. But a huge majority still opposed entering the war there and then. The American people, as one commentator put it, continued to prefer ‘their footing on the rim’ to being pushed into war.214

  Roosevelt’s ‘fireside chat’ was swiftly followed by his annual address to Congress on the State of the Union, delivered on 6 January 1941. In another forceful speech, the President outlined the ‘four essential human freedoms’ for which he was striving. They amounted to a declaration of American aims for a postwar world: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear. Soon afterwards, the President stipulated his budget demands for 1942: of the 17.5 billion dollars requested, 60 per cent was allocated to national defence.215 The ‘arsenal of democracy’ had been commissioned.

  Even before his speech to Congress, on 2 January, the President’s new sense of urgency had led him to commission the Treasury to draft the Lend-Lease bill to take to Congress.216 From now on, the main responsibility lay with Morgenthau and his team. The bill was given the symbolic number of House Resolution 1776–the date of the American Revolution. On 10 January it was brought to the House of Representatives. The debates that followed, over a period of two months, were intensive, and were widely reported. There was huge national interest. Almost all Americans knew of the bill, and most of them consistently supported it, even though more than a third of those questioned thought that, if passed, it would bring the United States closer to ‘getting into the war’.217 For the isolationists, the campaign against the bill amounted to a last hurrah. The America First Committee launched a massive campaign of opposition. The young John F. Kennedy was one of those who contributed to its funds.218 Extensive publicity for the campaign was assured in the pages of the Chicago Tribune, published by the larger than life character, and outspoken isolationist, Colonel Robert R. McCormick.219

  The complex legislative process took its course. In Congress, the opposition was not powerful enough to defeat the bill, but was able to force through a number of amendments. Eventually, the bill was passed by a majority of 260 to 165 in the House of Representatives, 60 to 31 in the Senate. In both chambers, those opposed were mainly Republicans. Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease law on 11 March 1941. It now gave him the authority to order the production or procurement of ‘any defense article for the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States’.220

  Speaking at the annual dinner of the White House Correspondents’ Association four days later, the President omitted all the recriminations about his opponents that he had originally thought of including.221 Instead, he focused on the national unity that the debate on lend-lease had brought to face the tasks ahead. ‘Let not the dictators of Europe or Asia doubt our unanimity now,’ he proclaimed. The entire country had engaged in a great debate. ‘Yes, the decisions of our democracy may be slowly arrived at,’ he conceded. ‘But when that decision is made, it is proclaimed not with the voice of any one man but with the voice of one hundred and thirty millions. It is binding on us all. And the world is no longer left in doubt.’ A sideswipe at his opponents followed: ‘This decision is the end of any attempts at appeasement in our land; the end of urging us to get along with dictators; the end of compromise with tyranny and the forces of oppression. And the urgency is now.’ He underlined the significance of the decision taken: ‘We believe firmly that when our production output is in full swing, the democracies of the world will be able to prove that dictatorships cannot win.’222

  VI

  Lend-lease was one of the most important political decisions of the war, and had some of the most far-reaching consequences. For Churchill, it was ‘a wonderful decision’, bringing new hope and conviction through the knowledge that ‘the United States are very closely bound up with us now’.223 He spoke of it as a ‘climacteric’–an ‘intense turning-point’–in Britain’s war effort.224 It meant an ‘irrevocable commitment’ to the alliance of the United States with Great Britain, a ‘point of no return’ in American policy against Nazi Germany, a ‘major step towards war’.225 The German reaction also spoke volumes for the significance of what had happened. The Wehrmacht leadership interpreted it as ‘a declaration of war’. Goebbels described it in the same way. And Hitler immediately decided to extend the combat zone in the north Atlantic as far west as the territorial waters of Greenland.226

  For Roosevelt’s critics, that was precisely what it was intended to do. When the arch-isolationist Senator Burton K. Wheeler declared that lend-lease would ‘plough under every fourth American boy’, Roosevelt reacted allergically. ‘I regard it as the most untruthful, as the most dastardly, unpatriotic thing that has ever been said,’ he retorted.227 And when, in the spring, Charles A. Lindbergh became the darling of the isolationists in the America First anti-Roosevelt campaign, the President privately expressed his conviction that the former aviation hero was a Nazi.228 Among ardent interventionists, within the administration and outside, lend-lease offered precisely what the isolationists were decrying: the expectation that a sense of urgency and dynamism would now drive American policy faster and closer towards the direct involvement in the war that they deemed necessary and inevitable. Over the months that followed the passing of the Lend-Lease Act, the President pleased neither of his sets of critics. For isolationists, he was going much too far. For interventionists, he was doing far too little. He was, in fact, not steering a middle way. His leanings were invariably towards those who wanted to do more, not less, to help the British in what was a dire phase of the war for them. But it was always to be ‘short of war’, and his political antennae invariably told him that the route of caution was the right one. The result was that over the spring months American policy seemed to recede into drift, uncertainty and hesitation.

  The immediate benefits from lend-lease were not huge. Harry Hopkins was put in charge of the lend-lease programme with something approaching a plenipotentiary mandate to make it work.229 The administration immediately requested $7 billion in appropriat
ions. Among the first supplies, and a neat reflection of Roosevelt’s determining ‘fireside chat’, were 900,000 feet of fire hose. But only a tiny 1 per cent of the munitions actually used by Britain and the Empire during 1941 came from lend-lease. The immediate significance for the British war effort was largely symbolic. What would result from lend-lease over the course of the war, however, was anything but confined to symbolism. More than half of British deficits were covered by lend-lease, and it would come, too, to be vital to the Soviet war machine. The list of potential recipient countries had been deliberately left open when the legislation was drafted. Aware from intelligence reports of growing signs that Hitler might invade the Soviet Union before the year was out, the administration was anxious to prevent anti-Communists in Congress from limiting the countries that might at some point receive lend-lease. It proved a crucial piece of forethought. By the time the war ended, the scheme had provided over $50 billion worldwide.

  Within the United States, lend-lease was the trigger to huge increases in armaments spending. Already in 1941, defence expenditure, as a proportion of gross national product, was almost ten times higher than it had been in 1939. Borrowing, not taxation, accounted for most of the increased spending–a new and lasting trend in financing. The mass-production techniques used meant, too, that big business grew even bigger and its dominance of industrial output more swollen. In essence, the military-industrial complex of postwar America had its foundations in lend-lease.230

  The decision taken in December and finalized through legislation in March had settled the issue of production. The American war economy was set in motion (though production and organizational blockages and shortcomings meant that it still did not function either smoothly or at full pace). How sufficient goods were going to get to Britain, given the mounting losses of merchant ships in the Atlantic, was, however, still far from resolved. Moreover, lend-lease had cast sharp light on the question which no one was yet ready to face. Could America, its neutrality now completely compromised, its non-belligerency a wholly one-sided affair, continue to remain out of a fighting war when she was so committed to one of the participants through the supply of weaponry? Stimson, as usual, had hit the nail on the head the previous December. ‘We cannot permanently be in the position of toolmakers for other nations which fight,’ he had concluded –though he accepted that the country was not yet ready to contemplate intervention.231