The Mantle of Command

by Nigel Hamilton

  With bleak reports such as these, Churchill realized, his speech to Congress would have even more significance in terms of Allied morale. When Halifax visited him late on Christmas morning, he “found him in his coloured dressing gown in bed, preparing his speech for the Senate tomorrow, surrounded by cigars, whiskies and sodas and secretaries!”73

  The President had tried his best to lighten the atmosphere, ribbing the Prime Minister and saying it had been good for him “to sing hymns with the Methodies” that day, at church. Churchill had attempted to smile, admitting it had been “the first time my mind has been at rest for a long time.”74 Yet in reality he could not relax, and the President eventually decided it would be best if he didn’t accompany Churchill to the Capitol on the morning of December 26, lest he distract from the Prime Minister’s reception on the Hill. Or worse still, in an atmosphere where all too many legislators still distrusted Churchill and the British for inveigling the U.S. into war with Germany, suggest unconstitutional collusion.

  Where the President seemed to have no visible nerves, Churchill suddenly had too many. He worried about support in Parliament, back at home; he worried about the situation in the Far East; he worried about the situation in Libya—unable to sleep if he did not receive his nightly signal of good tidings from General Auchinleck, however bogus “the Auk’s” claims.75 Moreover, he worried about the relationship between Britain and the United States. For it was clear to him, if only haltingly to his staff, that the U.S., whose entry into the war he had so long prayed for, would now be primus inter pares: not simply, at last, a world power, but the world power. It would be important, Churchill recognized, to do everything he could to maintain good relations with the new imperium: supporting, aiding, advising, and, where necessary, flattering its emperor or pharaoh. At one point, he even wheeled the President into dinner at the White House—likening his act to that of Queen Elizabeth I’s famous courtier, Sir Walter Raleigh, spreading his cloak before the sovereign, lest she get her shoes dirtied.76

  Speaking before Congress was, however, a quite different challenge. “Do you realize we are making history?” Churchill remarked to Dr. Wilson shortly after midday, as he paced across the antechamber to the U.S. Senate chamber, still rehearsing his speech.77

  For years the Führer had been the one to make history; even at this moment he saw himself being accompanied toward Valhalla by his accomplice, Emperor Hirohito, and his medieval warriors. Now, however, it would be the turn of the Associated Powers.

  The “galleries were crowded, the Diplomatic Corps, the Supreme Court and others being accommodated on the floor,” the British ambassador noted in his diary that night.78 One listener, the son of Jewish immigrants, spoke for many Americans hearing the Prime Minister for the first time, describing it in his diary as a triumph—“the first sound of blood lust I have yet heard in the war.” Churchill’s rhetoric amazed him: “the color and the imagery of his style, the wonderful use of balance and alliteration and the way he used his voice to put emotions into his words. Why at one point he made a growling sound that sounded like the British lion!”79

  “Winston spoke for about 35 minutes, and was much cheered,” Lord Halifax recorded, for his part. “Everybody thought it very good, and he produced a great impression. Personally I did not think it so very good, but naturally I kept my opinion within a narrow circle.”80

  Churchill’s doctor also had his doubts about the Prime Minister’s speech. As rhetoric it was beautiful—beginning in humility and ending in dignity—but its length and content revealed both Churchill’s brilliance and his flaws.

  The Prime Minister could not admit to personal error, so was unable to resist lecturing senators and congressmen on their failure to stop Hitler “five or six years ago” when it “would have been easy” to do so. To make matters worse, however, he found himself unable to resist romanticizing British feats of arms to come, under his own military leadership. Buoyed by the newsreel film of fighting in Libya, he unwisely predicted imminent British victory in the desert, fighting a German-Italian army of 150,000 men.

  “General Auchinleck set out to destroy totally that force,” the Prime Minister announced to the august assembly. “I have every reason to believe that his aim will be fully accomplished. I am glad to be able to place before you, members of the Senate and of the House of Representatives, at this moment when you are entering the war, proof that with the proper weapons and proper organization we are able to beat the life out of the savage Nazi. What Hitler is suffering in Libya is only a sample of foretaste of what we must give him and his accomplices, wherever this war shall lead us, in every quarter of the globe.”81

  Given the drubbing Rommel was now about to administer to the British Eighth Army—a drubbing that Japanese forces were already administering to the British across the globe—this was simply asking for trouble. Yet the Prime Minister could not refrain from more boasting. Answering his own question “why is it” that Britain did not have “ample equipment of modern aircraft and Army weapons of all kinds in Malaya and the East Indies” to defend against the Japanese, he answered: “I can only point to the victories General Auchinleck has gained in the Libyan campaign. Had we diverted and dispersed our gradually growing resources between Libya and Malaya, we should have been found wanting in both theatres,” he claimed. American generosity in arms shipped, under Lend-Lease, to British forces in North Africa, thus not only explained the weakness of Britain’s Far Eastern defenses, he claimed, but “to no small extent” explained why American forces in the Pacific had been “found at a disadvantage” at Pearl Harbor and in the Philippines.82

  Such exaggerated claims for current British prowess in Libya while salting the American wounds suffered in the Pacific in an effort to affirm his mastery as a British global strategist and commander in chief, were unfortunate, Halifax and others felt.

  Such passages would, of course, be excluded from Churchill’s memoirs, after the war—for by then Churchill had no wish to be reminded how he had crowed over Auchinleck’s accomplishments against Rommel, only weeks prior to the longest British military retreat in the history of its empire.

  Who, though, could penetrate the Prime Minister’s wall of self-regard? Churchill was the sum of his strengths and weaknesses—and no one who ever met him could doubt the former, while even the latter could be tragicomic: eliciting compassion in a man so gifted, moreover so resolute in defending the values of decency and goodwill.

  It was the Prime Minister’s “aggressive” quality that most drew the President to him—even if he thought Churchill a figure from England’s past rather than its future. “Winston is not Mid-Victorian—he is completely Victorian,” the President was heard to remark,83 while Dr. Wilson quoted the President as saying Churchill was not only “quite Victorian in his outlook,” but a “real blimp.”84 Nevertheless, Churchill’s courage moved Roosevelt—who knew a great deal about the quality, enabling him to differentiate between straightforward courage and principled, moral courage.

  To the President the distinction was not academic. The legendary courage of a man like Charles Lindbergh, the pioneering aviator, was of a deeply tainted order, in the President’s view. Lindbergh was brave but simple-minded—and more self-serving than was realized by most people. In this respect the President’s instinct—as was the case with his perception of Hitler’s demonic character—was instinctively sagacious. Lindbergh’s acceptance of a Nazi medal, and his gullible, exaggerated reports on German Luftwaffe superiority before the shooting even began, had amounted to rank defeatism, tricked out in isolationist rhetoric, the President judged. Therefore when at Christmas the aviator applied to General Arnold, chief of staff of the U.S. Army Air Forces, to take up his former commission as a colonel in the U.S. Air Force, the President found himself on the spot.

  The President asked not only the advice of the secretary of war, whose domain this was, but of the secretary of the interior, Harold Ickes—and of the director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover.

/>   Ickes, after analyzing Lindbergh’s speeches and articles, concluded that Lindbergh was “a ruthless and conscious fascist, motivated by a hatred for you personally and a contempt for democracy in general. His speeches show an astonishing identity with those of Berlin, and the similarity is not accidental.” To achieve political power in the United States, Lindbergh would, Ickes reflected, require “a military service record”—which Secretary Ickes hoped the President would deny him.85

  The President, as a political tactician of considerable renown, remained unsure. When he received a confirmed report, however, of what Lindbergh had said at a private meeting of America First members in New York ten days after Pearl Harbor, he felt his basic instinct about Lindbergh had been right. The former colonel was a blackguard.

  “There is only one danger in the world,” Lindbergh had reportedly said to the gathering in New York—that being “the yellow danger. China and Japan are really bound together against the white race. There could only have been one efficient weapon against this alliance, underneath the surface, Germany itself could have been this weapon,” Lindbergh explained. “The ideal set-up would have been to have had Germany take over Poland and Russia, in collaboration with the British, as a bloc against the yellow people and bolshevism. But instead, the British and the fools in Washington had to interfere. The British envied the Germans and wanted to rule the world forever. Britain is the real cause of all the trouble in the world today. Of course, America First cannot be active right now. But it should keep on the alert and when the large missing lists and losses are published the American people will realize how much they have been betrayed by the British and the Administration. Then America First can be a political force again. We must be quiet a while and await the time for active functioning. There may be a time soon when we can advocate a negotiated peace.”86

  Hitler would have ordered the execution of a purveyor of such treason against the Reich. The President, however, simply decided to deny Lindbergh’s request to serve in American uniform. (About Lindbergh’s self-serving lack of fundamental moral principle, the President would, moreover, be proven right—Lindbergh, a passionate eugenicist, conducted secret adulterous affairs with three German women two decades younger than himself, two of them disabled; he sired seven secret children by them in Germany and Switzerland, after the war.)87

  In the meantime, however, the President had to decide how best to win the war—which was still going disastrously in the Far East, in the wake of Pearl Harbor. And would soon fare as badly in the Mediterranean, despite the Prime Minister’s boasts.

  Fueling Lindbergh’s fire was the fact that the war in the Far East was going so badly. “Germany First” thus seemed to many, at this time, to be a mistake.

  Certainly, by focusing America’s primary war effort on the Pacific, the President would, had he been so willing, have been able to play to public opinion all across America—the majority of the nation clamoring to avenge the Japanese sneak attack, to save the Philippines, and to defend Australia and New Zealand if they were invaded by the Japanese.

  In reality, however, the Philippine Islands could no longer be saved, Roosevelt knew. Their distance from the United States, the destruction of MacArthur’s air force, and the emasculation of the American fleet made for a bleak outlook in the Southwest Pacific. At the same time, however, from his intelligence services and his emissaries, the President was convinced the Japanese had no intentions of invading Australia or New Zealand, despite the continuing panic consuming the Australian capital, Canberra. With sufficient U.S. naval, army, and air force reinforcement he had no doubt the Antipodes could easily be held—and would be, once American forces were sent out. What was far more important, therefore, Roosevelt felt, was to deal with Hitler before the Führer could defeat the Soviet Union—following which he would undoubtedly turn back to Britain. In that case, the United States would truly become a second-rate nation on the world stage—with calls from Lindbergh-style “patriots” to abandon democracy altogether.

  It was the recognition of this danger, as 1941 came to an end, that caused the President to review the question of an Allied Supreme War Council, which the secretary of state was recommending, and face up to the matter of how best to go forward. As commander in chief Roosevelt had a junior partner, vested with poor military judgment but supreme courage: Winston Churchill. With him, the President was certain, he could work. With others—especially a committee of others—he was less certain. Thus, where Secretary Hull had pressed for a politico-military Supreme War Council to represent all the Associated Powers, or Allies, as in World War I,88 the idea of such a body now died. Instead, Hull was told by the President to concentrate exclusively on the new version of the Atlantic Charter, or war aims that all of America’s partners in the conflict against Hitler and the Axis powers could sign. With regard to the waging of the war itself, however, Roosevelt made clear, he would take over this responsibility at the White House. In effect he would, with Winston Churchill as his chief lieutenant in London, become the supreme commander of the Associated Powers, or Allies, in Washington. There would naturally be differences of opinion and strategy, but he was now sure he had the skills to keep the Allied high command focused on eventual victory.

  The Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington would form a new military committee, with an officer present to represent the British chiefs of staff, that would henceforth be tasked with carrying out Roosevelt’s orders and decisions—decisions he would make with Churchill as his junior partner. In that way the Prime Minister’s capacity for poor judgment would for the most part be disabled, while his terrific moral strength could be applied to winning, not losing, the war.

  It was an inspired intention. Whether it would work as 1941 came to a close was yet to be seen.

  5

  Supreme Command

  ON DECEMBER 26, 1941, Winston Churchill suffered a minor heart attack while in the White House and was sent to Florida by the President to recuperate for a week. Roosevelt, whose patience had at times been sorely tried by the Prime Minister’s visit, was relieved. “It always took him several days to catch up on sleep after Mr. Churchill left,” Eleanor Roosevelt later wrote, concerned for her husband’s rest.1

  Churchill’s stay in the White House certainly proved exhausting for the President, the First Lady, and for the White House staff. Plans for offensive action—especially the President’s “great pet scheme” for U.S. landings in Northwest Africa—had had to be put on the back burner while the Japanese rampage in the Pacific dominated all military planning and operations. Many ideas were nevertheless advanced—perhaps the most important of which was the President’s notion of a new declaration of principles by the Associated Powers.

  The document’s final maturation, indeed the President’s whole method of bringing a project to fruition, amazed the Prime Minister’s military assistant, Colonel Jacob—symbolized in the “mess” he saw in the President’s study on the second floor of the White House. The President “leads a most simple life,” Jacob described in his diary. “He moves about the White House in a wheeled chair. His study is a delightful oval room, looking South, and is one of the most untidy rooms I have ever seen. It is full of junk. Half-opened parcels, souvenirs, books, papers, knick-knacks, and all kinds of miscellaneous articles lie about everywhere, on tables, on chairs, and on the floor. His desk is piled with papers and alongside his chair he has a sort of bookcase also filled with books, papers and junk of all sorts piled just anyhow. It would drive an orderly-minded man, or a woman, mad. The pictures on the walls are fine, mostly prints or paintings of ships. There are also good bookcases round the walls, and the furniture is not bad. But the effect is ruined by the rubbish piled everywhere. It is rather typical of the general lack of organization in the American Government.” As a proud English bureaucrat, Jacob found the “British Governmental machine” to be, by contrast, “like a motor car or even a train. Provided a reasonably efficient driver is in charge it will go. The American Governme
nt is not a machine at all. The various parts are not assembled into a working whole. The President is in the position of a patriarch, with a rather unruly flock, and much depends on the actual men who actuate or influence the various sections of that flock. The patriarch also relies to a great extent on sheep dogs, who are his stand-by, but are regarded with fear and suspicion by the sheep.”2

  One of the sheep dogs was Bill Donovan, a lawyer whom the President had put in charge of a “kind of super intelligence organization,” the Office of the Coordinator of Information, forerunner of the OSS (and later the CIA). Another was Harry Hopkins, “a frail anaemic man of great honesty and courage, who lives permanently in the White House and is the President’s constant companion. . . . Hopkins is usually to be seen in a magenta dressing gown and pyjamas. Other examples of the President’s peculiar method of working are the personal representatives he sends about the place, such as [former ambassador William C.] Bullitt in the Middle East. These report to him direct, and to our way of thinking are irresponsible meddlers.”3

  When Lord Halifax went to the White House to discuss a draft of the revised Atlantic Charter with President Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins, he too was bewildered. “They are the most amazing people,” he noted in his own diary, “in the way of what seems to us most disorderly and unbusinesslike methods of working. But somehow the result comes out not too badly and they seem quite happy working like that. It would drive me to drink,” the ascetic Catholic reflected. “While the draft [charter] was being retyped Harry Hopkins took me to wait in his bedroom while he dressed, his bedroom serving as bedroom and office. It is the oddest menage I have ever seen.”4