Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood With Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour

by Lynne Olson

  Yet for all the bonhomie of that initial wartime encounter and Churchill’s outward display of satisfaction at its conclusion, its outcome was a crushing disappointment for the British. Before crossing the Atlantic, Churchill had told a group of Dominion prime ministers that he did not think Roosevelt would have called the conference unless he was prepared to enter the war. “I would rather have a declaration of war now and no supplies for six months than double the supplies and no declaration,” he had declared to his associates. At Churchill’s first meeting with the president, Elliott Roosevelt quoted him as saying: “You’ve got to come in beside us! If you don’t declare war without waiting for them to strike the first blow, they’ll strike it after we’ve gone under, and their first blow will be their last as well! … You must come in, if you are to survive!”

  The president, however, rejected Churchill’s appeal, explaining that Congress and the American public were in no mood to enter the conflict. Indeed, during the week of the Placentia Bay meeting, legislation mandating a one-year extension for a limited military draft, instituted in 1940, came perilously close to defeat in the House of Representatives, surviving by only one vote.

  To lessen the sting of his rebuff, Roosevelt promised Churchill that the United States would become more “provocative” in the Atlantic by providing armed escorts for British as well as American merchant ships as far as Iceland. He also made clear that “he would look for an ‘incident’ which would justify him in opening hostilities.” In addition, the president promised to ask for another $5 billion for Lend-Lease from Congress and to expedite the shipment of planes and tanks to Britain. In return, he persuaded the prime minister to join him in proclaiming the goals and principles that should govern a postwar world, including the right of all nations to self-determination. Dubbed the Atlantic Charter, this declaration of war aims was the only publicly announced result of the conference.

  After returning home, Churchill glumly wrote to his son: “The President, for all his warm heart and good intentions, is thought by many of his admirers to move with public opinion rather than to lead and form it.” The prime minister’s chagrin over the collapse of his hopes was shared by many of his countrymen. “The flood is raging … and all America will do is give us dry clothes if we reach the shore,” the Times remarked. “We understand her attitude … but we think it would be no strain on her resources to wade in, at least up to her waist. We say this because we are frankly disappointed with the American contribution to the rescue.”

  When Roosevelt held a press conference to assure the American people that the Newfoundland meeting had brought the United States no closer to war, Churchill dashed off a telegram to Hopkins about the disheartening effect of the president’s statement on Parliament and the British public. “I don’t know what will happen if England is fighting alone when 1942 comes,” the prime minister’s cable concluded.

  BUT WHILE THE meeting might have ended in frustration for Churchill, it had a handsome payoff for Harriman. Thanks to Hopkins’s intercession, he managed to get himself appointed chief U.S. delegate of a high-level Anglo-American mission to Britain’s new and very reluctant ally, the Soviet Union.

  Immediately after the German invasion of Russia, Roosevelt had been somewhat cautious about supporting Churchill’s promise of all-out aid to Stalin. He had no doubt that the Soviets were in great need of such help: in the first few weeks of the onslaught, the Wehrmacht overran Soviet territory as swiftly as it had done in Poland and Western Europe. By August, the Russian army was close to collapse, its troops lacking everything from tanks and planes to rifles and boots. But there was considerable opposition in the United States, particularly among Catholics, to any idea of aid for the Communist dictatorship; many Americans believed that the Nazis and Communists should be left to destroy each other. George Marshall and other military leaders warned the president that help for the Russians would result in a significant cutback in military resources for both the United States and Britain.

  Nonetheless, as long as the Russians held out—and they were holding out much longer than anyone in the West believed was possible—they provided Britain with a respite from German bombing and a possible invasion. The calamitous May 10 raid on London was the last major enemy attack on Britain in 1941, thanks to the Luftwaffe’s new mission to fight the Soviets. In London’s East End, windows in shops and flats were adorned with pro-Russian signs, one of which read: “They Gave Us Quiet Nights.” For his part, Roosevelt believed that, in addition to helping Britain, continued Russian resistance might also take some of the pressure off the United States to enter the war. By the time he met Churchill in August, the president had already decided to send Stalin all the help he needed.

  When the two leaders agreed at Placentia Bay to dispatch a joint delegation to Moscow to work out an aid agreement with the Russians, Hopkins, at the behest of Harriman, nominated the Lend-Lease expediter as chief American representative. In making the pitch for his friend, Hopkins noted that Harriman had negotiated with the Soviets some twenty years earlier over manganese concessions. But Hopkins’s depiction of the former New York businessman as a skilled, seasoned negotiator was far from accurate: he had gone into those talks with little knowledge of Russia and its people and had been outsmarted by the fledgling Soviet government, which had withheld the richest manganese deposits for itself and later forced Harriman to sell out. He also failed to mention to Hopkins or anyone else that he still had more than $1 million in Russian investments, including over $500,000 worth of Soviet government notes from the liquidation of his manganese contract. Obviously, Harriman had his own personal reasons for making sure that the Western Allies did everything in their power to help the Russians ward off defeat.

  His British counterpart for the Moscow mission was Lord Beaverbrook, who, like Harriman, had no experience in diplomatic negotiations. Yet, when they arrived in the Soviet capital, Harriman and Beaverbrook excluded their countries’ ambassadors and other Soviet experts from the talks with Stalin, himself a tough-minded and wily bargainer. The two ambassadors—Laurence Steinhardt of the United States and Sir Stafford Cripps of Britain—had considerable experience in dealing with the Soviets and few illusions about the government’s willingness to cooperate with Britain and America. Both envoys urged Harriman and Beaverbrook to demand, at the very least, a quid pro quo from Stalin—detailed information about Soviet production, resources, and defense plans (all of which Britain had been forced to provide to the United States before it received its aid) in exchange for weapons and supplies.

  The delegation heads, however, rejected the recommendations out of hand. Their objective, Harriman told Steinhardt, was to “give and give and give, with no expectation of any return.” Not surprisingly, Stalin, who delivered scornful lectures to Harriman and Beaverbrook about the paucity of Western help thus far, was in full agreement with that aim. The Russian leader was given virtually everything he asked for—a cornucopia of weapons, trucks, planes, supplies, and raw materials—with no strings attached.

  As he left Moscow, an exultant Harriman was sure that the joint mission had helped eradicate any “suspicion that has existed between the Soviet government and our two governments.” Others in the delegation were not so sure. Among them was General Hastings “Pug” Ismay military secretary to the British War Cabinet and Churchill’s liaison with his chiefs of staff, who later wrote: “No one will deny that it was in our own interests to give the Russians the wherewithal…. But it was surely unnecessary and even unwise to allow them to bully us in the way that they did.”

  Yet, despite the severe sacrifices that would result from transferring so much aid to the Soviets, especially for Britain, Churchill and Roosevelt approved the deal. From the first weeks of the invasion, Stalin had made demands on the British that were impossible to meet at the time—a new front in northern France, for example, and the dispatch of twenty-five to thirty British divisions to Russia. Both Western leaders were afraid that if a massive amount of weapons a
nd supplies was not sent immediately, Stalin might make a separate peace with Hitler—a view that the Russian leader did nothing to discourage.

  In his report to the president on the Moscow meeting, Harriman declared that Ambassador Steinhardt was no longer effective in the Soviet capital because of his skepticism of the Russians and recommended that he be replaced. Roosevelt followed his suggestion. Having helped get rid of Steinhardt, Harriman then maneuvered himself into the role of unofficial liaison between the White House, Downing Street, and the Kremlin. It was the defining role of his life, one on which he would capitalize for the next four years and beyond.

  AT A TIME WHEN THE U.S. GOVERNMENT WAS STILL RELUCTANT to put its servicemen in harm’s way, a memorial service was held at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London to honor one young American who already had lost his life in the fight against Germany. In the crypt of the bomb-scarred cathedral, several hundred people, among them Gil Winant, gathered on July 4, 1941, for the unveiling of a plaque in memory of William Fiske III, who, in the words engraved on the plaque, “died that England might live.”

  The first U.S. citizen to join the Royal Air Force and the first American pilot killed in action during the war in Europe, Billy Fiske had been born in New York but spent his adolescence and young adulthood in Europe. Addicted to speed and adventure, Fiske, the son of a wealthy stockbroker, drove a supercharged Bentley and, in his teens and early twenties, had twice won Olympic gold medals in the daredevil sport of bobsledding. He was, said one friend, “very much the golden boy—good looks, wealth, charm, intelligence—he had it all.” A Cambridge graduate, he told his British friends in the 1930s that, if war came, “I want to be in it with you—from the start.”

  But when the conflict did break out in September 1939, the twenty-eight-year-old Fiske found that if he honored his pledge, he would be considered an outlaw in his own country. In its desperate attempt to keep the United States out of war, the American government had enacted a series of regulations that, among other things, made it illegal to join a warring power’s military service, travel on a belligerent ship, or use a U.S. passport to go to a foreign country to enlist. Those who were caught were subject to a $10,000 fine, several years’ imprisonment, and loss of their American citizenship.

  Bypassing the regulations by falsely claiming Canadian citizenship, Fiske joined the RAF less than three weeks after Britain’s declaration of war against Germany. He was posted to 601 Squadron, known as the “Millionaires’ Squadron” because of all the affluent young men, several of whom were prewar friends of Fiske’s, in its ranks. The squadron’s pilots lined their uniform jackets with red silk and their overcoats with mink, and won and lost hundreds of pounds in poker games while waiting to fly and fight. “They were arrogant and looked terrific, and probably the other squadrons hated their guts,” Fiske’s wife, Rose, remarked. But they also were expert pilots, and even though Fiske only had ninety hours of solo flying time to his credit when he joined the RAF, he soon matched them in skill. “It was unbelievable how good he was,” Sir Archibald Hope, 601’s commanding officer, later noted. “He picked it up so fast…. He was a natural as a fighter pilot.”

  On August 16, 1940, during one of the Luftwaffe’s heaviest attacks on RAF airfields in the Battle of Britain, Fiske’s Hurricane was hit; despite severe burns, he managed to nurse his badly damaged plane back to his base. Two days later, he died of his injuries. “He had no obligation to fight for this country,” declared Britain’s air minister, Sir Archibald Sinclair, at the St. Paul’s ceremony. “He was not an Englishman…. He gave his life for his friends and for the common cause of free men everywhere, the cause of liberty.” Sitting in the audience that day, dressed in RAF blue, were several of the other Americans who took part in the Battle of Britain. In all, seven U.S. citizens flew in the battle, joining more than five hundred other non-British pilots, including Poles, Czechs, Belgians, French, New Zealanders, and South Africans. Of all the members of this polyglot air force, only the Americans were breaking the laws of their country by flying.

  By the time of the ceremony honoring Fiske, thousands of Americans had disregarded their country’s prohibitions and enlisted on Britain’s side. About three hundred were flying in the RAF, dozens more had joined the British Army, and well over five thousand were in the Canadian forces in Britain. While most were young and adventure-loving, several dozen were paunchy, gray-haired, and affluent, with professions ranging from investment banking to the law to architecture. Longtime residents of London, they were members of the only American unit in Britain’s Home Guard, the civilian volunteers who were to protect Britain in case of German invasion.

  The Home Guard was created in June 1940 after the British retreat from Dunkirk and the fall of France. More than a million men answered the call, including some seventy American businessmen and professionals living in the capital. “Our homes are here, and we wanted to show in some practical way that we were ready, with the British, to share the responsibility of defending their soil,” said Wade Hayes, an investment banker and commander of the group. “Also, we wanted to give a lead to the people back home.”

  Initially, however, the Americans faced stiff opposition from both the British and their own government. British regulations barred foreigners from joining the Home Guard, and Joseph Kennedy was livid that these pillars of the American expatriate community not only refused to return home but planned to fight on behalf of the British. The ambassador warned Hayes, who had served on General John Pershing’s staff in World War I, that creation of the unit “might lead to all United States citizens being shot as franc-tireurs [guerrilla fighters] when the Germans occupied London.” Neither Kennedy’s admonition nor his threat to see that Hayes’s U.S. citizenship was revoked had any effect. In the end, George VI came to the Americans’ rescue, issuing a special order making them eligible for membership in the Guard.

  Like other Home Guardsmen throughout the country, the Americans drilled several times a week—after work and on the weekends. But in sharp contrast to their British counterparts, who trained with pitchforks and kitchen knives tied to broomsticks, the U.S. expatriates, using their own money, armed themselves with Winchester automatic rifles, grenades, and Thompson submachine guns, which they obtained from the United States. The envy of British units for their sophisticated weaponry and their eighteen camouflaged armored cars, the Americans, thanks to their Tommy guns, were known as “the gangsters.”

  In the British military, there was considerable skepticism, to put it mildly, about the effectiveness of the skimpily trained Home Guard in helping to stop a German invasion. But in July 1940, the Americans proved to the military brass that their unit, at least, shouldn’t be taken lightly. During training maneuvers, the U.S. businessmen captured the headquarters of an army brigade protecting a key airbase outside London, guarded by some five hundred regular troops wielding Bren guns and heavy machine guns. Rushing and overpowering a sentry, the Americans tossed tear gas bombs through the windows of the headquarters, knocked down the door, dismantled the switchboard, trussed up several British officers, and seized secret maps and other documents. The British protested that the assault came too early. The Americans replied that they had attacked at the first moment permissible under the maneuvers’ guidelines. “The Germans,” they added, “will not wait either.”

  THE CAPITULATION OF France also brought the first influx of American pilots to Britain. Not yet aware of how serious their offense was regarded by the U.S. powers-that-be, three of the earliest volunteers checked in at the American embassy in London in June 1940, only to be attacked by Kennedy for “jeopardizing U.S. neutrality” and ordered back to the United States on the next ship. Instead, they headed straight for the British Air Ministry, enlisting in time to fly in the Battle of Britain.

  The Americans who joined the RAF had grown up in the age of Charles Lindbergh, when the mere idea of aviation captivated young people all over the world. Most of them already were experienced fliers. Some had duste
d crops for a living; some were barnstormers and stunt pilots; one was a pilot for the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio in Los Angeles, whose job had been to ferry movie stars and other Hollywood VIPs around California. They had come to England for a variety of reasons, but most had one trait in common: an addiction to excitement, danger, and speed. A sizable number had tried to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Corps but could not meet the strict physical qualifications; the RAF, about to face the Luftwaffe onslaught, could not afford to be so discriminating. Virtually all of them were anxious to fly the hot new high-performance British fighters—the Hurricanes and Spitfires—they had heard and read so much about.

  A desire for romance and adventure also played its part. Some Americans wanted to follow in the footsteps of the Lafayette Escadrille, the dashing band of U.S. aviators who signed up to fight with the French in World War I. Others had seen the Howard Hughes movie Hell’s Angels, depicting Americans in the British air force during the 1914–18 war, and they visualized themselves taking the same role in this conflict. Here was their chance “to play opposite alluring platinum blondes like Jean Harlow that they had seen in the picture,” noted James Childers, a U.S. colonel who wrote a book during the war about Americans in the RAF. This was the next “Big Show … and they, like all normal boys, wanted to see it, to be a part of it. They didn’t want to miss anything.”

  A few, however, volunteered for more idealistic reasons. A number of them recalled after the war that Ed Murrow’s broadcasts had inspired them to volunteer. “I felt that this was America’s war as much as England’s and France’s,” said one Battle of Britain veteran. Another young American had been aboard the Athenia, the British passenger liner torpedoed by a German submarine in September 1939 while en route to New York. Feeling “an overwhelming fury” toward Germany over the loss of more than one hundred of his fellow passengers, he returned to Britain and joined the RAF. Still another U.S. citizen enlisted after his grandmother and grandfather were killed in the German invasion of Holland.