The Definitive FDR

by James Macgregor Burns

  Such was the dismal posture of domestic affairs when Hitler once again seized the world spotlight.

  At dawn on April 9 German soldiers struck across the naked Danish border. Half an hour later a dozen German destroyers suddenly emerged out of a snowstorm off the Norwegian port of Narvik, torpedoed Norwegian gunboats, and landed two thousand infantrymen. At ports along the Norwegian coast more troops were soon pouring out of barges and troopships. Danish independence was blotted out in a few hours; in two days the main ports of Norway were in the Nazi grip.

  In the first fogged hours of battle it seemed that Britain and France might withstand their enemy. Indeed, the Allies themselves had been planning to occupy key areas of Norway. They were too late. The Germans had laid their plans with thoroughness and imagination; they carried them out with a brilliant mixture of power, precision, ruthlessness, treachery, deception, and surprise. The Allied countereffort was improvised, ill-planned, and inadequate. British troops landed, jousted fecklessly with the enemy, and withdrew. Amid bitter criticism Chamberlain prepared to resign; Churchill would soon take his place. Then, while the Allies were still reeling from the blow, Hitler struck again.

  On May 10 a holocaust of German fire and steel began rolling across the Dutch and Belgian frontiers. Parachutists seized airfields, siren-blowing dive bombers roared through the spring air. Behind the German assault troops one hundred and twenty infantry divisions and six thousand warplanes were poised for battle. And somewhere behind this mighty force was the demonical genius, Hitler. Proclaiming the start of the battle, the Fuehrer told his troops that it would “decide the destiny of the German people for a thousand years.” Ready for the attack, a half-million Allied troops moved up behind the Belgian troops.

  Advancing with blinding speed, massed German tanks and dive bombers speared through Allied lines and cut around the Allied flanks in great encircling sweeps. Motorized troops and infantry poured through the gaps, converting Belgium into a vast trap for the defenders. Within five days German tanks burst through the lightly defended Ardennes hills and began their lightning dash across northern France. On May 15 Prime Minister Churchill, writing as “Former Naval Person,” sent an urgent message to Roosevelt: “The scene has darkened swiftly.… The small countries are simply smashed up, one by one, like matchwood.… Mussolini will hurry in to share the loot.… We expect to be attacked here ourselves.…” The next few days brought news of disaster after disaster.

  Amid this “hurricane of events,” as he called it, Roosevelt showed his usual qualities amid crisis: he was serene, confident, alert, ebullient, almost nonchalant. The day after Churchill’s letter he drove up to Capitol Hill and asked a cheering Congress for almost a billion dollars for increased defense. He electrified the lawmakers by setting a goal of “at least 50,000 planes a year.” The President’s face was grave; reporters could see the whiteness of his knuckles as he gripped the speaker’s stand; but his voice was resolute as he detailed War and Navy defense needs. Moving quickly on a tide of public opinion Congress soon voted these funds and more.

  Pouring through the Ardennes gap German armor curved west toward the Channel, and pinned masses of French and British troops against the sea. The retreat to Dunkerque was on. Huge crowds stood in Times Square, quiet and somber, watching the appalling news bulletins flash around the Times Tower. On the night of May 26 the President sat with a small group in his study. He mechanically mixed cocktails; there was no laughter or small talk. Dispatch after dispatch came in, and Roosevelt went through them quickly. “All bad, all bad,” he muttered as he handed them on to Eleanor Roosevelt. Grimly he faced the microphones later in the evening. The last two weeks, he said, had shattered many illusions of American isolation. But it was no time for fear or panic. “On this Sabbath evening, in our homes in the midst of our American families, let us calmly consider what we have done and what we must do.” The nation must further step up its defense, modernize its arms, enlarge its factories. The “great social gains” of the past few years must be maintained. The Fifth Column must be fought, forces of discord and division overcome. “We defend and we build a way of life, not for America alone, but for all mankind. Ours is a high duty, a noble task.”

  It was one thing to issue such a clarion call—it was something else to grapple with the cruel dilemma that faced the President during these weeks.

  Terribly pressed, British and French leaders were naturally turning for help to the great rich democracy across the seas. In his letter of May 15 Churchill warned Roosevelt of a “Nazified Europe established with astonishing swiftness” and asked him for forty or fifty old destroyers, several hundred of the latest types of aircraft, antiaircraft equipment and ammunition, and a visit by American naval units to Irish ports. The President responded as best he dared. He was expediting the sending of as much military aid as possible, but he would have to have permission from Congress to send destroyers, and this did not seem the right moment to ask for it. The American fleet was concentrated at Hawaii, watching lest the Japanese take some advantage of the crisis.

  As Allied defenses collapsed, British and French appeals became ever more frantic. Churchill warned that if England fell, new leaders might arise who could bargain off the British fleet to the Germans to gain a better peace. Ambassador Bullitt passed on a French plea for a statement by Roosevelt that the United States could not permit a French defeat, and the President had to telephone Bullitt to say that “anything of this kind is out of the question.” Searching for war material and means of sending it, the President encountered a “nightmare of frustration,” as Welles called it. Everything seemed short. The Navy and War Departments naturally coveted the new war equipment flowing out of factories. Legal advisers doubted that the government could sell equipment to the Allies lawfully. Secretary of War Woodring and other high officials opposed “frittering away” vital material overseas. Congress and country were wholeheartedly in favor of more defense, but divided over helping the Allies at our own expense.

  The President scraped up whatever equipment he could, but it was pitifully inadequate in the face of German might. And he shied away from strong declarations and even from sending Churchill destroyers.

  Roosevelt’s diplomatic efforts were equally abortive. During these titanic events he sent plea after plea to Mussolini to stay out of the war. The President even offered to serve as an intermediary in approaching the Allies to satisfy Italy’s “legitimate aspirations” in the Mediterranean. But as Hitler’s armies advanced the Duce yearned to be in on the kill. Just before the President left Washington on June 10 to speak at the University of Virginia, a message came in from Bullitt that Italy would declare war on France that afternoon and that the French were terming it contemptuously a “stab in the back.” Indignant and worried, the President set out for Charlottesville with his wife and Franklin, Jr., who was graduating from the Virginia Law School. His mind kept going over the phrase; as he said later, discretion told him not to use it and “the old red blood” said, “Use it.” Blood won out. That night, after a long account of his efforts to hold Mussolini, he said in measured tones: “On this tenth day of June, 1940, the hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor.” The President went on to declare American policy in this critical hour:

  “In our American unity, we will pursue two obvious and simultaneous causes: we will extend to the opponents of force the material resources of this nation, and at the same time we will harness and speed up the use of those resources in order that we ourselves in the Americas may have equipment and training equal to the task of any emergency and every defense.…

  “Signs and signals call for speed—full speed ahead.”

  Full speed was vital, for France was near collapse. In a last desperate gesture Premier Reynaud asked Roosevelt to intervene with force, or at least the threat of force. The President could only answer that the government was redoubling its efforts to send material. Roosevelt was so fearful of American opinion that he turned dow
n Churchill’s request that even this weak reply be made public to stiffen the French. Again Reynaud, who was now surrounded by ministers demanding an armistice, implored Roosevelt to lead America into the war; otherwise, he warned, France would “go under like a drowning man.” At the same time Churchill warned that continued French resistance from overseas depended on the President’s answer. Roosevelt hesitated. Then his answer was dispatched. He expressed his admiration for French resistance. He extended his “utmost sympathy” over developments. He was sending more and more material, but, he ended, as for military commitments—“Only the Congress can make such commitments.”

  Only Congress. And in the middle of this great tide of affairs a little episode reminded the President of the shoals and reefs on Capitol Hill. Chairman Walsh of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, an Irishman and an isolationist, suddenly discovered that twenty new motor torpedo boats were to be sent to Britain. Navy Secretary Charles Edison warned the President that Walsh was in a towering rage, “threatening to force legislation prohibiting sale of anything,” and the whole committee was in a lather. .Reluctantly Roosevelt called off the deal.

  By the time the President’s last message reached Reynaud the next day, June 16, the premier was at the end of his rope. That evening he resigned his office, and Marshal Petain, who had been demanding an armistice, began to form a new cabinet. Five days later the French signed the armistice in the forest of Compiegne, where the French had accepted German capitulation twenty-two years before. Present was the exultant Fuehrer. As correspondents watched, Hitler glanced with burning contempt at the French monument celebrating the German defeat of 1918. In a “magnificent gesture of defiance,” the Fuehrer snapped his hands on his hips, planted his feet wide apart, and arched his shoulders: 1918 had been avenged.

  “WE WANT ROOSEVELT!”

  Incredibly, during these feverish weeks, Roosevelt kept his fingers on the political situation at home. He followed closely the fights for state delegations. He jubilated over the victories scored by Roosevelt slates in California, Texas, and elsewhere. He discussed convention arrangements and platform planks with Ickes, Jackson, Douglas, Corcoran, and other third-term boosters. He watched the spirited Republican race among Dewey, Taft, Vandenberg, and a late entrant named Wendell Willkie. But he did all these things without revealing his own plans even to White House intimates. Hopkins, probably speaking for the President, asked Early to instruct all members of the administration to make no statements on the third term.

  As the crisis deepened, Roosevelt’s popular backing mounted sharply. Millions of Americans forgot their concern for the third-term tradition as they instinctively rallied behind their leader against the threat outside. But not all Americans, by any means— and there was one group whose opposition especially worried the President. At a time when the nation might soon be turning to its young men for succor and sacrifice, petitions against defense and aid to the Allies were showering the White House from colleges and youth groups. “Shrimps” was the best word for these young people, Roosevelt said in exasperation, but he felt concerned enough about the problem to let Eleanor Roosevelt arrange a special evening meeting early in June at the White House with the leaders of the American Youth Congress.

  It was a poignant scene—the youth leaders, white and colored, grouped in the East Room, stonily polite; the President calm and genial despite sickening reports received from France during the day; Mrs. Roosevelt trying in her gracious way to establish rapport between generations; Hopkins sitting by, pale, taut, impatient at young people’s failure to understand his chief’s problems. At the start Roosevelt tried to create a common bond with the group. He mentioned newspaper opposition to the “radical” New Deal; he explained his Spanish Civil War policy as the result of the French and British fear of war; he said that the issue was democracy versus other forms of government. Then the questions came, fast and sharp.

  What about democracy in the South, asked a conferee, where half the people don’t vote? Roosevelt: “What are we going to do about it? … You cannot get it [solved] in a year or two.” A Negro: What about segregation in the armed forces? The President turned to Hopkins, who said that even among Negroes there were two schools of thought on the matter. A Midwest YMCA leader: Why so much emphasis on national defense and so little on social defense? Roosevelt: “It is a little bit difficult in our system of government to pursue two equally important things with equal emphasis at the same time. That is darned hard.” Then a long speech from the floor: “Something serious has happened” that had caused the President to forget the first line of defense—social security, education, housing, clothing, food. Billions of dollars for guns and battleships—and nothing for the people. It was not enough to blame Congress. Where was the President’s leadership? “We are very—shall I say sick?—yes, but at the same time, we are a little bit angry that the President and the members of his Cabinet have not carried this fight once again to the people!”

  The President looked at him. “Young man, I think you are very sincere. Have you read Carl Sandburg’s Lincoln?”

  No, the young man had not.

  “I think the impression was that Lincoln was a pretty sad man,” Roosevelt went on, “because he could not do all he wanted to do at one time, and I think you will find examples where Lincoln had to compromise to gain a little something. He had to compromise to make a few gains. Lincoln was one of those unfortunate people called a ‘politician’ but he was a politician who was practical enough to get a great many things for this country. He was a sad man because he couldn’t get it all at once. And nobody can.

  “Maybe you would make a much better President than I have. Maybe you will, some day. If you ever sit here, you will learn that you cannot, just by shouting from the housetops, get what you want all the time.”

  If sections of organized youth felt deserted and bitter, there was another group that had no mixed feelings about the President. By June 1940 hundreds of Democratic party politicos were clamoring for the President to run. He already had enough delegate votes to win the nomination easily. Then, late in June, he strengthened his position immensely by one of his quick strokes.

  On the eve of the Republican convention in Philadelphia, the President appointed two eminent Republicans to his cabinet—Henry L. Stimson, seventy-three years old, a militant internationalist and a cabinet member under Taft and Hoover, as Secretary of War, and Frank Knox, Chicago newspaper publisher, Landon’s running mate in 1936, and one of Uncle Ted’s Rough Riders, as Secretary of the Navy. The Republicans might have ignored the matter, or they might have congratulated Roosevelt on undertaking to start his administration toward the change that the Republicans would complete in November. As Roosevelt probably anticipated, they did neither. Hysterical outcries rent the Philadelphia air, and there was even talk about reading the two renegades out of their party.

  “Dirty politics!” the Republicans shouted at Roosevelt. Actually the President had been planning since the outbreak of war to make his cabinet bipartisan. He had hoped to appoint Landon as well as Knox, but this plan repeatedly fell afoul of Landon’s refusal to come in unless Roosevelt publicly opposed a third term. Several other factors delayed the cabinet shuffle: Roosevelt’s reluctance to oust Harry Woodring as Secretary of War; his concern that Knox’s appointment might lead to difficulties with the publisher’s old enemy, Boss Kelly; the arrangements that had to be made with Boss Hague of New Jersey to nominate Secretary of the Navy Edison for governor of New Jersey. When Landon in mid-May still demanded the third-term disclaimer, Roosevelt seized on a suggestion of Frankfurter’s to choose Stimson. He then waited two weeks and announced the appointments just as the Republican convention was getting under way. As usual, Roosevelt’s timing was perfect; the date fitted both the needs of the crisis abroad and politics at home.

  The President followed with interest the turbulent Republican convention. For several ballots Dewey and Taft led the pack; then, with the help of the roaring, chanting galleries, W
endell Willkie surged ahead to an electrifying sixth-ballot victory. A utilities magnate as Republican candidate! “Nothing so extraordinary has ever happened in American politics,” Ickes exclaimed. The convention seemed to arouse Roosevelt’s militancy. He told his cabinet that he would break down the aura surrounding Willkie by tieing him in with the idea of the corporate state.

  Now at last, with foreign and domestic events coming into focus, the President could act. On July 3 he had Hull in for lunch. The secretary of state immediately noticed a whole change of manner. To be sure, Roosevelt still deprecated the idea of running for a third term. But he talked in a “sort of impatient, incredulous tone” of the pressure on him not to let the party down. He explored Hull’s weak points as a candidate. His guarded tone convinced the old Tennessean that the President would run again.

  Although surprised and mystified, Hull let the matter drop. It was too late for him to act on his own even if he wished to run. Garner, too, after his drubbings by Roosevelt in presidential primaries, was now all but out of the race. There was still Farley, though, to be reckoned with. The big, bald politico could not win. But how much damage could he do to the President? By July, Farley was in a mood to do damage. He was bitter over Roosevelt’s refusal to tell him of his plans, angry over Roosevelt’s devious behavior on the issue of a Catholic candidate, and indignant above all over Roosevelt’s failure to declare himself and let another Democrat have his chance at the presidency. In this mood Farley saw his chief at Hyde Park on a broiling day in early July. The photographers found two laughing, joking old comrades, but when they left the atmosphere quickly cooled. After desultory conversation the President shrugged his shoulders and waved toward his library and hilltop retreat.