The Definitive FDR

by James Macgregor Burns

  So Roosevelt’s first reactions to Russia’s plight were sympathetic, expedient, and cautious. Certainly he would issue no clarion call for a grand coalition against fascism or even for all-out aid to Russia.

  He did take a couple of immediate steps, partly as trial balloons. He unfroze forty million dollars of Soviet funds in the United States, but made clear to the press that American aid to Russia would be effective only in the event of a long war, and he was not sure of Soviet needs anyway. His other action was a most effective piece of inaction: by failing to invoke the Neutrality law against Russia he insured that Vladivostok would stay open for American shipping. Otherwise he was content to let Churchill take the lead.

  Paradoxically, at the time—and of the highest importance for the future—the first impact of the Nazi invasion of Russia was to push Washington and London closer together behind the Atlantic First strategy. In warning that Hitler’s attack on Russia was no more than a prelude to his assault on Britain, Churchill was establishing an even heavier claim on American aid. In Washington, too, pressure on Roosevelt intensified less to send aid to Russia than to escalate naval operations in the Atlantic. Thirty hours after news of the invasion, Stimson wrote to Roosevelt that he had been doing little but reflecting on the implications of this “almost providential occurrence” for sharply stepped-up Anglo-American operations in the Atlantic. It would take Hitler six weeks to two months to clean up Russia, Knox told the President, and that time must not go by “without striking hard—the sooner the better.” Within forty-eight hours of news of the attack Admiral Stark was telling the Commander in Chief that he should immediately seize the psychological opportunity to start escorting ships openly. Knox stated publicly that the nation had a “god-given chance” to “clear the path across the Atlantic.” Like Stimson, he evidently felt that the Lord was against the Russians, perhaps because the Reds did not recognize Him.

  For a moment the President veered toward such a direct approach. He authorized the Navy to escort American shipping, “including shipping of any nationality, which may join such convoys” west of Iceland. Here was a crucial step—the escorting of ships, inevitably including British ships, which would seek the shelter of a United States Navy-protected convoy. Then the President retreated. The actual operations orders of July 25 postponed the escorting of other than American ships.

  Once again Knox and the other militants were in despair. Why did their chief not take the direct logical step of simply—and openly—protecting all friendly shipping in the West Atlantic? Their chief had his reasons. He was wary both of congressional opposition and of Far Eastern implications. But more than that, he was waiting on events to propel the nation toward full intervention in the Atlantic. Some events a President can create, however, and the biggest event of July was the American occupation of Iceland.

  This project, long in the making, had glinted with complexities. The British had taken over Iceland—a pistol pointed at England, America, and Canada, as Churchill saw it—after its mother country, Denmark, had been overrun in 1940. The British and American military agreed early in 1941 that the United States would defend the island in the event of war. Later, Churchill, in the face of a feared Nazi attack, had hoped that Roosevelt would take it over, partly to relieve British forces, but mainly to hasten combined operations by his and Roosevelt’s navies along the great supply routes of the North Atlantic. The President would act only on the invitation of the Icelandic Prime Minister, but this gentleman wanted American protection without having to embarrass his Nazi-supervised government in Copenhagen by asking for it. Patiently Roosevelt worked out a delicate minuet of invitation and acceptance; on July 7 he was ready to announce that the Navy had just arrived in Iceland in order to supplement and eventually replace the British.

  Roosevelt could have had no doubt as to the seriousness of his move into Iceland. On June 17 Admiral Stark sent Hopkins a copy of his proposed instructions to the 1st Marine Brigade for “operations” in Iceland. The task: “IN COOPERATION WITH THE BRITISH GARRISON, DEFEND ICELAND AGAINST HOSTILE ATTACK.” He wanted the President to approve the order, Stark told Hopkins, because there was so much “potential dynamite” in it. The normal thing to do, he went on, was to put the 4,000 American troops under British command, as the British wanted, but he could not go quite that far. “I have, however, as the President will note, ordered the force to cooperate with the British (in defending a British base operated by the British against the enemy). I realize that this is practically an act of war.” Stark got the words he wanted at the bottom of the page—“OK FDR.”

  The American occupation of Iceland, Churchill told the House of Commons, was an event of “first-rate political and strategic importance”—one of the signal events of the war. Since large American and British traffic would now have to pass through those perilous waters, “I daresay it may be found in practice mutually advantageous for the two navies to assist each other….” So they did, but the nature of the assistance was ambiguous. What were Roosevelt’s ships and planes to do in “escorting, covering, and patrolling, as required by circumstances”? Were they to shoot first? On what grounds? At what targets? Or should they wait to be attacked? Decisive events seemed likely to turn on obscure and fugitive factors—visibility in the brumous Atlantic, communication in heavy seas, perceptions of the foe’s intentions on the part of young commanders perhaps longing for action.

  The uncertainty did not bother Roosevelt, who always thrived on disarray. At the very least he was realizing the simple aim of helping Britain in the North Atlantic; but much more, he was quietly challenging the Nazis on a crucial ocean front—one that they had taken up themselves when Hitler in the early spring had extended the German blockade and combat area to cover Iceland. Roosevelt would not yet order his Navy to shoot on sight; he would not yet openly escort British ships. He would let these things happen by day-to-day chance and necessity in the fog of Atlantic battle.

  If ever there was a point when Roosevelt knowingly crossed some threshold between aiding Britain in order to stay out of war and aiding Britain by joining in the war, July 1941 was probably the time. Others, including Morgenthau and Ickes, had crossed this threshold earlier, and more decisively. If Roosevelt was still waiting on events, he was now nudging them in a direction that would deepen the cold war in the Atlantic and produce a crisis.

  But his tactics were still at the mercy of Hitler’s strategy. And the Führer still saw this situation with unblinking insight. For months Admiral Raeder, apprehensive about the flow of supplies across the Atlantic, had urged him to step up hostilities by seizing the Azores or by attacking American warships and merchantmen or by extending the blockade area. As if to goad his Führer, he drew up a list of twenty unneutral or hostile actions by Washington since the beginning of the war. Hitler was unruffled. Until Operation BARBAROSSA was well under way, he instructed Raeder, he wanted no provocative incident that Roosevelt could seize on to make war. Hitler not only refused to accelerate, but he decelerated. He insisted that Raeder take measures to insure that American vessels not be attacked by mistake—not that he would call a U-boat commander to account, he added, for an honest error.

  Hitler had not been led afield by a passing whim of generosity. He reserved the right, he told Raeder, to deal with the United States “severely” after beating Russia. Meantime the Admiral must restrain his raiders and U-boats. Roosevelt must not have his incident.

  While Hitler concentrated on Russia and played down the Atlantic in the early summer of 1941, Roosevelt concentrated on the Atlantic and played down the Pacific. Hitler was trying to avoid a showdown with the United States while he dealt with Russia; Roosevelt was trying to avoid a showdown with Japan while he engaged Hitler in the Atlantic. Churchill was dedicated to beating Germany—just how, he was not sure. And Japan wavered between moving north and driving south, all the while concentrating on its effort in China. Such were the main thrusts of the chief antagonists in the early summer of 1941, but in the ponde
rously swaying mobile of global strategies secondary stresses could throw the opposing weights out of balance.

  It was no simple matter, Roosevelt knew, to be belligerent in the Atlantic and pacific in the Pacific. The two fronts were linked in numberless ways: Hitler’s hope for Japanese action against Russia; Tokyo’s stake in Hitler’s attack east; Britain’s eastern interests and obligations; Vichy’s vulnerable authority over Indochina; the Dutch presence in the East Indies, all combined with the interests of secondary powers. The President had to calculate how these strains and thrusts were cantilevered by the complex and ever-shifting balances of military power and strategy. One blow could put the whole fragile mobile in motion, but in what direction neither he nor any other leader could foretell. He had to consider, too, the internal forces at work—the rivalries in Tokyo between diplomats and the military, between soldiers and sailors, even between sailors and sailors; the extent of the weariness and disarray of Chiang’s armies; differences among the men of Vichy as to whether they should fight to hold Indochina. And always the differences at home, within Congress, within the administration, within the State Department and even the White House—and among the people, his constituents.

  These were some of the imponderables in the global balance of mid-1941, but Roosevelt did not perceive them in this kind of systematic, categorized frame. He still preferred to deal with situations piecemeal, plucking the day’s problem out of the tangle of events, turning it over, seeing its involvement in wider issues but not trying to deal with them as a whole. He was not seeking to be a grand strategist. In telling reporters one day that the country was not yet making the effort it should, he quoted with relish, from Sandburg, Lincoln’s remarks to some visitors in 1862. The people, Lincoln had said, “have not buckled down to the determination to fight this war through; for they have got the idea into their heads that we are going to get out of this fix somehow by strategy! That’s the word—strategy….”

  If Roosevelt was not making strategy, he was still recognizing priorities—especially the Atlantic over the Pacific. He felt that his policy of “babying” the Japanese along, of keeping them off balance, after two years was holding off a showdown in the Pacific. When Ickes pressed him to cut off oil to Japan, Roosevelt responded that “it is terribly important for the control of the Atlantic for us to help to keep peace in the Pacific. I simply have not got enough Navy to go round—and every little episode in the Pacific means fewer ships in the Atlantic.” One trouble with this simple priority was that it could easily be disrupted by a turn of events. And in early summer 1941 Roosevelt’s Atlantic First policy was nearly overturned, not by a hostile nation, but by Cordell Hull himself.

  By mid-June Hull’s long negotiations with Nomura were producing, phrase by phrase, an elaborate formulation for a détente in the Far East. Some of the most controversial points—especially the basis for a Japanese settlement with Chungking—were nebulous, but Tokyo seemed willing at least to discuss some kind of withdrawal from China. Hull’s note late in June showed no sign of retreat from principles the Secretary had long preached: Wilsonian morality, international justice, equity, free trade, economic nondiscrimination, neighborly friendship.

  All this was pure Hull, and surprised no one. But along with this moralistic note Hull gave Nomura an oral statement that had an unusually sharp edge. After a generous reference to the Ambassador himself it went on to assert that “some Japanese leaders in influential official positions are definitely committed to a course which calls for support of Nazi Germany and its policies of conquest.” So long as Japanese leaders took such a position and aroused the people behind it, Hull went on indignantly, how could there be a settlement?

  The Hull who asked this question was a tired, disappointed, and somewhat ailing man. After all his efforts to restore morality among nations he could not discern in Tokyo any real spirit of compromise. At times a terrible simplifier himself, he perceived Japanese leaders as neatly divided into two groups, one for peace, the other pro-German. Roosevelt, who had a strong streak of moralizing, too, but who coupled it with realistic and even Machiavellian attitudes, was content to let Hull sermonize to both the good guys and the bad guys in Tokyo while he played his main hand in the Atlantic.

  Hull’s note arrived in Tokyo during a sticky period for the Konoye government. Matsuoka, under pressure from Hitler and Ribbentrop, had been urging his colleagues to seize this supreme opportunity to erase the Russian menace in the north. Konoye and most of the military feared Russia’s hardy Siberian troops and distrusted Hitler; why not wait until the Wehrmacht had broken Russia’s back, they still argued, and then move in for the kill? But, insisted Matsuoka, “we can’t take the fruits of victory without having done something. We have to either shed blood or engage in diplomacy. It’s best to shed blood….” First strike north, he urged, then go south. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. His skeptical colleagues preferred to reverse the order. The next objective, it was decided, was Indochina, with its tin and rubber, strategic relation to China, and fine possibilities as a jumping-off spot for further expansion south. On July 2 the Imperial Conference ratified this plan, at the same time deciding to prepare for—though it did not hope for—war with America and Britain.

  “…The Japs are having a real drag-down and knock-out fight among themselves,” Roosevelt wrote to Ickes on July 1, “and have been for the past week—trying to decide which way they are going to jump—attack Russia, attack the South Seas (thus throwing in their lot definitely with Germany) or whether they will sit on the fence and be more friendly with us. No one knows what the decision will be….”

  At this point a desperate Matsuoka seized almost with relief on Hull’s provocative words. An outrageous communication, he proclaimed to his colleagues. It was inexcusable for Nomura to transmit such a statement. America was seeking to destroy Japanese leadership in East Asia. Roosevelt was a demagogue; he was trying to lead his country into war.

  The stage seemed set for a slandered Matsuoka to improve his shaky position through a bellicose policy north and south. But here surprising events intervened. By now Konoye and his colleagues had about enough of the impulsive, talkative Foreign Minister. His spring trip now seemed a fiasco. When Matsuoka stiffly rejected Hull’s note without at the same time sending an agreed-on counterproposal, Konoye, playing his hand carefully, asked his Cabinet to resign; the Prime Minister then reappointed the same members except for Matsuoka. The new Foreign Minister was Admiral Teijiro Toyoda, a friend of Nomura’s who was expected to have Washington’s confidence. Hull also eased matters by agreeing to the return of his note.

  The moment seemed ripe for a détente, but it was already too late. Tokyo was still set on the seizure of Indochina. Washington knew of the planned move because its cryptographers, in a brilliant feat, had broken a key Japanese code. In mid-July Tokyo put pressure on Vichy to allow Japanese troops into Indochina, with the right to use airfields and naval bases at Saigon and elsewhere. Admiral Jean-François Darlan, lacking support from Berlin, capitulated. Forty thousand Japanese troops moved into southern Indochina and quickly took control of the country.

  Now it was Washington’s turn to wax indignant. Hull feared that Japan was breaking forth on a general program of expansion. Welles told Nomura to his face—and stated to the public next day—that Japan was bent on a policy of force and conquest. The Cabinet militants in Washington seized on Japan’s move to urge drastic action.

  Now the President intervened. Flanked by Welles and Stark, he told Nomura late in July that he had allowed the continued export of oil to Japan—despite the outcries of oil-starved motorists on the East Coast—in order to prevent a showdown in the Pacific; if Japan now tried to seize East Indies oil, the Dutch would resist, Britain would help them—and a grave situation would result. But if Japan would reconsider its occupation of Indochina, the United States would combine with other Western nations and with Japan to neutralize Indochina in the manner of Switzerland. Nomura, who had told Welles that
he personally deplored the move into Indochina, was interested but pessimistic. Roosevelt ended by warning the envoy that Hitler was bent on conquering the world, not merely Europe or Africa.

  The next day Roosevelt froze all Japanese assets in the United States, as well as all Chinese, the latter at Chiang’s request. He notified Tokyo that the Panama Canal would be closed for repairs, and he took the long-planned step of mustering the Philippine military forces into United States service under Lieutenant General Douglas MacArthur. Newspapers rejoiced at the President’s forthright action. Actually he planned to proceed cautiously in denying licenses; he would not cut off all gasoline, for example, but only high octane. His chief, Ickes grumbled, was still unwilling to draw the noose tight. He preferred “to slip the noose around Japan’s neck and gave it a jerk now and then.” To Stimson the President’s fear that cutting off oil altogether would start a war was the “same old rot.” Stark and the Navy planners, on the other hand, had warned Roosevelt that an embargo would probably bring more Japanese aggression. So if the President held a noose in one hand he still held out an olive twig in the other.

  Tokyo’s first reaction to the freeze was bellicose. Toyoda warned Grew that if the United States made any hostile move toward Indochina, “on the exclusively theoretical ground that it contradicts general doctrinaire principles which the American government embrace”—a slap at Hull—Tokyo would not be able to suppress an outburst of nationalist resentment, which was already aroused over American aid to China. Grew now saw the “vicious circle of reprisals and counter-reprisals” heading toward war. No response came to Roosevelt’s neutralization proposal.

  The crucial question always facing Roosevelt was whether firmness or conciliation would deter the Japanese. Now came a turn that seemed to justify the freeze. The moderates in Tokyo had been surprised by Washington’s response to the move south. They, too, were waiting on events: America was angry, Russia was fighting hard, Britain was still intact. They knew that Japan could not desert the Axis, quit China, or pull back from Indochina, but were other compromises possible? The Emperor and his advisers, Konoye, and key Navy leaders began to press during August for serious counterproposals to Washington. Konoye toyed with the idea of a dramatic personal meeting with Roosevelt, perhaps in Hawaii.