A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror

by Larry Schweikart

  When it came to applying taxes and regulations, however, the administration took care not to unnecessarily cripple or alienate business leaders and entrepreneurs. Some obvious restrictions were necessary. War-critical products such as oil, gasoline, cotton, rubber, tin, and aluminum were rationed. (A popular phrase of the day, and one that made its way into most cartoons and movies, was “Is this trip really necessary?”) Various food items, especially meat and coffee, also went on the ration lists. Civilians enthusiastically pitched in with tin can drives, rounded up mountains of old tires for recycling, and collected used toothpaste tubes for their aluminum content.

  To manage the war production and procurement system, Roosevelt named Sears, Roebuck president Donald M. Nelson as the head of the War Production Board (WPB), which coordinated the effort. The WPB immediately ordered all civilian car and truck production halted to convert the factories to the manufacturing of tanks and armored personnel carriers. In theory, the WPB was to have exercised the same types of powers that the WIB under Bernard Baruch had in World War I. But Nelson was not Baruch, and the demands of this war were much steeper.

  Realizing the nation needed a single source of direction for the production effort, in 1943 Roosevelt created the Office of War Management (OWM), headed by former Supreme Court Justice (and FDR crony) James Byrnes. Byrnes soon demonstrated such great access to the president that people referred to him as the president’s assistant. Byrnes got the job done, allowing larger companies to make as much as they could, with profits tied strictly to numbers of units produced. The government had little regard for the cost of specific items—only performance and delivery mattered. The United States was rich enough to survive postwar debt and inflation, but there would be no surviving a victorious Hitler.

  War costs demanded the largest loan the American government had ever received from its people, in the form of war bonds. Bond drives resulted in a deluge of money for the war. Yet it paled beside the demands for cash—$8 billion a month!—to combat the Axis. Between 1941 and 1945 the national debt skyrocketed, from $48 billion to $247 billion. As a share of GNP measured in constant dollars, this represented a 120–fold increase over precrash 1929 debt levels.29 This debt growth illustrated one reason isolationsists were wary of war in the first place, and it also confirmed their fears about the rise of a permanent engorged bureaucracy.30

  In another area, that of domestic surveillance and intelligence gathering, people sacrificed liberty for the war effort. Keeping tabs on the enemy and foreign agents led the government to nearly triple the budget of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in just two years. Domestic surveillance increased as the attorney general authorized extensive wiretapping in cases of espionage. A new propaganda agency, the Office of War Information, coordinated the information campaign. The Joint Chiefs of Staff also needed information on the enemy, so they formed the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which would be the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency, to gather intelligence and to conduct psychological warfare against the enemy. After Americans began to take large numbers of enemy prisoners, the United States had to establish camps in the Arizona desert to house the POWs. (One U-boat commander, determined to escape, broke out of the Papago POW compound near Scottsdale, Arizona, only to find himself confronted with desert as far as his eyes could see. He was recaptured after holing up in the dry Arizona buttes for several days.)

  Ironically, the very traits often denounced by the New Dealers—individual effort, self-reliance, and capitalism—were now needed to fight the war. Government-backed science, however, did succeed in delivering what no individual could, the “ultimate weapon,” although the atomic bomb remained one of the best-kept secrets of the war until August 1945.

  The Gadget

  Experiments with splitting the atom had taken place in England in 1932, and by the time Hitler invaded Poland, most of the world’s scientists understood that a man-made atomic explosion could be accomplished. How long before the actual fabrication of such a device could occur, however, no one knew. Roosevelt had already received a letter from one of the world’s leading pacifists, Albert Einstein, urging him to build a uranium bomb before the Nazis did. FDR set up a Uranium Committee in October 1939, which gained momentum less than a year later when British scientists, fearing their island might fall to the Nazis, arrived in America with a black box containing British atomic secrets.31 After mid-1941, when it was established, the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), headed by Vannevar Bush, was investigating the bomb’s feasibility.

  Kept out of the loop by Bush, who feared he was a security risk, Einstein used his influence to nudge FDR toward the bomb project. Recent evidence suggests Einstein’s role in bringing the problem to Roosevelt’s attention was even greater than previously thought.32 Ironically, as Einstein’s biographer has pointed out, without the genius’s support, the bombs would have been built anyway, but not in time for use against Japan. Instead, with civilian and military authorities insufficiently aware of the vast destructiveness of such weapons in real situations, they may well have been used in Korea, at a time when the Soviet Union would have had its own bombs for counterattack, thus offering the terrifying possibility of a nuclear conflict over Korea. By wielding his considerable influence in 1939 and 1940, Einstein may have saved innumerable lives, beyond those of the Americans and Japanese who would have clashed in Operation Olympic, the invasion of the Japanese home islands.33

  No one knew the status of Hitler’s bomb project—only that there was one. As late as 1944, American intelligence was still seeking to assassinate Walter Heisenberg (head of the Nazi bomb project), among others, unaware at the time that the German bomb was all but kaput. In total secrecy, then, the Manhattan Project, placed under the U.S. Army’s Corps of Engineers and begun in the Borough of Manhattan, was directed by a general, Leslie Groves, a man with an appreciation for the fruits of capitalism. He scarcely blinked at the incredible demands for material, requiring thousands of tons of silver for wiring, only to be told, “In the Treasury [Department] we do not speak of tons of silver. Our unit is the troy ounce.”34 Yet Groves got his silver and everything else he required. Roosevelt made sure the Manhattan Project lacked for nothing, although Roosevelt himself died before seeing the terrible fruition of the Manhattan Project’s deadly labors.

  War Strategy: Casablanca

  The intense concern both Roosevelt and the British displayed over producing the bomb reflected their deepest fear that Hitler’s Germany would soon develop its own weapon of mass destruction. They did not know that Germany would soon begin plans for the A-9/A-10 100–ton intercontinental rocket. In retrospect, if the intercontinental rocket had been mated to atomic warheads, the war might have ended much differently. Allied spies were unaware of other potential threats to the U.S. mainland: Germany flew the four-engine Me-264 Amerika bomber in 1942, which later was converted into a jet bomber capable of 500-miles-per-hour speeds. The Nazis had already flown a Ju-290 reconnaissance plane to New York and back, taking pictures and proving that a bomber could attack New York. With their fears of known German technology combined with Stalin’s pleas for a second front, Churchill and Roosevelt knew that they had to focus on defeating Germany, not Japan, first.

  On New Year’s Day, 1942, the representatives of twenty-six nations at war with the Axis powers signed a Declaration of the United Nations based on the principles of the Atlantic Charter. They promised not to make a separate peace with any of the Axis powers and agreed to defeat Germany first. That decision only formalized what British prime minister Winston Churchill and Roosevelt had already concluded in private talks. Churchill, one of the few Western leaders to fully appreciate the barbarity and evil of Soviet communism, repeatedly expressed his concerns to FDR. But the president, based in part on the naïve reports of his ambassador, Joseph Davies, trusted Stalin to behave rationally; thus Churchill, who desperately needed American war matériel, could do little to talk Roosevelt into a more sober assessment of Ru
ssia’s overall aims. In January 1943, Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Combined Chiefs of Staff met at Casablanca to discuss war strategy. Stalin did not attend. The meeting produced the defeat-Germany-first decision and directed the resources to the European war. It also resulted in a commitment on the part of the Allies to demand unconditional surrender from all Axis parties.35

  Consequently, the Anglo-American leaders agreed that nearly 80 percent of America’s war capacity would go toward the European theater and, especially in the early days, the bombing campaign aimed to soften up Germany for the necessary amphibious invasion. Churchill saw bombing as a way to draw in the United States and use her massive economic output, but at the same time minimize the loss of American lives and avoid early public hostility.

  Since the prospects for invading the European mainland in 1942 were remote, about all Britain and America could do while building up was launch devastating air strikes on German manufacturing, especially on those industries related to aircraft production. The goal was to ensure total domination of the skies over whatever landing area the Allies would choose at some future point. Much debate has ensued over the supposed ineffectiveness of the air campaign that dropped between 1.5 and 2.6 million tons of bombs (depending on which aircraft are included in the survey) on Germany and related European targets. Many analysts have labeled strategic bombing a failure. It is true that Germany’s production actually increased between 1942 and 1944, and bombing was costly, in both lives and money. Several factors must be weighed, however. Nazi production increased because until late in the war Hitler had ordered his production chief Albert Speer to keep German civilian life as normal as possible. This meant that Germany retained excess capacity in her factories until near the end, having never put the nation on a total-war footing. Some of the continued buildup during the bombing reflected not a failure of bombing, but of Germany’s unwillingness to fully mobilize earlier.

  Second, in the early stages of the bombing campaign, neither Great Britain nor the United States had fighter planes with enough range to escort the bombers, so raids were conducted over enemy skies amid swarms of Luftwaffe aircraft, resulting in substantial losses. The United States agreed to fly missions during the day, based in part on the availability of the superior (and secret) Norden bombsight, which allowed the Americans to engage in pinpoint bombing as opposed to area or carpet bombing.36 That meant the loss of American aircraft and life would be higher than that of the British, who bombed at night. B-17 Flying Fortress bombers began regular raids on European targets in August 1942, striking targets in France. Then, in January 1943, the Eighth Army Air Force began missions against Germany itself.37 Even when flying in tight box formations, B-17s suffered tremendous losses, especially when out of escort range. Nevertheless, Germany had to commit increasingly greater resources to countering the bombers, thus diverting crucial resources from antitank tactical aircraft for the Eastern Front.

  Despite the high cost in men and planes, the strategic bombing campaign achieved a decisive victory almost from its inception. Surprisingly, even the U.S. government’s own “Strategic Bombing Survey” after the war tended to obscure the overwhelming success in the skies. In retrospect the devastation caused by Allied bombing, and its key role in the war, is clear. First, German aircraft were siphoned away from the Eastern Front, where they could have made the difference against Russian tanks. Second, the bombing hindered the Third Reich’s war production, especially of transport and oil, and there is no way of telling how many more aircraft, submarines, or tanks could have been produced without the bombing. Germany tied up nearly 20 percent of its nonagricultural workforce in air defense activities, and bombing reduced reserves of aviation gas by 90 percent. This represented millions of combat troops and civilians, not to mention pilots, who were pinned down by part-time defense duty. Existing statistics may even substantially understate the percentage of workers absorbed by the bombing because many were foreign slaves and POWs. Rail transportation—absolutely critical for getting larger Tiger tanks to the Russian front—plummeted by 75 percent in a five-month period because of the impact of air power.38

  Third, even before the long-range fighter aircraft appeared on the scene in 1943, the Luftwaffe had lost large numbers of fighter planes in its attempts to defend against bomber attacks. Every time a Messerschmitt went down, however, it took with it a pilot; and although most German pilots bailed out over friendly territory, not all survived. Pilot training took years, placing a huge burden on the Luftwaffe when it had to send up inexperienced youngsters to stop the waves of bombers over German skies. That had a cascading effect: inexperienced pilots were easier to shoot down. In short, the strategic bombing campaign worked more effectively than anyone had dreamed. By June 6, 1944, in the skies over Normandy on D-Day, the Allies could put eleven thousand aircraft over the battlefield. The Germans responded with two, a pair of desperate Messerschmitt pilots who made a single pass over Normandy before fleeing with the satisfaction that “the Luftwaffe has had its day!”39

  “Remember Bataan!”

  But the road to D-Day was long and rugged. Despite the strategic concern with Hitler, most Americans had turned their attention first, in 1942, to events in the Pacific, where Japan continued to crush opposition. Singapore, Britain’s powerful naval base in Malaysia, fell in February 1942, when Japanese armies cut off the city’s water supplies, having used bicycles to negotiate the dense impregnable jungle. When they arrived, they were short on food and water, and they took the base largely through bluff and luck. Moreover, the Japanese soldiers only had a hundred rounds of ammunition per man left. A vigorous defense of the city would have rendered General Tomoyuki Yamashita’s troops virtually unarmed, but the legend of the invincible Japanese soldier already had started to set in, and the British surrendered.

  By that time, Japan had eliminated virtually all Allied naval forces east of Pearl Harbor. The British battleships Repulse and Prince of Wales had left Singapore, only to be destroyed by air strikes in December. Australia to the south and Pearl Harbor to the east lay open to Japanese invasion, and Australia found itself hamstrung by its own socialist policies and labor unions, whose stevedores “refused to modify their union contracts in order to aid the war effort,” including clauses that “allowed the laborers to refuse work when it was raining.”40 American forces in the Philippines held out until April ninth, but before the surrender President Roosevelt ordered the American commander, General Douglas MacArthur, to relocate in Australia, where, as commander in chief of Allied forces in the Pacific, he organized a more tenacious defense. Following the surrender of the American island bastion of Corregidor, some eleven thousand Americans on the Bataan Peninsula were marched inland on hot jungle roads with no food or water. This Bataan Death March revealed the Japanese to be every bit as vicious as the Nazis. Japanese soldiers bayoneted American soldiers who fell by the wayside or tied them up in barbed wire to be eaten by ants. “Remember Bataan” and “Remember Pearl Harbor” would soon become the battle cries of GIs who stormed the beaches of Japanese-held islands.

  The constant drumbeat of disasters enhanced the image of superhuman Japanese fighting forces. When a Japanese sub surfaced off the coast of Oregon to lob shells harmlessly onto continental U.S. soil, American planners anticipated that it indicated an imminent invasion of San Francisco, San Diego, or the Los Angeles area. Bunkers were thrown up at Santa Barbara; skyscrapers in Los Angeles sported antiaircraft guns on their roofs; and lights on all high-rise buildings were extinguished or covered at night to make it more difficult for imperial bombers to hit their targets. Local rodeo associations and the Shrine Mounted Patrol conducted routine reconnaissance of mountains, foothills, and deserts, checking for infiltrators. No one could guess that this shocking string of victories actually marked the high tide of imperial Japanese success, not the beginning.

  Understanding the psychological impact of the Japanese successes in 1942 is critical to explaining Roosevelt’s decision to put Japanese American
citizens of California, Oregon, and Washington State into “relocation camps.” Some 110,000 Japanese Americans, most of them citizens, were removed from their homes and moved to inland centers in Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, California, and Arizona.41 Opponents of the internment of Japanese Americans formed an odd political mix. Conservatives included FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who thought the move unnecessary, and Robert Taft of Ohio, who was the only congressman to vote in opposition to the 1942 bill. Liberal critics included Supreme Court Justices Felix Frankfurter and Hugo Black and future Chief Justice Earl Warren (California’s Republican governor).

  Liberal historians have ascribed racist motives to the Japanese American relocation, pointing to the fact that the same thing was not done to German Americans or Italian Americans on the East Coast.42 In fact, both groups already had been under close scrutiny by the FBI and other agencies, a holdover policy from World War I, when German Americans had indeed experienced persecution and been denied fundamental civil liberties. Yet the comparison of the two is otherwise untenable. Although Germany had for a short time threatened the eastern U.S. coastline, by 1942 the Germans not only lacked a blue-water fleet, but also had not staged a successful amphibious invasion in two years. Germany had no aircraft carriers and no troopships. And Germany had certainly not launched an air strike two thousand miles from its home base across an ocean as had Japan at Pearl Harbor.