Herbert Hoover

by Glen Jeansonne

  Hoover did not enter Russia on this trip, but from people he spoke with he pieced together a composite description of the country’s situation. Russia’s farmers worked on collective farms with two or three acres for private truck gardens. Members of the Communist Party were the new nobility. The upper echelon of the party was privileged. The number of churches had declined from 46,000 to less than 5,000. Liquidation of dissenters and classes was widespread. The czar had about 200,000 in camps for political convicts. Stalin raised this to 10 million. Hoover remarked to a statesman in a neighboring country, “Stalin seems to me equally a reincarnation of Ivan the Terrible and Lenin.” The statesman replied, “Add to that something of Peter the Great and a large amount of Genghis Khan and you have him.” The Russians were building a great army. They hated the Germans and feared the Western democracies. The Germans, unlike the Russians, did not try to conquer with their ideology but with force of arms. Communist threats played a large role in all the Fascist revolutions in Europe—Fascism seemed the lesser evil. It was also a different variation on the concept of the planned economy. Both Communism and Fascism proved that a collectivist economy was incompatible with personal liberty. Communism and Fascism were destined to clash, as the Anti-Comintern Pact showed.6

  Upon arriving in America, Hoover seemed less optimistic after ruminating over world conditions during the voyage home. He described the continent as “a rumbling war machine, without the men in the trenches,” a breeding ground for dictators, nations piling up debts and erecting an unstable balance of power, ruled by cynical politicians or totalitarian tyrants. The talk of quarantines and collective actions by the Roosevelt administration made him nervous. He did not believe America could save Europe from the hangman’s noose from which it was dangling. It had tried and failed to do that in the Great War. The statesman said that to couple America’s fate with that of Britain and France would perpetuate imperialism and possibly entangle the United States in an alliance with the Soviet Union, a nation focused on aggression. Hoover believed America could and should, if necessary, accept a world with dictatorships if they did not touch the United States’ own shores. “We can never herd the world into the paths of righteousness with the dogs of war,” he warned. Hoover continued to believe in the power of world opinion to save the world from destruction. America’s job was to set a moral example. “Decency is still news,” he explained. Prosperity might preserve that elusive peace.7

  Upon his return to San Francisco, Hoover addressed a large crowd and was vividly descriptive about conditions in Europe. Unlike in his earlier speeches, he minced no words. Those who believed in totalitarian states were expected to sell their souls to the government, he said. Personal property was no longer respected. “If you carry over the old idea that perhaps it belongs to you, then you go to a concentration camp to rest your nerves,” he said sarcastically. “You will also be taught to sing cheerful songs in the recreation hours and to march all about. You have social security if you conform. If you do not conform you get security in a concentration camp. . . . Altogether I am glad Europe is still 7,200 miles from California.”8

  All of the dictatorships tried to superimpose a collectivist managed economy on individual liberty and failed to make them synchronize. Some were triggered by intense internal or external threats or economic hardship. But the systems were incompatible, and they led to tyranny. Hoover warned that they would destroy American democracy if pushed too far here. In Europe, fourteen nations with 240 million people had mixed a planned economy with individual liberty and destroyed individual liberty. It had gone furthest in Germany and Russia. It was destined to fail everywhere. In a material sense, Germany was better than it had been five years earlier, yet individual liberty had been destroyed.9

  By 1938 Hoover had shifted his focus from a critique of FDR’s domestic policies to the overriding concern of diplomacy. He feared the president was incrementally leading the nation into a second world conflagration that would incubate more tragic consequences than the first failed crusade. Hoover had never been a hard-core isolationist. In the context of the 1920s and of his own presidency he was an internationalist. Despite his Quaker heritage, he was not a pacifist, though he was a reluctant warrior. Hoover wanted to pursue all avenues short of war before engaging in conflict, and then to fight only in self-defense. Yet he was troubled by the overconfident idea that America could liberate the world or extricate Europe from the cauldron of its chaos. His twenty years of life abroad made him unconvinced of Europe’s ability to avoid war, and even more uncertain of America’s ability to purge the continent of the demons of war. He believed the Wilsonian experience should have taught America these lessons the hard way. In 1938 he feared Roosevelt was moving in just the opposite direction. In addition to the heinous, baneful international repercussions, Hoover feared the domestic consequences of another war. The United States would incur an enormous expansion of the national debt, digging a fiscal hole that would require generations to pay. Moreover, the regimentation necessary to fight a war would leave a permanent imprint on American democracy, he believed. “Those who would have us again go to war to save democracy might give a little thought to the likelihood that we would come out of any such struggle a despotism ourselves,” he warned.10

  From 1938 to 1941 Hoover carried on a crusade against American entry into World War II. Hoover’s prominent role in the debate over war versus armed neutrality kept him in the public spotlight. After his return from Europe, events soon erupted uncontrollably. On August 22, 1939, the Soviet Union and Germany, to the consternation of the world, signed a nonaggression pact, which gave Germany the green light to attack Western Europe. Shortly afterward, on September 1, German troops surged into Poland without a declaration of war. Two days later, Britain and France responded by declaring war on Germany. On September 17, Russia attacked Poland from the east and soon the nation of Poland disappeared from the map. Hitler’s invasion after Britain and France had vowed to defend Polish sovereignty would not have occurred if the democracies had not been given private assurances by Roosevelt that he would aid them, according to Hoover and his informants. The secret, imprudent Polish guarantee had deflected Hitler from his real objectives in the East. The guarantee constituted a tragic blunder on Roosevelt’s part. Hoover called for immediate permission to sell solely defensive weapons to the democracies on a cash-and-carry basis. The measure passed but did not bar offensive weapons. Hoover believed the sale of offensive weapons such as bombers, mobile cannons, submarines, tanks, and poison gas would kill civilians and escalate the conflict. To the end of his life Hoover believed that Roosevelt’s implied secret support of Britain and France had inspired them to guarantee Polish neutrality. Otherwise, they might have been spared. Hitler, he believed, had long coveted the breadbasket of Ukraine and the vast hinterlands to the east as settlements for his Aryan race, not more densely populated, smaller nations west of Germany. Moreover, he respected the British, whom he considered an Aryan people.11

  During 1940 the German air force began softening up England for an invasion planned for that summer. The air war—the Battle of Britain—stretched resources of the island while U-boats took a toll at sea. With Britain lacking funds, cash-and-carry no longer worked. On January 6, 1941, Roosevelt proposed to permit the British to borrow weapons and return them after the war and allow American ships to transport them. Many pointed out the incongruity in proposing to give weapons back when the shooting ended. More ominously, the next step would be American convoys to protect the precious cargoes, and American boys, along with their ships, would be sent to the bottom by Nazi submarines. It was a back door to war, not to mention a rerun of American entry into World War I. Hoover did not publicly oppose lend-lease, though he felt some facets delegated excessive power to a president who might abuse it. He wanted to forbid the president to authorize convoys on his own volition. The bill passed on March 11, 1941, including the ex-president’s amendment. America’s fate was now irrevocably l
inked to Britain’s.12

  In one sense, Hoover’s criticism of New Deal foreign policy was ironic. During his first administration Roosevelt had been significantly less involved in global affairs than Hoover had been during his single term. The New York aristocrat showed little inclination to cooperate with other nations economically, and he interpreted the interests of the United States more narrowly than Hoover had done. Hoover, for example, had made the first initiative to reach out to Latin America, negotiated naval disarmament, and proposed a highly ambitious program for land disarmament at Geneva in 1932. There was nothing in Roosevelt’s first term vaguely comparable to Hoover’s bold intergovernmental debt moratorium of 1931, nor had the New Deal president held summits in America with foreign leaders, as Hoover had done. Further, Roosevelt’s knowledge of world affairs was more limited than Hoover’s. Hoover had lived abroad for twenty years, had been an international businessman, and knew scores of foreign heads of state, diplomats, and generals. He had on-the-ground experience during the Great War and had fed Belgium, Central and Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union. The crucial difference lay in the two men’s temperaments. The Great War had not numbed Hoover to human suffering; it had sensitized him to it. His experience at Versailles had persuaded him that America could not impose its will on Europe and might overreach in the process. While not xenophobic, he was skeptical of European motives and offended by aristocratic pretensions. He feared that Roosevelt, with aristocratic inclinations of his own and a friend of Churchill, might be duped into putting the interests of Europe before those of America.

  Hoover believed America should remain neutral in any international conflict, joining the war only if the United States itself or the Western Hemisphere were attacked, which he considered unlikely. By June 1939 Hoover also became concerned that Roosevelt’s militant opposition to Japan might lead the United States into a war in a region where the country had no vital interests. Prior to Pearl Harbor, Hoover delivered twelve addresses dealing with the looming conflict over nationwide radio and scores of talks to local and regional audiences opposing America’s entry into the war. He published eight articles on the subject in national magazines. One of his major concerns was that World War II might end with the collapse of Fascism, only to leave the United States confronted with the spread of Soviet Communism, which proved prophetic. He predicted that individual freedom would be trampled by the powerful Soviet military and propaganda machine. Hoover found little to choose from between Communism and Fascism and hoped America would let these two tyrannies fight each other.13

  As an activist and a leader of his party, Hoover could not remain silent on the threat from war as it came to overshadow debates over the New Deal. He repeatedly harkened back to what he considered the lessons of the Great War: that the United States could not save Europe from its follies, nor preserve permanent peace on the continent. The first crusade had failed to achieve its purpose. There should not be a second one. Somewhat surprisingly, in view of his antipathy to war, he opposed the constitutional amendment proposed by Congressman Louis Ludlow of Indiana, which would have required a national referendum before declaring war. The world moved too rapidly for that, he asserted, and such an approach would be a deterrent to war only if every nation were a democracy. Self-defense and an impregnable Western Hemisphere were the best deterrents. Hoover believed the best offense was a good defense. The United States should be so strong that no nation would dare attack it, but the country should not taunt or bait other nations into doing so. U.S. foreign policy should not be provocative. America should not tempt fate. Hoover saw no imminent danger to America from the Third Reich, and he did not oppose the return of some German-speaking areas to Germany at Munich in 1938. Hoover had balked at stripping Germany of these regions at Versailles. The former chief executive now reminded Americans of the disarmament and conciliatory policies of his own administration, including creation of the Good Neighbor Policy frequently attributed to FDR. As Europe moved toward war incrementally, Hoover warned repeatedly that war would entangle America in the inferno. From late 1938 onward he inveighed against the inevitabilities of war.14

  Frustrated by exclusion from an elective or administrative position, the elder statesman remained an active insider in the politics of the GOP. Increasingly, he engaged in a power struggle with Wendell Willkie, a former Democrat who alienated the conservative wing of the GOP with the compatibility of his views with the outlook of the Roosevelt administration. Willkie was popular with the public but not within the hierarchy of his party. The Republicans did not come together internally even after America entered the war following Pearl Harbor.

  Just six weeks before Hitler attacked Poland, beginning World War II in Europe, Hoover expressed his qualms to his friend John C. O’Laughlin in a letter of July 18, 1939. Hoover feared that Roosevelt was making war more likely by encouraging the British and the French and alienating the Germans and the Italians. He based his observations on the origins of the First World War.15

  Roosevelt made a comparable mistake versus Japan, Hoover believed. The Japanese wanted half the Pacific to become a Japanese lake, but left alone with their newly minted empire, they had no substantial quarrel with the United States, nor any illusions that they could defeat America in a prolonged slugfest. Instead of papering over their differences, Roosevelt’s policies toward the Japanese provoked a war in the Pacific that mirrored the unnecessary war in Europe set up by the Polish guarantee. Hoover argued, possibly correctly in the short run, though probably not in the long run, that America had no vital interests in the Far East worth dying for. But Hoover’s immediate differences with the Democratic president’s Far Eastern policies from mid-1940 to Pearl Harbor were more tactical than strategic. The president believed sanctions would intimidate the Japanese and deter war, while Hoover believed they would inflame the proud island nation and provoke war. On both tactical fronts, the ex-president perhaps had the better argument. Over the long term, it is somewhat naïve, however, to insist that America could live at peace indefinitely, with its interests undisturbed, confronted by totalitarian, expansionist regimes at both doorsteps. Moreover, an unshackled Hitler might have ultimately divided Europe with Stalin, leaving the United States isolated and in peril, especially as German science was developing new weapons rapidly. The United States would have found itself constantly on edge, in a war of nerves, with a dictator more irrational than the men who sat in the Kremlin during the Cold War era. Speculation provides grist for the mill of historians. We shall never know for certain but the lives of everyone now living would probably be much different had Hoover’s view prevailed.16

  In June 1941, Hitler launched a massive attack on the Soviet Union despite a nonaggression pact with the Communist power. The invasion provided Hoover and other opponents of the war with a powerful new argument about why America should remain out. The war could no longer be characterized as a crusade of democracy against totalitarianism, he pointed out, because the Soviets were equal aggressors. After all, they had invaded Poland, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland and had freed Hitler to attack the West by signing the infamous neutrality pact. On practical grounds, Hoover argued that the Soviets were as dangerous a world predator as the Germans, possibly a greater threat. Thereafter, it was in America’s interest to let the power-mongering dictators bleed their countries white, weakening for the later showdown, while men such as Harry Truman, Robert Taft, Joseph P. Kennedy, and numerous prominent Americans argued a similar perspective. The United States had no business siding with either dictator, the man from Missouri advised. The more of one another they killed, the better. Senator Taft joined the chorus in proclaiming the totalitarian regimes equally invidious, neither worthy of American aid. Hoover also believed the titanic struggle being waged on the eastern front relieved Britain of the imminent threat of invasion. Aiding the Soviets could no longer be justified on the grounds of protecting Britain, he believed.17

  Hoover appears wrong on the major issue that Ame
rica could live with Hitler, though, on the other hand, the United States coexisted in an armed peace with the Soviet Union for about fifty years following the war. He was correct on many specifics, such as the arbitrary, improvised method with which FDR dealt with serious diplomatic problems, and the erroneous decisions that sometimes resulted. On the rare occasions when he intervened in military affairs, such as the North African and Italian campaigns, and dividing authority in the Pacific theater, FDR might have erred strategically as well. On the larger issue of escorted military aid to Britain, Hoover was probably right that it would inevitably involve us in war but probably wrong in his thesis that Britain could survive without American participation. On employing sanctions against Japan, Hoover proved prophetic that punitive steps were more likely to incite the Japanese than to intimidate them. Hoover relied largely on historical precedent, logic, and common sense, while Roosevelt trusted intuition. Neither was infallible, nor was any other national leader of that era. In retrospect, it is difficult to discern the end, regardless of the tactics employed, turning out much differently than it did. Hoover is unlikely to have proven an aggressive war president militarily, yet the home front doubtless would have been better organized.

  Most of Hoover’s prodigious energies during the war were channeled into writing. He felt humiliated by being excluded from the councils of government, yet he still wanted to remain relevant. It was during the war that he enhanced and launched a career in writing on a scale he had never anticipated previously. Though the work was laborious for such a perfectionist, Hoover foresaw usefulness beyond the present time. He had the opportunity to contribute to the historical record and to posterity.