Oval Office Oddities

by Bill Fawcett

  Nevertheless, Wilson returned home and campaigned vigorously for American acceptance of the treaty, including membership in the League of Nations. But the Republicans had gained control of Congress in 1918, and their isolationist sentiments—not to mention resentment of some of Wilson’s progressive accomplishments—proved intractable. When the organization that was Woodrow Wilson’s brainchild was at last created, the United States Senate refused to allow the United States to become a member.

  Exhausted, partially paralyzed by stroke, Wilson finished his term as an invalid; his wife, Edith, took over much of his work, and carefully controlled access to the president so that the nation was not aware of his disability. As a final honor, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919.

  But it was a hollow victory indeed.

  A DEMOCRACY GOES TO WAR

  FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT EASES AMERICA INTO WORLD WAR II

  by Douglas Niles

  With most of the world mired in depression, the 1930s were years of tumultuous challenges in the United States and abroad. In Germany, Italy, Spain, and Japan, forces of fascism gained control of their respective governments, while Joseph Stalin cemented his hold on the Soviet Union, and secured his own grasp on the Communist Party there through a series of bloody purges. China was a chaotic amalgamation of petty warlords and vast population, with no capable central leadership. Democratic governments in Western Europe, most notably England and France, still reeled from the horrific slaughter of World War I, and seemed powerless to cope with the difficulties in their own nations, much less challenge the rise of militancy in Germany and Italy.

  Against this backdrop of rising tensions, most Americans wanted nothing more than to be left alone. Certainly they wanted no part in solving the problems of Europe and Asia. The isolationism that marked the Senate’s refusal to bring the United States into the League of Nations after the “War to End All Wars” was further emphasized when Congress passed the Neutrality Act in 1935. Enacted when Italy invaded Ethiopia, the law banned United States businesses from sending armaments to any nation involved in hostilities.

  The president of the United States in 1935 was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then nearing the end of a first term that had been marked by a staggering array of policy initiatives. Collectively known as the New Deal, FDR’s legislation—some successful, some not—had given Americans hope that had been lacking since the stock market crash of 1929. While foreign policy had not been his primary concern, he kept a wary eye on developments abroad. He considered the Neutrality Act a bad idea, since it prevented the United States from aiding countries who were victims of aggression just as much as it banned aiding the aggressors. However, the act was popular with the people and the Congress, so he signed it into law.

  But it was not in Roosevelt’s nature to quietly submit to policy that he perceived to be a bad idea. For most of the decade, Japan had been engaged in military adventurism against China, and in 1937 the Imperial Japanese Army aggressively attacked the larger but much weaker nation. Public sentiment began to turn against the invaders, and in the fall of that year, FDR gave a speech suggesting that aggressive nations be treated like dangerous diseases, in effect, “quarantined.”

  At the same time, he was quietly increasing the strength of America’s pathetically underpowered armed forces. Using his considerable powers of persuasion, FDR got a reluctant Congress to authorize a naval building program to begin the modernization of a battle fleet that had received scant funding and attention since World War I. At a time when most of the world still regarded the battleship as the primary embodiment of naval power, the United States began to place emphasis on aircraft carriers and submarines.

  During the next two years, Nazi Germany became increasingly aggressive. In short order, Adolf Hitler’s troops occupied without bloodshed the Rhineland (which had been demilitarized since World War I as a condition of the Treaty of Versailles), Austria, and (in two stages) Czechoslovakia. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain acceded to these conquests at the Munich conference (1938), infamously proclaiming upon his return to England that his negotiations had gained “peace in our time.”

  On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and World War II exploded into furious conflagration. Roosevelt was determined to support the western democracies, but he recognized that the American people—and the American military—were not ready to participate in the hostilities. Instead, he increasingly flouted the provisions of the Neutrality Act to see that England and France continued to receive at least minimal American support.

  The United States was only partially shocked out of its complacency by the stunning Nazi victories in May and June of 1940. In short order Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, and France were conquered by the German military juggernaut. Paris, which had held the Germans at bay for more than four years in World War I, fell in less than five weeks. With the surrender of France, Britain stood alone against Germany and Italy by summer 1940. Neville Chamberlain resigned his job, to be replaced by the pugnacious Winston Churchill, and Roosevelt immediately opened lines of communication with the new prime minister.

  The president was determined to do everything he could to ensure Britain’s survival and now, finally, the majority of the population was with him—though Americans were still not prepared to join what was perceived as “another European war.” Before the end of 1940, FDR pushed through a deal to swap some fifty old U.S. Navy destroyers to England in return for the use of British bases in the Caribbean. (Even aged destroyers were crucial in protecting merchant ships from the growing menace of Nazi U-boats.)

  One of the president’s greatest triumphs of preparedness was the institution, in the summer of 1940, of the first peacetime draft in U.S. history. Thousands of young men were conscripted into the armed forces, albeit—at Congressional insistence—only for one year. These soldiers would form the core of the United States Army during the crucial years ahead, although only after the draft was renewed—by a single vote!—in summer 1941. (If that bill had failed, all of the draftees would have been released to civilian life only a few months before Pearl Harbor.)

  In May 1941, FDR proposed and gained passage of the Lend-Lease Act. Neutrality was now a thing of the past, as the United States became the “Arsenal of Democracy,” pledging to supply all the nations engaged in war with the fascist powers. Immediate beneficiaries of Lend-Lease were China and England, and when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the president immediately extended the offer of aid to Stalin—who was more than willing to accept.

  In addition to her adventures in China, Japan took advantage of the fall of France to move against French colonies in Southeast Asia. The war in China was turning into a bloody stalemate, but the military forces controlling the Japanese government remained bent upon expansion. In response, FDR placed an embargo on U.S. exports of steel and oil to Japan. By cutting off these vital materials, the president created an intolerable situation for Japan, and American entry into World War II became inevitable.

  Still, the American population was not ready for participation. In August 1941, Roosevelt met Churchill aboard ship in the Atlantic Ocean. The resulting agreement was the Atlantic Charter, which pledged “all aid short of war” to the British. American warships would escort convoys all the way to Britain, and were authorized to fire at U-boats that menaced American ships. Furthermore, and unknown to the public, it laid the groundwork for the strategic war plan that the two close allies would pursue for the next four years by labeling Germany as the most dangerous foe among the Axis nations.

  By late 1941, when the Soviet Army had been pushed all the way to Moscow and the British Isles remained the lone bastion of freedom in Western Europe, Franklin Roosevelt had prepared the American military, and the American people, for entry into the war. Some revisionist historians have claimed that Roosevelt knew about the Japanese aircraft carriers drawing close to Hawaii and the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor in early December, but this is a ludicrou
s charge rooted in the extreme antipathy that this great, but controversial, president still arouses. In any event, an attack against our primary naval base would have aroused American wrath even if it had not been a complete surprise and an unmitigated disaster. Furthermore, it is inconceivable that Roosevelt, a former assistant secretary of the navy, would have exposed his beloved fleet to catastrophe as a mere public relations ploy.

  As it happened, Japan’s naval air forces attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the United States was at war from that moment. Yet, even then, the president did not ask for a declaration of war against the other Axis powers. Hitler and Mussolini obliged him by immediately declaring war against the United States.

  If they had not done so, it seems certain that the wily FDR would have figured out a way to involve his country in that world-spanning conflict within a very short time frame. Because he was faced with an enemy so determined to engage in conflict and conquest, he didn’t have to.

  THE BUCK STOPS HERE

  HARRY TRUMAN VERSUS DOUGLAS MACARTHUR

  by Douglas Niles

  By the time the forces of communist North Korea spilled over the border into South Korea in June of 1950, President Harry S. Truman had solidly established his credentials as a staunch opponent of world Communism. He had overseen the creation of NATO, which stood as a bulwark of democracy against the Soviet threat to Europe. He had authorized the Berlin airlift of 1948–49, when Stalin had tried to isolate that city from its allies in the West. He had boldly announced the Truman Doctrine, declaring that countries threatened by communist invasion or overthrow—specifically Greece and Turkey, but allowing for other targets to be determined as necessary—would receive U.S. aid, support, and possibly troops to aid in the defense.

  Korea, however, was not much on anyone’s mind during the late 1940s as a potential hot spot. When Japan surrendered following the close of World War II, the United States and USSR had divided the Korean peninsula as a simple means for determining which country’s troops would accept the surrender of Imperial Japanese Army units in Korea. The Russians would oversee the land to the north of the thirty-eighth parallel of latitude, the Americans would take the south. It was agreed at the Potsdam conference, among other places, that a free and united Korea would take shape as soon as was practicable.

  As the Cold War took shape, however, the Korean peninsula was not exempt. When Stalin’s Iron Curtain fell across Europe, it also extended into Asia, forcing the creation of the two Koreas that exist to this day. It was a situation that was satisfactory to neither side. When the fledgling United Nations tried to mediate the matter, the USSR refused to participate in negotiations.

  Faced with this intractability, the Republic of Korea was established south of the thirty-eighth parallel, with the capital at Seoul. In the north, Stalin established a puppet government under Kim Il Sung. It was called the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. By summer of 1949, U.S. and Soviet combat troops had mostly withdrawn, both sides leaving a cadre of advisers. The North Korean Army, however, was vigorously expanded and equipped with Russian tanks and artillery. It was supported by an air force of nearly two hundred Russian planes of late World War II vintage. The Army of the ROK, in contrast, was little more than a national police force, lacking virtually all modern military equipment.

  On June 25, 1950, the NKA invaded, gaining complete surprise. Seoul was quickly captured, and the mechanized and well-trained North Korean Army pressed southward. President Truman ordered General Douglas MacArthur, who was commanding American occupation forces in Japan, to do whatever he could to support the ROK. Hastening to the front in person, MacArthur concluded by June 28 that South Korea lacked the strength and resources to withstand the invasion. On June 29, Truman authorized the use of American ground troops.

  Although four U.S. divisions were stationed in Japan, they were under strength and, softened by years of garrison duty, ill-prepared for combat. Even so, General MacArthur rushed them to the peninsula, and they were thrown into the fight as soon as they arrived. On July 7, MacArthur was appointed commander in chief, United Nations Command. By the end of the summer, UN forces (mainly American and ROK troops) had stopped the enemy advance at a perimeter protecting Pusan, the only port not yet captured by the NKA. As they held onto this little sliver of land, the situation for the UN forces seemed bleak, almost hopeless.

  MacArthur abruptly turned the tide of the conflict with one of the great strategic master strokes of twentieth-century warfare. On September 15 he landed an amphibious assault force consisting of one U.S. Marine division and one cobbled-together U.S. Army division, including some 5,000 ROK troops, at the coast of Inchon, very near Seoul and the thirty-eighth parallel. Quickly surrounding the capital, the landing force succeeded in cutting off supplies for the overextended NKA invasion forces, which virtually collapsed, individual units and soldiers simply fleeing into the hills.

  United Nations forces pursued quickly and aggressively. MacArthur and Truman were in agreement that the enemy should be pursued north of the thirty-eighth parallel; the implicit goal was the elimination of the Kim Il Sung’s regime and a reuniting of the two Koreas. The counterattacking army pressed north, toward the Yalu River that formed the border between North Korea and Red China.

  However, the two leaders disagreed on a crucial aspect of the war. Truman, believing along with many of his senior advisers that Europe was the crucial front in the Cold War, was very much determined to limit the Asian war to the Korean peninsula. MacArthur felt that China was weakened by many years of occupation and revolution, and that—if war should erupt between China and the United States—there would never be a better time to fight it.

  But the president was in charge, and he made his wishes known. Upon Truman’s orders, UN air forces were forbidden to fly over the Yalu, even to perform reconnaissance. Meanwhile, MacArthur’s troops continued their northward onrush. Most intelligence sources suggested that the Chinese did not want to get involved in the war. In order to keep the pressure on the disintegrating NKA, MacArthur shifted X Corps, a major component of his forces, by naval transport to the northeast coast of Korea. There it was separated from the rest of his command, the Eighth Army, by the rugged interior of North Korea.

  On November 25, 300,000 veteran Red Chinese soldiers spilled out of that mountainous redoubt, smashing both of MacArthur’s spearheads, sending the UN troops reeling back toward the south. In a stunning strategic surprise, the lightly-equipped Chinese moved quickly across country, rapidly outflanking the mechanized—and therefore road-bound—United Nations forces. By dint of tenacious fighting, the America and ROK forces extricated themselves from near catastrophe, but not before they had been pushed south of Seoul, the capital falling to invaders for the second time in eight months.

  Through the winter of early 1951, MacArthur’s forces clawed their way northward, gaining ground against forces that outnumbered them significantly. But tensions continued to rise between the president and his field commander. Truman still refused to authorize air raids into China, while MacArthur advocated, publicly, that the Nationalist Chinese forces in Taiwan should be engaged against the mainland, while his naval and air forces should be allowed to bring pressure against Manchurian bases and ports.

  When MacArthur, whose political ambitions were well known, wrote to Congressman Joe Martin, a Republican from Massachussetts, and declared “there is no substitute for victory,” Martin immediately made the letter public. A firm believer in civilian command of the armed forces, Truman felt that he was faced with unacceptable insubordination. He had no choice but to remove the popular general from his command.

  The suddenness of the dismissal, coupled with the rapidly growing displeasure with the Truman presidency, resulted in an outcry at home, and even more unpopularity for the president. Yet he acted in the true traditions and spirit of the United States Constitution, and the brilliant but vainglorious MacArthur was forced to accede. In the end, the great general could only stand and
give a speech to Congress, proudly declaring that “old soldiers never die. They just fade away.”

  “HOW MANY KIDS DID YOU KILL TODAY?”

  LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON AND THE WAR THAT DERAILED HIS ADMINISTRATION

  by Douglas Niles

  When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, some sixteen thousand American advisers were serving in South Vietnam. Their mission was to train the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN—Army of the Republic of Vietnam) to resist an increasingly aggressive guerrilla war being sponsored by communist North Vietnam. The war had its roots in many factors, including French colonialism, a desire for Vietnamese independence and unification, and the overarching struggle of the Cold War that had defined United States foreign policy since shortly after the end of World War II.

  In 1963, these American troops were not authorized to engage in combat operations, except to defend themselves. By the time, five years later, that Lyndon Johnson declared he would not run for reelection, there were more than half a million American soldiers engaged in direct combat with the Viet Cong guerrillas and the North Vietnamese Army. Casualties were heavy, the enemy was elusive, and there was still no end to the conflict in sight.

  Ironically enough, the war that came to define his presidency was a stark counterpoint to the domestic agenda that was Johnson’s primary passion. During his presidency, the United States went through a period of dramatically expanded and constitutionally protected civil rights. Medical and financial aid to the poor was expanded. The “Great Society” that was Johnson’s ideal had come into focus.

  But in the end, his entire agenda was overshadowed by the war in Southeast Asia, and the rising militancy of the antiwar protests at home.