Jean Edward Smith

by FDR

  At least once a month, more often if possible, Roosevelt took a cruise to nowhere on the presidential yacht Potomac. Downriver, sometimes as far as Point Lookout, the president lolled about and slept late. Missy, Pa Watson, Doc McIntire, and, when he was up to it, Harry Hopkins usually accompanied him. At the White House, FDR averaged fifteen appointments a day, dictated two dozen or so letters to Missy and Grace Tully, and continued to meet the press twice a week. Briefings from the State Department and the military consumed more and more time, cables and state papers streamed across his desk, and there was always the weekly cabinet meeting. He swam less often now, perhaps three times a week, and his blood pressure had climbed to 179/102, which Dr. McIntire dismissed as normal for a man of fifty-eight.21

  Lindbergh spoke again on October 13, but the wind was gone from his sails. His overtly racist remarks fell flat. “Our bond with Europe is a bond of race and not political ideology.… Racial strength is vital—politics a luxury. If the white race is ever seriously threatened, it may then be time for us to take our part for its protection, to fight side by side with the English, French, and Germans. But not with one against the other for our mutual destruction.”22*

  On the eve of the Senate vote, Roosevelt broke his self-imposed public silence to dispel whatever popular fears remained. Speaking to the Herald Tribune Forum on October 26, FDR lambasted those “orators and commentators beating their breasts and proclaiming against sending the boys of American mothers to fight on battlefields of Europe.” That was “one of the worst fakes in current history,” said Roosevelt. “The simple truth is that no person in any responsible place … has ever suggested the remotest possibility of sending the boys of American mothers to fight on the battlefields of Europe. That is why I label that argument a shameless and dishonest fake.”23

  Roosevelt worked both sides of the street. He held out repeal of the arms embargo as a step toward peace, while the purpose of the repeal was to aid the Allies. The implicit logic was that by helping Britain and France defeat Hitler, the United States would not have to fight.

  The following day, after four weeks of debate, the Senate voted to repeal the arms embargo, 63–30. Southern Democrats supported the president down the line. Eight of twenty-three Republicans voted for repeal. Except for Independent George Norris of Nebraska, western progressives and populists voted against. On November 2, 1939, the House fell in line, 243–181. The voting pattern was similar: southerners supporting FDR, progressives against.

  With Europe at war all eyes turned to Roosevelt. Was a third term in the offing? The president kept his own counsel. He did nothing to indicate that he was a candidate, but, more significantly, he did nothing to suggest he was not. Garner, who worked closely with the White House to secure passage of the “cash and carry” bill, believed Roosevelt would run. “He didn’t talk like a man who was coming to the end of his term. He didn’t say that war was inevitable, but he gave the impression that if there was one he intended to run it.”24

  The idea of a third term was a political bugbear. No presidential incumbent had ever sought one. Roosevelt sometimes joked about the possibility, but never in such a way that would tip his hand. “The country is sick and tired of Roosevelts,” he told Ed Flynn, recalling what “Uncle Ted” had said when third-term speculation arose: “They are sick of looking at my grin, and they are sick of hearing what Alice had for breakfast.”25

  As speculation increased, FDR encouraged and exploited it. He relished the backdrop at the annual Gridiron Dinner of Washington journalists in December 1939—a giant sphinx with Roosevelt’s face complete with pince-nez and the cigarette holder at a jaunty angle. The chances are that FDR had not made up his mind. The fieldstone library at Hyde Park he had designed to house his papers and memorabilia—the nation’s first presidential library—was nearing completion, as was his hilltop dreamhouse above Val-Kill. The three-bedroom cottage was built to FDR’s specifications, with extra-wide doors and no thresholds so that his wheelchair could roll easily, and he and Missy had gradually furnished it to his liking. “It’s perfect, just perfect,” he would often say.26

  There was also the question of his health. Roosevelt was fifty-eight, but twelve years in Albany and Washington had taken their toll. “No, Dan, I just can’t do it,” he told Teamster president Daniel Tobin just after Christmas. “I am tired. I really am. I can’t be president again. I have to get over this sinus. I have to have a rest. I want to go home to Hyde Park. I want to take care of my trees. I want to make the farm pay. I want to write history. No, I just can’t do it.”27

  In January 1940 Roosevelt signed a contract with Collier’s magazine to become a contributing editor at $75,000, a year commencing after he left office in 1941. Collier’s had offered substantially more, but FDR considered it inappropriate to earn a greater salary as editor than he had as president of the United States. The contract ran for three years, several editorial assistants were provided, and Roosevelt would write twenty-six articles annually.28 His mind was apparently made up. “I definitely know what I want to do,” he told Henry Morgenthau. “I do not want to run unless between now and the [Democratic] convention things get very, very much worse in Europe.”29

  When the elderly George Norris visited the White House in February to urge FDR to run for a third term, he said much the same thing: “George, I am chained to this chair from morning till night. People come in here day after day, most of them trying to get something from me, most of them things I can’t give them, and wouldn’t if I could. You sit in your chair in your office too, but if something goes wrong or you get irritated or tired, you can get up and walk around, or you can go into another room. But I can’t. I am tied down to this chair day after day, week after week, month after month. And I can’t stand it any longer. I can’t go on with it.”30

  William Bullitt, paying a quick visit to Washington from his post in Paris, reports having dinner at the White House with FDR and Missy in late February. Roosevelt collapsed and fell unconscious at the table. Admiral McIntire was summoned and after examining the president said he had suffered a “very slight heart attack.” FDR was put to bed, and nothing further was said. McIntire evidently thought it was nothing out of the ordinary.31

  Meanwhile, anxious contenders edged toward the starting gate. On December 18, 1939, Vice President Garner announced his candidacy. “I see that the vice president has thrown his bottle—I mean his hat—into the ring,” Roosevelt quipped at cabinet.32 Garner’s candidacy was a protest against the New Deal, FDR, and a third term rolled into one. He had little chance. John L. Lewis’s classic put-down of the vice president as a “labor-baiting, poker-playing, whiskey-drinking, evil old man” rang true among too many of the party’s rank and file.*

  James Farley also eyed the office. An energetic fifty-one, Farley was immensely popular with the party’s professional politicians. But his Catholicism was a handicap, and his lack of familiarity with policy issues was dumbfounding. Ignorance of economics and foreign affairs has never been a bar to high office, but in 1940 the nation required more than Farley could offer. Chicago’s Cardinal Mundelein, the Democratic party’s unofficial prelate, attempted to talk Farley out of running, but to no avail. “I will not let myself be kicked around by Roosevelt or anyone else,” said Farley.33

  Cordell Hull played his cards closer to his chest. He was betting that Roosevelt would not run and that he would be the natural fallback. FDR encouraged Hull to believe as much. At a cabinet dinner in early 1940, Mrs. Hull sat next to the president and told him her husband did not like to make speeches. “Well, tell him he had better get used to it,” Roosevelt replied. “He’ll have a lot of it to do soon.”34 Hull considered it incompatible with his position as secretary of state to campaign for the nomination. Knowing that Roosevelt’s support was all he needed, he chose to wait.35 “I believe the world is going straight to hell,” he told FDR, “and I think I can be of greater service in the State Department.”36

  Other potentials faded early.
Harry Hopkins, with whom the president felt most comfortable, was literally at death’s door, hospitalized first at the Mayo Clinic, then at the Naval Hospital in Washington, with an as-yet-undiagnosed digestive ailment. Paul V. McNutt, the former governor of Indiana, whom Roosevelt appointed to head the newly established Federal Security Agency, was new to the ways of Washington and mistook the president’s hearty welcome for political support. Henry Wallace, Securities and Exchange Commission head William O. Douglas, and Attorney General Robert H. Jackson all had the presidential urge, but with little professional support their candidacies failed to materialize.

  In Europe, meanwhile, the military situation was shrouded in fog. After Poland’s defeat, both sides settled into a period of watchful waiting. Troops deployed with theatrical precision, but no shots were fired. The Germans, taking advantage of their recent battlefield experience, honed their maneuver tactics and air-to-ground coordination. The French, whose tactical doctrine traced to World War I, assiduously dug fortifications. The British, equally confident that the home-front hardships induced by the Allied economic blockade would bring Germany to its senses, dithered and did little. “The accumulation of evidence that an attack is imminent is formidable,” Chamberlain wrote his sister, “and yet I cannot conceive myself that it is coming.” On April 5, 1940, the prime minister gloated to the National Conservative Union meeting in London, “Hitler has missed the bus”—a gaffe second only to his “Peace in our time” proclamation after Munich.37

  In Berlin, witty Germans who looked west spoke of Sitzkrieg. The French called it le drôle de guerre. Ironically, it was Senator Borah who baptized the situation with a name when in December 1939 he spoke of the “phony war” on the western front. If the stalemate in Europe had continued, FDR would likely have retired. “I think my husband was torn,” said Eleanor years later. “He would often talk about the reasons against a third term, but there was a great sense of responsibility for what was happening.”38

  FDR did not ask Eleanor’s advice, nor did she offer it. “I never questioned Franklin about his political intentions. The fact that I myself never wanted him to be in Washington made me doubly careful not to intimate that I had the slightest preference.”39

  The calm in Europe was shattered on April 9, 1940, at precisely 4:20 A.M., an hour before dawn, when German troops moved unopposed across Schleswig-Holstein’s unfortified border with Denmark. Simultaneously, combat-ready Nazi landing parties went ashore all along the Norwegian coast from Oslo to Narvik. The British and French were caught flat-footed. Danish independence was snuffed out by the time most Danes finished breakfast. Norway resisted for two weeks. In strategic terms the occupation of Denmark gave Germany a stranglehold on the Baltic. The audacious defeat of Norway provided Hitler a valuable psychological victory. But the long-term military impact was questionable. Norway’s ports proved less useful than the Kriegsmarine had anticipated; iron ore from Lorraine later diminished the importance of Swedish sources, and for the remainder of the war the occupation of Norway consumed vast numbers of German soldiers who could have been better deployed elsewhere.40

  Norway’s defeat became Chamberlain’s. On May 10, rather than face the inevitable vote of no confidence in the House, Chamberlain resigned.* He was succeeded by Winston Churchill. “I felt as if I were walking with Destiny and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial,” wrote Churchill.41 Roosevelt was less sanguine. “I suppose Churchill was the best man England had,” he told his cabinet, “even if he was drunk half of his time.”42

  That same day, German forces stormed across the Belgian and Dutch frontiers. In the north, Field Marshal Fedor von Bock’s Army Group B smashed through Holland’s defenses, paratroopers seized bridges, and motorized infantry followed on, while the Luftwaffe paralyzed Dutch resistance. The main German thrust was mounted by von Rundstedt’s Army Group A in the Ardennes. Rundstedt would repeat the maneuver in December 1944 at the Battle of the Bulge. In 1940 the Ardennes forest was the pivot between the Maginot Line to the south and the bulk of the French Army strung out along the Belgian border; in 1944 it was the hinge between Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery’s British and Canadian force in the north and General Omar Bradley’s American army group in the south. Because of the hilly, heavily wooded terrain, the Allies deemed it impenetrable to enemy armor and it was lightly held. Three German panzer corps, some two thousand tanks, slashed through in five days, opened a fifty-mile gap in the French lines, and were streaking toward the English Channel. At seven-thirty in the morning of May 15, French premier Paul Reynaud telephoned Churchill with the bad news. Speaking in English, Reynaud said, “We are defeated. We have lost the battle.”43

  Later that day, Churchill cabled Roosevelt, his first message to the president since becoming prime minister: “The scene has darkened swiftly. The small countries are simply smashed up, one by one, like matchwood. We expect to be attacked ourselves in the near future. If necessary, we shall continue the war alone.… But I trust you realize, Mr. President, that the voice and force of the United States may count for nothing if they are withheld too long.”

  Churchill proceeded to ask Roosevelt for immediate assistance: “forty or fifty of your older destroyers,” several hundred late-model aircraft, antiaircraft weapons, and ammunition, plus steel and other raw materials.44 The following day FDR made a dramatic appearance before a joint session of Congress to ask for a supplemental defense appropriation of $1.2 billion. The proposal had been in the works for some time, but the news from France gave it increased urgency. Roosevelt’s face was drawn, his knuckles white as he gripped the lectern. His voice was resolute. “The brutal force of modern offensive war has been loosed in all its horror. No old defense is so strong that it requires no further strengthening and no attack is so unlikely that it may be ignored.”

  The United States was currently producing 6,000 airplanes a year. Roosevelt asked for 50,000. He requested funds for modernizing the Army and Navy, as well as to increase production facilities for everything that was needed. Recognizing the power of the America First lobby, he also asked Congress to take no action that would hamper delivery of U.S. planes to the Allies.45 At the end of the month, with the war in France going badly, Roosevelt asked for another $1.9 billion.46 By May 1941, one year later, Congress had appropriated a total of $37.3 billion for defense—a figure roughly four times the entire federal budget in 1939.47

  The day after receiving Churchill’s request, Roosevelt responded. Airplanes, antiaircraft weapons, ammunition, and steel, said the president, would be provided. But the destroyers were unavailable. “As you know a step of that kind could not be taken except with the specific authorization of Congress and I am not certain that it would be wise for that suggestion to be made to the Congress at this moment.”48

  Churchill was sympathetic. “We are determined to persevere to the very end whatever the result of the great battle in France may be. But if American assistance is to play any part it must be available.”49

  As events unfolded in Europe, the nation’s Democratic primaries passed almost unnoticed. Oregon voters went to the polls on May 17 and voted 9 to 1 for Roosevelt over Garner. In Nebraska, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, Roosevelt slates were unopposed. In Wisconsin, FDR took twenty-one delegates to Garner’s three. In Illinois he swept all fifty-eight. In California, which Garner carried in 1932, Roosevelt won all but one delegate. Even Texas chose a pro-Roosevelt delegation.50 FDR made no public reference to the primaries and did not campaign, but he did not prevent supporters from filing slates on his behalf.*

  In France the war proceeded with the inevitability of a Greek tragedy. On May 20 German armor reached the Channel coast at Abbeville, slicing France in two. On the twenty-second the panzers wheeled north pinning the French First Army, the 350,000 men of the British Expeditionary Force, and the Belgian Army against the sea. The Belgians surrendered on May 28, and the bulk of the BEF, together with some 100,000 French troops, were evacuated from D
unkirk between May 29 and June 2.51 Left behind was the equipment of the British Army, including all of its artillery, small arms, 7,000 tons of ammunition, and 120,000 vehicles. “Never has a nation been so naked before her foes,” wrote Churchill.52

  The British losses at Dunkirk created an even greater need for American assistance, but Churchill’s request for weapons had been pigeonholed by the War Department. Secretary Woodring opposed providing anything, General Hap Arnold stressed the prior needs of the Army Air Corps, and the general staff worried about hemispheric defense. General Marshall cut through the resistance. Recognizing that the president wanted to provide everything possible, Marshall ordered Army supply depots inventoried, redefined American requirements, and declared surplus more or less what the British needed. Working closely with Treasury secretary Morgenthau, Marshall arranged for the equipment to be sold directly to two U.S. corporations, Curtiss-Wright and United States Steel, which resold it to the British at cost. Solicitor General Francis Biddle sprinkled legal holy water over the transaction, and by June 5 some 22,000 .30-caliber machine guns, 25,000 Browning automatic rifles, 900 75 mm howitzers, 58,000 antiaircraft weapons, 500,000 Enfield rifles left over from World War I, and 130 million rounds of ammunition were on their way to Britain. “I am delighted to have that list of surplus material which is ‘ready to roll,’ ” Roosevelt wrote Morgenthau. “Give it an extra push every morning and every night until it is on board ship.”53 Except for tanks, which were in short supply, the British Army was substantially rearmed within six weeks after returning from Dunkirk.*