Jean Edward Smith

by FDR

  So confident were Hitler and Mussolini of ultimate victory that they did not press Japan for a parallel declaration of war against Russia. Hitler wished to finish off the Soviet Union himself and was content to see the Japanese free the Pacific of American and British influence. Germany’s declaration of war against the United States intensified the U-boat campaign in the Atlantic. Hitler removed the restraints under which the German submarine fleet had been operating, and American coastal shipping became a prime target. By late January 1942 more than twenty U-boats were operating in American waters. On January 28, a single submarine standing off New York harbor sank eight ships, including three tankers, in just twelve hours.5*

  Roosevelt chose not to respond to Hitler by going before Congress. Late on the afternoon of December 11 he sent a written message requesting both houses to acknowledge that the United States and Germany were at war.6 The House acted instantly by voice vote, the Senate shortly afterward. Both votes were unanimous.

  As soon as the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Churchill decided it was essential for him to meet Roosevelt. “I have formed the conviction that it is my duty to visit Washington without delay,” he wrote the King on December 8. “The whole plan of Anglo-American defence and attack has to be concerted in light of reality. We have also to be careful that our share of munitions and other aid which we are receiving from the United States does not suffer more than is inevitable.”7

  FDR was initially reluctant. He wished to meet Churchill, but not until the dust from Pearl Harbor had settled. “I would like to suggest delay … until early stages of mobilization complete here and situation in Pacific more clarified,” the president wrote on December 10. “My first impression is that full discussion would be more useful a few weeks hence than immediately.”8 Evidently Roosevelt spoke directly with Churchill later that day and expressed concern for the prime minister’s safety on the long ocean voyage, especially the return trip after his presence in the United States had become known.

  Churchill refused to be deterred. “We do not think there is any serious danger about return journey,” he replied. “There is however, great danger in our not having a full discussion on the highest level about the extreme gravity of the naval position as well as upon all the production and allocation issues involved.… I never felt so sure about the final victory, but only concerted action will achieve it.”9

  Roosevelt conceded. “Delighted to have you here at White House,” he cabled the evening of December 10. “The news is bad but it will be better.”10

  Three days later Churchill sailed from Scotland on the shakedown cruise of the new battleship Duke of York (a sister ship to Prince of Wales), accompanied by his military chiefs and Lord Beaverbrook, Britain’s Canadian-born minister of supply. It was a stormy crossing with gale force winds and forty-foot waves, and the second day out the great battleship shed its destroyer escort, relying on its 28-knot speed to elude German U-boats. Once again Britain’s entire war leadership was making the perilous passage across the Atlantic on a single ship in a hostile sea. Churchill had originally planned to sail up the Chesapeake to the Potomac and then motor to Washington, but the rough weather delayed his arrival. When Duke of York reached Hampton Roads on December 22, the prime minister disembarked and boarded a U.S. Navy Lockheed Lodestar, which landed in Washington forty-five minutes later. “On no account come out to meet me,” he advised FDR, but when the plane landed Roosevelt stood waiting, his back propped against a White House limousine.

  Churchill hit the White House like a cyclone. Eleanor had arranged for his personal staff to be housed there and had cleared the Monroe Room on the second floor for the prime minister’s “map room,” modeled on his London command post. Churchill would sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom. Or so Eleanor thought. “Won’t do,” said Winston. “Bed’s not right.” The prime minister thereupon undertook his own tour of the second floor, trying the beds and examining the storage space in each room, and finally settled on the Rose Bedroom—the same room Sara had occupied on her visits to Washington and in which Queen Elizabeth had stayed in 1939.11

  Churchill confronted FDR’s butler, Alonzo Fields. “Now Fields, we want to leave here as friends, right? So I need you to listen. One, I don’t like talking outside my quarters. Two, I hate whistling in the corridors. And three, I must have a tumbler of sherry in my room before breakfast, a couple of glasses of scotch and soda before lunch, and French champagne and well-aged brandy before I go to sleep at night.”12 No one in the White House had ever seen anything like Winston before, said Secret Service chief Mike Reilly. “He ate, and thoroughly enjoyed, more food than any two men or three diplomats; and he consumed brandy and scotch with a grace and enthusiasm that left us all openmouthed in awe. It was not the amount that impressed us, although that was quite impressive, but the complete sobriety that went hand and hand with his drinking.”13 When Eleanor said she feared Churchill was a bad influence on her husband because of his drinking, FDR cut her short with a reminder that it was not his side of the family that had a problem with alcohol.14

  For his part Churchill felt completely at home: up at eleven, two hot baths a day, a long nap in the late afternoon, bedtime at two-thirty or three. “We live here as a big family,” he cabled Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee, “in the greatest intimacy and informality,* and I have formed the very highest regard and admiration for the President. His breadth of view, resolution and his loyalty to the common cause are beyond all praise.”15

  The day after his arrival, Churchill joined FDR at one of his twice-weekly press conferences in the Oval Office. The setting and informality were new, but after forty years’ experience with question period in the House of Commons, Churchill was in his element. Sitting to Roosevelt’s right behind the president’s crowded desk, the prime minister parried inquiries with deft aplomb.

  Q: Mr. Prime Minister, isn’t Singapore [which had not yet fallen] the key to the whole situation out there?

  WSC: The key to the whole situation is the resolute manner in which the British and American Democracies are going to throw themselves into the conflict.

  Q: Mr. Minister, can you tell us when you think we may lick these boys?

  WSC: If we manage it well it will take only half as long as if we manage it badly. [Loud laughter.]16

  Roosevelt beamed as Churchill cast his spell. “The smiling President looked like an old trouper who, on turning impresario, had produced a smash hit,” wrote Newsweek. “It was terribly exciting,” confirmed Alistair Cooke, who covered the White House for the London Times.17

  On December 26 Churchill addressed a joint session of Congress, the first foreigner accorded the privilege since Lafayette’s triumphal visit in 1824. For Churchill it was a signal honor, and a mighty roar greeted the prime minister as he was escorted down the aisle to the House rostrum. Roosevelt remained at the White House and listened to the proceedings over the radio.

  Churchill understood the audience and crafted his speech to perfection. “I cannot help reflecting that if my father had been American and my mother British, instead of the other way round, I might have gotten here on my own.” The legislators clapped and cheered. Churchill continued confidently:

  In that case this would not have been the first time you would have heard my voice. In that case I should not have needed any invitation, but if I had, it is hardly likely it would have been unanimous. [Cheers and laughter.] So perhaps things are better as they are. I may confess, however, that I do not feel quite like a fish out of water in a legislative assembly where English is spoken.18

  More laughter and thunderous applause. Churchill spoke thirty-five minutes. It was magnificent drama, reported The Washington Post. As the prime minister left the floor he flashed his “V for victory” sign. The effect was electric. Throughout the chamber hundreds of arms were raised, fingers spread in a return salute: a stunning climax to a speech that the Post ranked with Edmund Burke’s defense of the American colonies.19

  Churchill had intend
ed to stay only about a week. But as in The Man Who Came to Dinner,* the visit lengthened to three and a half weeks, including brief side trips to Ottawa and Pompano Beach, Florida.20 Christened the ARCADIA conference by Churchill, the meeting produced agreement on the “Germany first” strategy deemed essential by the British. It also (with perceptible American misgiving) accepted a British-inspired plan for an Anglo-American invasion of North Africa (GYMNAST) later in the year. At General Marshall’s insistence the conference agreed that the war would be waged in each theater under a single supreme commander, who would control all of the forces in his area from all countries and from all branches of the service. The first supreme commander appointed was British General Sir Archibald Wavell for the Southwest Pacific.

  To direct the actions of each supreme commander and to coordinate British and American military policy, ARCADIA established the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS), a joint British-American undertaking composed of the three British chiefs—General Sir Alan Brooke (CIGS); Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, the first sea lord; and Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal—and their American counterparts, Marshall, King, and Arnold. At Roosevelt’s insistence the Combined Chiefs was headquartered in Washington, where its work was directed by Field Marshal Sir John Dill, who became the ranking British chief and Churchill’s personal representative. Dill was joined in July 1942 by Admiral William D. Leahy, whom Roosevelt brought back from Vichy to become chief of staff to the commander in chief and, in effect, chairman of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff.*

  In retrospect, the establishment of the command structure to fight the war was an unprecedented achievement that reflected the extraordinary ability of Churchill and Roosevelt to saw off minor differences and find common ground. Roosevelt, unlike Lincoln, was also well served by his long familiarity with the Army and Navy and his ability to pick effective military subordinates. Leahy, Marshall, King, and Arnold were exactly the right men for the job, and they served in their posts throughout the war. In their own way they were ruthless taskmasters, loyal to the president, and, when pushed by FDR, worked effectively with their British counterparts.†

  An equal achievement was the creation of the Combined Munitions Assignment Board for the allocation of supplies among the allies. At General Marshall’s insistence the Board was made subordinate to the Combined Chiefs of Staff. As Marshall told FDR, he could not plan military operations and carry them through if some other body controlled the allocation of the materiel required for such operations. Roosevelt backed Marshall, the Board was located in Washington, and Harry Hopkins, who had long played go-between for Churchill and FDR, became its chairman.21 Like the CCS, the Munitions Assignment Board worked with remarkable efficiency. When disputes arose Hopkins resolved them before they festered.22

  The ARCADIA conference marked the first reference to the United Nations. On New Year’s Day 1942 twenty-six nations, led by the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China, affixed their signatures to a document drafted initially by FDR pledging cooperation in the defeat of the Axis powers.23 The term “United Nations” was Roosevelt’s choice (rather than “Associated Nations”),* but this was purely a declaration of wartime purpose, not the organization for postwar security that was established at San Francisco three and a half years later.

  On January 6, 1942, Roosevelt went to Capitol Hill to deliver his tenth State of the Union message. Within a span of little more than a week the Congress heard both Churchill and FDR. Both were captivating speakers, but their styles were distinctly different. Churchill, like Charles de Gaulle—and Hitler and Mussolini, for that matter—spoke to his audience collectively with rhetorical flourishes and stirring cadences that rallied the nation’s soul. Roosevelt addressed his remarks to each listener individually, with homey references and simple words that struck a personal note. For Churchill it was an oration; for FDR, a conversation.24

  Roosevelt was at his best that Tuesday. “The militarists of Berlin and Tokyo started this war. But the massed, angered forces of humanity will finish it.” He galvanized the nation with a breathtaking set of production goals for 1942: 60,000 airplanes, 45,000 tanks, 20,000 antiaircraft guns, 6 million tons of merchant shipping. “These figures,” the president told a wildly cheering Congress, “will give the Japanese and the Nazis a little idea of just what they accomplished at Pearl Harbor.”25

  Roosevelt’s production targets provided inspiration for the nation in the dark days after Pearl Harbor. It was, said Stimson, “the best speech I ever heard him make.”26 But FDR had drawn his figures more or less out of a hat. “Oh, the production people can do it if they really try,” he told an incredulous Hopkins the night before the speech.27*

  For the military, Roosevelt’s figures proved a mixed blessing. “Everyone set out to build sixty thousand planes and forty-five thousand tanks,” said General Lucius D. Clay, who had been placed in charge of all military procurement. “But we needed balanced forces. We needed ammunition, we needed machine guns, field artillery, anti-tank weapons—the whole range of equipment to fit out the troop formations which were being raised. And we could not afford to expend all our resources meeting the president’s goals. It was a hell of a fight. Finally I prepared a chart showing what the Army would have if the President’s goals were achieved, and what it would lack, especially artillery and anti-tank guns. I gave it to Mr. Hopkins, who quickly saw the point we were making. Mr. Hopkins got the President’s personal O.K. (although he never gave it a public O.K.), and Mr. Roosevelt’s goals were quietly revised downward.”28

  On February 19, 1942, in one of the shabbiest displays of presidential prerogative in American history, Roosevelt approved Executive Order 9066, authorizing the forcible evacuation of persons of Japanese ancestry from the Pacific coast. The order applied to forty thousand older, first-generation Japanese immigrants (Issei) who were debarred from citizenship by the Immigration Act of 1924, as well as to their children (Nisei), some eighty thousand persons born in the United States and therefore American citizens by birth.* There was no military necessity for the order. J. Edgar Hoover, then in his seventeenth year as director of the FBI, called the evacuation “utterly unwarranted”; Major General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, commanding the southern sector of the Western Defense Zone, labeled reports of Japanese sabotage “wild, farcical, and fantastic stuff”; the Los Angeles Times initially editorialized against removal; and Attorney General Francis Biddle thought the program “ill-advised, unnecessary, and unnecessarily cruel, taking Japanese who were not suspect, and Japanese-Americans whose rights were disregarded, from their homes and from their businesses to sit idly in the lonely misery of barracks while the war was being fought in the world beyond.”29

  For the first month after Pearl Harbor, little concern was given to the Japanese on the West Coast. But as the magnitude of the Navy’s defeat became clear, and as Japan advanced unstopped across the South Pacific, public opinion turned sharply antagonistic. Many Americans could not comprehend or explain the humiliating defeats suffered by Allied forces unless they were betrayed by legions of saboteurs undermining resistance from within. Lieutenant General John De Witt, the overall Army commander on the West Coast (whom FDR had passed over when he named George Marshall chief of staff in 1939), argued in a tortured twist of logic that “the very fact that no sabotage has taken place [in California] is a disturbing and confirming indication that such action will be taken.”30

  Racism fed fears of sabotage. For fifty years anti-Japanese sentiment had pervaded the social structure of the Pacific Coast. “California was given by God to a white people,” said the president of the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West, “and with God’s strength we want to keep it as he gave it to us.”31 Greed and economic rivalry contributed. Though Japanese farms occupied only 1 percent of the cultivated land in California, they produced nearly 40 percent of the state’s crop.32 As the manager of the Grower-Shipper Vegetable Association told The Saturday Evening Post: “We’re charged with wanting to get rid
of the Japs for selfish reasons. We might as well be honest. We do.”33

  The tipping point for public opinion came on January 24, 1942, when the Roberts Commission, which had been appointed by FDR to investigate the Pearl Harbor attack,* reported that Nagumo’s strike force had been aided by Hawaii-based espionage agents, including American citizens of Japanese ancestry.34 The commission provided no evidence to substantiate the charge, but the remark was sufficient to unleash a torrent of anti-Japanese reaction. The Los Angeles Times, which as recently as January 23 had advised moderation, called on January 28 for the relocation of all Japanese living in the State whether they were citizens or not. Politicians jumped on the bandwagon. By the end of January the entire California congressional delegation, as well as Democratic governor Culbert L. Olsen and Republican attorney general Earl Warren, was clamoring for removal of the Japanese.†

  The national press took up the cry. On February 12, 1942, following a long interview with General De Witt, Walter Lippmann, the dean of the liberal establishment, bannered his influential column in the Herald Tribune “Fifth Column on the West Coast.” After declaring the entire Pacific coast a combat zone, Lippmann pronounced judgment: “Nobody’s constitutional rights include the right to reside and do business on a battlefield.”35 Lippmann’s widely read conservative colleague Westbrook Pegler came to the same conclusion. “The Japanese in California should be under armed guard to the last man and woman right now. And to hell with habeas corpus until the danger is over.”36