Threshold of War

by Heinrichs, Waldo;

  On September 17 the Admiralty proposed that the United States Navy take over formal responsibility for guarding Denmark Strait, explaining that an important operation in the Mediterranean required withdrawal of heavy units from the Home fleet. This was Operation HALBERD, a vital supply convoy to Malta guarded by Prince of Wales, Rodney, and Nelson.58 Admiral King agreed, and within ten days nearly all the ships of the Atlantic Fleet were at the northern bases or headed there. They included one old and two modernized battleships, three heavy cruisers, and a carrier at Hvalfjordur; and one modernized and two old battleships, a carrier and two light cruisers at Argentia with a third carrier and a light cruiser headed there. Altogether some fifty destroyers were escorting warships or merchant convoys in northern waters. In addition, the new battleship Washington, though still not fully ready, was in a backup position at Rockland, Maine.59 On September 27 the commanders of the Home fleet and the Western Approaches, Admirals Sir John Tovey and Sir Percy Noble, arrived in Iceland in H.M.S. King George V to see for themselves that Denmark Strait was locked tight and to work out ways of improving communications between the British and American fleets.60 By October the American naval concentration against Germany in the northern reaches of the Atlantic was not far smaller than the Pacific Fleet itself.

  During the same September 5 meeting with Admirals Stark and King at which the president concluded his decisions on escort of convoy, he also considered a recent request from Churchill for troop transports and cargo ships to move 40,000 British troops from the United Kingdom to the Middle East. The purpose was not further reinforcement of the British forces in Egypt, however, but building strength through the Persian Gulf in Syria, Iraq, and Iran. By suppressing the Iraqi coup in May and defeating the Vichy French in Syria in July, British forces closed up to the southern border of Turkey. On August 25 Soviet and British forces by mutual agreement moved into Iran to prevent a pro-German coup at Teheran like the one in Iraq and to establish a supply corridor to the Soviet Union across the Caucasus. The object of the reinforcement, Churchill explained, was to sustain the “Russian reserve positions in the Volga basin” and encourage Turkey “to stand as a solid block against German passage in Syria and Palestine.”61 What had inspired this urgent dispatch of regular British divisions to a front so far from battle was dismal news from the Russian front.

  Shortly after Argentia, the German offensive resumed and soon sweeps and plunges by Panzer and motorized forces were taking huge bites out of the Red Army. The Soviets now were paying the price for the rest and replenishment of German forces in late July and early August. Army Group North cut Leningrad’s communications, besieged the city and prepared to storm it. In the center the decision was to defer the attack on Moscow. Guderian’s Panzer army swung south and with easier supply on a lateral front drove in behind the massive, inert concentration of Soviet forces—two-thirds of a million men—at Kiev. Opposite him, from Army Group South, Kleist’s Panzer group crossed the Dnieper and gathered mass to strike north, meet Guderian, and seal off Kiev. Further south, Runstedt’s columns fanned out across the Ukraine to encircle Odessa, cut off the Crimea, and capture the great bend of the Dnieper where it pokes eastwardly toward the industries of the Don basin. Beyond the Don lay the Caucasus and the Volga. Every major city of European Russia was imperiled except, for the moment, Moscow.62

  Western observers were slow to grasp the grim reality as the optimism of early August persisted. The American embassy in Moscow, now determinedly hopeful where it had been persistently skeptical, considered the reverses in the Ukraine as no worse than one battle lost. It warned that the capture of Rostov, where the Germans could turn the corner into the Caucasus, would be most serious, but pointed out on August 23 that winter would begin in sixty days. Soviet destruction of the great dam at Zaporozhe on the Dnieper, their emblem of proletarian progress, showed that Stalin’s scorched earth policy was in “deadly earnest.” The American legation in Switzerland, estimating German casualties of 1,400,000 (British estimates were 2,000,000), saw no sign of the breaking of Russian morale, fronts, or command. General Mason-Macfarlane, the British observer at Moscow, reported after a visit to the front that Russian morale and equipment were excellent, though he acknowledged that the situation in the south was “precarious.” The New York Times reported the Russians holding or gaining on August 24, 25, 28, 31, September 1, 3, and 4. Only the American military attaché in London, with access to British intelligence, which in turn was based partly on ULTRA, pointed out the grave danger of the envelopment of Kiev.63

  So after weeks of sanguine reports, news of this “lurch into disaster in the Ukraine,” as one authority has described it, came as a shock to Roosevelt, especially delivered as it was in a letter from Stalin to Churchill which was passed on to Washington on September 5. The situation, the Soviet chief said, had “considerably deteriorated” in the past three weeks because the Germans had transferred thirty to thirty-four divisions and great numbers of tanks and aircraft from the west. They did so “with impunity,” he continued acidly, because they recognized that the danger in the west was a bluff. Their strategy was to smash their enemies singly, first the Soviet Union, then Britain. Now more than half the Ukraine was gone, and the enemy was at the gates of Leningrad. He ticked off the losses: the Krivoi Rog iron-ore district and metallurgical works in the Ukraine. Out of production for months because of evacuation were an aluminum factory on the Dnieper, another at Tikhvin in the north, an automotive factory and two aircraft factories in the Ukraine, and two automotive factories and an aircraft factory in Leningrad.64

  The only answer to this “mortal menace” was a British second front in the Balkans or France, a guarantee of 30,000 tons of aluminum by October, and monthly shipments of 400 aircraft and 500 tanks. Without this help, the Soviet dictator concluded in brutal candor, Russia would be defeated or so weakened it would be unable to help its allies by active operations. In conveying the message, Churchill informed Roosevelt that Soviet Ambassador Ivan Maisky in London had used language “which could not exclude the impression that they might be thinking of separate terms.” With that language the American government was already familiar. In a dispatch Washington received August 27, Anthony Biddle, ambassador to several governments-in-exile in London, had reported Maisky as saying that the Soviet Union would make peace unless the United States entered the war and the British opened a second front.65

  Churchill responded to Stalin with equal candor that a second front that year was impossible and the next year indeterminable. The best he could offer was a buildup of forces in the Middle East, which, after the defeat of Axis forces in Libya, would “come into line on your southern flank,” some undefined operation “in the extreme North when there is more darkness,” and further battering of Germany from the air. Lacking a fighting front to offer, the British government stretched itself on war supplies. Churchill said he would try to expedite the Moscow conference on supply and promised on the spot, from British production, one-half of Stalin’s request for tanks and planes with the hope that the Americans would supply the other half. He apologized to Roosevelt for presuming on American aid, explaining that the “moment may be decisive.”66

  These were the exigencies when Roosevelt met with the admirals on September 5 to decide arrangements for escort of convoy. On the immediate issue of reinforcing the Middle East the president decided to meet the prime minister halfway: he would provide transports for one division and ten to twelve cargo ships. The troop ships would be the navy’s largest and fastest: the former luxury liners, Washington, America, and Manhattan.67

  Roosevelt was no less determined to provide the Soviet Union with all possible war matériel than he had been before the Argentia conference. Upon his return from Argentia in the wake of the House vote barely extending the draft, he warned reporters against a natural tendency to slacken in delivery of goods when the Russians were succeeding. This, he said, was “terribly, terribly dangerous.” He established the priority of Russian supply in
the most authoritative and deliberate way in a letter to Stimson on August 30: “I deem it to be of paramount importance for the safety and security of America that all reasonable munitions help be provided for Russia, not only immediately but as long as she continues to fight the Axis powers effectively.”68

  The problem was that demands had carried beyond any reasonable expectation of supply. Aside from the Russians, the British were counting on about one-third of American aircraft and one-half of American tank production, the latter especially important for CRUSADER, their impending offensive in Libya.69 The Middle East command was a favorite whipping boy of the U.S. Army, its deficiencies, whether in command, supply or tactics, were always being paraded through the General Staff. But Roosevelt unwaveringly supported its reinforcement on the ground that “the enemy must be fought wherever he was found.”70 To these demands were added those of the burgeoning American armed services, to say nothing of voices offstage such as China’s.

  The war and America’s relationship to it had changed faster than estimates of what it would take to win it. The army and navy were still at work on the estimates, known as the Victory Program, which the president had asked for July 9. On August 30 he directed Stimson to submit by September 10 his recommendations regarding allocation of war production through June 1942 among the United States and forces opposed to the Axis, and also his estimates of the production required for ultimate victory. Lights burned late at the War Department. On September 8, Roosevelt agreed with Churchill on an earlier date, September 25, for the Moscow conference on supply which they had planned at Argentia. The president suggested that their delegations first meet in London a week hence to coordinate allocations and estimates, immediate and ultimate. He sent the unwelcome news (by way of a letter over Hopkins’ signature) that American supply commitments to Britain would have to be reviewed in the light of Soviet requirements.71 The urgency of the situation described by Stalin only intensified Roosevelt’s determination to send all possible aid as soon as possible.

  The competitors for American supply were in fact “dividing a deficiency.”72 War production in 1941 was still less than 10 percent of total production and less than two-thirds of British-Canadian, which it would not surpass until the last quarter of 1942. Because of design changes, B-17 production halted and the United States produced exactly one heavy bomber in July 1941. Better than half the military planes produced were trainers, and there were scarcely any spare parts. The United States had on hand eighty medium tanks and expected to complete 450 in the July-September quarter as against 10,790 by the end of 1942. It expected to produce 230,000 tons of shipping in the same quarter; the army calculated that defeat of Germany would require the 10.8 million already planned through 1943 and an additional 13.1 million tons.73

  From September 8 to the end of the month, intense and at times bitter struggles over priorities and allocations occurred between the White House and the army, the army and navy, the Americans and British at London, and the Anglo-Americans and Russians in Moscow. Roosevelt carefully monitored the action and imposed his will at crucial moments to ensure that the outcome would be acceptable to the Soviet government.

  Bitterest of all was the battle over tanks. Stalin asked for five hundred a month, or 4,500 through June 1942, and the British promised half. Under pressure to match the British offer of 2,250, the U.S. Army agreed to stretch out the equipping of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Armored Divisions and fifteen independent tank battalions and postpone activation of the 6th Armored Division. This sacrifice and severe cutbacks in British allocations yielded 1,524 medium and light tanks, or precisely two-thirds of the matching offer. The British protested, whereupon the president ordered a doubling of tank production and an increase of 25 percent in deliveries, to the anguish of the U.S. Navy, which feared that a higher priority for tanks would reduce the armor plate available for warship construction. With a greater supply promised, at least on paper, the British agreed to make up the difference in immediate deliveries in return for a larger quota of American tanks later. On this basis Stalin’s demand for 500 tanks a month could be met. In the meantime the Soviet demand had risen to 1,100 a month, but in the end Stalin settled for five hundred.74

  With this sort of juggling and some highly speculative promissory notes on future production and delivery, the British Commonwealth and United States came forward with responsive offerings at Moscow on September 28. They would meet Stalin’s original requests for aircraft and tanks in full. Canada would provide one-half the aluminum sought, and the Americans would study the possibility of providing the rest. Counterbalancing modest amounts of other weapons, the British and Americans offered 90,000 jeeps and trucks, as well as a wide array of finished metals and raw materials, and large amounts of wheat and sugar. Britain and the United States assured production but not delivery, leaving the enormous problem of transportation to joint responsibility and the future. Payment was a problem since Roosevelt was not quite ready to extend Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union on account of anti-Soviet public opinion, but by patching together credits and old purchases the Treasury Department tided over the interim. Stalin sent word he was “much gratified.”75

  Whiffs of the battle over allocations began seeping into the press. Correspondents Walter Lippmann and Ernest K. Lindley, writing independently, set forth the opinion of the British and of the American navy that the United States should rely on sea and air power and on its manufacturing capacity to constrict and batter Germany into submission rather than build a huge army for the invasion of Europe. Pressure actually arose to reduce the size of the army. Stimson, Marshall, Lovett, and McCloy vigorously resisted the idea, contending that the United States must ultimately “come to grips with and annihilate” the German war machine. They pointed to existing commitments for task forces and bases and to what might happen if “Hitler gets his feet out of the bog in Russia.” On September 22, Stimson and Marshall went to the White House to defend the army’s current strength and projected size of 215 divisions under the Victory Program. The outcome was a presidential decision to defer further expansion of the army after February 1942 in order to release munitions for allies. That this represented Roosevelt’s choice of the navy’s rather than the army’s concept of defeating Germany seems unlikely. Roosevelt chose not to choose, dwelling on the immediate, imperative need to ensure Soviet survival into 1942. On September 20 the press reported the German capture of Kiev. The military attaché in London reported “definite disintegration” along the entire Russian front. The president was determined to provide aid to the Soviet Union so substantial that Stalin would not only gain concrete assistance but also the conviction that Britain and the United States were allies he could count on.76

  The competition among the Soviets, the British and the American armed services for American aircraft production, no less severe than that for tanks, had significant strategic consequences. The 1,800 planes promised the Soviet Union for the next nine months, consisting of fighters and medium bombers but not any heavy bombers, would come from British and U.S. Army allocations. The British insisted on American heavy bombers in compensation. Stimson, Marshall, and the Army Air Corps bitterly resisted. They were displeased, to be sure, with British handling of the few precious B-17s sent earlier, but, more important, they believed it was high time for the United States to develop its own heavy bomber forces. From August 1940 to June 1941, top priority had gone to building 1,221 planes for the navy.77 On August 25, Stimson and Marshall witnessed the first B-17Es coming off the assembly line at the Boeing plant in Seattle. This version of the Flying Fortress was much more heavily armed, with top, rear, and belly rotating powered turrets for twin .50 caliber machine guns. The Air Corps, with only 108 heavy bombers as of June 30, was determined to get as many of them as it could.78

  The argument for building American strategic air power increasingly turned on the air reinforcement of the Philippines. On August 11a group of army officers left Hawaii by navy patrol plane for Australia to prepare the way
for trans-Pacific flights of B-l7s. On September 5 nine B-l 7s took off from Hickam Field, Hawaii, for Midway and Wake islands. From Wake at high altitude and at night they overflew the eastern Carolines, Japanese mandated islands, headed for Port Moresby in southeastern New Guinea and hopped from there to Darwin, Australia, and Clark Field near Manila, arriving September 12.79 Difficult and dangerous as this pioneering flight was, it solved the problem of moving large aircraft across the Pacific quickly and opened the door to a buildup of strategic air power in Southeast Asia.

  Stimson was enthusiastic. The arrival of the B-l7s, he wrote on September 12, demonstrated American ability to position air power in the narrow seas of Southeast Asia to cut the line of communications of any Japanese expeditionary force sent southward. He spent a good part of the day September 16 poring over maps to see “how far our planes would reach.” Stimson and General Marshall understood Roosevelt’s concern for aid to the Soviet Union and his disposition, as Churchill explained to Stalin on August 28, “to take {a} strong line against further Japanese aggression whether in the South or in the Northwest Pacific.” Marshall aimed his argument for holding on to American bombers and developing American strategic air power directly at these presidential concerns. In his brief for a conference with the president on September 22, next in priority after preparing task forces for defense of the Atlantic islands was the air reinforcement of the Philippines. The brief read: “Rush buildup of air power to Philippines … to restrain Japan from advance into Malaysia or Eastern Siberia.”80