The day after his fireside chat, Roosevelt sent to Capitol Hill a request for a supplemental defense appropriation of $3.3 billion to fund another 15,000 military aircraft. The process of converting to a war economy, however, remained messy and difficult. At the end of 1940, Roosevelt had scrapped his National Defense Advisory Council and replaced it with an Office of Production Management with William Knudsen as the sole head. Knudsen’s authority was nonetheless weak, and the effort continued to sputter.30
In early June, Communist leaders of a United Auto Workers local shut down the important North American Aviation aircraft plant in Inglewood, California, despite calls for restraint by the union’s national leadership. Just a year before, Franklin Roosevelt’s use of troops to break a strike would have been inconceivable. On June 9, citing the national emergency, he sent bayonet-wielding soldiers to end the stoppage and take control of the facility. Military draft authorities announced that they would rescind occupational deferments for striking defense workers, signaling clearly to the nation that the war trumped the old politics of the 1930s.31
The New Dealer was giving way to the commander in chief, but that did not necessarily indicate the end of domestic reform. By mid-1941, Negro political activists and intellectuals were openly questioning whether blacks had a stake in the survival of European empires that subjugated people of color around the globe. They also increasingly protested widespread hiring discrimination in the booming defense industries and rigid segregation in the armed forces. On both issues, they had a strong advocate in Eleanor Roosevelt. The president, more dependent than ever on the goodwill of the southern Democratic delegation in Congress, still preferred to soft-pedal racial grievances.
In mid-1941, A. Phillip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and America’s most important black labor leader, called for a mass protest march on Washington, threatening to mobilize 10,000 to 25,000 demonstrators. Given the District of Columbia’s Upper South, highly segregated character, the potential for violence was real.
Roosevelt’s secretaries of the army and navy, along with almost all of his top generals and admirals, advised against using the armed forces as instruments of racial reform. Yet the Negro vote was important to the president, and no fair-minded leader could peremptorily ignore discriminatory segregation. Simple support of the status quo risked social upheaval. After intense negotiations in which Eleanor played a key role, the White House responded on June 25 with an executive order establishing a Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), charged with promoting equitable hiring and promotion procedures in defense industries. It did not, however, abolish segregation in the armed forces. Randolph nonetheless called off the march.32
Lacking a congressional mandate and funded parsimoniously from discretionary executive branch appropriations, the FEPC was a timid step forward. It would not prevent several racial riots in the war years that lay ahead, but its presence and mostly educational efforts may have staved off much worse. From his perspective as commander in chief, Roosevelt probably saw it as an expedient that reconciled the long-term thrust of the New Deal with the immediate necessities of the fight against Hitler. The mere establishment of the FEPC moved black civil rights several notches toward the top of the liberal agenda.
On the same day that the president broke the North American Aviation strike, the American public learned that a Brazilian ship in the South Atlantic had picked up survivors from the Robin Moor, an American merchant vessel bound for Cape Town and sunk by a German submarine. Fomenting a widespread sense of outrage in the United States, Berlin strongly defended its right to sink any ship carrying contraband to the enemy anywhere. In a formal communication to Congress, Roosevelt described the incident as “the act of an international outlaw” and condemned “German plans for universal conquest . . . based upon lawlessness and terror on land and piracy on the sea.” Acting on evidence that one of Germany’s diplomatic offices in the United States had leaked the sailing date and route of the Robin Moor, the president ordered the closing of all German and Italian consulates. Berlin responded with a tit-for-tat shutting of US consulates.33
In early July, the president sent American forces to join a British garrison that had already occupied Iceland. The United States gradually replaced the British as the country’s controlling force in a light-handed occupation widely accepted by the local population. The frontier of the Western Hemisphere was now at Reykjavik, 2,611 miles from New York and only 833 miles from Glasgow.
By then, the conflict had changed dramatically. On June 21, after mounting evidence of tension between the two allies, Germany launched an all-out offensive against the Soviet Union. Both Roosevelt and Churchill instantly grasped the possibilities of an alliance with the USSR. The prime minister, for years a stern critic of international communism and the Soviet state, put it most memorably to an aide: “If Hitler invaded Hell I would at least make a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.” He quickly opened channels to Moscow.34
Roosevelt’s attitude toward the USSR and its leader appears always to have been more ambivalent. His belief in the Soviet Union’s redeeming, socially transformative qualities existed alongside his realistic understanding of the USSR as a rough dictatorship. At dinner with a few friends on New Year’s Day, 1942, FDR remarked, as Joseph Lash recalled, “that Stalin had to rule a very backward people, which he thought explained a good deal,” and, moreover, that the Soviet dictator possessed a sense of proportion, illustrated by his sense of humor.35
Harry Hopkins, whom Roosevelt had dispatched on a second mission to England in July to establish the agenda for a personal meeting with Churchill, had provided this last insight into Stalin’s personality. Gaunt, struggling with severe gastric problems, and prone to bouts of exhaustion, Hopkins completed his work in England, delivered a brief speech to the British people over the British Broadcasting Corporation, and departed for Russia. He carried with him a communication from Roosevelt to Stalin: “I ask you to treat Mr. Hopkins with the identical confidence you would feel if you were talking directly to me. . . . May I express, in conclusion, the great admiration all of us in the United States feel for the superb bravery displayed by the Russian people in the defense of their liberty and in their fight for the independence of Russia.”36
On the evening of July 30, accompanied by Ambassador Laurence Steinhardt, Hopkins had the first of three meetings with Stalin. Their broad discussions ranged from the Soviet leader’s survey of the fight against Germany, to an extensive wish list for aid, to the USSR’s precarious relations with Japan. Most important was the personal impression Stalin left. Hopkins saw an absolute ruler, totally in charge, crisp and decisive. “There was no waste of word, gesture, nor mannerism. It was like talking to a perfectly co-ordinated machine.” Hopkins left Moscow convinced that the Soviet Union would survive the Nazi onslaught and function as an invaluable ally.37
Enduring a harrowing flight in stormy weather, Hopkins returned to Britain on August 2, just in time to join Churchill on a journey across the Atlantic. The next day Roosevelt boarded the presidential yacht Potomac off Martha’s Vineyard for what was billed as a brief vacation and fishing trip. Kept at its usual distance, the press intermittently managed to catch sight of the president—actually a stand-in who had donned pince-nez glasses—relaxing on deck. After a few days, the reporters saw through the ruse; they began openly discussing Roosevelt’s disappearance and speculating that he might be in a secret meeting with Churchill.
On August 5 the president had transferred to the heavy cruiser USS Augusta, the flagship of a small but formidable flotilla that moved northeast toward Newfoundland and the American base (acquired in the Destroyer Deal) at Argentia. His party consisted of an emerging elite of wartime commanders and military leaders: Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Harold Stark, Commander in Chief of the Atlantic Fleet Ernest J. King, Director of War Plans Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, Army Chief of Staff Gener
al George C. Marshall, and Chief of the Army Air Corps Major General Henry (“Hap”) Arnold. Roosevelt had with him his own military aide, Major General Edwin (“Pa”) Watson. Also along were Captain Elliott Roosevelt, who had become a US Army Air Force pilot, and Ensign Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. Not even informed in advance of the meeting, the secretaries of war and navy remained behind. Roosevelt valued their services but was determined that the war would be his to run and win. Nor did he bring along Secretary of State Hull, whom he also left uninformed in Washington, while he did take Undersecretary Sumner Welles.
The flotilla arrived off Argentia on the morning of August 7. Its party had two days to prepare for a dramatic rendezvous. The president knew, as did Churchill, that the meeting would be less about grand strategy or the details of the American-British relationship and more about the two leaders taking each other’s measure.38
The personal drama began on August 9. Through the morning mists, Prince of Wales entered the harbor, hastily repaired after its confrontation with the Bismarck but still bearing scars of the fight, representing in its own way the toughness and sacrifice of the British nation. Shortly after Prince of Wales dropped anchor, Churchill, dressed in the blue uniform worn in England on ceremonial occasions by the warden of the Cinque Ports, came aboard the Augusta to pay his respects to Roosevelt. To this point, Roosevelt had recognized the Englishman as a dynamic force, not unlike himself, but also harbored doubts about him. As Harold Ickes recorded it, the president had remarked at a cabinet meeting just after Churchill became prime minister that “he supposed Churchill was the best man England had even if he was drunk half of his time.” The two of them had an informal private lunch, and Roosevelt found a kindred spirit. In a rare aide-mémoire shared with his distant cousin and close friend Daisy Suckley, he wrote of his British counterpart, “He is a tremendously vital person. . . . I like him—& lunching alone broke the ice both ways.”39
The next day, Sunday, August 10, Roosevelt transferred to Prince of Wales to return Churchill’s visit and attend an open-air religious service. Rejecting the plan to wheel him up the deck, FDR insisted on walking to his designated seat. Grasping Elliott’s arm, he traversed much of the length of the great ship in front of sailors and marines lined up at attention. Churchill was profoundly impressed by his determination. The service that followed—FDR and Churchill leading American and British sailors in worship and joining in the great, emblematic hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers”—was recorded for British and American newsreels. Providing an aura of sanctification for the meeting, it left an overwhelming impression of warriors from across the seas joined in a crusade against the forces of evil.
The one tangible public product to come out of Argentia was a “joint declaration” of “certain common principles.” The eight points that followed rejected any “aggrandizement, territorial or otherwise.” It affirmed self-determination in the establishment of national boundaries and types of government, “access on equal terms to the trade and to the raw materials of the world,” “improved labor standards, economic advancement, and social security,” a peace settlement that would secure freedom from fear and want for all peoples, freedom of the seas, and abandonment of the use of force in international relations. The joint declaration carefully avoided the phrase “war aims,” although it would later commonly be described as establishing those. It was neither submitted to nor ratified by either the British parliament or the US Congress. Essentially a press release, it nonetheless had a powerful impact. A British newspaper, drawing a comparison to the Magna Carta, dubbed it the “Atlantic Charter.”
Along with the Four Freedoms, the Atlantic Charter illustrated the president’s sense that ideals were weapons in the war he was edging the United States toward and that Great Britain and the United States were united in their pursuit. The distinction between power and idealism was, all the same, tenuous. Churchill had his doubts about the Atlantic Charter; many of its propositions, after all, could be used against the British Empire. Still he had little choice but to accept its rhetoric while working to preserve British power in the world.
The military staff meetings were “conversations,” yielding perhaps understandings but no firm plans or commitments. Yet the suggestion of alliance and partnership in a combined war effort was overwhelming. There remained, above all, questions about what had been promised orally.
On the latter score, Churchill minced no words in his secret report to the War Cabinet on August 19: the president had promised him that by September 1, the US Navy would escort Lend-Lease convoys as far as Iceland. He assured the cabinet that Roosevelt—“obviously determined” to bring his country into the conflict but doubtful that he could get a declaration of war from Congress—“said that he would wage war, but not declare it, and that he would become more and more provocative.” Convoy escorts “were to attack any U-boat which showed itself, even if it were 200 or 300 miles away from the convoy. . . . Everything was to be done to force an ‘incident.’” He more than likely described Roosevelt’s words accurately. His report foretold the president’s behavior in the months to come.40
Nonetheless, political reality at home left the president pinned, as Theodore Wilson has put it, “between the horns of isolationist denunciation and interventionist outcry.” While FDR and Churchill were conferring, the House of Representatives had voted 203 to 202 to extend the service of army draftees by eighteen months. That slender margin relieved the army of an obligation to send tens of thousands of newly trained men back into civilian life. With only twenty-one Republicans favoring the bill, the vote confirmed an ominous pattern of foreign policy partisanship.41
Through all the close calls and epochal developments, the public Roosevelt appeared more in command than at any time since the spring of 1933. The private Roosevelt dealt as best he could with a disappointing personal life.
Women either devoted to him or at least intent on charming him continued to surround the president. He frequently saw his cousin Daisy Suckley, who gave him the Scottish terrier puppy the world would come to know as Fala. On occasions when Eleanor was away, he had meetings with Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd. Princess Martha of Norway, regal and beautiful, wanting to maximize the president’s interest in her country, was another favorite companion.
Missy LeHand remained closer than anyone else until, on the evening of June 4, 1941, she suffered what at first appeared to be a nervous meltdown but was probably a stroke. She lingered for a time in her White House living quarters, was hospitalized, and then eventually returned to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Roosevelt at first visited her regularly, but the war placed increasing limits on his free time. He probably also found it increasingly difficult to deal with the depressing reality of her condition. In 1943, relatives finally moved her back to Massachusetts and saw to her care. Roosevelt acknowledged the debt he felt to her by changing his will to provide that, should he predecease her, half the value of his estate, the legacy he had intended to leave to his children, would be devoted to providing for her medical needs.42
The other essential woman in his life was his mother, who provided an emotional connection to a reassuring past, indulged all her son’s foibles, and provided unconditional support. She had, as late as the ominous summer of 1939, traveled to Europe, holding an impromptu press conference upon her leave, taking questions in French, and responding fluently. She set foot in the United States just a day before the outbreak of the war. Not long after Missy’s collapse, she suffered a minor stroke but recovered well enough to take her customary August at Campobello. Back at Hyde Park, she took on a full-time nurse. In early September 1941, her health deteriorated. Roosevelt rushed to spend a day with her before her death on September 7. Three days later, she was buried in the St. James churchyard, close to her beloved husband. The president wore a black armband in her memory for the next year.43
Missy’s illness had hung over Roosevelt at Argentia. Sara’s illness and death came as he was grappling with
the first, albeit anticipated, “incident” stemming from his policy of protecting the convoys to Britain. On September 4, the US destroyer Greer, operating just southwest of Iceland on what the administration euphemistically called “the American Neutrality Patrol,” underwent attack by a German submarine, which fired torpedoes but failed to score a hit. Although functioning primarily as a supply ship, Greer, a recommissioned World War I vessel, had orders to track and report enemy U-boats. It launched depth charges that likewise missed their target.
The administration responded belligerently, never mentioning that Greer had relayed the submarine’s course to a British plane, which later dropped depth charges, also without effect. On September 11, just a day after the burial of his mother, the president delivered yet another fireside chat. Tough and uncompromising, he insisted that the Greer had been attacked without provocation, accused Germany of piracy, and declared that the United States would protect the entire Western Hemisphere. One did not wait for a rattlesnake to strike before crushing it, he declared. The navy would shoot on sight at any German or Italian warship discovered in “waters, the protection of which is necessary for American defense.”44
The nation reacted much as it had to earlier such declarations: with general approval, yet continued reluctance to wage a real war. It was one thing to strike at Nazi marauders on the high seas and quite another to enter into a full-scale conflict. It did not help that congressional anti-interventionists forced the release of information demonstrating that the attack on Greer had come only after the ship had transmitted the German submarine’s location to the British.
Other incidents in Icelandic waters followed. On October 17, a German torpedo hit but did not sink the destroyer Kearney, with the loss of eleven lives. On October 30, the destroyer Reuben James took 115 seamen to a watery grave.45
Man of Destiny: FDR and the Making of the American Century Page 45