One-Night Stands with American History

by Richard Shenkman

  “Dord” stayed in the dictionary through several printings, but was finally dropped when new editors took over.

  SOURCE: William Morris and Mary Morris, Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), pp. 276–77.

  MIXED METAPHORS

  Republican campaign manager John Daniel Miller Hamilton, in July 1936, responding to charges that the Republicans were resorting to anti-Semitism: “There is not an iota of truth in such a thing, and it is a deliberate attempt by those other people to throw a dust cloud when they know their ship is sinking. We have a red herring in every campaign, and apparently this is the first such attempt.”

  SOURCE: Ernest Sutherland Bates and Alan Williams, American Hurly-Burly (New York: Robert M. McBride, 1937), p. 193.

  FDR CLEARS HIS CONSCIENCE

  Politicians sometimes find it difficult to keep their promises. Even while campaigning for president in 1932, Franklin Roosevelt suspected that one thing a Roosevelt administration would not offer the American people was a cut in the federal budget. True, one of the major planks in the Democratic platform that year was a reduction in government expenditures. But Roosevelt had been generally silent on that particular plank throughout his campaign. Except once. On October 19, speaking in Pittsburgh, FDR promised that if elected he would reduce the government budget.

  By the next presidential election, in 1936, the federal budget was more unbalanced than it had ever been in American history. New Deal expenditures were still rising. And Republicans frequently quoted the 1932 Pittsburgh speech, accusing the President of deceiving the people.

  But Roosevelt would outdo them. The first major speech of the 1936 race would be made in Pittsburgh, at the same ball park as the earlier address. The President called in Samuel Rosenman, a close friend and adviser, and asked him to carefully go over the 1932 speech and prepare a draft explaining the apparent discrepancies between his promises and his performance. Rosenman returned to the White House that night and claimed that he had the explanation. The President was delighted. “Fine, what sort of explanation would you make?” he asked.

  “Mr. President,” replied Rosenman, “the only thing you can say about that 1932 speech is to deny categorically that you ever made it.”

  SOURCE: Samuel Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952), pp. 86–87.

  IRONIC ORIGINS OF FDR’S COURT-PACKING PLAN

  Voices of outrage greeted Franklin Roosevelt’s 1937 Supreme Court packing plan. Republicans declared that their worst suspicions about the President had been proven true; liberals argued that the plan threatened the constitutional balance of powers, and even some ardent New Dealers conceded that the patrician from Hyde Park had gone too far. To many Americans, Roosevelt appeared ready to turn the United States into a dictatorship.

  The irony of all this was that the plan had been based almost completely on suggestions made in 1913 by one of the very members of the Supreme Court whom Roosevelt wanted to force off the bench—James McReynolds, attorney general under Woodrow Wilson and now a leading foe of the New Deal. McReynolds had written that judges older than seventy ought to be required to retire, since some had “remained upon the bench long beyond the time that they are able to adequately discharge their duties, and in consequence the administration of justice has suffered.” FDR agreed entirely, but there was one significant difference between his plan and McReynolds’s. The future justice had specifically exempted members of the Supreme Court from the age limit.

  SOURCE: William E. Leuchtenburg, “The Origins of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ‘Court-Packing’ Plan,” Supreme Court Review (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), pp. 387–92.

  AND HE SOLD A LITTLE FLOUR ON THE SIDE

  The depression produced some strange politicians, and W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel, governor of Texas, was one of them. O’Daniel was born in Ohio, lived in Kansas, and in 1925 moved to Fort Worth, Texas, as sales manager of a flour milling company. In 1927, Pappy began a statewide radio program, where he, backed by a three-man group of hillbilly musicians known as the Light Crust Doughboys, sang country and religious tunes, gave advice to housewives, recited poetry, advocated thrift and morality, and sold a little flour. Each day at noon, the call words “Please pass the biscuits, Pappy” announced the beginning of the broadcast. By 1938, O’Daniel was president of his own flour company and a statewide personality. Hillbilly Flour, his firm’s product, sold well throughout the area.

  With the 1938 race for the governorship approaching and the usual crop of political candidates filing, a listener wrote in and told Pappy to have a go at the office. On his next show O’Daniel read the letter and requested his audience’s advice. In one week Pappy received 54,449 “you should run” letters from all across the state. Pappy and twelve other candidates filed in the Democratic primary.

  At first newspapers and the other contenders treated O’Daniel’s candidacy as a joke. Pappy had no headquarters, no campaign manager, and no practical knowledge of politics. By his own admission, he had neither cast a vote nor paid a poll tax his whole life. His announced platform was the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule. “I don’t know whether I’ll get elected,” admitted Pappy, “but, boy, it sure is good for the flour business.”

  Slowly, the political establishment realized that O’Daniel’s candidacy was very real and that the crowds flocking to his campaign rallies had not come simply to hear a good band play for free. On election day all these people who had been dropping nickels and dimes into Pappy’s special-donation flour barrels turned out at the polls, and O’Daniel swept his twelve opponents with over 50 percent of the vote. In November, Democrat O’Daniel leveled his Republican challenger, 473,526 to 10,940.

  In office, Pappy’s campaign promises, particularly on old-age benefits, were watered down by a dubious legislature, but Pappy’s radio show continued full steam. He was reelected governor two years later, more on account of his continuing broadcasts than his record at the statehouse. O’Daniel later became a U.S. senator from Texas, narrowly defeating a young Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1941 Democratic primary. In 1956 and again in 1958, Pappy ran for governor and polled a respectable percentage of the votes, but both times lost.

  SOURCE: Seymour V. Connor, Texas: A History (New York: Crowell, 1971), p. 342.

  SURPRISE AT PEARL HARBOR

  It is almost too incredible to be true. Beginning in 1931, ten years before the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, every graduate of the Japanese Naval Academy had to answer the following question as part of his final examination: “How would you carry out a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor?” The question remained on the cadets’ exam every year until the beginning of the war in the Pacific. It is not known if the Japanese high command used any of the answers from the ten-year period while planning the real attack.

  Source: Quincy Howe, Ashes of Victory: World War II and Its Aftermath (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972), p. 161.

  ELEANOR SHAKES A HAND

  Eleanor Roosevelt was a special first lady. Her vibrancy and energy were felt throughout the country during and after FDR’s long administration. When World War II was raging, Eleanor visited American servicemen worldwide, often returning with personal messages for their families. But in one particular South Pacific hospital her enthusiasm led to embarrassment. Suddenly, to the horror of her escorts, the first lady burst unannounced into a particular ward and started handshaking and kissing the wounded. The ward, her escorts had not been able to warn her, was reserved for American soldiers “wounded” by venereal disease.

  SOURCE: Time, November 16, 1962, p. 29.

  NEVER KILL A REPUBLICAN

  A story told by FDR to his cabinet:

  “An American Marine, ordered home from Guadalcanal, was disconsolate and downhearted because he hadn’t killed even one Jap. He stated his case to his superior officer, who said: ‘Go up on that hill over there and shout: “To hell with Emperor Hirohito!” That will bring the Japs out of hiding.�
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  “The Marine did as he was bidden. Immediately a Jap soldier came out of the jungle, shouting: ‘To hell with Roosevelt!’

  “‘And of course,’ said the Marine, ‘I could not kill a Republican.’”

  SOURCE: William D. Hassett, Off the Record with FDR. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1958), p. 175.

  SIR WINSTON’PART INDIAN?

  Winston Churchill, one of Great Britain’s greatest prime ministers, was a direct descendant of Iroquois Indians. Jennie Jerome, Winston’s mother, was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1850. Her mother was one-quarter Iroquois. Jennie married Lord Randolph Churchill, making their son one-sixteenth Iroquois. While being part Indian was somewhat of an embarrassment to the Jerome family, Winston himself was delighted to be a descendant of American Indians.

  SOURCE: William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory (New York: Dell, 1983) p. 101.

  FDR AND THE CASE OF THE MISSING MAP

  A short time before Franklin Roosevelt met with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin at Tehran in 1943 he had a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff aboard the battleship Iowa. The subject of the meeting was a British proposal to divide Germany after the war into three zones: a northwestern zone, to be governed by the British; a southwestern zone, to be run by the United States; and an eastern zone, which would include a jointly occupied Berlin, to be controlled by the Russians.

  Roosevelt began the meeting by denouncing the British proposal. He told the chiefs that the United States should have the northwestern zone and not the southwestern zone. The northwest would be good for the ports at Bremen and Hamburg, and would give access to Norway and Denmark; the southwest would be good for nothing except trouble caused by instability in neighboring France, Belgium, and Luxembourg. In addition, Roosevelt told the chiefs, the United States, in the northwest zone, “should go as far as Berlin.” “The United States,” the President said firmly, “should have Berlin.”

  The Joint Chiefs of Staff replied that Roosevelt’s plan was not feasible. He had neglected a simple fact, they said. Ever since the beginning of the war the United States had based its operations in Northern Ireland and southern and southwestern England. British forces had been based in northern England. Thus, logistics demanded that the British advance on Germany from the north, while the Americans advanced from the south.

  But the President was not persuaded. He argued that the American army could easily move into the northwest once it entered Germany. In any case, the army would have to reach Berlin. There would be a race for Berlin among the Allies, who knew that control of the city would strengthen their hand in postwar negotiations, and the United States would have to get there first.

  Before the generals could respond, Roosevelt pulled out a National Geographic map of Germany and began drawing lines on it. Vertical lines, horizontal lines, straight lines, and squiggly ones. Finally, he finished. There, he said, pointing at the map, is how Germany ought to be divided. The map showed the United States occupying a huge zone in the northwest including Berlin, with Britain getting a slightly smaller section in the southwest and the Soviet Union an even smaller area in the east.

  The Joint Chiefs looked at each other in dismay, but said little. The President of the United States had formulated a policy and there was nothing they could do about it. The United States would have the northwest and Berlin.

  Over the next four months the United States held negotiations with Britain and Russia on the question of the division of postwar Germany. But the negotiations were conducted entirely by the State Department—and the Joint Chiefs had neglected to tell Foggy Bottom what the President had decided about postwar occupation. So the State Department negotiated in ignorance. The British knew what Roosevelt’s ideas were because the President had casually mentioned them at Tehran. But the State Department did not. The secretary of state might have thought of asking the President for his views, but the secretary was ill and his department was being run by an incompetent assistant secretary.

  What about the National Geographic map that showed precisely what the President desired? After the meeting on the Iowa the President had handed it to General George Marshall. Marshall, in turn, had given it to Major General Thomas T. Handy, chief of the war department’s Operations Division. And Handy had prudently put the map in the top-secret archives at the Pentagon—where it was promptly forgotten. As Handy recalled later, “To the best of my knowledge we never received instructions to send it to anyone at the Department of State.”

  Meanwhile, the British and the Russians came to agreement on the British plan. When the State Department told this to the President, he exploded. “What are the zones in the British and Russian drafts and what is the zone we are proposing?” he asked. “I must know this in order that it conform with what I decided on months ago.”

  The officers at the State Department were bewildered. What had the President decided on months ago? An army officer had mumbled something about the President’s dislike of the British plan, but aside from that they had heard nothing.

  Notes flashed back and forth between the White House and the State Department. The department learned about the Iowa meeting and was shown the National Geographic map. Eventually, everything was cleared up.

  But by then it was too late. Momentum for the British plan had grown to the point where it could not be stopped. Months before, the United States probably could have prevailed and imposed its own plan on the Allies. But not now. Finally, on May 1, Roosevelt capitulated.

  The United States had suffered a major diplomatic defeat because of a few silly blunders. Most important, the American bungling had led to the adoption of a plan giving Russia a zone that included Berlin. It is, of course, not clear that the Allies would have given Berlin to the United States if the State Department had demanded the city. But the possibility is one of the most tantalizing might-have-beens of modern history. Fewer blunders in 1943, and the world might have been spared the Berlin crises of 1948 and 1961.

  SOURCES: Cornelius Ryan, The Last Battle (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1966), pp. 140–65; Herbert Feis, From Trust to Terror (New York: Norton, 1970), pp. 27–34.

  WORLD WAR WEARINESS

  Inscription found by an American reporter at Verdun, France, in 1945:

  Austin White—Chicago, Ill.—1918

  Austin White—Chicago, Ill.—1945

  This is the last time I want to write my name here.

  SOURCE: Webster’s Guide to American History (Springfield, Mass.: Merriam, 1971), p. 506.

  WORLD WAR II MOST EXPENSIVE WAR IN U.S. HISTORY

  The total cost of World War II to the American people, including payments for veterans’ benefits and interest on debts, amounted to about $560 billion. The cost of all other American wars:

  Revolutionary War 149 million

  War of 1812 124 million

  Mexican War 107 million

  Civil War (Union) 8 billion

  Spanish-American War 21/2 billion

  World War I 66 billion

  World War II 560 billion

  Korean War 70 billion

  Vietnam War 1211/2 billion

  Persian Gulf War 80 billion*

  SOURCE: Dictionary of American History, rev. ed. (New York: Scribner’s, 1976), p. 228.

  * Most of this total was paid by our allies.

  From Doo-Wop to Disco

  “The whole country is one vast insane asylum and they’re letting the worst patients run the place.”

  ’ROBERT WELCH, FOUNDER OF THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY

  SCRAPBOOK OF THE TIMES

  • During Watergate, John Connally was indicted in the milk scandal. When he ran for president in 1980, critics suggested he was tainted. Connally responded: “Well, what about it? I was tried and acquitted. I never drowned anybody. I was never kicked out of college for cheating.”

  • To see their favorite stars, 82 million people went to the movies every week in 1946. A decade later, because of tel
evision, only half as many people visited movie theaters weekly.

  • As president, according to one White House servant’s report, Harry Truman washed his own underwear.

  • Amidst the crisis in the Middle East in 1948, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Warren Austin made the helpful remark that he hoped Arabs and Jews would settle their differences “like good Christians.”

  • The last vice president born in a log cabin was Alben Barkley, who served under Harry Truman.

  • Learning that “V.P.” stands for “vice president,” Alben Barkley’s ten-year-old grandson coined a word when he suggested: “Why not stick in a couple of little e’s and call it ‘Veep’?”

  • Confident of a Republican victory in 1948, the Republican Congress provided a large appropriation for the presidential inauguration, only to see it put to use by Harry Truman. The appropriation included $80,000 for grandstands alone.

  • The year 1949 was the first year of the twentieth century in which a Negro was not lynched.

  • In 1950, J. Edgar Hoover began the practice of issuing a list of the “Ten Most Wanted Criminals,” after the idea was suggested to him by a friend of the fashion designer who invented the survey of the “Ten Best Dressed Women.”

  • Nebraska Senator Kenneth Wherry had a knack for mispronouncing and twisting words. Once he spent an hour on the Senate floor talking about the crisis in “Indigo-Chino,” and another time he referred to the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the “Chief Joints of Staff.” His malapropisms were known in the Senate as “wherryisms.”

  • When the mother of Dwight Eisenhower discovered her son reading books about war, she took them away and stowed them in the attic. Mrs. Eisenhower was a pacifist.