Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (113 page)

R
OOSEVELT DECLINED
to address the delegates in person. He wished to preserve his air of reluctance but also to make clear that he was answering the call not simply of the Democratic party but of the American people. He had intended to retire after two terms, he asserted by radio. “Eight years in the presidency, following a period of bleak depression, and covering one world crisis after another, would normally entitle any man to the relaxation that comes from honorable retirement.” But the world crises mounted, as they had not mounted for generations, culminating in the war that had begun the previous September. Even then, though, he had planned to leave the White House in January 1941. “This fact was well known to my friends, and I think was understood by many citizens.”

Roosevelt’s friends might have wondered who they were, for none could recall the disclaimers he alluded to. The president left them to their questions. “It soon became evident, however, that such a public statement on my part would be unwise from the point of view of sheer public duty. As President of the United States, it was my clear duty, with the aid of the Congress, to preserve our neutrality, to shape our program of defense, to meet rapid changes, to keep our domestic affairs adjusted to shifting world conditions.” Roosevelt’s language assumed a more assertive tone. “It was also my obvious duty to maintain to the utmost the influence of this mighty nation in our effort to prevent the spread of war, and to sustain by all legal means those governments threatened by other governments which had rejected the principles of democracy.” In this single sentence Roosevelt both framed the election campaign and indicated where he would be leading the country during the next six months—and the four years after that, voters willing.

Americans who disagreed with this interpretation of presidential duty were free to vote against it, Roosevelt said. But they should weigh the risk. “If our Government should pass to other hands next January—untried hands, inexperienced hands—we can merely hope and pray that they will not substitute appeasement, and compromise with those who seek to destroy all democracies everywhere, including here.” The fate of nations—of the American nation, to be sure, but of other nations as well—would turn on the current election. Americans confronted one of the great choices of history.

It is not alone a choice of government by the people versus dictatorship. It is not alone a choice of freedom versus slavery…. It is the continuance of civilization as we know it versus the ultimate destruction of all that we have held dear—religion against godlessness; the ideal of justice against the practice of force; moral decency versus the firing squad; courage to speak out, and to act, versus the false lullaby of appeasement.

I
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J
ULY
1940 the German Luftwaffe commenced bombing raids against British airfields, naval stations, and cities. The attacks on the military facilities appeared to be intended to weaken British defenses against an impending amphibious assault, the attacks on the cities to weaken British morale. British fliers of the Royal Air Force fended off the German bombers as best they could, but there were simply too many attackers and too many targets for the RAF pilots to handle them all.

The Battle of Britain—as the air contest was called—intensified through August to a September climax, during which the Germans pounded London relentlessly. “The last three nights in London have been simply hell,” Joseph Kennedy wrote his wife on September 10.

Last night I put on my steel helmet and went up on the roof of the Chancery and stayed there until two o’clock in the morning watching the Germans come over in relays every ten minutes and drop bombs, setting terrific fires. You could see the dome of St. Paul’s silhouetted against a blazing inferno that the Germans kept adding to from time to time by flying over and dropping more bombs.

Kennedy naturally kept close touch with Churchill, who expressed grave concern that Hitler would follow up the bombings with an invasion. The prime minister determined to redeem Roosevelt’s promise to supply the anti-fascist forces—meaning Britain, at this stage—with the materiel they needed to defend themselves. Shortly after Roosevelt accepted renomination by the Democrats, Churchill renewed his plea for weapons. “It has now become most urgent for you to let us have the destroyers, motor boats and flying boats for which we have asked,” he said. “The Germans have the whole French coast line from which to launch U-boats, dive-bomber attacks upon our trade and food, and in addition we must be constantly prepared to repel by sea action threatened invasion in the narrow waters.” Destroyers were more critical than ever, for in the last ten days the German bombers had sunk or crippled eleven of Britain’s destroyers. And they would probably sink or cripple many more. “Destroyers are frightfully vulnerable to air bombing, and yet they must be held in the air bombing area to prevent seaborne invasion.” Resupply of the destroyers was imperative. “If we cannot get a substantial reinforcement, the whole fate of the war may be decided by this minor and easily remediable factor.”

Churchill, the former naval person, may have realized that a request for ships would resonate more fully with fellow navalist Roosevelt than a request for aircraft or tanks. Or perhaps, like Roosevelt, he simply appreciated the value of ships more than that of planes and tanks. In any event, the American destroyers became the touchstone of Anglo-American diplomacy as the Battle of Britain raged in the skies over the English Channel and England itself. Churchill let pass no opportunity to remind Roosevelt that a comparative handful of ships might make the difference to democracy for generations to come and that the president, by a bold stroke, might make himself a hero forever.

Of course Churchill needed to convince Roosevelt that the ships wouldn’t be wasted—that Britain wouldn’t go under even after receiving the American assistance. This was no easy task, for with the skies over London raining German bombs, Britain’s future was hardly assured. Yet Churchill refused to be discouraged. “He was smoking a cigar when I entered and asked me if I would have a scotch highball and said he would have one,” Kennedy recorded after a visit to the prime minister. Fortified by the tobacco and booze, Churchill exuded optimism. “He was confident about everything. He felt that Hitler would invade and soon, but that he would get a terrible reception. In fact the only thing that disturbed him was that Hitler might not invade and Churchill would be in a bad way in that he built up the defenses and army to fight Hitler. He said the British soldiers would probably want their money back, because they won’t be satisfied with the show.”

Churchill perhaps protested too much to Kennedy, whose pessimism regarding Britain’s prospects was no secret. But the prime minister said essentially the same thing to Roosevelt. “I am beginning to feel very hopeful about this war if we can get round the next three or four months,” he wrote the president. “The air is holding well. We are hitting that man”—Hitler—“hard in both repelling attacks and in bombing Germany.” The crucial question, as before, was the supply of warships. “The loss of destroyers by air attacks may well be so serious as to break down our defence of the food and trade routes across the Pacific.” And it put the burden of saving freedom squarely upon Roosevelt. “Mr. President, with great respect I must tell you that in the long history of the world, this is a thing to do now.”

Having crossed the Rubicon of a third-term nomination, Roosevelt decided he was ready to cross the Atlantic of closer engagement in the European war. Churchill’s words weren’t inconsequential; the prime minister’s growing hopefulness made an American investment in England’s future appear a better bet than it had before. But Roosevelt’s own state of mind was at least as significant. He hadn’t known what the reaction to his nomination would be. The isolationists, of course, would complain. So would the Republicans and conservative Democrats who had found fault for years. But the crucial element was the broad constituency of ordinary Americans who had been his political base from the beginning. If they took exception to a third term—to his placing himself above George Washington and every other previous president—he would be in trouble. But they didn’t take such exception, at least not loudly or in large numbers. They seemed to be accepting his argument that the current world crisis justified an exception to the two-term rule.

Encouraged by this non-reaction, Roosevelt responded to Churchill more positively than in any previous message. “It is my belief that it may be possible to furnish to the British Government as immediate assistance at least fifty destroyers,” Roosevelt wrote Churchill. Yet there was a catch, or rather a quid pro quo. “Such assistance, as I am sure you will understand, would only be furnished if the American people and the Congress frankly recognized that in return there for the national defense and security of the United States would be enhanced.” Roosevelt knew that Churchill’s reflexive response would be to say that anything that helped Britain defeat the Nazis would enhance American security. But though the president might agree, Congress and the American people would require collateral of a more concrete nature. Roosevelt elaborated:

It would be necessary, in the event that it proves possible to release the materiel above mentioned, that the British Government find itself able and willing to take the two following steps:

1. Assurance on the part of the Prime Minister that in the event that the waters of Great Britain become untenable for British ships of war, the latter would not be turned over to the Germans or sunk, but would be sent to other parts of the Empire….

2. An agreement on the part of Great Britain that the British Government would authorize the use of Newfoundland, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Jamaica, St. Lucia, Trinidad and British Guiana as naval and air bases by the United States.

Roosevelt explained that the details of the bases agreement needn’t be decided at once. As to the assurance regarding the destroyers, the prime minister need make no public announcement; a private pledge to the president would do.

Roosevelt’s offer wrapped strategy inside politics and then bundled the package into strategy again. The proposed swap of destroyers for bases made sense strategically: factories in the United States could always build more ships, but ports to base them were in limited supply. Should Britain fall and America have to defend the Western Hemisphere against German assault, the bases—which spanned the western Atlantic from Canada to South America—would be essential.

The deal made even more sense politically. As confident as Roosevelt was becoming regarding a third term, he had no intention of provoking another outburst of isolationism. The deal could be defended as a sharp bargain: as Roosevelt exploiting Britain’s extremity to acquire real estate the British would never have surrendered otherwise, in exchange for some out-of-date ships that weren’t much good to America anyway.

And the canny politics of the deal would enhance America’s security by increasing Roosevelt’s room for maneuver. Roosevelt’s ego had always been robust, ever since Sara had centered her world, and such of the larger world as the family’s ample resources allowed, on her only child. It had grown with each political success, till by now, on the verge of setting a record for presidential longevity, Roosevelt accounted himself at least the equal of America’s greatest chief executives. He certainly considered himself more capable of dealing with challenges to American security than Wendell Willkie or Jim Farley or anyone else who had put himself forward as a candidate for president.

And why not? He had been studying the presidency for forty years, practicing the craft for eight. He had been engaged personally in matters touching national security since before the First World War. Could Willkie say that? Could anyone else in America? For that matter, could Hitler match his knowledge of the world? Could Mussolini? Could Stalin? Of the world’s current leaders, only Churchill came close to Roosevelt in decades devoted to the strategic arts. And Churchill had been head of his country’s government a mere few months. For most of the previous decade—while Roosevelt had been wrestling with the rise of Germany and Japan—Churchill had been a gadfly swatted by elements of his own party as often as by the opposition.

During the summer of 1940 Roosevelt emerged, in his own mind, as the great statesman of the modern era. He realized that it lay in his power to command the heights of international affairs. It would, at any rate, if he did two things: keep Britain fighting and complete his electoral coup. The destroyers-for-bases deal would serve both purposes.