Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (116 page)

R
OOSEVELT’S STATEMENT
served its immediate purpose. The Willkie tide crested and ebbed, and Roosevelt won his third term by a popular margin of 55 percent to 45 percent, and 449 to 82 in electors.

The campaign left Roosevelt weary. Willkie’s badgering had finally persuaded him, just days before the election, to forswear a fourth term, but only obliquely. In a discussion of what he hoped to accomplish in a third term, he had asserted, almost as an aside: “When that term is over, there will be another president.” He hadn’t mentioned the topic again.

But at the first post-election press conference, a newsman read back Roosevelt’s statement and inquired, “Did you definitely mean that?”

Perhaps the campaign had drained his patience. Doubtless the juggling between the contest at home and the wars in Europe and Asia had worn him down. In any event, he responded with uncharacteristic testiness. “Oughtn’t you to go back to grade school and learn English?” he snapped at the reporter.

“That was your meaning?”

“Read it. I am not teaching you English. Read it.”

“I have read it, sir.”

“Read it again.”

N
O ONE WAS
happier at Roosevelt’s reelection than Winston Churchill. “I did not think it right for me as a foreigner to express any opinion upon American policies while the election was on,” Churchill wrote the president the day after the balloting. “But now I feel you will not mind my saying that I prayed for your success and that I am truly thankful for it.” Britain had survived the German bombings, which after their September climax had diminished as the fighter planes of the Royal Air Force inflicted increasing damage on the Luftwaffe. To spare their bombers, the Germans now largely confined their raids to nights. These still spoiled English sleep, but they accomplished less meaningful destruction. And the onset of autumn’s nasty weather in the Channel obviated any real threat of invasion until the spring. “We are now entering upon a somber phase of what must evidently be protracted and broadening war,” Churchill continued. “Things are afoot which will be remembered as long as the English language is spoken in any quarter of the globe, and in expressing the comfort I feel that the people of the United States have once again cast these great burdens upon you, I must avow my sure faith that the lights by which we steer will bring us safely to anchor.”

Roosevelt didn’t respond at once. The immediate crisis was over, as Churchill himself acknowledged. The need now was to plan for the longer haul—for the “protracted and broadening war” of the prime minister’s description. Having pledged to avoid engagement in foreign wars, Roosevelt intended to keep his distance from Britain. But Britain remained America’s best hope, in Roosevelt’s view, for precisely such non-engagement. Roosevelt in late 1940 was no more eager for war than the isolationists. Yet their contention that a German victory in Europe would not be cause for alarm, that the United States might defend itself by fighting from American shores, struck Roosevelt as naïve and myopic. Doubtless America
could
defend itself, by itself, in the Western Hemisphere. But the task would be needlessly difficult. As valuable as he had made the bases in Newfoundland, Bermuda, and the West Indies out to be, they were nowhere so valuable a base as Britain, from which bombers might reach the heart of Germany. To retreat to the Western Hemisphere would be to concede control of the Atlantic and its shipping lanes to the Germans. To keep Britain in the war, by contrast, would threaten to bottle the German navy up in the Baltic and North seas.

There was more involved than mere fighting. This war would end, sooner or later. The world would have to be reconstructed. Roosevelt had seen it badly reconstructed once; the result was the current conflict. A reconstruction based on Nazi control of Europe would be far worse. Roosevelt favored democracy over dictatorship for reasons of morality and virtue; how could an American not? But he also believed that democracy was more stable, more peaceful, and more conducive to prosperity—to the prosperity of those living in the democratic countries and to that of their neighbors as well. In a world where fascists flourished, America would know neither peace nor prosperity. Roosevelt couldn’t yet see how fascism would be eliminated, but he instinctively understood that it must not be allowed to spread any farther than it already had.

What, then, should be his policy
—America’s
policy? It was simple, really: to keep Britain fighting as long and effectively as possible. Every month, every year perhaps, that Britain remained at grips with Germany was a month, a year, during which the United States might remain at peace. As bold as Hitler had proven, he couldn’t dream of attacking the United States without defeating Britain first. “Does anyone seriously believe that we need to fear attack anywhere in the Americas while a free Britain remains our most powerful naval neighbor in the Atlantic?” the president asked the American people in a Fireside Chat in December 1940.

Does anyone seriously believe, on the other hand, that we could rest easy if the Axis powers were our neighbors there? If Great Britain goes down, the Axis powers will control the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australasia, and the high seas—and they will be in a position to bring enormous military and naval resources against this hemisphere. It is no exaggeration to say that all of us, in all the Americas, would be living at the point of a gun—a gun loaded with explosive bullets, economic as well as military.

Isolationists imagined a negotiated peace with Hitler and his accomplices. These “American appeasers,” Roosevelt said, should ask the Austrians and the Czechs about negotiating with the Nazis. They should ask the Poles and Belgians and Dutch and Norwegians about the possibility of peace in the vicinity of German fascism. The nature of modern dictatorship was to expand by force. The Axis regimes spoke of a new order, but it was the oldest order in the world: a tyranny of terror and oppression. The British were bravely struggling against this tyranny; America’s fate depended on Britain’s success. “There is far less chance of the United States getting into war if we do all we can now to support the nations defending themselves against attack by the Axis than if we acquiesce in their defeat, submit tamely to an Axis victory, and wait our turn to be the object of attack in another war later on.” London wasn’t asking for American soldiers, nor were American soldiers being offered. Any claim to the contrary was a “deliberate untruth.” American weapons, not American soldiers, were what was required. Indeed, providing weapons would help ensure that American soldiers
not
go into battle. Roosevelt coined a phrase that would summarize American policy for the following year, and beyond, when he declared: “We must be the great arsenal of democracy.”

T
HE POLICY THAT
became known as Lend-Lease had multiple purposes. The obvious one was that which Roosevelt identified in his December Fireside Chat: to keep Britain in the war, that the United States might stay out. This part of Roosevelt’s aim was perfectly sincere, at least in the short term. Whether it was realistic over time was another question. Quite likely the British, with American weapons and equipment, could hold the Germans at bay, as they had done so far without American help. But it seemed quite
un
likely that the British, even with American arms, could somehow reverse the German victories on the Continent. Roosevelt hadn’t decided how long the United States could live with a Nazified Europe, but everything in his public and private statements indicated his belief that the cohabitation couldn’t be permanent. At some point, in some way, American power would have to be brought more directly to bear.

Yet even in the near term, becoming the arsenal of democracy would serve purposes other than bolstering Britain. It would allow the expansion of America’s defense industry. This would be good for America’s own defense, both in deterring attack and in fighting a war should deterrence fail. American businesses and workers would perfect their skills making weapons for export and in the process become ready to build for America’s own use if the need arose. “Orders from Great Britain are therefore a tremendous asset to American national defense, because they automatically create additional facilities,” Roosevelt told reporters at a December press conference. “I am talking selfishly, from the American point of view—nothing else.”

Putting Americans to work building weapons would have broader economic benefits as well. Jobs of any sort remained scarce in America in late 1940; whatever the government could do to find or create jobs would be welcomed. Defense jobs, moreover, were preferable to the kinds of jobs the New Deal had typically provided, in two respects. First, they paid better. Second, they came without the political and psychological baggage of make-work. At this stage Roosevelt didn’t expect the defense industry to pull the country out of the depression, but it might well get the process started.

How to fund democracy’s arsenal was a question. Would the British pay for the weapons? Would the American government? If the British, would they be required to pay cash, or would they be allowed to borrow? If the American government, would it expect to be reimbursed by the British at some point?

Roosevelt had dealt with these issues before, or at any rate seen them dealt with at close hand. “I remember 1914 very well,” he told reporters. Conventional wisdom at the outbreak of the First World War had predicted a short struggle, on the reasoning that the belligerents would run out of cash. “There was the best economic opinion in the world that the continuance of war was absolutely dependent on money in the bank. Well, you know what happened.” What happened first was that Americans had put up the money, the Allies had got their weapons, the American economy had boomed, and the Allies had won the war. What happened later was that the war debts poisoned relations between the United States and the Europeans during the decade and a half after the war.

Roosevelt wanted to gain the benefits of war production while preventing the postwar hangover. “What I am trying to do is to eliminate the dollar sign,” he said. “Get rid of the silly, foolish old dollar sign.” Needless to say, not everyone thought the dollar sign was so silly, but none of the reporters called Roosevelt on it before he provided a better hook for their stories.

Let me give you an illustration: Suppose my neighbor’s home catches fire, and I have a length of garden hose four or five hundred feet away. If he can take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, I may help him to put out his fire. Now, what do I do? I don’t say to him before that operation, “Neighbor, my garden hose cost me $15; you have to pay me $15 for it.” What is the transaction that goes on? I don’t want $15—I want my garden hose back after the fire is over. All right. If it goes through the fire all right, intact, without any damage to it, he gives it back to me and thanks me very much for the use of it. But suppose it gets smashed up—holes in it—during the fire; we don’t have to have too much formality about it, but I say to him, “I was glad to lend you that hose; I see I can’t use it any more, it’s all smashed up.” He says, “How many feet of it were there?” I tell him, “There were 150 feet of it.” He says, “All right, I will replace it.” Now, if I get a nice garden hose back, I am in pretty good shape.

The president conceived of something similar regarding aid to Britain.

The thought is that we would take over not all, but a very large number of, future British orders; and when they came off the line, whether they were planes or guns or something else, we would enter into some kind of arrangement for their use by the British on the ground that it was the best thing for American defense, with the understanding that when the show was over, we would get repaid sometime in kind, thereby leaving out the dollar mark in the form of a dollar debt and substituting for it a gentleman’s obligation to repay in kind. I think you all get it.