Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (121 page)

Stalin evidently had given the matter serious thought. In the immediate category he specified twenty thousand anti-aircraft guns, a million rifles, and an unspecified number of large-caliber machine guns. Over the longer term he wanted aviation fuel and aluminum for airplane construction. “Give us anti-aircraft guns and the aluminum and we can fight for three or four years,” he said.

At a second meeting—also held in the evening, as Stalin’s meetings typically were—Hopkins asked for Stalin’s frank assessment of the fighting. Stalin admitted to having been surprised by the German invasion; even till the last moment, he said, he had not believed that Hitler would strike. As a result of his error, many of Russia’s 180 divisions had been far from the frontier when the battle began, and the Germans enjoyed an early advantage. But in the month since then, Russia had mobilized another 50 divisions, and expected to muster as many as 350 divisions by the spring of 1942. He guessed that Germany could field 300 divisions. He said he was eager to get as many of his divisions as possible into battle—“because then the troops learn that Germans can be killed and are not supermen.” He characterized the morale of the Russian soldiers as “extremely high,” acknowledging that this said less about socialism than about patriotism. “They are fighting for their homes and in familiar territory.” As for the Germans, they seemed to be tired. German prisoners said they were “sick of war.” Even so, the Germans couldn’t be counted out. “Stalin repeatedly stated that he did not underrate the German Army,” Hopkins wrote Roosevelt. “He stated that their organization was of the very best and that he believed that they had large reserves of food, men, supplies, and fuel.” Stalin said that part of the reason the British had failed to stand up to the Germans in 1940 was that they had underrated the Wehrmacht. “He did not propose to do this.” He thought the Germans had sufficient fuel, food, and reserves to conduct a winter campaign, but autumn rains would prevent anything more than defensive actions after the beginning of October. By then the Red Army would have dug in. “Mr. Stalin expressed repeatedly his confidence that the Russian lines would hold within 100 kilometers of their present position”—in other words, west of Leningrad, Moscow, and Kiev.

Looking further into the future, Stalin said that it was “inevitable” that the United States would enter the war. “The might of Germany was so great that, even though Russia might defend herself, it would be very difficult for Britain and Russia combined to crush the German military machine.” Possibly the mere declaration of war by the United States would break German morale. But more likely the war would be “bitter and long.” Stalin said he looked forward to joint operations. “He wanted me to tell the President that he would welcome the American troops on any part of the Russian front, under the complete command of the American army.” He also welcomed working with President Roosevelt. “He repeatedly said that the President and the United States had more influence with the common people of the world today than any other force.”

Hopkins came away from his meetings most impressed: with the determination of the Russians to defend their territory and with Stalin as a man. “Not once did he repeat himself,” Hopkins wrote. “There was no waste of word, gesture, nor mannerism. It was like talking to a perfectly coordinated machine, an intelligent machine.” Stalin didn’t lack a sense of humor, but it was as controlled as everything about the man. “He laughs often enough, but it’s a short laugh, somewhat sardonic, perhaps. There is no small talk in him. His humor is keen, penetrating. He speaks no English, but as he shot rapid Russian at me he ignored his interpreter, looking straight into my eyes as though I understood every word that he uttered.” Hopkins spent six hours with Stalin over two meetings. When the second meeting ended, Hopkins’s time with the dictator was over. “He said good-bye once, just as only once he said hello. And that was that.”

D
URING THE SPRING
of 1941, as the German emphasis in the war against Britain shifted from the air to the sea, from an attempt to bomb the British into submission to an effort to starve them, German submarines and surface vessels targeted the convoys of ships that carried Lend-Lease provisions from America. Of the German surface vessels the most feared was the
Bismarck,
a great battleship that commenced service in May 1941. Fast, formidably armed, and heavily armored, the
Bismarck
prepared to prowl the North Atlantic, blast the convoys, refuel at sea, and wreak general havoc. The British knew about the
Bismarck
from naval attachés and others who had watched it being built before the war began, and they learned of its mission from messages intercepted and decrypted under the top-secret Ultra program. They sent their best ships, the battleship
Prince of Wales
and the battle cruiser
Hood,
to meet the
Bismarck
and its companion, the
Prinz Eugen,
in the Denmark Strait. But ten minutes into the battle the
Bismarck
put a fifteen-inch shell into the magazine of the
Hood,
touching off a tremendous explosion that split the
Hood
in two and sent the pieces directly to the bottom, with the loss of all but three of its crew of fourteen hundred. The
Prince of Wales,
also damaged, was forced to retreat, allowing the
Bismarck,
itself wounded and leaking fuel, to steam into the open Atlantic.

Churchill, alarmed at the threat the
Bismarck
posed to the lifeline from America and determined to avenge the
Hood
’s destruction, issued a terse order: “Sink the
Bismarck.
” Every available ship and aircraft was summoned to chase the German battleship. Torpedo planes scoured the surface of the sea; after finding the
Bismarck
they skimmed the waves below the effective field of its anti-aircraft guns and launched their single torpedoes before veering aside. The German ship zigzagged sharply to dodge the underwater missiles, but one scored a lucky hit near the vessel’s rudder. The steering mechanism jammed, leaving the
Bismarck
to trace a large circle in the ocean. As the British realized the ship’s disability, they closed in to deliver the coup de grace. They pounded the
Bismarck
relentlessly with shells and additional torpedoes. The ship’s end came on the morning of May 27, when it sank in three miles of water.

The
Prince of Wales
had been repaired by the time Hopkins arrived in London en route home from Moscow. The Russian eating and drinking, the need to be as sharp as Stalin, and the thousands of miles of travel had nearly killed Roosevelt’s envoy. “Harry returned dead beat,” Churchill informed Roosevelt. Consequently Hopkins was most appreciative when Churchill offered to ferry him across the Atlantic in the finest style and comfort the Royal Navy could offer, aboard the
Prince of Wales.

The warship was taking the prime minister to meet the American president. Roosevelt had put off seeing Churchill until now, mostly from fear of reviving the isolationists. But with the opening of the Russian front by the Germans and the extension of the Southeast Asian front by the Japanese, Roosevelt decided that the strategic benefits of a conference with Churchill outweighed the political costs.

Yet he shrouded the meeting in secrecy till he was confident of the outcome. He cited security as the reason, and security afforded ample cause for concern. Churchill was fair game for the Germans, and if a torpedo or bomb that killed the British prime minister also dispatched the American president, Churchill’s principal supplier, no tears would fall in Berlin. Significantly, though, Churchill wasn’t worried about the meeting’s becoming known, and he prepared a statement that he and the president were rendezvousing “on board ship somewhere in the Atlantic.” But Roosevelt vetoed even this vague announcement. “All that need be said is: ‘The Prime Minister is on a short vacation,’” Roosevelt declared. “Any statement now is a direct invitation to the Germans to attack the Prime Minister and his party both going and returning.
When in doubt, say nothing!
”

The warning was wasted. Reporters in London noticed that Churchill’s top military advisers had gone missing at the same time the prime minister dropped out of sight. Their counterparts in Washington remarked something similar about America’s top brass and the president. British papers surmised publicly that something was afoot. German radio repeated the story before long.

Roosevelt nonetheless plotted an elaborate scheme for losing his newspaper tail. Newfoundland’s Placentia Bay, where the United States was constructing one of the bases it had bargained the destroyers for, had been agreed upon as the site for the meeting. “I was faced with a practical problem of extreme difficulty,” Roosevelt explained with after-the-fact relish. “I knew that the British prime minister is not constantly accompanied by newspaper men nor camera men, whereas I was always accompanied”—the only exceptions being sea cruises when newspapermen representing the press associations followed the president’s vessel on escorting destroyers. To foil the reporters, Roosevelt informed them—or misinformed them—that he would be vacationing aboard the
Potomac
but that in light of the other demands on American defense he couldn’t justify bringing a destroyer escort. The reporters would have to stay home.

They bought the story. He traveled by train to New London, Connecticut, where he made a show of boarding the
Potomac.
He stopped at Nonquit, Massachusetts, the next day, for a conspicuous shore visit and an afternoon of fishing in full view of the bathers on the beach. At dusk the
Potomac
steamed off in the direction of the Cape Cod Canal. The deception began as night fell. “At eight o’clock we reversed course,” Roosevelt said.

Going around the south end of Cuddyhunk Island, we anchored in the midst of seven U.S. warships at about 11 p.m., at Menemsha Bight on the western end of Martha’s Vineyard. All ships were darkened. At dawn Tuesday, August fifth, the U.S.S.
Potomac
ran along side of the flagship U.S.S.
Augusta
and we transferred my mess crew, provisions, etc.

We found on board Admiral Stark and General Marshall, who joined the
Augusta
via a destroyer from New York late the previous evening. At 6:30 a.m. the U.S.S.
Augusta
and the U.S.S.
Tuscaloosa,
accompanied by five new destroyers, stood out into the open sea. We headed east past Nantucket Shoals Lightship until we were far outside any shallow waters where hostile mines could conceivably be laid. That evening we were 250 miles out in the ocean.

Smiling to himself, Roosevelt prepared for his meeting with Churchill. He knew that Churchill would be asking more than he—Roosevelt—was inclined to give. Churchill wanted commitments: ideally a commitment by the United States to enter the war, but at least a commitment to some specific war aims. American commitments would serve two purposes: they would ease the military burden on Britain, and they would lessen the political strain on Churchill’s government. Ordinary politics in Britain had been suspended by the war; Churchill faced no general election in the near term, and he didn’t worry much about a no-confidence vote in Parliament. But he had bet his political future on defeating Hitler, and he didn’t see how it could be done without American belligerence.

Roosevelt was as leery of commitment as Churchill was eager for it. Roosevelt remembered the Allied secret treaties of the First World War and what an embarrassment they had become for Wilson. Any commitments that emerged from a secret meeting with Churchill would be lumped into a comparably invidious category not only by the isolationists but by the larger group that always worried that American means might be harnessed to British ends. Besides, he had been cultivating American public opinion for months, with all the care he could summon. Americans were moving in the right direction. The slightest misstep could reverse the momentum, with political and military implications he preferred not to contemplate.

Furthermore, Roosevelt had the advantage over Churchill and knew it. He outranked Churchill, to begin with, being a head of state to Churchill’s mere head of government. He wouldn’t belabor this point or flaunt it, but it was something neither would forget. More important was the matter of American power. Roosevelt wielded instruments of coercion Churchill could only envy. Already American industry was tipping the balance in the anti-fascist struggle. American support for Britain had helped persuade Hitler to redirect his army from west to east. The promise of American support for Russia was steeling Stalin against anything like a second rapprochement with Berlin. American financial power allowed Roosevelt to turn American industry fully toward war without worrying where the money would come from. The name alone of Lend-Lease exemplified the Americans’ insouciance regarding cash. A loan, a lease, a gift—all this could be determined later. American military power would complement the country’s industrial and financial might, should Washington abandon its proxy policy and enter the war itself. The 130 million Americans were numerous enough to defeat the 70 million Germans, even assuming equivalent arms. But the arms would not be equivalent. American soldiers would have more and probably better weapons than the Germans by the time their armies closed upon each other. A two-front war—should the United States find itself simultaneously fighting Japan (population 75 million)—would slow the Americans somewhat, compelling them to make choices. But the outcome could hardly be questioned.