Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (123 page)

The president’s words had the desired effect, barely. On the final day of Roosevelt’s meeting with Churchill, the House agreed to the extension by a single vote.

The closeness of the decision explained Roosevelt’s reluctance to level with the press and the public about his intentions, and it inspired him to additional efforts to ready Americans for the showdown he considered increasingly inevitable. On September 11 he held a Fireside Chat in which he explained that an American warship, the
Greer,
had been attacked by a German submarine off the coast of Greenland. “She was carrying American mail to Iceland,” Roosevelt explained. “She was flying the American flag. Her identity as an American ship was unmistakable.”

This was true enough. The ship was indeed carrying mail, it was flying the flag, and its identity was unmistakable—at least to the crew of the British plane the
Greer
was helping hunt and depth-charge the German submarine in question. Roosevelt declined to mention this utterly unneutral, presumptively illegal collaboration, just as he declined to share the conclusion of an internal U.S. navy study that the German submarine commander quite possibly thought he was firing on a British ship.

Roosevelt went on to describe the German attack as “piracy—piracy legally and morally.” It was, moreover, “one determined step toward creating a permanent world system based on force, on terror, and on murder.” The Nazi threat to America was no longer hypothetical. “The danger is here now.” Describing German submarines and raiders as “rattlesnakes of the Atlantic,” the president announced a new policy: “If German or Italian vessels of war enter the waters the protection of which is necessary for American defense, they do so at their own peril.”

Roosevelt didn’t specify what those waters were. But given that he had already claimed the Atlantic clear to Iceland as part of America’s defense perimeter, the new approach amounted to a naval war against Germany—ordered by the president, on his authority alone.

“I have no illusions about the gravity of this step,” he assured his listeners, in what might have been his frankest statement of the evening. “I have not taken it hurriedly or lightly. It is the result of months and months of constant thought and anxiety…. In the protection of your nation and mine it cannot be avoided.”

43.

W
HETHER THIS STEP WOULD BE FOLLOWED BY ANOTHER DEPENDED,
as always for Roosevelt, on the reaction of the public. By now—two years into the European war, four years into the Asian war—Roosevelt could see quite clearly where he thought the United States must go. American democracy must engage fascism directly. Germany’s hold on the European continent must be broken; Japan’s thrust into China and Southeast Asia must be reversed. And he knew the order in which these tasks must be accomplished. Germany must go down first; Japan could wait. In part this ordering reflected Roosevelt’s personal familiarity with Europe; having spent, cumulatively, years of his life in Europe, he could visualize Nazi rule far more easily than he could conjure images of the Japanese occupation of China and Indochina. But it also revealed his understanding of the nature of power. Japan, for all its ambitions, remained a comparatively backward, poor country. Conceivably Japan could subdue Chinese resistance, although this seemed less likely now than ever. Possibly it would capture the resources of the East Indies. But not for decades, if ever, would Japan be more than a regional power. Germany, on the other hand, was almost within artillery range of becoming a global power. If the Germans defeated the Russians, little would stand between Hitler and the oil fields of the Middle East. The Nazis might then sever the British lifeline to India, depriving Britain of most of what made it an empire. Britain itself couldn’t hold out for long after that. Whether or not the defeat of Britain included capture of the British navy, Hitler would be in position to build up his own fleet. And whether or not he then assaulted the Western Hemisphere militarily, he would, by his control of Europe, severely damage America economically.

Roosevelt’s reasoning caused him to try to provoke a war in the Atlantic even while he attempted to avoid one in the Pacific. As bold a strategist as the president was, he didn’t welcome a two-front war. “I simply have not got enough navy to go round,” he told Harold Ickes. “And every little episode in the Pacific means fewer ships in the Atlantic.” Germany had to be dealt with first—and the sooner, in fact, the Atlantic war started, the better. If the recent past was any guide, the Japanese might well exploit American engagement with Germany to extend their conquests farther south and west. But once the German question was settled, the United States could deal with Japan.

Roosevelt was pleased to learn that the American people were coming around to his view of the Nazi threat. According to a Gallup poll, 68 percent of Americans endorsed what the papers had taken to calling the president’s “shoot on sight” policy toward German warships in the Atlantic. On the broader question of what the United States should do about Hitler, 70 percent said the German dictator must be defeated even if it meant war for the United States. Walter Lippmann, no fan of Roosevelt on many issues, summarized the evolving state of the American mind when he wrote, “After twenty years the American people are emerging from what is undoubtedly the most un-American period in the history of the nation…. A cleansing gale has begun to blow across the land and through the corridors and into the musty chambers where, for two decades, Americans have lived so luxuriously”—Lippmann seemed to have forgotten the depression—“but so uneasily, so far beneath themselves. The shock of the World War has unloosed it, but this wind is the very breath of the American spirit itself, proud, confident and sure.”

Roosevelt certainly thought so, and, with the rising wind at his back, he pressed American policy forward. On October 9 he called on Congress to repeal the “crippling provisions” of the current neutrality law. One such provision barred American ships from entering belligerent ports; another banned the arming of merchant ships for self-defense. Reversing the former would facilitate deliveries of Lend-Lease supplies; undoing the latter would allow Americans to defend themselves. “The practice of arming merchant ships for civilian defense is an old one,” Roosevelt explained. “Through our whole history American merchant vessels have been armed whenever it was considered necessary for their own defense.” It was now more necessary than ever. “We are faced not with the old type of pirates but with the modern pirates of the sea who travel beneath the surface or on the surface or in the air destroying defenseless ships without warning.” An armed merchantman couldn’t prevent a German submarine from firing torpedoes, but it could force that submarine to fire while still submerged and at a distance, giving the merchantman a fighting chance. It couldn’t keep German planes from dropping bombs or torpedoes, but it could compel the pilots of those planes to dodge antiaircraft fire.

Roosevelt asserted that he wasn’t advocating belligerence. “The revisions which I suggest do not call for a declaration of war any more than the Lend-Lease Act called for a declaration of war.” He was simply insisting on Americans’ historic right to traverse the seas unmolested. And he took the opportunity to reemphasize the Nazi threat.

I say to you solemnly that if Hitler’s present military plans are brought to successful fulfillment, we Americans shall be forced to fight in defense of our own homes and our own freedom in a war as costly and as devastating as that which now rages on the Russian front…. The ultimate fate of the western hemisphere lies in the balance.

Berlin appeared to confirm the president’s warning several days later. The shoot-on-sight policy had the predictable effect of making German commanders quicker to fire than before. In mid-October a Lend-Lease convoy came under attack by German submarines. An American destroyer, the
Kearny,
escorting the convoy, replied with a barrage of depth charges. One of the submarines put a torpedo in the
Kearny
’s side, killing eleven of the crew and seriously damaging the vessel, which nonetheless limped into an Iceland port.

“The shooting has started,” Roosevelt declared. “And history has recorded who fired the first shot.” The war had become personal. “America has been attacked. The U.S.S.
Kearny
is not just a navy ship. She belongs to every man, woman, and child in this nation.” The president listed the home states of the eleven sailors killed, before extrapolating: “Hitler’s torpedo was directed at every American, whether he lives on our sea coasts or in the innermost part of the country, far from the seas and far from the guns and tanks of the marching hordes of would-be conquerors of the world.”

Roosevelt proceeded to drop a bombshell of his own.

I have in my possession a secret map made in Germany by Hitler’s government—by the planners of the new world order. It is a map of South America and a part of Central America, as Hitler proposes to reorganize it. Today in this area there are fourteen separate countries. But the geographical experts of Berlin have ruthlessly obliterated all existing boundary lines; they have divided South America into five vassal states, bringing the whole continent under their domination. And they have also so arranged it that the territory of one of these new puppet states includes the Republic of Panama and our great life line—the Panama Canal….

Your Government has in its possession another document, made in Germany by Hitler’s Government. It is a detailed plan, which, for obvious reasons, the Nazis did not wish and do not wish to publicize just yet, but which they are ready to impose, a little later, on a dominated world—if Hitler wins. It is a plan to abolish all existing religions—Catholic, Protestant, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish alike. The property of all churches will be seized by the Reich and its puppets. The cross and all other symbols of religion are to be forbidden. The clergy are to be forever liquidated, silenced under penalty of the concentration camps, where even now so many fearless men are being tortured because they have placed God above Hitler.

The isolationists immediately suspected a forgery. The timing and alleged content of the documents the president described were simply too convenient—too supportive of the administration’s agenda. They demanded that he publish the documents.

Roosevelt may have smelled something fishy, too, for he declined the isolationists’ demand. The White House pleaded security concerns, but the provenance of the map, in particular, was dubious. Decades later a retired British agent claimed to have drawn the map himself, for the purpose of pulling the United States closer to war with Germany. Roosevelt knew enough of British propaganda tactics from the First World War to know that British forgers were clever. Yet he also knew that none of the skeptics would be able, in the near term, to
dis
prove the veracity of the documents. And they did indeed serve his agenda.

If Roosevelt hoped the
Kearny
would be his
Lusitania,
he was disappointed. No groundswell of support greeted his call for stronger measures. Even the arming of merchant ships seemed a measure too far for those who suspected the president of deliberately provoking incidents on the Atlantic. “If we take this one further step,” isolationist Democrat D. Worth Clark of Idaho told the Senate, “our power to resist will be gone. We will be utterly at the mercy of two men, one of them Adolf Hitler and the other Franklin D. Roosevelt.” Nor were hard-core isolationists the only ones who held back. Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., the grandson of Wilson’s bête noire, had voted for Lend-Lease, conscription, and every one of the president’s defense bills, but he drew the line at sending American ships into belligerent ports. “It is one thing to be an arsenal for other countries,” the Massachusetts Republican asserted. “It is another thing for our men to be fighting on the battlefield. Measures tending to make us a more effective arsenal should receive support. Those which send us onto the battlefield are still, I believe, to be resisted. If Americans are to be killed in belligerent waters, I fear that we will not be able long to delay the sending of our men to the theaters of this war.”

Not even another attack on an American vessel, far more serious than that on the
Kearny,
could convince the skeptics. The
Reuben James
was escorting a convoy off Iceland when a pack of German submarines began firing torpedoes. One hit the American destroyer in the magazine, producing a blast that sheared off the bow and quickly sank the vessel. More than a hundred members of the crew died.

Roosevelt might have taken the incident as the occasion for another stirring speech, or perhaps a diplomatic move against Germany. But he didn’t. Instead he waited to assess the public reaction—which, unfortunately for his plans, split along the same lines as before. Administration supporters deemed the sinking of the
Reuben James
further proof of the German menace; Tom Connally of Texas, the chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, called it “outrageous evidence of the murderous and defiant attitude of the Nazis.” But the isolationists contended that the attack revealed why the neutrality law should
not
be revised. “If the losses are going to be this heavy in convoying in our defensive waters,” Robert Taft said, “they may be so heavy convoying the rest of the way into British ports that we won’t have anything left to defend ourselves with.” Gerald Nye said bluntly, “You can’t expect to walk into a barroom brawl and hope to stay out of the fight.”