franklin d. roosevelt and world war ii

Franklin D. Roosevelt and World War IIAuthor(s): Warren F. KimballSource: Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 1, Going to War (Mar., 2004), pp. 83-99Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Center for the Study of the Presidency and CongressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27552565 .Accessed: 17/01/2011 12:24

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Franklin D. Roosevelt and World War II

WARREN F. KIMBALL

Rutgers University

"Roosevelt 'had said that he would wage war, but not declare it, and that he would

become more and more provocative. ' "

So reported British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to his cabinet upon his return to London in August 1941, following his first conference with the President of

the United States, Franklin Roosevelt. Churchill went on to claim that he and the pres ident had worked out the details of a system for escorting supply convoys in the Atlantic, and that FDR had ordered the U.S. Navy to shoot German U-boats (submarines) on

sight and thus "force" an incident.1 Is that what happened? Less than four months later, in December 1941, the United States went to war

with Japan, Germany, and Italy, all within the space of four days. In each case, Roosevelt

evaded a straightforward request for a declaration of war, asserting instead that war had

been thrust upon America. Pearl Harbor generated a somber accusation:

Yesterday, December 7, 1941?a date which will live in infamy?the United States of

America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of

1. Report by Churchill to War Cabinet, August 19, 1941, CAB 65/19, WM 84(41), British Public Record Office (PRO), Kew, UK.

Warren F. Kimball is the Robert Treat Professor of History at Rutgers University.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: When Bill Brands so graciously asked me to write this essay, I was honored by the request and by the company, but more than a little edgy. Because I had written so recently about U.S. entry into World War

II, I feared I had nothing new to tell others or to engage my mind. I think I have offered some new thoughts and com

mentaries, though whether or not that is the case I leave to the judgment of readers. Certainly much of this essay is deriv ative of and sometimes directly taken from, my earlier works, particularly Forged in War: Roosevelt, Churchill and the Second World War (New York: William Morrow, 1997, and Chicago: Ivan Dee, 2003), and "The United

States," in The Origins of World War Two: The Debate Continues, Robert Boyce and Joseph A. Maiolo, eds.

(Houndmills, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 134-54. 1 am indebted to Mark Stoler and

Justus Doenecke for their perceptive comments on this essay. I continue to marvel at the willingness of colleagues to do such analyses with no reward other than this sort of lame acknowledgment and the knowledge that they perhaps kept another historian out of trouble.

Presidential Studies Quarterly 34, no. 1 (March) 83 ? 2004 Center for the Study of the Presidency

84 I PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY / March 2004

Japan. ... I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack

by Japan on Sunday, December 7, a state of war has existed between the United States and

the Japanese empire.2

Then, on December 11, following Hitler's seemingly gratuitous declaration of war earlier

that day, Roosevelt sent a message to Congress "requesting the recognition of a state of

war with Germany and Italy," because those governments had "declared war against the

United States."3

The path to war for Roosevelt and the United States seemed obvious. The presi dent had said in September 1939 that Hitler was "pure, unadulterated evil." The appar ent logic is simple: by late 1941, he had settled on deceit and deception?waging but

not declaring war?to bring the United States into the ongoing conflict with Nazi

Germany, which is precisely the argument made by some historians and by FDR's most

bitter critics since 194l.5 But things

are not always what they seem on the surface.

The actual path to war for the United States was long and complex. It began with

the peace settlements following the First World War, agreements that created a renewed

structure of alliances and ententes by which the victors hoped

to preserve the status quo.

The problem was that there were various "status quos." British and French leadership

elites each had their own similar yet differing versions, with both nations focused on

maintaining their colonial empire. The United States, with its powerful and expanding

economy, held to a somewhat different vision. Then there were the revolutions?from

the Bolsheviks in Russia (aimed at a corrupt ruling clique and capitalism), to anti

imperialism in China (aimed against a corrupt ruling clique and the Europeans), and on

2. Available from http://odur.let.rug.n1/~usa/P/fr32/speeches/ph.htm. Roosevelt's sonorous drawing out of the word "empire" so it came out "em-pie-yaah" may have been his rather cultivated Hudson Valley patroon accent (recordings of the speech are available at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park,

NY). Then again, it may well have been a conscious and accented reference to something Americans believed

they disliked?empires.

3. Available from http://historyl900s.about.com/. On the German declaration, see Harvey Asher, "Hitler's Decision to Declare War on the United States Revisited (A Synthesis of the Secondary Literature),"

SHAFR Newsletter 31:3 (September 2000), 2-20. But Hitler's declaration of war was not as gratuitous as it seems. He was convinced (rightly at the time) that the Americans were already doing all they could to aid

the British. He overestimated Japan's strength and, like the Japanese, assumed the Americans would not

want to conduct a two-front war. However, the German leader drew the opposite conclusion from that of

his Japanese ally. Hitler believed the United States would respond as he would have responded to a "Pearl

Harbor" attack?with rage and fury. By that logic, a declaration of war on the United States was a low-risk

way to state the obvious and to live up to his commitment to the man he had once called that "lacquered

monkey," the Japanese Emperor. See Hitler's discussion of December 12, 1941 with Admiral Erich Raeder

in F?hrer Conferences on Matters Dealing with the German Navy, vol. II (translated and mimeographed by the

Office of Naval Intelligence; Washington: ONI, 1947), 79 [U.S. Naval Academy Library}. 4. Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won (New York: Norton, 1996), 23, quoting from a letter from

Arthur Murray to Walter Runciman dated September 5, 1939

5. Though such a list would begin with Charles Tansill and Charles Beard, and is added to every

day, I would be pretentious to engage in the academic ritual of writing long notes citing and acknowledg

ing and/or challenging the scholarship of others on the issues of America's entry into the Second World War,

given the recent publication of a second edition of the invaluable American Foreign Relations Since 1600: A

Guide to the Literature, Robert Beisner, ed. (Santa Barbara, Denver, Oxford: ABC Clio, 2003), sponsored by the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations [hereafter the SHAFR Guide]. For this essay, see

particularly chapter 17, well edited by Justus Doenecke. My citations will normally be discursive, to direct

quotations or specific evidence.

Kimball / FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT AND WORLD WAR II | 85

to Mexico (aimed at a corrupt ruling clique and the United States). On the fringe was

Japan, which had enhanced its empire during the First World War almost without effort.

Germany, defeated but not vanquished, waited in the wings. Nor were the "great" powers

in Europe prepared to accept American leadership. Not surprisingly, despite the dreams

of Americans and Europeans that the post-World War I agreements were "peace" treaties,

they merely constituted a short, 20-year truce.

The 1930s brought the Great Depression and the "rise of the dictators,"6 a potent combination that destabilized Europe and the United States. That instability brought to a head the contradictory challenges that had flowed out of the First World War. For

the United States the 1930s were simply scary, at home and increasingly so abroad. No

nation experienced greater change in its national quality of life during the Great Depres sion. No nation was less prepared psychologically for the maneuvering and bargaining that had traditionally constituted international diplomacy and war avoidance (certainly not peace keeping), despite the best efforts of Theodore Roosevelt to begin the educa

tion process. The American approach to international affairs seemed simple, and sim

plistic. There was a right way, and a wrong way. The conundrum that Americans7 faced

was what historian Lloyd Gardner so perceptively labeled the "covenant with power."8

Using power, especially military power, to achieve political goals was distasteful, perhaps even immoral. Witness American praise for the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact, and the cam

paigning of Senator William Borah, both aimed at "outlawing" war. But Hitler, Mus

solini, and the Japanese had no compunctions about using military force to achieve their

goals, whether that was the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland, the conquest of

Abyssinia (Ethiopia), or the subjugation of China.

Attempts by Americans to avoid involvement in the confrontations and disputes that sprang up, particularly in Europe,

ran afoul of the often unrecognized reality that,

like it or not, American prosperity and hence security depended upon a world, particu

larly a

European and East Asian world, where the United States could conduct commerce

without what it called "artificial" trade restraints (ignoring, of course, American tariff

walls). Yet such restraints appeared along with the "rise of the dictators." Americans,

and their leaders, were trapped. Like their Puritan forebears, they rejected the world, yet

6. The semi-official list of "dictators" included only those who could and did challenge British and

then American interests?Germany, Italy, and Japan. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was, for most of the time,

conspicuously absent, as was Chiang Kai-shek of China, who tried to rule in autocratic fashion. The unde

mocratic "colonels" in Poland became martyr-heroes, while Spain's Francisco Franco and Argentina's Juan Per?n, both openly sympathetic to Hitler and Mussolini, were pressured by the U.S. and Britain to change? not their authoritarianism, but their passive support for the Axis. One British Foreign Office official claimed, a bit angrily, that Per?n's "fascism" was "only a pretext" for the State Department, which aimed "to humil

iate the one Latin American country that has dared to brave their lightning." B.J.V. Perowne as quoted in

Bryce Wood, Dismantling the Good Neighbor Policy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), 96-97. The

British, despite images of their "realism" versus American fixation on ideology, were adept users of this

strong ideological weapon. It was, after all, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden who used Facing the Dictators as the title of one of his volumes of war memoirs.

7. What a wonderfully vague commonplace, "Americans," meaning the presidential administration,

Congress, the media, and others of the "chattering class." Add to it that archetypal American contribution to public affairs?a fixation on public opinion polls. "Public opinion" is, to mix metaphors, the label that

launched a thousand doctoral dissertations.

8. Lloyd C. Gardner, A Covenant with Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984).


they were of the world. The "great awakening" for Americans was a slow process, fright

eningly slow for the British who knew full well that if the United States did not ally with them against Hitler's Germany, they would have to compromise

or collapse.

The story of that awakening has been oft told. Suffice it to say that by the time of

the outbreak of open war between Germany and the rest of Europe (save Italy and a few

foolish or frightened neutrals) on September 1, 1939, American leaders and a majority of the public viewed the Nazis as a threat to the kind of Europe with which they were

comfortable. They were disgusted by Nazi persecutions of Jews and Christian churches,

challenged by German autarkic economic policies, and distressed by the blatant use of

open military force by Germany and Italy for political gain. But those were Europe's

problems.

Roosevelt played to the numbers. He quickly dropped his initial prediction in 1939

of a very short war due to either a quick German victory or the collapse of the Nazi

regime.9 Within a few months, he moved firmly, and publicly, toward a neutrality that

favored the Allies. Whatever his own beliefs about entering the war, he avoided that

black-and-white question like the plague. His private lobbying effort (what in the 1990s

would be called a political action committee) was led by the Committee to Defend

America by Aiding the Allies. The name alone illustrated the strategy. But no evidence

has surfaced to demonstrate that Roosevelt lied actively and consistently to the Ameri

can people about his ultimate intentions, and there are

good reasons to conclude that he

wishfully hoped that the United States could (or would have to) fight a limited war?

with only naval and air forces engaged against the Germans.10

Some way stations on the path to the declarations of war stand out. One was the

destroyer-bases deal. Churchill, after taking office as prime minister in May 1940, repeat

edly pleaded with the Americans for destroyers to combat German U-boats and surface

raiders that threatened the supply lifelines into the British Isles. In what became a

pattern, he combined bravado with a veiled threat in his first message as prime minis

ter to FDR: "If necessary, we shall continue the war alone and we are not afraid of that.

But I trust you realize, Mr. President, that the voice and force of the United States may

count for nothing if they are withheld too long. You may have a completely subjugated, Nazified Europe with astonishing swiftness, and the weight may be more than we can

bear."11

Effective American military assistance in 1940 was out of the question for both

political and practical reasons. Boosting morale and hope was not. Churchill wanted a

long-term American commitment to the war, but the immediate need was equipment

needed to fight off a German invasion. Aircraft were in the supply pipeline, particularly

9. FDR's early predictions are in David Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 67. Roosevelt's hope that Hitler would be assassinated or

overthrown was expressed as early as January 1939; Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists (Lincoln and London:

University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 305.

10. This is my conclusion and that of others, particularly David Reynolds. See his Anglo-American Alliance, passim, but especially pp. 213-19

11. Warren F. Kimball, ed., Churchill & Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, vol. I (Princeton: Prince ton University Press, 1984), C-9x. See also chapter 2 of Churchill's Their Finest Hour, vol. II of The Second

World War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948-1953).

Kimball / FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT AND WORLD WAR II I 87

with the acquisition of French aircraft orders made before that nation signed an armistice

with Germany in June 1940. But if Britain were to survive, destroyers were needed to

ward off Nazi submarines that threatened the Atlantic supply lanes. In the way stood

United States law forbidding the sale of military equipment needed for the defense of

the United States, and Roosevelt's military chiefs found no way around that requirement.

FDR had to have an arrangement that made it crystal clear that any transfer of those

destroyers benefited the nation's defenses more than keeping them.

The destroyer-bases deal ("arrangement" was the official euphemism, because the

"deal" was so favorable to the Americans) was simple and, as things turned out, mili

tarily unimportant: 50 World War I vintage (and, as it turned out, relatively unusable)

American destroyers in return for long-term authority to build and operate bases on eight British colonies in the western hemisphere, ranging from British Guiana through the

Caribbean to Bermuda and on north to Newfoundland. Though FDR had no interest in

acquiring colonies,12 he had long had his eye on Bermuda and assorted British posses sions in the Caribbean as sites for American military bases. After all, the British (and

other European empires) had no business being there anyway. He had negotiated though never implemented a general agreement for such bases back in June 1939. Predictably, he brought up the same idea in the summer of 1940 as he cast about for ways to "sell"

the American people, and his own military, on aid to Britain.13

But the "deal" was better than that. Roosevelt also insisted on a public commit

ment from Churchill that, if Britain were forced to surrender, its fleet would be sent

abroad "for the defence of other parts of the Empire."14 He had already initiated estab

lishment of a Canadian-American Joint Defense Board to insure United States leverage over the use of any elements of the British fleet sent to Canada?a clear indication of his

deep concern that Britain might fall, despite cautious reports that, given enough aid,

they might well fend off any German invasion.15 Churchill's promise fulfilled the require ment that the destroyer-bases deal promoted the defense of the United States.

Anti-interventionists were wary, though split?did the deal help the United Sates

build its own defenses, or move toward getting the nation involved in the war?16 His

own military complained that the destroyers were needed for American defense, and

opponents argued that he was violating the law and even the Constitution to make such

a deal. Roosevelt anticipated that "Congress is going to raise hell about this but even

another day's delay may mean the end of civilization . . . but if Britain is to survive, we

must act."17 And he did.

12. Forrest Davis and Ernest K. Lindley, How War Came (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1942), 86.

13. Reynolds, 65.

14. The formal documenrs of the deal, which were immediately made public, are in Kimball, Churchill & Roosevelt, I: C-25x, R-lOx, C-26x. On the usefulness of the destroyers, see ibid., C-53x, draft A

of December 25, 1940 (not sent), p. 119- In this message, Churchill grumbled that "we have of course been

disappointed in the small number we have yet been able to get into service."

15. Fred Pollock, "Roosevelt, the Ogdensburg Agreement, and the British Fleet," Diplomatic History, 5: 3 (summer 1981), 203-19; and Robert Shogan, Hard Bargain (New York: Scribner, 1995), 207.

16. Justus Doenecke, Storm on the Horizon: The Challenge to American Intervention, 1939-1941 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 126-28.

17. Grace Tully, F.D.R.: My Boss (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1949), 244.


On September 3, Labor Day, Roosevelt informed Congress of the terms. He treated

it as a fait accompli, citing his attorney general's opinion regarding the law. Muttering was heard in the expected quarters?Senator Gerald Nye, the anti-interventionist

America First Committee. But even Robert McCormick, the anti-Roosevelt publisher of

the Chicago Tribune, thanked "God" that the Caribbean had become "an American lake."

The firestorm that FDR expected never appeared. When it came time to pass appropri ations to implement the agreement, Congress did just that. Public opinion polls indi

cated general support for the deal.18

Why? Perhaps it was FDR's cleverness. Perhaps it was the distraction of the upcom

ing presidential election. Perhaps it was Churchill's ?lan and persuasiveness. But more

likely it was just plain common sense, in Congress and among the public. The German

bombing campaigns on the continent and over Britain had driven home the arrival of

the air age. The security provided by distance and the Atlantic Ocean had eroded. The

swap was a good deal for America in every sense of the phrase. The nation's security

was

enhanced, Britain's ability to resist a common threat was

strengthened, and, by besting

their long-standing rival and "mother country," Americans could grin a bit.

But what about the president's tortuous avoidance of the law, and of Congress, by

using an executive agreement, the legality of which depended to a degree on the place ment of a comma?19 What could or should Roosevelt have done in the summer of 1940?

By every calculus and calculation, a declaration of war would not have passed Congress.

A premature public debate would, almost certainly, have brought the wrong answer?

wrong as far as Roosevelt was concerned, wrong as far as Britain was concerned, wrong

as far as history is concerned. The British felt alone and isolated.

Opponents of presidential action in foreign policy have always complained that the

White House exceeds its authority. That argument was a staple of the contemporary and

later historical debates over Roosevelt's policies from September 1939 through the Pearl

Harbor attack more than two years later. Given the American political system, the alter

native to presidential leadership lies at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue?Capitol Hill. That alternative would become elevated during the anti-Vietnam War debates into

an accepted truth. But arguments that the destroyer-bases deal led inevitably to the

imperial presidency ignore the way Congress plays the game. Because sheer practicality

places the making of foreign policy primarily with the executive branch, Congress is able

to sit back and play dog-in-the-manger, carping, criticizing, and playing to the voters.

Congress reflects public perceptions far more accurately and broadly than any opinion

poll or pundit. Yet, for the crucial stages of America's "neutrality," or non-involvement,

whether before Pearl Harbor or, for that matter, before the mid-1960s' "intervention" in

Indochina, and in the cases of Gulf Wars I and II, Congress felt no overwhelming, or

even strong, public pressure to restrain presidential actions or change U.S. foreign policy.

One critic of Roosevelt's disingenuousness quotes the book of Psalms: "Put not

your trust in princes."20 That is always good advice, but it begs the question. Where

18. Doenecke, 126, 125.

19- Shogan, 233.

20. Shogan, 11.


should trust be placed? The Psalmist meant God, but that is hardly a practical practice. In the American democratic republic, the alternatives are Congress and the courts. No

one in Congress introduced legislation to nullify the destroyer-bases deal. No one filed

charges against the president or his cabinet for violating the law. Public opinion?created and expressed in polls, print, and radio?supported the arrangement, as did the bulk of

White House mail, to Roosevelt's surprise. One hundred seventy-five years earlier, James

Madison had argued that the prince, in this case the president, could be restrained only

by politics, not by law. Perhaps the reason FDR could manipulate the politics and even

dissemble and lie is that the "people" did not disagree. Which is how politics works.

The destroyer-bases deal constituted a major move by the United States toward an

alliance with Great Britain. The two nations were more than just "somewhat mixed up

together," the phrase Churchill used to the House of Commons when the arrangement

was coming together. The United States had come a long way from where it had stood

a year earlier, when Hitler invaded Poland and broke the peace of Europe.21 A clear indicator of public concern for the nation's security came shortly after the

destroyer-bases deal when, on September 16, 1940, Roosevelt signed into law the first

peacetime draft in American history. Even though the legislation forbade using draftees

outside the western hemisphere or U.S. possessions, anti-interventionists and peace groups

(again labeled "isolationists") mounted a campaign against it, arguing it was a step toward

militarism at home and intervention abroad. But it passed Congress with solid margins.

Destroyers, whatever their readiness for combat, offered only a promise of things

that might come. The Neutrality Laws of the mid-1930s, designed to keep the United

States out of the First World War (a bit belatedly), had forbade government loans or

credits to nations at war. Once war broke out in Europe, Congress modified the law to

allow "cash and carry"?belligerents could buy war materials, but only for cash and not

carried on American cargo ships. By autumn 1940, Britain's ambassador to the United

States, Lord Lothian, could announce to American reporters that Britain could no longer

pay cash for war supplies. Whatever he said, "Britain's bust," or "Britain's broke; it's

your money we want," the press caught the point. The "cash and carry" revision to the

Neutrality Act had forced Britain to use its ready money?"the hobble that cramped medieval kings," Churchill once wrote. Britain was far from broke, but it was running

very short of dollars.22 Britain needed help if it was to continue as the barrier between

Hitler and the United States.

Wearied by the 1940 election campaign, the president left Washington on Decem

ber 2 for a 2-week cruise aboard the USS Tuscaloosa. Had Lothian not dropped his bomb

shell, Roosevelt would have given little thought to the finance issue during a voyage dedicated to rest and relaxation?which in FDR's case meant

"fishing, basking in the

sun and spoofing with cronies."23 But before he left, he told his cabinet to study the

21. Churchill is quoted in Reynolds, 169

22. David Reynolds, "Lord Lothian and Anglo-American Relations, 1939-1940," Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 73, Pt. 2 (1983): 48-49; and Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English

Speaking Peoples (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1956-1958), vol. I, The Birth of Britain, 474.

23. Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History, rev. ed. (New York: Grosserr &

Dunlap, 1950), 222.


issue, and authorized a large quantity of British orders for military goods, orders he knew

Britain could not pay for, at least not in cash.

A week later, Roosevelt's sojourn was interrupted by a letter from Churchill, cabled

from London and flown out to the Tuscaloosa. The prime minister later called it "one of

the most important I ever wrote." Certainly it was one of the most carefully written,

going through multiple drafts once Lothian convinced Churchill the letter was needed.

The prime minister offered one of his classic surveys of the state of the war, summariz

ing in powerful phrases the nature of the threat, and what Britain needed in order to

continue the fight effectively. Ever conscious of the crucial nature of maritime strategy for Britain and its empire (a word he added at one point), and of Germany's superior

ground forces, Churchill focused on shipping and supply. "The decision for 1941 lies

upon the seas," he wrote. "It is therefore in shipping and in the power to transport across

the ocean, particularly the Atlantic Ocean, that in 1941 the crunch of the whole war

will be found." Britain needed more warships; vast numbers of merchant ships had to

be constructed; supply ships crossing the Atlantic needed the protection of American

escorts. "The industrial energy of the Republic" was also needed for "a further 2,000 combat aircraft a month"?a dramatic increase in British orders that they could not pay

for in cash.

Only one paragraph of 19 in the long, 4000-word message addressed the issue that

had to be solved, and solved quickly?ready money. "The moment approaches," warned

Churchill, "when we shall no longer be able to pay cash for shipping and other supplies." To force Britain to sell its assets would be "wrong in principle

. . . after victory was

won with our blood, civilisation saved and time gained for the United States. . . ."24

Roosevelt agreed.

The result was the second major way station toward a declaration of war?the Lend

Lease Act in March 1941. The language of the act was powerful and straightforward:

[T]he President may . . . , when he deems it in the interest of national defense, . . . sell, trans

fer title to, exchange, lease, lend, or otherwise dispose of, to any such government [whose

defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States] any defense article.

. . . The terms and conditions . . . shall be those which the President deems satisfactory.

It was an extraordinary grant of authority, restricted at the last minute only by limits

on the size of an annual Congressional appropriation for the program.

Once again the president seized the opportunity presented by the support of the

bulk of the American public, according to every indicator at the time, for aid to Britain?

though always short of war?even if such aid set the United States on the slippery slope toward full involvement, once again leaving the decision to the president. Lend-Lease

was an unequivocal declaration of economic warfare, and Hitler understood it that way.

Increasingly, as his advisers warned the F?hrer, the question was not would, but when

would the Americans come into the war?25 The massive American industrial machine

24. Kimball, Churchill & Roosevelt, I: 87-111 (C-43x and various drafts).

25. See Warren F. Kimball, The Most Unsordid Act: Lend-Lease, 1939-1941 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1969). For warnings to Hitler, see Kimball, "Dieckhoff and America," The Historian, 27: 2 (February 1965), 222-24.


that would deliver such aid in vast quantities was two years away, but the declaration of

war, however ostensibly limited to economics, was crystal clear.

FDR's premonitions, or plans, were revealed by two tactics he adopted during the

debates over the proposal. First, he worked to ensure the failure of attempts to forbid

extending Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union. Second, he instructed the bill's managers to

avoid any substantive discussions of escorting supply convoys with warships. He accepted a meaningless amendment that said nothing in the legislation gave the president additional authority to escort convoys, which raised no bars that would prevent the

president from doing just that when German submarines began attacking Lend-Lease

shipping.

Roosevelt, remembering Wilson's fears of hyphenated-Americans and a divided

nation, sought the appearance of a full and open debate on Lend-Lease. Anti-interven

tionists, Pacific-firsters, isolationists, professional Irishmen, and just plain FDR-haters

all played their role as the "loyal opposition." Time and again they argued that Lend

Lease would bring the United States closer to war. Time and again they mocked FDR

for not being willing to fight, if that was what he thought was right. Time and again

they warned that Lend-Lease gave the president a frightening and extraordinary grant of power. Time and again they echoed the fears of one Martin Sweeney, a Congressman from Ohio, who proposed new words for "God Bless America":

God save America from British rule:

Stand beside her and guide her From the schemers who would make of her a fool.

From Lexington to Yorktown,

From blood-stained Valley Forge, God save America

From a king named George.

America, they warned, must never again fight someone else's war, especially if that

someone else was one of the decaying and degenerate European colonial powers.26

The opposition arguments were, in an offset way, more right than wrong. What

ever the emotions and personal feelings about Roosevelt, the legislation did grant the

president a dangerous degree of power. It did lead ineluctably to escorting supply

convoys. It ?//?/violate all recognized definitions of "neutrality." Lend-Lease did move the

United States closer to open warfare with Germany. Anti-interventionists of all stripes

believed Roosevelt was leading the nation into war without honestly saying so.

But that is not how a political dynamic works, even in a democratic republic. We

may wish for candor, but it is not the responsibility of one faction to shoot itself in the

foot. That is, so to speak, the job of the opposition. The Lend-Lease debate was reported in remarkably full detail in all the media of the day. No American who cared to know,

did not know. All the accusations and challenges to FDR's policies were reported and

discussed, over and over again. Yet the primitive public opinion polls of the day indi

26. The Lend-Lease debate can be read in the Congressional Record, 77th Cong., 1st sess. Sweeney's

"poetry" is in LXXXVII, pt. 12, June 19, 1941. The arguments are summarized by many, but for starters

try Kimball, The Most Unsordid Act, chapter 6.


cated strong and consistent support for the legislation. More important, the United

States Congress?the true test of operative public opinion?supported Lend-Lease. The

vote was decisive: 260 to 165 in the House, 62 to 33 in the Senate.27 Once again, the

American public, through its representatives (which is how the system works), demon

strated its approval of Franklin Roosevelt's foreign policies?in this case, an economic

declaration of war.

This declaration of economic warfare was shadowed by secret Anglo-American mil

itary staff discussions, which took place even as the Lend-Lease debate took place. The

impetus for such talks had been the Tripartite Pact, which raised the specter of simul

taneous war in Europe and East Asia. The recommendations generated by those ABC-1

(American-British Conversations) discussions called for fighting Germany first in the

event of a war in both theaters. FDR received the report, expressed agreement, but did

not formally acknowledge it as American policy until after the Pearl Harbor attack. Not

only was he not prepared, in early 1941, to debate the question of war or peace, but

there is no indication that he had made a choice. For FDR, war meant ground forces in

Europe; air and naval units could fight Hitler under a different label. In fact, shortly before the ABC-1 talks, the president had expressed concern that, although there was

only a one-in-five chance of Germany and Japan waging

a joint

war against the Anglo

Americans, such an action could bring the collapse of British resistance and a German

attack on the western hemisphere?hardly the ruminations of someone contemplating

an offensive war against Hitler.28 But neither did the president repudiate the Germany

first strategy. Still, ABC-1 was not a way station toward war, but rather a determination

as to how the war, if it came, would be fought.

The third major way station to war came on June 22, 1941, when the Germans

attacked the Soviet Union. From the moment of that attack, the military situation and

wartime grand strategy changed dramatically. Instead of the prospect of an overwhelm

ing German presence that seemed unattackable on the European continent, Hitler had

taken on a foe with enormous potential?if, a

huge if, the Russians could hold out or

even pose a challenge to the Germans. Then Senator Harry Truman cynically quipped that the United States should help Germany if the Russians were winning, and Russia

if Germany was winning?though he added lamely that he would not want Hitler vic

torious under any circumstances. That comment reflected the mood swings of Ameri

cans toward the Soviet Union, ranging from admiration in the mid-1930s (when the

USSR seemed to be correcting the excesses of capitalism), to anger and revulsion (fol

lowing Stalin's purges and the Nazi-Soviet Pact), and then cautious collaboration during

the Second World War. Despite American suspicions about Soviet intentions, Truman's

27. The vote counts include announced positions. Kimball, The Most Unsordid Act, 207', 217.

28. James R. Leutze, Bargaining for Supremacy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977),

chapters. 14-15; memo from Marshall to Gen. [Leonard] Gerow, January 17, 1941, in Larry Bland, ed., The

Papers of George Catlett Marshall, vol. 2, "We Cannot Delay": July 1, 1939-December 6, 1941 (Baltimore

and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 391-92. On July 9, 1941, Roosevelt's navy chief, Admiral Harold "Betty" Stark, looked for a compromise between "all-out war againsr the Axis powers, in

accordance with the agreements with the British made in ABC-1 . . . ," Stark to FDR, July 9, 1941, PSF

Safe: Iceland, Roosevelt papers, FDR Library. My thanks to Patrice McDonough for the reference. There is

some confusion about the "C" in the acronym ABC?did it mean "Canadian" or "conversations?" American

records show the former, British records the latter. Either way, the Canadians did not participate.


gambit never became a serious possibility. Disgust for the Nazis may not have been

enough to bring America into the war, but it was much too strong to allow such cynical aloofness.29

The American military was initially pessimistic about Soviet chances, and

Roosevelt's first reaction to desperate Soviet requests for aid was caution. He dodged

questions from the press about extending Lend-Lease to Russia, particularly with polls

showing Americans opposed. Long-term Soviet intentions raised concerns, and reports

were full of references to secret agents and suspicious requests from the Soviets for secret

military technology.30 But FDR often played his hunches. During the debate over passage of Lend-Lease, he had had a hunch and instructed his managers to fight off attempts to

exclude the USSR from eligibility for such aid. In June 1941 he had another hunch (or was it an expectation?), this time that backing the Soviets might be worth the gamble. After a long evening's conversation on July 11 with his closest adviser (national security adviser would be the best analogy), Harry Hopkins, the president sent his trusted adviser

to London to discuss two related issues?the American aid program, and the effect of

the German-Soviet war on broad strategy. The very absence of any record or recollection

of extensive discussions between Hopkins and the president about the strategic impli cations of Soviet entry into the war

against Germany is suspect.31 Hopkins' discussions

with Churchill and the British may have focused on the Battle of the Atlantic, prepara tions for a Churchill-Roosevelt meeting that would take place in mid-August, and

British strategy in the Middle East. But the new front in Russia was the real reason for

Hopkins' visit to London, so it seems preordained, if not preplanned, that he should

suggest a visit to Moscow to assess the situation for himself and FDR. It is hard to read

Churchill's reaction to the proposal. He endorsed it to Roosevelt, and certainly supported

anything that would cause Hitler problems. The prime minister had predicted that the

Soviets would "assuredly be defeated," but then quickly promised to "go all out to help Russia."32

Hopkins' long trek to Russia brought the message Roosevelt hoped, and expected, to hear. Whatever the turmoil and confusion in Moscow and on the front lines, which

Hopkins visited, he verified that Stalin was committed to continuing the fight, however

long it took. Hopkins recognized that Stalin was the unchallenged ruler and pointed to

the ideological quandary posed by allying with the Soviet Union; the visit highlighted "the difference between democracy and dictatorship," he reported to FDR.33 For

29. Truman's remark is from The New York Times, June 24, 1941, p. 7, as quoted in Walter LaFeber,

America, Russia, and the Cold War, 5th ed. (New York: Knopf, 1985), 6. For a perceptive look at American

wartime attitudes toward Stalin and the Soviet Union, see Charles C. Alexander, "

'Uncle Joe': Images of

Stalin at the Apex of the Grand Alliance," in Annual Studies of America: 1989, N. N. Bolkhovitinov, ed.

(Moscow: Nauk, 1990), 30-42 fin Russian].

30. Sherwood, 308-22; and Warren F. Kimball, The Juggler: Franklin Roosevelt as Wartime Statesman

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 30-32.

31. No records ofthat conversation have surfaced beyond two sentences in Sherwood, 308.

32. John Colville, The Fringes of Power: 10 Downing Street Diaries, 1939-55 (New York: Norton, 1985), 404 (June 21, 1941); and Walter Citrine to Duff Cooper, July 7, 1941, Citrine papers, British Library of

Political and Economic Science, London School of Economics.

33. Memorandum of a conference at the Kremlin, July 31, 1941, Hopkins papers, Sherwood collec

tion, book 4 (FDR Library).


Woodrow Wilson in 1917, the Russian Revolution seemed to bring ideological consis

tency to the "coalition" fighting Germany. For FDR in 1941, the entry of the USSR

into the war brought inconsistency

to the struggle against "the dictators." Ideology is

inconvenient.

Whatever the awkward politics of aid to Russia, the president sent Stalin a message via Hopkins promising aid, especially aid that could "reach Russia within the next three

months." That commitment was followed by a far greater, far deeper pledge: "A great amount of materiel" would be available after that crucial three-month period. The impli cation was clear. If the Soviet Union stayed in the war, large-scale American aid would

be forthcoming. As Hopkins told the British ambassador in Moscow, Roosevelt was "all

out to help all he could even if the Army and the Navy authorities in America did not

like it." When aid to Russia seemed off to a slow start, he told an administrator to "use

a heavy hand?act as a burr under the saddle and get things moving.

. . . Step on it!"3

By October, American military intelligence and the U.S. Army War Plans Divi

sion agreed that no concessions should be made that might permit Japan to turn its eye

away from China and invade Siberia. The Russian effort against Germany was far too

important.35 FDR instructed his Army Chief of Staff, General George Marshall, to give

precedence to delivering aid to the USSR (fulfilling one of Churchill's fears, that aid to

Britain would be affected). When Congress rejected proposals to forbid Lend-Lease to

Russia, Roosevelt seized the opportunity and authorized up to one billion dollars worth

of such aid. It was Roosevelt's second economic declaration of war on Germany.

Which brings us to where this essay started, the statement by Churchill that "Roo

sevelt 'had said that he would wage war, but not declare it, and that he would become

more and more provocative.'" When the prime minister said that in September 1941,

he had just returned to London from Newfoundland to a cabinet, parliament, and public that expected

news of an American declaration of war?or at least something close to

that. He had written his king before the meeting that the president would not have

asked for such a meeting "unless he had in mind some further forward step."36 Yet this

is the same president who had warned his closest adviser, Harry Hopkins, about to leave

for London?"no talk about war." All Churchill could do was pass to the cabinet what

he called his "impression of the President's attitude." FDR "was obviously determined,"

reported the prime minister, that the United States should enter the war but, as a recent

single-vote majority in the House of Representatives for the extension of Selective Service

(the draft) seemed to demonstrate, the president had to be careful. They had worked out

the details of an escorting system to protect shipping against German submarines (U

34. Sherwood, 321-22; and Diary of Stafford Cripps, July 30, 1041, as quoted in Gabriel Gorodet

sky, Stafford Cripps' Mission to Moscow (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 200. FDR is

quoted in F.D.R. His Personal Letters, 1928-1945, Elliott Roosevelt, ed., vol. II (New York: Duell, Sloan and

Pearce, 1950), 1195-96.

35. The evidence is overwhelming that, by autumn 1941, U.S. Army intelligence and planners were

convinced that the Soviet Union was indispensable to the defeat of Hitler's forces. That evidence is well

summarized in Mark A. Stoler, Allies and Adversaries (Chapel Hill and London: University of North

Carolina Press, 2000), 53-56.

36. As quoted in David Reynolds, "The Atlantic 'Flop': British Foreign Policy and the Churchill

Roosevelt Meeting of August 1941," in Douglas Brinkley and David Facey-Crowther, The Atlantic Charter

(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994), 136.


boats), and Roosevelt had ordered the U.S. Navy to attack U-boat submarines on sight, thus forcing, in what Churchill said was the president's word, an "incident."37

Churchill, pressured to meet the high expectations of the British War Cabinet, had

read more into Roosevelt's comments than the president intended. Presidential speech

writer Robert Sherwood later wrote that the British assumed that Churchill had obtained

some secret assurances during the Atlantic Conference in August 1941, and "it is

improbable that Churchill did much to discourage this hopeful assumption." As one

British participant later remarked, "We wished to God there had been!"38

The U.S. Navy did not issue a shoot-on-sight order. But American naval policy in

the Atlantic did become increasingly belligerent, and FDR's references to an "incident"

suggest he was thinking about what had happened in World War I, when such events

as the sinking of the Lusitania and the German declaration of unrestricted submarine

warfare had brought the United States into the conflict. Hitler, who also remembered, had already ordered his U-boat commanders to avoid any incidents with the Americans.

Yet, when an incident did occur?a submarine attack on the destroyer USS Greer

on September 4?FDR made no call for escalation or even retaliation (nor did he explain that the American warship had been trailing the submarine for hours, providing track

ing data for British patrol planes). There was the hint of a shoot-on-sight order, but only if "Germany continues to seek it." Instead, he used it to

edge another step closer to

Britain by authorizing American warships to escort foreign shipping between the United

States and Iceland.39

It seemed a stalemate. Hitler was busy elsewhere, Japan

was threatening either

European colonies in Southeast Asia or the USSR in Siberia, and Roosevelt either hoped to avoid war or did not believe he could get Congress to declare war against Germany.

The real "incident," the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, changed that with stun

ning suddenness.

The war against Nazi Germany and its allies, and the war against Japan had no

integral connection except the coincidence of time. But timing is everything. In Sep tember 1940, the Japanese signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy. The agree

37. CAB 65/19, WM 84(41), August 19, 1941. (Italics added.) Three months later, Churchill

repeated that claim in a message to South African Prime Minister Jan Smuts: "He [Roosevelt] went on to

say to me 'I shall never declare war; I shall make war. If I were to ask Congress to declare war they might argue about it for three months.' "; and Churchill to Smuts, November 9, 1941, FO 954/4A/100670, p. 340

(Dom/4l/24) (PRO). But Churchill made no mention of such a promise from Roosevelt in a cable to Smuts sent only a month after the Atlantic Conference, referring only to American naval actions that they had

agreed upon; Churchill to Smuts, September 14, 1941, ibid., p. 333. See also Reynolds, Anglo-American Alliance, 202 (n.38) and 213-20 (n.116). Looking for "incidents" in order to aid Britain more effectively was nothing new for the Roosevelt administration. A diary enrry dated April 20, 1941 made by Harold

Ickes, a member of Roosevelt's cabinet as secretary of the interior, claimed that they were hoping for an inci dent that would justify "setting up a system of convoying ships to England"; as quoted in Thomas A. Bailey and Paul B. Ryan, Hitler vs. Roosevelt (New York: Free Press, 1979). The extension of Selective Service by a

single vote is a complex story, and it appears that FDR misread public opinion?as he had on other occa

sions. See Doenecke, 234-35.

38. Sherwood, 365, 355.

39- All these cascading events are well described in Waldo Heinrichs, Threshold of War: Franklin

Roosevelt and American Entry into World War II (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). On the Greer incident and the shoot-on-sight policy, see Bailey and Ryan, 181-83, where they point out that the president "did not use the fearsome phrase, 'shoot on sight.'"


ment was not, for the Japanese, an offensive alliance but rather a pro forma agreement

that promised to allow them to do what they had done during the First World War?

to expand their regional empire at the expense of the European colonial powers without

having to confront them militarily. Officials in Tokyo wishfully assumed that their coun

terparts in Washington would face the German threat first, leaving Japan to create what

it euphemistically called its Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, with a minimum

of interference. That the Japanese misread how the Americans would react is now

obvious. That the United States government misread the nature of the threat is equally so.

Had Japanese and American interests clashed a decade earlier, when there was no

European war, in the same way that they did in 1941, the Japanese-American War could

have been avoided, as it had been in other times of crisis. The root cause of Japanese American tension was expansion. But by 1941, the Japanese had managed to convince

Roosevelt and his administration that the "axis" powers posed a direct and combined

threat to America's vital interests. ?

Perhaps they did, for Germany and Japan both advo

cated commercial and trading policies that directly challenged America's traditional

conviction that "free trade," or "free markets" (the same thing) were

integral to both

democracy and prosperity.41

The details of Japanese-American policy for the 14 months preceding the Pearl

Harbor attack on December 7, 1941 are a lesson in the dangers of relying solely on mil

itary and economic deterrence. The United States continued to tighten the economic

noose it had around Japan, and to send diplomatic and military warning signals. The

Japanese became more and more anxious as their ability to

fight a war was threatened

by ever more restricted access to raw materials, but continued to assume that, when push

came to shove, the Americans would back off and focus on the European war. But the

German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, instead of further distracting the

United States, served to make Roosevelt even more concerned about Japan lest it seize

the opportunity to move into Russian Siberia.

The Roosevelt administration exaggerated the threat of totalitarian encirclement

(perhaps a conscious exaggeration

on Roosevelt's part), but it also underestimated the

intensity of the Japanese commitment. Following the State Department's strategy

(though Roosevelt often pushed for stronger measures), the United States assumed that

Japan would not go to war against a military power it could not defeat on the battle

field. Whatever the validity of American concerns about Japan's seeming alliance with

Germany, as well as

long-standing Japanese-American conflicts over economic and com

mercial interests, misperceptions lay at the root of their war?and the predictions of

both sides proved tragically wrong.

40. Richard Hill's overwrought and overwritten Hitler Attacks Pearl Harbor: Why the United States

Declared War on Germany (Boulder, CO & London: Lynne Rienner Publ., 2003) is not without some merit, for it reminds us of how strongly the Roosevelt administration depicted and believed in the myth of a true

German-Japanese alliance.

41. For a depiction ofthat threat to the American political economy, see another overwrought and

overwritten, but still useful book, Patrick Hearden, Roosevelt Confronts Hitler (DeKalb: Northern Illinois

Press, 1987). Better, if older, is Lloyd Gardner, Economic Aspects of New Deal Diplomacy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964).


Perhaps the remainder of this essay could consist of just titles and subtitles from

books about Franklin Roosevelt and the path to war in 1941. The Undeclared War, Back

Door to War, and Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, those will do for starters. The impli cation is clear. Franklin Roosevelt led, lied, and lured the United States into the Second

World War, even going to the extreme of forcing Japan to fight and then allowing the

American battle fleet to be "sitting ducks" at Pearl Harbor. Some of the critiques are

defenses of FDR in the tradition of Thomas A. Bailey, one of the creators of diplomatic

history as a subdiscipline. Bailey asserted that, although Franklin Roosevelt lied ("less than candid" is his usual phrase) America into war, it was the right war against the right

enemy. That thesis reached new heights (or lows) with Robert Stinnett's Day of Deceit:

The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor. The opening words of the subtitle, "The Truth . . . ," awakens my reflexive disbelief of people who qualify

a statement with "trust me."

At best, Stinnett's subtitle accuses everyone else of lying, or being either stupid or

ignorant.

And the beat goes on. As I wrote this essay (summer 2003), two letters arrived, one from Canada and the other from Great Britain, each purporting to have found "new"

or hitherto "ignored" evidence that British and American leaders must have or should

have known about the impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In these, and every

previous case, the arguments for a conspiracy within the Roosevelt administration to

foment war with Japan in order to go to war with Germany rely on memory that sur

faced 15 years or more after the Pearl Harbor attack. Somehow those who could cor

roborate this "evidence" are dead or missing.

Buying into the conspiracy theory requires leaps of faith, and a suspension of

common sense. The common sense argument is the most powerful. To cover up such a

vast conspiracy is, to say the least, implausible. More to the point, why would Franklin

Roosevelt, who adored his navy, sacrifice what was then considered a crucial and deci

sive weapon, the battleship fleet, when they might have set a trap for the Japanese, deliv

ered a crushing blow against the Imperial Navy, and slipped through the "back door"

into a war with Germany? 2

In the absence of an unequivocal and undeniable smoking

gun, the "FDR must have known" school flunks out.

Roosevelt's major aid program before the 1940 presidential election was a pathetic little swap of over-aged, decrepit destroyers for valuable base rights in seven British ter

ritories in the western hemisphere and a promise that Hitler would not get the British

fleet if he successfully invaded Great Britain. Then, in October 1940, just before the

voters went to the polls, FDR pandered to national fears by promising that "your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars," never

raising the question of how Amer

ican support for the Allies might force war on the nation.43

42. Robert B. Stinnett, Day of Deceit:' The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor (New York: Free Press, 2000). In Hitler vs. Roosevelt, Bailey and Ryan explicitly deny that FDR "wanted" to go to war with Germany. But they repeatedly write of Roosevelt's lack of candor. One might ask, what's the difference? Heinrichs, Threshold of War, offers an extensive case for FDR having a clear plan for war, but does not engage the candor

issue. There are arguments, based heavily on Dean Acheson's memoir, Present at the Creation (New York:

Norton, 1969), that Acheson "screwed down the Iron Boot" on Japan, knowing full well that FDR approved.

43. As quoted in James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox, 1882-1940 (New York:

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich-Harvest, 1956), 449.


Did the president believe, before the election of 1940, that the United States should

and would enter the war? Who knows? Even after his reelection, Roosevelt told his sec

retary of state, Cordell Hull, and the American military chiefs in mid-January 1941, that the United States should be prepared to fight a defensive war in the Pacific, while

the Navy should prepare to convoy supplies to Britain. But the army should follow "a

very conservative" approach, he said, focusing on

protecting Latin America. Through

out 1940 and 1941, he moved toward confrontation with Germany and Japan, but

dodged the issue of war, avoiding lies yet not being fully candid with the public or

Congress about the debate he was conducting with himself.

Not lying is not the same as telling the truth. If he had a plan, Roosevelt did not

take the public into his confidence during the election campaign of 1940 or thereafter

when Lend-Lease was debated, or as he moved closer to a confrontation with Germany.

He avoided and evaded answering awkward questions about how the United States could

be neutral and still provide naval vessels and war supplies to one of the belligerents. The

usual justification for such actions has been that FDR, wary of being told "no" if he asked

the public to endorse greater assistance to Britain, needed time to "educate" Americans

and their Congressional representatives.45

But the public, the president, and politicians in general follow conventions,

accepted usages that provide what reporters call "plausible deniability" for all parties.

They use an adult version of the children's taunt?"ask me no

questions; I'll tell you no

lies." Even the unsophisticated polls ofthat era (FDR occasionally suggested questions for the pollsters to ask)46 demonstrate that by mid-1940 those questioned understood

quite well what was at stake?but refused to ratify the hard decisions. That only illus

trates the role leaders are expected to play: to make unpleasant choices and then take the

blame. What Americans wanted to hear in 1940 (and in subsequent crises) was not what

they knew was the truth, but what they wished were the truth. In a sense, they wanted

to be lied to. Public opinion, expressed in polls and Congress, saw Hitler as an ever

increasing threat, and someone had to deal with that.47

FDR can be, and is, seen as the president who set the pattern followed during the

Cold War and afterward for fighting undeclared wars. Perhaps. Yet his decisions were in

response to a genuine and immediate military-political threat, at least where Hitler was

concerned. There was a "clear and present danger."48 Domination of Europe by Nazi

44. As quoted in Leutze, Bargaining for Supremacy, 219- FDR's early predictions are in Reynolds, 67. His hope that Hitler would be assassinated or overthrown was expressed as early as January 1939; and Cole, 305.

45. This is the argument of historians such as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Dallek, and Thomas A. Bailey, all seeming to agree with Burns's claim that "Roosevelt was less a great creative leader than a

skillful manipulator and a brilliant interpreter"; Burns, 400-04. Reynolds in The Anglo-American Alliance finds that, until autumn 1941, Roosevelt continued to hope the United States could avoid all-out war. I

agree, though the precise date when FDR lost hope remains elusive.

46. Manfred Landecker, The President and Public Opinion (Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1968), 123, n.7.

47. This thesis is buttressed by the evidence in James C. Schneider, Should American Go To War?

(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), although, like most, he argues that public pres sure "forced" Roosevelt to move slowly.

48. The counterfactual speculations of Bruce M. Russett to the contrary not withstanding. The

remarkably long shelf-life of his little book, No Clear and Present Danger: A Skeptical View of the United States'


Germany posed an economic, political, ethical, and eventually military threat that could

not be ignored. Japan's challenge to American interests was less clear, and the adminis

tration's policies were less candid. But in both cases, Roosevelt's vaunted skills at "edu

cating" the American public were not so great as to be able to convince them, and

Congress, that the United States should declare war on Germany in the summer and

autumn of 1941?//that was his intention. But the path to war and the formal decla

rations that finally came were not done without Congressional and, therefore, public

approval. Whatever the tactics Roosevelt used?from disingenuousness to lies?

Congress (and thus the public) had ample opportunities to say "no!" But that is not

what happened. Instead, Congress questioned, carped, harped, and waffled, but ulti

mately concluded that FDR was on the right path. A great myth is that the American

people (whatever that means), given information and the opportunity, will not choose

war and violence, but rather rational discussion and negotiation to solve confrontations.

History suggests otherwise. The entry of the United States into the Second World War,

however halting and whatever Franklin Roosevelt's deceptions and disingenuousness, came about because the American people?as represented by their Congress assembled?

agreed to and accepted (no one ever desires) war.

The covert wars of Eisenhower and Reagan (to mention only the two most frequent

practitioners), masked the ability of Congress to live up to its responsibilities. That is a

frightening and dangerous practice. But William McKinley in 1898, and Woodrow

Wilson in 1917, both had overwhelming support, even eagerness, for war from Con

gress, the press, and therefore (one assumes) the public. Not so FDR, Truman, LBJ, or

George H. Bush. Even George W Bush, whatever the widespread support for Gulf War

II that fell out from the 9/11 tragedy, chose to muffle the directness (and limitations) of

a formal declaration of war with a vague and generic (and undeclared) war on terror.

Nonetheless, in each and every case, Congress had a chance to speak for the American

public and to change the course of foreign policy. If lies were told, Congress had the

power to question and dig into the truth. Responsibility for foreign policy lies not solely in the West Wing.

Plus ?a change, plus c'est la m?me chose.

Entry into World War II (New York: Harper & Row, 1972) may well be because no one else has written a

short, literate, dispassionate presentation of the anti-Roosevelt revisionist arguments that is so ideal for stim

ulating classroom discussion. Shogan, Hard Bargain, directly accuses FDR of setting a precedent that led

the nation down the slippery slope to the excesses of Richard Nixon, and what Shogan sees as unlawful interventions by Reagan, Bush, and Clinton.

franklin d. roosevelt and world war ii

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