Roosevelt (74 page)

The President’s hold on Congress seemed weaker than ever. With their usual factionalism exacerbated by presidential nomination dogfights in both parties, the two chambers were arenas for rough-and-tumble combat. A House investigation of the National Labor Relations Board revealed a hapless administrative mess in this key New Deal agency. Republicans and conservative Democrats were readying a bill that, Roosevelt felt, while professing to assure administrative fairness, was actually a “stupid” attempt to hamstring New Deal agencies. The Hatch Act, which Roosevelt had signed the year before despite his suspicion that it was aimed at his patronage power rather than “purity in politics,” was extended to cover state employees paid with federal funds. Even Hull’s popular trade agreements program barely mustered enough support to gain a three-year extension. The President became so incensed at Garner’s opposition to the three-year extension that he exploded one night and “Goddamned this and that” to relieve his feelings, as he told Ickes.

Such was the dismal posture of domestic affairs when Hitler once again seized the world spotlight.

At dawn on April 9 German soldiers struck across the naked Danish border. Half an hour later a dozen German destroyers suddenly emerged out of a snowstorm off the Norwegian port of Narvik, torpedoed Norwegian gunboats, and landed two thousand infantrymen. At ports along the Norwegian coast more troops were soon pouring out of barges and troopships. Danish independence was blotted out in a few hours; in two days the main ports of Norway were in the Nazi grip.

In the first fogged hours of battle it seemed that Britain and France might withstand their enemy. Indeed, the Allies themselves had been planning to occupy key areas of Norway. They were too late. The Germans had laid their plans with thoroughness and imagination; they carried them out with a brilliant mixture of power, precision, ruthlessness, treachery, deception, and surprise. The Allied countereffort was improvised, ill-planned, and inadequate. British troops landed, jousted fecklessly with the enemy, and withdrew. Amid bitter criticism Chamberlain prepared to resign; Churchill would soon take his place. Then, while the Allies were still reeling from the blow, Hitler struck again.

On May 10 a holocaust of German fire and steel began rolling across the Dutch and Belgian frontiers. Parachutists seized airfields,
siren-blowing dive bombers roared through the spring air. Behind the German assault troops one hundred and twenty infantry divisions and six thousand warplanes were poised for battle. And somewhere behind this mighty force was the demonical genius, Hitler. Proclaiming the start of the battle, the Fuehrer told his troops that it would “decide the destiny of the German people for a thousand years.” Ready for the attack, a half-million Allied troops moved up behind the Belgian troops.

Advancing with blinding speed, massed German tanks and dive bombers speared through Allied lines and cut around the Allied flanks in great encircling sweeps. Motorized troops and infantry poured through the gaps, converting Belgium into a vast trap for the defenders. Within five days German tanks burst through the lightly defended Ardennes hills and began their lightning dash across northern France. On May 15 Prime Minister Churchill, writing as “Former Naval Person,” sent an urgent message to Roosevelt: “The scene has darkened swiftly.… The small countries are simply smashed up, one by one, like matchwood.… Mussolini will hurry in to share the loot.… We expect to be attacked here ourselves.…” The next few days brought news of disaster after disaster.

Amid this “hurricane of events,” as he called it, Roosevelt showed his usual qualities amid crisis: he was serene, confident, alert, ebullient, almost nonchalant. The day after Churchill’s letter he drove up to Capitol Hill and asked a cheering Congress for almost a billion dollars for increased defense. He electrified the lawmakers by setting a goal of “at least 50,000 planes a year.” The President’s face was grave; reporters could see the whiteness of his knuckles as he gripped the speaker’s stand; but his voice was resolute as he detailed War and Navy defense needs. Moving quickly on a tide of public opinion Congress soon voted these funds and more.

Pouring through the Ardennes gap German armor curved west toward the Channel, and pinned masses of French and British troops against the sea. The retreat to Dunkerque was on. Huge crowds stood in Times Square, quiet and somber, watching the appalling news bulletins flash around the
Times
Tower. On the night of May 26 the President sat with a small group in his study. He mechanically mixed cocktails; there was no laughter or small talk. Dispatch after dispatch came in, and Roosevelt went through them quickly. “All bad, all bad,” he muttered as he handed them on to Eleanor Roosevelt. Grimly he faced the microphones later in the evening. The last two weeks, he said, had shattered many illusions of American isolation. But it was no time for fear or panic. “On this Sabbath evening, in our homes in the midst of our American families, let us calmly consider what we have done and what we must
do.” The nation must further step up its defense, modernize its arms, enlarge its factories. The “great social gains” of the past few years must be maintained. The Fifth Column must be fought, forces of discord and division overcome. “We defend and we build a way of life, not for America alone, but for all mankind. Ours is a high duty, a noble task.”

It was one thing to issue such a clarion call—it was something else to grapple with the cruel dilemma that faced the President during these weeks.

Terribly pressed, British and French leaders were naturally turning for help to the great rich democracy across the seas. In his letter of May 15 Churchill warned Roosevelt of a “Nazified Europe established with astonishing swiftness” and asked him for forty or fifty old destroyers, several hundred of the latest types of aircraft, antiaircraft equipment and ammunition, and a visit by American naval units to Irish ports. The President responded as best he dared. He was expediting the sending of as much military aid as possible, but he would have to have permission from Congress to send destroyers, and this did not seem the right moment to ask for it. The American fleet was concentrated at Hawaii, watching lest the Japanese take some advantage of the crisis.

As Allied defenses collapsed, British and French appeals became ever more frantic. Churchill warned that if England fell, new leaders might arise who could bargain off the British fleet to the Germans to gain a better peace. Ambassador Bullitt passed on a French plea for a statement by Roosevelt that the United States could not permit a French defeat, and the President had to telephone Bullitt to say that “anything of this kind is out of the question.” Searching for war material and means of sending it, the President encountered a “nightmare of frustration,” as Welles called it. Everything seemed short. The Navy and War Departments naturally coveted the new war equipment flowing out of factories. Legal advisers doubted that the government could sell equipment to the Allies lawfully. Secretary of War Woodring and other high officials opposed “frittering away” vital material overseas. Congress and country were wholeheartedly in favor of more defense, but divided over helping the Allies at our own expense.

The President scraped up whatever equipment he could, but it was pitifully inadequate in the face of German might. And he shied away from strong declarations and even from sending Churchill destroyers.

Roosevelt’s diplomatic efforts were equally abortive. During these titanic events he sent plea after plea to Mussolini to stay out of the war. The President even offered to serve as an intermediary in approaching the Allies to satisfy Italy’s “legitimate aspirations” in
the Mediterranean. But as Hitler’s armies advanced the Duce yearned to be in on the kill. Just before the President left Washington on June 10 to speak at the University of Virginia, a message came in from Bullitt that Italy would declare war on France that afternoon and that the French were terming it contemptuously a “stab in the back.” Indignant and worried, the President set out for Charlottesville with his wife and Franklin, Jr., who was graduating from the Virginia Law School. His mind kept going over the phrase; as he said later, discretion told him not to use it and “the old red blood” said, “Use it.” Blood won out. That night, after a long account of his efforts to hold Mussolini, he said in measured tones: “On this tenth day of June, 1940, the hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor.” The President went on to declare American policy in this critical hour:

“In our American unity, we will pursue two obvious and simultaneous causes: we will extend to the opponents of force the material resources of this nation, and at the same time we will harness and speed up the use of those resources in order that we ourselves in the Americas may have equipment and training equal to the task of any emergency and every defense.…

“Signs and signals call for speed—full speed ahead.”

Full speed was vital, for France was near collapse. In a last desperate gesture Premier Reynaud asked Roosevelt to intervene with force, or at least the threat of force. The President could only answer that the government was redoubling its efforts to send material. Roosevelt was so fearful of American opinion that he turned down Churchill’s request that even this weak reply be made public to stiffen the French. Again Reynaud, who was now surrounded by ministers demanding an armistice, implored Roosevelt to lead America into the war; otherwise, he warned, France would “go under like a drowning man.” At the same time Churchill warned that continued French resistance from overseas depended on the President’s answer. Roosevelt hesitated. Then his answer was dispatched. He expressed his admiration for French resistance. He extended his “utmost sympathy” over developments. He was sending more and more material, but, he ended, as for military commitments—“Only the Congress can make such commitments.”

Only Congress. And in the middle of this great tide of affairs a little episode reminded the President of the shoals and reefs on Capitol Hill. Chairman Walsh of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, an Irishman and an isolationist, suddenly discovered that twenty new motor torpedo boats were to be sent to Britain. Navy Secretary Charles Edison warned the President that Walsh was in a towering rage, “threatening to force legislation prohibiting sale
of anything,” and the whole committee was in a lather. .Reluctantly Roosevelt called off the deal.

By the time the President’s last message reached Reynaud the next day, June 16, the premier was at the end of his rope. That evening he resigned his office, and Marshal Petain, who had been demanding an armistice, began to form a new cabinet. Five days later the French signed the armistice in the forest of Compiegne, where the French had accepted German capitulation twenty-two years before. Present was the exultant Fuehrer. As correspondents watched, Hitler glanced with burning contempt at the French monument celebrating the German defeat of 1918. In a “magnificent gesture of defiance,” the Fuehrer snapped his hands on his hips, planted his feet wide apart, and arched his shoulders: 1918 had been avenged.

Incredibly, during these feverish weeks, Roosevelt kept his fingers on the political situation at home. He followed closely the fights for state delegations. He jubilated over the victories scored by Roosevelt slates in California, Texas, and elsewhere. He discussed convention arrangements and platform planks with Ickes, Jackson, Douglas, Corcoran, and other third-term boosters. He watched the spirited Republican race among Dewey, Taft, Vandenberg, and a late entrant named Wendell Willkie. But he did all these things without revealing his own plans even to White House intimates. Hopkins, probably speaking for the President, asked Early to instruct all members of the administration to make no statements on the third term.

As the crisis deepened, Roosevelt’s popular backing mounted sharply. Millions of Americans forgot their concern for the third-term tradition as they instinctively rallied behind their leader against the threat outside. But not all Americans, by any means— and there was one group whose opposition especially worried the President. At a time when the nation might soon be turning to its young men for succor and sacrifice, petitions against defense and aid to the Allies were showering the White House from colleges and youth groups. “Shrimps” was the best word for these young people, Roosevelt said in exasperation, but he felt concerned enough about the problem to let Eleanor Roosevelt arrange a special evening meeting early in June at the White House with the leaders of the American Youth Congress.

It was a poignant scene—the youth leaders, white and colored, grouped in the East Room, stonily polite; the President calm and genial despite sickening reports received from France during the
day; Mrs. Roosevelt trying in her gracious way to establish rapport between generations; Hopkins sitting by, pale, taut, impatient at young people’s failure to understand his chief’s problems. At the start Roosevelt tried to create a common bond with the group. He mentioned newspaper opposition to the “radical” New Deal; he explained his Spanish Civil War policy as the result of the French and British fear of war; he said that the issue was democracy versus other forms of government. Then the questions came, fast and sharp.

What about democracy in the South, asked a conferee, where half the people don’t vote? Roosevelt: “What are we going to do about it? … You cannot get it [solved] in a year or two.” A Negro: What about segregation in the armed forces? The President turned to Hopkins, who said that even among Negroes there were two schools of thought on the matter. A Midwest YMCA leader: Why so much emphasis on national defense and so little on social defense? Roosevelt: “It is a little bit difficult in our system of government to pursue two equally important things with equal emphasis at the same time. That is darned hard.” Then a long speech from the floor: “Something serious has happened” that had caused the President to forget the first line of defense—social security, education, housing, clothing, food. Billions of dollars for guns and battleships—and nothing for the people. It was not enough to blame Congress. Where was the President’s leadership? “We are very—shall I say sick?—yes, but at the same time, we are a little bit angry that the President and the members of his Cabinet have not carried this fight once again to the people!”