Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941

by Ian Kershaw

  A radio report of the incident was swiftly transmitted to Washington and made available to the President. Without delay, the Navy Department put out a press release about a submarine attack on the Greer.95 At his press conference next day, 5 September, Roosevelt emphasized the deliberate nature of the U-boat’s attack, in daylight, on a ship with an identification number, flying the American flag and within the US security zone. He also stated that he had given orders to ‘eliminate’ the submarine if it could be found.96

  At this point, the President may not have been in full cognizance of the facts. No mention, of course, was made of the harassing role of the Greer. In the circumstances, the U-652 could be said to have fired its torpedoes in self-defence. Nor was it certain that she had recognized the destroyer as American. She had been under attack by British warplanes, within the German combat zone, and had merely chanced to gain a periscope glimpse of a four-funnel destroyer similar to those transferred to Britain the previous autumn.97 But no such considerations were likely to deter Roosevelt, now given an opportunity of the kind he had awaited.

  At lunch that day, 5 September, the President sketched for Harry Hopkins and Cordell Hull the outlines of a speech to the nation, long planned, which, in the light of the Greer incident, he now intended to deliver the following week. He intended to pull no punches. Hull, apparently no less outraged by what had happened, also spoke assertively. But when the Secretary of State summarized his views on paper to send them to the White House, doubts set in and he made no recommendation for action. In the absence of the President (who had travelled to Hyde Park to attend his mother’s funeral), Hopkins and Judge Samuel Rosenman, Roosevelt’s other main speech-writer, worked on the address with no input from the State Department. They incorporated some passages composed by the President himself (they were in touch with him by telephone during the drafting) and by the time he travelled back to Washington, the speech was as good as ready. He tried it out that evening, 10 September, on Stimson, Knox and Hull, who gave their warm approval. A few minor adjustments were made to the wording. Then, the following morning, Roosevelt read it out to a group of congressional leaders. Only one, a Republican isolationist, did not like it. The Secretary of State, however, despite his expression of agreement the previous evening, was again having second thoughts. He told Hopkins that ‘the speech was too strong’, and wanted ‘all reference to shooting first, or shooting of any kind’, to be removed. He spoke to Roosevelt along the same lines. But there was to be no weakening of the tenor of the speech.98 It was among the most hard-hitting the President had ever made.

  Roosevelt began in similar vein to that of his press conference six days earlier. The attack on the Greer had been in the American self-defence zone, in broad daylight, and with the ship’s identity unmistakable. ‘I tell you the blunt fact,’ he declared, ‘that the German submarine fired first upon this American destroyer without warning, and with deliberate design to sink her.’ He described it as ‘piracy legally and morally’, and referred to several incidents–including that of the sinking of the merchant ship, the Robin Moor, in July, which had prompted no retaliatory action–to show that the Greer was no isolated case, but ‘part of a general plan’. The Nazi design, he continued, was to acquire absolute control of the seas as a prelude to domination of the western hemisphere by force of arms. A sideswipe at isolationists followed. Americans could not continue deluding themselves, the President stated, by the ‘romantic notion’ that they could ‘go on living happily and peacefully in a Nazi-dominated world’. No appeasement was possible. A line had to be drawn. Supply routes to the enemies of Hitler had to be kept open, and the freedom of the seas upheld. He used a telling metaphor (adapting a remark by a luncheon guest a little while earlier99) to drive home the need for preventive attack in the Atlantic. ‘When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him. These Nazi submarines and raiders are the rattlesnakes of the Atlantic.’ It was a powerful image. He came to its policy implications, and the crucial–much belated in some eyes–introduction of escorting of convoys. ‘Upon our naval and air patrol–now operating in large number over a vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean–falls the duty of maintaining the American policy of freedom of the seas–now. That means, very simply, very clearly, that our patrolling vessels and planes will protect all merchant ships–not only American ships but ships of any flag–engaged in commerce in our defensive waters.’ The aim, he emphasized, was solely defensive. But then came the explicit warning to the Axis: ‘From now on, if German or Italian vessels of war enter the waters, the protection of which is necessary for American defence, they do so at their own peril.’100

  As the President finished speaking, the playing of the national anthem brought the audience–family, friends, advisers and a large press contingent–assembled in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House to hear the address (carried worldwide by radio) to their feet in an emotional finale.101 The President had outmanoeuvred his opponents. The isolationists were isolated. The escorting of convoys had been introduced. The official orders went out two days later. The escorting began on 16 September.102 ‘Thus was the long-standing issue of American naval escort resolved by the declaration of the shooting war’ is an apposite description of what had occurred.103

  Though he had not used the phrase, what he had unmistakably initiated was a policy of ‘shoot on sight’. The banner headline of the New York Times next day ran: ‘Roosevelt Orders Navy to Shoot First’.104 Isolationists predictably and vigorously protested.105 But public opinion favoured ‘shoot on sight’, 62 per cent approving with only 28 per cent against. This showed the impact of the Greer incident, and the President’s exploitation of it. Two days before it happened, only a bare majority of 52 per cent had favoured the US navy ‘convoying’ war materials to Britain.106 The American people had been brought behind a policy practically guaranteed to draw the United States into future armed clashes with German vessels in the Atlantic. Open warfare was round the corner. As Admiral Stark, chief of Naval Operations, put it on 22 September: ‘So far as the Atlantic is concerned, we are all but, if not actually in it.’107

  Roosevelt’s detractors, at the time and since, accused him of deceiving the American people ‘in a gigantic conspiracy to drive them into war’ (as alleged in the rabidly isolationist Chicago Tribune).108 His Greer speech had certainly been economical with the truth about the incident. He had made no mention of the circumstances of lengthy pursuit and harassment of the U-652 before she had fired her torpedo salvo. Though it was true that the submarine had fired first, it had not been without provocation. The American people learned nothing of this. Roosevelt’s claim that the Greer was part of a systematic Nazi attack on American shipping was also a distortion. It was, in a sense, surprising that there had been so few, not so many, incidents. The President and his military advisers were, however, aware that Hitler was not likely to be seeking outright conflict in the Atlantic before he had crushed the Soviet Union. (In fact, although Roosevelt could not know it, Hitler had given express orders forbidding provocation in the Atlantic while he had his hands full in the east.109) Apologists for the President claimed he was not fully informed of the facts of the incident. But if, in his press conference on 5 September, the President was still not in full knowledge of what had taken place, this is unlikely to have been the case six days later. (Hull’s reticence about the statement may, indeed, have been precisely because, legally, right in the incident was by no means unequivocally on the American side.) There is little doubt, therefore, that Roosevelt used some sleight of hand in his speech. Was this justified?

  He himself justified his action in terms of national defence interest and saw it as his clear, inescapable obligation as President.110 It is not easy to claim that he was wrong in this, given the long-term threat posed by Hitler’s regime.111 Did he have a choice? His options were, in fact, by now severely constrained. If he had used a degree of hyperbole to make the introduction of escorting
more palatable to the American people, the policy itself was quite in accord with the cautious but consistent steps taken over previous months. Stimson was only one of those pointing out from the outset the logic of lend-lease–approved by Congress–necessitating the protection of the mate

  ´riel to be shipped across the Atlantic. So the only effective choice Roosevelt faced in September 1941 was whether to take the executive action he did, whether to risk further protracted, bitter debate and possible defeat in Congress, or whether to ignore the Greer incident and delay the introduction of escorting yet further.

  Either alternative course would have pandered to minority isolationist feeling. But this offered no real option. The strategic problem in contending with the German threat (exacerbated by the growing tension in the Pacific) would not as a consequence have disappeared or lessened. And to pass up the chance of introducing escorting would have been to fly in the face of the advice he was receiving from his military experts. It would also have meant reneging on the promise he gave Churchill at Placentia Bay, and would therefore have been potentially damaging to the Atlantic alliance on which Hitler’s ultimate defeat was seen to rest. This in turn would have been to take a huge risk with Britain’s future capacity to continue fighting. As Roosevelt’s military experts put it on the very day of his speech, 11 September, ‘the immediate and strong reinforcement of British forces in the Atlantic by United States naval and air contingents, supplemented by a large additional shipping tonnage, will be required if the United Kingdom is to remain in the war’.112 And, as Roosevelt had seen all along, the defence interests of the United States would be irreparably damaged if Britain were to be forced to capitulate or to negotiate an unfavourable settlement, leaving Hitler in charge of the European continent and dominating the Atlantic. Isolationist notions that America could bury her head in the sand and Hitler would leave her alone were, as Roosevelt had incessantly pointed out, dangerous illusions. By 1941, the United States could, in her own interest, not afford to stand on the sidelines in the ‘battle of the Atlantic’.

  Roosevelt followed the only course of action possible. His exploitation of the Greer incident was clever politics, not an abuse of power. It had brought the majority of the public behind the escorting policy in a way which would probably not earlier have been possible. Lord Halifax, the British ambassador in Washington, described to Churchill the President’s dilemma, as he himself saw it: to steer a course between ‘(1) the wish of 70% of Americans to keep out of war; [and] (2) the wish of 70% of Americans to do everything to break Hitler, even it if means war.’113 Again, the President’s way of ‘making haste slowly’ had proved both successful and justified. But there was no mistake about it: he had indeed now taken the United States to the brink of all-out conflict with Nazi Germany. Could sporadic skirmishing continue indefinitely? Or might little now be needed to transform the ‘undeclared war’ into the all-out conflagration which would demand American boys being sent to fight–something the President had ruled out during his electoral campaign less than a year earlier?

  The latter seemed the more likely eventuality as the inevitable further incidents in the Atlantic occurred in the autumn. Pushing in the same direction was the news emerging soon after Roosevelt’s ‘fireside chat’ of 11 September that the President had discussed measures to bring about the repeal of the 1939 Neutrality Act with congressional leaders.114 But as autumn dragged on, and the clashes in the Atlantic led to no great flare-up, the first possibility, that of indefinite undeclared war, began to seem a possibility. By now, in any case, the danger of war in the Pacific was at least as great as all-out conflict with Germany. And that was something the President had to bear carefully in mind when deciding how to react to incidents in the Atlantic.

  IV

  These incidents did not take long to materialize. When on 19 September the Pink Star, a Danish freighter registered in Panama but requisitioned by the US Maritime Commission, was torpedoed, questions arose about the necessity of arming merchant ships, something not permissible under the 1939 Neutrality Act.115 The sinking of a number of other freight ships flying the Panamanian flag though American-owned–a ruse to avoid falling foul of the neutrality legislation–raised the same issue.116

  It was a torpedo attack on another American destroyer, the USS Kearny, south of Iceland on 17 October, that gave Roosevelt his best opportunity to highlight the deficiencies of the Neutrality Act in the changed circumstances. The Kearny was one of four American destroyers responding to a call for assistance from a Canadian-escorted convoy under assault from a U-boat ‘wolfpack’. Several ships went down in a night-long battle with the marauders. The destroyers launched a hail of depth charges, but in the mélée the Kearny was hit by a torpedo. She was damaged, though not sunk, and was able to limp on to Iceland. But eleven of her crew had died, and twenty-four were injured.117 It was a poignant moment for a nation not officially at war. Roosevelt did not let the chance slip. The ‘Navy and Total Defense Day’ on 27 October provided the occasion for a notably fiery address by the President, his most outspoken before Pearl Harbor.

  ‘We have wished to avoid shooting. But the shooting has started. And history has recorded who fired the first shot,’ he began. ‘America has been attacked.’ Continuing in this vein, he claimed: ‘Hitler’s torpedo was directed at every American.’ It was an attempt ‘to frighten the American people off the high seas–to force us to make a trembling retreat’. He referred to secret maps in his possession of German plans to dominate South America, and a Nazi design for the eradication of religion–British forgeries swallowed by a gullible President118–using ‘these grim truths’ to discredit isolationists (though he did not directly refer to them) who were presenting a gift to the Nazis through exposing apparent American disunity. He posited, as in earlier speeches, the absolute choice in a future world between American freedom and Nazi tyranny, and pledged once more the complete destruction of Hitlerism. The United States, he continued, was producing ever more arms for those involved in the actual fighting, ‘and it is the Nation’s will that these vital arms and supplies of all kinds shall neither be locked up in American harbors nor sent to the bottom of the sea’. It was in defiance of that will that American ships had been sunk and sailors killed. ‘I say that we do not propose to take this lying down,’ he declared. ‘That determination of ours not to take it lying down has been expressed in the orders to the American Navy to shoot on sight. Those orders stand.’ He came to the relevance of this to the neutrality legislation: ‘Our American merchant ships must be armed to defend themselves against the rattlesnakes of the sea. Our American merchant ships must be free to carry our American goods into the harbors of our friends. Our American merchant ships must be protected by our American Navy.’ It meant ‘total national defense’. He concluded his peroration on an emotive note: ‘Today in the face of this newest and greatest challenge of them all, we Americans have cleared our decks and taken our battle stations. We stand ready in the defense of our Nation and in the faith of our fathers to do what God has given us the power to see as our full duty.’119 It sounded like the preface to a declaration of war. But no request to Congress was forthcoming.

  According to a later comment by Roosevelt’s speech-writer, Samuel Rosenman, the President had believed when the European war started in September 1939 that the United States could stay out, and that remained his view during 1940. But, though there had been no definitive incident that had changed his mind, during 1941 he had gradually come to the conclusion that American involvement was as good as inevitable.120 This conviction collided, however, with political realities at home. Speaking to Lord Halifax after the Greer affair, Roosevelt had reportedly said that ‘if he asked for a declaration of war he wouldn’t get it, and opinion would swing against him’.121 That remained his position. It meant a policy of waiting for things to happen.

  As autumn deepened, Roosevelt felt his hands were tied by three considerations. At home, isolationist clamour had been stirred again by the neu
trality legislation revisions which had been proposed to Congress, and by the escalation of conflict in the Atlantic. In terms of production and rearmament, the United States was still not ready for war. And, with the pot starting to boil in the Far East, it was a question of how long Roosevelt could keep the lid on. As he had said earlier in the year, he did not have ‘enough Navy to go round’, and war in the Pacific would mean diversions from the Atlantic.122 Perhaps a combination of these considerations led Roosevelt to take a surprisingly soft line, compared with his response to the Greer and Kearny incidents, when another American destroyer, the USS Reuben James, was attacked by a U-boat 600 miles west of Ireland on 31 October. In this incident, the worst of the three clashes involving American warships, a torpedo struck the ammunition magazine of the destroyer, which sank within five minutes, with the loss of a hundred and fifteen men. Given the inflammatory way Roosevelt had spoken following earlier attacks, where there had been less damage caused and fewer casualties, his restraint on this occasion was striking. It signalled that, despite his previous belligerent statements, he was still far from ready to use a clash in the ‘undeclared war’ of the Atlantic to take the United States into full-scale hostilities.