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

by Ian Kershaw

  199. DRZW, vol. 3, pp. 421–2.

  200. Creveld, Hitler’s Strategy, pp. 134–5.

  201. The Testament of Adolf Hitler. The Hitler–Bormann Documents February–April 1945, ed. François Genoud, London, 1961, pp. 65, 72–3, 81.

  202. See Andreas Hillgruber, Hitlers Strategie. Politik und Kriegführung 1940–1941, 3rd edn., Bonn, 1993, p. 506 n. 26.

  203. Rintelen, pp. 90, 92–3, 98–9, emphasizes from the German point of view the strategic mistake of not taking Malta.

  204. Rintelen, p. 101.

  205. James J. Sadkovich, ‘The Italo-Greek War in Context. Italian Priorities and Axis Diplomacy’, Journal of Contemporary History, 28 (1993), pp. 439–64, atp. 440, and see also p. 455.

  206. Fuehrer Conferences on Naval Affairs 1939–1945, London, 1990, pp. 154–5.

  207. James J. Sadkovich, ‘Understanding Defeat. Reappraising Italy’s Role in World War II’, Journal of Contemporary History, 24 (1989), pp. 27–61, atp. 38.

  208. Dear and Foot, pp. 504–8. The terrible conditions in Greece at the end of the German occupation, as the descent into civil war was beginning, are vividly described in Mark Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece. The Experience of Occupation, 1941–44, New Haven/London, 1993, pp. 362–73.

  209. See Creveld, Hitler’s Strategy, p. 163.

  210. Sadkovich, ‘The Italo-Greek War’, p. 446.

  211. See Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 209.

  212. Badoglio, p. 29; also cited in Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 236; and (with slightly differing translation) Cervi, pp. 149–50.

  213. Ciano’s Diary, p. 298; Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 215–16.

  214. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 2, p. 548. The assertion is nevertheless accepted by Brian R. Sullivan, ‘ "Where One Man, and Only One Man, Led”. Italy’s Path from Non-Alignment to Non-Belligerency to War, 1937–1940’, in Wylie, p. 149.

  215. Mack Smith, Mussolini as a Military Leader, p. 23, points out how recourse to the ‘genius’ of the Duce relieved senior officers of a sense of responsibility.

  CHAPTER 5. WASHINGTON, DC, SUMMER 1940–SPRING 1941

  1. The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, ed. Samuel I. Rosenman, vol. 9, New York, 1940, p. 517.

  2. Public Opinion 1935–1946, ed. Hadley Cantrill, Westport, Conn., 1951, p. 971.

  3. Public Opinion, p. 973.

  4. Yale University Library, Henry L. Stimson Diaries 1909–1945, Reel 6, entry for 19.12.40; William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Undeclared War, 1940–1941, New York, 1953, p. 243.

  5. Quoted in John Morton Blum, From the Morgenthau Diaries, vol. 2: Years of Urgency, 1938–1941, Boston, 1965, p. 254 (from the diary entry of 14.5.41).

  6. Stimson Diaries, Reel 6, entry for 22.4.41; Langer and Gleason, The Undeclared War, p. 442.

  7. Public Papers and Addresses, vol. 8 (1939), p. 3; Joseph Alsop and Robert Kintner, American White Paper. The Story of American Diplomacy and the Second World War, London, 1940, p. 31; Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945, New York, 1979, p. 179; Robert A. Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent. American Entry into World War II, New York, 1965, p. 56; David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear. The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945, New York/Oxford, 1999, p. 427.

  8. Quoted in Alsop and Kintner, p. 68.

  9. Waldo H. Heinrichs, Jr., Threshold of War. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Entry into World War II, New York/Oxford, 1988, p. 11.

  10. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 2: Their Finest Hour, London, 1949, p. 503.

  11. Churchill and Roosevelt. The Complete Correspondence, ed. Warren F. Kimball, Princeton, 1984, vol. 1, doc. C-84x, pp. 181–2 (3.5.41); Heinrichs, Threshold of War, p. 81.

  12. Quoted in Kennedy, p. 496.

  13. The title of chapter 3 of Warren F. Kimball, Forged in War. Churchill, Roosevelt and the Second World War, London, 1997.

  14. Roosevelt’s role in the New Deal was indispensable, to the point that his input was decisive to areas of success, while his lack of interest, for example in low-cost housing, and his indecision on industrial strategy helped to determine the inadequacies of the system (Tony Badger, The New Deal. The Depression Years, 1933–40, London, 1989, p. 9). Patrick Renshaw, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Profiles in Power, London, 2004, p. 107, points out the importance of Roosevelt’s ‘sheer force of personality’ in the recovery of the nation’s morale after 1933.

  15. See Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt. A Rendezvous with Destiny, Boston, 1990, p. 252. See also Renshaw, p. 120; and Badger, pp. 94–104.

  16. Freidel, p. 287; Kennedy, pp. 347–9; Hugh Brogan, The Pelican History of the United States of America, Harmondsworth, 1986, p. 565. The Republicans won eighty seats in the House of Representatives and eight in the Senate. Though the Democrats still controlled both the House and the Senate, cross-party alignments meant that the anti-Roosevelt forces were substantially strengthened.

  17. On American loans, and insistence on repayment, see Zara Steiner, The Lights that Failed. European International History 1919–1933, Oxford, 2005, pp. 38–9, 185, 188.

  18. Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent, pp. 8–10; Kennedy, pp. 387–8.

  19. Quoted in Kennedy, p. 386.

  20. Freidel, p. 171.

  21. Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent, pp. 17–22.

  22. Kennedy, p. 393.

  23. Kennedy, pp. 395–6. For American oil and the Abyssinian war, see Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull, New York, 1948, vol. 1, pp. 422–42, esp. Hull’s admission on p. 442 that, ‘we had gone as far as we could’, but although ‘exports of oil from the United States to Italy were morally embargoed’, the ‘United States Government did not have legal authority to impose an oil embargo’. And see Robert A. Divine, Roosevelt and World War II, Baltimore, 1969, pp. 11–13.

  24. Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent, p. 29.

  25. Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent, pp. 31–3; Cordell Hull laid out the government’s position, and defended it, in Hull, vol. 1, pp. 476–85.

  26. Kennedy, pp. 398–9.

  27. Eric Larrabee, Commander in Chief. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, his Lieutenants, and their War, London, 1987, pp. 32–3.

  28. The passage containing the quotation is included in Divine, Roosevelt and World War II, p. 9; and also quoted in Brogan, p. 569.

  29. Quoted in John T. Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth, New York, 1956, pp. 90–92.

  30. Flynn, p. 92.

  31. Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent, pp. 48–9.

  32. Kennedy, p. 388.

  33. For Hull’s background and career, see Irwin F. Gellman, Secret Affairs. Franklin Roosevelt, Cordell Hull, and Sumner Welles, Baltimore/London, 1995, pp. 20–36.

  34. Alsop and Kintner, pp. 14, 25.

  35. David Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance 1937–1941. A Study in Competitive Co-operation, Chapel Hill, NC, 1982, p. 27.

  36. Quoted in Kennedy, p. 405. In a careful analysis of American public opinion at the time of the quarantine speech, Michael Leigh, Mobilizing Consent. Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy, 1937–1947, Westport, Conn., 1976, p. 48, concluded that, far from being constrained by popular attitudes, Roosevelt ‘was able to project his own hesitancy on to the mass public’, with the result that he ‘deferred action even when popular isolationism was crumbling’.

  37. Quoted in William R. Rock, Chamberlain and Roosevelt. British Foreign Policy and the United States, 1937–1940, Columbus, Ohio, 1988, p. 48.

  38. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 1: The Gathering Storm, London, 1948, p. 229. The initiative had been prompted by Sumner Welles, and taken up by the President, but opposed by the Secretary of State, Cordell Hull. See Sumner Welles, Seven Major Decisions, London, 1951, pp. 29–44; and Rock, pp. 51–77.

  39. Rock, p. 70.

  40. Foreign Relations of the United States. Diplomatic Papers 1938, vol. 1, Washington, 1955, p. 688; also quoted in Rock, p. 124, a
nd Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent, p. 54. See also Divine, Roosevelt and World War II, pp. 20–23, for the impact of the Czech crisis on Roosevelt.

  41. Kennedy, p. 419.

  42. Kennedy, pp. 416–17.

  43. David Reynolds, From Munich to Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt’s America and the Origins of the Second World War, Chicago, 2001, pp. 42–3.

  44. Alsop and Kintner, pp. 25, 41. For Welles’s personality and the development of his career, see Gellman, pp. 59–69.

  45. Alsop and Kintner, pp. 28–9.

  46. For the weight attached to the development of a strong air force, see Michael S. Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power. The Creation of Armageddon, New Haven/London, 1987, pp. 76–91.

  47. Freidel, pp. 307–13.

  48. Alsop and Kintner, pp. 57–9.

  49. Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent, pp. 56–63.

  50. Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–1945. Nemesis, London, 2000, p. 189.

  51. Quoted in William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Challenge to Isolation, 1937–1940, New York, 1952, pp. 160–61.

  52. Freidel, p. 318.

  53. FDR’s Fireside Chats, ed. Russell D. Buhite and David W. Levy, New York, 1992, pp. 148–51.

  54. Quoted in Alsop and Kintner, p. 31.

  55. Quoted in Alsop and Kintner, pp. 85–6.

  56. Alsop and Kintner, p. 86.

  57. Alsop and Kintner, pp. 81–2, 90; Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent, p. 76.

  58. Alsop and Kintner, p. 83.

  59. Kennedy, p. 432.

  60. Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent, p. 67.

  61. Quoted in Reynolds, From Munich to Pearl Harbor, p. 65.

  62. Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent, pp. 66–73.

  63. Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent, p. 35.

  64. Kennedy, p. 433; Freidel, p. 323.

  65. Sumner Welles, The Time for Decision, London, 1944, pp. 61–118. Welles’s original dispatch from London (12.3.40) conveyed less enthusiasm than his later published account. It indicated that Churchill had ‘consumed a good many whiskeys’ and was far from sober as he delivered a monologue–‘a cascade of oratory’, though constituting merely a ‘rehash’ of views which he had already published–that lasted one hour and fifty minutes (http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/psf/box6/a73g02.html).

  66. P. M. H. Bell, A Certain Eventuality…Britain and the Fall of France, London, 1974, p. 39.

  67. Welles, Time for Decision, pp. 118–19.

  68. For the President: Personal and Secret. Correspondence between Franklin D. Roosevelt and William C. Bullitt, ed. Orville H. Bullitt, London, 1973, p. 416.

  69. Langer and Gleason, Challenge, p. 473. Dallek, p. 222, has even smaller numbers.

  70. Langer and Gleason, Challenge, p. 462.

  71. Freidel, p. 331.

  72. Reynolds, From Munich to Pearl Harbor, p. 78.

  73. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 2, pp. 103–4; Winston S. Churchill, Great War Speeches, paperback edn., London, 1957, pp. 23–4; and quoted in Langer and Gleason, Challenge, p. 497.

  74. Kennedy, p. 440.

  75. Reynolds, From Munich to Pearl Harbor, p. 81.

  76. John Lukacs, Five Days in London. May 1940, paperback edn., New Haven/London, 2001, pp. 75–6.

  77. Alsop and Kintner, pp. 104–10.

  78. James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt. The Soldier of Freedom 1940–1945, London, 1971, p. 9.

  79. Burns, p. 61.

  80. Robert E. Sherwood, The White House Papers of Harry L. Hopkins, vol. 1, London, 1948, pp. 202–19, has a good description of Roosevelt’s working environment. See also Burns, pp. 58–62; Alsop and Kintner, p. 23; and Larrabee, pp. 26–7.

  81. Richard M. Pious, The American Presidency, New York, 1979, p. 31.

  82. Larrabee, p. 42; Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent, p. 88.

  83. Pious, pp. 53–5.

  84. Pious, pp. 142, 154–5.

  85. Kimball, Forged in War, pp. 18–19.

  86. Heinrichs, Threshold of War, pp. 17, 19.

  87. Stimson Diaries, Reel 6, entries for 7.11.40, 18.12.40.

  88. Pious, pp. 240–42.

  89. Langer and Gleason, The Undeclared War, p. 181.

  90. Langer and Gleason, Challenge, p. 472.

  91. Freidel, pp. 341–2.

  92. Langer and Gleason, Challenge, p. 478; Freidel, p. 342; Blum, pp. 147–8.

  93. Freidel, p. 324; Blum, p. 264.

  94. Langer and Gleason, The Undeclared War, p. 181.

  95. Langer and Gleason, Challenge, p. 674; quotation from Langer and Gleason, The Undeclared War, p. 181.

  96. Langer and Gleason, Challenge, p. 478.

  97. Sherwood, White House Papers, vol. 1, pp. 164–5; Freidel, p. 342.

  98. Blum, p. 165; Flynn, pp. 221–2.

  99. Burns, p. 39; Blum, p. 166.

  100. Blum, p. 166; Larrabee, p. 45; Burns, p. 38.

  101. Kimball, Forged in War, p. 53.

  102. Heinrichs, Threshold of War, p. 18.

  103. Larrabee, p. 45.

  104. Larrabee, p. 98; Kennedy, pp. 430–31.

  105. Larrabee, p. 121.

  106. Quoted in Freidel, p. 339.

  107. Blum, pp. 166–7.

  108. Blum, p. 44.

  109. Blum, p. 44; William Carr, Poland to Pearl Harbor. The Making of the Second World War, London, 1985, p. 48.

  110. Heinrichs, Threshold of War, p. 20.

  111. See Gellman, pp. 2, 226–34.

  112. Sherwood, White House Papers, vol. 1, pp. 3–13; Larrabee, pp. 25–6; Kennedy, pp. 145–6, 161; Freidel, p. 347; quoted phrase, Burns, p. 60.

  113. Heinrichs, Threshold of War, p. 20, for the above paragraph and for the quotation.

  114. Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent, p. 99; Reynolds, From Munich to Pearl Harbor, p. 94.

  115. Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent, pp. 86–8; Reynolds, From Munich to Pearl Harbor, pp. 92–4.

  116. Langer and Gleason, Challenge, p. 479. This was the only, short-lived, period when opinion surveys indicated that a majority of Americans thought Germany would win the war. See the graph in Steven Casey, Cautious Crusade. Franklin D. Roosevelt, American Public Opinion, and the War against Nazi Germany, Oxford/New York, 2001, p. 26.

  117. Quoted in Kimball, Forged in War, pp. 15, 35.

  118. Kimball, Forged in War, pp. 13, 22–3; Freidel, p. 332; Reynolds, Anglo-American Alliance, p. 114. For Hopkins’s disparagement of Roosevelt’s ‘vile’ cocktails, see Sherwood, White House Papers, vol. 1, p. 113.

  119. Kimball, Forged in War, p. 31.

  120. Kimball, Forged in War, p. 36.

  121. Quoted in Freidel, p. 333.

  122. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 2, pp. 22–3; Churchill and Roosevelt, vol. 1, C-9x(15.5.40), pp. 37–8.

  123. Reynolds, Anglo-American Alliance, p. 98, citing a Foreign Office minute of 17.5.40.

  124. Quoted in Reynolds, Anglo-American Alliance, p. 98 (italics in the original).

  125. Reynolds, Anglo-American Alliance, p. 99. After Roosevelt had sent an encouraging message to Reynaud on 13 June, Churchill–echoed by Lord Beaverbrook, Minister of Aircraft Production–expected America’s entry into the war ‘in the near future’. Disillusionment of such unrealistic hopes soon followed (Christopher Hill, Cabinet Decisions on Foreign Policy. The British Experience, October 1938–June 1941, Cambridge, 1991, p. 168).

  126. Freidel, p. 331. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was forceful in voicing its opposition on 3 June to delivering material to other countries which might be required for national defence. Later in the month, Congress forbade the sale of army and navy supplies unless deemed non-essential for national defence (Dallek, pp. 227, 243).

  127. Quoted in Langer and Gleason, Challenge, pp. 481–2; see also Hull, vol. 1, pp. 765–6; and Blum, p. 151.

  128. Blum, pp. 150–52.

  129. Freidel, p. 333.

  130. Hull, vol. 1, p. 166; and see Blum, pp. 149–58.

  131. Langer and Gleason, Challenge,
p. 483.

  132. Text in Langer and Gleason, Challenge, p. 485; and Churchill and Roosevelt, vol. 1, R-4x, 16.5.40, pp. 38–9; see also Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 2, p. 23; Kimball, Forged in War, p. 49; Reynolds, Anglo-American Alliance, p. 114.

  133. Langer and Gleason, Challenge, p. 496.

  134. Langer and Gleason, Challenge, pp. 489–90, 494.

  135. Langer and Gleason, Challenge, pp. 486–7.

  136. Langer and Gleason, Challenge, pp. 516–17.

  137. Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent, p. 88.

  138. Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent, p. 86. Putting this in perspective, Britain’s defence outlay almost trebled between 1939 and 1940 and practically quadrupled from 1939 to 1941; German expenditure was less than double (from a high base) in 1939–40, and increased almost two-and-a-half fold from 1939 to 1941 (Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham (eds.), Nazism 1919–1945. A Documentary Reader, vol. 2, Exeter, 1984, p. 298).

  139. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 2, pp. 50–51; Churchill and Roosevelt, vol. 1, C-10x, C-11x, C-17x, pp. 39–40, 49–51; Reynolds, Anglo-American Alliance, p. 115; Lukacs, Five Days in London, p. 73.

  140. Quoted in Langer and Gleason, Challenge, p. 491.

  141. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 2, p. 205.

  142. Langer and Gleason, Challenge, p. 744.

  143. Freidel, p. 334.

  144. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 2, pp. 205–11; Joseph P. Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill 1939–1941. The Partnership that Saved the West, New York, 1976, p. 165; Langer and Gleason, Challenge, p. 573; Reynolds, Anglo-American Alliance, p. 119; Kennedy, p. 452.

  145. Harold L. Ickes, The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes, vol. 3: The Lowering Clouds 1939–1941, New York, 1955, p. 233.