Afterward the President was introduced to the Prime Minister’s junior staff. To the chagrin of the British chiefs of staff, however, that was it. As Churchill’s military aide lamented, “it had been the intention that the Chiefs of Staff should have a short meeting with the American Chiefs of Staff at which to hand over the Future Strategy Paper. However, this went by the board as Admiral Stark and General Marshall decided to go back to their ships with the President.”91
The luncheon, intended as the prelude to joint military discussions, had been for naught—the President determined not to be snared by Churchill into a position that isolationists back in the U.S. could interpret as having even the semblance of an alliance.
Once aboard the USS Augusta the President then held “a military & naval conference in my cabin”92—adamant to ensure that no hint of a military alliance was being suggested, or any whisper of U.S. “war plans” being given to emissaries of a foreign country. His chiefs of staff still seemed bewildered by his tactics, but were too loyal to protest.
Despite the President’s ban on joint discussions among the chiefs, however, it was impossible to stop junior staff officers from confiding in one another. At a junior meeting with Colonel Harvey Bundy, General Marshall’s director of plans, for example, Colonel Jacob, Churchill’s military assistant, learned to his consternation just how different were British and American ideas for conducting the war against Germany.
Some weeks previously, it appeared, the President had ordered a secret new review to be drawn up—later called the Victory Plan—of what the U.S. Army and Navy Departments would deem necessary in a war to defeat the Third Reich. A preliminary report had been presented to the President before he’d left Washington, and Colonel Bundy now unwisely shared the gist of it with his counterpart—who was both amazed and disbelieving. “The Americans are busy trying to draw up a scheme of the forces which they would ultimately raise, and the possible theatres in which they might be utilised. They are tentatively aiming at an Army of 4 million men.”
Colonel Jacob was shocked. Four million men? “We did our best to point out to Bundy that this was possibly a wasteful use of manpower and manufacturing capacity; it hardly seemed conceivable that large scale land fighting could take place on the Continent of America, and shipping limitations would make it quite impossible for large forces to be transferred quickly to other theatres.”93
Colonel Charles Lindbergh, one of the leaders of the America First isolationist movement, would have been appalled to know that such secret discussions regarding possible American “intervention” in “other theaters” were being aired; he would have been even more appalled to discover the sheer magnitude of the army the U.S. military was proposing in order to win the war against Germany. Colonel Jacob certainly was—for the American notion of defeating Hitler was almost diametrically opposed to that of the British.
“The day has been almost entirely wasted from the point of view of joint discussion,” Jacob lamented in his diary. “We have been here two days and have not yet succeeded in getting the opposite sets of Chiefs of Staff together round a table,” he recorded in frustration—unaware that this was happening on the President’s specific orders. “We have thus given away the strength of our position, which lies in the fact that our three Chiefs of Staff present a unified front of the strategical questions, while it is quite clear that theirs do not. We have played into their hands by allowing the discussions to proceed in separate compartments.”94
The President’s stratagem worked magnificently—the British were unable to present their “Future Strategy Paper,” while their U.S. hosts remained wholly uncommitted either to enter the war, or to follow “unified” British strategic military policy: a policy that assumed there would be no major ground forces landed on the continent of Europe, and that Hitler could merely be forced into submission by peripheral harassment and aerial bombing—if only the United States provided enough bombers. (The RAF’s request, Arnold learned from his opposite number, Air Vice Marshal Freeman, was for ten thousand heavy bombers—the entire output of the U.S.)95
As Colonel Jacob rued immediately after the conference, “neither the American Navy nor the Army go much on the heavy bomber”—the mainstay of Britain’s only plan to defeat Hitler. Neither the U.S. Navy nor Army “seems to realize the value of a really heavy and sustained aerial offensive on Germany.”96
Given that England had itself successfully survived the world’s most sustained bomber offensive in human history—the Blitz—for an entire year, the notion that Nazi Germany could be defeated by the same tactics in reverse seemed nonsensical to General Marshall and Admiral Stark, the U.S. Army and Navy chiefs of staff—indeed, even to General Arnold, who did believe in an important role for heavy bombers in modern war.97 Yes, heavy bombers could savage an enemy’s manufacturing and supply chain to its armies. Even Arnold could not visualize, however, the war against Hitler being won by bombers. . .
Thanks to the President’s injunction against a formal meeting between the two nations’ joint chiefs of staff, however, the difference between British and American military strategy in conducting a full-scale war against Nazi Germany could, at least, safely be deferred.
Thus, when finally the British chiefs of staff managed to present their hollow-sounding “Future Strategy Paper” on Monday, August 11, the day the Prince of Wales was supposed to depart, all the U.S. chiefs of staff would say was that they would study the paper “with interest,” and respond later.98 For the only matter the President was determined to nail down was his declaration of principles.
Once the Cadogan draft of the declaration was handed over to the American team, Sumner Welles and the President took over.
Together with Harry Hopkins, Welles was perhaps the President’s most trusted senior adviser. He “looks exactly as if he had stepped out of a film,” Jacob felt—the sort of film in which Welles would probably be playing “a business lawyer.”99
The comparison was apposite, for Welles was indeed acting the business lawyer in world politics. In the quiet of the President’s cabin, he and Roosevelt got down to the business of war and peace: pens poised as they went over the preliminary draft of what would become the Atlantic Charter.
“I am very doubtful about the utility of attempts to plan the peace before we have won the war,” the Prime Minister had confided his fundamental unwillingness to his foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, in May 1941100—but given that it was what the President requested, Churchill had not dared refuse. In its contorted language the first draft reflected the Prime Minister’s reluctance to draw up a charter at all, and his attempt to twist it, if he could, into a declaration of war. The preamble had thus opened by claiming that the U.S. president and the British prime minister were meeting at Placentia “to concert and resolve the means of providing for the safety of their respective countries in face of Nazi and German aggression . . .”
This, clearly, suggested an alliance—which was the last thing the President wanted American isolationists to infer. With Sumner Welles at his side, Roosevelt went through the document with the utmost care, taking out anything that could provide free ammunition to his opponents in America—isolationists waiting all too keenly to pounce on the President for any sign he had entered into an unconstitutional agreement with Great Britain and its colonial empire. By evening the American draft two was ready to be given to Churchill—who had gone ashore for a couple of hours to clear his head, but was due to come over to the USS Augusta at 7:00 P.M.
The previous night “Churchill had talked without interruption, except for questions,” Elliott Roosevelt recalled101—the Prime Minister “talking, talking, talking,” as irascible Admiral King put it.102 “Tonight,” however, as the Prime Minister arrived for his informal, private dinner with the President in the admiral’s cabin of the Augusta, “there were other men’s thoughts being tossed into the kettle, and the kettle correspondingly began to bubble up and—once or twice—nearly over. You sensed that two men ac
customed to leadership had sparred, had felt each other out, and were now readying themselves for outright challenge, each of the other.”103
The first bone of contention was the British Empire: its restrictive trade agreements, and its colonialism. “Of course,” the President opened his attack, “of course, after the war, one of the preconditions of any lasting peace will have to be the greatest possible freedom of trade.” Churchill countered by pointing out Britain had long-established trade agreements with its Dominions and colonies. “Yes. Those Empire trade agreements are a case in point,” the President agreed.
“It’s because of them that the people of India and Africa, of all the colonial Near East and Far East, are still as backward as they are.”
Churchill’s face, according to Elliott Roosevelt’s account, went red with fury. “Mr. President, England does not propose for a moment to lose its favored position among the British Dominions. The trade that has made England great shall continue, and under conditions prescribed by England’s ministers.”104
The President’s challenge had been met by Churchill—Roosevelt acknowledging “there is likely to be some disagreement between you, Winston, and me. I am firmly of the belief that if we are to arrive at a stable peace it must involve the development of backward countries. Backward peoples. How can this be done? It can’t be done, obviously, by eighteenth-century methods.”
Churchill, according to Elliott, became even more furious. “Who’s talking eighteenth-century methods?” he snapped.
“Whichever of your ministers recommends a policy which takes wealth in raw materials out of a colonial country, but which returns nothing to the people of that country in consideration,” the President explained patiently. “Twentieth-century methods involve bringing industry to these colonies. Twentieth-century methods include increasing the wealth of a people by increasing their standard of living, by educating them, by bringing them sanitation—by making sure that they get a return for the raw wealth of their community.”105
At the mention of India, Churchill became, Elliott described, “apoplectic.” “Yes,” the President had added blithely, ignoring Churchill’s rage as he piled accusation upon accusation. “I can’t believe that we can fight a war against fascist slavery, and at the same time not work to free people all over the world from a backward colonial policy.”106
Backward colonial policy? This then was the battle royal the Placentia Bay meeting had built up to, and though Churchill—“a real old Tory, isn’t he? A real old Tory, of the old school,” Roosevelt described his opponent to Elliott afterward107—would give no quarter, the President knew he’d made his point, and had the upper hand, “& now I’m ready for bed after dining Winston Churchill, his civilian aides & mine,” the President finished his account of the day’s doings for Daisy.108
Churchill, by contrast, went to bed with the aching realization that, despite all his oratory, the President of the United States was even less likely to enter into an alliance with Great Britain than when the Prime Minister had set sail from Scapa Flow.
The third day, Monday, August 11, 1941, the sparring continued.
“A day of very poor weather but good talks,” the President wrote. “My staff came at 12, lunched, & we worked over joint statement. They went and Churchill returned at 6:30 & we had a delightful dinner of five: H. Hopkins, Elliott, F. Jr., Churchill & myself.”109
Roosevelt was clearly delighted—getting what he wanted by his usual mixture of presidential charm, dogged insistence, occasional compromise, and sincere American hospitality. All day, fresh versions of the declaration of principles sped between the two warships—the President cutting out any implications of military or political alliance, the Prime Minister refusing to relent on “imperial preferences” in postwar trade agreements, and threatening to delay the declaration a further week while he submitted it to the governments of the British Dominions if the President insisted upon that article.
Feeling magnanimous, Roosevelt gave way. The core of his demand had gone unchallenged, after all: that the British government and the U.S. president sought “no territorial” or other “aggrandizement,” in fact no “territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the people concerned.” The text of the declaration specifically committed the signatories to “respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live”: a postwar peace aim that guaranteed an eventual end to the British colonial system—indeed caused British colonial administrators across the globe to shudder when they read the terms of the Atlantic Charter in the weeks that followed.
In the meantime, however, the President was ecstatic. He had got what he wanted—and not given Churchill what he so dearly hoped for.
For his part, the Prime Minister was resigned to defeat. It was disappointing, but the summit had at least brought the two men together. At dinner on Monday evening harmony finally reigned. “We talked about everything except the war!” the President related to his cousin, “& Churchill said it was the nicest evening he had had!”110
At some deeper level, Churchill was well aware the British Empire was doomed as a colonial enterprise, though he prayed the crumbling of the once-proud imperial edifice that had controlled a quarter of the world would not happen on his watch. Elliott Roosevelt afterward claimed that, at the summit, he saw “very gradually, and very quietly, the mantle of leadership was slipping from British shoulders to American.” He had seen it vividly when, the night before, Churchill got to his feet and “brandished a stubby forefinger under Father’s nose. ‘Mr. President,’” he had cried, “‘I believe you are trying to do away with the British Empire. Every idea you entertain about the structure of the postwar world demonstrates it. But in spite of that’—and his forefinger waved—‘in spite of that, we know that you constitute our only hope. And’—his voice sank dramatically—‘you know that we know it. You know that we know that without America, the Empire won’t stand.’”111
In sending the final, revised draft of the declaration of principles to the war cabinet in London by secret cipher on the evening of August 11, 1941, Churchill felt ashamed of what he had been forced to concede. With trepidation he therefore went to bed, wondering what the cabinet’s response would be.
“Am I going to like it?” he asked his private secretary, “rather like a small boy about to take medicine,” Colonel Jacob noted in his diary, when the response eventually came in.112
The British cabinet did—mercifully for the President.
In actuality, Roosevelt’s hand was much weaker than Winston Churchill had realized. Not only was the United States in no position to wage war on anyone, at that time, but the President’s political position was a great deal less powerful than the Prime Minister knew. Reports of a secret meeting with the leader of a belligerent nation were bound to arouse isolationist ire across America—making American intervention in the war even less likely. News of a joint declaration of principles, by contrast, would not.113 In this sense the President had played a masterly hand.
“W.S.C. to lunch,” the President wrote to Daisy the next day, “with Lord Beaverbrook [Churchill’s minister of munitions], who landed by plane this A.M. at Gander Lake from Scotland.” Churchill had brought with him “approval of statement by his cabinet & King—& after a few minor changes we gave final OKs & drew up the letter to Stalin, & arranged for release dates,” the President chronicled.114
The Atlantic Charter, as it was swiftly called, was a historic document: a declaration in the great tradition of the American Bill of Rights, guaranteeing the rights of all nations—including British colonies—to self-determination, not conquest by rule of force. If the United States were to go to war, it would this time be for a noble cause.
“They left at 3:30, their whole staff having come to say goodbye—It was a very moving scene as they received full honors going over the side,” back to their battle-scarred battleship, the President described to Daisy.115 Then, at 5:00 P.M. that evening
, August 12, 1941, after “great activity” getting the battleship ready to weigh anchor, the ill-fated HMS Prince of Wales steamed out of Placentia Bay with salutes given as it passed the ships of the U.S. flotilla—strains of the Royal Marine Band still playing as it headed across the still water.116
In Placentia Bay, meanwhile, the President breathed a sigh of relief. “At 5 P.M. sharp the P. of W. passed out of the harbor, past all our ships,” he described the scene to his cousin. On his desk was the Atlantic Charter. “Ten minutes later we too stood out of the harbor with our escort, homeward bound. So end these four days that I feel have contributed to things we hold dear.”117
PART TWO
PEARL HARBOR
2
The U.S. Is Attacked!
PEARL HARBOR DAY BEGAN quietly. We were expecting quite a large party for luncheon,” Eleanor Roosevelt later recalled, “and I was disappointed but not surprised when Franklin sent word a short time before lunch that he did not see how he could possibly join us.”1
This was not unusual; the President and First Lady led somewhat separate lives. They lived together upstairs at the White House, but on opposite sides of the Central Hall. Their marriage, since FDR’s affair with Eleanor’s secretary and then his affliction with polio in 1921, had become one of duty, parenthood, and convenience—though they did respect one another, in the manner of English aristocrats. Eleanor acknowledged that in the White House the President “had been increasingly worried for some time and frequently at the last moment would tell me that he could not come to some large gathering that had been arranged. People naturally wanted to listen to what he had to say,” she allowed, “but the fact that he carried so many secrets in his head made it necessary for him to watch everything he said, which in itself was exhausting.”2
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