American Warlords

by Jonathan W. Jordan

  Some legislators despised FDR enough that it influenced their vote, though most simply despised the idea of losing reelection bids the next year. A Gallup poll showed that 45 percent of the country—more than 50 percent in the Rockies and the Midwest—opposed draft extension. Feeling was naturally strongest among Republicans, so General Marshall made a special effort to reach out to the GOP.4

  He made little headway, in part because of bitterness built up over three electoral losses to a smug liberal Democrat. During one closed-door dinner meeting with Republican congressmen at the Alibi Club, a representative told Marshall, “You put the case very well, but I will be damned if I am going along with Mr. Roosevelt.”

  Incensed, Marshall spat back, “You are going to let plain hatred of the personality dictate to you to do something that you realize is very harmful to the interest of the country.”

  He pushed hard with the other invitees, but the dinner yielded a poor harvest. He later grumbled, “I had all the Republican congressmen in there and out of that I only got a few votes.”5

  • • •

  In 1936, Sam Rayburn had warned his fellow Democrats, “When you get too big a majority, you’re immediately in trouble.” Now Roosevelt’s party was in trouble. In early August, House Majority Leader John McCormack of Massachusetts counted forty-five Democrat votes against draft extension, with another thirty-five Democrats undecided. Republicans were nearly unanimous in opposition, so unless Stimson and Marshall could bring wavering Democrats into line, the Army would melt away come October.6

  The bill was scheduled to hit the House floor in mid-August, so early in the month was the time to call the touchdown play. But the two running backs who should have been carrying the ball—Marshall, the respected front man, and FDR, twisting arms behind the scenes—abruptly left Washington without disclosing their destination.

  To leave the capital the week before the biggest fight since Lend-Lease seemed unthinkable, yet Henry Stimson found himself alone in the lion’s den. “There is a wild rumor going around town tonight to the effect that the President is going to meet Churchill somewhere up near Canada,” a puzzled Stimson told his diary on August 6. “Perhaps it’s true because for the first time Marshall failed to tell me where he went when he left last Sunday.” 7

  •

  To the clang of bells, the thump of feet, and the rattle of chains that punctuated the command, “Weigh anchor!” Admiral King’s flagship, USS Augusta, slipped out of Newport, Rhode Island, and headed south to Long Island Sound. The stately cruiser steamed into the East River and obediently came to rest at the cluttered Brooklyn Navy Yard.

  Not long after her arrival, a barge crammed with workmen pulled alongside. Carpenters began attaching odd-looking boarding ramps to Augusta’s hull while curious sailors looked on. Judging by its structure, the ramp was built to accommodate the least seaworthy of landlubbers. Someone who would have more trouble than most coming aboard. Someone important.8

  The next day a destroyer hove to and transferred General Marshall, Admiral Stark, and a small galaxy of star-shouldered officers to King’s flagship. Augusta weighed anchor and steamed east to Martha’s Vineyard, anchoring in Menemsha Bight off Cape Cod. On the night of August 4, the President of the United States was wheeled up the new ramps with a small company of retainers.9

  They were going to meet Great Britain’s harbor pilot.

  Steaming through Nova Scotia’s choppy waters at twenty-two knots, Augusta and her escorts whisked their charges to Placentia Bay, near the village of Argentia on the island of Newfoundland. Roosevelt spent the next two days meeting with advisers and doing a bit of angling from Augusta’s fantail—catching, in the words of the official log, “an ugly fish which could not be identified by name, and which he directed be preserved and delivered to the Smithsonian Institute.”10

  As they awaited the arrival of Prime Minister Churchill and his staff, Roosevelt called his military chiefs into conference, where they discussed the protection of Atlantic shipping. In their discussions, Roosevelt provided little clear guidance on matters of cooperation, planning, or strategy, and a puzzled Marshall left the meeting bothered by the president’s lack of answers to questions the British would ask. Churchill was sailing an awfully long way through submarine-infested waters, and he would want more than words of good cheer from the Americans.11

  The ambiguity did not bother Roosevelt in the slightest. America was not at war yet, and FDR had lived his whole life offering glib half answers, encouraging words, and equivocal promises. He shunned rigid plans, and would not let his military chiefs—who had predicted the quick demise of Russia—discuss anything of significance with their British counterparts. He would set the agenda as he saw fit.

  • • •

  On the morning of August 9, Augusta’s lookouts spotted three British destroyers in the offing. They stood in for Placentia Bay, leading the way for the battleship HMS Prince of Wales, recently of the Birkenhead shipyard, and more recently of a death struggle with Hitler’s Bismarck.

  The pride of the Royal Navy made a grand entrance. Her battle scars accentuated her smooth skin, billowing pennants and proud turrets rising from her deck. As “The Star-Spangled Banner” wafted from His Majesty’s Ship over the water, a veteran crew assembled in neat files along Prince’s rails. Nestled among the navy blue coats stood the prime minister, clad in the fraternal uniform of an Elder Brother of Trinity House.12

  In a plain fedora and gray civilian suit, FDR stood to greet Churchill on Augusta’s covered deck, a cane in one hand, his son Elliott holding the other, his legs locked into steel braces concealed beneath his trousers. Augusta’s band struck up “God Save the King,” and a murmur rippled through the crowd as Churchill made his way aft to meet the president.

  Roosevelt’s handsome face broke into a smile as Churchill drew near. “At last, we’ve gotten together,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Churchill, an impish grin spreading over his pink jowls. “We have.”13

  • • •

  Roosevelt took an instant liking to the English dynamo, and the brotherhood reached its high tide the first full day of the conference. It was a Sunday morning, and before a day of meals and meetings, divine services were held on the British battleship’s afterdeck.

  Roosevelt’s inability to walk had never prevented him from working the levers of power. But to cross from an American cruiser to a British battleship in a tight anchorage tested the skill of both FDR and his naval pilots. In a series of tight moves, Augusta’s consort, the destroyer McDougal, pulled alongside the cruiser’s bow, and the Augustines transferred Roosevelt to the destroyer. McDougal then hove around for a “Chinese landing” on the battleship’s port quarter, inching her bow up to Prince of Wales’ railing.

  As McDougal touched home, her boatswain’s mate, holding a heavy coiled rope, called out to figures gathered on Prince’s quarterdeck, “Hey! Will you take a line?”

  A portly man in a dark suit darted forward and replied, “Certainly!”

  The rope flew, and before his tars could run up to assist him, the prime minister of Great Britain caught and hauled in the line. The warships were secured, a bridge ramp was thrown up, and the officers of two navies held their breath as the President of the United States boarded Britain’s towering flagship. On two feet.14

  Walking was a form of torture that Roosevelt reserved for the most sacred occasions, such as convention speeches or annual addresses to Congress. His back and side muscles strained as he took each awkward step in his heavy steel braces. He walked over the bow ramp gripping Elliott’s arm, his teeth clenched, his face plastered with a rigid, artificial smile.15

  Churchill would have been delighted to step forward—to cut short Roosevelt’s walk, perhaps take an elbow alongside Elliott. But he knew Roosevelt was a proud man determined to show that there was no obstacle so great it couldn’t be overcome by unbending will. Nodd
ing silently in support, Churchill stood on the ship’s deck, surrounded by the trappings of empire, beaming in admiration as his partner walked the deck and took his place among the chairs set before a pulpit draped with American and British flags.

  After the homilies, long-winded prayers, and remarks by U.S. and British naval chaplains, the service closed with hymns selected by the two leaders. The emotional crescendo reached its peak as the host rang out “Onward Christian Soldiers,” “O God, Our Help in Ages Past,” and an old FDR favorite, the naval hymn, “Eternal Father, Strong to Save.”16

  Since the days of the ancient Greeks, naval songs have moved the hearts of men buffeted by wind and wave. This service, held in a common tongue and offered to a common god, bound those gathered in common cause. “Every word seemed to stir the heart,” Churchill wrote years later. “None who took part in it will forget the spectacle presented. . . . It was a great hour to live.”17

  Churchill, though not a religious man, delighted in the pomp and spectacle of ecclesiastical ceremony. He used to joke that he was not a pillar of the church, but rather a buttress—he supported it from the outside. Roosevelt, by contrast, was a devout Episcopalian, a true believer, and the incorporation of Christianity into Allied war aims moved him emotionally. Hours after the last notes died away and the altar was broken down, he told Elliott, “It was our keynote. If nothing else had happened while we were here, that would have cemented us. ‘Onward Christian Soldiers.’ We are, and we will go on, with God’s help.”18

  • • •

  The Americans might go on with God’s help, but the British were looking for something a bit more tangible. Speaking with the lispy eloquence that had inspired millions, the prime minister in the next meeting starkly outlined the Empire’s most critical needs: heavy bombers, medium bombers, seaplanes, medium tanks, destroyers (always), and antiaircraft guns. Ammunition. Food. Fuel. They also needed the Americans to take over convoy routes of the North Atlantic so the Royal Navy could fight the enemy in the Mediterranean and North Seas.19

  The Americans were lavish with sympathy but tight with promises. Marshall, Stark, and General Arnold were short on nearly everything, and for months they had been splitting aircraft production down the middle. Now, with Russia elbowing aside the British and American armies, and China making fresh claims, the American chiefs could offer little more than what they had committed to provide before the voyage began.

  “[The British] did not appreciate that on top of this load we had to take care of the needs of China, Russia, British Colonies, Dutch East Indies,” Arnold scribbled in his little pocket diary a few days later. “Fortunately, we were able to get away without promising or giving away everything we had. As a matter of fact, we might have lost everything we owned, including our pants—but we didn’t.” 20

  Trolling for a fish that Churchill could take back to England, Roosevelt ordered Stark to provide naval protection for British convoys beginning September 1. King’s Atlantic Fleet would move from reporting on U-boats to defending Commonwealth merchantmen.

  Materially, it was not much. But to Churchill, this concession was more welcome than a fresh shipment of tanks or bombers. An undeclared war at sea, he knew, just might pull the United States into a declared war on land. And a declared war on land meant victory.21

  • • •

  War’s tools and strategy interested Roosevelt, but only marginally. War is a milestone in the life of a nation, but that life goes on, in some form or other, after the guns fall silent. As head of state, Roosevelt had to make a difference to the ordinary man in ordinary times. Things like the National Recovery Act, or Social Security, or even his disastrous plan to pack the Supreme Court, drew Roosevelt’s fertile mind. So with democracy’s two leaders free of outside distractions, Roosevelt pondered a sweeping declaration of Allied war aims to lay before mankind.

  In centuries past, European alliances had been formed either to upset the old order or to defend it. Churchill was heir to an empire that traditionally defended it. Coalitions opposing Spanish monarchs, the Sun King, Napoleon, and the Kaiser had been forged to preserve balance on the Continent. In a way, restoring a world of constitutional monarchies—an order interrupted by communism and fascism—had been Churchill’s great commission.

  The United States saw the world differently, and would not shed its blood simply to preserve Europe’s ancien régime. America needed a goal worthy of the sacrifice it would be asked to make, and Roosevelt, a son of Woodrow Wilson’s idealism, channeled his beliefs into a statement of American principles. Anxious to bind America’s fate to Britain’s, Churchill agreed to a joint statement of Anglo-American war aims that became known as the “Atlantic Charter.”22

  It was breathtaking in tenor and scope. The Atlantic Charter pledged that the nations aligned against the Axis powers would seek no territory, encourage free trade, support democratic institutions, and work toward a permanent system of world security. The document was, in Churchill’s words, a “profound and far-reaching” declaration of the ideals that would guide the Anglo-American alliance.23

  On what was billed as another “fishing trip,” each leader had come away with a big catch. Churchill won American protection of his merchantmen, binding America’s fate to Britain’s. With the Atlantic Charter, Roosevelt claimed the idealistic vision of his hero.

  But by pledging his nation to a world of peace, FDR had irrevocably set his country on the path to war.

  •

  Henry Stimson missed the drama at Placentia Bay because he had a role to play in Washington. As Roosevelt, Stark, Marshall, and King shook hands with their British counterparts, Stimson was working phones and halls to convince balking congressmen that they should ignore the specter of voter retribution and extend the draft.

  The old guard opposition—Republicans, conservative Democrats, isolationist groups, anti-Churchill Irishmen, and a hodgepodge of pacifists, Hooverites, intellectuals, and anti-Willkies—vilified Roosevelt as a three-term dictator and Stimson as his warmongering Iago. A few Republicans, like House Minority Leader Joe Martin of Massachusetts, sympathized with the bill, but most saw draft extension as a golden opportunity to give FDR a black eye that voters would remember going into the 1942 midterm elections.

  With Roosevelt and Marshall AWOL from the capital, and Stimson hobbled by charges of extremism, it was up to Sam Rayburn, John McCormack, House Whip Pat Boland, and the renegade Republican Jim Wadsworth to scrape together enough votes to save the Army. Rayburn, McCormack, and Boland called on friends in the American Legion to push fickle Democrats, which brought in a few more votes, and Wadsworth eventually delivered twenty-one Republicans. But it would be a close call, and the gauntlet of a full House vote had yet to be run.24

  The final vote, taken on the evening of August 12, fell to a sharply divided chamber after a long day of bitter debate. As summer rains lashed the Capitol’s roof, the chief clerk called out names for a voice vote.

  The abundance of “nay” votes indicated that Democrats, feeling the heat, were breaking ranks and deserting Roosevelt. But the total inched up in the administration’s favor until the House tally clerk, Hans Jorgensen, sat before a list of 204 “aye” votes, 201 “nays,” and 27 abstentions.25

  When the count was announced, a flurry erupted around the Speaker’s rostrum. Seeing the close margin for a bill he had thought would pass easily without him, Democrat Andrew Somers of New York leaped forward to change his “aye” to “nay.” The ayes still had it, for the moment, by one vote.

  But Sam Rayburn knew how to run his house. Unwilling to let one more vote slip away, the Texan announced that voting was over. To the howls of opponents, Jorgensen read the roll of 203 “aye” votes to 202 “nays,” and Rayburn fought back complaints of procedural irregularities from the isolationists. After nearly twelve hours of legislative combat, the Speaker’s gavel slammed down, and Rayburn’s lieutenants rushed it to the Senate for
approval.26

  • • •

  In a democracy, armies can die from political wounds more swiftly than from combat, disease, or desertion. America’s army would not die that day. The battle won by Henry Stimson and Sam Rayburn on a rainy August evening ensured that America’s soldiers and sailors would continue to defend the nation until Hitler was vanquished and Europe was safe.

  But, as Wellington once said about Waterloo, it had been a damned near-run thing. And the men who so painstakingly planned for war in Europe were about to learn they had an enemy coming at them from a different direction.

  ELEVEN

  YEAR OF THE SNAKE

  IF AMERICA WERE DRAWN INTO WAR, SAID ROOSEVELT, IT WOULD BE BECAUSE Germany fired the first shot. Abraham Lincoln had refused to go to war until the Confederates opened fire—but he kept a Union garrison at Fort Sumter to ensure that sooner or later, the Confederates would draw first blood. Keeping a promise he made to Churchill at Argentia, FDR ordered Admiral King to begin escorting British merchant ships in the Atlantic, knowing the Germans would not tolerate the arrangement for long. Fort Sumter was open for business.1

  Roosevelt took another long stride toward war on September 11, when in his second fireside chat of the year he announced a new policy toward U-boats in the Atlantic. The destroyer USS Greer, he announced, had been suddenly and deliberately attacked by a German submarine. The United States would therefore shoot German U-boats on sight. “When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him,” he told his listeners. “These Nazi submarines and raiders are the rattlesnakes of the Atlantic. . . . From now on, if German or Italian vessels enter the waters, the protection of which is necessary for American defense, they do so at their own peril.”2