Roosevelt may have viewed the evacuation as a matter of military necessity, but his decision was shaped by both prejudice and indifference. He considered the egregious violation of civil liberties a trivial issue, especially when compared with the larger strategic goal of fighting and winning a global war. In 1982, a government commission reviewing the internment criticized the Roosevelt administration for “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.” Unfortunately, it was a fair assessment.
10
“We are all in the same boat now”
ON SUNDAY EVENING, Winston Churchill was having dinner with the American ambassador to Britain, John G. “Gil” Winant, along with diplomat Averell Harriman and his future wife, Pamela. “The Prime Minister seemed tired and depressed,” Harriman recalled. “He didn’t have much to say throughout dinner and was immersed in his thoughts, with his head in his hands part of the time.”1
There was plenty of reason for gloom. For most of the year, as Nazi bombs rained down on London, Churchill’s top priority was to convince Roosevelt to enter the war. To his dismay, he had managed to wrangle old ships and other material but few commitments from the frustratingly elusive Roosevelt.
The two men had started a correspondence in September 1939 when Churchill joined the cabinet as the first lord of the admiralty. Churchill sent a series of letters about the problems confronting the British navy. On May 10, 1940—the day that Hitler invaded Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France—Churchill became prime minister, and the correspondence became more frequent, and more urgent. On May 15, he promised to fight alone, but if the United States did not intervene, he warned Roosevelt, “You may have a completely subjugated, Nazified Europe established with astounding swiftness, and the weight may be more than we can bear.”2
Roosevelt was not sure about his new counterpart. Although they came from similar social backgrounds and possessed a flair for the dramatic, Churchill was a political conservative who dreamed of preserving the British Empire. His love of alcohol, and capacity for consuming it, was legendary. “I suppose Churchill was the best man England had,” FDR told his cabinet on hearing the news that he was the new prime minister, “even if he was drunk half of his time.”3
In January 1941, Roosevelt had sent Harry Hopkins to London as his personal emissary to get a better sense of Churchill. “I suppose you could say—but not out loud—that I’ve come to try to find a way to be a catalytic agent between two prima donnas,” Hopkins told CBS correspondent Edward R. Murrow, who was in London at the time. Hopkins spent twelve evenings with Churchill, traveled with him to military posts, and came away inspired by Churchill’s determination and statesmanship. “People here are amazing from Churchill down,” he wrote FDR, “and if courage alone can win—the result will be inevitable. But they need our help desperately.”4
The frail, businesslike Hopkins was a big hit with Churchill as well. Interior Secretary Harold Ickes noted, “Apparently the first thing that Churchill asks for when he gets awake in the morning is Harry Hopkins, and Harry is the last one he sees at night.” Hopkins lobbied for more aid, but Roosevelt remained cautious. While declaring that America “must become the great arsenal of democracy,” he refused to give Churchill what he needed most—a declaration of war against Germany and American troops on European soil.
Over the next few months, Churchill continued to write as many as two or three letters a week to Roosevelt, describing Britain’s plight and pleading for American intervention. His radio addresses, which were broadcast in the United States, were extremely popular. By 1941, Churchill ranked second only to FDR as the “favorite personality” on U.S. radio. Although his words inspired Americans, they seemed to make little difference in Washington. British ambassador Lord Halifax observed that trying to pin down the Roosevelt administration on a clear policy toward Britain was like “a disorderly day’s rabbit-shooting.”5
At the end of 1940, Roosevelt suggested that he and Churchill meet “to talk over the problem of the defeat of Germany.” Churchill accepted, and in August 1941, they met at Placentia Bay in Newfoundland—the first of many conferences between the two leaders. “I’ve just got to see Churchill myself in order to explain things to him,” FDR told Henry Morgenthau. Both men came away with renewed respect and affection for each other. After an informal lunch, Roosevelt noted in a letter, “[Churchill] is a tremendously vital person & in many ways is an English Mayor La Guardia. . . . I like him—& lunching alone broke the ice both ways.”6
Roosevelt’s main reason for calling the meeting was to issue a declaration of war aims, which he hoped would educate the public about the European conflict and prepare them for the possibility of American intervention. The statement would also ease American anxieties that the United States might be forming an alliance that included the Soviet Union. Before the meeting ended, the two leaders issued the Atlantic Charter. The declaration pledged both nations to honor the principles of self-determination, free trade, nonaggression, and freedom of the seas, promising a postwar world in which all people “may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want.”7
But Churchill continued to press Roosevelt for a declaration of war against Germany. Roosevelt dodged, promising “to wage war, but not declare it.” He pledged the navy to protect British convoys as far east as Iceland while he looked for an “incident” to justify a more aggressive posture. Despite the good feelings between the two national leaders, Roosevelt’s position remained the same: support Britain in every way short of war. FDR was acutely aware that the public, while favoring a tough line with Japan, wanted to stay out of a war in Europe. For now, he had no intention of challenging public attitudes.8
By December, British prospects seemed bleak. Churchill expected Germany to eventually defeat Russia, although the struggle was taking longer than expected. Once Hitler had vanquished Russia, he would turn the full force of his military on England. At the same time, Japan was making threatening moves in the Pacific. He now faced the prospect of a spring offensive from the Germans and a war with Japan in the East.
There was a general sense in Britain that the war was already lost. An American diplomat who traveled to Scotland reported back to the embassy that most people he met believed that “the British are now losing the war.” The only way Hitler could be defeated was by a massive offensive on the ground. The simple reality was that the British lacked the manpower and the matériel to launch such an offensive without direct American intervention. British merchant ships carrying food and supplies were being sunk faster than they could be replaced. His field marshal in Africa cabled Churchill on November 4: “I am struck by the growth of the impression here and elsewhere that the war is going to end in stalemate and thus fatally for us.”9
As a flood of intelligence poured in that winter indicating that the Japanese were planning a major offensive, Churchill worried they would bypass American possessions and strike only at the British. At lunch on December 7, he asked Ambassador Winant bluntly, “If they declare war on us, will you declare war on them?” He did not get the answer he wanted. “I can’t answer that, Prime Minister. Only the Congress has the right to declare war under the United States constitution.” Churchill sat in silence. His empire stood on the brink of destruction, and the best his American counterpart could offer was a civics lesson.10
Just before 9:00 on the evening of December 7, an aide handed Churchill a fifteen-dollar radio that had been presented to him as a gift from Harry Hopkins. Operating like a music box, it started playing when the lid was opened. Churchill used the radio to tune into the 9:00 p.m. broadcast of the BBC News, which he never missed. A few minutes into the broadcast came a bulletin announcing the Japanese attack. “President Roosevelt has announced that the Japanese have bombed the Hawaiian base of the United States fleet at Pearl Harbor.”11
There was initially some confusion among those gathered around the dinner table. Harriman repeated the announcement in shock. “My God,” he exclaimed,
“they’ve attacked Pearl Harbor.” Another guest, however, assuming the announcement was wrong, said, “Oh, no, it was Pearl River.” Churchill’s butler settled the dispute. “Yes, yes, we’ve heard it too. They’ve attacked the Americans at Pearl Harbor.”12
Churchill jumped up, slammed down the lid on the radio, and announced, “We will declare war on Japan.” The Japanese had already attacked Malaya, but the news had not yet reached the prime minister. Winant tried to calm the prime minister down. “Good God,” he said, “you can’t declare war on a radio announcement.” He suggested they call Roosevelt to get the latest information and to learn whether a declaration of war would follow.13
A few minutes later, the two men went to the war room at Chequers. Ambassador Winant placed a call to the White House and soon had Roosevelt on the line. “I’ve got someone with me who wants to speak with you,” Winant said. “Who’s that,” FDR asked. “You’ll find out when he speaks.” Churchill, who was listening on an extension, broke into the conversation. “Mr. President, what’s this about Japan,” he asked. “It’s quite true,” Roosevelt answered. “They have attacked us at Pearl Harbor. We are all in the same boat now.” He told Churchill that he would go before Congress and ask for a declaration of war the next day. Churchill was thrilled that the United States had finally entered the war. “This certainly simplifies things,” the prime minister responded. For the first time, he believed the Allies could now win. “To have the United States at our side,” he wrote later, “was to me the greatest joy. Now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! . . . Hitler’s fate was sealed. Mussolini’s fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder.”14
Later that evening, Churchill recalled what the British foreign secretary had told him about the United States during World War I. He had compared the United States to a giant boiler. “Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate.” The British leader said that night he “slept the sleep of the saved and the thankful.”15
Despite his optimistic statements, Churchill still worried that Roosevelt would choose to fight only in the Pacific. If the Americans moved in this direction, it would pull essential resources away from the Atlantic theater, denying Churchill the men that he needed both to stop Hitler’s planned invasion and to start an offensive operation to retake Europe.16
American reporters in London were surprised that the British public showed little reaction to the news that evening. “Regarding the Jap war, I feel sure London reaction is much less intense than you’d imagine,” Jeffrey Mark cabled his editors in New York late on December 7. “It is important to realize that to Britishers, Hawaii is not a naval base but a South Sea island with a Hollywood ukulele and hula hula trimmings.” While the British thought it was good that the Americans were finally part of the conflict, that feeling was “qualified by the thought that America will now attend to her own defense needs frantically and tend to neglect British and Russian lease-lend.” They also worried that the U.S. Navy would abandon its Atlantic patrols and relocate to the Pacific.17
Despite the underlying anxiety about how America would respond to the attack, Churchill and the British people could take considerable comfort from knowing that they now had a powerful ally in their once lonely struggle against fascism.
Adolf Hitler was at the Wolf’s Lair, an underground bunker nestled in the forest about 450 miles northeast of Berlin, when he heard the news of the Pearl Harbor attack. After a late dinner, he gathered with a handful of minions. Although he refused to acknowledge it, his troops were stymied on the eastern front, bogged down by unexpectedly strong Russian resistance and a typically brutal Russian winter. The previous summer, Hitler had launched Operation Barbarossa—his assault on his former ally, the Soviet Union. By the beginning of December 1941, German troops had advanced to Istra, a suburb only 15 miles west of Moscow. But the frigid temperatures and Stalin’s patriotic appeals to a shell-shocked nation had slowed the German advance. Fighting the killing cold and the stiffening Russian resistance, the invaders’ losses mounted. On December 5, as the Japanese sailed toward Pearl Harbor, the Soviet army launched a massive counterattack along a 560-mile front.
For the past few years, the Nazis had encouraged Japan to attack British and Dutch possessions in Asia, while trying to avoid a direct confrontation with the United States. Hitler’s strategy was to keep the United States neutral for as long as possible. He calculated that Roosevelt would not be able to convince the American public to enter the war unless they were attacked. By late November, however, as it became clear that negotiations between Japan and the United States were dead-locked, Germany switched positions. A few days before the attack, the German foreign minister assured Japan that Germany would intervene on its side if it decided to declare war on the United States. He prepared a draft of an agreement that was still unsigned when the bombs started falling on Pearl Harbor.18
While Hitler expected a Japanese move against the United States, he did not know the place or the time. Around midnight on December 7, the German leader was discussing the eastern front and how the German people were supporting the troops by contributing warm clothing to the cause. Suddenly, his press officer burst into the room with a bulletin. They had picked up an American broadcast indicating that the Japanese had attacked at Pearl Harbor. Hitler was elated by the news. Leaping to his feet, he shouted, “The turning point!” As he rushed from the room, he told an aide, “We can’t lose the war at all. We now have an ally which has never been conquered in three thousand years.” He called for champagne and invited all the officers for the celebration.19
Hitler was elated because he believed that a U.S. war with Japan would relieve pressure on him in the Atlantic. America’s policy of providing escorts to British ships while clinging to a policy of neutrality had made life difficult for German U-boat commanders. “How can a commander know when he should fire his torpedoes and when he shouldn’t?” He added that it was impossible for a U-boat commander to “read through a whole book before he fires a torpedo in order to discover if the ship is a British or an American one!”20
The successful Japanese attack, Hitler believed, would destroy “the myth of American superiority.” American military capability, he declared, was overrated. Shortly after the attack, Hitler said he did not “see much future for the Americans.” He dismissed the nation as a “decayed country,” for which he felt nothing but “hatred and deep repugnance.” America, he claimed, was “half Judaized” and half “Negrified.” “How can one expect a state like that to hold together—a country where everything is built on the dollar?”21
Italian leader and fellow fascist Benito Mussolini also welcomed the Japanese attack that brought the Americans into the war. Like Hitler, “Il Duce” believed that Roosevelt was too weak, and the Americans too soft, to wage a successful war. He too doubted that “a country of Negros and Jews” could create an effective fighting force. He also believed that American industrial capabilities were overstated. Most of all, he simply could not understand how a man incapable of walking could lead a nation during war. “Never in history has a people been ruled by a paralytic,” he contemptuously said of FDR. “There have been bald kings, fat kings, handsome kings, and even stupid ones, but never a king who when he wants to go to the toilet or to dinner must be assisted by other men.”22
Though for different reasons, both Churchill and Hitler were elated by the news of the Japanese attack. The reception was less enthusiastic among some of Roosevelt’s critics at home. There was a large “America First” rally scheduled in Pittsburgh that afternoon at 3:00 p.m. at Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall. The committee, formed by a group of students at Yale University in the fall of 1940, was the largest, most powerful isolationist group in the country. “Our first duty is to keep America out of foreign wars,” its founding document stated. “Our entry would only destroy democracy, not save it.” The group
held large rallies, organized letter-writing campaigns, and attracted the support of such luminaries as aviator Charles Lindbergh and dozens of elected officials. By December 7, 1941, there were 450 chapters with around 800,000 members, mostly based in the Midwest.23
Organizers billed the gathering as the “greatest mass rally” of those opposed to the administration’s policies and bragged about the featured speaker, North Dakota senator Gerald P. Nye. The organization issued a press release saying that Nye’s appearance “is our answer to the local war-mongers who would send other men’s sons to die on foreign battlefields.” By 3:00 p.m., a crowd of 1,500 had gathered in a hall decorated with red-white-and-blue bunting and dozens of “Defend America First” signs. Before Nye was scheduled to speak, a local reporter, Robert Hagy, had seen the AP wire announcing the strikes on Pearl. Wanting to get Nye’s reaction, Hagy found the senator backstage and shoved the Teletype describing the Japanese attack at him. “It sounds fishy to me,” Nye said. “Can’t we have some details? Is it sabotage or is it open attack? I’m amazed that the President should announce an attack without giving details.” He compared the announcement with the way Roosevelt described the USS Greer incident, suggesting that it was just another FDR deception.24
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