Commander in Chief

by Nigel Hamilton

  About this patent untruth the President could only shake his head, knowing Stalin never went anywhere near his brave Russian troops. The rest of Stalin’s message—asking what exactly were the “problems which you, Mr. President, and Mr. Churchill intended to discuss at our joint conference,” and wondering if these could not be dealt with “by correspondence”—had been similarly disappointing, despite the Russian dictator’s assurance “there will be no disagreement between us.”4

  The chances of that, Roosevelt knew, were slim—especially given Stalin’s hope that “the promises about the opening of a second front in Europe given by you, Mr. President, and by Mr. Churchill in regard of 1942 and in any case in regard of the spring of 1943, will be fulfilled, and that a second front in Europe will be actually opened by the joint forces of Great Britain and the United States of America in the spring of next year.”5

  That hope—as the President had confided to Prime Minister Mackenzie King—was pie in the sky. Unless the Germans showed signs of collapse in 1943, he was simply not going to approve such a strategy until U.S. forces and commanders were battle-hardened in the Mediterranean that year—just as was taking place in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific, at the extremity of Japanese lines of communication.

  It was Stalin who would inevitably be disappointed, then, once he learned of Roosevelt’s implacable decision. Though the President’s own generals and admirals, his war secretary, his counselor Hopkins, and even his ambassador to London, John Winant, might echo Stalin’s appeals for an immediate cross-Channel assault, the President was simply not going to authorize mass American—and Canadian—suicide. Each day, by contrast, the President was more confident of “certain victory in the end”—if the Allies made no more mistakes.

  With Stalin still saying nyet to a summit meeting, however—whether in January or in March, 1943—the President had cabled Churchill on December 14, 1942, to say they should go ahead without him. In Casablanca, as he confided to Captain McCrea.

  Before he left, however, the President decided he must do two important things. First, get the nation behind him. And second, his generals.

  6

  Addressing Congress

  AS THE SEVENTY-EIGHTH Congress prepared to reassemble with a much-diminished Democratic majority, the President decided to use his annual State of the Union address, on January 7, 1943, not only to review the past year but to share something of his vision of the future.

  The speech went through no fewer than nine full iterations over “many days,” starting before Christmas and extending beyond the New Year, Judge Rosenman (the President’s primary speechwriter, together with the playwright Robert Sherwood and Harry Hopkins) later recalled.1 Finally, at noon on January 7, the President was driven to the Capitol to deliver his “sermon.”

  “The past year,” the President began boldly, “was perhaps the most crucial for modern civilization. The Axis powers knew that they must win the war in 1942—or eventually lose everything. I do not need to tell you,” he added to loud cheers, “that our enemies did not win the war in 1942.”

  Step by step the President reminded members of Congress and those listening on radios at work, or in their homes, of the year’s most significant military actions. “In the Pacific area our most important victory in 1942 was the air and naval battle off Midway Island. That action is historically important because it secured for our use communication lines stretching thousands of miles in every direction. In placing this emphasis on the Battle of Midway, I am not unmindful of other successful actions in the Pacific, in the air and on land and afloat, especially those on the Coral Sea and New Guinea and in the Solomon Islands. But these actions were essentially defensive. They were part of the delaying strategy that characterized this phase of the war. During this period we inflicted steady losses upon the enemy—great losses of Japanese planes and naval vessels, transports and cargo ships. As early as one year ago, we set as a primary task in the war of the Pacific a day-by-day and week-by-week and month-by-month destruction of more Japanese war materials than Japanese industry could replace. Most certainly, that task has been and is being performed by our fighting ships and planes. And a large part of this task has been accomplished by the gallant crews of our American submarines who strike on the other side of the Pacific at Japanese ships—right up at the very mouth of the harbor of Yokohama. We know that as each day goes by, Japanese strength in ships and planes is going down and down, and American strength in ships and planes is going up and up. And so I sometimes feel that the eventual outcome can now be put on a mathematical basis. That will become evident to the Japanese people themselves when we strike at their own home islands, and bomb them constantly from the air”—just as Japan had begun the war with aerial bombing.

  Japan was not the nation’s first priority, however. Nazi Germany was—and would remain so, in terms of global American strategy, as long as Roosevelt remained president. “Turning now to the European theater of war,” the President explained, “during this past year it was clear that our first task was to lessen the concentrated pressure on the Russian front by compelling Germany to divert part of her manpower and equipment to another theater of war. After months of secret planning and preparation in the utmost detail, an enormous amphibious expedition was embarked for French North Africa from the United States and the United Kingdom in literally hundreds of ships. It reached its objectives with very small losses, and has already produced an important effect upon the whole situation of the war. It has opened to attack what Mr. Churchill well described as ‘the underbelly of the Axis,’ and it has removed the always dangerous threat of an Axis attack through West Africa against the South Atlantic Ocean and the continent of South America itself. The well-timed and splendidly executed offensive from Egypt by the British 8th Army was a part of the same major strategy of the United Nations. Great rains and appalling mud and very limited communications have delayed the final battles of Tunisia. The Axis is reinforcing its strong positions. But I am confident that though the fighting will be tough, when the final Allied assault is made, the last vestige of Axis power will be driven from the whole of the south shores of the Mediterranean.

  “I cannot prophesy,” he added sternly. “I cannot tell you when or where the United Nations are going to strike next in Europe. But we are going to strike—and strike hard. I cannot tell you whether we are going to hit them in Norway, or through the Low Countries, or in France, or through Sardinia or Sicily, or through the Balkans, or through Poland—or at several points simultaneously. But I can tell you that no matter where and when we strike by land, we and the British and the Russians will hit them from the air heavily and relentlessly. Day in and day out we shall heap tons upon tons of high explosives on their war factories and utilities and seaports. Hitler and Mussolini will understand now the enormity of their miscalculations—that the Nazis would always have the advantage of superior air power as they did when they bombed Warsaw, and Rotterdam, and London and Coventry. That superiority has gone forever. Yes,” he concluded his strategic survey, “the Nazis and the Fascists have asked for it—and they are going to get it.”

  To reinforce this message the President announced with pride that, “after only a few years of preparation and only one year of warfare, we are able to engage, spiritually as well as physically, in the total waging of a total war.”

  The phrase, for the United States, meant complete focus on war production on a scale that dwarfed anything ever done before—exceeding the production figures of America’s enemies combined. In the past year the United States had manufactured “48,000 military planes—more than the airplane production of Germany, Italy, and Japan put together,” as well as “56,000 combat vehicles, such as tanks and self-propelled artillery”—figures that would double again in 1943. “I think the arsenal of democracy is making good,” the President congratulated America. “These facts and figures that I have given will give no great aid and comfort to the enemy,” he explained his reason for
releasing such numbers. “On the contrary, I can imagine that they will give him considerable discomfort. I suspect that Hitler and Tojo will find it difficult to explain to the German and Japanese people just why it is that ‘decadent, inefficient democracy’ can produce such phenomenal quantities of weapons and munitions—and fighting men.” For, along with the “miracle of production, during the past year our armed forces have grown from a little over 2,000,000 to 7,000,000” men in uniform.

  Seven million? And that figure rising?

  Though the figures were astounding, and though the strategic initiative was now in the President’s hands (his personal secretary noting how the “President becomes more and more the central figure in the global war, the source of initiative and authority in action, and, of course, responsibility”2), the President was clearly unwilling, it became clear, to leave matters there. “In this war of survival we must keep before our minds not only the evil things we fight against,” he asked his audience, “but the good things we are fighting for. We fight to retain a great past—and we fight to gain a greater future.” With that, he proceeded to outline the terms on which he proposed to end the war. And what to do after the war was won.

  “We, and all the United Nations, want a decent peace and a durable peace. In the years between the end of the first World War and the beginning of the second World War, we were not living under a decent or a durable peace. I have reason to know that our boys at the front are concerned with two broad aims beyond the winning of the war; and their thinking and their opinion coincide with what most Americans here back home are mulling over. They know, and we know, that it would be inconceivable—it would, indeed, be sacrilegious—if this nation and the world did not attain some real, lasting good out of all these efforts and sufferings and bloodshed and death.”

  The good he wanted was, he proceeded to explain, a sort of renewed New Deal:

  The men in our armed forces want a lasting peace, and, equally, they want permanent employment for themselves, their families, and their neighbors when they are mustered out at the end of the war.

  Two years ago I spoke in my annual message of four freedoms. The blessings of two of them—freedom of speech and freedom of religion—are an essential part of the very life of this nation; and we hope that these blessings will be granted to all men everywhere.

  The people at home, and the people at the front, are wondering a little about the third freedom—freedom from want. To them it means that when they are mustered out, when war production is converted to the economy of peace, they will have the right to expect full employment—full employment for themselves and for all able-bodied men and women in America who want to work.

  They expect the opportunity to work, to run their farms, their stores, to earn decent wages. They are eager to face the risks inherent in our system of free enterprise,

  the President allowed. On the other hand,

  They do not want a postwar America which suffers from undernourishment or slums—or the dole. They want no get-rich-quick era of bogus “prosperity” which will end for them in selling apples on a street corner, as happened after the bursting of the boom in 1929.

  When you talk with our young men and our young women, you will find they want to work for themselves and for their families; they consider that they have the right to work; and they know that after the last war their fathers did not gain that right.

  When you talk with our young men and women, you will find that with the opportunity for employment they want assurance against the evils of all major economic hazards—assurance that will extend from the cradle to the grave. And this great government can and must provide this assurance.

  I have been told that this is no time to speak of a better America after the war. I am told it is a grave error on my part.

  I dissent.

  And if the security of the individual citizen, or the family, should become a subject of national debate, the country knows where I stand.

  I say this now to this 78th Congress, because it is wholly possible that freedom from want—the right of employment, the right of assurance against life’s hazards—will loom very large as a task of America during the coming two years.

  I trust it will not be regarded as an issue—but rather as a task for all of us to study sympathetically, to work out with a constant regard for the attainment of the objective, with fairness to all and with injustice to none.

  These were the fighting words of a president who, quite clearly, was intending to stand for a fourth term, as Mackenzie King had inferred.

  Not content with this domestic sally, however, the President then waded into national security on an international scale—national security that would require the end of American isolationism. “We cannot make America an island in either a military or an economic sense,” he pointed out. “Hitlerism, like any other form of crime or disease, can grow from the evil seeds of economic as well as military feudalism. Victory in this war is the first and greatest goal before us. Victory in the peace is the next. That means striving toward the enlargement of the security of man here and throughout the world—and, finally, striving for the fourth freedom—freedom from fear.” However, to attain freedom from fear meant taking a new role as peacekeeper in a “shrinking” globe, thanks to the “conquest of the air.” It was fruitless to imagine the clock could be turned back, once the war was won.

  Undoubtedly a few Americans, even now, think that this nation can end this war comfortably and then climb back into an American hole and pull the hole in after them.

  But we have learned that we can never dig a hole so deep that it would be safe against predatory animals. We have also learned that if we do not pull the fangs of the predatory animals of this world, they will multiply and grow in strength—and they will be at our throats again once more in a short generation.

  Most Americans realize more clearly than ever before that modern war equipment in the hands of aggressor nations can bring danger overnight to our own national existence or to that of any other nation—or island—or continent.

  It is clear to us that if Germany and Italy and Japan—or any one of them—remain armed at the end of this war, or are permitted to rearm, they will again, and inevitably, embark upon an ambitious career of world conquest. They must be disarmed and kept disarmed, and they must abandon the philosophy, and the teaching of that philosophy, which has brought so much suffering to the world.

  Step by step the President was leading his audience, and radio listeners, toward his notion of a United Nations authority.

  After the first World War we tried to achieve a formula for permanent peace, based on a magnificent idealism. We failed. But, by our failure, we have learned that we cannot maintain peace at this stage of human development by good intentions alone.

  Today the United Nations are the mightiest military coalition in all history. They represent an overwhelming majority of the population of the world. Bound together in solemn agreement that they themselves will not commit acts of aggression or conquest against any of their neighbors, the United Nations can and must remain united for the maintenance of peace by preventing any attempt to rearm in Germany, in Japan, in Italy, or in any other nation which seeks to violate the Tenth Commandment—“Thou shalt not covet.”3

  The President’s words, clearly, were not only directed against isolationists in America, but were a preview of what he would announce internationally in the next few weeks. An announcement, to be given from the podium of a global stage, that would make public the fact that the United States was stepping up to the plate; would not this time back off, following victory, but was going to embrace a new, world-historical role as a leader of the democratic nations—if he could get those nations to support his vision.

  7

  A Fool’s Paradise

  REACTION TO ROOSEVELT’S ambitious State of the Union address was, somewhat to the President’s surprise, decidedly positive.

  The British ambassador, certainly, was impressed. Visco
unt Halifax had spent almost an hour at the dentist before going to the Capitol, where he was “herded on to the floor” with other diplomats “where we had good places. The President’s speech was forceful and well-delivered and well-received,” he recorded that night in his diary, remarking on the “very warm personal reception both at the beginning and end. The warmth of applause for China as compared with Russia and ourselves was very noticeable,” he’d added—with understandable concern. The President, however, had spoken “with great confidence. I thought what he said on the domestic side was pretty strong and likely to be provoking to his domestic critics, as it seemed to be ‘Let us have as much unity as we can, but I am going to go ahead with my social policy, and if you don’t like it, let the country judge, and I know what their verdict will be,’ but the general impression of it seems to have been that it was conciliatory. The informality of all Congress proceedings on these occasions is striking,” he’d reflected, “by contrast with our affairs at home”—the ambassador amazed when, in reelecting its Speaker, Sam Rayburn, the day before, “the House [of Representatives] sang ‘Happy birthday to you’!”1

  If the President was delighted by the reception, however, he had little time to bask in it. Following a quick lunch at the Capitol, he returned to the White House—there to face in the Oval Office a smaller but equally critical audience he’d summoned: the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, who would be flying to Casablanca that very evening, ahead of the President, aboard C-54 transport planes.