by FDR
* O’Connor, ironically, was the brother of FDR’s former law partner and confidant Basil O’Connor. In 1923 he succeeded to the House seat (the so-called silk-stocking district on the Upper East Side) formerly held by the legendary Bourke Cochran. After losing the Democratic primary in 1938, he contested the seat as a Republican (New York’s cross-filing provision permitted that) and in November was narrowly defeated for a second time.
NINETEEN
ON THE BRINK
What America does or fails to do in the next few years has a far greater bearing and influence on the history of the whole human race for centuries to come than most of us who are here today can ever conceive.
—FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, DECEMBER 5, 1938
REPUBLICAN VICTORIES IN 1938 did not represent a return to Hooverism or a repudiation of the achievements of the New Deal. As the country had changed, so had the GOP. New leaders like Thomas Dewey in New York, Harold Stassen in Minnesota, even Robert Taft in Ohio did not advocate turning the clock back. It was time to digest and assimilate: a period of thermidor after six years of upheaval. “We have now passed the period of internal conflict in the launching of our program of social reform,” Roosevelt told Congress in his annual message on January 4, 1939. “Our full energies may now be released to invigorate the process of recovery in order to preserve our reforms.”1
FDR had sought to refashion the Democratic party into a permanent progressive force. But the resistance proved overwhelming. Southern Democracy remained the ball and chain that hobbled the party’s move to the left.2 The purge failed. And in the curious way of American politics, it would be those same disaffected Southern Democrats who would provide the president bedrock support to resist aggression and prepare the nation for war.
Until 1939 Roosevelt’s involvement in foreign affairs had been sporadic. In 1936, when Germany reoccupied the Rhineland, the president was running for reelection. When Japan invaded China in 1937, FDR was consumed by the Court-packing fight. When Hitler annexed Austria in March 1938, it was the “Roosevelt recession” on the front burner. The Czech crisis in September played out against the backdrop of the purge. And during the Spanish Civil War—which commenced in 1936 and would ultimately cost the lives of 650,000 combatants—the United States stood on the sidelines.3
Roosevelt’s approach to foreign policy was similar to his conduct of domestic affairs: intuitive, idiosyncratic, and highly personalized. Just as he divided the New Deal’s relief effort between Ickes and Hopkins, he split diplomacy between Cordell Hull and Sumner Welles. As secretary of state, Hull had titular responsibility. As undersecretary, Welles exercised operational control. Like Ickes and Hopkins, they competed for FDR’s attention. Unlike Ickes and Hopkins, they shared an abiding dislike. In the War Department Roosevelt presided over a similar rivalry. Secretary Harry Woodring and Assistant Secretary Louis Johnson detested each other. Woodring, a low-wattage Kansas banker, was cautious, provincial, and strongly isolationist. Johnson, a former commander of the American Legion, was a glad-handing ball of fire, vigorously internationalist in outlook. The Navy did not require a division of authority because FDR, to the extent he wished, ran it directly through the chief of naval operations, Admiral William D. Leahy. In each case—State, War, and Navy—Roosevelt kept the reins in his own hands. The method was not what textbooks teach, but neither Hull nor Welles, nor Woodring or Johnson, for that matter, could presume to act without clearance from FDR.
Roosevelt distrusted the career diplomats in the State Department. The seven hundred members of the foreign service, primarily prep school progeny with Ivy League pedigrees, were predisposed to political conservatism. Prone to the prejudices of their wealthy WASP backgrounds, they were anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, antiblack, and anti–New Deal. For the most part FDR ignored them. When he recognized the Soviet Union in 1933, the State Department was fenced out of the negotiations. By the same token, Roosevelt’s principal ambassadorial appointments reflected measured contempt for the striped-pants set. To Mexico he sent his old mentor Josephus Daniels—whom he still addressed as “Chief.” To Russia he dispatched William Bullitt and then Joseph E. Davies, both sympathetic to the Soviet Union. Joseph P. Kennedy, an unapologetic Irish Catholic, went to the Court of St. James; Jesse Isidor Straus, a Jew (shades of the Dreyfus Affair), was sent to Paris; and Professor William E. Dodd, an outspoken anti-Nazi, to Berlin. Each of these ambassadors enjoyed direct access to FDR. That minimized State Department input and ensured that the president’s views would be accurately represented. When war came, the State Department was shunted to a siding. Roosevelt’s cable communications with foreign leaders were handled by the Navy; Hopkins and other special emissaries undertook delicate diplomatic missions; and the department was absent from major wartime conferences.
During the 1930s Americans concentrated on domestic recovery. The problems of Europe and Asia appeared remote: of little more than passing interest when a third of the nation was “ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.” Much as they may have sympathized with victims of aggression, Americans had no desire to repeat their entry into World War I. Influenced by an isolationist press, revisionist historians, and the much-ballyhooed revelations of the Nye Committee, which had investigated the role of munitions makers in fomenting war, they eschewed involvement in foreign affairs. Mussolini’s 1935 subjugation of Ethiopia caused scarcely a ripple. “The policy of the United States is to remain untangled and free,” Walter Lippmann wrote in January 1936. “Let us follow that policy. Let us make no alliances. Let us make no commitments.”4*
Roosevelt swam with the isolationist tide. He acquiesced in the passage of a series of neutrality acts that denied American arms to aggressors and their victims alike, kept the Army on a starvation budget, and, like Britain and France, refused assistance to the duly elected republican government in Spain.5 In his speeches and letters during the mid-1930s he repeated his belief that the United States should avoid being drawn into another war. At Chautauqua in August 1936 he revealed the depth of his feeling. “I have seen war,” he said. “I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed.… I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.”6
Japan’s incursion into China in the summer of 1937 caused FDR to hesitate. Like most Americans he favored China (the historic ties of the Delano family ensured FDR’s sympathy),7 and he refused to invoke the Neutrality Act on the somewhat specious grounds that neither side had actually declared war. That benefited China, which needed weapons more than Japan did. On October 5, with the Japanese war machine advancing full tilt, Roosevelt tested the water. Speaking in Chicago, the heartland of American isolationism, he sounded the first notes of a still uncertain trumpet. “Innocent peoples, innocent nations, are being cruelly sacrificed to a greed for power which is devoid of all sense of justice,” he said.
When an epidemic of physical disease starts to spread, the community approves and joins in a quarantine of the patients in order to protect the health of the community against the spread of the disease.
War is a contagion.… The peace of the world is today being threatened.… We are determined to keep out of war, yet we cannot insure ourselves against the disastrous effects of war and the dangers of involvement.8
Reaction was mixed. “Stop Foreign Meddling; America Wants Peace,” bellowed The Wall Street Journal.9 The Chicago Tribune and the Hearst press were equally caustic. But The New York Times, The Washington Post, and most national chains were supportive. A press survey by Time reported “more words of approval … than have greeted any Roosevelt step in many a month.”10 Overseas reaction was enthusiastic (save in Tokyo and Berlin), and White House mail ran 4 to 1 in favor of the president’s remarks. But on Capitol Hill it was a different story. While isolationist members rushed to the barricades, Democrats hunkered down and said nothing. Fearful of a fickle electorat
e, the president’s supporters passed up the opportunity to place themselves on the record. “It’s a terrible thing,” FDR told Sam Rosenman, “to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead—and to find no one there.”11
At his press conference the following day Roosevelt pulled back. “Do you care to amplify your remarks at Chicago, especially where you referred to a possible quarantine?” the president was asked.
“No,” he replied dismissively.
Ernest K. Lindley of the Herald Tribune, who had covered FDR for years, persisted. “I think it would be very valuable if you would answer a few questions or else talk for background.”
Roosevelt demurred. “All off the record.”
Q: Is anything contemplated?
FDR: No, just the speech itself.
Q: Doesn’t [quarantine] mean economic sanctions?
FDR: No. “Sanctions” is a terrible word to use. They are out the window.
Q: Is there a likelihood that there will be a conference of the peace-loving nations?
FDR: No; conferences are out the window.12
The president sparred with reporters for another ten minutes, and it was clear he had no new policy in mind. “Mr. Roosevelt was defining an attitude and not a program,” reported The Times of London.13 Isolationism remained the order of the day. FDR had commenced the laborious process of changing the nation’s course. In typical fashion he had taken two steps forward and one step back. “I am fighting against a public psychology of long standing,” he wrote Rector Endicott Peabody at Groton. “A psychology which comes very close to saying, ‘Peace at any price.’ ”14
The nation’s calm was shattered on Sunday, December 12, 1937, when Japanese warplanes bombed, strafed, and sank the gunboat USS Panay, lying at anchor in the Yangtze River, twenty miles above Nanking. With the Panay were three Standard Oil Company tankers, which were also sunk. The attack lasted more than an hour. Shore batteries joined in, and at one point Japanese soldiers boarded the vessels. Three persons were killed and fifty injured, including Panay’s captain, Lieutenant Commander James Hughes.15
The attack bore every earmark of being premeditated. The Panay, which had been on station since its construction in Shanghai in 1928, was part of the Asiatic Fleet’s Yangtze Patrol, assigned to protect American commercial and missionary interests.* It was plainly marked with abundant insignia, including two large American flags, eighteen feet by fourteen feet, painted horizontally across the canvas shading her top deck. The flags were clearly visible from the air at any angle. The attack occurred shortly after twelve noon; the day was bright and clear, the visibility unlimited. A Universal Pictures newsreel photographer who happened to be on board during the attack filmed the incident showing the planes strafing the vessel at masthead level: so low the pilots’ faces could be seen clearly.16 The American flags could not have been overlooked or mistaken, and when Panay returned fire it would have been abundantly clear what was at stake.
At a meeting of the cabinet immediately afterward, Secretary of the Navy Claude Swanson, supported by Vice President Garner and Harold Ickes, clamored for war. “Certainly war with Japan is inevitable sooner or later,” Ickes noted. “If we have to fight her, isn’t this the best possible time?”17 Roosevelt steadied the ship. The Navy was not ready for war, and the country was not prepared. “The gunboat Panay is not the battleship Maine,” chided The Christian Science Monitor.18 Arizona senator Henry Ashurst told FDR that a declaration of war would not win one vote on Capitol Hill.19 Senator Henrik Shipstead of Minnesota spoke for many when he asked that all American forces in China be withdrawn. “How long are we going to sit there and let these fellows kill American soldiers and sailors and sink our battleships?”20
Roosevelt directed Hull to demand an apology from the Japanese government, secure full compensation, and obtain a guarantee against a repetition of the attack.21 He instructed Morgenthau to prepare to seize Japanese assets in the United States if Tokyo did not pay and mused about the possibility of an Anglo-American economic blockade. The day after FDR’s demand, Japan’s foreign minister, Kiki Hirota, patently embarrassed by the military’s action, tendered the official apologies of his government and promised full restitution for the losses sustained. Ten days later Hirota informed Washington that orders had been issued to ensure the future safety of American vessels in Chinese waters and that the commander of the force that had launched the attack had been relieved. On April 22, 1938, the Japanese government provided a check for $2,214,007.36, paying in full the claim submitted by the United States.22
The Panay incident ended agreeably. But it energized isolationist efforts to keep America out of war. In 1935, when Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, Representative Louis Ludlow, a five-term Democrat from Indianapolis, introduced a constitutional amendment in the House that would require a national referendum before the United States could go to war.23* It was referred to the Judiciary Committee, where the chairman, Hatton Sumners of Texas—who had “cashed in his chips” over FDR’s Court-packing scheme—loyally kept it off the committee’s agenda. By 1937 a discharge petition to bring the amendment to the House floor had obtained 205 of the necessary 218 signatures. Twenty-four hours after the attack on the Panay, an additional thirteen members signed on. A Gallup Poll recorded that 73 percent of Americans approved of the amendment.24 “You can cast your ballot for a constable or a dogcatcher,” Ludlow told a national radio audience, “but you have absolutely nothing to say about a declaration of war.”25
With the discharge petition in place, Ludlow’s resolution to bring the amendment to the floor became the first order of business when the House reconvened in January 1938. The administration pulled out all the stops. Farley called every Democrat in the chamber, party whips visited each member in his or her office, and FDR wrote a personal letter to Speaker Bankhead.26 “The proposed amendment would be impracticable in its application and incompatible with our representative form of government,” said Roosevelt. It “would cripple any President in his conduct of any foreign relations, and it would encourage other nations to believe that they could violate American rights with impunity.”27 Alf Landon and his 1936 running mate, Frank Knox, weighed in against the amendment, and former secretary of state Henry L. Stimson, speaking for the East Coast Republican establishment, attacked the proposal in a lengthy letter to The New York Times.28
Debate began January 10, 1938. The Rules Committee allotted twenty minutes. Speaker Bankhead, departing from custom, left the chair to lead the opposition. After Bankhead spoke, Majority Leader Sam Rayburn made one of his rare appearances in the well of the House. He was followed by Republican congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts, the ranking member of the Committee on Veterans’ Legislation. “This is the gravest question that has been submitted to the Congress of the United States since I became a Member of it more than twenty years ago,” said Bankhead.29 Speaking on behalf of the resolution were Ludlow; Hamilton Fish of New York, the ranking Republican on Foreign Affairs; and Democrat Caroline O’Day of New York, an old friend of Franklin and Eleanor. When the yeas and nays were called, Ludlow lost, 188–209. The vote, like the debate, crossed party lines. Democrats split 188–111 against the resolution; Republicans were 64–21 in favor. Support for the resolution was strongest among members from the Middle West and the Plains states. All thirteen Progressives and Farmer-Laborite members—who usually went down the line for FDR—voted with Ludlow. Southern Democrats, a majority of whom were now aligned against the New Deal, backed the president 74–14.30*
Shortly after the defeat of the Ludlow Amendment, the international picture darkened. On March 11, 1938, Hitler annexed Austria, not only overturning a key element of the post–World War I treaty structure but unleashing a virulent strain of pan-Germanism not seen in Europe since well before the time of Bismarck.31† The Nazi slogan used to justify the Anschluss—“Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer”—would provide the kindling that would bring the world to the brink of war. France, which was without a g
overnment when the German Army crossed the Austrian frontier, said nothing.32 Mussolini, who had rushed four divisions to the Brenner Pass in 1934 to prevent Austria’s incorporation into Germany, this time acquiesced.33 The Neville Chamberlain government in Great Britain continued to look upon Hitler as an important bulwark against communism and chose not to make an issue of the takeover.34 The League of Nations, which had treaty responsibility to protect Austria’s independence, did not even hold a meeting on the question, and the Catholic Church, represented by Theodor Cardinal Innitzer in Vienna, gave its blessing to the Anschluss.35 Since those closest to the annexation accepted it as a fait accompli, Roosevelt felt nothing could be gained by stirring up domestic opinion in a lost cause. At his press conference on March 11 he was noncommittal.36 Privately he deplored Chamberlain’s eagerness to appease Hitler. “If a Chief of Police makes a deal with the leading gangsters and the deal results in no more hold-ups, that Chief of Police will be called a great man—but if the gangsters do not live up to their word the Chief of Police will go to jail.”37
In April the president’s mood soured when Great Britain gave formal recognition to Italy’s conquest of Ethiopia. As Chamberlain explained it, by appeasing Mussolini, Italy might become sated, the Mediterranean pacified, and Britain’s Suez gateway to India secured. To Roosevelt, such recognition merely rewarded aggression and would have a ruinous effect on the situation in the Far East “and upon the nature of the peace terms Japan may demand of China.” To Winston Churchill, watching events in political exile at his Chartwell estate, Chamberlain and the British cabinet were “feeding the crocodiles.”38
