by FDR
* The statutory basis of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (and an independent air force) was not established until the passage of the Defense Reorganization Act of 1947. But the American side of the CCS, with Leahy as chairman, plus Marshall, King, and Arnold, provided the model for the act.
† Admiral Leahy had served with Roosevelt since FDR had been assistant secretary of the Navy and enjoyed the president’s complete confidence. Marshall, Roosevelt’s personal choice for chief of staff, brought a single-minded, take-no-prisoners dedication to his task—combined with a remarkable sensitivity to political nuance at the highest level. Arnold, underneath his affable exterior, had a genius for organization urgently required to create an air force virtually from scratch. King, to some extent, was odd man out: fiercely Anglophobic, incredibly stubborn, not as gifted intellectually as his colleagues, but a powerful command presence that the Navy needed after Pearl Harbor. FDR said King shaved with a blowtorch, and it was that fierceness that propelled the Navy, even when King was wrong (as he was in early 1942, when he refused to convoy ships in American waters). For insightful sketches of FDR’s subordinates, see Eric Larrabee, Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants and Their War (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1987).
* Churchill embraced the term enthusiastically and, to the delight of his White House dinner companions on December 31, recited from memory Lord Byron’s “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”:
Here, where the sword United Nations drew,
Our countrymen were warring on that day
And this is much—and all—which will not pass away.
The quotation is from Canto III, Verse xxxv. The Complete Poetical Works of Lord Byron 40 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1905).
Churchill evidently knew Byron’s lengthy “Childe Harold” by heart and later recited it to his daughter Sarah on the eighty-five-mile drive from Saki airfield to Yalta in February 1945. Sarah Churchill, A Thread in the Tapestry 78 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1967).
* Roosevelt relied on the guesswork of Lord Beaverbrook, who cautioned against underestimating U.S. production capacity. Taking the projected Canadian production for 1942 as a base, Beaverbrook estimated that the excess of American resources over Canadian resources should permit the United States to produce fifteen times as much. According to Beaverbrook’s calculations, this would mean 45,000 tanks and 60,000 planes—figures that FDR relied on in drafting his speech. Memorandum, Lord Beaverbrook to the President, December 29, 1941, FDRL.
* The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution provides that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are, citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside” (emphasis added). In the leading case of Wong Kim Ark v. United States, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), the Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment meant exactly what it said and guaranteed American citizenship to all those born in the country regardless of their ethnic heritage or the status of their parents.
* The Roberts Commission was created by Executive Order on December 18, 1941. It was composed of Supreme Court justice Owen Roberts as chairman, plus two retired admirals, Joseph M. Reeves and William H. Standley (a former CNO), and two generals, Frank R. McCoy (ret.) and Joseph T. McNarney. The commission took testimony from 127 witnesses, including Admiral Kimmel and General Short. It reported to FDR on January 23, 1942, and the entire report was made public the next day. The principal finding was that Kimmel and Short were guilty of dereliction of duty. For the text of the Roberts Commission Report, see Hearings Before the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, Part 39 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946).
† In his autobiography Warren confessed he had been wrong. “I have since deeply regretted the removal order and my own testimony advocating it. Whenever I thought of the innocent little children who were torn from home, school friends, and congenial surroundings I was conscience-stricken. It was wrong to act so impulsively … even though we had a good motive.” The Memoirs of Earl Warren 149 (New York: Doubleday, 1977).
* When Biddle asked for an outside opinion from a trio of New Deal stalwarts (Benjamin Cohen, Joseph L. Rauh, and Oscar Cox), which he hoped would buttress the case against removal, he got instead a seven-page brief that affirmed the constitutionality of removing citizens on a racial basis if necessary for national security. “It is a fact and not a legal theory that Japanese who are American citizens cannot readily be identified and distinguished from Japanese who owe no loyalty to the United States.” Cohen, Rauh, and Cox, “The Japanese Situation on the West Coast,” in Greg Robinson, By Order of the President 104 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001).
† In congressional testimony on February 4, 1942, General Clark and Admiral Stark told legislators that the Pacific states were unduly alarmed. Clark said the chances of invasion were “nil.” Admiral Stark said, “it would be impossible for the enemy to engage in a sustained attack on the Pacific Coast at the present time.” 77th Cong., 2d Sess., House Document 1911 2–3.
* At the request of the War Department, Congress unanimously enacted legislation on March 21, 1942, authorizing the removal of the Japanese from the West Coast (56 Stat. 173). The only objection was raised by Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, who said the bill was constitutionally vague. “I think this is probably the sloppiest criminal law I have ever read or seen anywhere.” But Taft did not vote against it. 90 Congressional Record 2722–2726 (1942).
In two test cases, Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81 (1943), and Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), the Supreme Court upheld the curfew and relocation. Said Justice Black, speaking for the Court in Korematsu: “We are not unmindful of the hardships imposed upon a large group of American citizens. But hardships are a part of war, and war is an aggregation of hardships.” Justice Roberts and two former attorneys general, Frank Murphy and Robert Jackson, dissented vigorously.
In 1984 a federal court, in an unusual coram nobis procedure initiated by the University of California at San Diego professor Peter Irons, voided Fred Korematsu’s original conviction because of official misconduct (584 F. Supp. 1406 (N.D. Cal. 1984)). The West Coast military had exaggerated the danger and falsified the evidence. “Fortunately, there are few instances in our judicial history when courts have been called upon to undo such profound and publicly acknowledged injustice,” said the court (584 F. Supp. at 1413). In 1998 President Clinton bestowed on Korematsu the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom.
† Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle was a pioneer in American aviation. In 1922 he made the first transcontinental flight in less than twenty-four hours; in 1929, the first blind instrument-controlled landing; and he won both the Bendix and Thompson trophies for world speed records in 1932. Along the way he picked up a doctorate in aeronautical science from MIT and was an aviation manager for Shell Oil helping to develop aviation fuels when he returned to active duty in 1940.
* With its massive 18-inch guns capable of firing 3,200-pound shells twenty-seven miles, Yamato dwarfed American battleships of the Iowa class. The length of three football fields with a complement of 2,800 men, it had a cruising range of 7,500 miles and a top speed of twenty-seven knots. With Vickers-hardened steel 16 inches thick in places and triple bottoms, no warship was ever so heavily armored. It was sunk on April 6, 1945, off Okinawa following a massive attack by planes from fourteen American carriers. William E. McMahon, Dreadnaught Battleships and Battle Cruisers 215–217 (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1978).
* The Soviet Union had requested 4.1 million tons of assistance in 1942, of which only 1.8 million tons were actual military materiel. Eventually it was agreed to reduce overall shipments to Russia to 2.5 million tons, with no reduction in the volume of military equipment the Red Army could use in actual fighting. Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins 574 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948).
* Churchill’s skepticism about landing
on the Continent in 1942 was more than borne out by the disastrous commando raid at Dieppe in August. Some 5,000 troops, mostly Canadian, landed under hostile fire and suffered horrendous casualties. Nearly 1,000 were killed and another 2,000 taken prisoner. Little damage was inflicted on the Germans. If nothing else, the Dieppe raid demonstrated to Allied planners how difficult it would be to land on a fortified enemy coast. Robin Neillands, The Dieppe Raid: The Story of the Disastrous 1942 Expedition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006).
* In a 1956 interview with Forrest Pogue, Marshall said, “When I went in to see Roosevelt and told him about the planning [for the North African invasion], he held his hands in an attitude of prayer and said, ‘Please make it before Election Day.’ However, when I found we had to have more time and it came afterward, he never said a word. He was very courageous.” Forrest C. Pogue, 2 George C. Marshall 402 (New York: Viking, 1965). (In the 1942 congressional elections the Democrats lost eight seats in the Senate and fifty in the House, reducing their majorities to twenty-one and ten, respectively.)
* FDR once told the cabinet that the Russians had a habit of sending him “a friendly note on Monday, spitting in his eye on Tuesday, and then being nice again on Wednesday.” The Price of Vision: Diary of Henry A. Wallace, 1942–1946 245, John Morton Blum, ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973).
* Roosevelt, who initially had approved, was subsequently embarrassed when the arrangements Eisenhower had made with Vichy’s representatives were heavily criticized in the United States and Great Britain. On November 7 he cabled Ike:
Marshall has shown me your dispatch giving your reasons for placing [Admiral] Darlan in charge of civil administration of North Africa. I want you to know that I appreciate fully the difficulties of your military situation. I am therefore not disposed to in any way question the action you have taken.…
However I think you should know and have in mind the following policies of this government:
That we do not trust Darlan.
That it is impossible to keep a collaborator of Hitler and the one whom we believe to be a fascist in civil power any longer than is absolutely necessary.
His movements should be watched carefully and his communications supervised.
Darlan was assassinated by a young Gaullist on December 24, 1942, relieving the embarrassment for the Allies. Few believe he acted independently. The text of FDR’s message to Eisenhower was first printed in Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins 654 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948). For the murky details of Darlan’s assassination, see Anthony Verrier, Assassination in Algiers 193–252 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990).
* In mid-February 1943 Rommel’s panzers clobbered the U.S. II Corps at Kasserine Pass. Eisenhower said afterward that the American commanders lacked battlefield experience. “The divisions involved had not had the benefit of intensive training programs.… They were mainly divisions that had been quickly shipped to the United Kingdom. Training was for them a practical impossibility. Commanders and troops showed the effects of this, although there was no lack of gallantry and fortitude.” Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe 163 (New York: Doubleday, 1948).
TWENTY-FIVE
D-DAY
Almighty God: Our sons this day have set upon a mighty endeavor. Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.
—FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, JUNE 6, 1944
ROOSEVELT’S FLIGHT TO CASABLANCA marked the first time an American president had flown while in office—and FDR had mixed feelings. He much preferred travel by ship, where the slow pace, the roll of the sea, and the fresh air afforded time to rejuvenate. To minimize the distance over open water on the return leg, the president puddle-jumped from Marrakech to Gambia to Liberia; crossed the South Atlantic to Recife, Brazil; then flew north to Trinidad and Miami, where he boarded a train to Washington. “What do you know,” he cabled Eleanor en route. “Will be back in the United States Saturday evening [January 30, 1943—FDR’s sixty-first birthday]. We should get to Washington by 8 p.m. on Sunday.”1
ER was not at home when Franklin arrived. She had departed the White House Friday for the weekend in New York. But she penned a note: “Welcome home! I can’t be here Sunday night as months ago I agreed to open a series of lectures at Cooper Union but I’ll be home for dinner Monday night.… I have to be gone again for the day Tuesday but will be back Wednesday a.m. I’m terribly sorry not to be home.… Much love and I am so glad you are back.”2
Roosevelt had been away from Washington three weeks. A new Congress (the Seventy-eighth) was in session and already making mischief. Numerous administration supporters had gone down to defeat in the 1942 off-year elections, and for the first time since FDR had become president the Democrats commanded only a slender (218–208) majority in the House. Republicans had picked up eight seats in Ohio, five in Connecticut, four in Missouri, and three each in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Washington, and West Virginia. That left Roosevelt more dependent than ever on white supremacist votes from the Solid South.
On the home front the alphabet soup of wartime agencies created by FDR had soured and urgently needed attention. The War Manpower Commission (WMC), charged with allotting workers between military and civilian needs, competed with the Selective Service System (SSS) and the National War Labor Board (NWLB), both of which enjoyed independent statutory authority. The Office of Price Administration (OPA), responsible for controlling inflation, shared overlapping authority with the Office of Economic Stabilization (OES). And the War Production Board (WPB), denied power over both labor and prices, floundered under the erratic leadership of Donald Nelson, a former Sears, Roebuck sales executive congenitally incapable of making tough decisions. “It took Lincoln three years to discover Grant,” Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote FDR when Nelson was appointed, “and you may not have hit on your production Grant first crack out of the box.”3
But it was the military situation that was most pressing. The Battle of the Atlantic hung in the balance. In October 1942 German submarines sank 101 Allied merchant ships. In November the total rose to 134. Heavy losses continued through the winter. In January, as Churchill and Roosevelt met at Casablanca, submarines off West Africa demolished a tanker convoy carrying much-needed fuel to Eisenhower’s forces. Seven of the nine vessels were sunk in one of the most devastating attacks of the war.
In February and March 1943 merchant sinkings approached an all-time high. The Germans had 212 operational U-boats in the Atlantic (compared to 91 a year earlier) and were adding 17 each month. By contrast, Allied shipping tonnage—despite impressive American production figures—had declined by almost a million tons since the outbreak of war. “The Germans never came so near to disrupting communication between the New World and the Old as in the first twenty days of March, 1943,” said the Admiralty in retrospect.4
A modest breakthrough occurred in December 1942, when British intelligence officers at Bletchley Park outside London cracked the German naval code, allowing them to read U-boat message traffic. But the German decryption service had previously broken the British convoy cipher, so in effect both sides were reading each other’s mail.
The key to control of the Atlantic was airpower. Submarines of World War II vintage were unable to remain submerged for long periods of time, and when surfaced they were extremely vulnerable to air attack. In early 1943 small escort carriers began to arrive from American shipyards. These “baby flattops” carried up to twenty planes and provided some convoys their own air cover. But a vast midocean gap remained in which German U-boats operated with impunity. “Sinkings in the North Atlantic of 17 ships in two days are a final proof that our escorts are stretched too thin,” Churchill cabled FDR on March 18. The prime minister recommended the immediate cessation of all convoys to Russia so that aircraft and escort vessels could be shifted to the Atlantic.5
“We share your distress over recent sinkings,” Roosevelt replied. But he was reluctant to curtail convoys to
Russia. Instead, the president suggested that additional long-range aircraft be assigned to the Atlantic theater. “I will provide as many as can be made available and I hope you can augment the number,” he told Churchill.6
As he had done when he ordered the invasion of North Africa contrary to the recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Roosevelt assumed personal responsibility. The Navy had an abundance of long-range aircraft, but Admiral King had sent most of them to Nimitz in Hawaii. Roosevelt gave King a direct order: transfer sixty very-long-range B-24 Liberator bombers from the Pacific to the Atlantic immediately.7
Results followed almost overnight. The B-24s, equipped with radar, powerful searchlights, machine guns, and depth charges, could stay aloft eighteen hours and, in the words of military historian John Keegan, “were flying death to a U-boat caught on the surface.”8 In the last week of March the Allies sank eight U-boats; in April, thirty-one; in May, forty-three. Faced with the inevitable destruction of his submarine fleet, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz called it quits. On May 24, 1943, he ordered German U-boats out of the North Atlantic. In the next four months, sixty-two convoys comprising 3,546 merchant vessels crossed the Atlantic without the loss of a single ship.9 Churchill gave the good news to the House of Commons on September 21. “This is altogether unprecedented in the whole history of the U-boat struggle, either in this war or in the last.”10
With the sea-lanes to Britain secure, American industrial production tipped the balance in favor of the Allies. Roosevelt’s 1942 production goals appeared puny once the economy converted to war. The figures are staggering. Between 1941 and 1945 the United States produced 300,000 military aircraft. In the peak year of 1944 American factories built 96,318 planes—more than the yearly total of Germany, Japan, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union combined. Henry Ford’s enormous Willow Run plant produced a B-24 every sixty-three minutes. By war’s end the United States had manufactured 2.4 million trucks, 635,000 jeeps, 88,400 tanks, 5,800 ships, and 40 billion rounds of ammunition.
