Threshold of War

by Heinrichs, Waldo;

  The strategy of Plan Dog gained the support of the army and implicitly of President Roosevelt, though he never formally endorsed it. Thus at the end of 1940 a powerful consensus for strategic focus on Germany developed at the highest levels in the American government. At a meeting of his defense advisers on January 17, 1941, Roosevelt concluded that the primary objective must be maintenance of the supply lines to Britain and ordered the navy to prepare for escort of convoys. That meant standing on the defensive in the Pacific, keeping the fleet close to Hawaii, sending no Asiatic reinforcement, and permitting the Asiatic Fleet to withdraw from the Philippines if necessary. The military course for the United States would have to be very conservative while its military power developed. However, Roosevelt did ask the navy to look into the possibilities of bombing Japanese cities.14 The new strategic emphasis on Europe was embodied in the individual and joint plans of the armed services entitled RAINBOW 5.

  The next step was to integrate American and British strategy. From the end of January to the end of March 1941, British army, navy, and air planners secretly met with their American couterparts in Washington. The result was an American-British-Canadian plan (ABC-1), in case the United States entered the war, for protection of Atlantic shipping, defense of Britain, buildup of forces there, and eventual invasion of the Continent.

  The area of sharpest disagreement among the planners was cooperative action against a Japanese southward advance. The British strongly urged that the United States Pacific Fleet, or major portions thereof, be sent to Singapore, from which base, they argued, it could far more effectively deter a Japanese advance than at Pearl Harbor. Singapore, they held, was of cardinal importance to the British Empire and its war effort. If Japan could be deterred from seizing the resources of Southeast Asia by defense of the “Malay Barrier,” they argued, economic pressure would then be sufficient to keep Japan in check.

  The Americans, with their new-found Atlantic orientation, strongly disagreed. United States assistance in the defense of Singapore would be “a strategic error of incalculable magnitude,” the army warned. American planners were dubious about the facilities and defenses of Singapore and worried about the risk of provoking war with Japan by sending the fleet to Asian waters. Furthermore, they resisted identifying the United States with European colonialism in Asia by participating in the defense of a British imperial bastion.

  As a compromise the two sides agreed that in case of war approximately one-quarter of the Pacific Fleet would transfer to the Atlantic. Thereby an American force of battleships, a carrier, escorts and submarines could base at Gibraltar, releasing a comparable British force for transfer to Singapore. In this curious musical-chairs fashion the British at Singapore and the Americans at Pearl Harbor would provide a show of combined deterrence against Japan.15

  The wraith of containment persisted. A letter of January 21, 1941, from Roosevelt to Joseph C. Grew, the American ambassador in Japan, emphasized the importance to Britain’s defense at home of the resources and lines of communication in Southeast Asia. Yet the president could not say what might be done to protect these imperial interests or when. The letter to Grew from the president was written not by Roosevelt himself but by the State Department’s political adviser for Far Eastern affairs, Stanley K. Hornbeck, who had the keenest interest in emphasizing East Asian stakes at a time when the strategic inclination was strongly toward Europe.16 In the spring of 1941, President Roosevelt and his advisers really had no idea how the yawning chasm of military deficiency in Southeast Asia might be filled.

  As Roosevelt rested during his fishing cruise in late March and considered what to do about the German threats to British shipping and communications, he had detailed recommendations from the United States Navy before him. Admiral Stark, chief of naval operations, urged maximum naval assistance to Britain as soon as possible, in effect full-scale entry into the Battle of the Atlantic. The German battle-cruiser attacks on shipping off the Grand Banks were challenging the U.S. Navy in its own front yard, but the devastating losses Britain was suffering on the Atlantic and in the western ports and the approach of the invasion season were matters of deep concern. Stark advised the president to put into effect, with modifications, the ABC-1 war plan which the navy was just then, with the British, shaping into final form. The reinforcement from the Pacific called for in the ABC-1 plan should come immediately so that the Atlantic Fleet could enter the battle as fast as ships became available and ready for action.17

  Under the stern command of Admiral King, considered just the leader to shake the navy out of its “peacetime psychology,” the U.S. Atlantic Fleet was beginning to evolve from a patrol and training force into a hard-bitten, make-do fighting organization.18 It consisted of three battleships, five heavy cruisers, four light cruisers, two aircraft carriers, and fifty-nine destroyers. The Pacific reinforcement would add three battleships, one carrier, four light cruisers, and eighteen destroyers.

  One of the main tasks of the beefed-up fleet would be to protect convoys in the western Atlantic against surface raiders. The battleships transferred from the Pacific, originally assigned to Gibraltar, would now join the existing Atlantic Fleet battleships and two heavy cruisers to provide each convoy with a battleship or pair of heavy cruisers as escort. None of these ships was a match for the Bismarck or Tirpitz. The Texas, New York, and Arkansas were built before World War I. Even so, they had heavier guns than Germany’s pocket battleships and were comparable to the Royal Navy’s Ramillies class of battleships, which they were supposed to replace. The Pacific reinforcements, the battleships Idaho, New Mexico, and Mississippi, had been extensively modernized with new turbines and gunfire controls and additional armor. More powerful than the German battle cruisers, they were now considered “the most effective fighting units in the battle line.” The experience of February and March was that German raiders—even the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau—backed off in the face of any battleship escort.19

  Equally important was the escort of convoys in the Western Approaches to the British Isles. Stark, who had been a staff officer to Admiral William Sims in London in World War I, was thoroughly familiar with such destroyer operations. The navy had already established a force of three destroyers squadrons, nine ships to a squadron, for this assignment. Two of these squadrons were composed of ships of limited utility—World War I four-stackers like those provided Britain in the destroyers-for-bases agreement; one boasted newly completed ships. These twenty-seven destroyers, gathering at Newport, Rhode Island, with additional patrol planes and Coast Guard cutters, formed what the navy designated enigmatically as the Support Force. It was to be ready for action by mid-May 1941 after six weeks of intensive antisubmarine warfare training, alterations, and trials. According to plans, it would operate from bases in Northern Ireland and Scotland and eventually from Iceland. Another squadron would join the three in July, and a fifth was promised for later. This would be a substantial reinforcement for the hard-pressed escort groups of the Royal Navy but still, even at maximum strength, amount to less than one-third of the British number.20

  The remaining elements of the Atlantic Fleet and its Pacific reinforcement were given roving assignments. The two aircraft carriers, the Wasp, the navy’s newest, and the Ranger, the oldest, were to form a striking force based at Bermuda for “catching” German raiders. A third carrier from the Pacific would make it possible to keep two always ready for sea. Four light cruisers from the Pacific, assigned to accompany the carriers, would relieve two heavy cruisers to form a striking force based on Iceland. Finally, four old light cruisers, each with two scout planes, would patrol the gap between Africa and Brazil.

  Alongside the navy’s proposal, and in fact prompted by it, was a plea from Churchill of March 19. The prime minster was frank to admit Britain’s desperate circumstances, both to get help and to draw the United States as far as possible into the war. The onslaughts of the German battle cruisers gave him further opportunity. He carefully pointed out the novelty of attacks “s
o far to the west of the thirtieth meridian” which passes through the midpoint of Denmark Strait (between Greenland and Iceland) and which the Washington staff conversations were designating as the boundary between British and American command in case of war. Churchill dwelt on the difficulty of supplying convoys with battleship protection and then made a specific request for assistance. Raiders depended on supply ships stationed in little-frequented parts of the ocean such as the Sargasso Sea southeast of Bermuda, which the Royal Navy was unable to patrol for lack of ships. The United States, Churchill advised, could render aid under the banner of neutrality by sending warships with aircraft to “cruise about” in these “almost unknown waters,” disclosing and disconcerting these secret rendezvous.21

  This was all Churchill asked for personally but not all he sought. In January he had explained that the delay in bringing American destroyers already transferred into action had been due to refitting the ships not to lack of crews. Indeed, he said, the Royal Navy could man another thirty by April. The suggestion of another transfer also arose in the Lend-Lease debate as an alternative to American escort of convoys. Influential members of the House and Senate foreign relations committees favored it. So did the public. In a Gallup poll a majority approved turning over to Britain another forty or so destroyers. Congress defeated amendments to prevent it.22

  On March 16, Ernest Lindley reported in the Washington Post that the administration was under “terrific” British pressure for more patrol bombers and destroyers. Bad news about the Atlantic arrived in a steady dirge, Churchill regretting the loss of valuable cargoes produced by American labor. March 27, the day Hitler extended the combat zone to Iceland, Harriman in London suggested sending ten destroyers or Coast Guard cutters. Few doubted that some would be sent. Either the United States would have to join in escort or provide escorts.23

  The ever-cautious Cordell Hull feared that American participation in the Battle of the Atlantic, or even partial intervention leading to an incident and war with Germany, would raise a critical question for the Japanese of their obligations under the Axis alliance. War with both Japan and Germany must be avoided at all costs. Transfer of destroyers promised to provide the necessary assistance without war. On April 18, Lord Halifax reported that Hull had asked him personally and privately if Britain could find crews for twenty-five to fifty American destroyers.24

  The United States Navy did not take kindly to this chorus of suggestions on how to use or dispose of it. It had seventy-four old destroyers left and despite their shortcomings was exceedingly reluctant to part with thirty, ten, or any. Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, director of the War Plans Division—“Terrible Turner” as he was known for his corrosive temperament — argued that every one was needed, eighteen now and nine as soon as possible for the Support Force, thirteen for the Asiatic Fleet, its only destroyers, eight for training sonar operators in tracking submarines, and only twenty-six to patrol the entire Caribbean and Pacific coast from Panama to Alaska. Besides, American crews used them more effectively than British because they understood them better. In case Britain were defeated, he added, or in case the United States entered the war it would need all the ships it could get its hands on for American requirements.25

  The navy was indeed short of destroyers, old and new. The westward migration of U-boats forced it to provide at least two escorting destroyers for every cruiser, battleship, or carrier at sea. Aside from the Support Force, the Atlantic Fleet had only fourteen modern destroyers. Nine of these were due for major overhaul in May, and four were promised to the Support Force.26 Two new destroyers were due in May, four more in June, and six later in the year, but “working up” took time—five months, reduced by Admiral King to two. To make up escort for warships he borrowed some of the modern destroyers of the Support Force, disrupting their submarine tracking, anti-aircraft, and depth-charge practice.27

  That year tension was always severe in the navy between operational responsibilities and orderly expansion. All indicators known to its professional officer corps pointed to the need for more time. New destroyers needed time to overcome design problems, to catch up with scarce communications equipment, to install splinter shields to protect gun crews, to expand depth charge capacity, and to add anti-aircraft guns with compensating weight reductions topside.28 Manning new ships meant breaking up trained ship companies and diluting the corps of veteran petty officers and skilled technicians. Ships were going to sea undermanned, with green crews. The supply of sonar operators from the fleet school at Key West was wholly inadequate. Destroyer crews needed the skills, supervision, and equipment provided by division and squadron command, especially for gunnery and the complex maneuvers and techniques of antisubmarine warfare and escort operations. Searching vast stretches of ocean for German supply ships seemed a waste of precious time. The navy believed it needed concentration not dispersion.29

  Rather than dwelling on these deficiencies, Admiral Stark urged battle if not war. Britain’s plight was certainly compelling, but the navy’s zeal for action was reinforced by bureaucratic imperatives. Had the navy argued against assisting Britain on grounds of unreadiness or dwelt on the need for progressive intervention as contingents became ready, the argument for Lend-Leasing warships would have been hard to resist. Not to make too much of a point, there is some truth in the notion that the navy had to join the battle to save its ships.

  On April 1, President Roosevelt returned to Washington from his vacation looking refreshed and tanned, and the next day met with his principal military and foreign policy advisers to consider what major steps might be taken to assist Britain. He had returned from his previous vacation in December with the idea for Lend-Lease. This time he had no new ideas, no tricks. He was in a discursive, reminiscent mood which kept his anxious advisers and their urgent problems at bay.30

  On the one hand the navy urged intervention, a course strongly pressed by Stimson and Knox. For the hawks it was not only a question of critical, practical assistance for Britain but of providing evidence to occupied Europe and wavering neutrals of American leadership in the cause of freedom and determination ultimately to overcome Hitler and liberate Europe. At the moment the darkness over Europe seemed to be lifting slightly. The British had sunk three Italian cruisers and badly damaged a battleship at the Battle of Cape Mattapan. They had captured Addis Ababa and redeemed Ethiopia, the first victim of fascist aggression. The Greeks fought on against Italy. Britain was sending an army to help defend Greece against the approaching German Goliath. The Washington Post caught the excitement with a banner headline: BRITISH MASSING 300,000 MEN IN GREECE. It spoke of tanks “pouring” into Greek ports from a “vast convoy” of British ships. Roosevelt doubted the number of soldiers was as high as 100,000; in fact 62,000 arrived.31

  Most “thrilling” of all to Stimson was news on March 27 of a coup in Belgrade overthrowing the government of Prince Paul, which had bowed to German pressure and signed up with the Axis two days earlier. With 1.2 million Yugoslavs moving to battle stations against the massing German forces, a Balkan front seemed to be forming. War in the Balkans at the very least would preoccupy and extend the Wehrmacht. Germany, said Britain’s Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, would be “only playing football in her own cabbage patch.”32

  The Yugoslav uprising was the first “great European event” since Lend-Lease, argued Walter Lippmann, evidence that the progressive abandonment of American isolation was changing the world balance of power. Lend-Lease, interventionists contended, made possible Britain’s commitments in the Balkans, which in turn encouraged the Yugoslav uprising. According to Assistant Secretary of State A. A. Berle, Jr., some presidential advisers—Morgenthau and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, for example—thought that Britain and the United States were the only two civilized peoples in the world and that “the entire Continent of Europe ought to be written off.…” However, Roosevelt, he believed, shared the contrary view that the United States needed all possible European support. Resistance t
o the Nazis depended on “faith in us, and hope that we will ultimately navigate their liberation.” With Yugoslavia wavering, on March 24, Stimson noted in his diary, escort of convoy must come “practically at once.” It was essential in the view of Alexander Kirk, a veteran diplomat who had just left the chargéship of the American embassy in Berlin, that Hitler’s opponents conduct a display of force to prove to neutrals that “power is not the monopoly of Hitler alone.”33

  Roosevelt could do practically nothing to assist the victims and intended victims of aggression directly. He followed up Anthony Eden’s suggestion through Hopkins of encouraging Turkey and Yugoslavia by informing them of American plans for support of Britain on a vast scale. To the government of Prince Paul he promised Lend-Lease if it resisted and warned implicitly that a Yugoslavia tamely submitting to threats would receive less sympathy for its postwar claims than one which fought even though vainly. He had promised the Greeks P-40 fighters but found none available and was not prepared to wrest any from the American army or the British. Older planes were substituted but even these could not be delivered in time. Informed of the further delay, the Greek prime minister remarked bitterly, “Enfin seuls” (In the end alone).34 Illusions swiftly vanished on April 6, when the German army struck at Greece and Yugoslavia.

  Disaster widened in the Balkans as Roosevelt searched for an Atlantic solution. In doing so he was certainly aware of the unreadiness of the Atlantic Fleet. In April he met exclusively with admirals at least five times. He knew that no destroyers would be ready for escort duty until mid-May at the earliest, that one of the battleships would be under repair until April 28 and another under overhaul until May 19, and that the Ranger required a three-month overhaul and installation of new arresting gear. The Pacific reinforcements, even if ordered immediately, would not arrive until the end of May. The United States had not enough troops for an expeditionary force of any importance, not enough transports to send them in, and not enough warships to protect them. In January 1941 American assembly lines turned out 159 bombers, of which seven went to the Army Air Corps and fifty-two to the navy. The rest went to Britain. They produced 248 fighters of which eight went to the army and twenty-five to the navy. A huge armament program was under way, but the keel of only one aircraft carrier had been laid since 1938.35