Алистер Смит - The Spoils of War - Greed, Power, and the Conflicts That Made Our Greatest Presidents

The polls we have thus far summarized were all conducted before France, Holland, Belgium, Norway, and Denmark had fallen under Nazi control, leaving Britain alone to defend democracy in Europe. In a Gallup survey conducted on May 5–10, 1940, on the eve of Germany’s expansion of the war, people were asked who was winning in Europe. Two thirds said Germany, only 8 percent thought England and France, with 13 percent thinking the sides were even, and the rest having no opinion. Here we can see that the overwhelming majority of respondents understood the reality on the ground in Europe, although 55 percent in the same survey still thought the Allies would ultimately win the war, an unlikely outcome without US involvement. In the week of May 18–23, 1940, respondents were asked, “Do you think the United States should declare war on Germany and send our army and navy abroad to fight?” France, Holland, and Belgium had been attacked on May 10, one to two weeks earlier, and democracy was nearly nonexistent on continental Europe. Still, 93 percent of respondents answered no! The president was not leading opinion to the recognition of reality, although he almost certainly favored stopping Germany and backing Britain. He was, after all, actively engaged with Winston Churchill even while assiduously assuring the American public that he would keep the United States out of the war.

It seems that prior to the election, seeking to minimize his political risks, Roosevelt chose to blindly follow the blind, failing to prepare adequately for the defense of the United States or, indeed, for the preservation of freedom and democracy. Even after Adolf Hitler implicitly threatened the United States, following a pact signed among the Axis powers in September 1940, stating, “There are two worlds that stand opposed to each other. . . . Others are correct when they say: With this world we cannot ever reconcile ourselves. . . . I can beat any other power in the world,” still FDR failed to use his powers of persuasion to bring American public opinion around to the inevitability and necessity of defeating the Axis.20 Indeed, Roosevelt reported these and other statements by Hitler in his “Arsenal for Democracy” speech on December 29, 1940, two months after Hitler made them and nearly two months after the US election, marking the first time the American people heard them!21

The hostility to participation in the war among the public was truly remarkable. In an April 1940 Gallup survey, 65 percent of Americans thought Germany would attack the United States if it succeeded in defeating France (which happened two months later) and Britain. Yet, with the country unprepared to defend itself against such an eventuality, still 79 percent reported that the president was doing a good job in dealing with the war crisis. That opinion must have been heartening to Roosevelt as he contemplated pursuit of a third term. The continuing blindness to the threat the country faced persisted even after France, Holland, and Belgium were all defeated. A poll conducted during the last few days of June and the first two days of July 1940 showed that 86 percent of Americans responded, “Stay out,” when asked, “If the question of the United States going to war against Germany and Italy came up for a national vote within the next two weeks, would you vote to go into the war or to stay out of the war?” So reluctant were Americans to get involved that 62 percent opposed sending food on US ships to alleviate starvation in France, Holland, and Belgium during the winter. This response must be understood against the backdrop of Germany’s intensive U-boat campaign in the Atlantic against merchant shipping. Americans were unwilling to gamble on being drawn into the merchant marine struggles even to help starving people. By September a minority believed that England would win the war. Despite that change in view and despite Willkie’s explanation of how calamitous a British defeat would be, still survey respondents split almost equally between advocating fighting to save Britain or remaining on the sidelines. A month before the presidential election, 83 percent of Americans responding to the Gallup survey still said, “Stay out,” when asked whether the United States should enter the war. Thus, the president, the great shaper of public opinion from 1932 to 1939, now followed public opinion, campaigning on the principle that he would keep the United States out of the war.

Finally, once the election was over, Franklin Roosevelt began to use the power of his office to educate public opinion, leading rather than following. Echoing Willkie’s recognition of the disaster that would follow if Britain fell to Nazi Germany, Roosevelt finally, on December 29, 1940, in his famous “Arsenal for Democracy” speech, said,

If Great Britain goes down, the Axis powers will control the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australasia, and the high seas—and they will be in a position to bring enormous military and naval resources against this hemisphere. It is no exaggeration to say that all of us, in all the Americas, would be living at the point of a gun—a gun loaded with explosive bullets, economic as well as military. We should enter upon a new and terrible era in which the whole world, our hemisphere included, would be run by threats of brute force. To survive in such a world, we would have to convert ourselves permanently into a militaristic power on the basis of war economy. Some of us like to believe that even if Great Britain falls, we are still safe, because of the broad expanse of the Atlantic and of the Pacific. But the width of those oceans is not what it was in the days of clipper ships. At one point between Africa and Brazil the distance is less than from Washington to Denver, Colorado five hours for the latest type of bomber. And at the North end of the Pacific Ocean America and Asia almost touch each other.22

Yet, even after acknowledging both the evil intentions of Germany, Italy, and Japan, and the real danger they posed to the United States, still Roosevelt was unwilling to commit to defend Britain. He went on in this same speech to say, “There is no demand for sending an American Expeditionary Force outside our own borders. There is no intention by any member of your Government to send such a force. You can, therefore, nail any talk about sending armies to Europe as deliberate untruth [emphasis added].”23

Roosevelt’s foray into turning public opinion around was, as we have seen, exceedingly cautious. Having finally echoed the concerns raised explicitly by Willkie during the campaign, the president also echoed the First Lady’s efforts to tie the grave danger in Europe to the reconstruction of the American economy. As he said, “I would ask no one to defend a democracy which in turn would not defend everyone in the nation against want and privation. The strength of this nation shall not be diluted by the failure of the Government to protect the economic well-being of its citizens.”24 That well-being was to be promoted by building and sending arms to Britain, but there was to be no commitment of soldiers even as Roosevelt endorsed and signed the Selective Service Act, creating a “peacetime” draft. Indeed, when it came to making the strongest possible case for a war in defense of liberty, he dissembled, becoming downright disingenuous. He claimed, “The people of Europe who are defending themselves do not ask us to do their fighting. They ask us for the implements of war, the planes, the tanks, the guns, the freighters which will enable them to fight for their liberty and for our security. Emphatically we must get these weapons to them in sufficient volume and quickly enough, so that we and our children will be saved the agony and suffering of war which others have had to endure.”25

The minimalist, cautious Roosevelt continued to insist that American children could be spared the pain of war if all the nation did was rearm Britain and, outrageously, he claimed that the British government asked no more of the United States than this. Yet, juxtaposed to this statement by the president in late December 1940, we cannot help but consider Winston Churchill’s profoundly moving statement of June 1940—six months earlier. Faced with the fall of Europe and standing alone against Germany, Churchill said, “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old [emphasis added].”26 Surely the power and might of the New World to which he referred was not the power and might of Canada—already in the war—or of Mexico or Brazil or Argentina; he was asking for the help from the United States that President Roosevelt denied was being sought.