Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

The Lend-Lease Act was to expire in two years. The change in American public opinion can be judged from the fact that it was renewed in March 1943 by a vote of 476-6 in the House and 82-0 in the Senate.

In spite of the large appropriations for Lend-Lease provided in 1941, it moved little additional supplies to any fighting nation before 1942. The American productive system was almost completely clogged up with unfilled orders which had been placed previously by either the British or the American governments. When the Soviet Union came into the war in consequence of Germany’s attack in June 1941, no additional outlet was provided for Lend-Lease goods by this event, because American public opinion was too strongly anti-Communist to allow the Soviet Union to partake of Lend-Lease benefits. Only at the end of the year was Russia admitted to these benefits.

Shortly afterward the productive log jam in war industries was broken by the so-called Victory Program of August 1941. This program ended the attempt to build a war-productive system out of the surplus capacity of the peacetime civilian industrial system, and courageously faced the issue that adequate economic mobilization for war could be achieved only if it were based on three fundamental principles: (1) civilian production must be curtailed to provide labor, materials, and capital for war industry; (2) any adequate war industry requires a great increase in investment in new industrial capacity; and (3) economic mobilization is impossible unless there is some degree of centralized control by the government and some degree of duress on business, labor, and consumers.

As part of this effort, Roosevelt at the end of August 1941 set up a new agency of the government, the Supply Priorities and Allocations Board, which, while it had all the weaknesses of a committee organization in contrast with a single executive organization, began, for the first time, to face the fact that there could be no real economic mobilization without a single over-all plan of priorities and allocations among the many different groups demanding access to economic resources. Behind this whole effort toward economic mobilization was a secret decision of Roosevelt’s military advisers, made in the summer of 1941, that the war could not be won unless the United States planned eventually to raise the number of men in its armed forces to 8,000,000.

An 8,000,000-man army looked very remote in the summer of 1941 as the 900,000 draftees provided by the Selective Service Act of 1940 approached the end of their year of training and eagerly began to prepare to disperse to their civilian activities again. To have permitted this would undoubtedly have inflicted a dangerous blow to the preparedness program. Accordingly, the Roosevelt Administration asked the Congress to extend the terms of service of these men. At once the isolationists were in full cry, and this time they found a greater response in American public opinion. It seemed to many to be very unfair to keep in service for several years men who, when they reported for service, had been assured that they need serve for only one year. The supporters of the extension argued that America’s preparedness and security must take precedence over any such mistaken assurances. An Act extending the period of selective-service training by an additional eighteen months passed the Congress on August 12, 1941, by the narrow margin of one vote, 203-202. Once again, the Republicans were solidly opposed to the Act, only 21 voting for it, while 133 voted against it.

As the voting on the extension of selective service was being counted, the historic Atlantic Conference of Roosevelt and Churchill was being held on the battleship Prince of Wales in a small harbor in Newfoundland. After four days of conferences (August 9-12, 1941), the chiefs of government of the United States and Britain issued the so-called Atlantic Charter as their first formal enunciation of war aims. According to this document they renounced all ambitions toward territorial aggrandizement for themselves and, for others, hoped to obtain territorial settlements and forms of government in accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned. They also aspired to see equal access to trade and raw materials for all states, international economic collaboration, freedom of the seas, and postwar disarmament.

Certain differences of outlook which emerged from the discussions between the British and Americans were either omitted or compromised in the public announcement. The British were still in favor of imperial preference and a certain measure of bilateralism, commercial discrimination, and economic autarchy in international trade, while Secretary Hull’s influence set the American delegation solidly in opposition to these and in favor of multilateral, nondiscriminatory trade relations on most-favored-nations principles. A second difference, which was soon pushed into the background, rested in the contrast between Churchill’s desire for some statement of preference for a long-range postwar plan for an international organization to replace the League of Nations, and Roosevelt’s preference for an immediate postwar system based on police action by the few Great Powers, or even by a simple Anglo-American partnership. At any rate, Roosevelt was too reluctant to rouse the unsleeping dogs of isolationism to allow the Atlantic Conference to issue any public statement on international organization.

The Atlantic Charter was issued to the world as soon as the conference ended; at least equal in importance were the simultaneous military and strategic conversations which were kept secret. Once again, these decided that the defeat of Germany must have priority over the defeat of Japan, but there was a wide difference of opinion on how Germany could be defeated. The British had no plans or expectations for making any large-scale invasion of Europe with ground forces. Instead, they hoped that Germany could be worn down to defeat, after a very long war, by blockade, aerial bombardment, subversive activity, and propaganda. They wanted large numbers of heavy bombers, and hoped for American intervention in the war, as soon as possible, largely for its propaganda value against German morale. Apparently, no one pointed out that a German defeat by British methods would leave the Soviet armies supreme in all Europe, with no Axis, Anglo-American, or local forces to oppose them.

On military grounds alone, the Americans at the Atlantic Conference rejected the British theories. They rejected any immediate American intervention into the war on the grounds that the United States was not sufficiently armed to be effective. The only immediate contribution which the United States could add by intervention, they felt, would be in escorting convoys of British supply vessels to Europe. The American military experts rejected the idea that Germany could be defeated by blockade, propaganda, air attacks, or by anything less than a large-scale invasion by ground forces. For this purpose the War Department in Washington was planning an army of 8,000,000 men.

An additional difference of opinion between the British and Americans emerged from the discussions regarding Japanese aggression. The British wanted a joint or parallel message to Japan, accompanied, if possible, by threatening naval movements, to demand a cessation of aggressive Japanese actions. The Americans were reluctant, fearing to take any steps which might speed up Japanese aggression and thus distract attention from the German problem; Roosevelt even said that continued peace with Japan was so essential that “he would turn a deaf ear if Japan went into Thailand, but not if they went into the Dutch East Indies.” In the latter case he envisaged nothing more than economic warfare for a considerable period.

Immediately following the Atlantic Conference, Roosevelt was concerned with two major European problems, leaving the rising tension with Japan in Hull’s hands. The two problems were naval escort of convoys to Britain and military supplies for the Soviet Union.