Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George W. Bush (43 page)

After the election, FDR redoubled his efforts to send aid to Britain. He authorized secret staff talks between American and British military planners, who recommended a grand strategy of defeating Germany first while holding Japan to a stalemate.
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In November, FDR ordered the army to make B-17 bombers immediately available to the British, to be replaced by British planes on order in American factories, and he discussed making half of all American arms production available to the British. British finances collapsed in late November; the country could no longer pay for the material it needed to continue the war. Britain's ambassador to the United States, Lord Lothian, appealed to the American public on November 23 by saying to a group of journalists, "Well, boys," he said, "Britain's broke; it's your money we want."
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Lothian's report of Britain's functional bankruptcy shocked the White House into action. FDR approved the sale of $2.1 billion in weapons that the British could not pay for, as well as the diversion of $700 million in Reconstruction Finance Corporation funds to underwrite the factory expansions needed for the increased arms sales.
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The President hit upon one of his most artful evasions of neutrality, Lend-Lease, which would "get away from the dollar sign," as he told reporters at a December 17, 1940, press conference. The United States would "lend" Britain weapons and munitions and, rather than demand immediate payment, would expect their return after the war's end. Of course, the idea was a complete fiction; war would consume the arms. FDR deployed a homey analogy: if a house were on fire, a neighbor would lend a garden hose with the expectation that it would be returned later, rather than demanding $15 for the cost of the hose.
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Lend-Lease required congressional action. In his famous "Arsenal of Democracy" speech on December 29, Roosevelt defended Lend-Lease and broader aid to the Allies with his most stirring language. FDR declared that the Nazis posed the most direct threat to the security of the United States since its founding. To avoid war, the United States would have to become the great "arsenal of democracy" for the free nations carrying on the fight. The United States would be less likely to get into war "if we do all we can now to support the nations defending themselves against attack by the Axis," rather than "if we acquiesce in their defeat."

Disclaiming any intention to send a new "American Expeditionary Force" outside the United States, FDR declared that "the people of Europe who are defending themselves do not ask us to do their fighting." All they seek are "the implements for war." Increasing national defense production and sending it to Britain would "keep war away from our country and our people."
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It was one of the most popular speeches of FDR's Presidency: roughly 80 percent of the public agreed.
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Congress waited until March 1941 to give its approval to Lend-Lease,
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but FDR decided to move forward during that critical time anyway. He authorized British purchase of 23,000 airplanes in November 1940, and rifles and ammunition in February 1941. He ordered the U.S. military to purchase munitions factories but diverted the production to Britain.
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In spring 1941, FDR turned to the protection of the supplies that would begin to flow across the Atlantic, and took unilateral action that provoked the Nazis and drew the United States ever closer to war. In March, FDR moved to place Greenland under American military protection, and in April he gave orders to the navy to extend its security zone as far as Greenland and the Azores, and to begin locating German submarines and reporting their positions to the Royal Navy. In May, he transferred one-quarter of the Pacific fleet to the Atlantic to deter any German effort to seize Atlantic islands for bases. He declared an "unlimited national emergency" at the end of the month and told the nation that helping Britain win the battle of the Atlantic was critical to keeping the Nazis out of the Western Hemisphere. "It would be suicide to wait until they are in our front yard," Roosevelt argued.
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He followed his speech with a June deployment of a Marine brigade to occupy Iceland (which is about 1,200 miles from London and 2,800 miles from Washington, D.C.), which freed up a British division and extended the American security zone even farther. In July, he announced that the navy would begin escorting ships between the United States and Iceland.

FDR did not seek or receive congressional approval for any of these deployments, which made clear, if earlier aid had not, that the United States was no longer a true neutral. Still, Congress retained ample checks on presidential power. FDR could send only 4,000 marines to Iceland because of the small size of the regular armed forces, and he could not send any of the new draftees because Congress had attached a provision to the Conscription Act forbidding their deployment outside the Western Hemisphere. Congress had also limited the terms of service of the 900,000 draftees to one year, requiring FDR to go to Congress to win an extension. Even with America occupying Iceland and Greenland and escorting ships in the North Atlantic, only 51 percent of Americans supported the draft extension, and Congress narrowly approved it.
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Meanwhile, FDR pursued measures to check Japan's expansion and perhaps provoke it into a conflict. Japan had been waging war in China since the 1931 Manchuria crisis and had launched an invasion to conquer the whole nation in 1937. Japanese military and civilian leaders sought to create a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" that would supply the raw materials for the Japanese economy and the war in China. In 1940, Japan had intensified its attacks in China and had moved into Indochina. In September 1940, it entered into the Axis agreement with Germany and Italy.

Roosevelt launched a campaign of economic warfare, without any effort to rely on legal authority. In July 1940, for example, FDR blocked aviation gasoline exports to Japan. Chiang Kai-shek had sent an urgent message to Roosevelt that without more aid, the Nationalist Chinese resistance to Japan would fail. FDR responded by banning the export of iron and steel to Japan. In November, he sent $100 million and 100 warplanes to the Chinese Nationalist government, and in the spring he authorized volunteers -- Colonel Chennault's Flying Tigers -- to fly fighters for China. FDR had never found China and Japan to be at war under the 1939 Neutrality Act, so he had no statutory authority to impose the materials embargo on Japan or to send money and arms to China.
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Roosevelt simply undertook the actions as President in order to protect the national security.

Japan's expansion south toward Indochina and Thailand raised the possibility of conflict. On August 1, 1941, FDR ordered a freeze of Japanese assets in the United States, reduced U.S. oil exports to pre-war levels, and prohibited the sale of high-octane aircraft gasoline to Japan. By mistake, administrators executed a complete oil embargo against Japan, which FDR did nothing to correct. FDR opened negotiations to reach a settlement with the Japanese government, though he knew because of American code-breaking success that Tokyo was considering an attack on American, British, and Dutch possessions in Asia.

Some historians believe that FDR's goal was to hold off Japan while resources could be devoted against the more dire challenge in Europe, a view held by many of his military and civilian advisors. Marc Trachtenberg, however, has convincingly argued that FDR deliberately painted the Japanese into a corner.
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In the course of negotiations, Roosevelt demanded that Tokyo end its war in China in exchange for a resumption of U.S. oil and steel exports, yet FDR and his advisors knew that Japan would not willingly give up its territorial gains in China. "[T]he United States had been waging preventive economic warfare against Imperial Japan for at least 18 months prior to Pearl Harbor," Colin Gray writes. "U.S. measures of economic blockade left Japan with no alternative to war consistent with its sense of national honor. The oil embargo eventually would literally immobilize the Japanese Navy. So Washington confronted Tokyo with the unenviable choice between de facto complete political surrender of its ambitions in China, or war."
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As FDR squeezed Japan, he expanded political and military assistance to the British. On August 9, he met Churchill in Placentia Bay, off Newfoundland, where the two leaders issued the Atlantic Charter. It declared Anglo-American principles in the war to be: no Anglo-American aggrandizement, opposition to undemocratic changes in territory, self-government for all peoples, equal access to trade and natural resources, international economic cooperation, a guarantee of security and freedom to all nations, freedom of the seas, disarmament of aggressors and reduction in armaments, and plans for a collective system of international security.
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During the discussions, FDR made clear to Churchill his desire to bring the United States into the war by forcing an incident with Germany,
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and set out to make his wish come true by ordering full naval escorts for British convoys between the United States and Iceland, which put the Germans in the position of firing on U.S. warships or conceding the Battle of the Atlantic. Without input from Congress, FDR had joined together the fates of the United States and Britain.

An undeclared shooting war soon broke out. On September 4, a German submarine fired on the destroyer USS
Greer
, which FDR used to publicly justify "shoot-on-sight" orders for naval escorts in the Atlantic. Only later did Congress learn that the
Greer
had been hunting the submarine with British airplanes and had dropped depth charges on the Germans. FDR declared the Nazis to be the equivalent of modern-day pirates and compared German subs and commerce raiders to "rattlesnakes of the Atlantic." As he put it, "[W]hen you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him."
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FDR won broad support for the navy's new rules of engagement in the Atlantic, but at the price of deliberately deceiving the public about the facts.
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He followed with an October speech claiming that captured Nazi plans envisioned the division of North and South America into five dependent states and the abolition of the freedom of religion.
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The shooting war led to German submarine attacks on two American destroyers, the USS
Kearny
and the USS
Reuben James
, with the deaths of 11 and 115 sailors, respectively. FDR responded by seeking amendment of the neutrality laws to allow merchantmen to arm and carry goods directly to British ports.

The changes passed Congress by small majorities because 70 percent of the public told pollsters they opposed American entry into the war. FDR concluded that the public, influenced by the memory of the way Wilson had led the country into World War I, would not rally behind a war waged in response to these isolated incidents. Rising tensions with Japan, however, provided other opportunities. After the Atlantic Conference, FDR informed the Japanese ambassador that any further expansion in Southeast Asia would force him to take any and all measures necessary "toward insuring the safety and security of the United States."
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He offered to undertake formal negotiations with Prince Konoye, the Japanese Prime Minister, only if Japan suspended its "expansionist activities" and openly declared its intentions in the Pacific. FDR asked that Japan terminate the Axis alliance, withdraw from China, and open up its trading system. He consciously demanded terms he knew that the Japanese were unlikely to accept.

Japanese cabinet meetings on September 3-6 concluded that unless the government reached a settlement with the United States by October, its military would attack American, British, and Dutch possessions in Asia. Tokyo decided its terms must include the freedom to conclude matters in China, an end to Anglo-American military action in the Pacific, and secure access to raw materials for the economy. FDR refused to negotiate on these conditions and instead ordered the reinforcement of the Philippines. By October 15, FDR and his advisors believed that they needed more "diplomatic fencing" to create the image "that Japan was put into the wrong and made the first bad move -- overt move."
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Thanks to electronic intercepts of Japanese communications, FDR knew that the Japanese would attack if no settlement were reached, and he tried to string out negotiations to give the armed forces time to strengthen the Philippines. On Thanksgiving Day, FDR discussed with his advisors the chances of a Japanese sneak attack and asked "how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves."
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He also told the British that he would respond to any attack on their possessions in Asia. Still, FDR realized that without an enemy attack on the United States, his other measures would not convince the American people to support entry into World War II.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese solved FDR's conundrum. No evidence supports the theories that FDR knew that Pearl Harbor was the target, nor that he willfully ignored the possibility of devastating losses to the Pacific Fleet. FDR did not consciously know about any attack on the United States -- rather, he placed the Japanese in the position of choosing between war and giving up their imperial ambitions in China and the rest of the Pacific. The most that can be said is that if war were to come, FDR had tried for more than a year to maneuver the Axis powers into firing a first shot. Pearl Harbor guaranteed the unity of the American people, just as Fort Sumter had eight decades before. As FDR told the American people the next day, December 7 was a "day that would live in infamy," and he asked Congress for a declaration of war, which it promptly granted.

Hitler further obliged by declaring war on the United States three days later. FDR exercised foresighted leadership in recognizing the Axis threat to the United States and the free nations of the West. But faced with a recalcitrant Congress and a reluctant public, FDR had to use his constitutional powers to move the nation into a war that he knew, as perhaps no one else did, was in the country's best interests. If he had faithfully obeyed the Neutrality Acts, American entry into the war might have been delayed by months, if not years. A President who viewed his constitutional authorities as narrowed to executing the will of Congress might well have lost World War II.