Franklin D.

Roosevelt and World War II

Author(s): Warren F. Kimball
Source: Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 1, Going to War (Mar., 2004), pp. 83-99
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress
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 Franklin D. Roosevelt and World War II

WARREN F. KIMBALL
Rutgers University

"Roosevelt 'had said that he would wage war, but not declare it, and that he would
'"
become more and more provocative.

So reported British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to his cabinet upon his
return to London in August
1941, following his first conference with the President of
the United States, Franklin Roosevelt. Churchill went on to claim that he and the pres
ident had worked out the details of a system for escorting supply convoys in the Atlantic,
and that FDR had ordered the U.S. Navy to shoot German U-boats (submarines) on
sight and thus "force" an incident.1 Is that what happened?
Less than four months later, in December 1941, the United States went to war
with and all within the of four In each case, Roosevelt
Japan, Germany, Italy, space days.
evaded a for a declaration of war, instead that war had
straightforward request asserting
been thrust upon America. Pearl Harbor a somber accusation:
generated

Yesterday, December 7, 1941?a date which will live in United States of

infamy?the
America was and attacked naval and air forces of the of
suddenly deliberately by Empire

1. Report by Churchill toWar Cabinet, August 19, 1941, CAB 65/19, WM 84(41), British Public
Record Office (PRO), Kew, UK.

Warren F. Kimball is the Robert Treat Professor of History at Rutgers University.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: When Bill Brands so graciously asked me to write
this essay, I was honored by the request
and by the company, but more than a little edgy. Because I had written so recently about U.S. entry into World War
II, I feared I had nothing new to tell others or to engage my mind. I think I have offered some new thoughts and com
mentaries, though whether or not that is the case I leave to the judgment of readers. Certainly much of this essay is deriv
ative of and sometimes directly taken from, my earlier works, inWar: Roosevelt, Churchill and
particularly Forged
the Second World War (New York: William Morrow, 1997, and Chicago: Ivan Dee, 2003), and "The United
States," in The Origins of World War Two: The Debate Continues, Robert Boyce and Joseph A. Maiolo, eds.
(Houndmills, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 134-54. 1 am indebted toMark Stoler and
Justus Doenecke for their perceptive comments on this essay. I continue to marvel at the willingness of colleagues to do
such analyses with no reward other than this sort of lame and the knowledge that they perhaps kept
acknowledgment
another historian out of trouble.

Presidential Studies Quarterly 34, no. 1 (March)

83
? 2004 Center for the Study of the
Presidency
84 I PRESIDENTIALSTUDIESQUARTERLY /March 2004

...
I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack
Japan.
by Japan
on
Sunday, December 7, a state of war has existed between the United States and
the Japanese empire.2

Then, on December 11, following Hitler's seemingly gratuitous declaration of war earlier
that Roosevelt sent a message to the of a state of
day, Congress "requesting recognition
war with and because those governments had "declared war the
Germany Italy," against
United States."3

The path to war for Roosevelt and the United States seemed obvious. The presi
dent had said in September 1939 that Hitler was "pure, unadulterated evil." The appar
ent logic is simple: by late 1941, he had settled on deceit and deception?waging but
not declaring war?to bring the United States into the ongoing conflict with Nazi
Germany, which is precisely the argument made by some historians and by FDR's most
bitter critics since 194l.5
But are not what seem on the surface.
things always they
The actual path to war for the United States was long and complex. It began with
the settlements the First World War, that created a renewed
peace following agreements
structure and ententes to preserve status
by which
of alliances the victors the quo.
hoped
The was that there were various "status British and French
problem quos." leadership
elites each had their own similar yet differing versions, with both nations focused on
maintaining their colonial empire. The United States, with its powerful and expanding
economy, held to a somewhat different vision. Then there were the revolutions?from

the Bolsheviks in Russia at a corrupt ruling clique and capitalism),

(aimed to anti

imperialism in China (aimed against a corrupt ruling clique and the Europeans), and on

2. Available from http://odur.let.rug.n1/~usa/P/fr32/speeches/ph.htm. Roosevelt's sonorous drawing

out of the word "empire" so it came out "em-pie-yaah" may have been his rather cultivated Hudson Valley
patroon accent (recordings of the speech are available at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park,
NY). Then again, itmay well have been a conscious and accented reference to something Americans believed
they disliked?empires.
3. Available from http://historyl900s.about.com/. On the German declaration, see Harvey Asher,
"Hitler's Decision to Declare War on the United States Revisited (A Synthesis of the Secondary Literature),"
SHAFR Newsletter 31:3 (September 2000), 2-20. But Hitler's declaration of war was not as gratuitous as it
seems. He was convinced (rightly at the time) that the Americans were already doing all they could to aid
the British. He overestimated Japan's strength and, like the Japanese, assumed the Americans would not
want to conduct a two-front war. However, the German leader drew the opposite conclusion from that of
his Japanese as he would to a "Pearl
ally. Hitler believed the United States would respond have responded
Harbor" attack?with rage and fury. By that logic, a declaration of war on the United States was a low-risk
way to state the obvious and to live up to his commitment to the man he had once called that "lacquered
monkey," the Japanese Emperor. See Hitler's discussion of December 12, 1941 with Admiral Erich Raeder
in F?hrer Conferences on Matters Dealing with the German Navy, vol. II (translated and mimeographed by the
Office of Naval Intelligence; Washington: ONI, 1947), 79 [U.S. Naval Academy Library}.
4. Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won (New York: Norton, 1996), 23, quoting from a letter from
Arthur Murray toWalter Runciman dated September 5, 1939
5. Though such a list would begin with Charles Tansill and Charles Beard, and is added to every
day, I would be pretentious to engage in the academic ritual of writing long notes citing and acknowledg
ing and/or challenging the scholarship of others on the issues of America's entry into the Second World War,
given the recent publication of a second edition of the invaluable American Foreign Relations Since 1600: A
Guide to the Literature, Robert Beisner, ed. (Santa Barbara, Denver, Oxford: ABC Clio, 2003), sponsored by
the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations [hereafter the SHAFR Guide]. For this essay, see
particularly chapter 17, well edited by Justus Doenecke. My citations will normally be discursive, to direct
quotations or specific evidence.
 Kimball / FRANKLIND. ROOSEVELTAND WORLD WAR II | 85

to Mexico (aimed at a corrupt ruling clique and the United States). On the fringe was
Japan, which had enhanced its empire during the First World War almost without effort.
defeated but not waited in the wings. Nor were the powers
Germany, vanquished, "great"
in Europe prepared to accept American leadership. Not surprisingly, despite the dreams
of Americans and that the post-World War I agreements were treaties,
Europeans "peace"
constituted a short, truce.
they merely 20-year
1930s brought the Great Depression
The and the "rise of the dictators,"6 a potent
combination that destabilized Europe and the United States. That instability brought
to a head the contradictory challenges that had flowed out of the First World War. For
the United States simply scary, at home and increasingly so abroad. No
the 1930s were
nation experienced greater change in its national quality of life during the Great Depres
sion. No nation was less prepared psychologically for the maneuvering and bargaining
that had traditionally constituted international diplomacy and war avoidance (certainly
not peace keeping), despite the best efforts of Theodore Roosevelt to begin the educa
tion process. The American to international affairs seemed and sim
approach simple,
There was a and a wrong way. The conundrum that Americans7 faced
plistic. right way,
was what historian Lloyd Gardner so perceptively labeled the "covenant with power."8
Using power, especially military power, to achieve political goals was distasteful, perhaps
even immoral. Witness American for the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact, and the cam
praise

paigning of Senator William Borah, both aimed at "outlawing" war. But Hitler, Mus
solini, and the Japanese had no compunctions about using military force to achieve their
whether that was the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland, the of
goals, conquest

Abyssinia (Ethiopia), or the subjugation of China.

Attempts by Americans to avoid involvement in the confrontations and disputes
that sprang up, in Europe, ran afoul of the often that,
particularly unrecognized reality
like it or not, American and hence a world,
prosperity security depended upon particu
a and East Asian world, where the United States could conduct commerce
larly European
without what it called "artificial" trade restraints (ignoring, of course, American tariff

walls). Yet such restraints appeared along with the "rise of the dictators." Americans,
and their leaders, were trapped. Like their Puritan forebears, they rejected the world, yet

6. The list of "dictators"

semi-official included only those who could and did challenge British and
then American interests?Germany, Italy, and Japan. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was, for most of the time,
conspicuously absent, as was Chiang Kai-shek of China, who tried to rule in autocratic fashion. The unde
mocratic "colonels" in Poland became martyr-heroes, while Spain's Francisco Franco and Argentina's Juan
Per?n, both openly sympathetic to Hitler and Mussolini, were pressured by the U.S. and Britain to change?
not their authoritarianism, but their passive support for the Axis. One British Foreign Office official claimed,
a bit angrily, that Per?n's "fascism" was "only a pretext" for the State Department, which aimed "to humil
iate the one Latin American country that has dared to brave their lightning." B.J.V. Perowne as quoted in
Bryce Wood, Dismantling the Good Neighbor Policy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), 96-97. The
British, despite images of their "realism" versus American fixation on ideology, were adept users of this
strong ideological weapon. It was, after all, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden who used Facing the Dictators
as the title of one of his volumes of war memoirs.
7. What a wonderfully vague commonplace, "Americans," meaning the presidential administration,
Congress, the media, and others of the "chattering class." Add to it that archetypal American contribution
to public affairs?a fixation on public opinion "Public opinion" is, to mix metaphors, the label that
polls.
launched a thousand doctoral dissertations.
8. Lloyd C. Gardner, A Covenant with Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984).
 86 I PRESIDENTIALSTUDIESQUARTERLY /March 2004

were The was a slow

they of the world. "great awakening" for Americans process, fright

eningly slow for the British who knew full well that if the United States did not ally
with them Hitler's would have to or
against Germany, they compromise collapse.

story of that awakening has been oft told. Suffice it to say that by the time of
The
the outbreak of open war between Germany and the rest of Europe (save Italy and a few
foolish or frightened neutrals) on September 1, 1939, American leaders and a majority
of the public viewed the Nazis as a threat to the kind of Europe with which they were
comfortable. They were disgusted by Nazi persecutions of Jews and Christian churches,
challenged by German autarkic economic policies, and distressed by the blatant use of
open military force by Germany and Italy for political gain. But those were Europe's
problems.
Roosevelt played to the numbers. He quickly dropped his initial prediction in 1939
of a very short war due to either a quick German victory or the collapse of the Nazi

regime.9 Within a few months, he moved firmly, and publicly, toward a neutrality that
favored the Allies. Whatever his own beliefs about entering the war, he avoided that
black-and-white question like the plague. His private lobbying effort (what in the 1990s
would be called a political action committee) was led by the Committee to Defend
America by Aiding the Allies. The name alone illustrated the strategy. But no evidence
has surfaced to demonstrate that Roosevelt lied actively and consistently to the Ameri
can about his ultimate intentions, and there are reasons to conclude that he
people good

wishfully hoped that the United States could (or would have to) fight a limited war?
with only naval and air forces engaged against the Germans.10

Some way stations on the to the declarations of war stand out. One was the
path

destroyer-bases deal. Churchill, after taking office as prime minister inMay 1940, repeat
edly pleaded with the Americans for destroyers to combat German U-boats and surface
raiders that threatened the supply lifelines into the British Isles. In what became a
he combined bravado with a veiled threat in his first as minis
pattern, message prime
ter to FDR: "If necessary, we shall continue the war alone and we are not afraid of that.

But I trust you realize, Mr. President, that the voice and force of the United States may
count for nothing if they are withheld too long. You may have a completely subjugated,
Nazified with swiftness, and the weight may be more than we can
Europe astonishing
bear."11

Effective American military assistance in 1940 was out of the question for both
political and practical reasons. Boosting morale and hope was not. Churchill wanted a
American commitment to the war, but the immediate need was
long-term equipment
needed to fight off a German invasion. Aircraft were in the supply pipeline, particularly

9. FDR's early predictions are in David Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 67. Roosevelt's hope that Hitler would be assassinated or
overthrown was expressed as early as January 1939; Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists (Lincoln and London:
University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 305.
10. Thisis my conclusion and that of others, particularly David Reynolds. See his Anglo-American
Alliance, passim, but especially pp. 213-19
11. Warren F. Kimball, ed., Churchill & Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, vol. I (Princeton: Prince
ton University Press, 1984), C-9x. See also chapter 2 of Churchill's Their Finest Hour, vol. II of The Second
World War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948-1953).
 Kimball / FRANKLIND. ROOSEVELTAND WORLD WAR II I 87

with the acquisition of French aircraft orders made before that nation signed an armistice
with Germany in June 1940. But if Britain were to survive, destroyers were needed to
ward off Nazi submarines that threatened the Atlantic supply lanes. In the way stood
United States law forbidding the sale of military equipment needed for the defense of
the United States, and Roosevelt's chiefs found no way around that
military requirement.
FDR had to have an arrangement that made it crystal clear that any transfer of those

destroyers benefited the nation's defenses more than keeping them.

The deal was the official because the
destroyer-bases ("arrangement" euphemism,
"deal" was so favorable to the Americans) was and, as turned out, mili
simple things

tarily unimportant: 50 World War I vintage (and, as it turned out, relatively unusable)
American destroyers in return for long-term authority to build and operate bases on eight
British colonies in the western hemisphere, ranging from British Guiana through the
Caribbean to Bermuda and on north to Newfoundland. Though FDR had no interest in

acquiring colonies,12 he had long had his eye on Bermuda and assorted British posses
sions in the Caribbean military as sites for American
bases. After all, the British (and
other European empires) had no business being there anyway. He had negotiated though
never implemented a general agreement for such bases back in June 1939. Predictably,
he brought up the same idea in the summer of 1940 as he cast about for ways to "sell"
the American and his own on aid to Britain.13
people, military,
But the "deal" was better than that. Roosevelt also insisted on a commit
public
ment that, if Britain were forced to surrender, its fleet would be sent
from Churchill
abroad "for the defence of other parts of the Empire."14 He had already initiated estab
lishment of a Canadian-American Joint Defense Board to insure United States leverage
over the use of any elements of the British fleet sent to Canada?a clear indication of his

deep concern
that Britain might fall, despite cautious reports that, given enough aid,
they might fend well
off any German invasion.15 Churchill's promise fulfilled the require
ment that the destroyer-bases deal promoted the defense of the United States.
Anti-interventionists were wary, though split?did the deal help the United Sates
build its own defenses, or move toward getting the nation involved in the war?16 His
own military complained that the destroyers were needed for American defense, and
opponents argued that he was the law and even the Constitution to make such
violating
a deal. Roosevelt anticipated that "Congress is going to raise hell about this but even
another mean the end of civilization . . . but if Britain is to we
day's delay may survive,
must act."17 And he did.

12. Forrest Davis and Ernest K. Lindley, How War Came (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1942), 86.
13. Reynolds, 65.
14. The formal documenrs of the deal, which were immediately made public, are in Kimball,
Churchill & Roosevelt, I: C-25x, R-lOx, C-26x. On the usefulness of the destroyers, see ibid., C-53x, draft A
of December 25, 1940 (not sent), p. 119- In this message, Churchill grumbled that "we have of course been
disappointed in the small number we have yet been able to get into service."
15. Fred Pollock, "Roosevelt, the Ogdensburg Agreement, and the British Fleet," Diplomatic History,
5: 3 (summer 1981), 203-19; and Robert Shogan, Hard Bargain (New York: Scribner, 1995), 207.
16. Justus Doenecke, Storm on theHorizon: The Challenge toAmerican Intervention, 1939-1941 (Lanham,
MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 126-28.
17. Grace Tully, F.D.R.: My Boss (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1949), 244.
 88 I PRESIDENTIALSTUDIESQUARTERLY /March 2004

On September 3, Labor Day, Roosevelt informed Congress of the terms. He treated

it as a fait accompli, citing his attorney general's opinion regarding the law. Muttering
was heard in the Gerald the anti-interventionist
expected quarters?Senator Nye,
America First Committee. But even Robert McCormick, the anti-Roosevelt of
publisher
the Chicago Tribune, thanked "God" that the Caribbean had become "an American lake."
The firestorm that FDR expected never appeared. When it came time to pass appropri
ations to implement the agreement, Congress did just that. Public opinion polls indi
cated general support for the deal.18
Why? Perhaps it was FDR's cleverness. Perhaps it was the distraction of the upcom

ing presidential election. Perhaps it was Churchill's ?lan and persuasiveness. But more
likely it was just plain common sense, in Congress and among the public. The German
bombing campaigns on the continent and over Britain had driven home the arrival of
the air age. The security provided by distance and the Atlantic Ocean had eroded. The
was a deal for America in every sense of the The nation's was
swap good phrase. security
enhanced, Britain's to resist a common threat was and,
ability strengthened, by besting
their rival and "mother Americans could a bit.
long-standing country," grin
But what about the tortuous avoidance of the law, and of Congress,
president's by

using an executive agreement, the legality of which depended to a degree on the place
ment of a comma?19 What could or should Roosevelt have done in the summer of 1940?
every calculus and calculation, a declaration of war would not have
By passed Congress.
A premature debate would, almost have the wrong answer?
public certainly, brought

wrong as far as Roosevelt was concerned, wrong as far as Britain was concerned, wrong
as far as history is concerned. The British felt alone and isolated.
Opponents of presidential action in foreign policy have always complained that the
White House exceeds its authority. That was a of the and
argument staple contemporary
later historical debates over Roosevelt's policies from September 1939 through the Pearl
Harbor attack more than two years later. Given the American system, the alter
political
native to presidential leadership lies at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue?Capitol
Hill. That alternative would become elevated during the anti-Vietnam War debates into
an truth. But that the deal led to the
accepted arguments destroyer-bases inevitably

imperial presidency ignore the way Congress plays the game. Because sheer practicality
places the making of foreign policy primarily with the executive branch, Congress is able
to sit back and and to the voters.
play dog-in-the-manger, carping, criticizing, playing

Congress reflects public perceptions far more accurately and broadly than any opinion
or Yet, for the crucial stages of America's or non-involvement,
poll pundit. "neutrality,"
whether before Pearl Harbor or, for that matter, before the mid-1960s' "intervention" in

Indochina, and in the cases of Gulf Wars I and II, Congress felt no overwhelming, or
even strong, pressure to restrain actions or U.S.
public presidential change foreign policy.
One critic of Roosevelt's disingenuousness quotes the book of Psalms: "Put not
your trust in That is always advice, but it begs the Where
princes."20 good question.

18. Doenecke, 126, 125.

19- Shogan, 233.
20. Shogan, 11.
 Kimball / FRANKLIND. ROOSEVELTAND WORLD WAR II I 89

should trust be placed? The Psalmist meant God, but that is hardly a practical practice.
In the American democratic the alternatives are and the courts. No
republic, Congress
one in Congress to nullify the destroyer-bases
introduced
legislation deal. No one filed
charges against the president or his cabinet for violating the law. Public opinion?created
and expressed in polls, print, and radio?supported the arrangement, as did the bulk of
White House mail, to Roosevelt's One hundred years earlier,
surprise. seventy-five James
Madison had argued that the prince, in this case the president, could be restrained only
by politics, not by law. Perhaps the reason FDR could manipulate the politics and even
dissemble and lie is that the "people" did not disagree. Which is how politics works.
The destroyer-bases deal constituted a major move by the United States toward an
alliance with Great Britain. The two nations were more than "somewhat mixed up
just
the Churchill used to the House of Commons when the arrangement
together," phrase
was coming together. The United States had come a long way from where it had stood
a year earlier, when Hitler invaded Poland and broke the peace of Europe.21
A clear indicator of public concern for the nation's came after the
security shortly

destroyer-bases deal when, on September 16, 1940, Roosevelt signed into law the first
peacetime draft in American history. Even though the legislation forbade using draftees
outside the western or U.S. anti-interventionists and peace groups
hemisphere possessions,
labeled "isolationists") mounted a it, arguing it was a step toward
(again campaign against
militarism at home and intervention abroad. But it passed with solid
Congress margins.
whatever their readiness for combat, offered a of
Destroyers, only promise things
that might come. The Neutrality Laws of the mid-1930s, designed to keep the United
States out of the First World War (a bit belatedly), had forbade government loans or
credits to nations at war. Once war broke out in modified the law to
Europe, Congress
allow "cash and could war materials, but for cash and not
carry"?belligerents buy only
carried on American cargo autumn 1940, Britain's ambassador to the United
ships. By
States, Lord Lothian, could announce to American that Britain could no
reporters longer

pay cash for war supplies. Whatever he said, "Britain's bust," or "Britain's broke; it's

your money we want," the press the The "cash and revision to the
caught point. carry"

Neutrality Act had forced Britain

its ready money?"the to use
hobble that cramped
medieval kings," Churchill once wrote. Britain was far from broke, but it was running
very short of dollars.22 Britain needed help if it was to continue as the barrier between
Hitler and the United States.
Wearied by the 1940 election campaign, the president leftWashington on Decem
ber 2 for a 2-week cruise aboard the USS Tuscaloosa. Had Lothian not dropped his bomb
shell, Roosevelt would have given little thought to the finance issue during a voyage
dedicated to rest and relaxation?which in FDR's case meant in the
"fishing, basking
sun and spoofing with cronies."23 But before he left, he told his cabinet to study the

21. Churchill in Reynolds,

is quoted 169
22. David Reynolds, "Lord Lothian and Anglo-American Relations, 1939-1940," Transactions of the
American Philosophical Society, 73, Pt. 2 (1983): 48-49; and Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English
Speaking Peoples (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1956-1958), vol. I, The Birth of Britain, 474.
23. Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History, rev. ed. (New York: Grosserr &
Dunlap, 1950), 222.
 90 I PRESIDENTIALSTUDIESQUARTERLY /March 2004

issue, and authorized a large quantity of British orders for military goods, orders he knew
Britain could not pay for, at least not in cash.

A week later, Roosevelt's sojourn was interrupted by a letter from Churchill, cabled
from London and flown out to the Tuscaloosa. The prime minister later called it "one of
the most I ever wrote." it was one of the most written,
important Certainly carefully

going through multiple drafts once Lothian convinced Churchill the letter was needed.
The minister offered one of his classic surveys of the state of the war, summariz
prime

ing in powerful phrases the nature of the threat, and what Britain needed in order to
continue the fight effectively. Ever conscious of the crucial nature of maritime strategy
for Britain and its empire (a word he added at one point), and of Germany's superior
ground forces, Churchill focused on shipping and supply. "The decision for 1941 lies
upon the seas," he wrote. "It is therefore in shipping and in the power to transport across

the ocean, particularly in 1941 the crunch of the whole war

the Atlantic Ocean, that
will be found." Britain needed more warships; vast numbers of merchant ships had to
be constructed; supply ships crossing the Atlantic needed the protection of American
escorts. "The industrial energy of the Republic" was also needed for "a further 2,000
combat aircraft a month"?a dramatic increase in British orders that could not
they pay
for in cash.

Only one paragraph of 19 in the long, 4000-word message addressed the issue that
had to be solved, and solved money. "The moment warned
quickly?ready approaches,"
Churchill, "when we shall no longer be able to pay cash for shipping and other supplies."
To force Britain to sell its assets would be in principle . . . after was
"wrong victory
won with our civilisation saved and time for the United States. . . ."24
blood, gained
Roosevelt agreed.
The result was the second way station toward a declaration of war?the Lend
major
Lease Act inMarch 1941. The language of the act was powerful and straightforward:

[T]he President . . . ,when he deems it in the interest of national . . . sell, trans

may defense,
fer title to, lease, lend, or otherwise of, to any such government [whose
exchange, dispose
defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States] any defense article.
. . .The terms and conditions . . . shall be those which the President deems satisfactory.

It was an extraordinary grant of authority, restricted at the last minute only by limits
on the size of an annual for the program.
Congressional appropriation
Once
again the president seized the opportunity presented by the support of the
bulk of the American public, according to every indicator at the time, for aid to Britain?
though always short of war?even if such aid set the United States on the slippery slope
toward full involvement, once the decision to the Lend-Lease
again leaving president.
was an declaration of economic warfare, and Hitler understood it that way.
unequivocal
as his advisers warned the F?hrer, the was not would, but when
Increasingly, question
would the Americans come into the war?25 The massive American industrial machine

24. Kimball, Churchill & Roosevelt, I: 87-111 (C-43x and various drafts).
25. See Warren F. Kimball, The Most Unsordid Act: Lend-Lease, 1939-1941 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
Press, 1969). For warnings to Hitler, see Kimball, "Dieckhoff and America," The Historian, 27: 2 (February
1965), 222-24.
 Kimball / FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELTAND WORLD WAR II | 91

that would deliver such aid in vast was two years away, but the declaration of
quantities
war, however limited to economics, was clear.
ostensibly crystal
FDR's or were revealed two tactics he the
premonitions, plans, by adopted during
debates over the proposal. First, he worked to ensure the failure of attempts to forbid

extending Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union. Second, he instructed the bill's managers to
avoid any substantive discussions of escorting supply convoys with warships. He accepted
a meaningless amendment that said nothing in the legislation gave the president
additional authority to escort convoys, which raised no bars that would prevent the
president from doing just that when German submarines began attacking Lend-Lease
shipping.
Roosevelt, remembering Wilson's fears of hyphenated-Americans and a divided
nation, the of a full and debate on Lend-Lease. Anti-interven
sought appearance open

tionists, Pacific-firsters, isolationists, professional Irishmen, and just plain FDR-haters

all played their role as the "loyal opposition." Time and again they argued that Lend
Lease would bring the United States closer to war. Time and again they mocked FDR
for not being willing to fight, if that was what he thought was right. Time and again

they warned that Lend-Lease gave the president a frightening and extraordinary grant
of power. Time and again they echoed the fears of one Martin Sweeney, a Congressman
from Ohio, who proposed new words for "God Bless America":

God save America from British rule:

Stand beside her and guide her
From the schemers who would make of her a fool.
From Lexington to Yorktown,
From blood-stained Valley Forge,
God save America
From a named
king George.

America, warned, must never someone else's war, if that

they again fight especially
someone else was one of the and colonial
decaying degenerate European powers.26
The opposition arguments were, in an offset way, more than wrong. What
right
ever the emotions and personal feelings about Roosevelt, the legislation did grant the
president a dangerous degree of power. It did lead ineluctably to escorting supply
convoys. It ?//?/violate all recognized definitions of "neutrality." Lend-Lease did move the
United States closer to open warfare with Anti-interventionists of all
Germany. stripes
believed Roosevelt was
leading the nation into war without honestly saying so.
But that is not how a political dynamic works, even in a democratic republic. We
may wish for candor, but it is not the responsibility of one faction to shoot itself in the
foot. That is, so to speak, the job of the opposition. The Lend-Lease debate was reported
in remarkably full detail in all the media of the day. No American who cared to know,
did not know. All the accusations and challenges to FDR's policies were reported and
discussed, over and over again. Yet the primitive public opinion polls of the day indi

26. The Lend-Lease debate can be read in the Record, 77th Cong., 1st sess. Sweeney's
Congressional
"poetry" is in LXXXVII, pt. 12, June 19, 1941. The arguments are summarized by many, but for starters
try Kimball, The Most Unsordid Act, chapter 6.
92 I PRESIDENTIALSTUDIESQUARTERLY /March 2004

cated strong and consistent support for the legislation. More important, the United

States true test of operative Lend-Lease. The

Congress?the public opinion?supported
vote was decisive: 260 to 165 in the House, 62 to 33 in the Senate.27 Once again, the
American public, through its representatives (which is how the system works), demon
strated its of Franklin Roosevelt's this case, an economic
approval foreign policies?in
declaration of war.

This declaration of economic warfare was shadowed secret mil

by Anglo-American

itary staff discussions, which took place even as the Lend-Lease debate took place. The

impetus for such talks had been the Tripartite Pact, which raised the specter of simul
taneous war in Europe and East Asia. The recommendations generated by those ABC-1
(American-British Conversations) discussions called for fighting Germany first in the
event of a war in both theaters. FDR received the report, expressed agreement, but did
not formally acknowledge it as American policy until after the Pearl Harbor attack. Not
was he not in 1941, to debate the question of war or peace, but
only prepared, early
there is no indication that he had made a choice. For FDR, war meant forces in
ground
a different label. In fact, shortly
Europe; air and naval units could fight Hitler under
before the ABC-1 talks, the president had expressed concern that, although there was
a one-in-five chance of Germany and a war the
only Japan waging joint against Anglo
such an action could the of British resistance and a German
Americans, bring collapse
attack on the western the ruminations of someone
hemisphere?hardly contemplating
an offensive war Hitler.28 But neither did the repudiate the Germany
against president
first ABC-1 was not a way station toward war, but rather a determination
strategy. Still,
as to how the war, if it came, would be fought.
The third station to war came on 22, 1941, when the Germans
major way June
attacked the Soviet Union. From the moment of that attack, the military situation and

wartime Instead of the of an overwhelm

grand strategy changed dramatically. prospect
that seemed unattackable on the Hitler had
ing German presence European continent,

taken on a foe with enormous a if, the Russians could hold out or
potential?if, huge
even pose a challenge to the Germans. Then Senator Harry Truman
cynically quipped
that the United States should help Germany if the Russians were winning, and Russia
if Germany was winning?though he added lamely that he would not want Hitler vic
torious under circumstances. That comment reflected the mood of Ameri
any swings
cans toward the Soviet Union, ranging from admiration in the mid-1930s (when the
USSR seemed to be the excesses of to anger and revulsion (fol
correcting capitalism),
Stalin's purges and the Nazi-Soviet Pact), and then cautious collaboration during
lowing
the Second World War. American suspicions about Soviet intentions, Truman's
Despite

27. The vote counts include announced positions. Kimball, The Most Unsordid Act, 207', 217.
28. James R. Leutze, Bargaining for Supremacy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977),
chapters. 14-15; memo from Marshall to Gen. [Leonard] Gerow, January 17, 1941, in Larry Bland, ed., The
Papers of George Catlett Marshall, vol. 2, "We Cannot Delay": July 1, 1939-December 6, 1941 (Baltimore
and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 391-92. On July 9, 1941, Roosevelt's navy chief,
Admiral Harold "Betty" Stark, looked for a compromise between "all-out war againsr the Axis powers, in
. . . ," Stark to FDR,
accordance with the agreements with the British made in ABC-1 July 9, 1941, PSF
Safe: Iceland, Roosevelt papers, FDR Library. My thanks to Patrice McDonough for the reference. There is
some confusion about the "C" in the acronym ABC?did it mean "Canadian" or "conversations?" American
records show the former, British records the latter. Either way, the Canadians did not participate.
 Kimball / FRANKLIND. ROOSEVELTAND WORLD WAR II | 93

gambit never became a serious possibility. Disgust for the Nazis may not have been
enough to bring America into the war, but it was much too strong to allow such cynical
aloofness.29

The American military was initially pessimistic about Soviet chances, and
Roosevelt's first reaction to desperate Soviet requests for aid was caution. He dodged
questions from the press about extending Lend-Lease to Russia, particularly with polls

showing Americans Long-term Soviet intentions raised concerns, and reports

opposed.
were full of references to secret and from the Soviets for secret
agents suspicious requests

military technology.30 But FDR often played his hunches. During the debate over passage
of Lend-Lease, he had had a hunch and instructed his managers to fight off attempts to
exclude the USSR from eligibility for such aid. In June 1941 he had another hunch (or
was it an expectation?), this time that backing the Soviets might be worth the gamble.
After a long evening's conversation on July 11 with his closest adviser (national security
adviser would be the best analogy), Harry Hopkins, the president sent his trusted adviser
to London to discuss two related issues?the American aid program, and the effect of
the German-Soviet war on broad The very absence of any record or recollection
strategy.
of extensive discussions between Hopkins and the president about the strategic impli
cations of Soviet entry into the war against Germany is Hopkins' discussions
suspect.31
with Churchill and the British may have focused on the Battle of the Atlantic, prepara
tions for a Churchill-Roosevelt meeting that would take place in mid-August, and
British strategy in the Middle East. But the new front in Russia was the real reason for
Hopkins' visit to London, so it seems preordained, if not preplanned, that he should
suggest a visit to Moscow to assess the situation for himself and FDR. It is hard to read
Churchill's reaction to the proposal. He endorsed it to Roosevelt, and certainly supported
anything that would cause Hitler problems. The prime minister had predicted that the
Soviets would "assuredly be defeated," but then quickly promised to "go all out to help
Russia."32

Hopkins' long trek to Russia brought the message Roosevelt hoped, and expected,
to hear. Whatever the turmoil and confusion inMoscow and on the front lines, which
Hopkins visited, he verified that Stalin was committed to continuing the fight, however
long it took. Hopkins recognized that Stalin was the unchallenged ruler and pointed to
the ideological quandary posed by allying with the Soviet Union; the visit highlighted
"the difference between democracy and dictatorship," he reported to FDR.33 For

29. Truman's remark is from The New York Times, June 24, 1941, p. 7, as quoted inWalter LaFeber,
America, Russia, and the Cold War, 5th ed. (New York: Knopf, 1985), 6. For a perceptive
"
look at American
wartime attitudes toward Stalin and the Soviet Union, see Charles C. Alexander, 'Uncle Joe': Images of
Stalin at the Apex of the Grand Alliance," in Annual Studies of America: 1989, N. N. Bolkhovitinov, ed.
(Moscow: Nauk, 1990), 30-42 fin Russian].
30. Sherwood, 308-22; F. Kimball,
and Warren
The Juggler: Franklin Roosevelt as Wartime Statesman
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 30-32.
31. No records ofthat conversation have surfaced beyond two sentences in Sherwood, 308.
32. John Colville, The Fringes of Power: 10 Downing Street Diaries, 1939-55 (New York: Norton, 1985),
404 (June 21, 1941); and Walter Citrine to Duff Cooper, July 7, 1941, Citrine papers, British Library of
Political and Economic Science, London School of Economics.
33. Memorandum of a conference at the Kremlin, July 31, 1941, Hopkins papers, Sherwood collec
tion, book 4 (FDR Library).
94 I PRESIDENTIALSTUDIESQUARTERLY /March 2004

Woodrow Wilson in 1917, the Russian Revolution seemed to bring ideological consis
tency to the "coalition" fighting Germany. For FDR in 1941, the entry of the USSR
into the war to the "the dictators." is
brought inconsistency struggle against Ideology
inconvenient.

Whatever the awkward politics of aid to Russia, the president sent Stalin amessage
via Hopkins promising aid, especially aid that could "reach Russia within the next three
months." That commitment was followed by a far greater, far deeper pledge: "A great
amount of materiel" would be available after that crucial three-month period. The impli
cation was clear. If the Soviet Union in the war, American aid would
stayed large-scale
be forthcoming. As Hopkins told the British ambassador inMoscow, Roosevelt was "all
out to help all he could even if the Army and the Navy authorities in America did not
like it." When aid to Russia seemed off to a slow start, he told an administrator to "use
a hand?act as a burr under the saddle and . . . on it!"3
heavy get things moving. Step

By October, American military intelligence and the U.S. Army War Plans Divi
sion that no concessions should be made that to turn its
agreed might permit Japan eye

away from China and invade Siberia. The Russian effort against Germany far too was

important.35 FDR instructed his Army Chief of Staff, General George Marshall, to give

precedence to delivering aid to the USSR (fulfilling one of Churchill's fears, that aid to
Britain would be affected). When Congress rejected proposals to forbid Lend-Lease to
Russia, Roosevelt seized the opportunity and authorized up to one billion dollars worth
of such aid. It was Roosevelt's second economic declaration of war on
Germany.
Which brings us to where this essay started, the statement by Churchill that "Roo
sevelt 'had said that he would wage war, but not declare it, and that he would become
more and more When the minister said that in 1941,
provocative.'" prime September
he had just returned to London from Newfoundland to a cabinet, parliament, and public
that news of an American declaration of war?or at least close to
expected something
that. He his king before the meeting
had written that the president would not have
asked for such a meeting "unless he had in mind some further forward step."36 Yet this
is the same who had warned his closest adviser, about to leave
president Harry Hopkins,
for London?"no talk about war." All Churchill could do was pass to the cabinet what

he called his of the President's attitude." FDR "was determined,"

"impression obviously
the prime minister, that the United States should enter the war but, as a recent
reported
in the House of Representatives for the extension of Selective Service
single-vote majority
(the draft) seemed to demonstrate, the president had to be careful. They had worked out
the details of an system to protect German submarines (U
escorting shipping against

34. Sherwood, 321-22; and Diary of Stafford Cripps, July 30, 1041, as quoted in Gabriel Gorodet
sky, Stafford Cripps' Mission to Moscow (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 200. FDR is
quoted in F.D.R. His Personal Letters, 1928-1945, Elliott Roosevelt, ed., vol. II (New York: Duell, Sloan and
Pearce, 1950), 1195-96.
35. The evidence is overwhelming that, by autumn 1941, U.S. Army intelligence and planners were
convinced that the Soviet Union was indispensable to the defeat of Hitler's forces. That evidence is well
summarized in Mark A. Stoler, Allies and Adversaries (Chapel Hill and London: University of North
Carolina Press, 2000), 53-56.
36. As quoted in David Reynolds, "The Atlantic 'Flop': British Foreign Policy and the Churchill
Roosevelt Meeting of August 1941," in Douglas Brinkley and David Facey-Crowther, The Atlantic Charter
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994), 136.
 Kimball / FRANKLIND. ROOSEVELTAND WORLD WAR II | 95

boats), and Roosevelt had ordered the U.S. Navy to attack U-boat submarines on sight,
thus in what Churchill said was the word, an "incident."37
forcing, president's

Churchill, pressured to meet the high expectations of the British War Cabinet, had
read more into Roosevelt's comments than the president intended. Presidential speech
writer Robert Sherwood later wrote that the British assumed that Churchill had obtained
some assurances during
secret the Atlantic Conference in August 1941, and "it is
improbable that Churchill did much to discourage this hopeful assumption." As one
British participant later remarked, "We wished to God there had been!"38
The U.S. Navy did not issue a shoot-on-sight order. But American naval policy in
the Atlantic did become increasingly belligerent, and FDR's references to an "incident"
suggest he was thinking about what had happened inWorld War I, when such events
as the sinking of the Lusitania and the German declaration of unrestricted submarine
warfare had brought the United States into the conflict. Hitler, who also remembered,
had already ordered his U-boat commanders to avoid any incidents with the Americans.
Yet, when an incident did occur?a submarine attack on the destroyer USS Greer
on September 4?FDR made no call for escalation or even retaliation (nor did he explain
that the American warship had been
trailing the submarine for hours, providing track
ing data for British patrol planes). There was the hint of a shoot-on-sight order, but only
if continues to seek it." Instead, he used it to another closer to
"Germany edge step
Britain by authorizing American warships to escort foreign shipping between the United
States and Iceland.39

It seemed a stalemate. Hitler was elsewhere, was either

busy Japan threatening

European colonies in Southeast Asia or the USSR in Siberia, and Roosevelt either hoped
to avoid war or did not believe he could to declare war
get Congress against Germany.
The real "incident," the attack on Pearl Harbor, that with stun
Japanese changed

ning suddenness.

The war Nazi and its allies, and the war had no
against Germany against Japan

integral connection except the coincidence of time. But timing is everything. In Sep
tember 1940, the Japanese signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy. The agree

37. CAB 65/19, WM 84(41), August 19, 1941. (Italics added.) Three months later, Churchill
repeated that claim in a message to South African Prime Minister Jan Smuts: "He [Roosevelt] went on to
say to me 'I shall never declare war; I shall make war. If I were to ask Congress to declare war they might
argue about it for three months.' "; and Churchill to Smuts, November 9, 1941, FO 954/4A/100670, p. 340
(Dom/4l/24) (PRO). But Churchill made no mention of such a promise from Roosevelt in a cable to Smuts
sent only a month after the Atlantic Conference, referring only to American naval actions that they had
agreed upon; Churchill to Smuts, September 14, 1941, ibid., p. 333. See also Reynolds, Anglo-American
Alliance, 202 (n.38) and 213-20 (n.116). Looking for "incidents" in order to aid Britain more effectively
was nothing new for the Roosevelt administration. A diary enrry dated April 20, 1941 made by Harold
Ickes, a member of Roosevelt's cabinet as secretary of the interior, claimed that they were hoping for an inci
dent that would justify "setting up a system of convoying ships to England"; as quoted in Thomas A. Bailey
and Paul B. Ryan, Hitler vs. Roosevelt (New York: Free Press, 1979). The extension of Selective Service by a
single vote is a complex story, and it appears that FDR misread public opinion?as he had on other occa
sions. See Doenecke, 234-35.
38. Sherwood, 365, 355.
39- All these cascading events are well described in Waldo Heinrichs, Threshold of War: Franklin
Roosevelt and American Entry into World War II (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). On
the Greer incident and the shoot-on-sight policy, see Bailey and Ryan, 181-83, where they point out that
the president "did not use the fearsome phrase, 'shoot on sight.'"
 96 I PRESIDENTIALSTUDIESQUARTERLY /March 2004

ment was not, for the an offensive alliance but rather a

Japanese, pro forma agreement
that promised to allow them to do what they had done during the First World War?
to expand their regional empire at the expense of the European colonial powers without

having to confront them militarily. Officials in Tokyo wishfully assumed that their coun
terparts inWashington would face the German threat first, leaving Japan to create what
it euphemistically called its Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, with a minimum
of interference. That the Japanese misread how the Americans would react is now
obvious. That the United States government misread the nature of the threat is equally
so.

Had and American interests clashed a decade earlier, when there was no
Japanese

European war, in the same way that they did in 1941, the Japanese-American War could
have been avoided, as it had been in other times of crisis. The root cause of Japanese
American tension was expansion. But by 1941, the Japanese had managed to convince
Roosevelt and his administration that the "axis" powers posed a direct and combined
?
threat to America's vital interests. Perhaps they did, for Germany and Japan both advo
cated commercial and trading policies that directly challenged America's traditional
conviction that "free trade," or "free markets" (the same were to both
thing) integral

democracy and
prosperity.41
The details of Japanese-American policy for the 14 months preceding the Pearl
Harbor attack on December 7, 1941 are a lesson in the dangers of relying solely on mil
and economic deterrence. The United States continued to the economic
itary tighten
noose it had around Japan, and to send diplomatic and military warning signals. The
became more and more anxious as their to a war was threatened
Japanese ability fight
ever more restricted access to raw materials, but continued to assume that, when
by push
came to shove, the Americans would back off and focus on the European war. But the
German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, instead of further distracting the
United States, served to make Roosevelt even more concerned about lest it seize
Japan
the opportunity to move into Russian Siberia.
The Roosevelt administration the threat of totalitarian encirclement
exaggerated
a conscious on Roosevelt's but it also underestimated the
(perhaps exaggeration part),

intensity of the Japanese commitment. the State Department's strategy

Following

(though Roosevelt often pushed for stronger measures), the United States assumed that
Japan would not go to war against a military power it could not defeat on the battle
field. Whatever the validity of American concerns about Japan's seeming alliance with
as well as conflicts over economic and com
Germany, long-standing Japanese-American
mercial interests, at the root of their war?and the of
misperceptions lay predictions
both sides proved tragically wrong.

40. Richard Hill's overwrought and overwritten Hitler Attacks Pearl Harbor: Why the United States
Declared War on Germany (Boulder, CO & London: Lynne Rienner Publ., 2003) is not without some merit,
for it reminds us of how strongly the Roosevelt administration depicted and believed in the myth of a true
German-Japanese alliance.
41. For a depiction ofthat threat to the American political economy, see another overwrought and
overwritten, but still useful book, Patrick Hearden, Roosevelt Confronts Hitler (DeKalb: Northern Illinois
Press, 1987). Better, if older, is Lloyd Gardner, Economic Aspects ofNew Deal Diplomacy (Madison: University
of Wisconsin Press, 1964).
 Kimball / FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELTAND WORLD WAR II I 97

Perhaps the remainder of this essay could consist of just titles and subtitles from
books about Franklin Roosevelt and the path to war in 1941. The Undeclared War, Back
Door toWar, and Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, those will do for starters. The impli
cation is clear. Franklin Roosevelt led, lied, and lured the United States into the Second
World War, even going to the extreme of forcing Japan to fight and then allowing the
American battle fleet to be "sitting ducks" at Pearl Harbor. Some of the critiques are
defenses of FDR in the tradition of Thomas A. Bailey, one of the creators of diplomatic
history as a subdiscipline. Bailey asserted that, although Franklin Roosevelt lied ("less
than candid" is his usual phrase) America into war, it was the right war against the right
enemy. That thesis reached new heights (or lows) with Robert Stinnett's Day ofDeceit:
The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor. The opening words of the subtitle, "The Truth
. . . a statement with "trust me."
," awakens my reflexive disbelief of people who qualify
At best, Stinnett's subtitle accuses everyone else of lying, or being either stupid or

ignorant.
And the beat goes on. As I wrote this essay (summer 2003), two letters arrived,
one from Canada and the other from Great Britain, each to have found "new"
purporting
or hitherto "ignored" evidence that British and American leaders must have or should
have known about the impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In these, and every
case, the for a within the Roosevelt administration to
previous arguments conspiracy
foment war with in order to go to war with on memory that sur
Japan Germany rely
faced 15 years or more after the Pearl Harbor attack. Somehow those who could cor

roborate this "evidence" are dead or

missing.
into the of faith, and a of
Buying conspiracy theory requires leaps suspension
common sense. The common sense is the most To cover up such a
argument powerful.
vast is, to say the least, More to the would Franklin
conspiracy implausible. point, why
Roosevelt, who adored his navy, sacrifice what was then considered a crucial and deci

sive weapon, the fleet, when have set a trap for the Japanese, deliv
battleship they might
ered a crushing blow against the Imperial Navy, and slipped through the "back door"
2
into a war with Germany? In the absence of an unequivocal and undeniable smoking
gun, the "FDR must have known" school flunks out.

Roosevelt's
major aid program before the 1940 presidential election was a pathetic
little swap of over-aged, decrepit destroyers for valuable base rights in seven British ter
ritories in the western hemisphere and a promise that Hitler would not get the British
fleet if he successfully invaded Great Britain. Then, in October 1940, just before the
voters went to the polls, FDR pandered to national fears by promising that "your boys
are not to be sent into any wars," never the of how Amer
going foreign raising question
ican for the Allies force war on the nation.43
support might

42. Robert B. Stinnett, Day ofDeceit:' The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor (New York: Free Press,
2000). In Hitler vs. Roosevelt, Bailey and Ryan explicitly deny that FDR "wanted" to go to war with Germany.
But they repeatedly write of Roosevelt's lack of candor. One might ask, what's the difference? Heinrichs,
Threshold ofWar, offers an extensive case for FDR having a clear plan for war, but does not engage the candor
issue. There are arguments, based heavily on Dean Acheson's memoir, Present at the Creation (New York:
Norton, 1969), that Acheson "screwed down the Iron Boot" on Japan, knowing full well that FDR approved.
43. As quoted in James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox, 1882-1940 (New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich-Harvest, 1956), 449.
98 I PRESIDENTIALSTUDIESQUARTERLY /March 2004

Did the president believe, before the election

of 1940, that the United States should
and would enter the war? Who knows?
Even after his reelection, Roosevelt told his sec
retary of state, Cordell Hull, and the American military chiefs in mid-January 1941,
that the United States should be prepared to fight a defensive war in the Pacific, while
the Navy should prepare to convoy supplies to Britain. But the army should follow "a
very conservative" he said, on Latin America.
approach, focusing protecting Through
out 1940 and 1941, he moved toward confrontation with Germany and Japan, but
dodged the issue of war, avoiding lies yet not being fully candid with the public or
Congress about the debate he was conducting with himself.
Not lying is not the same as telling the truth. If he had a plan, Roosevelt did not
take the public into his confidence during the election campaign of 1940 or thereafter
when Lend-Lease was debated, or as he moved closer to a confrontation with Germany.
He and evaded answering awkward questions about how the United States could
avoided
be neutral and still provide naval vessels and war supplies to one of the belligerents. The
usual justification for such actions has been that FDR, wary of being told "no" if he asked
the to endorse greater assistance to Britain, needed time to "educate" Americans
public
and their Congressional representatives.45
But the public, the president, and politicians in general follow conventions,
accepted usages that provide what reporters call "plausible deniability" for all parties.
use an adult version of the children's taunt?"ask me no I'll tell no
They questions; you
lies." Even the unsophisticated polls ofthat era (FDR occasionally suggested questions
for the pollsters to ask)46 demonstrate that by mid-1940 those questioned understood
quite well what was at stake?but refused to ratify the hard decisions. That only illus
trates the role leaders are to to make choices and then take the
expected play: unpleasant
blame. What Americans wanted to hear in 1940 (and in subsequent crises) was not what
knew was the truth, but what wished were the truth. In a sense, wanted
they they they
to be lied to. Public opinion, expressed in polls and Congress, saw Hitler as an ever
threat, and someone had to deal with that.47
increasing
FDR can be, and is, seen as the president who set the pattern followed
during the
Cold War and afterward for fighting undeclared wars. Perhaps. Yet his decisions were in
response to a and immediate threat, at least where Hitler was
genuine military-political
concerned. There was a "clear and Domination of
present danger."48 Europe by Nazi

44. As quoted in Leutze, Bargaining for Supremacy, 219- FDR's early predictions are in Reynolds, 67.
His hope that Hitler would be assassinated or overthrown was expressed as early as January 1939; and Cole,
305.
45. This is the argument of historians such as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Dallek, and Thomas
A. Bailey, all seeming to agree with Burns's claim that "Roosevelt was less a great creative leader than a
skillful manipulator and a brilliant interpreter"; Burns, 400-04. Reynolds in The Anglo-American Alliance
finds that, until autumn 1941, Roosevelt continued to hope the United States could avoid all-out war. I
agree, though the precise date when FDR lost hope remains elusive.
46. Manfred Landecker, The President and Public Opinion (Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1968),
123, n.7.
47. This thesis is buttressed by the evidence in James C. Schneider, Should American Go To War?
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), although, like most, he argues that public pres
sure "forced" Roosevelt to move slowly.
48. The counterfactual speculations of Bruce M. Russett to the contrary not withstanding. The
remarkably long shelf-life of his little book, No Clear and Present Danger: A Skeptical View of the United States'
 Kimball / FRANKLIND. ROOSEVELTAND WORLD WAR II I 99

an economic, ethical, and threat that could

Germany posed political, eventually military
not be to American interests was less clear, and the adminis
ignored. Japan's challenge
tration's were less candid. But in both cases, Roosevelt's vaunted skills at "edu
policies
the American were not so great as to be able to convince them, and
cating" public
that the United States should declare war on in the summer and
Congress, Germany
autumn of 1941?//that was his intention. But the path to war and the formal decla
rations that came were not done without and, therefore,
finally Congressional public
Whatever the tactics Roosevelt used?from to lies?
approval. disingenuousness

Congress the public) had ample opportunities

(and thus to say "no!" But that is not
what happened. Instead, Congress questioned, carped, harped, and waffled, but ulti
mately concluded that FDR was on the right path. A great myth is that the American

people (whatever that means), given information and the opportunity, will not choose
war and violence, but rather rational discussion and to solve confrontations.
negotiation

History suggests otherwise. The entry of the United States into the Second World War,
however halting and whatever Franklin Roosevelt's deceptions and disingenuousness,
came about because the American their assembled?
people?as represented by Congress
to and (no one ever desires) war.
agreed accepted
The covert wars of Eisenhower and (to mention the two most
Reagan only frequent

practitioners), masked
of Congress to live up to its responsibilities.
the ability That is a
frightening and dangerous practice. But William McKinley in 1898, and Woodrow
Wilson in 1917, both had overwhelming support, even eagerness, for war from Con
gress, the press, and therefore (one assumes) the public. Not so FDR, Truman, LBJ, or

George H. Bush. Even George W Bush, whatever the widespread support for Gulf War
II that fell out from the 9/11 tragedy, chose to muffle the directness (and limitations) of
a formal declaration of war with a vague and (and undeclared) war on terror.
generic

Nonetheless, in each and every case, had a chance to for the American
Congress speak

public and to change the course of foreign policy. If lies were told, Congress had the
power to question and dig into the truth. Responsibility for foreign policy lies not solely
in theWest Wing.
Plus ?a change, plus c'est la m?me chose.

into World War II (New York: Harper & Row, 1972) may well be because no one else has written a
Entry
short, literate, dispassionate presentation of the anti-Roosevelt revisionist arguments that is so ideal for stim
ulating classroom discussion. Shogan, Hard Bargain, accuses FDR of setting a precedent that led
directly
the nation down the slippery slope to the excesses of Richard Nixon, and what Shogan sees as unlawful
interventions by Reagan, Bush, and Clinton.