From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (86 page)

Recognizing the urgency in Churchill's tone, Roosevelt responded with uncharacteristic dispatch. While at sea, he read the message over and over, contemplating a response. At a press conference on December 17, as though extemporizing, he floated a trial balloon, in best Rooseveltian fashion talking about getting rid of the "silly, foolish old dollar sign," noting that it would be better to lend or lease supplies to Britain than leave them in storage in the United States, and spinning a homey yarn about the man who lent his garden hose to a neighbor whose house was on fire, expecting nothing in return but to get the hose back.
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While his advisers formulated the details of the remarkable innovation that would be called lend-lease, FDR on December 29 enunciated what was much later labeled the Roosevelt Doctrine. In a radio address billed as a talk on "national security," he challenged head-on traditional views that the nation was not threatened by events abroad. In the starkest of terms, he portrayed a world divided between good and evil, warning that Axis tyranny endangered the basic freedoms Americans held most dear. The Western Hemisphere was threatened, he emphasized, by air power and subversion. As guardian of the Atlantic, Britain must be defended. There could be no negotiations with a "gang of outlaws," he insisted. Reiterating his desire to keep the United States out of war, he spoke of "an emergency as serious as war itself" and called upon the nation to become "the great arsenal of democracy."
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Fully aware that the destroyers-bases deal had stretched the Constitution to the limit—he is said to have feared impeachment—this time he went to Congress to get the extraordinary power he sought. Cleverly packaged as a "Bill to Promote the Defense of the United States," the legislation gave the
president unprecedented authority to "sell, transfer, exchange, lease, lend or otherwise dispose of" any "war material" to any nation whose defense was deemed vital to the defense of the United States." To give it a patriotic ring and counter anti-British sentiments from Irish Americans in House Majority Leader John McCormack's Boston district, it was even more artfully designated HR 1776, although that historic number was not due to be attached to the next piece of legislation.
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In FDR's words, the lend-lease bill was "argued in every newspaper, on every wave length—over every cracker barrel in all the land."
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Recognizing that it had firm public backing and solid majorities in both houses, the administration took the high road, giving the opposition ample time to develop its arguments and for the most part staying above the fray. As before, it justified the grant of extraordinary powers to the president on grounds of national emergency. It continued to insist that aid to Britain was the best way to stay out of war. Its star witness, no less than Wendell Willkie, warned Americans that passage was the only "chance to defend liberty without themselves going to war." The opposition mounted a furious counterattack—the last gasp of 1930s isolationism—warning that expanded aid to Britain would necessitate convoys, which inevitably would lead to war, and protesting that the bill would confer dictatorial authority on an already too powerful president. At times the discussion got ugly, as when Montana senator Burton K. Wheeler called lend-lease the New Deal's Triple A foreign policy that would plow under every fourth American boy. After weeks of heated debate, the bill passed in early March 1941 by large and generally partisan majorities.
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Lend-lease did represent a huge step toward war. It skirted the cash-and-carry provisions of the Neutrality Acts as well as Johnson Act prohibitions against loans; it addressed directly the critical problem of the British dollar shortage. This "Declaration of Interdependence," as the London
Economist
called it, shed the last pretense of U.S. neutrality, opening the nation's warehouses to what was now a de facto ally and providing a mechanism for the first U.S. foreign aid program. It was not "the most unsordid act," as Churchill in a flight of rhetoric once called it (he of all people knew better).
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Roosevelt deliberately left unstated what was
expected in return, but within weeks after the bill passed it was clear that the supplies would not be an outright gift, and the State Department's dogged quest for bases and trade concessions in exchange alarmed top British officials. Given the woeful state of U.S. preparedness, lend-lease for the short term provided little help. But it offered reassurance that substantial assistance would soon be under way, a huge boost to British spirits. As the isolationist opposition had warned, it also brought to the forefront the issue of convoys. It would do no good to send supplies to Britain only to see them end up on the bottom of the ocean.

As was his custom, after a bold move Roosevelt reverted to caution. British shipping losses in the Battle of the Atlantic increased to perilous proportions in the spring of 1941, bringing urgent pleas from Churchill and some FDR advisers for convoys, but the president responded with half measures. He was ill much of the time, and not up to another political battle. Although the public increasingly accepted the risk of war, a solid majority still hoped to stay out. Opponents of lend-lease had warned that aid to Britain would inevitably lead to convoys, and the president recognized that any overt move in that direction would bring down their wrath on him. In any event, the U.S. Navy was far from ready at this point to assume convoy duties. Thus FDR moved by stealth and indirection. Even before lend-lease had passed Congress, he authorized top-secret joint planning exercises between U.S. and British military officials, one result of which was agreement, in the event of a two-front war, on a Europe-first strategy. In April, he stretched the U.S. defense perimeter to 26° west longitude, far out into the North Atlantic, and shifted twenty ships from the Pacific fleet. Avoiding any word or deed even hinting at convoys, he authorized U.S. ships to "patrol" this area, report to the British the presence of Axis vessels, and use force if they threatened American shipping. Disguising the significance of his move with another folksy history lesson, he compared the patrols to Old West scouts sent ahead of the wagon train to warn of possible ambush. Viewing Danish colony Greenland as a vital base for British and American shipping and vulnerable to a German takeover, he brought the frigid island under U.S. protection.
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Although it was not entirely clear at the time, FDR's stealthy moves represented a sharp extension of traditional U.S. concepts of national defense. Indeed, in 1940–41, Americans began to think and talk of national security in ways they had not since the early republic. Expansion of the defense zone deep into the western Atlantic marked a sharp break with
tradition.
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In a major speech on May 27, the president gave his listeners a geography lesson, warning ominously of Hitler's global ambitions and expressing special concern about the threat to island outposts such as Greenland, Iceland, and the Azores from which Nazi Germany might control the Atlantic and even mount air attacks against North and South America. He also outlined a crudely formed doctrine of preemption. With new military technologies, he warned, "if you hold your fire until you see the whites of his eyes, you will never know what hit you! Our Bunker Hill of tomorrow may be several thousand miles from Boston, Massachusetts." Although the speech won widespread praise, Roosevelt did not follow with new steps other than declaring a vague and indeterminate state of unlimited national emergency and beginning quiet, behind-the-scenes negotiations to bring Iceland under U.S. protection. By June 1941, he had extended the nation's defense perimeter well out into the North Atlantic.
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As the threat of war increased after 1939, U.S. officials increasingly feared for the security of the Western Hemisphere. German and Italian immigration into Latin America in the interwar years along with a German trade offensive Hull labeled "cut throat trouble breeding" aroused fears of an Axis fifth column.
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Germany's stunning military victories in the spring of 1940 transformed concern into outright alarm. Inexperienced intelligence agents and private informants such as the Cuba-based novelist Ernest Hemingway deluged Washington with frightening reports of German influence. Partly from genuine fear, partly to build support for his policies, FDR in a series of 1941 Fireside Chats warned of the danger next door, one time even divulging the existence of a secret map—later proven bogus—demonstrating Hitler's plan to seize Latin America before attacking the United States. Exaggerated U.S. fears reflected the insecurity that gripped the nation after the fall of France and a distrust of Latin governments presumably too complacent or weak to defend themselves. Some Latin leaders suspected what they considered undue U.S. concern about their security; others saw a chance to exploit U.S. fears for economic and political gain.

Concern for hemispheric defense provided the decisive inducement for a remarkably conciliatory U.S. response to yet another oil dispute with
Mexico. When President Lázaro Cárdenas nationalized foreign-owned oil companies in 1938, Hull firmly reminded Mexico of its international obligations. Oilmen in the United States organized a boycott of Mexican oil. But when the dispute dragged on, Ambassador Josephus Daniels urged conciliation. "It is always noble in the strong to be generous, and generous, and generous," he told the president.
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Roosevelt had little interest in backing the oil companies, members in good standing of that group he had branded "economic royalists." With Mexico seeking to sell oil to Germany and Italy, he saw urgent need for a generous settlement. After months of discussion, the two nations in November 1941 established a joint board to evaluate confiscated oil properties and set terms for payment. To sweeten the deal, the United States extended loans to Mexico.
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The administration developed a multifaceted effort to expand U.S. influence in the hemisphere. It negotiated arrangements for naval and air bases across Latin America. To counter German influence with Latin militaries and promote hemispheric military cooperation, it sent military advisory missions to numerous Latin American nations and invited their officers to study in U.S. military schools. The United States also expanded hemispheric trade by providing loans through the Export-Import Bank for the purchase of U.S. surplus commodities and to fund development projects such as a Brazilian steel mill. To the great annoyance of some hemispheric governments, U.S. officials compiled blacklists of firms and individuals suspected of ties with the Axis. Especially fearful that airliners might be used as bombers, the United States pressed Latin governments to eliminate German influence in commercial aviation. Under intense U.S. pressure, Brazil took control of German-owned airlines operating within its territory and got rid of all German personnel. In June 1940, with U.S. encouragement, Pan American Airways pulled off a virtual "coup" by firing en masse German pilots and mechanics employed by its Colombian subsidiary and replacing them with North Americans.
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United States officials also mounted a diplomatic offensive to promote hemispheric security. At a 1939 conference in Panama, the delegates created a "neutrality zone" extending from three hundred to one thousand miles around the hemisphere in which non-American nations were forbidden from committing hostile acts. At Havana the following year, in the
atmosphere of panic after the fall of France, the United States sought to prevent Germany from seizing the territories of its European victims. The Act of Havana provided that any American republic (namely the United States) might step in and establish a provisional regime should a hemispheric territory be threatened by an outside power. The delegates also adopted a resolution providing that aggression against any American nation would be considered an attack on all.

The most innovative instrument of the administration's prewar diplomatic offensive was a vast expansion of the cultural programs created under the Good Neighbor policy. In August 1940, Roosevelt named Nelson Rockefeller, thirty-two-year-old grandson of the oil baron, to head the Office for the Coordination of Commercial and Cultural Relations Between the American Republics. Within a short time, the energetic Rockefeller created a remarkable range of programs to counter German influence and sell the North American way of life. His office distributed articles from U.S. newspapers and magazines and itself produced
En Guardia,
a magazine distributed throughout Latin America. It purchased advertising space in pro-U.S. newspapers to promote U.S. radio programs and blacklist stations carrying Nazi broadcasts. It sponsored art exhibitions and musical concerts. A tour of the east coast of Latin America by the outspoken anti-fascist maestro Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony in 1940 met such a triumphal response that a U.S. diplomat hailed it as a "United States' 'fifth column.' "
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The State Department later conceded, obviously with a touch of envy, that Rockefeller had pulled off "the greatest outpouring of propagandistic material by a state ever."
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As the United States edged closer to war with Germany in the summer of 1941, tensions with Japan increased sharply. The two nations held divergent visions for the future of East and Southeast Asia. Especially because of the vulnerability of resource-rich European colonies in Southeast Asia, the fall of France for each tightly linked the European war with that in Asia, making resolution of differences far more difficult. In addition, in attempting to influence their adversary's actions, they repeatedly misjudged each other, taking steps that produced results opposite from those intended. Two nations that did not want war and had every reason to avoid it moved inexorably in that direction.

China remained the most difficult issue. After early, decisive victories, Japan's war machine bogged down in the vast hinterland of China, unable to win the war and, because of the vast blood, treasure, and pride already invested, unwilling to liquidate it. Frustration brought increasingly harsh treatment of Chinese in occupied areas, provoking outrage in other countries. For many Americans, by the late 1930s China had become an important cause. The United States had modest economic interests there, and some businessmen still clung to dreams of a vast China market. Japanese aggression evoked widespread sympathy for the Chinese people. Lobbying groups like United China Relief depicted a valiant and overmatched China "holding the western ramparts for us and for the democratic way of life in the world."
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Leading citizens like Stimson had long believed that because it depended on the United States for crucial resources, Japan was a prime target for economic pressure. As the war dragged on, there were growing demands for U.S. aid to China and sanctions against Japan. Roosevelt and Hull, to whom the president assigned major responsibility for East Asian matters, were more cautious. With Munich still fresh in their memories, they did not want to appear to be appeasing Japan. But with war in Europe looming and the nation grossly unprepared, they did not want to risk war either. Thus in July 1939, Hull indicated that the 1911 commercial treaty with Japan would be permitted to lapse in six months. When that happened in early 1940, he announced that trade would henceforth be on a day-to-day basis. The administration hoped to restrain Japan by keeping it guessing regarding U.S. intentions.
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