On May 6, 1939, Bill Leahy arrived home after another long day at the Navy Department and was surprised by a party.1 For his sixty-fourth birthday, Louise had gathered all the officers she could find who had served under his command to help him mark this milestone. It was more than just a birthday—Leahy had reached the navy’s mandatory retirement age. Though neither he nor President Roosevelt had any desire for him to stop being chief of naval operations, nothing could be done to sidestep the rule. In three months, he would have to step down and leave the fleet.
Retirement held no appeal for Leahy. Still physically robust and mentally alert, he was confident in his own skin, seemingly over the doubts and insecurities that had plagued him during the early years of the Great Depression. After two years as CNO, he had a firm handle on all facets of the job and had shown himself to be a superb and politically sophisticated administrator. What’s more, he had become the public face of the US Navy. He had first stepped into the national spotlight in 1937 when famed pilot Amelia Earhart, along with her copilot, went missing over the central Pacific. Leahy placed the navy on alert, dispatching the aircraft carrier Lexington to assist in the search. For weeks he was widely quoted in newspapers across the nation as expectant Americans waited impatiently for the latest updates. The media exposure taught Leahy how to shape news stories in such a way as to reflect positively on the navy and the Roosevelt administration, a skill that would prove useful in his role as the president’s chief of staff.
Leahy’s fame grew as he worked with Congress to secure passage for naval appropriations and other fleet legislation. Moviegoers began to recognize him from newsreels: the long-faced admiral speaking slowly and carefully about naval preparedness in a low, rather dull voice. He hardly cut a dashing figure, but he carried himself with an air of gravitas and a no-nonsense demeanor that left an impression on audiences. On Navy Day in 1938, in an event broadcast on NBC radio throughout the country, Leahy gave a speech before a crowd at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, addressing the power and readiness of the US Navy.2
As Leahy honed his media abilities, he was also sharpening his political skills. The fight over the future of Tongue Point continued to rumble on even as Leahy stood fast against wasting money building up the facility.3 In December 1938, Oregon Republican Charles McNary, the Senate minority leader, dropped by Leahy’s office and made an unveiled threat to cut the naval budget if Tongue Point was not funded. Leahy was irritated, but he knew when a fight was lost.4 When a congressional report recommended an enlarged naval facility at Tongue Point, Leahy gave in gracefully, even testifying in favor of funding.5 McNary soon returned to Leahy’s office, acting as if the two men were the best of friends.6 Leahy diplomatically held his tongue, though he could not have been impressed with the senator’s behavior.
Leahy’s distasteful interaction with McNary indicated a change in his political outlook. Though he clung to the idea that he was politically independent, happy to work with Republicans and Democrats alike, he was, unconsciously or not, beginning to identify with the latter. Schmoozing with the Washington establishment as CNO, he had in fact become a member of that establishment, which was overwhelmingly Democratic. He dined with Roosevelt officials like Cordell Hull and Sumner Welles, as well as sympathetic newsmen such as Walter Lippmann. He was friendly with a range of Democratic politicians and frequented parties alongside DC’s powerbrokers. As a man who had the president’s ear, he was courted by officials who needed the administration’s support for efforts normally removed from the CNO’s remit.7
Indeed, Leahy was at home in Washington. He and Louise were slowly recovering from the loss of their life savings and even indulged occasionally, such as when they purchased a new Buick Roadmaster. They needed it, as their family was growing. A second grandchild, Robert Beale Leahy, was born in 1936, and the admiral continued to dote shamelessly on his granddaughter, Louisita. Leahy’s modest public celebrity extended to his wife: Louise launched ships, attended state dinners and receptions, and hosted foreign diplomats. She was an enthusiastic patron of the Naval Relief Society and the Red Cross.8 In 1939 she was even named to the advisory committee of the New York World’s Fair.
Having reached the top of his profession, Leahy found himself once again revisiting his past. In 1938, he returned to Wisconsin during a tour of naval facilities on the Great Lakes. In his boyhood hometown of Ashland, he addressed an American Legion convention and looked up all the old friends he could find. Receiving an honor he would cherish for the rest of his life, he was inducted as an honorary member of the local Bad River Chippewa tribe. An eagle headdress was placed atop his head while four “medicine” men with tom-toms and twenty “braves and squaws” performed a ceremonial dance of welcome. He was presented with a pair of beaded moccasins, a peace pipe, and two birchwood food plates and given the tribal name “Kitchi-Be-Ba-Mash,” which meant “Great Man Sailing Around.”9
Leahy’s sense of satisfaction never spilled over into self-aggrandizement, or, crucially, a desire to make himself into too prominent a personality. Serving the president was his highest priority, and this is what led Franklin Roosevelt in 1939 to decide that Leahy would be the man who would help him win the next world war. The old sailor was on the path to becoming the second most powerful man in the world.
Leahy had become one of the few people with whom Roosevelt felt he could escape the pressures of office. In February the president decided to observe the navy’s fleet exercises in the Caribbean. Recognizing an opportunity to relax and flee the dreariness of a Washington winter, he invited his CNO to join his entourage aboard the USS Houston. Leahy was given the cabin next to the president’s. For two weeks the party cruised at leisure, visiting Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and a number of smaller ports. Roosevelt and Leahy fished and chatted under a tropical sun, becoming so sunburnt they had to be covered in Noxzema. Over cocktails and cigarettes, the admiral bonded with the men who made up Roosevelt’s inner circle, including aides Edwin “Pa” Watson and Capt. Daniel Callaghan, and Roosevelt’s personal physician, Dr. Ross McIntire.
When the Houston finally joined the rest of the fleet for maneuvers, Roosevelt and Leahy watched as the ships steamed in various antiaircraft formations and conducted a classic battle-line engagement. One exercise that captivated the president was when the US fleet was divided into two parts. The larger force, acting as an unnamed European aggressor, attempted to seize a Caribbean naval base to establish a forward facility in the Western Hemisphere. The smaller force, representing the limited naval power the US could deploy in the area if most American ships were in the Pacific, tried to thwart them.10 As they looked on, Roosevelt stunned his friend by telling him that there was a strong likelihood that Leahy, upon retirement, would be named the next American governor of Puerto Rico.11 He wanted Leahy to help make the Caribbean more secure for American interests.
Not long after Roosevelt and Leahy returned from the Caribbean an event occurred that set the stage for the outbreak of World War II in Europe. On March 15, 1939, Adolf Hitler ordered the German Army to seize what remained of independent Czechoslovakia.* This was an open repudiation of everything the Nazi dictator had agreed to during the Munich Crisis of the previous October, and it destroyed the foundations of the appeasement policy that Britain and France had followed to that time. It was now clear that Hitler wanted more than just a large national German state. He was set on seizing new lands and oppressing other peoples. When almost immediately afterward Hitler made his next move and started agitating for control over German-populated areas of Poland, the British and French governments decided to take a much tougher line. Poland would not be sacrificed like Czechoslovakia.
Though neither Roosevelt nor Leahy were in favor of America jumping into any European conflict, and Leahy judged that the seizure of Czechoslovakia itself would not be enough to trigger a war, they both understood that if one did break out, the United States might be pulled into the fight. Leahy’s rhetoric about the Nazi state became noticeably harsher, even in his usually dispassionate diary.12 He also took a particularly trenchant line during cabinet meetings, much to the president’s delight. During the meeting on March 16, Roosevelt asked Leahy what he would do if the navy were ordered to seize the German liner Europa and that ship refused to surrender. Leahy replied without hesitation, “I’d sink her.”13 Roosevelt, pleased, told Harold Ickes a few hours later of his plan to send Leahy to Puerto Rico.
By early April the European situation had deteriorated further. The Polish government said that it would fight any attempt by the Nazis to seize their territory, while Hitler’s Italian ally, Benito Mussolini, invaded the small independent state of Albania, which lay across the Adriatic. With the sense of crisis growing, Leahy met with Roosevelt on April 11 to work out American policy. Cordell Hull was with them at first, but after the secretary of state left, the president turned to the admiral and said that if war did break out, Leahy would be recalled to the White House to serve the president as “an aide and an advisor.”14 The threat of war had concentrated Roosevelt’s mind and, faced with great peril, he had concluded that Leahy was the one person in the US government whom he wanted by his side. It was this foundation of a special role in Roosevelt’s life that would make Leahy the second most powerful man in the world during World War II.
For the next few months, it almost seemed like the president was preparing Leahy for his future post. Leahy became one of the first informed when Roosevelt made important foreign-policy decisions. For instance, on April 14, FDR told Leahy, along with Cordell Hull, that he was about to issue his soon-to-be-famous, and somewhat derided, statement to Hitler and Mussolini, asking the dictators to state publicly that they had no more territorial ambitions.15 In addition, he began tapping the admiral for jobs almost entirely removed from naval policy. In late April he asked Leahy to meet personally with Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins to discuss prospects for ending an ongoing coal strike and report back. Leahy took on these extra responsibilities while continuing his job running the navy.
Roosevelt was so pleased with the admiral’s performance that when Claude Swanson died suddenly in early July, the president contemplated appointing Leahy as the new secretary of the navy.16 In the end, he opted for a political appointment, Frank Knox, a Republican who could help gain bipartisan support for Roosevelt’s foreign policy. Having Leahy in Puerto Rico meant that he would be close enough that he could be recalled quickly if needed. To make such a recall simpler, Roosevelt told Leahy to ask the chairs of the House and Senate Naval Affairs Committees (Leahy’s friends Carl Vinson and David Walsh, respectively) to speed up a measure that made it possible for Leahy to be kept on the active navy list for an additional two years.17
Leahy’s last few weeks in office were taken up with preparations and celebrations. Much of his time was spent getting ready to take over in Puerto Rico, a job that appeared more daunting by the day, and he continued to look after the fleet, with one of his last moves to further augment the navy’s shore-based air arm.18 Meanwhile, the great and good of Washington, including the incoming chief of staff of the army, Gen. George C. Marshall, came by Leahy’s office to pay their respects. The navy threw a gala dinner in Leahy’s honor, attended by three hundred officers. On July 28, the president threw a surprise party for the admiral, awarding him the first of his Distinguished Service Medals. Two days later Roosevelt had Leahy come by the White House for a private conversation, stressing once again that he wanted Leahy by his side if the United States went to war.
On August 1, Leahy formally left office and Adm. Harold Stark became the CNO. Deciding he needed to get out of Washington for a few days, he and Louise hopped in the Roadmaster for a trip through Pennsylvania and New York, stopping off to visit friends along the way. Laconic as usual, the final duty entry in his diary was: “This brings to an end forty six years of active service in the Navy of the United States.” The president was more emotional. In the formal letter he sent to Leahy announcing his retirement, Roosevelt included in his own handwriting: “I just HATE to see you leave.”19
He meant every word. On August 30, as Leahy was about to board a ship for Puerto Rico, the war clouds had fully gathered over Europe. Nazi Germany was poised to invade Poland, and this time France and Britain were determined to fight. Roosevelt wanted one more strategic discussion with his friend and called Leahy in for a private, hour-long chat. They analyzed the coming war and what the US could or should do as a neutral power. Roosevelt once again told the admiral explicitly that he would be brought back to the White House if the country went to war. This time he was more specific, describing how he wanted Leahy to chair something similar to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “He informed me that if the United States becomes seriously involved in the European difficulty, it will be necessary for him to recall me from Puerto Rico and assign me to membership on a Four-Man-War Board, with the duty of coordinating the work of the State, War and Navy Departments.”20
Franklin Roosevelt was a man constantly surrounded by courtiers, flatterers, even potential rivals, all asking for favors or advantages. Often he would promise them positions or dazzle them with the possibility of future greatness. For Roosevelt, such offers were excuses, said to get himself out of sticky situations or to keep an ambitious person at bay. In the end, he typically left these courtiers disappointed or passed over. Leahy was different. Over the previous few months Roosevelt had gone to great lengths to prepare him to be his most important strategic wartime adviser. Leahy requested no favors, yet Roosevelt continually promised that a great position was on offer—and it would be Roosevelt who made sure that it happened.
With Bill Leahy, Franklin Roosevelt would always be true to his word.