On Inauguration Day, January 20, 1941, Roosevelt paused to pen a handwritten letter of support to Churchill, quoting a verse from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “The Building of the Ship”:
Sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great.
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hope of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
Churchill was so moved by the message that he quoted it in a February broadcast, directly addressing the United States: “Put your confidence in us. Give us your faith and your blessing, and under Providence all will be well. We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools and we will finish the job.”
Among the tools FDR was pushing was a program that came to be known as Lend-Lease. It was a simple idea: to provide military aid to allies with the agreement that materials would be returned at the end of the war. FDR used a neighborhood analogy to describe the idea in a press conference on December 17, 1940:
Suppose my neighbor’s home catches fire, and I have a length of garden hose four or five hundred feet away. If he can take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, I may help him to put out his fire. Now, what do I do? I don’t say to him before that operation, “Neighbor, my garden hose cost me $15; you have to pay me $15 for it.” What is the transaction that goes on? I don’t want $15—I want my garden hose back after the fire is over. All right. If it goes through the fire all right, intact, without any damage to it, he gives it back to me and thanks me very much for the use of it. But suppose it gets smashed up—holes in it—during the fire; we don’t have to have too much formality about it, but I say to him, “I was glad to lend you that hose; I see I can’t use it any more, it’s all smashed up.” He says, “How many feet of it were there?” I tell him, “There were 150 feet of it.” He says, “All right, I will replace it.” Now, if I get a nice garden hose back, I am in pretty good shape.
The Lend-Lease Act was introduced in Congress in early January and was hotly debated for weeks. Resistance came from the usual suspects, such as Charles Lindbergh. In the Senate, the most fervent opponent was Robert Taft, a son of former president William Howard Taft, who had built his reputation largely on an isolationist platform. (He never changed. Years after World War II, in 1952, he would fight Dwight Eisenhower, an internationalist, for the Republican nomination and go down to defeat.) But during the debate over Lend-Lease it was becoming clear that both parties were beginning to grasp the hard realities. Even if the United States didn’t enter the war directly, it could no longer refuse to help. The Lend-Lease Act was passed by a bipartisan coalition and signed into law on March 11. Now Harriman’s role as expediter in Great Britain was clearer.
On June 22, Hitler made his boldest move yet, breaking the nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union with an overwhelming assault. He’d never taken the pact seriously, and he thought the Soviet Union was ripe for the picking, telling his generals, “We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.” Furthermore, he was playing a long game. He believed the United States would eventually enter the war, and he wanted to dispose of the Soviet Union before a powerful tripartite alliance could form among England, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Furthermore, having conquered western Europe, an expansion into new territory would be the next step in his world domination strategy. He expected to be able to conquer the Soviet Union in a matter of months.
In the surprise attack, launched at 3:15 in the morning, more than three million soldiers and thousands of tanks and aircraft crossed into the Soviet Union in an area between the Baltic and Black seas. The Soviet army was overwhelmed and the air force virtually destroyed.
At first, the Soviets were ill equipped to fight back. In his memoirs, Nikita Khrushchev, who at the time was the head of the party in Ukraine, described a conversation he had had with Georgy Malenkov, the head of arms production. Khrushchev had asked for rifles, and Malenkov had told him that all the rifles had been shipped to Stalingrad.
“Then, what are we supposed to fight with?” Khrushchev asked.
“I don’t know,” Malenkov said. “Pikes, swords, homemade weapons, anything you can make in your own factories.”
Khrushchev was stunned. “You mean we should fight tanks with spears?”
“You’ll have to do the best you can,” Malenkov told him. “You can make incendiary bombs of petrol or kerosene and throw them at the tanks.”
For Churchill, it was unthinkable that the Soviet Union could fall to the Nazis. He recognized it would make winning the war nearly impossible. He went on the air to offer a rare hand of friendship. “No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I have for the last twenty-five years,” he said. “I will unsay no word that I have spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding.” Churchill despised the Soviet regime, but Hitler’s evils trumped all others. As he told his secretary, “If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.”
What would the US administration say? Americans, too, preached the evils of communism under Stalin’s totalitarian dictatorship. Roosevelt was more cautious than Churchill, weighing the implications of sending aid to Russia. He was also distracted by new dangers in the east. Japanese ships had moved into Indochina—a clear threat to the region, signaling a plan of aggression, despite Japan’s insistence that its aims were peaceful. So, when Hopkins volunteered to go to Moscow and meet with Stalin, Roosevelt agreed. He sent a personal message: “Mr. Hopkins is in Moscow at my request for discussions with you personally . . . on the vitally important question of how we can most expeditiously and effectively make available the assistance which the United States can render your country in its magnificent resistance to the treacherous aggression by Hitlerite Germany.”
Hopkins and Stalin met for two days, and Stalin was impressed with the envoy, who was obviously in poor health and had come so far to offer help. He admired that kind of steel. He was also impressed by Hopkins’s sincere interest in learning everything he could about the Soviet Union’s readiness and the challenges it faced. When it came to the matter of practical aid, Hopkins told Stalin he saw no reason why Lend-Lease would not apply to the Soviets, citing a clause in the bill extending aid to “any country whose defense the president deemed vital to the United States.” Hopkins knew it was a hard sell for FDR; the nation might balk at sending military aid to the Red Army. But Hitler’s attack had dramatically changed the calculation, making allies of old enemies. Hopkins once again proved his skill as an ally and negotiator. He had the ability to set aside preconceptions and look at the big picture.
Although Hopkins thought that meeting with Stalin was “like talking to a perfectly coordinated machine,” he could not help but be struck by Stalin’s personal strength as an old warrior and his courage in the face of what seemed a nearly insurmountable force. As Hopkins took his leave, he watched the dictator, standing alone, rugged and austere, “in boots that shone like mirrors,” short and solid, with “huge hands, as hard as his mind.”
Predictably, many Americans protested against giving aid to the Soviet Union, particularly Catholics, who couldn’t square an alliance with godless communism to their faith. Roosevelt reached out to Pope Pius XII, with whom he had a friendly relationship, writing “In my opinion, the fact is that Russia is governed by a dictatorship, as rigid in its manner of being as is the dictatorship of Germany. I believe, however, that this Russian dictatorship is less dangerous to the safety of the nations than is the German form of dictatorship.” He added that the Soviet Union was also less dangerous to religion, an arguable point. It was an uncomfortable accommodation, which Roosevelt would find himself making repeatedly in the coming years. The pope responded carefully, noting that the Russian people did not necessarily reflect the will of their leaders and should be helped. By the end of October, $100 billion in shipments was making its way to the Soviet Union.
ON THE THIRD OF August, FDR went fishing in Cape Cod. At least, that was what most people, including his wife, believed. He set off on his presidential yacht, the USS Potomac, heading north for what was supposed to be a week of rest and relaxation. But the fishing trip was a carefully staged subterfuge to hide a secret meeting with Churchill. On August 5, he transferred to a battleship, the USS Augusta, and headed for Placentia Bay in Newfoundland. The Potomac returned to Cape Cod and docked there. To keep the ruse going, Ed Starling, the chief of the Secret Service, sat on the deck, dressed in typical Roosevelt seagoing garb, smoking a cigarette in a long holder. From a distance, he could almost carry it off, though the press was suspicious and rumors of a meeting with Churchill circulated. However, regular dispatches kept the fiction alive: “Cruise uneventful and weather continues fair. President spent most of the day working on official papers.”
Meanwhile, Churchill, accompanied by Hopkins, was departing England under cover of secrecy to make the dangerous journey. As they sped across the U-boat-infested Atlantic in the British battleship HMS Prince of Wales, Churchill and Hopkins played backgammon for a shilling a game. Hopkins took advantage of the prime minister’s lack of skill, winning about $32 and change Canadian. It took their minds off the danger and calmed Churchill’s nerves about the meeting with Roosevelt. “You’d have thought Winston was being carried up into the heavens to meet God,” Hopkins joked, recalling that at one point Churchill nervously said, “I wonder if he will like me.”
On August 9, as they neared the meeting area at Placentia Bay, the USS Augusta came into view, surrounded by the looming protection of destroyers. Churchill eagerly stomped on board and met FDR for the first time, save for the brief meeting they’d had in 1917, which Churchill, for one, did not remember. Now they greeted each other with the warmth of brothers.
For Churchill, that meeting meant everything. He was so full of relief and hope that he could barely contain himself. He had imagined Roosevelt as his partner in war for so long, he couldn’t resist thinking this would be the turning point. It didn’t happen that way, but it certainly commenced a promising courtship, if not a marriage.
On Sunday morning, FDR and his crew boarded the HMS Prince of Wales for Divine Service on the quarterdeck. British and US flags were draped side by side on the pulpit, and US and British chaplains took turns reading the prayers. Churchill himself had selected the hymns: “Eternal Father, Strong to Save,” “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” and “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.”
The following day, Roosevelt wrote King George, “I wish you could have been with us at Divine Service yesterday on the quarterdeck of your latest battleship. I shall never forget it. Your officers and men were mingled with about three hundred of ours, spread over the turrets and superstructure—I hope you will see the movie of it.”
The conversations of the coming days steered somewhat clear of the United States’ commitment to the war—to Churchill’s disappointment—focusing on articulating the two leaders’ common principles. FDR and Churchill didn’t always see eye to eye on what those would be. FDR spoke of the absolute sovereignty of nations, but Churchill disagreed. The British fight against totalitarianism had ignored the unsavory reality that the British had an empire, too, which practiced colonialism throughout the world. Colonialism was antithetical to American democracy (though the United States did have an array of territories), and FDR made that clear. In the end, Churchill chose not to insist on the point. So the statement of common principles, which would come to be known as the Atlantic Charter, was an ode to freedom and independence that would hardly have passed muster in Great Britain.
The principles were loosely stated, expressing the sovereign right of self-governance for all peoples, as well as equal rights to trade, open collaboration with all nations, peace on the seas, and a hope, after the defeat of Hitler, that all nations would abandon the use of force.
The Atlantic Charter was not a formal agreement and as such had no tangible impact. But at that first meeting of Roosevelt and Churchill, the symbolism was just as significant. When he was back in Washington, FDR would share the charter with Congress with little fanfare. His critics were unhappy with the entire episode and the language of the charter, which seemed presumptuous. Unbeknown to most people, it would be the starting framework of a postwar world.
On September 6, FDR was summoned to Hyde Park. Sara, just two weeks shy of her eighty-seventh birthday, was gravely ill. Roosevelt went to her room on the second floor and sat by her bed all day, talking softly to her. He remained in a vigil most of the night, sometimes joined by Eleanor. Sara Roosevelt died quietly just after noon the next day. She had lived to see her only son elected president three times and had presided over her own little empire. Shortly after her death, one of the property’s most majestic oaks toppled to the ground.
The president did not break down in tears or show the depth of his emotion. He only wanted to be alone. He went out to his car, which he was able to drive by himself because it was equipped with special hand brakes, and prepared to take a solitary drive. He was stopped by a Secret Service agent, who gently informed him that he must be accompanied, with an agent seated beside him and a car following.
During the simple funeral held at Hyde Park, the president did not betray any outward sign of grief. He was stoic throughout, as his mother had been when his father died. It was a Roosevelt trait. But those around him knew the depths of his sorrow.
He returned to Washington with a heavy heart, and the world news added to his depression. “Mr. Roosevelt was not playing the part of a leading tragedian in a play on world history, nor did he consider himself a Messiah vested with the responsibility of leading the world along a path of his own choosing,” Grace Tully would later write of FDR’s mood. “He felt—and there was ample evidence that the American people shared his feeling—that the integrity and dignity of humanity were being devastated by the Axis program of conquest.”
ON SEPTEMBER 22, 1941, the smiling, bespectacled face of Japanese ambassador to the United States Kichisaburo Nomura appeared on the cover of Time magazine with a story headlined “Japan: Honorable Fire Extinguisher.” Nomura was generally viewed with favor among Americans, who believed his efforts for a peaceful resolution were sincere. For months, he had been in negotiations with Cordell Hull, often at night in Hull’s apartment at the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington. Hull, a quiet, soft-spoken Tennessean, liked the personable Nomura, who had spent World War I in the United States as a naval attaché, but he was doubtful about his skills. “His outstanding characteristic was solemnity,” Hull observed, “but he was much given to a mirthless chuckle and to bowing.” He often wondered if Nomura was up to the task, and was constantly frustrated by his poor English; sometimes he wondered if Nomura understood what he was saying. Nevertheless, they were stuck with each other.
Essentially, Japan wanted the United States to stay out of its affairs in Indochina and to restore normal commercial relations. The United States sought Japan’s assurances that it would cease aggression, withdraw from Indochina, and assume a nonaggressive stance in the Pacific. The United States also wanted to draw Japan away from the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy. As Hull put it bluntly to Nomura, “If we were to go into an agreement with Japan while Japan has an outstanding obligation to Germany that might call upon Japan to go to war with us, it would cause so much turmoil in the country that I might be lynched.”
Hull, at the urging of the president, continued to try to find ways to stave off war, if only temporarily. That was made more difficult in October, when the government of Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe collapsed and was replaced by a more militaristic regime under the leadership of Hideki Tojo. Hull didn’t have much respect for Tojo, calling him “a typical Japanese officer, with a small-bore, straight-laced, one-track mind. He was stubborn and self-willed, rather stupid, hard-working, and possessed with a quantity of drive.”
Although Nomura tried to convince Hull that they would proceed as before, Hull guessed that that wouldn’t be the case. Very quickly Tojo had sent a message to Nomura, intercepted by US intelligence, that had set a firm deadline of November 25 for an agreement. The desperate Nomura met with the president and Hull on November 10, urging speed in the negotiations.
FDR, who knew about Tojo’s deadline, regarded the ambassador thoughtfully. “Nations must think one hundred years ahead, especially during the age through which the world is passing,” he said calmly. He essentially asked Nomura, why the rush? They’d been negotiating for only six months. Nomura kept pushing for a quick resolution, but his urgings sounded hollow.
FDR’s strategy was to play for time. His military and defense advisers had suggested various worst-case scenarios of what could happen, including Japanese attacks in the Philippines or Indochina. He thought the US defenses in the Philippines were strong enough to discourage an attack there, but in either case he wanted to be ready. In spite of Tojo’s private deadline, Nomura indicated that there would be a moratorium on “armed advancement” for three months as they negotiated.
On November 15, Hull presented Nomura with the outline of a proposal: if Japan would walk away from Indochina and agree to no further aggression, the United States would begin restoring its economic partnership. He hoped that could be a starting point, but the same day, he was jolted by the arrival of a special envoy from Japan, sent to work with Nomura and perhaps keep him on the straight and narrow. Hull felt an immediate dislike for the envoy, Saburo Kurusu, who struck him as the complete antithesis of Nomura. “I felt from the start that he was deceitful,” he wrote, noting that Kurusu, in his previous position as Japanese ambassador to Berlin, had put his signature on the Tripartite Pact. Tully referred to Kurusu as that “sly-looking little man.”
With Kurusu on the team, Japan presented its final offer, what Hull called a “take-it-or-take-the-consequences” proposal. Japan said it would withdraw its forces from southern Indochina if the United States would agree to end aid to China and Southeast Asia, lift the sanctions, and supply Japan with oil.
It was a nonstarter. The United States could not unilaterally take Japan at its word and withdraw aid to China, much less supply oil and other materials to a member of the Axis pact. Hull bristled. “It’s a pity,” he told Kurusu, “that Japan cannot do just a few small, peaceful things to help tide over this situation.” In a message to the president, the war and defense secretaries, and General Marshall, he wrote, “There is practically no possibility of an agreement being achieved with Japan.”
Although Hull realized that the situation was rapidly getting away from him, he tried one more effort; if nothing else, it might delay further action by Japan. He was well aware that Tojo’s deadline was approaching. A second intercepted communication to Nomura and Kurusu read that the deadline had been moved to November 29, but “This time we mean it, that the deadline absolutely cannot be changed. After that things are going to happen.”
Hull’s response on November 26, the so-called Hull Note, was a hardball play. Rejecting Japan’s latest offer, he outlined a ten-point plan that the United States would find acceptable. In Japan, the response was an immediate refusal, but this message wasn’t sent right away. Instead, Nomura and Kurusu were instructed to continue to negotiate or at least give the appearance of doing so.
The evening of Saturday, December 6, the Roosevelts had dinner at the White House for thirty-four guests, followed by a musical performance by the Canadian violinist Arthur LeBlanc. As he sat listening to the music, FDR’s thoughts were on Japan, calculating the next move. He believed that Japan might strike as early as the following week, as there were surveillance reports of movement by the Japanese fleet toward the Malaysian coast and Thailand. Late that afternoon he had dictated an urgent message for delivery to Japanese emperor Hirohito by Monday:
I address myself to Your Majesty at this moment in the fervent hope that Your Majesty may, as I am doing, give thought in this definite emergency to ways of dispelling the dark clouds. I am confident that both of us, for the sake of the peoples not only of our own great countries but for the sake of humanity in neighboring territories, have a sacred duty to restore traditional amity and prevent further death and destruction in the world.
He ended the letter, “May God have your Majesty in his safe and holy keeping. Your good friend, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”
The emperor had remained mostly silent as tensions mounted, as was the protocol, but earlier that fall, he had conveyed a rare expression of his desire for peace. FDR was hopeful that a final appeal from one peace-loving leader to another would strike a chord.
FDR sent the letter to Hull with the instruction: “Dear Cordell, Shoot this to [Ambassador] Grew—I think it can go in gray code [our least secret code]—saves time—I don’t mind if it gets picked up. F.D.R.”
But the message never reached Hirohito. Although Hull sent it Saturday evening, it didn’t get to Grew in Tokyo in time to have any effect. It turned out that Hirohito was not so peace loving after all.