FOURTEEN

The Maelstrom of War

When Japanese bombs rained on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, it altered the direction of Herbert Hoover’s career. Looking back, he had lost all three of his major objectives since 1938, including his quest for redemption at the polls in 1940; his struggle to play a role in war relief of Europe; and his attempts to avert war. Now he ceased his open opposition to Franklin Roosevelt’s policies and loyally supported the war effort, although privately he continued to compile FDR’s diplomatic blunders for a work that would not be published until long after Hoover’s death. The day following the Japanese attack, the ex-president summoned the nation to duty. “The president took the only line of action available to any patriotic American,” he proclaimed. “He will and must have the full support of the entire country. We have only one job to do now and that is to defeat Japan.”¹

Hoover’s feelings were complex. After the attack, Hoover unreasonably resented the lack of a second opportunity to reorganize food resources on the home front in service of the war effort. After America entered the war he offered his services through two intermediaries, publisher John C. O’Laughlin and Bernard Baruch, a Democratic businessman and a mutual friend of the president and Hoover. The commander in chief was caustic in his rejection of Baruch’s entreaty, replying acidly, “Well, I’m not Jesus Christ. I’m not going to raise him from the dead.”²

Hoover found himself in an anomalous situation. He had warned that placing economic sanctions on Japan was dangerous; it would not deter the Japanese warlords and might lead to military conflict. Some, but not all, of Hoover’s fears were borne out. He was as surprised by the timing of the attack on Pearl Harbor as most Americans were; he also initially believed Nazi Germany would defeat Communist Russia. Ultimately, he conceded that the Soviets would triumph and was reconciled to their absorption of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bessarabia, half of Poland, and large chunks of Sweden. He warned his countrymen not to trust Stalin, inveighing, “Five years after this war we’ll be arming Germany and Japan to help protect us from Russia.” He believed Roosevelt and some of his advisers were naïve about Stalin’s ambitions and the nature of Communism.³

During the war, Hoover muted his criticism of the Roosevelt administration and threw himself wholeheartedly into striving for victory and a just peace. Though he considered it unlikely that the incumbent administration would solicit his advice, he kept himself available. Hoover avidly desired a role in reorganizing the home front. He continued and even accelerated his customary hectic regimen, testifying at congressional hearings, writing articles, delivering speeches, and dabbling in Republican politics, though he no longer aspired to the White House. He hoped the articles and his speeches would sway public opinion, and, more important, establish a record for history. Hoover retained the respect of many in both parties and maintained a high profile in GOP politics. Although Hoover endeavored to mend fences between the liberal Willkie wing and the conservative wing of the GOP, the estrangement widened as Willkie moved left and courted favor with FDR. For his part, the former president solidified his alliance with Alf Landon. Willkie lent no help to Republican candidates in the 1942 congressional elections, yet the GOP gained ten seats in the Senate and forty-seven in the House. Meanwhile, Willkie embarked on a worldwide goodwill tour that implicitly endorsed Roosevelt’s liberal internationalist policies. This was the prelude to another attempt by Willkie to win the Republican nomination in 1944. Although Hoover conceded that he would not be offered a job helping to mobilize the home front, he nonetheless continued to desire a role in food relief.⁴

Hoover believed the president had bungled both foreign policy and domestic policy during the war, although he muted his criticism after the war began. The ex-president was concerned that the home-front effort was disorganized, ill coordinated, and hydra-headed, and that FDR had overbureaucratized the stateside machinery and created various agencies and bureaus with overlapping activities, which led to inefficiency. He pointed to inefficient production and distribution of food resources for domestic consumption, the military, and the worldwide famine certain to follow the war. He called for draft exemptions for some farmworkers, whom he considered as essential as munitions workers, and furloughs for others at harvesttime. Hoover believed the free market should be permitted to function as normally as practicable during wartime. Some Republicans advocated Hoover himself as the man best qualified to untangle the red tape. Instead, he published numerous articles, delivered speeches, and testified on Capitol Hill about topics related to efficient production and distribution of food. He also realized that some idealists among the New Dealers wanted to exploit the opportunity presented by the war to redistribute wealth and create a leviathan welfare state. Hoover believed coupling war mobilization with social reform would detract from the priority of winning the war. Further, the GOP conservative believed that some New Dealers, including the president himself, underestimated the moral evils of Communism. Indeed, a few even sympathized with it. Hoover himself possibly underestimated the moral evils of Nazism until he learned of the full horrors of the Holocaust, which appalled him. Hoover was also dismayed by elements of the president’s diplomacy, which he considered too compliant to Soviet expansionism and British imperialism during the summit conferences held during the war. He believed the New Dealer was moving away from his earlier commitment to internationalism and self-determination for nations and returning to the old balance-of-powers concept in which the Great Powers divided the world into spheres of influence. Nonetheless, near the end of the war the Chief was less critical of Roosevelt’s concessions at Yalta than were some of his friends, who believed Hoover staked too much on an updated successor to the League of Nations. He emerged as the voice of reason among the divided Republican factions.⁵

From 1939 to 1947, Hoover crusaded for food and medical relief for the civilian populations in the German-occupied nations in Europe. After an appeal to him by the exiled governments of Belgium, Norway, the Netherlands, and Greece, Hoover proposed that the American and British governments create a public organization to feed these nations. Churchill, with the backing of Roosevelt, refused. Upon their refusal, Hoover created the National Committee on Food for the Small Democracies, which operated from 1940 through 1942, subsisting on donations. However, its shipments were terminated by the British blockade. The Great Humanitarian also played an unofficial role in organizing the home front during the Second World War. He cooperated with farm and business organizations in staging numerous conferences inspiring methods to increase production and to resolve economic problems during the conflict. At their request, Hoover appeared before numerous congressional committees to testify about economic strategy and relief issues.⁶

Hoover’s efforts to feed the destitute masses of war-ravaged Europe during and after World War II included some of the continent’s largest concentrations of Jews and helped save millions from starvation. He pleaded with FDR to open the gates of America and admit Jews who were being persecuted in Europe, especially in Poland. The president replied that the only practical way to help the Jews was to win the war. In 1943, Hoover broadcast a speech before the Emergency Conference to Save the Jewish People in Europe. The ex-president remarked that there was no language that would either portray their agonies or describe their oppressors. “To find relief for them is one of the great human problems today.”⁷ He called upon the Allies to provide food relief as well as clothing and medicine to Jews who had escaped Germany to neutral nations. During the same period, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise presented definitive evidence that Jews from Poland and Russia were being gassed and cremated at sites such as Treblinka and Auschwitz. FDR’s Jewish treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau, pressured the president to act and warned him that if he did not he might lose Jewish votes. Within days of his meeting with Morgenthau, Roosevelt issued an executive order creating the War Refugee Board. Its mission was described as to take “effective measures for the rescue, transportation, maintenance and relief of the victims of enemy oppression.” The board’s efforts resulted in saving about two hundred thousand Jews and twenty thousand non-Jews and laid to rest the argument that the only way to help the Jews was to win the war.⁸

By late 1943 there was a consensus among most Americans in both parties that Jews needed and deserved a homeland, but there was no consensus on where that homeland should be. Most Jews desired land in Palestine, their ancient home, but many Arabs vehemently rejected the proposal and vowed to fight to prevent its implementation. Hoover proposed a plan to create a homeland for Arabs in a fertile but uninhabited portion of Iraq in order to open Palestine for the Jews, but political leaders considered this impractical. Near the end of the war several proposals were considered to end the friction between Arabs and Jews. Hoover viewed the issue in nonideological terms but recognized that both Arabs and Jews had a historic claim to Palestine. The new United Nations proposed to partition Palestine, creating both Arab and Jewish states, which failed to satisfy passionate nationalists on either side. Further, the Western nations would not agree to any proposal that would inhibit their access to Arab oil. Nonetheless, by 1944, when the full extent of the Holocaust was realized, both party platforms endorsed unrestricted Jewish immigration to Palestine and the creation of an independent Jewish state there. Both common sense and the logic of politics dictated the long-delayed conversion.⁹

Once he realized that he would not be invited to help his country organize for war, Hoover decided to devote the bulk of his time during the conflict to serving his nation in another way. He would put his words into thoughts for articles and books. The articles might serve the short-term purpose of influencing public opinion. The books, more importantly, would preserve the historical record of his life and history and serve future historians and policy makers with raw materials that would still be read long beyond his own lifetime. Hoover had always read books for pleasure as well as for information, and he hoped his own books would contribute in that respect. In the process, the ex-president perfected his prose by dint of repetition, hard work, and meticulous attention to detail, and became a more polished writer. His mature books are sprinkled with quips and jovial self-insight. Hoover wrote not only about events he recollected, reinforced by research, but about those that were happening as he wrote. Some were written for contemporaries, but most targeted posterity. He left a greater legacy in writing than any other president save Theodore Roosevelt. The Hoover books are fundamentally reliable as history. They are straightforward, and he tried to make them as objective as possible, though he was fallible. During this period, writing was not the ex-president’s sole occupation, but it was the dominant one, and he grew to enjoy what had once been an arduous task. Near the end of his life, the former president became obsessed with completing the books he had planned before he died. Involuntarily retired from politics, he attended congressional hearings and political rallies, held press conferences, and continued his activities in Republican Party circles. He never relinquished his old friendships; loyalty was the mainstay of his life.

Hoover’s first wartime book, America’s First Crusade, published only a few weeks after Pearl Harbor, was based on an earlier series of four articles that had recently appeared in The Saturday Evening Post. The ex-president had hoped the book would be published in time to show by historical analogy that it was folly for America to become involved in the quarrels of Europe. He demonstrated the high expectations and tragic culmination of Woodrow Wilson’s dream for a fair peace and a League of Nations. Hoover considered America and Europe fundamentally different, having grown apart over the centuries. He blamed the failure of the Treaty of Versailles and the League largely on the cynicism of European statesmanship but also in part on Wilson’s flawed idealism. The author’s major purpose was to avoid a repeat of the mistake of involvement in a European war. Unfortunately, the book did not appear until after Pearl Harbor, when its core message was no longer relevant. Some reviewers blamed Hoover for taking an overly defensive military posture.¹⁰

After Pearl Harbor, Hoover was no longer interested in debating the wisdom of war and turned to writing a second book, coauthored with his friend diplomat Hugh Gibson, that intended to outline the framework of an enduring peace at the war’s end. Again, he used the Versailles conference as an example of what to avoid. This book, The Problems of Lasting Peace, attempted to provide guidelines for a more successful treaty than Versailles. By early 1942, they had completed a draft. They were gratified by the decision of The Reader’s Digest to publish it in advance as one of their condensed books, which gave the study immediate exposure to 5 million readers. The authors began by succinctly summarizing centuries of European wars and peacemaking attempts. They portrayed Wilson as a sincere reformer outmaneuvered by the cunning tactics and sleight of hand of the self-seeking European leaders. The conferees sliced and diced the American president’s Fourteen Points, leaving them in shreds. The authors developed guidelines for tactics they hoped would ensure the fabric of a lasting peace at the war’s end. Some of the ideas were not original, yet the authors took a more systematic approach to negotiating a settlement than had been done at Versailles. The historical case study was a mixture of theory and practice.¹¹

The authors assiduously spelled out their terms. The peace following the Second World War should be reasonable to victors and vanquished rather than punitive. It should be formulated over time rather than at one enormous, pressure-packed conclave. A long armistice should provide an interlude between the end of the fighting and the signing of the final document, to permit passions to cool. America should commit to joining an international organization, but one without power to impose its decisions by force. There should be no international army, but the United States and Britain should collaborate in utilization of air and sea power to maintain stability. The peace should initially be negotiated at a set of regional conferences before a larger gathering convened, and rulings should be enforced at the regional level; the United States must be largely responsible for the Western Hemisphere. The international organization ought to resort to the leverage of world opinion before using force. Hoover also opposed the continuation of international imperialism. His model peace would be rational and not dictated by a handful of nations.¹² The victors must disarm shortly after the disarming of the vanquished. Those who plotted aggression should be punished as war criminals, but ordinary conscripts were to be given the opportunity to rebuild their lives. As in America’s First Crusade, the authors used Versailles as a primer of mistakes to avoid. “When we got there we had high ideals, high aims, and great eloquence,” the authors wrote. For the future peace, “we must have something far more specific and definite.” The key to a successful treaty was meticulous planning over an extended period and a generous spirit. The writers wanted the book to reach average Americans as well as academicians. Hoover decided to invest time and money to ensure broad dissemination of the book, because he considered its message vital. It was published by Doubleday, Doran; the ex-president arranged for the Hoover Institution to subsidize it, which reduced the retail price to $2, and he purchased copies to donate to libraries. The Book-of-the-Month Club made the volume one of its selections, helping it to become a bestseller. The president-turned-historian raised money from friends to promote the volume.¹³

The study took a pragmatic and generous approach to peacemaking. Hoover wanted to avoid sowing the seeds of a future war. Free trade must be guaranteed and Germany should not be dismembered. The former enemy nations must be disarmed and their leaders tried as war criminals. The Allies should construct machinery to permanently ensure peace. The treaty would build in methods for the peaceful resolution of disputes, such as arbitration and mediation. The most vexing long-term problems ought to be settled after a cooling-off period once the participants at the original conference had been dispersed. Such problems might be delegated to separate international commissions. The book received critical praise for its ideas, logic, and common sense. Senator Arthur Capper of Kansas, who had opposed the League of Nations, endorsed Hoover’s analysis, as did journalist William Allen White, who had differed with the former president over foreign policy prior to Pearl Harbor. The elder statesman was gratified to learn the book was being used in some college classrooms.¹⁴

Hoover also embarked upon his longest project, finally published in 2011 as Freedom Betrayed, still incomplete at the time of his death and withheld for decades by his sons and other heirs because they considered it too controversial. The lengthy manuscript was written as a criticism of FDR’s foreign policies before and during World War II and expanded to include the early years of the Cold War. One prominent theme was the opening Roosevelt’s leadership provided for Communist expansion and the shrinking of the free world. The former president remained convinced that entry into the war had been a mistake, blaming Roosevelt and Stimson. Hoover built a case indicting the policies of FDR’s administration, listing some fifteen crucial blunders in statesmanship. He told a friend that the first chapter must include the fatal step taken in allying the United States with the Soviet Union. “When Roosevelt put America in to help Russia as Hitler invaded,” he said, “we should have let these two bastards annihilate themselves.”¹⁵ During the war Hoover also began work on three volumes of memoirs. The last was ultimately entitled The Great Depression, 1929–1941. He expected the books to be published posthumously, but he outlived his own expectations, and the final volume was published in 1951.

In January 1943 Hoover attempted to silence any speculation that he might become a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination once more. Well in advance of the following year’s convention, he publicly took himself out of the race. He wrote a reporter, Kent Cooper of the Associated Press, dispelling rumors that he would seek the nomination. This time he was firm. The ex-president said he would even decline a draft. “I wish to reiterate again my statement that I will not again accept political office,” he wrote. “I hope such misstatements will cease. I believe I can be of more service to my country at my time of life with an occasional discussion or by providing advice upon public affairs. I should like to be able to do so free from political imputation.” For the first time since he had departed from the White House, Hoover had disavowed beyond question any desire to hold the office of president again. In addition, Hoover took no public role in the nominating campaign. He had reservations about virtually all the candidates. Unfortunately, the man he favored privately, Ohio senator John W. Bricker, was probably the weakest of the top four contenders.¹⁶

Republicans looked hopefully toward the presidential contest of 1944. The chief candidates were Willkie, Dewey, California governor Earl Warren, and Bricker, perhaps the most conservative of the serious candidates. Willkie had coveted the nomination since his defeat in 1940, and the interim had been one long campaign for him, but he dropped out of the race after losing badly in the early primaries. Neither Warren nor Bricker waged vigorous primary campaigns, and Dewey was clearly the front-runner. Hoover was not enthusiastic about Dewey, and the New Yorker kept a distance from the ex-president. The Chief considered Dewey able and intelligent, but vain and coldly calculating in his bid for votes. Hoover’s speech at the convention once again was better received than that of any other speaker. Dewey received the nomination as expected. He offered second place on the ticket to Warren, who declined, then to Bricker, who accepted.¹⁷

The ex-president played no active role in the campaign. Dewey did not invite him to take part and Hoover did not offer. The incumbent won a fourth term, although by a smaller margin than in his earlier campaigns. The Democratic standard-bearer appeared weak and barely able to light a cigarette or hold a coffee cup because of trembling hands, yet he concealed his declining health from the public. Dewey’s defeat only confirmed Hoover’s belief that the GOP had nothing to gain by straddling issues and running candidates who seemed pale images of the New Deal.¹⁸

The Democrats dusted off Charles Michelson to slay the dragon of Hoover once more during the campaign. Whomever the GOP nominated, the Democrats inevitably ran against Hoover. It seemed like an endless rerun of 1932 newsreels, with stock villains. Roosevelt adviser Tommy Corcoran snidely remarked to a group of fellow Democrats, “We ought to be eternally grateful to Herbert Hoover, who has been our meal ticket for twelve years.” Because Dewey realized this, he studiously avoided Hoover. The proud former president received a curt order from Dewey’s campaign advisers to avoid the candidate. Once again, Hoover seemed ostracized by both parties. During his speech at the convention, Hoover chose to cool speculation and dodged photographers who sought to photograph Dewey near him. This was pragmatism on Dewey’s part; he did chat with Hoover occasionally in private after he was safely nominated. For his part, Hoover’s sparse comments were directed against Roosevelt’s policies.¹⁹ He grew increasingly critical of what he considered FDR’s bungling of food supplies during the war. It was riven by a “muddle of uncontrolled food prices, local famines, profiteering, black markets, and stifled farm production.” Having ignored the model that had served the nation well during the Great War, Roosevelt would face a crisis of world famine at the end of the present war, Hoover warned. The administration would be unprepared to deal with it. Hoover continued to hope that he could find a way to provide food relief to the occupied nations of Europe. However, Churchill was adamantly opposed and Roosevelt conceded.²⁰

For Herbert Hoover, 1944 saw the death of his most beloved. Lou cherished the bucolic surroundings and the memories within the walls of her dream house at Palo Alto, but when her husband decided to move permanently into a hotel suite in New York to be near the political action, she loyally followed, never complaining. She adjusted her lifestyle to enjoy the social and cultural amenities of the metropolis. Lou attended plays and concerts, visited museums, shopped and collected, and continued to work with the Girl Scouts and other charities. Her life was never marred by prolonged maladjustment to circumstances. She was content, even proud, to live in Bert’s shadow. Physically attractive in youth, she was still a beautiful woman as First Lady, proudly declining to die her white hair. Her physical vigor declined sharply after leaving the White House, and she lacked the vitality of her youth, though she remained optimistic and vivacious.²¹

Lou became slightly more active politically after leaving the White House. Like her husband, she believed the New Deal was harming the country. She objected to FDR’s ideology and considered him obsessed with perpetuating himself in office. She feared the possibility of a dictatorship entrenching itself in America. Lou’s political evolution to the right continued after the 1936 election. If anything, she became somewhat more conservative than her husband, though less vocal, and her emphasis lay in moving forward. Lou helped energize Pro-America, an organization of conservative women that had been created in 1932. During the 1940s Lou became involved in promoting her husband’s books, especially those that emphasized patriotism. Her emphasis was on positive programs, wholesome values, and ethical politics. Like her husband, she retained a steadfast interest in the welfare of children, education, and helping others. Lou could be fun loving and gregarious, but she possessed an inner reserve, a sense of calm and purposefulness. She resembled her husband in possessing a deep reservoir of duty. Like Bert, she never complained.²²

On Friday, January 7, 1944, Lou attended a concert by an old friend, Mildred Dilling, a harpist who had performed at the White House for the Hoovers. Lou invited Bunny Miller, Hoover’s secretary, to accompany her. She suggested that she walk home, but she tired quickly and hailed a cab. Often Bunny dined with Lou after concerts, but this evening Lou did not invite her in. Rather, she went straight to her room to rest. Hoover and his old friend Edgar Rickard were at the apartment, preparing to depart for dinner. Hoover stepped into Lou’s bedroom to kiss her good night and found her slumped on the floor, stricken by a heart attack. Hoover cut through her dress, tried to resuscitate her, and summoned the house doctor. The physician pronounced her dead. She was sixty-nine. Although Hoover would live for another twenty years, he would never find another, and would not try. He did not show much emotion—he never did—but he must have felt hollow inside. He rarely mentioned Lou after her death. Franklin Roosevelt transmitted a gracious telegram and Eleanor sent a personal handwritten letter. Hoover responded in kind, with a telegram to FDR and a written note to Eleanor.²³ The grieving husband told his family, “I have lived with the loyalty and tender affection of an indomitable soul almost fifty years.” For her part, Lou wrote to her sons in her will: “You have been lucky boys to have had such a father and I am a lucky woman to have had my life’s trail alongside the path of three such men and boys.”²⁴

The following Monday some fifteen hundred mourners packed into St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church near the Waldorf for the former First Lady’s funeral. There were numerous celebrities, political figures, and old friends, and two hundred Girl Scouts. A Quaker minister read from the Bible. The service was simple, and there was no eulogy. Hoover’s two sons flanked the widower in a pew. Lou’s body then traveled by rail to Palo Alto, where she was interred. At the grave-site services at Palo Alto before her family and a few intimate friends, Ray Lyman Wilbur delivered a brief eulogy in which he said, “She was just as interested in the smallest Girl Scout as in the biggest economic or political person.” Journalistic eulogies also emphasized the many lives she had touched.²⁵ When the West Branch Quaker who had risen to the presidency died in 1964, Lou’s body was disinterred and moved to lie beside his in the small park on the grounds that include the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, where they can be together in death as in life. On his deathbed, Hoover requested that his library close Lou’s papers to researchers for at least twenty years. She had written some angry words about a few people who had maligned her husband during political campaigns, and he did not want to stir those memories. The delay in processing and opening her papers probably contributed to her becoming an underappreciated, sparsely studied First Lady.²⁶

The grieving ex-president was deluged with sympathetic letters and telegrams. Lou’s death left a void in his life that was never adequately filled. He wrote even more furiously and passionately, driving himself ferociously to the end of his life. He leaned even more heavily on his old male friends. Hoover, of course, made some new friends, but they could not displace those he had bonded with in his earlier work. Being in public service or politics together is like fighting a war jointly, or playing a team sport. It produces a bonding that is lifelong. Holed up in his suite in the Waldorf, Hoover was haunted by the memory of his mother and his wife. He was alone with his heaps of book projects, his reading material, artifacts of his travels, honorary degrees, awards, and valuable collectibles. His permanent companion was a Siamese cat he named “Mr. Cat.” Yet he was never bored by idleness, remained in contact with friends, and was visibly stoic.²⁷

The ex-president continued to monitor developments in the war and diplomacy. He received unofficial briefings from the War Department and remained on cordial terms with War Secretary Henry L. Stimson. He learned as early as December 1944 of the race to develop a nuclear bomb. Late in January 1945, when FDR left for a parley at Yalta with Stalin and Churchill, Hoover expressed his skepticism of the outcome of Great Power diplomacy to Ray Lyman Wilbur. He predicted that Roosevelt would return with a bundle of Stalin’s promises, which would flee like frightened antelope. Hoover was distrustful of the agreements reached at Yalta, but he confided to Landon that, publicly, at least, it would be unwise to oppose them because it would only divide the American people—and it would be futile as well. Hoover said that if the agreements had elements of success, he would be gratified, though he was skeptical of that outcome. However, he wanted them to succeed because he wanted world peace. Increasingly, however, Roosevelt’s diplomacy near the end of the European war emphasized realpolitik at the expense of his earlier ideals expressed in the Atlantic Charter. With some resignation, Hoover conceded that the only viable option was to use the new international organization to rectify the shortcomings of the Great Power agreements. Such an arrangement reminded him of Wilson’s strategy at Versailles, which had resulted in a war. Hoover had the disturbing sense of history repeating itself.²⁸

On April 12, 1945, President Roosevelt died at Warm Springs, Georgia, his private aquatic resort for people with disabilities. Although he had long been ill, his death shocked the nation. Hoover was gracious in his response to the passing of the man who had tried to destroy him politically and had denied him even the minimum courtesies customarily extended to a former chief executive. “The nation sorrows at the passing of its president,” the Chief said in a statement to the press. “Whatever differences there may have been, they end in the regrets of death,” he added. “The new president will have the backing of the country. While we mourn Mr. Roosevelt’s death, we shall march forward.” Although eight years older than Roosevelt, Hoover had outlived his archenemy. In the final days, Eleanor had sought to reconcile the men, but her husband had obstinately refused.²⁹ Hoover hoped to stimulate a revival of conservatism in the post-Roosevelt era. Already he was collaborating in the liftoff of a new conservative journal, Human Events, to compete with liberal and radical journals such as The New Republic, The Nation, and New Masses, which had achieved near dominance in universities and among the intellectual elite.³⁰

On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered, and Hoover immediately turned his attention to the feeding of postwar Europe, especially the saving of children from imminent famine. Meanwhile, war continued to rage in the Pacific. American marines crept incrementally closer to the home islands, the battles growing increasingly bloody. President Truman sought a negotiated peace but also pondered use of a powerful new weapon, the atomic bomb, which could destroy an entire city. Hoover knew of the attempt to build a superbomb, but its sudden use on Japanese cities revolted him. It lifted war to a new level of destruction and killed noncombatants, including children, indiscriminately. He had consistently opposed the bombing of civilian populations, and he considered the atomic bombs literal overkill. Hoover now faced an uncertain future. Many Americans considered prewar noninterventionists such as Hoover unpatriotic, no different from extreme isolationists or Nazi sympathizers, forgetting the polls that showed a majority of Americans opposed going to war before Pearl Harbor. The new president was a wild card in the deck.³¹

Hoover opposed the Dumbarton Oaks draft of the United Nations Charter and proposed several amendments, some of which were subsequently incorporated into the charter written at San Francisco in June 1945. Between March 25 and March 28 the ex-president had published four articles outlining his ideas for a successor to the League of Nations. He attempted to apply lessons learned from its failure to the new document. In his unofficial capacity, the GOP spokesman exerted his influence on world politics and, theoretically, as a political philosopher, in trying to shape the framework of the new organization. His desire for an enduring peace had not been dimmed by the maelstrom of war; in fact, it had been enhanced. His articles and public statements mirrored ideas he had previously discussed in The Problems of Lasting Peace. The new organization should be decentralized, with regional peacekeeping bodies. Sufficient time should be devoted to drafting the document in order to get it right. Once done, it could not be easily undone. The defeated powers should be disarmed totally and immediately; the victors should be disarmed partially and incrementally. Hoover stated that the UN must ban military alliances and specifically define aggression. It should wrap the skeleton of its framework in spiritual garments and study the causes of war. Ex–New Dealer Raymond Moley praised Hoover’s recommendations. Hoover’s former adversary told the elder statesman that his suggestions for the charter were “exactly what is needed at this time of confusion and drift.” He added that “the country never needed you more than it needs you now” and urged him to speak up. In their elder years, the men had become close friends.³²

Although the UN Charter rejected most of Hoover’s recommendations while adopting a few, the GOP spokesman spoke out in favor of the completed document, as he had for ratification of the imperfect Treaty of Versailles. In postwar America, many Republican leaders opposed the successor to the League of Nations. The role that Hoover played in advocating a largely, if not completely, bipartisan foreign policy after Pearl Harbor was significant, though he was not alone in closing ranks. However, the wartime allies had not even waited until the war ended, much less observed a cooling-off period, to draft a tentative plan for peace. Neither had they defined aggression, created regional subgroups, or made immediate plans for disarmament. The Republican statesman disliked the Security Council’s veto power, which he believed might paralyze action, which it often did. The draft did contain a “bill of rights” pertaining to nations, one of Hoover’s suggestions. Despite its shortcomings, he backed the organization on July 18, in an address in San Francisco devoted to the UN, stating that it probably was as good as was reasonable to expect. The Great Humanitarian of the Great War added the caveat that Americans should not expect the updated version of the League to ensure a lasting peace. Enforcement would lie in the hands of the Great Powers, who had already begun to quarrel before the war ended. Hoover followed up with a speech at Long Beach on August 11, where he warned that a growing number of nations were succumbing to the clutches of Communism. A short time later, the ex-president’s longtime nemesis Hiram Johnson, with whom he had reconciled, died. One by one, Hoover was outliving his friends and foes alike. Some of the statesman’s friends suggested him as a temporary appointment to fill the Senate seat, but Governor Earl Warren appointed wealthy publisher William Knowland. Hoover’s appointment was probably unrealistic because he had lived chiefly in New York since 1940.³³

Although he was never invited to join the Roosevelt administration’s efforts to win the war, Hoover served his country in a variety of ways during the conflict. Following his presidency he had become a leader of the Boys Clubs of America (BCA) and by 1936 was already chairman of the board. The BCA appealed to Hoover’s sense of voluntarism, self-help, patriotism, and community service. Clubs operated in urban areas, offering wholesome recreation, vocational training, and the opportunity to bond with adult mentors and other boys. Hoover also viewed clubs as an alternative to street gangs bred by city slums, which generated juvenile delinquency. During World War II, the BCA was a leader in mobilizing the home front to win the war. It emphasized patriotism and physical fitness and showed the advantage that democracy gave boys for choosing their occupation and obtaining an education. It also trained teenage boys in skills needed by the armed services and by war industries. Most clubs had an indoor swimming pool, offered a variety of team and individual sports, and provided free, regular physical and dental examinations. They offered classes in carpentry, woodcraft, electrical skills, writing, painting, typing, radio operations, photography, and model airplane building. They also instructed boys in music, drama, and comedy, staged shows, and sponsored marching bands. They maintained libraries including fiction, nonfiction, newspapers, and magazines. Stories were read aloud to younger children. Their chief objective was to prepare boys from low-income families for the responsibilities they must face. During the war a large number of members left the BCA to enter the military, and many returned afterward. Hoover quickly became the BCA’s most visible promoter and most prolific fund-raiser, tapping his network of wealthy friends, corporations, and foundations, delivering speeches nationwide, and sending out thousands of personal letters. Despite a shortage of resources during the war, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation donated $10,000 in 1943, and that year the W. K. Kellogg Foundation gave $25,000. Hoover also assisted the organization with generous bequests from friends. He frequently spoke at the annual banquet. Hoover operated primarily at the national level, but he also delivered speeches to help clubs in major cities raise money for large capital expenditures, such as buildings and equipment. He later became an important fund-raiser for a building in New York City, named after him, to house the national headquarters.³⁴