The battle of Lend-Lease continues, Lindbergh
and Kennedy testify before Congress, Roosevelt
asks the FBI to investigate Lindbergh.
ROOSEVELT’S THIRD INAUGURATION offered a further chance for the president to win the American people to his side. He used the address to counter those, such as Anne Morrow Lindbergh, who had written that democracy was finished and that Nazism and Fascism represented a “new wave” of politics. He said:
There are men who believe that democracy, as a form of government and a frame of life, is limited or measured by a kind of mystical and artificial fate that, for some unexplained reason, tyranny and slavery have become the surging wave of the future—and that freedom is an ebbing tide. We Americans know that this is not true.1
Three days later, on January 23, Lindbergh sat before the horseshoe-shaped desk populated by the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The gallery was filled with more than a thousand spectators, eager to catch sight of the celebrity flier. This was the first time press photographers had been given a prolonged look at Lindbergh up close since the murder of his baby son in March 1932. Now, subjected for two and a half hours to whirring newsreel cameras and photographers’ flashing bulbs, he felt surrounded by “all the things I dislike and which represent to me the worst of American life.”2
Lindbergh did himself no favors when, asked point-blank whether he was sympathetic to Britain’s wish to defeat Hitler, he replied, “I am in sympathy with the people on both sides.” Asked whether he did not think it was important, in terms of America’s defense, for Britain to win, he answered, “No, Sir. I think that a complete victory, as I say, would mean prostration in Europe and would be one of the worst things that could happen.” He insisted that America’s best interests would be served if there were a negotiated peace. He added that if America were to enter the war, it “would be the greatest disaster this country has ever passed through.”3
Perhaps because Representative Bloom profusely thanked Lindbergh for being “one of the best witnesses that this committee has ever had,”4 Lindbergh felt he had performed well. “One or two of the Congressmen were a little unpleasant, but not for long,” he reported to his diary. “To my amazement, I found that the crowd was with me. They clapped on several occasions!” As always, however, Lindbergh had only seen what he wanted to see. He despised moderation and got a thrill from articulating unpopular thoughts. “I have no apology to make for the fact that I prefer adventure to security, freedom to popularity, and conviction to influence,” he wrote.5
The day after Lindbergh’s appearance, Hitler made a clumsy intervention in the Lend-Lease debate, claiming that Germany had no intention of waging war on America. “There exists no territorial, strategic, economic or political point of conflict,” read the release from the German Foreign Office. “The declaration of the American President that Germany intends to attack the United States is in every way without qualification an invention.” It bolstered Lindbergh’s claim that America was not vulnerable to attack by long-range bombers because “broad oceans render technically impossible warlike actions by one continent against another.”6
Hitler might have done better to consult with William R. Castle, Hoover’s under secretary of state, who had concluded that after Lend-Lease was passed the Führer would find in Roosevelt a new and wily opponent. By dint of his control of war supplies through Lend-Lease, it would be Roosevelt rather than Churchill who directed the democracies’ war strategy. The war was about to become a duel between Roosevelt and Hitler.
After a hectic month of campaigning for and against Lend-Lease, Gallup reported at the end of January that Roosevelt’s personal popularity was higher than at any time in his eight-year presidency, with 71 percent approving and 29 percent disapproving. Most telling, 38 percent of those who had voted for Willkie just two months before now approved of Roosevelt as president.7 The Lend-Lease debate was both educating Americans about war and winning the argument in Roosevelt’s favor.
Sometimes the artlessness and naïveté of the isolationists surprised even the president’s allies. On January 26, when the Senate committee began three weeks of public hearings, Nye demanded that Roosevelt personally canvass Hitler and Mussolini to discover their war aims and whether they were party to secret treaties. Only in this way, he said, could America avoid playing the “sucker part” in settling the “age-old disputes of Europe,” as it had done in World War One. Such simplistic, solipsistic solecisms were hardly helpful to the isolationist cause. As Senate Majority Leader Alben Barkley reminded Nye, it was “rather silly” for those who encountered a man with a knife to another’s throat to ask what the fight was about before helping the victim.8
On February 6, Lindbergh returned to Washington to appear before the Senate committee. Despite his father’s congressional career, Lindbergh had only a bare grasp of how politics on Capitol Hill worked in practice. He expressed surprise that, while much of the senators’ questioning was robust and “antagonistic,” during the break in proceedings his inquisitors were charming and friendly. “[Senator] Pepper has called me everything from a fifth columnist on down,” Lindbergh wrote in his diary, “but he was smiling and good-natured during the lunch hour. In a sense it demonstrates a dangerous irresponsibility in the speech of public men.”
Lindbergh’s opening statement to the senators allowed him to modify remarks made to the House committee that had, he felt, been misconstrued. He described his opposition to Lend-Lease as twofold: it was “a step away from the system of government in which most of us in this country believe,” and it would weaken rather than strengthen America. Speaking “with the utmost frankness,” he said he did not believe it “either possible or desirable for us in America to control the outcome of European wars.” He favored a negotiated peace because a British victory “would necessitate years of war and an invasion of the Continent of Europe” that would lead to “prostration, famine, and disease in Europe—and probably in America.”
Lindbergh did not believe that Britain could win. “If she does not win, or unless our aid is used in negotiating a better peace than could otherwise be obtained, we will be responsible for futilely prolonging the war and adding to the bloodshed and devastation in Europe,” he said. While Lend-Lease might buy time for America to rearm, “instead of consolidating our own defensive position in America, we are sending a large portion of our armament production abroad. In the case of aviation, for instance, we have sent most of it.”
He returned to his favorite theme, relative air force strengths. He had concluded from tours of European military airfields in 1936, 1937, and 1938 “that Germany was the natural air power of Europe, just as England [sic] is the natural sea power.” This judgment was not simply based on what he had seen but on “a combination of factors including geographical and meteorological conditions; national psychology; ability in the design, manufacture, and operation of aircraft; and upon a comparison of existing European air forces and manufacturing facilities.” He thought that America could not supersede Germany in air strength “in less than several years.”
With Lend-Lease sending warplanes to Britain, Americans would have “England as a bridgehead in Europe. And, one might say, with the American neck stretched clear across the Atlantic. . . . What we are doing . . . is giving up an ideal defense position in America for a very precarious offensive position in Europe.” He concluded by saying, “I do not believe that the danger to America lies in an invasion from abroad. I believe it lies here at home in our own midst, and that it is exemplified by the terms of this bill—the placing of our security in the success of foreign armies and the removal of power from the representatives of the people in our own land.”9
After a jokey start, in which Senator Pepper failed to see the humor in Lindbergh’s deadpan response to the question, “When did you first visit Europe?”—“1927, Sir,” the year he famously flew solo across the Atlantic—the world’s most famous flier was pressed on why he had remained silent on German aggression and atrocities. “Nothing is gained by publicly commenting on your feeling in regard to one side of a war in which your country is not taking part,” Lindbergh replied. Five hours of questioning failed to budge him from his mantra that Lend-Lease would “lead to failure in war, and to conditions in our own country as bad or worse than those we now desire to overthrow in Nazi Germany.”10
Lindbergh’s nonchalant disregard of the miseries and outrages inflicted by the Nazis did not bolster the isolationist cause. His views appeared cold and dispassionate when every night radio reporters in Britain told stories of the heroism of ordinary Brits enduring the Blitz. The Richmond News Leader wrote, “Millions would vote today to hang Lindbergh or to exile him. . . . Half the letters that have come to newspapers during the past few days have been abuse of him. Some of the communications have been so scurrilous that they could not be printed.” The author advised the flier that if he wanted to boost Nazism and keep America out of the war, he would be more effective by “keeping away from the committee room and plotting in the background.”11
The appearances before the committees of Lindbergh and Kennedy were the dramatic highlights of the Lend-Lease debate, but a great deal of the heavy lifting was done by administration members called to explain how Lend-Lease would work and by congressmen, aware that in the nation’s history few debates in Congress were as important as this. Roosevelt was eager to keep his top officials away from the close questioning of the committees, but that was not always possible. At first, the administration tried to prevent Republican members from questioning Marshall, Stark, Knox, Stimson, and George H. Brett, acting chief of the Air Corps, but they were all eventually allowed to testify.
Knox found himself playing cat and mouse with Nye, who asked about convoying. “You stand very much opposed to the idea of convoying merchantmen across the Atlantic?” Nye asked. Knox agreed. “You look upon it as an act of war?” Knox again agreed, though in later testimony he said he was bound by the president’s orders as commander in chief and would obey any order given.12 The isolationists were delighted to discover that Stimson took a different view. He thought supplies could be sent across the Atlantic “if necessary in our own ships and under convoy.” Pressed to explain why convoying in these circumstances would not be either illegal under international law or an act of war, Stimson cited resolutions passed at the International Law Association in Budapest in 1934, an argument that would have been more convincing had America ever agreed to them.
The Knox–Stimson double act continued over sea defenses. “We can keep non-American military power out of our hemisphere only through being able to control the seas that surround our shores,” Knox maintained. “Once we lose the power to control even a part of those seas, inevitably the wars of Europe and Asia will be transferred to the Americas. We need time to build ships and to train their crews. . . . Only Great Britain and its fleet can give us that time.”13
In his cross-examination of Stimson, however, Fish drew attention to the moral dilemma raised by Wheeler: if the war Britain was fighting was also America’s war, why were we not already at war? “If our Navy is not our first line of defense, and if Great Britain is our first line of defense, then it is our war, and it would be craven not to be in it. But I believe the American Navy is our first line of defense, and always will be, and we do not have to depend on anyone else,” said Fish. Stimson replied that he was in favor of helping Britain maintain her fleet. “At present, she, being at war, is providing for the defense of the North Atlantic, and we are vitally interested in that defense.”14
Later, Stimson suggested to the committee that all America was doing was buying time from “the only nation that can sell it”—Britain—and that the Lend-Lease bill was “about the last call for lunch.”15 He also put to rest a recurring isolationist argument: that to avoid a dictatorship, Congress needed to control the president’s actions, even in wartime. Stimson riposted that a “government of law which is so constructed that you cannot trust anybody with power will not survive the test of war.”16 Bullitt also believed that Lend-Lease would give America time to rearm. “Should the British Navy be eliminated and should the Panama Canal be blocked before we are prepared, invasion of the Western Hemisphere would be almost certain,” he said.17
Morgenthau, who appeared before the Senate committee on January 28, found himself fencing with Johnson, though neither drew blood. In fact, the to-and-fro was remarkably agreeable, even if the irony in the exchange may have been missed by those who read it the following day. Johnson said there was one thing he wanted above all and that was “to keep this country out of war.”
Morgenthau replied, “You and me both.”
“Do you too?” asked the senator.
“Most fervently.”
“I will shake hands across the table,” said Johnson, “because there are a great many people in this audience and in this city and in this country at present who want nothing better than to stick us into some war and with all of its bloody consequences.”
The Treasury secretary insisted, “It is my fervent prayer that we stay at peace.” To which Johnson responded, “We will play ball together.”18
To head off arguments that there was no need for Lend-Lease because Britain could afford to pay for its own armaments, the president asked Morgenthau to open the British books for inspection by the House committee. “So far as I know, this is the first time in history that one government has put at the disposal of another figures of this nature,” said the Treasury secretary. He explained that Britain had so far spent $1.33 billion on American war supplies and could probably afford $1.4 billion more during 1941 for existing orders. Otherwise, Britain had just $1 billion left in dollar reserves. Its $8 or $9 billion in worldwide assets were being used to buy war materiel and support its defense efforts elsewhere.19
When Secretary of State Hull was called before the House committee, Roosevelt helped draft his statement to ensure that Hull concentrated on the defensive nature of Lend-Lease, rather than on whether it would tip America into war. The bill needed to be passed to keep the war away from America’s shores, insisted Hull in camera before the Senate committee on January 27. His evidence to the House was much the same, but “more frankly and bluntly stated.”20 He expanded the debate to the rest of the world, warning that the Japanese wanted to establish an empire of a billion people that included India, the jewel of the British Empire.
After all of his work behind the scenes of the isolationist movement, Hoover’s contribution before Congress disappointed. He told the House committee that his preference was not to stand on the sidelines and watch the British sink but to give them “all of our accumulated defense material which we could spare” and “an appropriation of anywhere from two to three billions [of dollars] with which to buy other things,” allowing them “to spend the money directly themselves and to conduct their own war in the way that seems to them to be the wisest.”21
The discussion about whether Lend-Lease was a defensive or offensive measure was addressed by Democrat John W. McCormack, Majority Leader of the House.22 “Suppose,” he asked, “the people of America should read of the defeat of Britain, what do you suppose would be their feelings? Will it be one of calmness, of safety and security, or will it be one of alarm, one with the feeling of fear, or impending danger? Would not their feelings be properly summed up in the words, ‘We are next!’ ”23
Representative E. V. Izak, a Democrat from California, recalled, “I lost all patience with my people when they came to me during the last campaign and said, ‘Please don’t get us into war.’ I said, ‘Don’t look at me. I am not getting you into war. But there is one man who has the power to do that and that is Mr. Hitler.”24
Senator J. W. Bailey, a Democrat from North Carolina, was candid. “Some say what is proposed by the bill is intervention,” he said. “It is. . . . It is not neutrality. It is the reversal of the policy which we laid down in the neutrality act.” He continued, “It is said the passage of the bill will lead to war. . . . I think those who predict that it will lead to war are in a pretty safe position, because there is a great deal of probability that war is coming, either course we take.”25
Always ready with a colorful quote, Barkley painted a bleak picture of American life if Britain were defeated. “We run the risk of being hemmed in and fenced off as a sort of unilateral concentration camp,” he said. “We run the risk of seeing the rest of the world overrun, and then being compelled to fight a hostile world or be overrun ourselves.” Asked about the shape of the postwar world, he said, “You might with equal propriety ask a peaceful citizen who is under the heel of a highwayman with a knife at his throat what use he will make of his life if you help him to preserve it.”26
Anxious that the bill might be lost in the final stages, Hull cabled Willkie in London, where he had met with Churchill three times, and urged him to return to testify before the Senate committee. Appearing on February 11, Willkie was immediately quizzed, in light of his strong support for Lend-Lease, about his opposition to the destroyers-for-bases deal. He explained that he had been against the deal for legal reasons. Willkie said that America had little option but to help Britain. “I really do not think we have any chance of keeping out of war if we let Britain fall,” he said. “My judgment is that if Britain collapses tomorrow we would be in a war in a month.”27
Republican senators relished taking Willkie to task for changing his mind about helping Britain, as the platform on which he had fought the presidential election stated clearly that he did not support America becoming involved in foreign wars. They pressed him on how, in less than three months, he could so swiftly alter his view about the president and his war policies. “I tried as hard as I could to defeat Franklin Roosevelt,” said Willkie, “and I tried not to pull my punches. He was elected president. He is my president now.” Nye pushed further, reminding Willkie that he had said that if Roosevelt were elected America would be at war by April. What did he think of that prediction now? Willkie smiled. “It was a bit of campaign oratory,” he said. The audience roared with laughter.
Willkie failed to find a place in the hearts of either Democrats or Republicans, interventionists or isolationists, but his role was not underestimated by either Franklin or Eleanor Roosevelt. In her newspaper column, “My Day,” Eleanor said she was “thankful beyond words” for Willkie’s bold intercession.28 When Hopkins, eager to please the president, began to slur Willkie, he was met with a tart response. “Don’t ever say anything like that around here again,” Roosevelt said. “We might not have had Lend-Lease or Selective Service or a lot of other things if it hadn’t been for Wendell Willkie. He was a godsend to the country when we needed him most.”29 For Hull’s top aide Carlton Savage, Willkie was “the real hero” of the battle of Lend-Lease.30
To expedite passage of the bill, the administration agreed a number of changes. On January 24, Hoover had sent Vandenberg amendments which would deprive the president of the power to authorize the convoying of British ships by the American navy, forbid the repairing of ships of belligerent nations in American docks, and ban the transfer of American naval vessels to other nations. Only the first amendment was adopted.
A bipartisan conference of congressional leaders was convened at the White House three days later. McCormack told the president that he expected Lend-Lease to pass the House with an “overwhelming” majority in favor, but that certain changes should be made “strictly in the interest of speed and harmony.”31 It was agreed that Lend-Lease should expire on July 1, 1943, pending renewal; that the president was obliged to report to Congress on Lend-Lease every ninety days; and that an upper cost limit to Lend-Lease be set at $7 billion. A more troubling amendment for the administration from anti-Communist House member George Tinkham of Massachusetts, which sought to limit aid to a list of countries including the Soviet Union, was resisted.32
On January 30, the House committee reported out HR 1776 by seventeen votes to eight, and on February 8 it passed the House 260–165. The following day Churchill broadcast an impassioned plea for Lend-Lease to pass the Senate.
A mighty tide of sympathy, of good will and of effective aid, has begun to flow across the Atlantic in support of the world cause which is at stake. Here is the answer which I will give to President Roosevelt: 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.33
Ever the grateful supplicant, Churchill had told the Americans what they wanted to hear. As Churchill biographer Roy Jenkins explained, the “give us the tools” speech was “a piece of tactical phrasing. . . . The most that he really meant was ‘give us the tools and we will hold on long enough for you to take your time about coming in.’ ”34
Only late in the day did the White House invoke the FBI in its attempt to defeat the opponents of Lend-Lease. In February 1941, Roosevelt, brandishing a leaflet describing Lend-Lease as the “War Dictatorship Bill,” asked Early, “Will you find out from someone—perhaps the FBI—who is paying for this?”35 On March 1, J. Edgar Hoover36 returned with an eight-page report, dated February 7, 1941, that credited the pamphlet to America First but offered little new insight into the organization. Its main donors were Wood, Henry Ford, J. C. Hormel, president of the Hormel Meat Packing company in Minnesota,37 and J. Sanford Otis, of the Central Republic Bank of Chicago.
The names the FBI linked with America First were eminently respectable, among them Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter Alice Roosevelt Longworth; Clay Judson, an attorney with a white-shoe Chicago law firm; Dr. Anton Julius Carlson, a professor at the University of Chicago and a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, whom the report described as “extremely liberal”; Janet Ayer Fairbank, a former Democratic National Committee member; Thomas McCarter, former attorney general of New Jersey; and John Flynn, the resident critic of the president at the liberal New Republic.
In the covering note attached to the brief report, Hoover wrote, “If it’s the President’s wish that a more exhaustive investigation be made relative to the means by which the America First Committee is financed, I hope you will not hesitate to call upon me.” Although the FBI kept a watching brief on America First, despite 2,900 pages of investigations the Bureau found nothing untoward. Lindbergh, convinced that his phones were tapped by FBI agents, declared that “if there was anything they didn’t understand in my phone conversations, I would be glad to give them additional information.”38
On March 8, the Lend-Lease bill passed the Senate by sixty votes to thirty-one. Although the division in Congress was roughly along party lines, 15 percent of Republicans in the House and 30 percent of Republican senators voted in favor. When news of the Senate vote reached Hopkins, he telephoned Churchill at Chequers, the British prime minister’s country residence, where it was early morning. The moment Churchill woke, he was given the message and called Hopkins, telling him, “The strain has been serious, so I thank God for your news.”39
With the passage of Lend-Lease, Roosevelt could afford to congratulate himself on a job well done. As his biographer Black explained, “He had in eighteen months, with the help of British heroism, Churchill’s leadership, and Hitler’s butchery, brought American public opinion along from opposition to any departure from neutrality to a blank check to the President to give all aid short of war.”40