Hail to the Chiefs Part XXXIIB: FDR and World War II
"It's the way it's always been. The monsters and the Doctor. It seems you cannot have one without the other... But you and I know...that the Doctor is worth the monsters." - From the Doctor Who episode "The Girl in the Fireplace."
World War II is a very popular war among a lot of Americans. It seems to be one of those rare wars where there were clear good guys and bad guys. The United States and the UK had to save the whole world from the evil Adolf Hitler to make the world ready for human rights and democracy. For those of you playing the drinking game version of this blog, get your beverage ready. Of course, it was more complicated than that.
Germany and Hitler were a problem for FDR from day one. Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January of 1933. FDR was inaugurated in March. The two died within weeks of each other in April, 1945.
The initial problem was getting an ambassador to Germany. Nobody wanted the job. So FDR, as he often did, took a rather unorthodox route and offered the position to University of Chicago professor William Dodd. Usually ambassadors were independently wealthy.....(such as Joseph Kennedy) so that they could afford to throw the kind of parties ambassadors needed to throw to schmooze....as the ambassador's salary itself was pretty paltry. Dodd was a history professor. His main focus was the American South. He had absolutely no diplomatic experience. However he was fluent in German, and had gotten his PhD at the University of Leipzig. The hope was that it would be a quiet position where he could finish his magnum opus on the South. His family also saw it as an opportunity for adventure. So Dodd, his wife, his son and his incredibly promiscuous daughter Martha packed up and went to Berlin.
The Dodd family got to watch first hand as the Weimar Republic deteriorated into Nazi Germany. (The story is covered beautifully in Erik Larson's In the Garden of Beasts.) One of the biggest problems of the Hitler era was everybody underestimated him. In Germany, most of the moderates figured Hitler and his cronies were too unstable to last long in power. Dodd rather awkwardly tried to promote democracy and American interests. Meanwhile his daughter had a date with Hitler, an affair with the head of the Gestapo, another one with a Soviet spy.....and eventually became a Soviet spy herself.
Britain fumbled around with appeasement. "OK Germany you can take Austria but NO MORE than that! All right so you took a good chunk of Czechoslovakia too....well no more than that!" The United States was in full-on isolationist mode still. Laws created in the 1920's after the supposed "war to end all wars" made it very difficult for the United States to be involved in any foreign war. Meanwhile Germany had time to rebuild its military.
But by the late 30's FDR was starting to experience deja vu. He had been Assistant Naval Secretary until World War I. In Germany at the time, the Final Solution hadn't started yet....but things had gotten pretty uncomfortable for the Jews. Eleanor was working her tail off trying to get as many refugees into the country as she could. This was no easy task as immigration quotas were very limited....and it didn't help that FDR was getting a lot of advice from an Breckinridge Long, an anti-semitic member of the state department....who did whatever he could to get as few refugees in as possible, partly by stirring the fears that any immigrants could be German spies.
Sometimes FDR gets accused of being anti-Semitic for not aiding the Jewish refugees when he had the chance. While this was one of the biggest miscalculations of his administration...I don't think FDR was an anti-Semitic. The cliche about politics is that it is the "art of the possible." One factor that made Roosevelt successful as a politician was he was particularly gifted at having a feel for public opinion. The United States as a whole was very anti-Semitic....and thoroughly isolationist. So part of it was FDR taking the wrong advice...and the rest was not wanting to fight a battle he gauged he couldn't win just yet. In the mid 40's he changed his mind, but it was too little too late.
Of course the other major miscalculation (or giving into war hysteria) was the Japanese internment camps. Eleanor's visits to the camps in 1943, and her horror at the conditions, and what it was doing to the families, was the beginning of the end for the internment camps.
On September 1, 1939, Germany with its new pal the Soviet Union, jointly invaded Poland. Nobody could deny there was a war happening now. FDR had to console Ambassador Joseph Kennedy who called up sobbing "It's the end of the world, the end of everything."
In the United Kingdom appeaser Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigned and was quickly replaced by Winston Churchill. Roosevelt ad Churchill discreetly began communicating with each other about the war. FDR did not want to let the general public know he was preparing just in case a war happened. By the summer of 1940, the Battle of Britain had begun. (On a side note, in the fall of 1940, during a particularly heavy bombing of Liverpool, a young woman gave birth. In a rare surge of patriotism she named her son: John Winston Lennon.)
However the first thing FDR had to do was win an election. He hemmed and hawed over the decision, but finally decided the international situation was bad enough, he wanted to stay in office at see it through. The 1940 Democratic Convention was particularly bitter and divided that year. Eleanor Roosevelt helped somewhat to ease the tensions with her speech: "This is no ordinary time. No time for weighing anything except what we can do best for the country as a whole, and that responsibility rests on each and every one of us as individuals."
FDR's Republican opponent was Wendell Willkie....easily the most fun presidential candidate name to say until Hubert Horatio Humphrey. The tricky aspect of the campaign was Willkie had only recently switched parties...and very few of his views differed from FDR. Ultimately (inexperienced politician that he was) he made many verbal gaffes that sunk his campaign.
FDR wanted to give aide to Britain, while still technically keeping the United States neutral. So he devised the "Lend-Lease Act" which pretty much meant that the United States would give....oops I mean LEND....military equipment to the British. FDR sold it as if you see your neighbor's house is on fire, of course you are going to lend them the hose. FDR also instituted the first peace time draft in the United States. (And at that point if anybody thought war was not going to happen, they were kidding themselves.) Churchill was impressed and touched by the Lend-Lease Act which he called: "the most unsordid act in the history of any nation." (You are going to be hearing a LOT from Churchill in this blog entry!)
Then in June of 1941, Germany invaded Russia. This was a turning point for the Allies even if it did put them in the awkward position of having to create an alliance with the Soviet Union. Britain began helping the Soviets right away. Churchill, an ardent anti-communist, stated "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons."
Not quite Hell but pretty close. Most of the world did not realize about the estimated 20 million who died in the Soviet Union during Stalin's regime. While Hitler and FDR were beginning their administrations....Stalin's plan to collectivize the farms in the Ukraine (thanks to a freakishly good harvest the year he got his numbers) had the Ukrainians starving, all the while they were exporting grain. It got so bad in the Ukraine that cannibalism began to be fairly common. In one book I was reading about the era the comment was made "Orphans were people whose parents had not eaten them." Although the ultimate sign for me of how bad things had gotten was when the Ukrainians went to Poland and asked them to invade. That's pretty much like asking for help against the bully from the kid that has gotten beaten up by everybody in school....including the valedictorian.
Learning more about Stalin made me question whether it was a good idea to become his ally. (Not that I condone fascism....or any ism for that matter. Isms in my opinion are not good.) However the fact is, while not the better of two evils, Stalin was the smarter of the two evils. He was the one NOT invading England.
FDR and Churchill secretly met in person just off the coast of Newfoundland on August 14, 1941. It was love at second sight. FDR and Churchill had briefly met each other in England at the end of World War I. It didn't make much of an impression on Churchill. The second time was very different. Churchill later commented "Meeting Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it."
Through all of this the United States was still attempting to play the neutrality card, particularly by negotiating with Japan. All that ended on December 7 1941.....say it with me.... "a day that will live in infamy." Pearl Harbor actually had a few things in common with Fort Sumter. Both forts were not fully stocked, staffed or even totally built yet. And of course, this was the catalyst for public opinion that finally had the American public ready to go to war.
That first Christmas the Churchills spent at the White House. Eleanor was disgusted at how geeked up FDR and Churchill were about planning strategies together. She thought they looked like two little boys playing war. Eleanor did not particularly care for Churchill....especially because he was a heavy drinker. She worried FDR would start drinking more as well...a remark FDR brushed off by pointing out his side of the family did not have the alcoholism problem.
Now the play by play on how strategically the Allies defeated the Axis powers....I will leave that to other writers' capable hands.
However...I do want to talk a little more about Winston Churchill....because I absolutely adore him. In 1943 Churchill and FDR met up in Morocco. There was some worry that Hitler would find out where they were meeting. In fact Hitler DID find out but thanks to the message getting confused in the translation, he thought that "Casablanca" meant that FDR and Churchill were meeting at the White House.
There was an elegant reception for the two heads of state. Churchill was in a crabby mood because thanks to being in a Muslim country...he couldn't get away with drinking alcohol in public. FDR however was having a good time. He especially enjoyed getting to visit his son Elliott. (All four Roosevelt sons serve in the military.) The sultan of Morocco had fabulous gifts for the visitors....including an elaborate gold tiara for Eleanor. Elliott later commented "One glimpse of the tiara, and Father gave me a straight-faced sidelong look, and then a solemn wink. The same thought was in both our minds: a picture of Mother presiding over a formal function at the White House with that imposing object perched atop her head."
After visiting the Allied troops and getting the diplomatic business out of the way (a.k.a. getting the French to cooperate...) the two world leaders decided to play hooky for a couple of days. Churchill wanted FDR to experience the beauty of a sunset on the Atlas mountains. The villa where the view was had steep narrow stairs, so FDR needed to be carried up.
This is my favorite image of Churchill and FDR together. FDR enjoying the scenery, and Churchill enjoying FDR's company. Churchill made a painting of the view and gave it to FDR.
Churchill commented at the end of the trip "If anything happened to that man I couldn't stand it. He is the truest friend; he has the farthest vision; he is the greatest man I've ever known."
Churchill, although older than FDR, lived to see the end of the war and beyond. FDR's health was already failing during the campaign for his 4th term in 1944. In 1945, while on a trip to Georgia, he complained "I have a terrific pain in the back of my head" and died not long after of a cerebral hemorrhage. It was just weeks before Germany surrendered.
The nation that he left behind was radically different from the one he had started leading 12 years before. Besides the legacy of the New Deal, the era was also a major catalyst for what would eventually become the Civil Rights movement and feminism. World War II had finally dragged the nation out of the Depression...but the G.I. Bill helped the returning vets to be better educated and have better job prospects. (Both of my grandfathers benefited from the G.I. Bill.)
Eleanor, who was very much FDR's conscience, would continue fighting the good fight. She was head of the committee that drafed the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" and was a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly from 1945-1952.
Of course, like the Civil War, just because we've reached 1945 in the story does not mean we are done with World War II. Wait until you hear about the guy that had to clean up the mess....I'm just wild about him. :)
Here are the books I read on FDR to prepare for this blog entry:
"Kennedy and Roosevelt" by Michael R. Beschloss
"Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship" by Jon Meacham
"In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin" by Erik Larson
"Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler's Germany" by Rudolph Herzog (Actually a very insightful look on day to day life in Nazi Germany.)
"Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin" by Timothy Snyder (Couldn't finish this one....if you REALLY want a feel for how bad it got in both places....this is the book for you.)
"No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II" by Doris Kearns Goodwin
World War II is a very popular war among a lot of Americans. It seems to be one of those rare wars where there were clear good guys and bad guys. The United States and the UK had to save the whole world from the evil Adolf Hitler to make the world ready for human rights and democracy. For those of you playing the drinking game version of this blog, get your beverage ready. Of course, it was more complicated than that.
Germany and Hitler were a problem for FDR from day one. Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January of 1933. FDR was inaugurated in March. The two died within weeks of each other in April, 1945.
The initial problem was getting an ambassador to Germany. Nobody wanted the job. So FDR, as he often did, took a rather unorthodox route and offered the position to University of Chicago professor William Dodd. Usually ambassadors were independently wealthy.....(such as Joseph Kennedy) so that they could afford to throw the kind of parties ambassadors needed to throw to schmooze....as the ambassador's salary itself was pretty paltry. Dodd was a history professor. His main focus was the American South. He had absolutely no diplomatic experience. However he was fluent in German, and had gotten his PhD at the University of Leipzig. The hope was that it would be a quiet position where he could finish his magnum opus on the South. His family also saw it as an opportunity for adventure. So Dodd, his wife, his son and his incredibly promiscuous daughter Martha packed up and went to Berlin.
The Dodd family got to watch first hand as the Weimar Republic deteriorated into Nazi Germany. (The story is covered beautifully in Erik Larson's In the Garden of Beasts.) One of the biggest problems of the Hitler era was everybody underestimated him. In Germany, most of the moderates figured Hitler and his cronies were too unstable to last long in power. Dodd rather awkwardly tried to promote democracy and American interests. Meanwhile his daughter had a date with Hitler, an affair with the head of the Gestapo, another one with a Soviet spy.....and eventually became a Soviet spy herself.
Britain fumbled around with appeasement. "OK Germany you can take Austria but NO MORE than that! All right so you took a good chunk of Czechoslovakia too....well no more than that!" The United States was in full-on isolationist mode still. Laws created in the 1920's after the supposed "war to end all wars" made it very difficult for the United States to be involved in any foreign war. Meanwhile Germany had time to rebuild its military.
But by the late 30's FDR was starting to experience deja vu. He had been Assistant Naval Secretary until World War I. In Germany at the time, the Final Solution hadn't started yet....but things had gotten pretty uncomfortable for the Jews. Eleanor was working her tail off trying to get as many refugees into the country as she could. This was no easy task as immigration quotas were very limited....and it didn't help that FDR was getting a lot of advice from an Breckinridge Long, an anti-semitic member of the state department....who did whatever he could to get as few refugees in as possible, partly by stirring the fears that any immigrants could be German spies.
Sometimes FDR gets accused of being anti-Semitic for not aiding the Jewish refugees when he had the chance. While this was one of the biggest miscalculations of his administration...I don't think FDR was an anti-Semitic. The cliche about politics is that it is the "art of the possible." One factor that made Roosevelt successful as a politician was he was particularly gifted at having a feel for public opinion. The United States as a whole was very anti-Semitic....and thoroughly isolationist. So part of it was FDR taking the wrong advice...and the rest was not wanting to fight a battle he gauged he couldn't win just yet. In the mid 40's he changed his mind, but it was too little too late.
Of course the other major miscalculation (or giving into war hysteria) was the Japanese internment camps. Eleanor's visits to the camps in 1943, and her horror at the conditions, and what it was doing to the families, was the beginning of the end for the internment camps.
On September 1, 1939, Germany with its new pal the Soviet Union, jointly invaded Poland. Nobody could deny there was a war happening now. FDR had to console Ambassador Joseph Kennedy who called up sobbing "It's the end of the world, the end of everything."
In the United Kingdom appeaser Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigned and was quickly replaced by Winston Churchill. Roosevelt ad Churchill discreetly began communicating with each other about the war. FDR did not want to let the general public know he was preparing just in case a war happened. By the summer of 1940, the Battle of Britain had begun. (On a side note, in the fall of 1940, during a particularly heavy bombing of Liverpool, a young woman gave birth. In a rare surge of patriotism she named her son: John Winston Lennon.)
However the first thing FDR had to do was win an election. He hemmed and hawed over the decision, but finally decided the international situation was bad enough, he wanted to stay in office at see it through. The 1940 Democratic Convention was particularly bitter and divided that year. Eleanor Roosevelt helped somewhat to ease the tensions with her speech: "This is no ordinary time. No time for weighing anything except what we can do best for the country as a whole, and that responsibility rests on each and every one of us as individuals."
FDR's Republican opponent was Wendell Willkie....easily the most fun presidential candidate name to say until Hubert Horatio Humphrey. The tricky aspect of the campaign was Willkie had only recently switched parties...and very few of his views differed from FDR. Ultimately (inexperienced politician that he was) he made many verbal gaffes that sunk his campaign.
FDR wanted to give aide to Britain, while still technically keeping the United States neutral. So he devised the "Lend-Lease Act" which pretty much meant that the United States would give....oops I mean LEND....military equipment to the British. FDR sold it as if you see your neighbor's house is on fire, of course you are going to lend them the hose. FDR also instituted the first peace time draft in the United States. (And at that point if anybody thought war was not going to happen, they were kidding themselves.) Churchill was impressed and touched by the Lend-Lease Act which he called: "the most unsordid act in the history of any nation." (You are going to be hearing a LOT from Churchill in this blog entry!)
Then in June of 1941, Germany invaded Russia. This was a turning point for the Allies even if it did put them in the awkward position of having to create an alliance with the Soviet Union. Britain began helping the Soviets right away. Churchill, an ardent anti-communist, stated "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons."
Not quite Hell but pretty close. Most of the world did not realize about the estimated 20 million who died in the Soviet Union during Stalin's regime. While Hitler and FDR were beginning their administrations....Stalin's plan to collectivize the farms in the Ukraine (thanks to a freakishly good harvest the year he got his numbers) had the Ukrainians starving, all the while they were exporting grain. It got so bad in the Ukraine that cannibalism began to be fairly common. In one book I was reading about the era the comment was made "Orphans were people whose parents had not eaten them." Although the ultimate sign for me of how bad things had gotten was when the Ukrainians went to Poland and asked them to invade. That's pretty much like asking for help against the bully from the kid that has gotten beaten up by everybody in school....including the valedictorian.
Learning more about Stalin made me question whether it was a good idea to become his ally. (Not that I condone fascism....or any ism for that matter. Isms in my opinion are not good.) However the fact is, while not the better of two evils, Stalin was the smarter of the two evils. He was the one NOT invading England.
FDR and Churchill secretly met in person just off the coast of Newfoundland on August 14, 1941. It was love at second sight. FDR and Churchill had briefly met each other in England at the end of World War I. It didn't make much of an impression on Churchill. The second time was very different. Churchill later commented "Meeting Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it."
Through all of this the United States was still attempting to play the neutrality card, particularly by negotiating with Japan. All that ended on December 7 1941.....say it with me.... "a day that will live in infamy." Pearl Harbor actually had a few things in common with Fort Sumter. Both forts were not fully stocked, staffed or even totally built yet. And of course, this was the catalyst for public opinion that finally had the American public ready to go to war.
That first Christmas the Churchills spent at the White House. Eleanor was disgusted at how geeked up FDR and Churchill were about planning strategies together. She thought they looked like two little boys playing war. Eleanor did not particularly care for Churchill....especially because he was a heavy drinker. She worried FDR would start drinking more as well...a remark FDR brushed off by pointing out his side of the family did not have the alcoholism problem.
Now the play by play on how strategically the Allies defeated the Axis powers....I will leave that to other writers' capable hands.
However...I do want to talk a little more about Winston Churchill....because I absolutely adore him. In 1943 Churchill and FDR met up in Morocco. There was some worry that Hitler would find out where they were meeting. In fact Hitler DID find out but thanks to the message getting confused in the translation, he thought that "Casablanca" meant that FDR and Churchill were meeting at the White House.
There was an elegant reception for the two heads of state. Churchill was in a crabby mood because thanks to being in a Muslim country...he couldn't get away with drinking alcohol in public. FDR however was having a good time. He especially enjoyed getting to visit his son Elliott. (All four Roosevelt sons serve in the military.) The sultan of Morocco had fabulous gifts for the visitors....including an elaborate gold tiara for Eleanor. Elliott later commented "One glimpse of the tiara, and Father gave me a straight-faced sidelong look, and then a solemn wink. The same thought was in both our minds: a picture of Mother presiding over a formal function at the White House with that imposing object perched atop her head."
After visiting the Allied troops and getting the diplomatic business out of the way (a.k.a. getting the French to cooperate...) the two world leaders decided to play hooky for a couple of days. Churchill wanted FDR to experience the beauty of a sunset on the Atlas mountains. The villa where the view was had steep narrow stairs, so FDR needed to be carried up.
This is my favorite image of Churchill and FDR together. FDR enjoying the scenery, and Churchill enjoying FDR's company. Churchill made a painting of the view and gave it to FDR.
Churchill commented at the end of the trip "If anything happened to that man I couldn't stand it. He is the truest friend; he has the farthest vision; he is the greatest man I've ever known."
Churchill, although older than FDR, lived to see the end of the war and beyond. FDR's health was already failing during the campaign for his 4th term in 1944. In 1945, while on a trip to Georgia, he complained "I have a terrific pain in the back of my head" and died not long after of a cerebral hemorrhage. It was just weeks before Germany surrendered.
The nation that he left behind was radically different from the one he had started leading 12 years before. Besides the legacy of the New Deal, the era was also a major catalyst for what would eventually become the Civil Rights movement and feminism. World War II had finally dragged the nation out of the Depression...but the G.I. Bill helped the returning vets to be better educated and have better job prospects. (Both of my grandfathers benefited from the G.I. Bill.)
Eleanor, who was very much FDR's conscience, would continue fighting the good fight. She was head of the committee that drafed the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" and was a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly from 1945-1952.
Of course, like the Civil War, just because we've reached 1945 in the story does not mean we are done with World War II. Wait until you hear about the guy that had to clean up the mess....I'm just wild about him. :)
Here are the books I read on FDR to prepare for this blog entry:
"Kennedy and Roosevelt" by Michael R. Beschloss
"Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship" by Jon Meacham
"In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin" by Erik Larson
"Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler's Germany" by Rudolph Herzog (Actually a very insightful look on day to day life in Nazi Germany.)
"Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin" by Timothy Snyder (Couldn't finish this one....if you REALLY want a feel for how bad it got in both places....this is the book for you.)
"No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II" by Doris Kearns Goodwin