Lynne Olson specializes in relatively short, focused histories about the years before WW2. This is her third book and again, another superb one. It is subtitled 'Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over WW2, 1939-1941. We have institutionalized the War as our finest hour and have enshrined its youthful warriors as our greatest generation. Many have forgotten the bitter, partisan divide that was the state of our affairs in the 30's. In the Introduction, the author quotes Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the noted Harvard historian, who said that it was "the most savage political debate in my lifetime. There have been a number of fierce quarrels - over communism in the late forties, over McCarthyism in the fifties, over Vietnam in the sixties - but none so tore apart families and friendships as this fight"
How bad was it? There were fist fights on the floor of the House. A Senator was hung in effigy on the Capital lawn. During the Lend-Lease hearings, which the editor of the Chicago tribune called "the war dictatorship bill," veiled women dressed in black went daily to the Capital to moan and weep. The British, with the approval of FDR and the FBI, conducted an active intelligence, spying, and lobbying effort. The FBI wiretapped, bugged, opened the mail, and spied on foreigners and just about any American who they felt might be disloyal. J. Edgar Hoover had a full-fledged secret police state long before most of his later opponents were born.
The military was very uncomfortable with Roosevelt's articulated support of Great Britain. Numerous members of the Armed Forces assisted the isolationists, most famously Hap Arnold. The architect of America's air war and victory over the Axis could easily have been jailed in 1941 for passing top secret information to Sen. Burton Wheeler, who leaked it to the press in an attempt to show how Roosevelt was planning to fight Germany. Olson claims that the German General Staff was so concerned about the information in the 'Victory Report' that they considered a halt of their march into the USSR. They thought it would be prudent to finish up in Europe and Africa, in order to be ready for America's might. George Marshall, who comes off a bit weaselly in this book, protected Arnold and a cabal of others, who seemed to have forgotten their oaths.
One of the heroes of the book is Wendell Wilkie. Wilkie had nothing in common with the isolationists in his party and unselfishly supported Roosevelt by agreeing not to make a campaign issue of FDR's program of exchanging destroyers for the British bases in the Caribbean. In 1941, he was instrumental in convincing Congress to pass Lend-Lease. Later that year, he helped with the extension of the draft bill. The 1940 law said that the inductions were good for one year. The 1941 bill, with some crafty footwork by Speaker Rayburn ,passed the House 203-202.
Olson credits Roosevelt with succeeding in his great balancing act, but ceaselessly points out how frustrated everyone (particularly the British PM and his own Sec. of War, Henry Stimson) was with his inability to follow through on his rhetorical flourishes. His great Fireside chat on Lend-Lease included his coining the phrase 'arsenal of democracy' and featured his famous analogy about lending a garden hose to your neighbor when his house was on fire. It was heard by 85 million people, an astounding two-thirds of the nation. Everyone loved it and agreed, yet he did nothing to initiate a program of constructing things to lend.
The isolationists had a point, at least in the beginning, as two-thirds of Americans were initially opposed to any involvement in Europe. Americans felt that they had been roped into WW1 by British propaganda and a duplicitous Wall Street. They were unhappy with all of the unpaid debts, and felt contempt for Europe's propensity to repeat its mistakes. Many Americans felt that the 1919 Peace was unfair to Germany and simply an invitation to a repeat performance. Irish-American constituents had no empathy for the British Empire. Midwesterners and farmers didn't particularly like the Brits and their east coast Anglophile supporters. Thus, most of the opposition was in the western half of the country. The leaders were farm state senators like Wheeler from Montana, Borah from Idaho, and Nye from N. Dakota. However, events impacted opinion, and by the summer of 1941, two-thirds of the country were behind the President and ready to step up in Europe. As is always the case though, there are those who dig in and ignore the changing circumstances.
And, the leader of that pack was the tragic Charles Lindbergh. He, of course, comes off badly, but also to some extent, a victim of circumstances. At the age of 25, he became the most revered person on the planet, Time Magazine's first Man of the Year. Propelled to fame, wealth, and, most importantly, a public pedestal, he was just a poor airplane pilot who got lucky. He was ill-equipped to deal with his place in the pantheon and unfortunately never understood that. He justifiably deplored the American press that haunted him and his family before, during, and after the kidnapping/murder of his infant son. The Lindbergh's fled to Europe and, at the request of the US, he spent a lot of time in Germany, inspecting and trying to find out about their air forces. He overstated their capabilities and had the misfortune of receiving a medal from Goering, commemorating his contributions to aviation. He liked the Germans, their efficiency and their respect for his privacy. He concluded that France and the UK didn't have a chance in a future war. When he came home, he took up the cause of the isolationists and, famously in Sept. 1941, blamed the Brits, FDR and America's Jews for our opposition to the Nazis. When war came, FDR left it to the duplicitous Hap Arnold to decline to let Lindy back in uniform. He did redeem himself as civilian test pilot, consultant, and actually flew over fifty combat missions in disguise. Ike later reinstated him as a Brigadier General in Air Force Reserve. JFK made him his guest of honor at his first state dinner and had him stay in the White House. His autobiography, 'The Spirit of St. Louis' won the Pulitzer. However, the wisdom of age and the perspective of a long life never came to Lindy. In his 1970 memoirs, he stated that the Holocaust was no worse than the US treatment of Japanese POW's. The secretive, lonely old man would go to the Smithsonian several times a year. He would hide behind a showcase and gaze up at the Spirit of St. Louis, riding above him.
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