Roosevelt and Churchill: US's real intentions wrt WWII

Great Debates
1

I’m watching a show on the History Channel entitled Warlords about Roosevelt and Churchill from 1940-1942. Its pretty interesting stuff and I wanted to ask a few questions for debate to see how accurate folks around here think it is…because its a bit different than the history I learned in school.

One thing I found interesting is that, appearently Roosevelt had a very strong dislike of Churchill before the war. Appearently they had met during WWI briefly and Roosevelt felt that Churchill’s attitude toward the US (and toward himself of course) left a lot to be desired. Also, he appearently thought Churchill was a drunk.

Anyway, let me head toward the debate questions. The show talks about Churchill’s increasingly desperate efforts to somehow get the US into the war…and Roosevelts evasions and outright lies in his efforts to both keep the US out of the war while making sure the UK (and later Russia) fought on. According to the show Roosevelt NEVER had any intention of bringing the US into the war, reguardless of what was happening in Europe. This would be the first debate point…is this true? Did Roosevelt never intend to bring the US into the war, only to be overtaken by events with Japan? Was he just playing the Brits (and later Russia) with promisses he never intended to keep?

Later in the show they talk about the underlieing motives of both men, and their goals concerning the war. According to the show, Churchill was motivated primarily by the desire to maintain the status quo wrt the British Empire…and he saw the only way to do that was to bring the US fully into the war. Roosevelt on the other hand was (appearently) motivated by a desire to keep the US out of the war…but also by a desire to break, once and for all, the European empires world wide, and to destroy the last vestiges of the European caste/class system that he felt was the root cause of all their (and our) problems. Of course, he also very much so recognized the threat Nazi Germany posed to the US…so, (according to the show) saw this as an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone (by providing arms to the UK and Russia, but no real military aid). I’ve never heard it put this way before…so, how accurate do you think this is? WAS Roosevelt motivated by a desire to see the UK (and France) bleed to the point where

The final debate point concerns Russia. Going with the theme of the last point, the show makes the case that Roosevelt actually felt much closer and better about Stalin and the USSR (at least initially), and felt that they would be best for Europe in the long run. He forsaw that Russia would become a great power after the war, and felt that a Russian Hegemony over Europe would finally break them of the colonial leanings once and for all ( :eek: !!). I find this completely incredible and am having the hardest time swallowing this of all the things the show stated. How true was this…and if it was true, did Roosevelt ever change his mind?

Anyway, hopefully an interesting debate (and a chance for me to learn some thing I THOUGHT I knew…but maybe didn’t).

-XT

2

OMG! :eek: Seriously?

Not trying to change the subject, but I’d rather have that drunk running my country in wartime than any teetotaler I can think of.

My impression - could be wrong - is that Roosevelt was the one who jumped through hoops in his attempts to support the UK. Lend-Lease was quite controversial. Prior to Pearl Harbor, the U.S. wanted nothing to do with the European conflict. (A case could be made that had not Hitler honored his alliance with Japan and declared war on the U.S., that we would not have declared war on Germany so quickly.) Certainly I agree that Churchill attempted to draw us in, but I do not believe that Roosevelt was ignoring his pleas. He was, instead, attempting to walk a fine line, by supporting the UK with supplies (and I would hardly term the supplying of Britain with arms and ships as “no real military aid”), without committing U.S. troops.

Roosevelt did, apparently, have a great deal of trust in Stalin. So much so, that, quite frankly, I must say that Roosevelt died at just the right time, leaving the post-war cleanup to a far less trusting Truman.

3

Biographers of FDR that I’ve read complain of the same problem: FDR did not confide his thoughts. Certainly not to the extent that Lincoln did. This places us in the happy circumstance of conjecture without fear of definitive rebuttal.

I think Frank has it about right. I might go a bit further and suggest that had FDR his druthers, he would have happily let Stalin and Hitler fight it out, while materially supporting the Soviets to any extent possible. I think he expected war with Japan to come, but his assessment was similar to Yamamoto’s: Japan could put up a good scrap for a while, but not for very long.

As to Germany, a minor quibble. Germany was not, in fact, obliged to join Japan’s war with the US, the treaty only specified mutual defense if one party was attacked. Clearly, Japan was not attacked, so he was under no such obligation. The consensus is that Hitler hoped this display of allied loyalty would move the Japanese to attack the Soviets, but could hardly have been surprised when no such thing materialized. After all, the invasion of Poland was ostensibly in reply to a Polish border raid, and Japan did not declare war on Poland.

I think if WWII could have gone pretty much as it did without US military engagement, FDR would have been perfectly happy to have it so - if everyone loses, only we win. But I doubt very much if he considered that likely, he probably had some contingency plan for declaring war on Germany when Japan attacked, the foolishness of Hitler was just a happy accident, underlining Lord Acton’s maxim about the influence of stupidity on human history.

Hijack anecdote:
Came across this in my readings, a book about FDR’s involvement in intelligence matters, OSS and all that…

Seems FDR was inundated by crackpots schemes for secret weapons (like the famous “fire bomb bats” over Tokyo…). Sometimes, they came from very important crackpots, who couldn’t be brusquely ignored. FDR had very little scientific sophistication, and was loathe to admit it.

Anyway, he gets the famous Einstien letter, advising him about the possibility of a nuclear fission bomb. He read it and was inclined to dismiss it out of hand. By sheer coincidence, he had on his desk an intelligence report of all manner of events in Europe, most of them trivial. Such as an embargo on exporting uranium from Czeckoslovakia that the Nazis had ordered.

And the little light went on…

4

It’s important to look at the context of the times with respect to public opinion. NOBODY in the U.S. wanted to get involved with yet another European slaughter-fest. World War I was still fresh in everyone’s mind, the depression was considered a continuation of same via economic means. The general consensus was, hopefully the communists and the nazis would kill each other off, to the benefit of everyone. Roosevelt had numerous constitutional issues working against him as far as joining the war - and congress arguably had more power in those days. “Luckily” for FDR, Germany declared war on the U.S. after Pearl Harbor.

5

So, it sounds to me as if this is yet another instance of the History Channel, er, exaggerating for effect lets say? I’m not exactly surprised at this point…

This is interesting, in that its the one part so far that seems to go along with the show. They made a similar point.
Didn’t quite spark the debate I’d hoped for, but I want to say I appreciate the responses. 'luci, yours in particular was quite good. Thank you all. If anyone else has anything to comment on wrt Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin or the war in general feel free.

-XT

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If anyone’s interested in what the British got up to, there’s a good book I found a few years ago that goes into more detail than you could possibly want. Desperate Deceptions by Thomas Mahl.

7

FDR calling Churchill a drunk? Didn’t FDR break all business at 4 pm (I may be wrong about the exact time) for his “special” martini’s all around? His own high octane version? Sounds like a History Channel producer practicing a little yellow journalism/anti-Churchill agenda to me.

I’m with you, Frank, I’d rather have both of them “unwinding”, not afraid to let loose, than a teetotaler calling the shots. Much as I like Give 'Em Hell Harry, I’m glad he was only in charge of a small part of the war.

8

Well, it is certainly a theory. One that is popular amongst some people. One that is almost certainly wrong.

While contemporary documents certainly showed the British did not want to give up Empire, they also show that the political class saw clearly that a major war would wound the Empire, perhaps to the point of disestablishment.

The smart play for the Empire would have been to let the Germans have Europe. War meant (at the least) a very great threat to the status quo ante belleum. The British ruling class knew they were betting everything on the war, that they might loose their place in society and their nation its place in the world.

They decided to fight anyway. Why?

Because they thought they could pull it off. Because prewar policy boxed them into a corner where they had to fight or back down. And finally because they thought it was the morally right thing to do.

Imagine that! A ruling class that went to war against self-interest! Hard to believe in these cynical times, but is seems to be the case.

9

I guess by “pre-war” policy, you refer to Neville Chamberlain’s gaffe? I wonder if the desire for revenge for this obvious blind-siding, boxed them into the proverbial corner and spurred the English on.

10

Yes, but he didn’t drink a bottle of champagne for breakfast.

I suspect “drunk” had a different meaning then…

11

Churchill did this? Dayam! I retract/slink away from my argument then. I never heard that before. :eek:

12

Even by the standards of the aristocracy, Churchill was very fond of his food, and even fonder of his booze. He was probably a functional alcoholic.

13

“let the German’s have Europe” to preserve themselves? Huh??? I don’t get it…

The ruling class’s self interests were in keeping the Empire ,not creating a new German Empire to rival their own.
For the ruling class to preserve itself as the aristocratic power, it would have needed to ensure that Britain continued as the world’s only superpower, and Britain’s wealth continue to roll in from the Empire, making sure that (as the old song said) “rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves”

By giving up Europe to the Germans, a new superpower would be created. The German navy would be stronger than England’s, and the various merchant fleets of Europe would combine to be larger than the England’s merchant fleet.

Not exactly in the self-interest of Englands upper classes.

Imagine that! They went to war precisely because they thought it was in their own self interest.
Only later,as the war dragged on, was morality mentioned. It became easy to rally public support by picturing Hitler as an evil enemy with a mustache (like Saddam Hussein.) But the moral reasons were hardly discussed in 1939, as far as I know.
When Chamberlain made his famous radio address to explain that the country was now at war, he didn’t make any grand statements about fighting the axis of evil.

14

Hmmm. This is not to start a hijack to a debate on a current event, on which there are plenty enough threads. But may I point out that over the last couple of years, there’s been a shift in public opinion about the current War in Iraq from “good idea”=consensus/“mistake”=a few radicals to “good idea”=a small group of diehards/“mistake”=a growing consensus? That’s brought up not to argue who’s right, but to illustrate the change in public opinion over relatively short periods.

The lead-up to the iconic World War II of 1942-45 is very much the same thing, in two acts. First, a consensus of British, from all three major parties, were largely backing Chamberlain’s efforts to negotiate a modus vivendi with Hitler through agreeing to the transfer of lands inhabited largely by Deutschophones: the Rhineland, Austria, the Sudetenland, the Memelland. Churchill and Eden’s warnings that this was a big mistake were seen as warmongering alarmism. Herr Hitler would surely agree to the treaties he had negotiated and signed!

When Germany annexed Bohmen und Mohren (the rump of Czech lands) in March 1939, it was a wake-up call for Chamberlain. And in the period between Munich and 9/1/39, British public opinion shifted from appeasement to fight Hitler.

Likewise, in America, the majoritarian opinion in the late 1930s was isolationism. Let those Europeans have their petty wars; they won’t affect us! Only a handful of radicals advocated intervention. Again, opinions shifted through 1939-41 until Pearl Harbor shocked the last isolationists out of their dream world.

Despite the public speeches he made, aimed at keeping up the British will to fight and optomism, Churchill was convinced that only if the United States became involved would it be possible to defeat Hitler. (Barring improbables like a successful internal revolt, Germany doing something stupid like attack Russia, etc.)

Roosevelt was farsighted enough to know that, Hitler being who he was, sooner or later the United States would need to fight Hitler. He preferred doing this in company with allies that could contribute reasonable fighting power. A Germany that had overrun France, Britain, and Russia and was drawing on the resources of them and their colonies – essentially the entire Old World, ceteris paribus – fighting the American republics, where only Canada and Brazil can provide more than a regiment of help (and neither of them more than a corps), was his worst nightmare.

Roosevelt therefore made contact with Churchill as soon as Churchill was named First Lord of the Admiralty, at the beginning of the war in September 1939. Literally as soon as – it was within 48 hours of the declaration of war. He was convinced that Churchill’s leadership powers and vision of what the war needed to be were what Britain needed – and what the U.S. needed in order to keep Britain in the war and not have to face Hitler essentially alone. Note how unusual this is: the President of a country that is officially neutral entering into close personal correspondence with the Cabinet member heading up the Navy in a subordinate role in another, belligerent country.

They had exchanged minor compliments before the war – Churchill had, for example, sent Roosevelt an autographed copy of his Marlborough biography. But each recognized in the other the person that his country needed as leading an ally that his country needed.

Churchill’s “job” as he saw his duty was to press the U.S. for intervention, as strongly as he dared. Roosevelt’s, on the other hand, was to lead his country towards fighting the war he saw as inevitable sooner or later, while he still had allies to help win the fight. This became clearer to more and more people after the Fall of France. Roosevelt needed to lead towards war, but never get too far ahead of the consensus of the people. Hence we moved from neutrality to Lend Lease to patrolling the Western Atlantic.

The two men established a close friendship, at first by correspondence and then by personal visits bolstered by ongoing correspondence. There were, inevitably, some personal conflicts, and both men’s idiosyncracies were humorous to the other. (Both, by the way, were probably functional alcoholics, as slaphead notes.)

I think there’s a huge amount of revisionism being advanced in some of this material, particularly the TV show as described by xtisme. Neither man needed to be a plaster saint to be the effective political leader he needed to be, and both men were quite comfortable being iconic heroes to the masses. Both recognized and played the political realities of the day, in support of a goal of defeating Nazi Germany and all its friends and relations.

Quick note re Roosevelt and Stalin, with reference to Frank’s point: I don’t believe Roosevelt was overly enamored of Stalin. He saw him as the dictator he was. Rather, I think he had the self-confidence, bordering on arrogance, to believe that he could manage Stalin in the postwar world. That said, though, your point about how fortunate it was that Truman was left to deal with Stalin is, I think, very apropos.

15

There is a degree of controversy about the USA’s entry into WWII

Supposedly the British made Roosevelt aware of a British raid on an Italian fleet in harbour, using aircraft nicknamed ‘Stringbags’. Japanese observers were interested.

Definitely the USA put the Japs in a difficult position, they cut off the supply of oil.
For the Japs, Indonesia was an easier source than the unknown fields of the USSR

  • since the Japs had duffed up Russia in 1905, Stalin was worried about an invasion of Siberia, personally I can’t see why.

Come Yalta, Roosevelt was supposedly dying.

My uncle, who was pretty canny, and in India during WWII, was a great supporter of Indian independance, yet he indoctrinated me with the view that the USA was determined to break up the British Empire.

I suspect that Roosevelt was well aware that Churchill’s mother was American

There really was not much one could do about Russia, although I reckon that shipping back a small proportion of people for slaughter was disgusting.

Disjointed ramblings, but I think that the History Channel is going for drama rather than fact.

16

Interesting and well cited article:

But tellingly:

17

Remember that, at the same time as the Munich Agreement, Britain intensified its rearmament. Chamberlain’s “gaffe” bought Britain a couple years before they had to go to war.

18

The central feature of British foreign policy, predating the Empire, was to keep continental Europe divided. Any time there was the threat of hegemony in Europe, the British would oppose it as strenuously as necessary. Hitler thought they needed only to preserve the Empire. Obviously, he was wrong.

19

He did call the German attack on Poland “wicked and unprovoked”, and say:

20

Let’s think back to a few years before the war.

In the mid 1930’s, the American military was in something of a shambles. Annecdotes abound: troops drilling with broomsticks because they had no rifles, commanders paying for tank repairs out of their own pockets, and so forth. This was related to the depression, of course.

Roosevelt was well aware of the events taking place in Europe in '37 and '38. In those years, he began beefing up the American Army. Now why did he do so? Was it because he anticipated the possibility of conflict in Europe, or only because the spending would finally pull America totally out of the Depression? We can’t know his true motivation, but certainly he did spend as much on the Army as Congress and public opinion would allow. Certainly when war broke out in Europe in the fall of '39, the American public had no interest in joining.

Now as for what Roosevelt felt between September of '39 and December of '41, we again don’t know, but we should keep in mind how things looked from the American side. Suppose we go back to the winter of '40. What does WWII look like? It looks like a purely European conflict. The only major action has been Germany’s invasion of Poland. On the western front, we’ve seen nothing other than a very limited French offensive. So if you had to guess, you’d probably say that the European powers are in for many years of trench warfare…again.

It’s only in April of '40 that Germany takes the offensive again, and from that point forward events start happening extremely quickly. However, American public opinion isn’t going to shift as fast as the events merit. While Hitler’s grand plan seems obvious to us, it wasn’t at all obvious to the typical guy at home in Iowa. Also recall that Roosevelt faced an election in '40, so he couldn’t be seen as eager to join the war when the public wanted to stay out.