Threshold of War Read online

  Threshold of War

  Threshold of War

  Franklin D. Roosevelt and

  American Entry into World War II

  Waldo Heinrichs

  Oxford University Press

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  Copyright © 1988 by Waldo Heinrichs

  First published in 1988 by Oxford University Press, Inc.,

  198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016–4314

  First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1989

  Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Heinrichs, Waldo H.

  Threshold of war: Franklin D. Roosevelt and American entry

  into World War II/Waldo Heinrichs.

  p. cm. Bibliography: p. Includes index.

  ISBN 0–19–504424-X

  ISBN 0–19-506168–3 (Pbk.)

  1. World War, 1939–1945—Diplomatic history. 2. World War, 1939–1945—United

  States. 3. Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882–1945. I. Title.

  D753.H38 1988 940.53′2—dc 19 88–5303 CIP

  6 8 10 9 7 5

  Printed in the United States of America

  for Dorothy Borg

  Preface

  The literature on American entry into World War II is rich and abundant but mostly segmented, concerned with particular topics, regions, or relationships. Histories of the Pearl Harbor attack, for example, form a world in themselves. Yet world politics was not compartmentalized. The cataclysmic changes in the configuration of world power that occurred in 1940–41—the fall of France, Japan’s alliance with the Axis, the German attack on the Soviet Union — reverberated between East and West. The configuration of world power was moving from one of interconnected regional crises toward a unitary global balance of forces. The United States always needed to consider the implications elsewhere of a move in any particular direction.

  To understand fully American entry into World War II we need a modern synthesis combining the story of deepening participation in the war against Hitler with the related story of the road to Pearl Harbor and placing American policy in its global context. The 1952–53 work of William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Challenge to Isolation and The Undeclared War, provides a model in this respect. We need a book of that scope, incorporating modern scholarship, integrating the military side — intelligence and operational capability as well as strategy—with the diplomatic, and attentive to public and congressional opinion.

  By striving for comprehensiveness we may also gain a better understanding of the foreign policy of Franklin D. Roosevelt. So little record exists of the thoughts of this most elusive and dissembling of presidents that we must rely on inference and try for better sleuthing. Assessments differ widely, but Roosevelt has impressed me as an active and purposeful maker of foreign policy, the only figure with all the threads in his hands. He also had a keen sensitivity for relations among nations and grasp of great power politics. He took a comprehensive view. Accordingly, the more completely we reassemble the pieces of what we can reasonably assume he knew of world developments, and of what he could do about it and was advised to do, the better we may understand his policies.

  Comprehensiveness in these dimensions requires concision in others. The question was how far back from Pearl Harbor could 1 go in this fashion within the compass of one volume—and the answer was, not far. March 1941 offers a natural starting point. Earlier Roosevelt had been preoccupied with gaining a third term in the election of 1940 and winning the Lend-Lease debate. In foreign policy matters he was at his most opaque. With passage of Lend-Lease he had a mandate to act. Nineteen hundred forty-one was not necessarily more important than 1940, but it offered me more of an international harvest. Also the beginning of spring brought World War II into a new compaigning season with possible outcomes even worse than those of 1940. Increasingly in my research the nine-month period from March to December 1941 took on a character of its own with a separate yarn to tell.

  More than anyone else, Dorothy Borg has made it possible for me to reach the point of telling this story and with heartfelt thanks I dedicate this book to her. Her high expectations, rigorous standards, gentle prodding, and constant, warm encouragement and support have brought out the best in me as a historian. The East Asian Institute of Columbia University with its kindred spirits, workshops, and conferences has been a second home for me professionally. Lectures to Carol Gluck’s Columbia students have greatly helped me develop the ideas on which this book is based.

  My education in Japanese foreign relations and the international history of East Asia began with Akira Iriye, when we were graduate students together at Harvard, and I have been tapping his rich and abundant scholarship ever since. His kindness and help have powerfully assisted me in this project. Of particular benefit was his faculty seminar on the 1931–49 period, sponsored by the Henry Luce Foundation, which started me organizing research and writing and provided me the expert criticism of its members, Warren Cohen, Gary Hess, Sherman Cochran, and Bob Messer. Akira and Gary have given me the additional benefit of their criticism on the completed manuscript.

  The writing of this book would have been impossible without the concentrated time and energy permitted by a fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in 1985–86. I wish to thank the directors and staff of the Center, especially Associate Director Samuel Wells, my colleagues there, especially Jon Sumida, and my research assistants Michael Ciriello and Ann Heyer for making that year so enormously beneficial. Professor Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who has helped me so much along the way, was kind enough to serve as commentator at my Wilson Center symposium.

  I wish to thank the Earhart Foundation of Ann Arbor, Michigan, for a fellowship which made it possible to continue writing through the following summer. Travel for research was made possible by a grant from the American Philosophical Society. To Temple University I owe repeated thanks for research support of many kinds since the inception of this project. In my department at Temple I am deeply grateful to Russell Weigley and to the late Shumpei Okamoto, whom we miss so much.

  This manuscript has been greatly improved as the result of a careful evaluation by Robert Dallek. I am indebted again to my mentors at Harvard: Ernest May for his early suggestions about the project and Frank Freidel for his examination of the product and his sage advice. More errors than I care to admit were uncovered by the eagle-eyed scrutiny of portions of the manuscript by Jim Field, Charles Neu, and Dick Leopold. Scott Sagan gave me a valuable critique from his perspective in political science. To all these readers as well as Gary Hess and Akira Iriye my deepest thanks.

  My research has been facilitated by the knowledge and professional skill of many archivists; their courtesy and efficiency has eased my way through countless boxes and hours. My special thanks to Bill Emerson at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library for the key suggestions he made; to John Taylor at the National Archives for his unparalleled knowledge of military records; to Dean Allard, director of the U.S. Navy Operational Archives for showing the way to so many valuable naval records and sharing his knowledge as a naval historia
n; to Milt Gustafson and Sally Marks for the best-run archive I can imagine—the Diplomatic Branch at the National Archives; and the many other archivists who have helped: Richard Von Doenhoff, Howard Wehman, Tim Nenninger, Ed Reese, Bill Heimdahl, Fred Pernell, Richard Boylan, Richard Gould, Robert Parks, Martha Crawley, Bernard (“Cav”) Cavalcante, and Elaine Everly.

  At one stage or another in this project historians and experts of various kinds have kindly given of their time and knowledge. My thanks to David Reynolds, Daniel Harrington, Charles Maechling, Vice Admiral (Ret.) Edwin B. Hooper, Bob Love, Hugh Gallagher, “Sandy” Cochran, and W. A. B. Douglas and Marc Milner of the Directorate of History, National Defense Headquarters, Ottawa. My thanks also to Timothy J. Heinrichs for an expert editing of the manuscript. I have been fortunate, even after entering the world of personal computers, to be able to call on the word processing skills of Gloria Basmajian, Anita O’Brien, and jack Runyon.

  Scholarly Resources Inc. has granted permission to publish here excerpts from my article “President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Intervention in the Battle of the Atlantic, 1941,” which originally appeared in Diplomatic History.

  I have followed the Japanese style of giving Japanese family names first

  My wife, Audrey Stewart Heinrichs, with her own. intense profes sional career to manage, has been a constant source of support. My deepest thanks go to her for her patience, grace, and wise advice.

  Shoreham, Vermont

  August 1987

  Waldo Heinrichs

  Contents

  Prologue

  1 March 1941

  The Aura of German Power

  2 April

  Balancing Risks

  3 May

  Guarding the Atlantic Line

  4 June

  The Russian Factor

  5 July

  Containment of Japan

  6 August-September:

  Crossing the Threshold

  7 October-November:

  Race Against Time

  Epilogue: Japan Attacks

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  Maps

  (All maps reproduced from The New York Times of 1941 by permission of The New York Times, Inc.)

  Threshold of War

  Prologue

  Before war pounced on the United States on December 7, 1941, it crept up, stage by stage, over many years. First came the world economic crisis, beginning with the American stock market crash in 1929, undermining confidence in the world order, shaking the foundations of political power in every country, and promoting authoritarian rule. Japan’s conquest of Manchuria in 1931 was an isolated case, but aggression and pressure for territorial revisions dominated international politics from the mid-thirties onward, as the sad litany of Ethiopia, China, Austria, and Czechoslovakia attest. Hitler’s violation of the Munich agreement over Czechoslovakia and the determination of Britain and France henceforth to resist led to European war in 1939, In 1940 Hitler’s conquest of France, siege of Britain, and alliance with Japan shredded America’s sense of security. In 1941, European and East Asian conflicts extended and interconnected, the world divided, and war became virtually global. It is with the last climactic stage in 1941 that this book is concerned.

  The World War of 1914–18 was supposed to be the war to end all wars. Thirteen million combatants died, one in five, and twenty-two million were wounded, one in three.1 The great object of the Paris Peace Conference and the diplomacy of the 1920s was to make a repetition unnecessary and impossible. The dominant values of international relations remained those advanced by President Woodrow Wilson: national self-determination, guarantee of territorial integrity, peaceful settlement of disputes, disarmament, freer trade, and collective security under the aegis of the League of Nations. In significant ways these principles remained unfulfilled in the twenties. The peace settlement bore the marks of revenge and national self-aggrandizement; collective security was incomplete without United States membership in the League. Nevertheless, the United States played an active if behind-the-scenes role in diplomacy and dominated the Washington Conference of 1921–22 on arms limitation and Pacific-East Asian affairs. Universalism and multilateralism, conciliation and consultation, diplomacy not force—the spirit of Locarno, Geneva, and Washington—were the predominant motifs of those years, and it would have been hard to believe in 1929 that the world was already half the years to another war.

  The world economic crisis of the 1930s shriveled internationalism. A chain of failures and errors occurred in systems already weakened by war: declining commodity prices, exchange difficulties, foreign trade shrinkage, debt default, collapse of investment values, bank closings, factory shutdowns, and devastating unemployment. Britain was unable to continue as stabilizer of the international system and no successor appeared. Economic disorder led to political instability. Governments were less concerned with harmonizing relations with other nations than with staying in power. Nations turned inward and autarky prevailed.

  Most of the noteworthy events of the early and mid-thirties involved repudiation of internationalism. The failure of the London Economic Conference of 1933 marked the end of currency stabilization and the very idea of a managed world economy. At Geneva the exhaustive search for European disarmament died, and at London in 1936 naval limitation expired. League sanctions failed to prevent Italy’s conquest of Ethiopia in 1935–36, and the United States Senate rejected even a highly conditional membership in the World Court. Regional security pacts fared no better. The Locarno pact dissolved with Hitler’s occupation of the Rhineland in 1936, while the Brussels Conference of 1937 marked the demise of the Nine-Power Treaty designed to protect China. One by one the symbols of postwar accord and the Wilsonian New Diplomacy collapsed.

  In the wake of economic and political chaos arose two regimes seeking hegemony and prepared to use force, in Germany and Japan. Adolf Hitler, coming to power in 1933, planned step-by-step the conquest of Europe, the sequence and timing depending on circumstances. Furthermore, as Gerhard Weinberg contends, Hitler’s Nazi system depended on ever more space and resources. This insatiable expansionist appetite would ultimately have led along the paths of Hitler’s early visions to an attempt at world domination. Certainly the laying of keels of 56,000-ton battleships in 1939 suggests wider ambitions than Europe. Nazi persecution of the Jews and ruthless suppression of democracy and dissent aroused revulsion and fear abroad, but in the first years of his regime Hitler avoided confrontation while he concentrated on rearmament and consolidation of power. Historians now see the Nazi state as far from monolithic, rather as a congeries of bureaucratic and private empires, but the ultimate and absolute authority in all great questions was the Fuehrer’s and his alone.2

  Though German and Italian interests in Austria and the Balkans clashed, the two nations had powerful ideological affinities and saw common adversaries in France and Britain. Benito Mussolini and the Fascists, who came to power in 1922, were moved by illusions of Roman glory and empire, but until the mid-thirties II Duce acted with caution in foreign affairs. Germany’s benevolent neutrality toward Italy’s conquest of Ethiopia eased the path to accommodation, and in late 1936 the two dictators inaugurated the partnership known as the Axis. Both assisted General Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War between 1936 and 1939, and Italy bowed to Hitler’s annexation of Austria in 1938. Now Germany was on the march.

  Japan had led the way. On September 18, 1931, a bomb ripped out thirty-one inches of track in the South Manchurian Railroad just north of Mukden. It had been set by the Japanese army to serve as a pretext for the takeover of Manchuria, which was then accomplished. The League of Nations condemned the aggression, and Japan withdrew from the League. In the next several years Japan extended its sway beyond Manchuria (renamed Manchukuo) into Inner Mongolia and North China.

  The sources of Japanese expansionism were deep and complex. Of immediate importance was the rise of Chinese nationalism in the 1920s and the threa
t this posed to Japan’s interests, especially its imperial holdings in Manchuria and its visions for the future of those rich northern provinces of China. Behind that concern lay fear of the Soviet Union, then turning to development of the resources and defenses of Siberia and the Pacific maritime provinces. The world depression affected Japan especially severely because of its dependence on foreign trade. Japan’s exports fell by one-half from 1929 to 1931, driving down incomes and employment and destroying faith in Western political and economic systems. The military became a determining influence in Japanese politics and foreign policy, leading Japan down the path toward imperial self-sufficiency and hegemony in East Asia.

  While Germany’s imperial vision was singular, that of Hitler, Japan’s was pluralistic. The Japanese army anticipated war with the Soviet Union sooner or later, but the navy considered the United States its chief hypothetical enemy. The army looked northward, the navy southward toward the rich resources—particularly oil—of Southeast Asia. The more Japan challenged the existing order in East Asia—represented by the Washington treaty system of 1922—the more it estranged itself from the Western powers with interests in the region and the greater its affinity for the revisionist powers of Europe—Germany and Italy. In 1936, Germany and Japan signed a limited pact directed at the Soviet Union, to which Italy adhered the following year.

  Japan was not looking for war in China in 1937, but its arrogant pretensions and progressive intrusions from the north so roused the Chinese, both Nationalists and Communists, that the government of Chiang Kai-shek perforce determined to resist. A clash between Chinese and Japanese troops at Marco Polo Bridge, south of Peking, produced an uncontrolled escalation of conflict and full-scale war. Chiang and the Nationalists (Kuomintang) retreated westward into the mountains at Chungking. As the Japanese army swept up the great cities of eastern China it destroyed or jeopardized all of Western enterprise, business and missionary, and the treaty system on which it was based. Its bombing and massacre of civilians hardened anti-Japanese sentiment in America.