A Higher Purpose by Thomas J. Whalen

Author:Thomas J. Whalen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781615780426
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee

CHAPTER SIX

Saving Democracy

Franklin Roosevelt and the Destroyers-for-Bases Deal

As a leader, Franklin Delano Roosevelt frowned upon rash impulsiveness. He preferred instead to weigh carefully the pros and cons of a considered action before arriving at a final decision—often, his political enemies charged, in a dissembling and manipulative way. “I am a juggler,” Roosevelt once boasted. “I never let my right hand know what my left hand does.” But the crush of events appeared to be conspiring against the usually buoyant commander-in-chief in the frenzied summer of 1940. France had fallen to the marauding armies of Adolf Hitler in June, and a Nazi invasion of Great Britain appeared imminent as the Luftwaffe was on the verge of delivering a knockout blow against the badly outgunned and outnumbered Royal Air Force (RAF). “A few more weeks of this,” wrote one American observer, “and Britain would have no organized defense of its skies. The invasion could almost certainly succeed.” British Prime Minister Winston Churchill spent most of these critical days frantically pleading with Roosevelt to provide whatever arms and materiel he could spare to ward off the expected German military onslaught.

In particular, Churchill requested that a number of older American naval destroyers be handed over to his country immediately to help protect the English coastline and prevent German U-boats from sinking merchant ships carrying vital war supplies. “Destroyers are frighteningly vulnerable to air bombing,” Churchill wrote Roosevelt in late July, “and yet they must be held in the air bombing area to prevent a seaborne invasion. We could not keep up the present [high] rate of casualties for long, and if we cannot get a substantial reinforcement, the whole fate of the war may be decided by this minor and easily remediable factor. I cannot understand why, with the position as it is, you do not send me at least 50 to 60 of your oldest destroyers.”

For Roosevelt the stakes could not have been higher. If Britain fell, all of Western Europe would be under Hitler’s iron heel, with the United States and the Western Hemisphere next in line as targets for conquest. “In times like these—in times of great tension, of great crisis—the compass of the world narrows to a single fact,” Roosevelt told a nationwide radio audience in July. “The fact which dominates our world is the fact of armed aggression, the fact of successful armed aggression, aimed at the form of Government, the kind of society that we in the United States have chosen and established for ourselves. It is a fact which no one longer doubts—which no one is longer able to ignore.”

Yet to come so openly to Britain’s aid with the destroyers risked violating existing neutrality laws while seriously jeopardizing Roosevelt’s chances at winning reelection for an unprecedented third term that fall, as Americans overwhelmingly favored staying out of the war. Nevertheless a decision had to be made and made quickly. The fate of Britain and “the institutions of democracy in the Western World” hung precariously in the balance. The time for juggling had clearly passed.

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