Nineteen Weeks: America, Britain, and the Fateful Summer of 1940 by Norman Moss

Author:Norman Moss [Moss, Norman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2014-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

8. PANZERS IN PHILADELPHIA

Roosevelt wanted some bipartisan participation in the administration’s foreign policy making. The previous autumn he had offered the post of secretary of the navy to Frank Knox, the publisher of the Chicago Daily News, a Republican who supported all-out aid to the Allies. Knox had turned it down, saying that his disagreement with Roosevelt’s domestic policies was too great. On June 18, Knox made a speech in Detroit calling for compulsory military training, vastly expanded defense expenditure, more aid to Britain, and cooperation with the British navy. It is indicative of the rapidity with which American thinking had changed that two months earlier, in a speech in Cleveland, Knox had said, “After our experience in the last war, it is simply unthinkable that we will ever again send overseas a great expeditionary force.”

Roosevelt called him and again invited him to join his cabinet. He offered him the choice of the War or Navy Departments. Knox had turned down the offer of a cabinet post before, but he decided that in this crisis in world affairs he could not refuse to serve, and he chose the navy. However, he said he wanted to wait until after the Republican National Convention, which was to open in a few days. He wanted to attend the convention and fight against the isolationists in the party.

Roosevelt argued that the announcement of his appointment should be made before the convention.[252] He said that if Knox attended the convention and an isolationist candidate was adopted, his joining Roosevelt’s cabinet would be seen as the action of a disgruntled loser. If his candidate won the nomination, then he could hardly desert the candidate he had fought for by joining the administration. His joining the cabinet should be seen as an act of patriotism unaffected by party considerations. Knox accepted this argument. Roosevelt had already arranged for the present navy secretary, Charles Edison, to get the Democratic nomination for the governorship of New Jersey.

Knox, a native Chicagoan who began his working life as a reporter, had fought in the Spanish-American War in Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. In World War One he enlisted as a private and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, and he was Alfred Landon’s running mate in the 1936 election. He admired Theodore Roosevelt, and some said he modeled himself after him, with his fierce patriotism, his strong opinions, and even his ruddy complexion and bristling red hair.

That left the War Department. Roosevelt had to replace his secretary of war, Henry Woodring, who had tried to obstruct every move to get help to Britain. He did not like to sack anyone but he could find no way to ease Woodring into another post as he had Edison, so he simply asked him to resign.

Two people who were to influence events pressed him to offer the post to Henry Stimson. They were Felix Frankfurter, Supreme Court justice and advisor to presidents, and Grenville Clark, a lawyer and protegé of Frankfurter’s. Roosevelt offered the post to Stimson, and he accepted.

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