FDR - Jean Edward Smith [270]
By the end of 1938 Hopkins had succeeded to the place in Roosevelt’s confidence that Louis Howe had occupied. Like Howe, he was one of the president’s few intimates who moved confidently between Franklin and Eleanor, and ER was the guardian of Hopkins’s young daughter, Diana.* Frequently Hopkins would join FDR at Warm Springs, where he and Missy were the president’s only companions. Roosevelt’s routine had changed remarkably little. According to Hopkins:
The President wakes up about eight-thirty—breakfasts in bed—reads the morning papers and if left alone will spend a half hour or so reading a detective story. I would go in about nine-thirty—usually much talk about European affairs—Kennedy and Bullitt our ambassadors in London and Paris would telephone—Hull and Welles from the State Department so we had the latest news of Hitler’s moves in the international checkerboard.…
Lunch has usually been F.D.R. with Missy and me—these are the pleasantest because he is under no restraint and personal and public business is discussed with the utmost frankness. The service incidentally is as bad as the food.…
He will sleep a bit after lunch—visit his farm—look at the tree plantings—back around four thirty for an hour’s dictation. Dinner at seven. The ceremonial cocktail with the President doing the honors. He makes a first rate “old fashioned” and a fair martini.…
After dinner the President retreats to his stamps—magazines and evening paper. Missy and I will play Chinese checkers. George Fox comes in to give him a rub down and the President is in bed by ten.63
FDR sought to deter Hitler without tipping his hand. Nevertheless, his airpower program encountered turbulence shortly after takeoff. One of Roosevelt’s goals was to lay the groundwork for a rapid expansion of aircraft production should an emergency arise. Another was to provide planes immediately for Britain and France. Because those nations were at peace, the restrictions of the Neutrality Act did not apply. But Secretary of War Woodring and the Army general staff opposed the sale of weapons abroad. Woodring, an ardent isolationist, was against American overseas involvement in any context. The Army staff resisted because they wanted the material to equip American forces. Roosevelt bypassed the opposition by assigning responsibility for foreign arms sales to Morgenthau and the Treasury. Just as the State Department had been shut out of FDR’s decision to recognize the Soviet Union, the War Department was overridden in order to provide planes for America’s potential allies. In both instances Roosevelt called the shots, and the details were closely guarded.64
The president’s cover was blown in January 1939, when an experimental Douglas A-20 bomber crashed in California with a French purchasing agent aboard. Asked about it at his press conference on January 27, Roosevelt dissembled. The plane was not really an American military plane, he said, but a private model that Douglas was trying to peddle. French purchases would provide a shot in the arm for the aircraft industry, and the Treasury was involved because it wished to promote American exports.65
When the firestorm did not abate, Roosevelt invited the members of the Senate Military Affairs Committee to the White House. “I cannot overemphasize the seriousness of the situation,” he told the senators. All of Europe