FDR - Jean Edward Smith [272]
The highlight of the Washington summer was the visit of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. In September 1938, at the height of the Munich crisis, FDR invited the King to Washington as a goodwill gesture to cement Anglo-American relations. “You would, of course, stay with us at the White House. You and I are fully aware of the demands of the Protocol people, but, having had much experience with them, I am inclined to think you and Her Majesty should do very much as you personally want to do—and I will see to it that your decision becomes the right decision.”72
The King and Queen arrived in the United States June 7, 1939. After a ceremonial reception in Washington,* the Roosevelts and Windsors adjourned for a summer weekend at Hyde Park. FDR, who personally planned every detail of the trip, treated the King as a fellow head of state: no bowing, no curtsies to the Queen, hot dogs on the lawn at Top Cottage, informal dinner at Springwood. Sara had urged Franklin to dispense with the usual cocktail hour. “My mother says we should have tea,” Roosevelt told the King. “My mother would have said the same thing,” His Majesty replied—at which point FDR reached for the martini shaker. After dinner the King and the president talked privately well into the night. About one-thirty FDR placed a fatherly hand on the King’s knee. “Young man, it’s time for you to go to bed.” Not only had Roosevelt covered the gamut of world affairs, but his combination of charm, respect, and paternal guidance won George’s admiration. “Why don’t my Ministers talk to me as the President did tonight?” he asked Canadian prime minister Mackenzie King before retiring. “I feel exactly as though a father were giving me his most careful and wise advice.”73
The King’s visit provided a momentary distraction from the deteriorating situation in Europe. After incorporating the Baltic port of Memel into East Prussia, Hitler turned his attention to Danzig and the Polish Corridor. The Treaty of Versailles, in the process of creating an independent Poland, had not only stripped a large slice of Silesia from Germany but granted landlocked Poland access to the sea by establishing a corridor along the Vistula River terminating in the port city of Danzig. Danzig, one of the four principal cities of the Hanseatic League and demonstrably German since the Middle Ages, was made a Free City tied economically to Poland. Even more onerous, the Vistula corridor split East Prussia from the rest of Germany. Hitler demanded the immediate return of Danzig and an extraterritorial road and rail link across the Corridor. Paradoxically, these demands were among the least unreasonable Hitler had made. When Poland refused, war became inevitable.
On August 23, 1939, Hitler achieved his final diplomatic triumph—a surprise Nonaggression Pact with the Soviet Union. A secret protocol provided for the partition of Poland and the liquidation of the Baltic states of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.74 At first light on the morning of September 1, forty-two German divisions, including ten armored divisions, stormed across the Polish frontier.75 Roosevelt was awakened at 2:50 A.M. Washington time by a phone call from Ambassador Bullitt in Paris relaying a message from Anthony Drexel Biddle in Warsaw that war had begun. “Well, Bill, it has come at last,” said the president. “God help us all.”76
* A Fortune magazine poll taken at the time Lippmann wrote indicated that fewer than 25 percent of the respondents would be willing to go to war to defend the Philippines if they were attacked. “The Fortune Survey,” Fortune 46–47 (January 1936).
* U.S. forces were in China under the provisions of the Sino-American Treaty of 1858. In 1937 the Yangtze Patrol consisted of thirteen vessels (nine of which were