FDR - Jean Edward Smith [281]
In France, the military situation turned hopeless. The French had lost thirty of their best divisions, the Belgians and Dutch were out of the war, and the BEF had been evacuated. On June 5 the Germans turned south. Panzers crashed through the French line on the Somme, the defense collapsed in confusion, and the Germans crossed the Seine virtually unopposed four days later. Paris was declared an open city, the government fled first to Tours and then to Bordeaux, and General Maxime Weygand, the French commander in chief, urged Reynaud to ask for an armistice. “I am obliged to say that a cessation of hostilities is compulsory.”54
On Monday, June 10, Roosevelt headed for Charlottesville, Virginia. FDR, Jr., was graduating from law school, and the president had been invited to give the commencement address. As Roosevelt boarded the train, he received word that Italy had declared war on France, launching thirty-two divisions against the lightly held Alpine passes and the Côte d’Azur. Whatever doubts FDR held about his future course vanished with Mussolini’s attack. That night, disregarding State Department objections, he went full out. In a voice dripping with scorn, the president told the university’s graduands, “On this tenth day of June, 1940, the hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor.”
To believe that the United States could exist as “a lone island in a world dominated by the philosophy of force,” said Roosevelt, was “an obvious delusion.” America’s duty was clear: “We will extend to the opponents of force the material resources of this nation; and at the same time, we will harness and speed up the use of those resources in order that we ourselves may have equipment and training equal to the task. Signs and signals call for speed—full speed ahead.”55
Roosevelt’s “stab-in-the-back” speech marked the decisive turning point in American policy. Though polls indicated that only 30 percent of the nation believed an Allied victory possible, FDR unequivocally placed himself shoulder to shoulder with Britain and France.56 Listening to the president on the radio, Churchill could scarcely contain his enthusiasm. “We all listened to you last night and were fortified by the grand scope of your declaration. Your statement that the material aid of the United States will be given to the Allies in their struggle is a strong encouragement in a dark but not unhopeful hour. Everything must be done to keep France in the fight. The hope with which you inspired them may give them the strength to persevere.… I send you my heartfelt thanks and those of my colleagues for all you are doing and seeking to do for what we may now indeed call a common cause.”57
Despite Churchill’s hopes, the weight of the Nazi offensive proved too much for the embattled Third Republic. On June 14 the Germans entered Paris. On the sixteenth Reynaud resigned and was succeeded by Marshal Henri-Philippe Pétain, the aged hero of World War I’s Battle of Verdun. Two hours later Pétain sued for peace. On Saturday, June 22, in the Forest of Compiègne, in the very same railway car in which the 1918 armistice had been signed, Hitler personally presided over France’s surrender.
When Roosevelt returned from Charlottesville, he reorganized his cabinet for action. Charles Edison was eased out as secretary of the Navy, and Harry Woodring was dumped from the War Department. FDR prevailed upon the New Jersey Democratic organization to nominate Edison for governor (he won the post in November); Woodring, who continued to drag his feet on rearming the British, was cut adrift.58
On June 19, 1940, less than a week before the Republican nominating convention in Philadelphia, Roosevelt announced that Colonel Frank Knox, the publisher of the Chicago Daily News, the old Rough Rider who had been Alf Landon’s running mate in 1936, would succeed