FDR - Jean Edward Smith [302]
Waiting for Roosevelt was a congratulatory message from Churchill. “I did not think it right for me as a Foreigner to express my opinion upon American politics while the Election was on,” said the prime minister, “but now I feel you will not mind my saying that I prayed for your success.”2 Bismarck had said that the most important geopolitical fact of the modern era was that the Americans spoke English, and Churchill exploited that fact shamelessly.3 “Things are afoot which will be remembered as long as the English language is spoken in any quarter of the globe,” he told Roosevelt. “In expressing the comfort I feel that the people of the United States have once again cast these great burdens upon you, I must avow my faith that the lights by which we steer will bring us all safely to anchor.”4
As Churchill wrote out that message, the Battle of Britain approached a climax. The Luftwaffe had failed to gain air superiority over the Channel; Operation Sea Lion—the German invasion plan for the British Isles—had been shelved, yet air attacks against civilian targets accelerated. For fifty-seven consecutive nights the Nazis bombed London: ten thousand were dead, more than fifty thousand injured.5 On November 14 three hundred German bombers hit Coventry, kindling a firestorm that claimed 568 civilian casualties and destroyed the city’s center.* Five nights later, 1,353 people were killed in a massive raid on Birmingham.6 At sea, the battle hung in the balance. More than five hundred British merchant ships had been sunk by German U-boats and surface raiders—a total of more than 2 million tons of lost shipping that was difficult to replace. Most serious of all, Britain was on the verge of bankruptcy. The “cash-and-carry” provision of the Neutrality Act had drained the British Treasury of its dollar reserves.
Roosevelt appeared in little hurry to offer assistance. No one was better at laying a smoke screen to cloak his intentions than FDR, and he masked his plans for aid to Britain in postelection euphoria. In late November, Lord Lothian, who had just returned from London, called on the president to explain Britain’s plight. At his press conference on November 26 Roosevelt was asked:
Q: Mr. President, did the British Ambassador present any specific requests for additional help?
FDR: Nothing was mentioned in that regard at all, not one single thing—ships or sealing wax or anything else.7
Roosevelt’s cavalier denial concealed the intense planning that was under way in Washington. On Tuesday, December 3, Hull, Stimson, Knox, Commerce secretary Jesse Jones, and General Marshall met with Morgenthau at the Treasury to review Britain’s financial situation. As Treasury officials scrawled figures across a blackboard, the inescapable conclusion was that the British would exhaust their gold and dollar reserves within the month just to pay for the orders already placed with American industry. The money to pay for future orders was nowhere in sight. “What are we going to do?” asked Morgenthau. “Are we going to let them place more orders?”
“Got to,” said Knox. “No choice about it.”8
Roosevelt took the problem with him when he departed Washington the next day for a Caribbean cruise on the USS Tuscaloosa accompanied only by Hopkins and his immediate staff—Pa Watson, Dr. McIntire, and Navy captain Daniel Callaghan. The White House proclaimed the purpose of the cruise was to inspect base sites in the West Indies, but FDR wanted time at sea to refresh and regroup.* Aside from meeting local dignitaries, including the Duke of Windsor, Roosevelt spent his days fishing, basking in the sun, and spoofing with cronies. Evenings were devoted to poker and movies. When Ernest Hemingway sent word that many big fish had been caught on a stretch of the Mona Passage between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, FDR trawled there for several hours using a feathered hook baited with a piece of pork rind as Hemingway suggested but failed to get a strike.9
Roosevelt seemed carefree and relaxed, almost indifferent