FDR - Jean Edward Smith [86]
Instead of making ready to leave Washington, Franklin and Eleanor settled in for another four years. “It is rumored that a certain distinguished cousin of mine is now engaged in revising his most noted historical work, The Winning of the West,” FDR joked to an audience of party faithful immediately after the election. To Eleanor he confided, “I hope to God I don’t grow reactionary with advancing years.”87
In France, the military stalemate continued. The Allied lines were stretched thin but remained intact. Imperial Russia was on the verge of collapse and revolution loomed, but the British naval blockade was taking a dreadful toll on the German home front. Eager to drive Britain from the war, the German high command concluded that unrestricted submarine warfare—the one weapon they had not yet employed—would force the island to its knees in six months. That might bring the United States into the war, but the German military was convinced the fighting would be over before America’s power could be felt. On January 9, 1917, Kaiser Wilhelm revoked his earlier edict and ordered unrestricted submarine warfare to commence on February 1. German embassies were instructed to inform their host governments on January 31, which left no time for a diplomatic protest. Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann dispatched an additional note to the German ambassador in Mexico City:
We shall endeavor to keep the United States neutral. In the event of this not succeeding, we make Mexico a proposal of alliance on the following basis: Make war together, make peace together, generous financial support, and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.88
On February 3, following the U-boat sinking of the freighter Housatonic, Wilson went before Congress to announce that he had severed diplomatic relations with Germany.89 FDR was inspecting the Marine occupation of Santo Domingo at the time and received an urgent message from Daniels to return to Washington immediately.90 “No one knew anything for certain except that the German Ambassador, Count von Bernstorff, had been given his passports and it seemed probable that the United States and Germany were already at war,” Roosevelt recalled. “As we headed north on our way to Hampton Roads no lights were showing, the guns were manned and there was complete radio silence.”91
When FDR arrived in Washington, he found it was business as usual. Wilson hoped that by breaking relations he would convince Germany to rescind its submarine campaign, and the administration settled into a period of watchful waiting. But the president’s hopes were soon dashed. By the end of February German U-boats had sunk an unprecedented 781,500 tons of Allied shipping. Reeling under the impact, the British Admiralty furnished the U.S. Embassy in London a decoded copy of Zimmermann’s January telegram to his ambassador in Mexico City.* The embassy passed the message to Washington, and on March 1, 1917, an infuriated Wilson released it to the press. A wave of anti-German sentiment swept the country, and the United States inched closer to war.
With hostilities looming and Daniels out of town, FDR as acting secretary asked Wilson for permission to bring the Atlantic Fleet north from Guantánamo Bay so that it could be fitted out for war. Wilson declined. “I want history to show,” Roosevelt remembers the president saying, “not only that we have tried every diplomatic means to keep out of the war; to show that war has been forced upon us deliberately