Roosevelt (18 page)

During the spring, rumors and reports of Hitler’s intentions reached the Kremlin from many sources. Stalin did not ignore them or necessarily disbelieve them; he processed them through his ideological,
Realpolitik
mind. He was wary. Were the Nazis building up their eastern frontier and letting out rumors simply to camouflage their spring assault on England? Was Churchill—who had sent him an inconclusive warning that was delayed in the delivery—trying once again, like a typical imperialist and warmonger, to let Russia pull his chestnuts out of the fire? Was Hitler simply securing a position of strength from which he hoped to bargain harder with Moscow? Or could Hitler possibly be contemplating a war on two fronts?

At least Stalin could avert a second front against himself. The
neutrality pact that he and Matsuoka had negotiated gave him a rare moment of relief—along with a moment of humor when the Japanese Foreign Minister said that the better elements in Japan were originally “moral Communists.” In one stroke Stalin had minimized the chance of an eastern front and hence—presumably—a western one. In a surprise visit to Matsuoka’s alcoholic, back-slapping send-off at the station, he embraced his guest, remarking, “We are Asiatics, too, and we’ve got to stick together.” He went on: “Now that Japan and Russia have fixed their problems, Japan can straighten out the Far East; Russia and Germany will handle Europe. Later together all of them will deal with America.” Seeking out the German Ambassador, he threw his arm around his shoulder and exclaimed: “We must remain friends and you must now do everything to that end.”

For such friends time was running out. Early in May, Stalin spoke in the Kremlin to young officers just graduated from military academies. He told them bluntly that the situation was extremely serious, a German attack was possible; but that the Red Army was not strong enough to smash the Germans easily because of inadequate training, equipment, and defense lines. The government, he said, would try by all diplomatic means to put off a German attack until the fall; but even if this succeeded, almost inevitably there would be war with Germany in 1942, but under more favorable conditions for Russia. “Depending on the international situation, the Red Army will either wait for a German attack,” Stalin went on, “or it may have to take the initiative, since the perpetuation of Nazi Germany as the dominant power in Europe is ‘not normal.’ ”

Two days later Stalin made himself Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, and thus the formal head of government. By now he seemed to be fighting for time, hoping Hitler would still turn west. He tried to appease Berlin by closing down embassies and legations of Nazi-occupied nations. He kept Russian oil and other supplies moving to Germany. He had TASS deny rumors that Berlin was putting pressure on Moscow—a denial that in fact was correct, because Hitler was now bound on annihilation, not bargaining—and imply that London was still trying to foment war between Russia and Germany.

Seven nights later the German Ambassador drove to the Kremlin shortly before dawn and read to Molotov a cable just received from Berlin. It was the same pack of Nazi lies and accusations a dozen nations had heard just before their doom.

“This is war,” Molotov said. “Do you believe that we deserved that?”

At that moment—dawn of June 22, 1941—a tide of German troops,
tanks, and guns was flooding across the open plains. The Wehrmacht struck with its usual deception, surprise, efficiency, and stunning force. In the north three Panzer divisions, with over six hundred tanks, simply swarmed over a weak Russian rifle division. In the center the Nazi spearhead—two Panzer groups comprising seven divisions and almost 1,500 tanks—burst through understrength Russian divisions. In the south another German army brushed aside Russian defenses—they might have been a row of glass houses, a German lieutenant observed—and soon was rolling along hard and intact roads with the sound of guns fading behind. By evening the leading Panzer divisions, stretched out over seven to ten miles-motorcyclists and armored cars scouting ahead, massed tanks following, and a “sandwich” of infantry and artillery in between-had pierced the Soviet border by almost twice their own length.

In East Prussia the night before, in his new underground headquarters, “Wolfsschanze” (“Wolf’s Lair”), concealed in a dark forest, Hitler had dictated a letter,
“DUCE!
I am writing this letter to you at a moment when months of anxious deliberation and continuous nerve-wracking waiting are ending in the hardest decision of my life.” He reviewed the situation. England had lost the war. It was trying to get Russia into it. “Behind these two countries stands the North American Union goading them on” and supplying them with war materials. If he had to send his Air Force against Britain, Russia would follow a strategy of extortion. So he would “cut the noose before it can be drawn tight.” The war in the east would not be easy, but Germany and Italy would secure a common food-supply base in the Ukraine. He tried feebly to explain why he was notifying the Duce only at the last moment. The decision had been made. Now he felt spiritually free. “With hearty and comradely greetings. Your Adolf Hitler.”

In London Churchill spoke over the radio to the people:

“…No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I have for the last twenty-five years. I will unsay no word that I have spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding. The past, with its crimes, its follies, and its tragedies, flashes away.” He described the tranquil Russian villages, children playing, mothers and wives awaiting the return of their loved ones. “I see advancing upon all this in hideous onslaught the Nazi war machine, with its clanking, heel-clicking, dandified Prussian officers, its crafty expert agents fresh from the cowing and tying-down of a dozen countries. I see also the dull, drilled, docile, brutish masses of the Hun soldiery plodding on like a swarm of crawling locusts…. Behind all this glare, behind all this storm, I see that small group of villainous men who plan, organize, and launch this cataract of horrors upon mankind….”

In Tokyo, officials reacted with shock and dismay. The Konoye government had had intelligence of the Nazi attack but could scarcely credit it. Now for a second time Hitler had presented a
fait accompli.
But Matsuoka was undaunted. Japan, he felt, now had a supreme opportunity to attack Soviet Siberia and destroy Russian power in the Far East. The man who had strolled with Stalin along the station platform exchanging felicities was ready two months later to scrap his agreement with the Soviet chief. He rushed to the Imperial Palace with his plan, but he met a cool reception. Russia was still formidable in Siberia, army chiefs contended; why not wait until it was bleeding so heavily from Nazi thrusts that its strength would be drained away from the east? Let Germans fight Russians; Japan could pursue its interests southward and later move north when the main job was done. Let Hitler undertake a two-front war; Tokyo would not.

In Moscow, Stalin waited two weeks—in a state of near-collapse, it was said later—before he spoke to his people. “Comrades, citizens, brothers and sisters, fighters of our Army and Navy! I am speaking to you, my friends.” He described, and understated, the German advances. “A serious threat hangs over our country.” He tried to justify the Nazi-Soviet Pact. “The enemy is cruel and merciless. He aims at grabbing our land, our wheat and oil. He wants to restore the power of the landowners, re-establish Tsarism, and destroy the national culture of the peoples of the Soviet Union…and turn them into slaves of German princes and barons.” The writer Ilya Ehrenburg, sitting by the radio at the office of
Red Star,
had never heard Stalin sound so moved, so close to his people. The dictator warned against panic-mongers, called on the troops and the whole Soviet people to fight for every inch of Soviet soil, and leave not a single engine or railway track or pound of bread or pint of oil for the enemy.

“Comrades, our forces are immeasurably large….All the strength of the people must be used to smash the enemy. Onward to victory!”

T
HE WEEKS OF MAY
and early June 1941 had been among the most trying in Roosevelt’s life. Although he, too, had had ample warning of Hitler’s mobilization in the east, he could not be sure that this was not a massive feint for an attack on the British Isles or elsewhere. Britain’s heavy needs, China’s plaintive cries for help, Matsuoka’s continental fence-mending, Pétain’s and Franco’s vulnerability in the Mediterranean, the isolationist clamor in Congress, the pressure of the militants around him—these and a host of other scourges put the President under heavy strain. His May cold dragged on. With the press he was less open and genial as the spring neared its end, with his subordinates less tolerant and patient.

“…I wish to God,” he wrote to Senator Josiah Bailey, of North Carolina, in regard to convoying, “I could make out what all this full-dress debate they are talking about in the Senate relates to. Why debate convoys?” Convoying was a matter for experts, not for “laymen like you or I.” A few days later he burst out in a letter to an isolationist Congressman: “…When will you Irishmen ever get over hating England? Remember that if England goes down, Ireland goes down too….” When former Congressman Bruce Barton wrote in to complain of inconsistent figures from the administration, the President replied: “…It is hard to explain technical problems either to the Congress or to the people in view of the distorted values which are promptly given to one phase or the other of a complete picture.” The master interpreter to the American people of complex problems at this point seemed to have lost his touch.

As usual the President was trying to gauge public opinion, and as usual public opinion was blurred and drifting. Americans seemed fiercely protective of their own shores, very doubtful that Britain could survive without American aid, and very sure that American naval escort of war materials to Britain would put the country into war. In mid-May, Pa Watson got an advance tip on a Gallup Poll; the figures he gave his boss indicated that about a quarter of the respondents felt that the President had not gone far enough in
helping Britain, almost a quarter thought he had gone too far, and about half answered “just about right.” During the following weeks interventionist feeling seemed to run ahead of presidential action. A majority seemed to be in favor of convoying, for example. But what kind of convoying, where, at what risk of shooting? On the specific and crucial policy questions public opinion was, as usual, hazy and volatile.

Amid the impenetrable events of early 1941 people seemed to be waiting for some clarifying event or galvanizing incident—or at least for some clear lead from the top. Only the President could give such a lead. By late May the militants were putting heavy pressure on their chief to speak bluntly to the people and proclaim an unlimited national emergency. Stimson sensed that the President was waiting for the accidental shot of a German or American commander to move the country into war, when he should have been considering the “deep principles” underlying the question. Ickes wrote to the President that Hitler would not create an incident until he was ready, and he would strike when ready, incident or no incident. Morgenthau was still militant; Hull, still cautious of action, if not of word.

Finally deciding on a speech, the President went about its preparation in a curious way. He would not ask Sherwood or Rosenman to put in a declaration of unlimited emergency, and he professed surprise when he found it in a draft. High officials tussled over the text of the speech as if it were a declaration of war. Stimson wanted a statement about the transfer of fleet units to the Atlantic; Hull objected. Some favored a stark presentation of shipping losses in the Atlantic; the Chiefs of Staff objected. Roosevelt was set on two matters: he would not mention Japan, for fear of provoking that country toward war; he would mention Russia, in case Germany forced it into war.

The speech had a dramatic prelude. The German battleship
Bismarck
suddenly slipped through the North Sea fogs and headed into the North Atlantic. “We have reason to believe that a formidable Atlantic raid is intended,” Churchill cabled to Roosevelt. “Should we fail to catch them going out, your Navy should surely be able to mark them down for us.” The battle cruiser
Hood
and other mighty ships would be on its track, he added. “Give us the news and we will finish the job.” But contrary news came to the White House: the
Bismarck
had sunk the
Hood
and was now on the loose. The President got the news while sitting behind his desk in the oval study, where he was working with Sherwood and others on his speech. He wondered whether the
Bismarck
would head straight toward Martinique. “Suppose she does show up in the Caribbean,” he speculated almost casually. “We have some submarines down there. Suppose we order them to attack her and attempt to sink her?
Do you think the people would demand to have me impeached?” Two days later the President took a call from the Navy Department. The
Bismarck
had been cornered by British Navy units and blasted by shells and torpedoes. Roosevelt hung up and said exultantly, “She’s sunk!”

After this prelude and all the rumors and anticipation, the final speech, on May 27, was somewhat anticlimactic. The setting was anomalous: inside the East Room, representatives of Latin-American republics sat uncomfortably on gilt ballroom chairs; outside, Communist pickets trudged up and down the sidewalk with their antiwar placards. The President began his address boldly with a flat declaration that the Nazis were bent on world domination. He was not speculating, he insisted; it was already in the “Nazi book of world conquest.” The Nazis, he said, “plan to treat the Latin American Nations as they are now treating the Balkans. They plan then to strangle the United States of America and the Dominion of Canada.” American labor would be oppressed, unions crushed, the farmer regimented and impoverished, churches threatened, children perhaps sent off “goosestepping in search of new gods.”