Hard Bargain: How FDR Twisted Churchill's Arm, Evaded the Law, and Changed the Role of the American Presidency. - book reviews

Washington Monthly, April, 1995 by Charles Peters

In the last half-century or so, American presidents have displayed a proclivity for foreign policy misadventures, often carried out in secret and without consulting Congress. Robert Shogan, one of our shrewdest political reporters, has an intriguing explanation of this phenomenon. It all began, he says, with Franklin Roosevelt's deal with England in 1940 in which the United States acquired sites for military bases from Newfoundland to Trinidad in exchange for 50 destroyers. The deal was made public at the beginning of September 1940, but had been negotiated largely in secrecy, and was not submitted to Congress.

Shogan tells a fascinating story of the three months of negotiation that produced the agreement. Unfortunately, his analysis is less compelling. Because he is a great reporter, Shogan has the integrity not to omit the facts that don't fit his case, but he too often either mininimizes or misinterprets them.

1940 is a year everyone should know and know well. It was a crucial moment in the history of the modem world. And the drama was at its height during the period of June through September.

This was the situation in the middle of June: Hitler had completed his conquest of France, having already overrun Poland, Norway, Denmark, Holland, and Belgium. He was planning to invade Britain in September. Britain was short of all kinds of armaments, but, of its many needs, destroyers ranked among the most desperate. So Churchill asked Roosevelt for 50 of the World War I-era destroyers this country had mothballed. The need was clearly immediate.

Yet Roosevelt could not say yes right away. There was a law called the Walsh Amendment that appeared to preclude a transfer of American warships to another country. Even more daunting was the fact that the American public had been largely isolationist in sentiment for more than twenty years. The great national hero, Charles Lindbergh, was an active leader of the America First camp, aided and abetted by such prominent senators as Burton Wheeler, Hiram Johnson, Gerald Nye, and Arthur Vandenburg. The Chicago Tribune, the leading editorial voice of the isolationists, said, "The sale of the American ships to a nation at war would be an action of war." Herbert Hoover, the only living ex-president, opposed the transfer. And perhaps most maddeningly, Roosevelt faced the same problem that Churchill had been forced to confront when France, in its death throes, had asked for his precious Spitfire fighters. Would he be sacrificing to a lost cause weapons that would soon be needed in his own country's defense? Hitler seemed unstoppable. Britain, especially since it had been stripped of its armor at Dunkirk, did not seem a good bet to succeed where all others had failed. Many feared America would be next. Time magazine ran drawings of Nazi arrows sweeping across the Atlantic. Only 13, I took the peril so seriously that I decided I should enter military school.

Clearly we were scraping the bottom of the barrel. Roosevelt had to get a pitifully unprepared America ready to fight. The army had only a few hundred thousand men. So it was essential to get a military draft enacted. The bill didn't pass until September 15, and until it was passed it had to take priority over other legislation. Shogan makes only fleeting reference to this crucial part of the context of the destroyer deal. This was the first peace-time conscription in American history. It was, to say the least, politically dangerous, as was to a lesser but real extent FDR'S call-up of four National Guard divisions that summer, to which Shogan devotes only one sentence.

And Roosevelt was far from being in the strongest political position of his career. He was nominated for a third term in July, but at a convention that was grumbling and at times near rebellion. The Republican candidate, Wendell Willkie, was the most formidable opponent he had faced. (In November, Willkie was to receive five million more votes than the previous Republican presidential nominee.)

So here was FDR trying to get a draft enacted and prepare his country while running against a dangerous Republican opponent and having to face the strong emotional arguments of Lindbergh and the other isolationists against involving the country in a foreign war. Now he added to his problems the effort to accommodate Britain's need for the 50 destroyers.

Far from keeping the matter a secret, Roosevelt tried, to drum up public support for somehow getting the destroyers to England. He invited the nation's most powerful magazine publisher, Henry Luce of Time-Life, to the White House and said, "Harry, I can't come out in favor of such a deal without the support of the entire Time-Life organization for my foreign policy." FDR then arranged for General John Pershing, the only national hero more admired than Lindbergh, to make a radio speech advocating the deal. Roosevelt took Senator Walsh, the author of the amendment that stood in the way of the transfer, for a three-day cruise on the presidential yacht. He used William Allen White as an intermediary to try to get Willkie if not to advocate the deal, at least not to oppose it. Hoover persuaded Willkie not to come out in favor of the deal, but White kept him from coming out against it. And, last but not least, Roosevelt had the unenviable task of convincing the Chief o Navy Operations, Harold Stark, that giving up those fifty ships was a dandy idea.