The United States, inadequately supported by Britain and France in its early peace-keeping endeavors, retreated into isolationism in the spirit of “a plague o’ both your houses.” At the same time the country took steps to insulate itself from the coming war. In a series of extraordinary measures, the government renounced rights that the United States had three times gone to war to defend. An Act of Congress in 1935 forbade the sale or delivery of munitions to a belligerent nation and empowered the President to prohibit Americans from travel on the ships of belligerents. An amendment the following year forbade loans to belligerents, and a new Congressional Act in 1937 required that all sales to them be paid for before export and be carried away in other than American ships. This last was the notorious “Cash-and-Carry Act.” To avoid being challenged on the seas, Americans planned to retreat from the seas.
Upon the declaration of war in Europe, President Roosevelt promptly established a Neutrality Patrol, which had a stated purpose of reporting and tracking belligerent aircraft, ships, or submarines approaching the United States or the West Indies. A month later the United States, in concert with the republics of Latin America, proclaimed a safety zone 300 miles wide off the coasts of the Americas south of Canada. Inside this zone warlike operations were forbidden.
Despite the apparent determination of the United States to sit out this war, the Americans were never, to use President Wilson’s phrase, “impartial in thought as well as in action.” American traditions opposed the totalitarian and aggressive governments of Germany,
Italy, and Japan. The American people were outraged by the mistreatment of minorities in Germany and by atrocities committed by the Japanese army against Chinese civilians. Concerning Hitler’s systematic persecution of the Jews, President Roosevelt in November 1938 declared: “The news of the past few days from Germany has deeply shocked public opinion in the United States. ... I myself could scarcely believe that such things could occur in a twentieth-century civilization.”
Even the Neutrality Acts were less than strictly neutral, for the British, having command of the seas, could purchase and take home goods from the United States, while Germany could not. The U. S. government, by not recognizing Japan’s undeclared war, permitted Americans to sell and deliver materials to embattled China via Hanoi or the Burma Road. At the outbreak of hostilities in Europe, the United States lifted the embargo on munitions specifically for the benefit of Britain and France.
President Roosevelt realized more fully than most others that the United States could not afford to see victory for a gangster nation like Hitler’s Germany. He therefore began by devious means to lead his country into rearmament and to increase aid to Germany’s antagonists. In his eyes the Neutrality Patrol was chiefly a means of preparing for war. As the patrol was expanded, ships were refitted and pressed into service, and reserves were called to the colors and given training that prepared them admirably for convoy escort duty.
The Nazi blitzkrieg quickly rolled over Poland, which Germany divided with Russia. The following spring.
At the Atlantic Conference, August 1941: General Marshall is conversing with President Roosevelt; behind Prime Minister Churchill, Admirals King and Stark are in consultation. Signed by and for President Roosevelt.
German armies overran Denmark and Norway and plunged through the Low Countries into France. The British army, overwhelmed by German aircraft and armored columns, barely escaped from French soil. Italy declared war on Britain and France, Paris fell, and France appealed for an armistice. Hitler, with access presumably to the combined naval power of Germany, France, and Italy, now stood with his armies poised on the English Channel, threatening to invade Britain. It thus seemed a distinct possibility that the Royal Navy also might be added to the Axis fleet. Roosevelt asked the new prime minister, Winston Churchill, for assurances that the British fleet would not be surrendered to Germany. Churchill replied that he himself would never relinquish the ships, but that, in the event of a British defeat, his government might be turned out and its successor might trade the fleet for better terms at the armistice table. /
Now at last the American people, faced with losing the Royal Navy as their first line of naval defense, came into agreement with their President on the issue of possible ivar. Congress appropriated funds for a two-ocean navy and passed the first peacetime draft in American history. President Roosevelt notified Berlin and Rome that the orphaned colonies of Denmark, Holland, and France in the Western Hemisphere were not subject to transfer from one non-American power to another. With Canada the United States set up a permanent board to propose joint action against threats from overseas.
Despite the possibihty of a surrender of the British fleet to Germany, Roosevelt decided to do something about Britain’s shortage of escort vessels. This shortage had been rendered critical by losses in the Allied attempt to oust the Germans from Norway and during the evacuation of the British army from France by way of Dunkirk. In September 1940, Roosevelt and Churchill made a
WORLD WAR II
Deal whereby Britain granted the United States 99-year leases of sites for bases in the West Indies in return for 50 U. S. destroyers built during, or shortly after, World War I. Britain also granted to the United States as gifts bases on Newfoundland and Bermuda; the United States gave to Britain 10 Coast Guard cutters equipped for antisubmarine duty.
To circumvent the “cash” part of the U. S. “cash-and-carry” policy and to avoid the war-debts problems that had followed World War I, Congress, at the President’s urging, in March 1941 passed the Lend-Lease Act. This act permitted the United States to go into high gear in the production of war materials and to transfer all that could be spared to Britain, and later Russia, on a loan basis. “We must,” said Roosevelt, “be the great arsenal of democracy.” The United States soon engaged in further unneutral acts—seizing Axis ships in American ports, freezing German and Italian assets in the United States, occupying Greenland, and relieving Britain in the defense of Iceland.
Early in 1941 high-ranking American and British oflBcers, meeting secretly in Washington, concluded the ABC-1 Staff Agreement, whereby the U. S. Navy would share responsibility for escorting transatlantic convoys. In the event that the United States entered the war, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff would meet periodically with the British Chiefs of Staff under the designation Combined Chiefs of Staff to make strategic plans and decisions; the United States would exert its principal military effort in the European theater, even if Japan should make war on America. The decision to “beat Hitler first” was based on Germany’s greater military potential, on her greater threat to the United States because of her control of the Atlantic coast of Europe, and on the fact that Germany was already fighting England, which could be helped at once, whereas Japan had now sealed off China from the outside world.
The Neutrality Patrol was expanded and reorganized as the U. S. Atlantic Fleet so that it could handle the Navy’s new assignment. Appointed as its commander in chief was Admiral Ernest J. King, a stem, demanding, and dedicated officer who was to become a principal architect of Allied victory.
In August 1941 President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill met at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, with their top-ranking officers. Here they discussed problems of common defense and issued an Atlantic Charter setting forth the joint war aims of their countries.
OPENING HOSTILITIES IN THE ATLANTIC
The undeclared war between the United States and Germany opened on September 4, 1941. The German submarine U-652, tracked for three hours by U. S. destroyer Greer, at last fired a torpedo. The Greer counterattacked with depth charges. Both missed.
In mid-September, the U. S. Navy began regular escort of convoy, relieving Canadian escorts off Newfoundland and handing the Britain-bound merchant ships over to Royal Navy escorts at a Mid-Ocean Meeting Point (MOMP), south of Iceland. Here the American escort vessels usually picked up a westbound convoy, which they delivered to Canadian escorts in the Newfoundland area.
Blood was first drawn by the undeclared enemies on the dark night of October 16, when a U-boat “wolfpack” attacked an eastbound convoy, sinking seven merchantmen. One of these merchantmen, while ablaze, silhouetted U. S. destroyer Kearny, which was struck by a torpedo. Eleven Americans on board the destroyer were killed, but the heavily damaged vessel made port in nearby Iceland. Two weeks later the naval tanker
The Reuben James, torpedoed by a U-boat in October 1941, was the first U. S. warship sunk during World War II.
Salinas and the destroyer Reuben James were torpedoed on successive nights. The Salinas, buoyed by empty compartments, survived. The torpedo that hit the Reuben James probably set oflF her forward magazine, for the entire fore part of the ship, including the bridge, was blow oflF. More than 100 of her company were lost; no oflBcers survived.
In response to these hostile acts. Congress removed the “carry” feature of the U. S. neutrality policy. American merchant ships might now be armed and sent with lend-lease materials directly to British ports. The formal plimge into full-scale war, however, came as a result of the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor. The following day, December 8, 1941, Congress declared war on Japan. Three days later, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States, and that same day the United States declared war on those countries.
World History
