FDR
had a reputation for vagueness, inconsistency, and self-contradiction, according
to historian Robert Shogan in his book Hard Bargain (p.27), but he “cloaked his guile with a personal charm.” By 1940 a troublesome pattern was well
established: FDR tailored his stances on foreign policy to suit his immediate
political interest and said whatever his particular audience wanted to hear (Shogan, p.33-34), Often, though FDR maintained that “ideals do
not change but methods [of attaining them] do change,” his words were chosen
not to uphold ideals but to attain power; once he was in power it became
incredibly difficult to see the connection between his methods and the
international ideals that he apparently still upheld (Shogan, p.40-41). In hindsight, it is clear that the ideals FDR
professed were not the same as the ones towards which he actually strove.
The Lend-Lease Act
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| Signing Lend-Lease Act |
The 1937 Neutrality Act did not last
long. In late 1940, under pressure from
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during the Battle of Britain, FDR
began to formulate plans to side with Britain in an underhanded way. The Blitz ended in October of 1940; in
December FDR announced his intention to begin sending money and supplies to the
governments of Britain, China, and later the U.S.S.R. He pushed the Lend-Lease Act through
Congress, which allowed Britain to “borrow” billions of dollars’ worth of
American supplies without paying for them.
Lend-Lease voided the Neutrality Act’s requirement for cash payments,
although the ban on the travel of U.S. armed ships abroad remained in place (Shogan, p.264). FDR simplified the appearance of his scheme
by using the analogy of lending one’s garden hose to a neighbor to put out a
fire, then rather than requiring payment for the hose, simply requesting that it
be returned once the fire has been quenched.
FDR’s Illegal Secret Agreement with
Churchill
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| Atlantic Charter Conference |
On
August 9, 1941, Winston Churchill and FDR met in the Atlantic off the coast of
Newfoundland for the so-called Atlantic Charter Conference. FDR had used a highly-publicized fishing trip
as a diversion to ward off curious media coverage, and then transferred from
his fishing yacht to the battle cruiser Augusta.
The result was the Atlantic Charter,
a preliminary to the North Atlantic Treaty which created NATO in April of 1949.
Admiral Edwin T. Layton, the chief
intelligence commander at Pearl Harbor, reports the evidence of the secret
agreement in his book, And I Was There. The minutes of the joint Army-Navy Board
meetings after the Atlantic Charter Conference indicate that FDR “put a de
facto Anglo-American alliance against Japan into effect by making preparations
to commit our forces to war even if it was British rather than our territory
that the Japanese struck first.”
Roosevelt provided Churchill with an unconstitutional assurance that “we
shall all be in it together.” (Layton, p.134-135) In Article I of the United States Constitution, the President is made “commander-in-chief of the army and navy of
the United States,” and is permitted to make treaties “by and with the consent of [two-thirds of] the Senate.” FDR did not receive, or even seek, that consent; had his actions been
discovered, he could have been impeached.
As late as December 5, 1941, a message sent from London to the British
commander in Malaya referred to assurances of American support if Japan
attacked the Dutch East Indies or any other part of Siam. Layton records that, at the 1945 Pearl Harbor
hearings, FDR was charged with making an illegal, unconstitutional secret
agreement with Britain, but since the minutes of the Joint Board meetings were
not made available, the court decided that no such commitment had been made (Layton, p.258-259).
The author does not claim the rights to any of the images in this post.
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