THE PRESIDENCY: War of the Dinosaurs

It was 9:30 in the morning; Germany had declared war on Russia. President Roosevelt in his second-floor study in the White House faced the strangest and perhaps the most momentous turn of World War II. It was something which he had not dared hope for. And it might turn out to be the luckiest military break for the U.S.—outside of an outright defeat for Germany in battle—that the President could have hoped for.

For the past two years there have been few moments when Franklin Roosevelt could pity either Stalin or Hitler. But that Sunday morning he could pity Stalin who had started the war by signing a pact which he thought would keep Russia safe.

Stalin, by turning Hitler loose on the rest of the world, apparently had saved his own skin—but this piece of smartness had now boomeranged.

The time had not yet come when Franklin Roosevelt could pity Hitler but on that Sunday morning he had no need to envy the German dictator. Even if Germany was to conquer Russia with ease—as it might—Hitler now had to fight for Russia’s resources—to fight for necessary resources which up to that moment the world had believed Germany could obtain without fighting.

And that morning Franklin Roosevelt was a lucky man. He had committed the U.S. to the defeat of Hitler and the nation was still militarily unprepared; now the U.S. had gained at least a few precious days or weeks to push its arming, had found another great power besides Britain to keep Hitler occupied a little longer.

Like two vast prehistoric monsters lifting themselves out of the swamp, half-blind and savage, the two great totalitarian powers of the world now tore at each other’s throats. But the time gained was no gain unless urgent use was made of it. No good use would be made of it if the U.S., pleased to see Naziism fighting Communism, relaxed its defense efforts.

Early Monday morning the President telephoned Cordell Hull, ill in his hotel suite. He called in Sumner Welles. To Under Secretary Welles he gave the task of drafting a statement that would make clear to the U.S. the implications of Hitler’s move: the magnitude of Hitler’s vision of his world, the scope of his dreams of conquest, the threat to the U.S. proved even by the German attack on Russia.

Said Secretary Welles’s statement: “If any further proof could conceivably be required of the real purposes and projects of the present leaders of Germany for world domination, it is now furnished by Hitler’s treacherous attack upon Soviet Russia. … To the leaders of the German Reich sworn engagements to refrain from hostile acts against other countries . . . are but a symbol of deceit. To the present German Government the very meaning of the word ‘honor’ is unknown.”

Perhaps Franklin Roosevelt smiled inwardly at that example of State Department mentality—a mentality which might have been shocked by John Dillinger’s 10th bank robbery—but he approved it. The statement continued: “The President has declared that the United States maintains that freedom to worship God as their consciences dictate is the great and fundamental right of all people. This right has been denied to their peoples by both the Nazi and the Soviet Governments. . . . Any defense against Hitlerism, any rallying of the forces opposing Hitlerism, from whatever source these forces may spring, will hasten the eventual downfall of the present German leaders, and will therefore redound to the benefit of our own defense and security.”

The President okayed it. At noon Sumner Welles read the statement to newsmen in the State Department. The usually impassive correspondent of the German News Bureau frowned as he made his note; the correspondent of the official Soviet agency frowned at the phrases that put Communism and Naziism in the same class. The U.S. newsmen checked off the phrases applied to Nazi Germany and its ways—”treacherous, dishonorable, deceitful, hostile, murderous, brutal, desperate.” When the U.S. could officially use such terms as were now applied to the Nazis, the U.S. was certainly at war.