The New Dealers' War: FDR and the War Within World War II by Thomas Fleming | WWII History Book | American Political History | Great for History Buffs & Students

One of the best books I have read, “The New Dealers War” by Thomas Fleming. I would also recommend the following books: "The Forgotten Man," by Amity Shlaes, "The Secret Betrayal 1944*1947," by Nikolai Tolstoy, "New Deal or Raw Deal," by Burton Folsom, Jr, "FDR's Folly," by Jim Powell, "Freedom Betrayed," by Herbert Hoover, "Operation Snow," by John Koster, "THE VENONA SECRETS," by Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel and American Betrayal by Diana West.From this book some of the main points are:When Roosevelt ran for his third term in 1940, he had vowed to never send American soldiers to fight beyond America's shores. Roosevelt had already ordered the joint board of the Army and Navy to draw up war plans that he called “Rainbow Five.”It wasn’t until these plans were leaked to the press that the American public knew he had been lying to them.An example of how far he was willing to go to get the U.S. into the war happened on Dec. 4, 1941. Lieutenant Kemp Tolley was summoned to the Manila waterfront office of Commander Henry Slocum, the operations officer of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet. Slocum gave Tolley the strangest order he had ever heard. He was to take command of a two-mast schooner, the Lanikai, commission her as a man-of-war, arm her with a cannon and a machine gun, man her with a mostly Filipino crew, and have her ready to sail under sealed orders in forty-eight hours. "The rules do not apply here," Slocum continued. "The Navy Yard has been directed to give you highest priority- without paperwork of any kind. Of this you can rest absolutely assured. The President himself has directed it." On December 6, Manila time- on the eastern side of the international date line it was December 7- the USS Lanikai sailed fifteen miles to the mouth of Manila harbor and anchored at dusk. The ship had to wait until dawn to traverse the minefield at the harbor’s mouth. Commander Slocum had told him where he was going: the waters off Cam Ranh Bay, the big Japanese naval base on the coast of Indochina. What this improvised man-of-war was supposed to accomplish was a mystery that only Franklin D. Roosevelt could solve. At 3:00 A.M on December 8, Manila time, the radioman woke up LT. Tolley. He read by flashlight an astonishing message: ORANGE WAR PLAN IN EFFECT. RETURN TO CAVITE. Lt. Tolley being a graduate of West Point instantly knew Japan and the United States were at war. Tolley devoted several years of his postwar years to proving he had been sent on a suicide mission. After Tolley retired as an admiral, Admiral Thomas Hart, the commander of the Asiatic Fleet sat at lunch with another admiral. Hart said: “I once had the unpleasant requirement to send this young man [Tolley] on a one-way mission.”“Do you think we were set up to bait an incident?” Tolley asked. “Yes, I think you were the bait!” Admiral Hart said. “And I could prove it.”Over in the Treasury Department, Henry Morgenthau Jr. and (Harry Dexter White, a Soviet mole) was using sanctions against the Japanese. Japan imported 90 percent of her needs and the United States was supplying half of that amount. Secretary of the Interior Ickes who was wearing two hats, he was also Petroleum Coordinator, suspended all shipments of oil to Japan. Roosevelt also froze all Tokyo’s assets in the United States. The Japanese had to now obtain a license for any product deemed useful to their war machine and another license to unfreeze the dollar to pay for it. This meant they had to go to both the State Department and the Treasury Department, leaving ample room for maximum bureaucratic foot dragging.Roosevelt encouraged Secretary of State Cordell Hull to bring Japanese ambassador, Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura, into his office for nonstop lectures on proper international behavior. The retired admiral, a professed friend of America, but he was at an enormous disadvantage. The American cryptographers had broken Japan’s top secret “Purple” code and knew more of what was going on in Tokyo than he did.In November, Japan sent another negotiator to Washington, Saburo Kurusu, who was married to an American and spoke excellent English. He was an old friend of Admiral Nomura and a spokesman for the dwindling peace party in Japan. He brought with him orders to reach an agreement before November 25. The peace agreement he sought was savagely attacked by the interventionists (communists) in the State Department and by the British Foreign Office, who had an intense interest in getting the United States into the war. The American military leaders continued to implore the president and Hull to accept some sort of temporary truce with Japan. Instead of negotiating with the Japanese or taking charge of the situation himself, Roosevelt told Hull to present the Japanese with an ultimatum that demanded that they withdraw from China and Japan’s repudiation of the Tripartite Pact. The Japanese were stunned, dismayed and ask why, Hull mumbled some rigmarole about public opinion. What all of this amounted to was, the Japanese either had to fight or starve. He was getting into the war he wanted by going through the back door so that the American public would not blame him and the Democrats.There was no reason for America to enter the war against Germany, even after Roosevelt had issued orders to American warships to “shoot on sight” at German submarines on October 8, 1941, Hitler had ordered Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, the German navy’s commander in chief, to avoid incidents that Roosevelt might use to bring America into the struggle. FDR made a radio address to the nation that is seldom mentioned in history books. It accused Hitler of urging Japan to attack the United States. “We know that Germany and Japan are conducting their military and naval operations with a joint plan,” Roosevelt declared. “Germany and Italy consider themselves at war with the United States without even bothering about a formal declaration.” This was a lie and FDR knew it. FDR was baiting Hitler into declaring war on the U.S.The charge that Roosevelt wanted the Japanese to attack the Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbor remains unproven. But the responsibility for stationing the ships there is another matter. FDR ignored the warnings of the commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet, Admiral James O. Richardson, who wanted to keep the ships in San Diego. The argument between Roosevelt and Richardson reached an ugly climax in the Oval Office on October 8, 1940, when the admiral said: “Mr. President, I feel I must tell you that the senior officers of the navy do not have the trust and confidence in the civilian leadership of this country that is essential for the successful prosecution of a war in the Pacific.” (FDR fired him soon after he was elected to his third term.) Richardson spent two hours with Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, warning him that the fleet was vulnerable at Pearl Harbor and Roosevelt’s idea of a naval offensive to stop the Japanese in the Far East was a fantasy. After the war, Admiral Richardson said: I believe the President’s responsibility for our initial defeats in the Pacific was direct, real and personal.”For over a year FDR did nothing to prepare for war but the lies continued. Secretary of the Navy Knox declared the navy was concealing the number of German submarines it was sinking for security reasons, when in fact it had sunk none. The New York Times was gulled into declaring: NAVY HIDES IT’S BLOWS.On February 23,1942, Roosevelt solemnly assured the American people that “your government has unmistakable confidence in your ability to hear the worst, without flinching or losing heart.” Then he proceeded to minimize American losses at Pearl Harbor, instead of admitting the Japanese had sunk six battleships and damaged two others, plus three cruisers and two destroyers, FDR claimed only three ships had been permanently put out of commission.Then he lied about the aircraft! He said, “To date, including Pearl Harbor- we have destroyed considerably more Japanese planes than they have destroyed ours.” At Pearl Harbor, the Japanese had destroyed 180 planes and damaged 128 others. Only 43 planes remained operational. Japanese had lost 29 planes. In the Philippines we had lost 277 and MacArthur’s air force had been reduced to a handful.Louis Lochner a newsman that was desperately trying to get time with FDR.In November 1941 He had been invited to the house of the Reichstag deputy to meet fifteen members of the Nazi opposition, ranging from military generals to politicians. They informed him that they hoped to overthrow Hitler, renounce his conquests and his war on the Jews and restore Germany as a peaceful member of the family of nations. Lochner had to return to his duties in Germany and never got a visit. When he returned to the U.S. in June 1942, he immediately wrote to Roosevelt and requested a meeting. He received nothing but silence. Five subsequent letters and calls were also rebuffed Later by the AP’s Washington office he was told that the president was not interested in German resistance movements against Hitler. There were many attempts by Germans to negotiate a peace treaty, but Roosevelt and Churchill were not interested. Later in 1944, Louis Lochner filed a story of the German resistance and the U.S. Army censors went to work and killed it. He asks why? He was told a special regulation was in force from the President of the United States in his capacity as commander in chief, forbidding all mention of any German resistance.January 24,1943- Casablanca- Churchill and Roosevelt meet. Roosevelt wanted a cross-channel invasion because Stalin had repeatedly asked for it, but Churchill didn’t think it was a good idea.Military Staff Officers had the opinion that they should fight from their established position instead of reinvading Europe. Stalin continued to request a second front and Roosevelt did everything he could to appease Stalin. We now know why Stalin was urgently requesting a second front, it would slow down the Allies and gave Stalin time to terrorize and siege half of EuropeRoosevelt also said he was for “Unconditional Surrender.” Churchill chimed in his approval.All of the Military Brass was shocked, the chief of the British secret intelligence service (SIS), General Sir Stewart Graham Menzies, considered unconditional surrender disastrous not only to certain secret operations but it would make Germany fight “with the despairing ferocity of cornered rats.” Major General Ira C. Eaker commander of the U.S. Eighth Air Force said, “How stupid can you be?’ All the soldiers and the airmen who were fighting this war wanted the Germans to quit tomorrow. A child knew, once you said this to the Germans, they were going to fight to the last man.Chief of Staff George Marshall made it clear that he thought it was a major blunder.With this major blunder Roosevelt had extended the war by at least two years and caused the death of millions of young men and women. In America, Wild Bill Donovan’s OSS was violently opposed to the policy and so was the Office of War Information, where the New Dealers no longer reigned. OWI regarded “unconditional surrender” as a propaganda disaster of the first order. It soon became evident that few top people in either government supported the policy except Roosevelt and his White House circle.It was also a manifestation of Harry Hopkins ‘s insistence that democracy “must wage total war against totalitarian war” and exceed the Nazis in “ruthlessness.” (some authors believe Harry Hopkins to be the highest placed spy in the U.S. government) he lived in the White House for three years and six months and slept in the Lincoln bedroom. He was FDR’s closest advisor.Harry Hopkins and Joseph Davies, ambassador to the Soviet Union was working hard for the second front that Stalin had requested. Davies assured Litvinov he would give the message to Harry Hopkins immediately, with the presumption that it would reach the president within an hour. Litvinov feeling emboldened paid a visit to Under Secretary of State Summer Wells. The Russian handed him a list of names of State Department employees whom he found obstacles to better understanding between the United States and Moscow. Would the under secretary please arrange for them to be transferred elsewhere? (They were purged.) The employees the Russian wanted out had very little enthusiasm for New Dealers and One Worlders and their utopian ideas about universal brotherhood.FDR covered up the murder of 10,000 Polish army officers who had surrendered to the Russians in Katyn forest. Harry Hopkins took the lead in dismissing the Poles as troublemakers who were endangering the alliance with Russia. He said their government in exile was controlledby “large landlords” who feared the Russians would confiscate their land. Roosevelt said the story was Nazi propaganda and was furious with the Poles for demanding an investigation. Elmer Davis, Office of War Information (OWI) called the massacre story a classic example of the Big Lie propaganda technique preached by Hitler. When Polish-American radio stations in Detroit and Buffalo began broadcasting facts that suggested the Big Lie was emanating from the Oval Office. The OWI and FCC silenced them. Lt. Commander George Earle, was tormented by the information he had gathered on the Katyn Massacre. He was also bitter because Roosevelt had refused to transfer him to Germany, where he hoped to organize the anti-communist opposition. Instead, Roosevelt had ordered him placed on the retired list. Later the president sent him to Samoa.The Teheran Conference-The attempt to sideline Churchill was a manifestation of Roosevelt’s underlying hostility not merely to the prime minister but to Britain and its colonial empire. While there Roosevelt made fun of Churchill and General de Gaulle, the leader of the free French to Stalin. Roosevelt agreed with Stalin’s demand for most of eastern Poland, asking only that his approval be kept secret until after the 1944 elections, lest it cost him the Polish-American votes. In 1939, when Russia and Germany were allies, state terrorism reached levels unusual even for the Stalin era. In two years, at least 1 million people experienced the harsh hand of the NKVD, the Russian secret service. Most were deported to the Siberian gulag. About 100,000 died on the trains or in the camps; some 30,000 were shot. Roosevelt never displayed the slightest awareness of these awful realities. Roosevelt agreed with Stalin on everything, from eliminating the independence of the Baltic states and vassalizing Poland to dismembering Germany. The Soviet Union obviously hoped to dominate Europe and Roosevelt seemed to be totally unbothered by this fact.In 1941, Harry Hopkins declared that the forces of democracy had to exceed the Nazis in “fury and ruthlessness.” In the skies above Europe in 1944, these concepts were put into practice by the British and American bomber fleets with increasing candor. “Breaking civilian morale,” the phrase that the British air generals had whispered behind their hands to the shocked Americans in 1942, was swiftly becoming official policy. Soon shortened to “morale-bombing,” it was a step beyond area-bombing, which could be rationalized by arguing that there were war plants and railroad yards to be smashed. The British ran stories in the newspapers about the Americans being too timid to bomb the center of cities where they said the anti-aircraft fire was the heaviest.With their macho reputations challenged, the AAR generals proceeded to plaster the center of Berlin in another series of massive raids during April and May 1944. When a staff committee began considering morale bombing as the next step, presuming that all strategic targets had been eliminated, an explosion of protest took place within the American command structure. Commander of the U.S. Strategic Air Forces in Europe, General Carl Spaatz, decided not to pursue morale bombing and General Eisenhower gave his approval to the decision.The Home Army of Warsaw was in ruins, over 250,000 civilians had died along with freedom fighters. The Polish government had begged the British and Americans for help. The Americans ask the Russians for use of an airstrip in Poltava, but the Russians had refused. The RAF tried to help but the skies were filled with Luftwaffe, the Russians didn’t send a single plane. There are many examples to show how the Russians were fighting against us instead of for us during the war. Roosevelt did everything he could to conceal it.In the car ride from Saki FDR told Stalin, “I’m more blood thirsty than a year ago.”“Thunderclap” was a plan for a gigantic raid on the center of Berlin by huge number of British and American bombers, aimed at killing everyone still living there. The moralists on the American side reacted with horror and disgust. One said it would be “a blot on the history of the Air Forces and the U.S. It is not war, it is baby killing.” With Roosevelt’s go-ahead900 American bombers headed to Berlin killing 25,000 German women and childrenDresden was next, bombed by two waves of British planes followed by a massive American assault, which dropped 475 tons of general bombs and 292 tons of incendiaries, Dresden was engulfed in flames that incinerated tens of thousands of people. No one knew the exact number of deaths because the city was jammed with at least 500,000 refuges who fled eastern Germany to escape the oncoming Red Army. More than 7,000 public buildings and 30,000 homes were destroyed. A great city had been wiped from the map of Europe.Roosevelt continued the lie that the bombing was only against military targets in Germany.On March 9, 1945, 172 B-29s took off from American air bases on Guam headed to Tokyo.Bombing at altitudes as low as 4,900 feet, the B-29s dropped 1,165 tons of incendiary bombs on an area in which the population density was 135,000 per square mile. Men and women and children literally caught fire and burned like sticks of wood. The attack on Tokyo, United States Strategic Bombing Survey later estimated that 87,783 Japanese died, 40,918 were injured and 1,008,005 were dehoused. General Powers called the raid “the greatest single disaster incurred by an enemy in military history,…There were more casualties than in any other military action in the history of the world”.American military leaders were against dropping the A-bomb. They were in agreement that the war was won and Since April, Tokyo’s Foreign Office had been sending out peace feelers. Thanks to the ability to break Japan’s secret codes, the United States knew all about these probes. Ironically, Tokyo’s biggest effort was aimed at Moscow. Relying on the nonaggression treaty they had signed in 1941, the Japanese thought Stalin would be willing to act as an intermediary with the United States. They knew nothing of the secret Yalta agreement Stalin had made with Roosevelt to enter the war. From reading the intercepts, Truman soon perceived that the chief obstacle to an immediate peace was the policy of unconditional surrender. Tokyo reiterated to their Moscow ambassador that they would never accept this demand, which they considered an ultimatehumiliation, and a threat to Emperor Hirohito, whose sacred presence everyone regarded as a necessity for the nation’s survival. The soon to be secretary of state, Jimmy Byrnes, played a decisive role in convincing the Interim Committee to drop the atomic bomb. He said, “it was time to stop debating. The bomb should be dropped on a war plant surrounded by workers homes and it should be without warning.”