United Superpower of America: 1940

“The US shed its isolationist traditions and emerged from WW2 as the leader of the west.”
Wise and Ross, The Invisible Government

Europe went to war. After conquering Poland (Warsaw fell on September 27th), Germany invaded Denmark and Norway on 9th April 1940. A blitzkrieg against the low countries on May 10th, the day Winston Churchill became prime minister, allowed Germany to take over Benelux and France. May 15th Netherlands capitulated to the Nazis; on May 28th Belgium.

With war threatening, Roosevelt gave J. Edgar Hoover authority over all intelligence operations against foreign espionage within the US and South America, including authorisation of legally questionable phone taps. Overseas though remained the responsibility of the army and navy. A program to track more than 13,000 “dangerous” individuals was started,  The Custodial Detention Program.

While Hoover didn’t mistrust Roosevelt – he did have the First Lady followed by his agents and produced a “big fat dossier” on her.

Einstein’s second letter to the US government came in March 7th 1940. He again warned that “interest in uranium has intensified in Germany” and that “Dr Szilard…describes in detail a method of setting up a chain reaction in uranium…will appear in print [the Physics Review] unless they are held up”.

His third letter was on April 25th. He stresses urgency and suggests putting together a “board of trustees for a non-profit organisation which…could secure from governmental or private sources or both, the necessary funds for carrying out the work.”

Refugees from Nazi Germany Frisch and Professor Rudolf Peierls realised the practical possibility of a fast chain reaction resulting in an atomic bomb.

In a 3 page memorandum they stated that they thought it likely that the Alliance would never wish to develop such a bomb due to long-term hazards and fall out, and that it was intrinsically a weapon that would inevitably cause much civilian death and suffering. The sole reason for bringing this to the attention of the government was their fear that Germany might be developing their own atomic weapons.

On May 24, German armoured units stopped their advance on Dunkirk, leaving the operation to the slower infantry and the Luftwaffe. This reprieve was partly due to the influence of Hermann Göring, who promised Hitler air power alone could destroy the surrounded Allied forces. This stop order for the armour was reversed on May 26, when the evacuation began.

Allied troops were evacuated from Europe at Dunkirk. Preparations for the evacuation began on May 22. Operation Dynamo (or Dunkirk Evacuation or just "Dunkirk") was the name given to the World War II mass evacuation of Allied soldiers from May 26 to June 4, 1940, during the Battle of Dunkirk.

The Blitzkrieg caused excitement in Japan. They were keen to take advantage of German success. Increasingly enamoured with southward advance, but it wanted war with GB alone. Some considered GB and USA to be strategically separable, but the prevailing view in the navy was that GB and USA were inseparable. They should have listened to the navy.

Americans watched the events in Europe, “disturbed, especially as German victories continued to dominate the headlines in weeks that followed”. The US although not formally in the war, was liaising with the allies. FDR committed the nation to a two-fold policy of increased defence and extending “material resources” to allies. Clement Atlee was meeting with FDR through this time. After the Russo-German pact, and the beginning of the war in Europe, Roosevelt  asked Congress for an increase in the defence budget. He asked for $1bn and got $3bn. His popularity had begun to grow again.

In mid May the British made a request for American destroyers. Personal pleas came from Churchill and King George VI. Roosevelt  postponed making a decision, fearing Congress would not allow a breach of neutrality.

Roosevelt’s concern was chiefly about implications for re- election, Americans would see it as being dragged into a foreign war. So the idea of swapping destroyers for naval and air bases in British territory was hatched. On Aug 2nd Roosevelt  decided to go ahead with swap plan. Cordell Hull was told to go ahead with negotiations (14th August) with England, by-passing Congress. Aug 17th a poll showed plan to be popular. Hull and Frank Knox conducted what became the destroyers-for-bases deal in great secrecy with British Ambassador Lord Lothian.

 Lothian reported that Churchill wanted to give the bases to the US instead of just swapping them (Aug 25th). Hull explained that Roosevelt  had to justify the transfer of the destroyers to British as a bargain to satisfy Congress and public opinion. Compromise – 6 bases as payment and 2 as free gifts.

Italy declared war on GB and France on June 10^th; the fall of Paris on June 14th.

In early June the Germans regrouped for an offensive against France. On 10th June Italy joined the war so that they too could have a piece of occupied France. By mid June the Nazis paraded through Paris in their leather jackets and jack boots. Occupied France signed an armistice with Germany (June 22nd). De Gaulle went to London. France was cut in two. Marshal Henri Philippe Petain’s government was allowed to police the so-called “free zone” while Germans remained in the occupied north.

With the Battle of Britain (July 10th ), it looked very much like Hitler had won the war on the continent and was now trying to take Britain too. Joe Kennedy predicted a British defeat while he was ambassador there. Churchill, half American, became p.m. The Battle of Britain benefited the interventionist cause, and therefore Roosevelt too.

When France surrendered, Vietnam, a French colony, was also surrendered to the Japanese. A French puppet Bao Dai, who’d ruled Vietnam for 20 years was installed by them. Vigorous nationalism proved a problem there as the rebels resorted to increasingly affective guerrilla warfare.

After Denmark and Norway were invaded, Sweden and the other remaining Baltic Sea countries became enclosed by Germany and the Soviet Union, then on friendly terms with each other with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The lengthy fighting in Norway resulted in intensified German demands for indirect support from Sweden, demands that Swedish diplomats were able to fend off by reminding the Germans of the Swedes' feeling of closeness to their Norwegian brethren. With the conclusion of hostilities in Norway this argument became untenable, forcing the Cabinet to give in to German pressure and allow continuous (unarmed) troop transports, via Swedish railroads, between Germany and Norway.

July 23rd, Red Army took Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia; August 3rd, Italy invaded British Somali Land; August 13th Italy attack Egypt.

Map of Italian "Mare Nostrum" (Italian Mediterranean), showing inside the green line & dots the italian areas in the Mediterranean sea during summer 1942 (in red those under British control). The remaining areas were under Axis control (Germany,Bulgary and Vichy France) and under friendly neutrality (Spain, Turkey).

August 13th, Luftwaffe began raids on GB airfields and aircraft factories.

August 23rd/24th, Germans accidentally bomb London.

August 25th/26th British RAF reprisal raid on Berlin.

“In early August 1940 a Gallup poll revealed that although 59% of those questioned felt the US should give priority to keeping out of the war - nearly ¾ wanted to increase the level of aid to England. Almost ½ believed England would win the war, but 69% thought that a German victory would endanger American security.” 

FDR worried, but gave his approval on September 2nd – bases for destroyers deal with Britain.

September 7th German ‘blitz ’ on GB. London targeted.

Isolationist outcry: “a dictatorial step”, “an act of war” – Republicans said. 6/10 voters supported the deal and FDR’s popularity increased. After that Wilkie went completely anti-war.

Mid September FDR signed the draft bill passed by Congress.

September 16th Military conscription introduced in USA;

September 22nd Japanese troops occupied north part of French Indo-China.

Sep 27th Tripartite alliance formed;

Germany links with Japan

Late summer, Hitler announced the Tripartite Pact linking Germany and Italy in Europe with Japan in Asia. This marked a set back for FDR’s foreign policy. FDR was accused of driving Japan to Germany and allowing US to be dragged into war. He extended the controls on exports which he had imposed on Japanese in July to cover all scrap iron as well as high-octane gasoline. Aid to England increased.

Japan did not declare war on Britain in the Summer after all. Germans had not launched intended amphibian attack and there came about a split in Japanese government and services concerning GB/USA solidarity.

The tripartite pact was concluded on 27th Sep 1940. Foreign minister Matsuoka Yosuke subscribed to differentiated US and GB view.  27th Sep Japanese troops were dispatched to Northern Indo-China.

The Japanese began using germ warfare against the Chinese – Quzhov, Ningbo and Changole 1940 to 1942.

Unit 731 -  a secret experimental unit. Kohken Tsuchiya, head of the plaintiff’s team. – Manchuria and Harbin. General Shiro Ishii established the facility for using Chinese victims as guinea pigs. The US granted immunity to Ishii after WW2 and his colleagues in return for his research findings. No mention was made of their activities during the Tokyo war crimes Tribunal. The death toll may have been 300,000.

The US began to protest about Japanese atrocities 3 to 9 years after the fact. This may have been because suddenly it was convenient to use this information to justify a planned war against the Japanese. At that point the US were increasingly alarmed at Japanese activity in the Pacific – the US empire and trading opportunities were being threatened or lost.

A State Department memo on Japanese expansion:

“…our general diplomatic and strategic position would be considerably weakened by our loss of Chinese, Indian and South Seas markets (and by our loss of much of the Japanese market for our goods, as Japan would become more and more self sufficient) as well as by insurmountable restrictions upon our access to the rubber, tin, jute and other vital materials of the Asian and Oceanic regions.”

“Magic” – the project to break the Japanese code. Frank Rowlett of the Signal Intelligence service broke the Japanese code on September 20th 1940.  – having detected and decoded the code that threatened the attack on Pearl Harbor - disputes between Army and Navy intelligence led to the reports going nowhere.

On 8th October GB told Japan she did not intend to renew their three month agreement of 18th July to close the Burma Road. Then announced a £10m loan to China on December 10th. Strengthened military cooperation with China by bringing Chinese troops to Burma and sending military advisers to Chungking. GB forces placed in far east on 18th November 1940.

FDR’s concern over Nazi Germany’s growing influence in South America had prompted him to appoint Nelson Rockefeller to the newly created post of Official Coordinator of the State Department Inter American Affairs (Co-ordinator of Inter-American Affairs) on August 16th 1940. Rockefeller had previously sponsored film projects for Darryl F Zanuck and Orson Welles – Hoover suggested to Roosevelt that Disney should also be made part of the program.

Welles and Disney were being distributed by RKO – Rockefeller and Whitney were major stockholders in the studio, and stood to make a substantial profit from the two filmmakers’ projects. – film produced under auspices of the motion picture division for the Co-ordination of Inter-American affairs?

Disney’s brother wanted Walt away from the strike – he’d swung the Hoover intervention. The government put up $100,000 for Walt to make the trip and it would help counter new rumours of his pro-Nazi sympathies.

Disney had appeared alongside Charles Lindbergh at several ‘America First’ rallies in NYC and elsewhere.

Walt agreed to make South American trip and set off on August 17th – he was to make two films at the government’s expense. – did he? – what films?

The Council for the Pan American Democracy (CPAD), a group concerned for civil rights in Latin America, formed in 1939 by Latin American diginitaries Vincente Lambardo Toledano and Pablo Neruda – Latin American leaders. And American stars: Margo; Donald Ogden Stewart; Xavier Cugat; journalist John Gunther; Carman Miranda; Paul Robeson; Deems Taylor; Orson Welles; Paul Muri were all present at their “Night of the Americas” fundraising gala on February 14th 1943 in New York City.

Disney was invited and filed a report – CPAD was designated a subversive organisation by the Attorney General’s office.

Senator Edward R Burke (anti-New Deal Democrat) and Representative James Wandsworth (NY Republican) introduced a bill proposing registration of all men from age 18 to 64 and drafting 400,000 single men aged 21 to 30 by October 1st 1940.

Political leaders remained non-commital. The looming election certainly didn’t help.

October 4th Hitler met Mussolini at the Brenner Pass

October 7th Germany occupy Romania & on the 20th Romania joined the Axis.

By mid October a prolonged pause in the fighting occured, although London was bombed nightly. Nazis had failed to drive the RAF from the skies and so ended the possibility of a successful invasion of Britain. Hitler met Mussolini at the Brenner Pass.

“Arise My Love” (Mitchell Leison), written by Billy Wilder, involves Spanish Civil War, “Hollywood’s dreamy notion of springtime in Paris as the Nazi boot relentlessly crushes Europe.”

Oct 22nd Hitler had a meeting with Marshall Petain.

On October 23rd Hitler had a meeting with Franco at Hendaise in the Pyrenees.

28th Italy attacked Greece;

10th / 11th RAF cripple Italian fleet at Taranto;

December 9th / 10th Brits counter attack begins against Italy in North Africa.

$7,000,000,000 was lent to GB which they spent buying American war materials.

At the end of 1940, December 18th, Hitler ordered that plans for Operation Barbarossa be drawn up.

US destroyers went into action against German submarines.

$6,000,000,000 lend-lease went to Stalin when the Germans invaded.

11th Lend-Lease Act signed by FDR.

The 1940 Election Campaign

Throughout 1940 FDR was distracted by the race for the Democratic nomination in the forthcoming presidential elections. He chose to run for a third term which though not against the constitution as it is now, was against tradition. Coolidge (1928) had been slapped down by the Senate when he tried it. Cordell Hull opposed a third term for FDR.

Wendell Wilkie, who had JE Hoover connections, had grabbed the Republican nomination away from Dewey, a Wall Street lawyer with big business connections who accused FDR of setting up a dictatorship and spreading poverty. In 1944 Dewey got the nomination back. His book ‘One World’.

Dewey took an isolationist view until the blitz and then called for a massive defence build up and accused FDR of not having prepared the nation for this emergency. But, in seeming contradiction, he said “no American forces shall ever again be sent to fight in Europe.” He was still trying to achieve that balance of satisfying the public wish for something to be done, but not trying to care them with the possibility that the USA would join in the war. There was a fair amount of fear that FDR would drag America into WW2? By late May, Dewey and FDR had virtually identical views on the war.

However it was Wilkie who got the nomination and “Slightly more favoured Wilkie than Roosevelt, but when asked which candidate could “handle our country’s foreign affairs better” they preferred Roosevelt by more than 2 to 1” . Wendell Wilkie became the anti-war candidate and the German embassy even financed an extensive propaganda campaign on his behalf. He was more or less smeared as the pro-Hitler candidate by FDR’s campaign.  “Using material supplied by Arthur Krock and Raymond Leslie Buell, Wilkie cited the Munich pact to accuse FDR of having “telephoned Hitler and Mussolini and urged them to sell Czechoslovakia down the river.” But then backed off and said that FDR had urged England and France to attend the Munich conference “where they sacrificed Czechoslovakia”. Eventually dropping the Munich line altogether and concentrating on domestic issues.

There was a sharp surge for Wilkie in the 3rd week of October, after Hitler joined with Japan, and FDR suddenly looked vulnerable.

Extensive Nazi effort to influence the election outcome. John L Lewis, the head of CIO (labour leader) became isolationist. James Rhodes Davis, a wealthy oil man with close German ties.

Alton Frye, historian, concluded that the German efforts “constituted one of the most massive interferences in American domestic affairs in history.”

In the final days of campaigning, FDR “was forced to offer isolationists what seemed to be a ‘no war’ pledge to boost his candidacy. He declared “I have said this before, but I shall say it again: your boys are not going to be sent to any foreign wars.”

The Result

FDR won his third term and announced increased aid to GB.

Wilkie took the largely German Midwest back for Republicans

     F.D.Roosevelt              54.8      449

Wendell L. Wilkie           44.8     82

FDR’s popularity had waned.

Times Square in 1940

http://wwwdelivery.superstock.com/WI/223/3829/PreviewComp/SuperStock_3829-4524.jpg

11th November British planes attack Italian fleet at Toronto from aircraft carriers in first ever attack of its kind. Japanese planners study the raid.

14th – 15th November German bomber raid on Coventry.

Media

The Press Associations more or less controlled what stories got into the papers. Associated Press, United Press or International News Service. There was a Drug Trust director on Associated Press Directorate. Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times. The Drug Trust censor had to approve stories from the Assoicated Press Science editor. Same with United as long ago as Jan 10th 1940.

The larger companies spent for newspaper, radio and magazine ads, the sum total of $1,104,224,374 of which Rockefeller-Morgan interests controlled about 80%.

Anybody who tries to get into mass media independent news, contrary to the interests of the Day Trust, will sooner or later run into an unbreakable wall. Big advertisers find it easy to plant any news they wish to disseminate, and also to keep out the news they don’t want to get around.

Operation MOCKINGBIRD began in the late 1940s. The CIA began to recruit US news organisations and journalists, to become spies and disseminators of propaganda. The effort was headed by Frank Wisner, Allan Dulles, Richard Helms and Philip Graham. Graham was publisher of the Washington Post, which became a major CIA player . Eventually the CIA's media assets included ABC, NBC, CBS, Time, Newsweek, Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Copley News Service, etc. The CIA admit at least 25 organisations and 400 journalists became CIA assets.

Big City Boss corruption

Kansas City thrived as the “wide open” town. More than 400 night clubs, cabarets, burlesque houses and dance club sprang up. Developed its own distinctive jazz style – “Paris of the plains”. This was over by the end of the 1930s. Pendergast himself was finished and his machine was swept away out of office by reformers in 1940. Truman scraped a victory to Senate (re-elected) – his re-election had looked unlikely but he gained last minute support of Robert E Harregan a St Louis sub-boss.

FIT TOGETHER WITH TRUMAN STUFF SEE PAGE 13 (+ footnote)

ULTRA PROJECT – Birth of the Computer

The first operational electronic computer, Coosses, for Department of Communication in the British Foreign Office to assist in decoding of intercepted Nazi transmissions.

ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) – the first electronic digital computer – came from relationships between Moore school of Electrical Engineering at Uni of Penns and Ballistics Research Lab operated by army ordnance Department Proving Ground in Aberdeen, Maryland to deal with ballistics problems.

At the end of the year Disney released “Fantasia” – “Gothic meditation, bathed in heavy classical music and awash in dark visions of fear, isolation, repentance and mourning.” One for the kiddies then!