December 1941 (71 page)

Curiously, even with all the action in the Pacific occupying the American forces and with so little action against Germany so far, the Gallup Polling organization surveyed the American people and found that, by a whopping margin of 64 percent to 15 percent, they considered Germany to be the greater threat to America than Japan.
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The poll results presaged what would become a continual source of tension and debate among American and British military leaders: which theater of war deserved the most attention, Europe or the Pacific? From the beginning of the global conflict until V-E day, the effort in Europe would take precedence. Despite the desperate lobbying of generals such as MacArthur, who wanted ever-more resources to combat the Japanese, the Nazis were always perceived by FDR and Churchill as the greater menace. Hitler would have to be dealt with, first and foremost. As early as December 1941, American opinion in this regard was influenced by the news of yet another sinking by the Germans, this time of the British carrier
Formidable
. The loss of the 23,000-ton ship had a devastating effect on the war effort and on public opinion.
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In Hong Kong, some of the fiercest fighting was taking place on the “broad playing fields of the Happy Valley recreation areas east of Victoria.”
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News reports of Hong Kong noted the upbeat tones of the British forces, even as the reports also called the soldiers there “beleaguered.”
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Some 20,000 British soldiers were fighting on, standing their ground while also defending “3,000 white women and children who remained [and] are now living in caves. . . .”
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The Japanese had been blasting away at Hong Kong by plane and warship for days and now their troops were closing in on the desperately outnumbered Brits.

Some observers said the fall of Hong Kong would not be as devastating as the loss of Singapore. But in point of fact, Hong Kong was an excellent, natural harbor, strategically important. “Japan gains a fine naval anchorage behind the fortified rocky island, a good airfield only 600 miles from Manila, and some shipbuilding facilities and three dry docks. . . . Hong Kong was the Gibraltar of the East and well named that.”
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From Hong Kong, the Japanese could intensify the fight south. Australia knew that if the Philippines fell and Malaya fell, it would only be a matter of time before the Japanese landed on their northern shores.

Churchill was becoming a beloved figure in America—described by the
Atlanta Constitution
as a “rotund little fighting premier”
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—perhaps more popular in the land of his mother's birth than the land of his father's birth. Indeed, some of his political adversaries held his mother's country of birth against him.
⁵⁵
“Britain's ruling class still considers him brilliant, erratic, unsafe.”
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His arrival in America was reported on widely and enthusiastically. He was an extrovert and a character, again like his mother, with a knack for tossing off the perfect bon mot. Once at a dinner party, he told his seat mate, “We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glow-worm.”
⁵⁷

He'd been up and down in British politics, and had changed parties several times; it was sometimes difficult to keep track of the state of his career. But beginning in the early 1930s, he saw the German military buildup and began to loudly protest it, despite the claims of the status quo in Parliament that he was wrong and that Hitler would abide by the Treaty of Versailles. Even as Hitler moved into other European countries, the British pooh-poohed it. They simply had no more stomach for war. After the Germans invaded Poland—with whom England had a mutual defense agreement—in September of 1939, the die was cast.

Churchill was a Renaissance Man. A soldier, a statesman, writer, and many other guises, he'd seen battles, both military and otherwise, many political battles he'd started himself. After losing a seat in Parliament in 1923, he packed his troubles and his brushes and went to Egypt to paint scenery. He'd won medals in 1895, 1897, and in 1916 for helping the Cubans fight the Spanish; for his bravery in India; and for action in the Nile, in the Boer Wars, and service on the Western Front. “Soldier, newspaper man, adventurer, lecturer, artist, bricklayer, politician and statesman, Churchill has served in more wars, held more offices and practiced more arts than any man of his time in the British Empire. In the middle of the last war, Churchill was a colonel in charge of a regiment. In a foxhole being shelled, he was urged to move on by a superior officer saying, “I tell you, this is a very dangerous place.” Churchill replied, “Yes sir, but after all this is a very dangerous world.”
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The day before, Sunday, December 21, Roosevelt asked Americans to pray and declared that January 1st, 1942 would be a national day of prayer. “We are confident in our devotion to country, in our love of freedom, in our inheritance of strength. But our strength, as the strength of all men everywhere, is of greater avail as God upholds us.” He declared January 1 “a day of . . . asking forgiveness for our shortcoming of the past, of consecration to the tasks of the present, of asking God's help in days to come.”
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The proclamation was widely reported in the press without cynicism or rancor or question.

Unlike Woodrow Wilson, who cancelled all his press conferences during the Great War, FDR was holding them on an almost daily basis now. From the night of the eighth, when he'd broadcast a national radio message to the country from the basement of the White House, already partially blacked out—where he'd invited reporters and photographers in—right up through the coming of Christmas and beyond, Roosevelt courted the press, seeing them as an important ally, unlike Wilson, whom the press turned on. “Mr. Roosevelt met the press, lectured them on what they might and might not print. He looked calm, rested, cheery and buoyant.”
⁶⁰

Archbishop Francis J. Spellman was the military vicar of the United States. He gave a radio broadcast over the CBS radio network and in front of a live audience of three hundred military and civic leaders in New York at the National Catholic Community Service clubhouse. In this, his first speech as the military vicar, he asked the American people not to go on strike, but the speech went much, much further. It was a testament to the high moral plane upon which he believed America operated and the direness of the world situation. “What will it profit us, however, to emerge victorious over attacks from abroad if at the same time we do not preserve the ideals of democracy at home and their indispensable supports of religion and morality.”
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Spellman had worked on the address for hours, pouring over news clippings. At one point he quoted publisher Henry Luce. “The high resolve is yet to come . . . it would be better to leave America in a heap of smoking stones than surrender it to the mechanized medievalism which is the Mikado, or to the Antichrist which is Hitler.”
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The speech was a magnificent testament to the “American Century” of the country's charity and selflessness, of its moral bearings, but also a warning to not lose its moral compass. Luce had coined the phrase, “American Century.”
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Even with the surprise visit of Churchill and his huge entourage and all the comings and goings in the White House because of the war, it still promised to be a quiet Christmas for the Roosevelts. All four sons were now on active duty. “For the first time since the Roosevelts moved into the White House, there won't be a child or a grandchild home for Christmas.”
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Mrs. Roosevelt was busy though. Because of her duties as assistant civilian defense director, she had meetings to attend and speeches to give. She also attended a “slum clearance project” where Christmas carols were sung. There, “a tiny Negro woman edged up to her . . . very elderly but very pert.” She was introduced to Mrs. Roosevelt as “Betty Queen Anne.” When her age of ninety-seven was mentioned to the first lady, the elderly woman replied, “Lordy, I'm more dan dat.” Betty claimed she had been a slave near Fredericksburg, Virginia.
⁶⁵

When Eleanor Roosevelt arrived back at the White House, a dinner had to be prepared for Churchill and his aides. She also hung a stocking in the Oval Office containing a bone for “Fala,” the family pooch.
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Before the meeting of the “War Council,” Churchill and FDR sat together behind the president's untidy desk cluttered with keepsakes in the Oval Office and faced the journalists in an historic press conference which lasted about half an hour.
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The setting was described as “electric.”
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Churchill pulled on his customary cigar, and the president smoked several Camel cigarettes, as always attached to his ivory cigarette holder clamped between his teeth. Roosevelt was in gray suit and was still wearing the mourning band on his left arm for his mother. Churchill was in “formal striped trousers and a dark blue coat. He was wearing polka-dot blue and white bow tie.”
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The
New York Times
said he stared “unperturbedly into space” as he waited for things to begin.
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As always, Harry Hopkins was standing off to the side.

The reporters in the back could not see the two men, so Roosevelt asked Churchill to stand for a moment “while those in the crowded back rows could get a glimpse of him.” Churchill, 67, immediately jumped to his feet but still, he could not be seen, so he clambered onto his chair “grinning broadly and waving his cigar.”
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The reporters applauded and cheered.

During the course of the press conference, the leaders said “the key to the whole conflict is the resolute manner in which the American and British democracies are going to throw themselves into this war.” The
Evening Star
reported, “Pulling on his cigar from his mouth, [Churchill] smiled wryly then as he remarked that someday the Allied nations might wake up and find themselves short of Huns.”
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Asked about how long the war might take, the prime minister remarked that it would take twice as long if it were managed “badly.” FDR and the reporters laughed. “The reporters hurled a barrage for questions—and soon found the prime minister adept in swift replies.”
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The prime minister was eloquent, and “displayed his marked gift for turning phrases—a gift which has made his speeches and writings literary achievements.”
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Churchill also announced he would broadcast a Christmas Eve message to the American people the next day and said there was much to thank God for. Prior, they'd met with State Department officials.
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Roosevelt announced yet another new bureaucracy, this one the new Office of Defense Transportation.
⁷⁶

Following the press conference, reporters filed out and political and military aides filed in for a two-hour meeting. No real details were made public at the time but the two men wanted to address “all questions related to the concerted war effort.”
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What Roosevelt and Churchill had in mind was a “Victory Program” to create an Allied Force of such magnitude it would simply roll over Axis opposition. They were talking in terms of producing 1,500 four-engine bombers a month, a Supreme Commander in the Far East (MacArthur was the popular and logical choice) as well as a Supreme Commander in Europe and a standing army of 20,000,000 men among all the Allied Powers. They also divided the world into four war zones; “Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, The North Atlantic and The Pacific and Far East.”
⁷⁸

Speculation was rife that Hitler would mount a renewed offensive against Russia, or would invade England, or would invade Spain. There were also rumors of discord within his military command. The fact was that little was really known of what the next plans were for the Third Reich. Churchill had told war planners, “That he looked for a new German offensive in some theatre to counter-balance the humiliating reverses in Russia. He mentioned a thrust towards the Mediterranean and an invasion of Britain . . . but said frankly that he did not know where it would come.”
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Attending the “War Council” meeting were all the top administration officials including the Secretary of War Henry Stimson, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, the Chief of Naval Operations Harold Stark, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, the new commander in chief of the fleet, Admiral Ernest King, and as always, FDR's friend and confidant, Hopkins. Attending for the British were Sir Dudley Pound, Admiral of the fleet; Sir Charles Portal, Air Chief Marshal; and Sir John Dill, Field Marshal.
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The goal was straightforward: The eradication of Hitlerism from the world, as Roosevelt said. They saw Japan as an extension of Germany. “The matter of immediate urgency is, of course, the Battle of the Pacific. . . .”
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This was untrue.

A plan was coming together to accomplish total victory though: “Worldwide strategy and worldwide supply leading to worldwide victory.”
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FDR and Churchill had mutually decided that nothing less than unconditional surrender of the Axis scourge would be acceptable.

CHAPTER 24
THE TWENTY-FOURTH OF DECEMBER

Californians See Sub Attack U.S. Ship

Evening Star

Wake Marines, Fighting to End, Sink Two Ships