December 1941 (88 page)

They also did not get the planned investigation into war propaganda in the movies, but by December, it was a moot point. With the government's complicity, Hollywood had helped manufacture a consensus in favor of war.

Then “the Senate passed resolutions for sine die adjournment Jan. 2 and convening of the new Congress Jan. 5,” at which time, they would consider legislation, to allow FDR the executive authority, to direct the country to abide by daylight savings. The House did likewise. One of the first bills they would take up in 1942 was the “establishment of a separate air force. . . .”
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The 77th Congress began 1941 riddled with factionalism and petty bickering, Democrats versus Republicans and Democrats versus Democrats. There simply weren't enough Republicans to fight amongst themselves. They also began the year arguing over a $17 billion dollar federal budget. Twelve months later, they were in near unanimous agreement that the country needed a $61.5 billion dollar budget, all of it save $8 billion slated for national defense.
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Capitol Hill in January of 1941 was dominated by isolationists. In December of 1941, it was dominated by internationalists.

The city of Washington finally staged a successful blackout drill, after numerous failed attempts to do so. All it took was twelve thousand air raid wardens bellowing throughout the city for residents to get off the streets and turn off their lights. “By intent, it was only a partial blackout. Street lights were extinguished only in the downtown section and even there lights continued to glow . . . for the order in such cases were simply to use as little light as possible.”
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Via his odious Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler addressed the German people on New Year's Eve. So, too, did Marshal Petain address the French people on that day. Hitler claimed to have been behind the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor but a confidential memo to FDR from Rome refuted that. There, Hermann Goering had a conversation with an undercover British operative in which the German signaled his interest and approval of the Japanese operations in the Pacific. Although out of favor with Hitler for the recent failures of his Luftwaffe, Goering probably would have known if there had been any coordination between Berlin and Tokyo on December 7. Goering said, “I should consider it a great pleasure if Japan would be so kind as to instruct me in their method of conducting these operations. I feel that I have made a great mistake in not giving more study to the matter of launching aerial torpedoes.”
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In the continuation of his exclusive interview with Pierre Huss of the International News Service, it was clear Hitler was still paranoid, ill-informed, insecure, and delusional. “He may have heard that astrologers are saying in the eighth year of his favorable sign in the heaven is the last. It is a worrisome thing.” One thing was for sure. Adolf Hitler was absolutely obsessed with Franklin Roosevelt.
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The rumor was still going around that Hitler would be overthrown by his generals in 1942 and they would immediately sue for peace. A memo from the Office of Naval Intelligence laid it out, saying the German military was divided between “two factions, the first—Extremist, the second—Conservative. The Extremists are strong adherents of Hitler . . . Marshal Goering is now inclined toward the Conservative group, which is the real reason for his present alienation from Hitler. He and other members of the Conservative faction are under close surveillance of the Gestapo.” The memo continued, “The Conservatives aim at final liquidation of the Nazi party at the earliest opportunity . . . .”
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In an earlier broadcast, he'd referred to President Roosevelt as “Frau Roosevelt.”
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British astrologers also forecast a bad 1942 for Adolf Hitler.

Still ringing in the ears of the Allies were the immortal words of Churchill “There will be no halting or half measures. There will be no compromise or parley. These gangs of bandits have sought to darken the light of the world . . . and thence march forward into their inheritance. They shall themselves be cast into the pit of death and shame, and only when the earth has been cleansed and purged of their crime and of their villiany will we turn from the task which they have forced upon us . . . The enemies have asked for total war. Let us make sure they get it.”
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Mr. Churchill was due back in Washington on January 1st and few men fired up the American people like the British Prime Minister.

The first time Churchill and Roosevelt met in London in 1918, they did not like each other though they did share a fondness for “tobacco, strong drink, history, the sea, battleships, hymns, pageantry, patriotic poetry, high office and hearing themselves talk.” But they grew to respect each other, and on Churchill's part, there was a genuine fondness. He once said that FDR was like opening a new bottle of champagne and FDR once said to Churchill, I am glad we live in the same decade.
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At the stroke of midnight on January 1st, 1942, America had technically been at war ___days ____hours ___minutes since the attack on Pearl Harbor. On December 8, President Roosevelt had made it official and then he did so again on December 11. America was thrust into a new world war; one in which she had vowed never to be involved; one that polling established the vast majority of the American people opposed, and one that had been forced upon a reluctant nation and indolent capital. “A languid Southern town with a pace so slow that much of it simply closed down for the summer grew almost overnight into a crowded, harried, almost frantic metropolis struggling desperately to assume the mantle of global power, moving haltingly and haphazardly and only partially successfully to change itself into the capital of the free world.”
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Once forced into battle, the American people quickly rallied to the cause of patriotic grace, passion, desire, commitment, fear, revenge, love, hate, anger—all the emotions one would expect when one's country is unfairly and maliciously and sneakily attacked. Especially if that country was America in 1941, with its particularly strong streak of patriotism and sense of fair play.

The events of December 7, 1941, changed America and changed America forever. It sent the country careening off on a wildly different path of history than the one it had traveled in the days before that fateful day. In the two hours of the attack, the Navy lost more men than in World War I and the Spanish-America War combined. However, the nearly 3,000 dead did not come close to representing or reflecting the dimensions of the radical changes to America.

On December 6, 1941, America was an old body at rest. By the afternoon of December 7, it was a young body in motion. Action had been initiated and now America was obliged to engage in reaction. Yet it was more than just mere physics.

On December 6, 1941, America was in many ways, a tired and run down country and many thought she had seen her best days. The cloud of the Great Depression hung over the country despite the best (and some said harebrained) efforts of the New Dealers. The “Brain Trust” around FDR, who had come into power in 1933 full of promise and full of themselves had, by 1941, drifted away, frustrated with their failures. FDR was essentially alone with only his last New Deal companion, Harry Hopkins, still at his side, still believing that government could prime the pump.

In joining the Allied effort against the Huns, as they had in 1917, America took the lead but also learned from the mistakes at the Treaty of Versailles; the French insisted on humiliating the German people, giving rise to Adolf Hitler, giving rise to a new world war. No one in America really knew why the world went to war in August of 1914, except Barbara Tuchman. The assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip is cited as the flashpoint which triggered a series of mutual defense treaties, but European countries had battled each other for hundreds of years and it was often difficult to tell the good guys from the bad.

The war had revived a dying, wandering, and meandering America, without national purpose. And it changed the country forever. Never at any point in American history had the country been as united as it had been following December 7. Not on July 4, 1776, not on September 17, 1787, not for the War of 1812, certainly not in April 1861, not for the Spanish-American War, and not for the War to End All Wars. Indeed, in 1917 Congress debated for days before voting to support Woodrow Wilson and even then, dozens of members voted against the War Resolution. After 1919, Americans asked themselves, “What did we get out of the first world war but death, debt, and George M. Cohan?”
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It was a good question.

Never again would America be an isolationist country as it had been after 1919, refusing to join the League of Nations. After this war, America took the lead in creating the United Nations. Rather than turning its back on the Empire of Japan and Nazi Germany, America chose instead to rebuild those war-torn countries and, going even further, implement the Marshall Plan as a means of rebuilding other countries in Europe, to protect them and America from Soviet advances, even as an Iron Curtin fell across Europe. It changed the Soviet Union, too, leading to a Cold War, in turn, leading to America's victory over the Soviets.

It forever changed the culture of America, kicking off a new realization of human rights for women and blacks.

It forever changed the economy as a heretofore unknown “Middle Class” sprung into being. It changed education, as the G.I. Bill, one of the greatest and kindest pieces of legislation ever passed by a grateful country, gave access to the academy to millions of G.I.s. It changed labor in America and the view towards government. The gentility of the past melted away. A brutality was evident at the end of the war that was not there at the beginning. For months after Pearl Harbor, American publications did not print photos of dead American soldiers. The subject was confined to private memos that ended up on Roosevelt's desk, as on December 11, when “Cincpac” Fleet Surgeon Elphege A.M. Gendreua wrote, “The dead were fingerprinted, where possible, identification marks and teeth charted, bodies marked with attached wooden tag, and wrapped in canvas.”
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It changed the airplane from a marginally important player in economics and warfare to a central role in the world. Roosevelt's first Secretary of War, George H. Dern, dismissed the airplane in war as “the fantasy of a dreamer.”
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Airplanes fought during World War II as the Army Air Corps, making a decisive difference on the battlefield. In the end, the war would hinge on who controlled the skies. The U.S. Air Force became its own service in 1947, marking the undisputed primacy of air power in warfare. After the war, the country was awash in commercial airlines and had plenty of experienced pilots to fly for them. It changed science, as rockets, once thought of as kids' stuff, became a reality in war and then in peace, leading to satellites, men in space, and walking on the moon.

This war, beginning in 1939, was easier to comprehend and it was easier to tell the good guys from the bad guys. It was
The Good War
as Studs Terkel so memorably dubbed it.
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Newspapers across the country contained full-page ecumenical ads entreating Americans to go to the church of their choice for “A Universal Day of Prayer” as called for by President Roosevelt just a few days earlier.
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New Year's Day was celebrated in the Catholic Church as the Feast of Circumcision but all churches throughout America would be open from early the morning of January 1, 1942, until well into the evening for prayer, communion, and supplication.

This prayer—recited in America and across the globe—had been marked “Triple Priority” for the American Embassy because it was to be read in London as well:

The year 1941 had brought upon our nation, as the past two years have brought upon other nations, a war of aggression by powers dominated by arrogant rulers whose selfish purpose is to destroy free institutions. They would thereby take from the freedom-loving peoples of the earth the hard-won liberties gained over many centuries.

The new year of 1942 calls for the courage and the resolution of old and young to help win a world struggle in order that we may preserve all we hold dear.

We are confident in our devotion to country, in our love of freedom, in our inheritance of courage. But our strength, as the strength of all men everywhere, is of greater avail as God upholds us.

In making this first day of the year 1942 a day of prayer, we ask forgiveness for our shortcomings of the past, consecration to the tasks of the present, and God's help in days to come.

We need His guidance that this people may be humble in spirit but strong in the conviction of the right; steadfast to endure sacrifices and brave to achieve a victory of liberty and peace.
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt

America had the will to succeed; this much was certain. To do so would require the necessary “blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

EPILOGUE

“A failure of imagination . . .”

A
fter the devastating fire of 1967 in which
Apollo One
astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chafee were burned alive on the ground in a seemingly routine drill. Another astronaut, Frank Borman, was ordered to head up the NASA investigation.

He was hauled before a hostile congressional committee and towards the end was asked, “How could this have happened? How are three men killed in a ground test of the
Apollo
capsule?” Borman, a taciturn man, thought for a moment and replied to New Mexico Senator Clinton Anderson, “Senator, it was a failure of imagination. . . .” Elaborating, Borman said, “No one ever imagined . . . [we] just didn't think that such a thing could happen.”