Our Man in New York

While I read about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt I am getting another perspective in Henry Hemming’s Our Man in New York.

Roosevelt walked a tight-rope in the early years of the war. He felt instinctively that his country must support the Allies; a brave decision that Americans did not support.

18 – 23 May 1940

Gallup Survey: do you think the United States should declare war on Germany and send our army and navy abroad to fight? Yes – 7%

The isolationists were overwhelmingly in the ascendant and they were a broad church. Many remembered the loss of American lives in the first Great War, others felt that America was impregnable to attack (too big and too far away) and needed to arm itself and not send military help to Britain and some admired the Nazis. Hans Thomsen, chargé d’affaires at the German embassy in Washington, used propaganda and money to bolster isolationism. The interventionists were on the back-foot but they did have Franklin’s covert support. In the summer of 1940 Franklin sent arms, ‘planes and fifty destroyers to Britain without the endorsement of the Senate. He could have been impeached but he was re-elected because he was a consummate politician and could walk a tightrope while sitting on a fence.

April 1941

Fortune Poll: would you be in favour of sending an army to Europe? Yes – 21.5%

Opinion is shifting but why? Hemming tells a story untold in No Ordinary Time. He writes about German support for the isolationists and focusses on Charles Lindbergh’s impassioned opposition to American participation in the war. There is no evidence that Lindbergh was in the pay of the Nazis although he did accept a medal from Goebbels before the war. His father opposed intervention in World War One and I think he was sticking to the family line. Nevertheless his speeches carried weight until he went too far claiming that Jews in America were fanning the flames of war. He was half-right but it was MI6 pumping the bellows.

The kernel of Hemming’s readable book is the relationship between two Bills: Colonel William Donovan and William Stephenson; neither are mentioned in No Ordinary Time. The former, an American World War I decorated veteran, was close to Roosevelt; his emissary to London twice, had frequent meetings with him at the White House, on the President’s fishing boat, Potomac, and was asked to be his Secretary of War until FDR changed his mind and appointed Henry Stimson. Instead he became the first head of what became the CIA and one of his first employees was Jimmy Roosevelt, one of Franklin’s sons.

November 1941

Gallup Survey: do you think the US will go into the war in Europe sometime before it is over, or do you think we will stay out of the war? Go to war sooner or later with Germany – 85%.

William Stephenson was head of MI6 in the Americas. There’s not time for his back story except to comment that spies often have their own secrets. His mission was difficult but not impossible; he persuaded America to go to war. To begin with he funded interventionist organisations, then he became bolder, not always telling “C”, his MI6 boss. Fake news? Nothing new, William Stephenson scattered it like confetti around the American media and ventured, successfully, into forgery and deception. He worked on getting “Wild Bill” Donovan appointed head of a new intelligence agency, to become the CIA. Once he got him there he taught him and his agents what to do and fed them intelligence material.

On 8th December 1941, the day after Pearl Harbour, America declared war on Japan; three days later Germany declared war on the United States. Bill Stephenson’s schemes had the desired outcome and he was given a knighthood. He is also remembered at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia where this small sculpture of him stands in the atrium; a telling reflection of the shift in the balance of power between MI6 and the CIA.