Lend Lease and Franklin Roosevelt
Sensing the need to provide assistance to European democracies under attack, FDR and the Congress committed US support as early as November 1939.
World War II began in September 1939 when German forces invaded and overwhelmed eastern Poland. The attack on Poland resulted in war declarations by Britain and France. In the United States, the Roosevelt administration watched events in both Europe and Asia with caution. The nation was still in the midst of a depression and in terms of foreign affairs, FDR had to balance the growing need for preparedness with the strong isolationist views of many Americans and the Congress. Despite these obstacles, Roosevelt was able to help the British as well as thwart the Japanese through legislative loopholes.
Lend Lease and Executive Orders
Within weeks of the fall of Poland, Roosevelt and the Congress passed the Neutrality Act of November 1939 that repealed the U.S. embargo of armaments to Europe. Britain and France could now purchase arms but on a “cash and carry basis,” meaning that the goods had to be transported in their own vessels. But by the spring of 1940 the European situation had changed dramatically. Hitler’s blitzkrieg strategy resulted in the defeat and occupation of large sections of Europe, including much of France. The Battle for Britain was about to begin.
One of Roosevelt’s first actions was to “trade” fifty American destroyers to Britain for the rights to build bases on British possessions in the Americas. The “bases for destroyers” deal augmented a stretched British fleet protecting conveys across the Atlantic, defending the British Isles and Mediterranean sites, and maintaining a naval presence in the Pacific as Japanese aggression became more overt.
By 1941 Congress authorized President Roosevelt to implement the lend-lease policies. Given wide authority to transfer defensive articles to foreign governments, Roosevelt’s Congressional loophole rested in the statement, “whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States.” In many ways a “blank check” to sell, lease, exchange, or lend, this delegation of legislative authority was upheld by the federal courts.
In regard to Japan, two 1940 Presidential “executive orders” embargoed oil (July) and banned the sale of scrap iron and steel (October). In July 1941, Roosevelt issued an executive order freezing Japan’s financial assets in the United States. Although much has been written about these executive orders in terms of their impact on the Japanese decisions to attack the United States, and while they certainly played a role in setting Imperial time tables, the plans to eliminate the U.S. from a position of dominance in the Pacific region predate the 1940s.
Committing American Naval Support
In July 1941 President Roosevelt ordered the armed forces to occupy Iceland. Iceland was highly strategic in terms of the naval war in the Atlantic. United States’ troops replaced British troops that could be used elsewhere in the British effort. Additionally, United States’ naval vessels could now escort convoys to Iceland before handing them over to British escorts.
The expanded U.S. presence in the Atlantic might have prompted the attack on the USS Greer in September 1941 by a German submarine. An angry Roosevelt denounced the action, referring to U-boats as the “rattlesnakes of the Atlantic.” As both Germany and Japan would soon learn, America was the “great arsenal of democracy.” The delegation of authority by Congress was in line with presidential prerogatives regarding foreign affairs. It was all the more constitutional in times of international crisis.
Sources:
David Bercuson and Holger H. Herwig, One Christmas in Washington (Overlook, 2005).
Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution Its Origins & Development 5th Ed (W.W. Norton & Company, 1976).
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