COURTING A RELUCTANT ALLY - National Intelligence University

praised the fighting spirit of the British, not because he was an anglophile, but forthe most concrete of strategic reasons—“If she [England] falls, and her vast seapower is broken or seized...the Atlantic Ocean will cease to be our great barrier ofdefense.” 138 For Knox, it was in America’s self-interest to aid Great Britain and,while he may have felt an affinity for that country, it was his sound strategic sensewhich told him that America could not avoid war.Admiral Harold R. StarkADM Stark relieved ADM Leahy as CNO on 1 August 1939. Stark was waryof the British most likely because, as ADM Sims’ Flag Secretary, he had seenfirst-hand during World War I how the British treated their “junior partners,” theAmericans. Even though Stark had learned how to work with the British effectively,he, like many of his counterparts, was determined that the U.S. would onlywork with the British as equals in the future. 139 Despite a history of working successfullywith the British, Stark’s personal views show that he was unimpressedwith them. In a personal letter to the commander of the U.S. Asiatic Squadron,Admiral T. C. Hart, Stark wrote that his Special Naval Observer (SPECNO) inLondon, RADM Ghormley, had just told him the British were expecting the U.S.to enter the war soon after Roosevelt’s reelection in 1940. Stark told Hart thisexpectation on the part of the British was “merely another evidence of their slackways of thought, and their non-realistic views of international political conditions,and of our own political system.” 140Clearly, Stark was no fan of the British, yet, as the author of the famous “PlanDog” memorandum in November 1940, he was responsible for “reversing thePacific orientation [of U.S. military planning] and, in the midst of a national climateof independence and neutrality, proposed to enter a coalition war.” 141 Onceagain, strategic imperatives led Stark to conclude, like his British counterparts,that alliance between the U.S. and the UK was necessary for the defeat of theAxis and the preservation of the democracies. The memo was written to Secretaryof the Navy Knox, essentially as a plea to get definitive strategic direction fromRoosevelt. Such strategic direction had become a necessity, given that RADM138Frank Knox, “It Is Later Than You Think,” 4 August 1940, in Deadline for America, KnoxPapers, 2. In a speech given in January 1941, Knox said that those favoring the provision of aid toGreat Britain should be called “A Committee to Aid Britain to Aid Us to Defend America.” SeeFrank Knox, Speech to the Canadian Society of New York, 19 January 1941, Knox Papers, 11.139 Morison, The Battle of the Atlantic, 39; Department of the Navy, “Administrative History:United States Naval Forces in Europe 1940-1946,” Strategic Planning, iv, cited hereafter as COM-NAVEU Admin History; Budiansky, 52.140 Harold R. Stark, ADM, USN, Letter to ADM T.C. Hart, Commander-in-Chief, Asiatic Fleet,12 Nov 40, Stark Papers, 1.141 Baer, 19.40