The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

as a leading interventionist. There was no stomach for war in the US and
the anti-interventionist lobby was a powerful one. Isolationist sentiment
was also, crucially, strong in both houses of Congress. Nonetheless, despite
the negative response to Churchill’s requests, the President still rang
Kennedy, anxious to know what the Prime Minister’s reaction had been.
The following day, Churchill replied to Roosevelt, stressing the
mounting gravity of the situation. ‘We must expect in any case to be
attacked on the Dutch model before very long,’ he wrote. If American
assistance was to play any part at all, he stressed, it would have to be
available very soon.
It would not be the last time Churchill would plead Britain’s case in
such stark terms. He would continue chivvying and cajoling the President
for as long as it took because he was sure – as certain as he could be about
anything – that the United States held the key to Britain’s eventual victory
over Nazi Germany.
Right now, however, he faced an uphill battle. From London,
Ambassador Kennedy was warning the President that Britain would soon be
beaten too, and that to support her now would be to back a busted flush. His
man in France, Ambassador Bullitt, was equally certain the current crisis
was going to end in disaster for Britain. On 16 May, he had put to the
President – in an off-the-record cable that was for Roosevelt’s ‘most private
ear’ only – a hypothesis that he believed had a likely chance of becoming
reality: Britain would throw out the current Government, sue for peace and
install Mosley and the British Fascists, who would co-operate fully with
Nazi Germany. ‘That would mean the British navy against us,’ he wrote. To
this end, he urged the President to speak with Mackenzie King, the
Canadian Prime Minister, and the senior commanders of the British Fleet,
and make sure that should the worst happen, the navy would sail for
Canada.
Roosevelt wanted to see the world rid of Hitler and the Nazis. Unlike
the anti-interventionists, he did not see the Atlantic as the great bulwark that
would protect them. War against Germany, he believed, was inevitable. But
he was not a dictator; he was a democratically elected head of state. In
November there would be a Presidential election and, to be reelected, he
needed the support of the nation – a nation overwhelmingly opposed to war.
To overtly help Britain and France further when their futures looked so
bleak would be political suicide. For the time being, at any rate, he had to