We’ve heard a lot recently about alleged secret and illegal
collaboration by prominent Americans with foreign governments. Collusion is
widely regarded as so malign and disgraceful that any official who cooperates
with a foreign power in an underhanded way is considered unfit to hold public
office. In particular, politicians and media commentators have been charging
that devious cooperation by Donald Trump with the government of Ukraine or
Russia renders him unfit to be President.
However valid such accusations may be, secretive and unlawful
collusion by an American leader with a foreign power that subverts the US
political process is not new. The most far-reaching and flagrant case was by
President Franklin Roosevelt in 1940-41.
The stage for this had been set some months earlier. In September
1939, Germany and then Soviet Russia attacked Poland. Two days after the German
assault, Britain and France declared war against Germany.
Following the defeat of Poland after barely five weeks of
fighting, the German leader appealed to Britain and France for peace. Hitler’s
plea was rejected. After British and French leaders made clear their
determination to continue the war, Germany struck in the West in May 1940.
Military and political leaders in Britain and France were confident that their
forces would prevail. After all, those two countries had more soldiers, more
artillery, more tanks and armored vehicles, and vastly more impressive and numerous
naval vessels, than did the Germans. Nonetheless, in just six weeks German
forces subdued France and forced the British to flee to their island nation.[1]
Hitler then launched yet another peace initiative. In a dramatic
July 19, 1940, appeal for an end to the conflict, he stressed that his proposal
did not in any way harm vital British interests or violate British honor. This
offer was also rejected, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill vowed to continue
the war.[2]
Privately, though, he and all other high-level British officials
knew that their country’s resources were hopelessly inferior to those of
Germany and her allies, and that Britain’s only hope for “victory” required
somehow bringing the United States into the war. In a one-on-one conversation
during this period Randolph Churchill pointedly asked his father just how
Britain could possibly beat Germany. “With great intensity,” he later recalled,
Winston Churchill replied: “I shall drag the United States in.”[3]
From mid-1940 onwards, bringing the US into war was a priority
British government objective. The great problem, though, was that the great
majority of Americans wanted to keep their country neutral, and avoid any
direct involvement in the European conflict. Millions remembered with bitterness
the deceit by which the US had entered the world war of 1914-1918, and the
betrayal of the solemn, noble-sounding pledges made during those years by US
President Wilson and the leaders of Britain and France.
Roosevelt secretly supported Churchill’s efforts. Even before the
outbreak of war in September 1939, the President was already working, behind
the scenes, to encourage Britain to make war against Germany, with the goal of
“regime change” there.[4] America’s most influential newspapers, magazines and
radio commentators shared Roosevelt’s hostile attitude toward Hitler’s Germany,
and they supported his campaign for war by putting out stories designed to
persuade the public that Germany was a grave danger. Even prior to the outbreak
of war in Europe, for example, the country’s most influential illustrated
weekly, Life magazine, published a major article headlined “America Gets Ready
to Fight Germany, Italy, Japan.” Readers were told that Germany and Italy
“covet … the rich resources of South America,” and warned that “fascist fleets
and legions may swarm across the Atlantic.”[5]
In the months before December 1941, when the US formally entered
the war in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt
did everything he could to get America into the global conflict without
actually declaring war. He proceeded with caution and cunning, because his
measures were often contrary to US law, and without Congressional or
Constitutional mandate. Roosevelt also acted with ever more brazen disregard
for international law and America’s legal standing as a neutral country. As
part of his campaign, he sought to convince the public that Hitler’s Germany
threatened the US.
“The Nazi masters of Germany,” he announced in a December 1940
radio address, “have made clear that they intend not only to dominate all life
and thought in their own country, but also to enslave the whole of Europe, and
then to use the resources of Europe to dominate the rest of the world …” In
August 1941, the President met with British premier Churchill to pledge US
support for war against Germany. They issued a joint declaration, the “Atlantic
Charter,” that laid out the ambitious and noble-sounding war aims of the two
countries.[6]
Roosevelt and Churchill at their historic “Atlantic Charter”
meeting off the coast of Newfoundland, August 1941
Roosevelt and Churchill at their historic “Atlantic Charter”
meeting off the coast of Newfoundland, August 1941
In a nationally-broadcast address two weeks later, Roosevelt told
Americans that “… our fundamental rights – including the rights of labor – are
threatened by Hitler’s violent attempt to rule the world,” and pledged that “we
shall do everything in our power to crush Hitler and his Nazi forces.”[7] In
another radio address on September 11 the President announced a
“shoot-on-sight” order to US naval warships to attack German and Italian
vessels on the high seas.
In spite of these and other hostile measures, German leaders
fervently sought to avoid conflict with the US. Hitler ordered German
submarines to avoid any clash with American forces, and to use their weapons
only in self-defense and as a final resort. So belligerent were US actions
against Germany and her allies, and so blatant was US disregard for the
country’s officially neutral status, that Admiral Harold Stark, US Chief of
Naval Operations, warned the Secretary of State that Hitler “has every excuse
in the world to declare war on us now, if he were of a mind to.”[8]
As part of Churchill’s effort to bring the US into the war, in
1940 his government established an agency that came to be known as the British
Security Coordination (BSC), which managed operations in North and South
America of Britain’s key intelligence bureaus, including MI5, MI6, the Special
Operations Executive, and the Political Warfare Executive.
BSC operations were headed by William Stephenson. Born in Canada,
he had distinguished himself as a flier with British forces during the First
World War, and afterwards became a highly successful businessman in England.
From its central offices on two floors of the Rockefeller Center building on
Fifth Avenue in New York City, the BSC at its height supervised the work of
more than two thousand full- and part-time employees, agents and operatives.
These included linguists, cipher and crytology experts, intelligence agents,
propaganda specialists, people skilled in business and finance, and operatives
in a range of other fields. Nearly a thousand were active in New York, while
more than that number worked in Washington, DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco and
Seattle, as well as in Canada, Mexico City, Havana, and other centers in Latin
America. “The scale and audacity” of British intelligence activivities in the
US between June 1940 and December 1941, concludes one historian, “were without
parallel in the history of relations between allied democracies.”[9]
William Stephenson
William Stephenson
At the end of World War II, Stephenson arranged for an official
history of the British Security Coordination to be written, based on its
voluminous files and records. Just twenty copies of this secret and very
restricted work were produced, and then the entire archive of BSC documents and
papers was gathered together and burned.[10]
In the years that followed, some information about BSC operations
came to public attention in a few widely-read books. But it was not until 1999
– more than half a century after the end of World War II – that the full text
was finally published. This important primary source, titled British Security
Coordination: The Secret History of British Intelligence in the Americas,
1940-1945, throws light on the carefully hidden record of collusion between the
Roosevelt White House and a foreign government.
Not long after William Stephenson arrived in the US to begin work,
Prime Minister Churchill informed President Roosevelt of Stephenson’s
assignment. After a briefing on the BSC’s planned operations, Roosevelt said:
“There should be the closest possible marriage between the FBI and British
intelligence.” The president also communicated his views on this to the British
ambassador in Washington.[11] Roosevelt arranged for Stephenson’s agency to
work closely with William Donovan, a highly trusted colleague of the President
who went on to establish and head the wartime Office of Strategic Services,
which after the war became the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency.
William Donovan
William Donovan
As the official BSC history acknowledges, BSC operations “could
not have come into being at all without American approval on the highest
level.” The official history goes on: “The climax of that offensive was reached
some six months before Pearl Harbor when BSC secured, through the establishment
of the organization which eventually came to be known as the Office of
Strategic Services, an assurance of full American participation and
collaboration with the British in secret activities directed against the enemy
throughout the world.”[12]
Moreover, “Inasmuch as the cause of American intervention was
symbolized in the foresight and determination of the President himself, the
ultimate purpose of all BSC’s Political Warfare was to assist Mr Roosevelt’s
own campaign for preparedness. This was not merely an abstract conception, for
WS [William Stephenson] kept in close touch with the White House and as time
went on the president gave clear indication of his personal concern both to
encourage and take advantage of BSC’s activities.”[13]
This cooperation with British intelligence by the President and
other high-ranking US officials, as well as with the FBI, the US federal
government’s main domestic security and police agency, was quite illegal. Such
collusion by the nominally neutral US to further the war aims of a foreign
government was contrary to both US law and universally accepted international
norms. Accordingly, the White House kept this collaboration secret even from
the State Department.
Incidentally, the official BSC history acknowledges the role of
Donovan in a little known but important chapter of World War II history. On
March 25, 1941, Yugoslavia joined the Axis alliance with Germany, Italy and
other European countries. Two days later, a group of Serbian officers led by
General Dusan Simovic, carried out a putsch in Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital,
that violently overthrew the country’s legal government. Ten days later the new
regime signed a treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union.
How did this sudden “regime change” come about? Several months
earlier, during a visit to Belgrade in January 1941, William Donovan was in the
Yugoslav capital as an agent of President Roosevelt and of the British
government. During a crucial meeting and conversation with General Simovic, he
set the stage for the “regime change” overthrow of the country’s government.
The official BSC history puts it this way: “In Yugoslavia, Donovan paved the
way for the coup d’état which resulted at the eleventh hour in Yugoslav
resistance to, instead of acquiescence in, German aggression. He interviewed
General Simovic, who asked him whether Britain could hold out against the Nazis
and whether the United States would enter the war … He answered both questions
in the affirmative; and at his persuasion Simovic agreed to organize the
revolution which a few months later overthrew the pro-German government of
Prince Paul.”[14]
William Stephenson is honored for his wartime service with the US
“Medal of Merit,” presented by William Donovan at a ceremony in 1946
William Stephenson is honored for his wartime service with the US
“Medal of Merit,” presented by William Donovan at a ceremony in 1946
A major task of the BSC – as the official history reports – was
“to organize American public opinion in favour of aid to Britain.” As part of
what the BSC called “political warfare designed to influence American public
opinion,” BSC agents were “placing special material in the American press.”
Stephenson’s operatives were very active in prodding, cajoling and steering the
US media to foment fear and hatred of Germany, and to encourage public support
for Roosevelt’s ever more overt campaign of military backing for Britain, and
later for Soviet Russia.
“Of particular value,” the BSC history notes, was the cooperation
of the publisher of the New York Post, the editor of the New York daily PM, the
publisher of the New York Herald Tribune, the publisher of the Baltimore Sun,
and the president of the New York Times, as well as the country’s most
influential columnists, including Walter Lippman, Drew Pearson, and Walter
Winchell. Pearson’s column alone appeared in 616 newspapers with a combined
readership of more than twenty million. In working “to bring the United Sates
into the `shooting’ war by attacking isolationism and fostering
interventionism,” the BSC “was able to initiate internal propaganda through its
undercover contacts with selected newspapers, such as the New York Times, the
New York Herald Tribune, the New York Post, and the Baltimore Sun; with
newspaper columnists and radio commentators; and with various political
pressure organizations.”
The BSC worked closely with a specially created news service. Set
up in July 1940, the “Overseas News Agency” was a supposedly legitimate and
trustworthy enterprise. Actually, and as the BSC history notes, this was “a
branch of the Jewish Telegraph[ic] Agency, owned in part by the rich New York
Jew who controlled the liberal and vehemently anti-Nazi New York Post.”
As the official history goes on to explain: “After a series of
secret negotiations, BSC agreed to give ONA [Overseas News Agency] a monthly
subsidy in return for promise of cooperation in certain specific ways … It’s
value … lay in its ability not only to channel propaganda outwards but to
assure wide dissemination of material originated by BSC and intended for
internal consumption. In April 1941, the ONA clients within the United States
already numbered more than forty-five English language papers, which included
such giants as the New York Times … It afforded a useful instrument for rapid
dissemination abroad of subversive propaganda originated by BSC in the United
States.”[15]
The Jewish-run ONA agency soon became an important distributor of
“fake news” as part of the widening campaign to smear and discredit National
Socialist Germany, and to promote public support for US involvement in war
against Germany and her allies. As one historian put it: “From the start,
attacking Nazi Germany was a higher priority for ONA than hewing to the truth.”
ONA articles influenced many millions of Americans, appearing in such major
daily papers as the New York Times, the New York Herald Tribune, the San
Francisco Chronicle, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Washington Post.[16]
Here are a few examples:
In August 1940 an ONA report cited anonymous “qualified Czech
sources” to inform Americans that “Czechoslovak girls and young women have been
transported from the [Czech] Protectorate to German garrison towns to become
white slaves.” It went on to tell readers that “Nazi officials, dispatching
these trainloads of prospective white slaves to the Reich, informed husbands
and relatives that the women `will be entrusted with the important work of
amusing German soldiers, in order to keep up the morale of the troops’.”[17]
In February 1941 American newspapers carried a sensational ONA
report claiming that the US was threatened by “fascist bands” in the Caribbean
country of Haiti, which had become a dangerous center of Nazi activity. Germans
were supposedly preparing that county as a base for attacks on Florida, the
Panama Canal, and Puerto Rico.[18] In June 1941 an ONA report appearing in
newspapers across the US told of a daring British parachute raid within Germany
that had succeeded in capturing 40 German pilots. This and similar stories were
meant to encourage Americans to believe that the British had the skill and
resolve to defeat Germany and her allies. But the raid never happened. This
“fake news” story was conceived in London by the MI6 agency, and was written by
a British agent.[19]
In August 1941, an ONA item in the New York Post told readers that
“Hitler is not at the Russian front, but at Berchtesgaden suffering from a
severe nervous breakdown.” The article went on to assert that the German
leader’s personal physician had recently traveled to Switzerland to consult
with the famed psychiatrist Carl Jung to discuss “the rapid deterioration of
Hitler’s mental condition,” which was supposedly characterized by delusional
rages.[20] That same month, The New York Times published a report of the
Overseas News Agency telling readers that in the Middle East the recent death
of a 130-year-old Bedouin soothsayer was widely regarded as “a sign of a coming
defeat for Hitler.”[21]
Stephenson’s BSC also rigged public opinion polls to give the
impression that Americans were more willing to join Britain and the Soviet
Union in war against Germany than was actually the case. Polls that showed
American unhappiness with British policies, such as Britain’s imperial rule in
India, were suppressed. As a result, one historian cautions, many surveys of
American public opinion during this period “should be seen for what they were:
at worst they were flatly rigged, at best they were tweaked and massaged and
cooked – advocacy polls without the advocate being visible.”[22]
An important British propaganda outlet during this period was
radio station WRUL, an American short-wave broadcaster based in Long Island,
New York. With 50,000 watts of power, its reach was unsurpassed by any other
station either in the US or Europe. “By the middle of 1941,” the official BSC
history reports, “station WRUL was virtually, though quite unconsciously, a
subsidiary of BSC, sending out covert British propaganda all over the world …
Daily broadcasts went out in no less than twenty-two different languages …”[23]
In its efforts to influence the American public, the British had
formidable competition. News, photos and contextual information provided by
German agencies was more timely and detailed, and consequently better
appreciated and more effective, than what Britain provided. The German “news
agencies, Transocean and DNB, were always first with the headlines,” the BSC
history acknowledged.[24]
In two confidential telegrams sent to London in April 1941, Stephenson
wrote frankly about the unsatisfactory situation: “Close examination of US
press during past fortnight indicates almost complete failure [to] prevent Axis
monopoly of war news coverage … most journals … carry predominance of Axis news
… [and] photographs … few if any British photographs appear … Axis news reports
reach here more quickly than ours … rapidly followed by copious flow of
descriptive material, photographs and films … Transocean and DNB keep up flow
and build up stories even in quiet periods … invariably beat our news to
headlines … US newsmen here say Germans show far better sense of news and
timing … infinitely better understanding US psychology.”[25]
As the BSC official history goes on to explain, “these warnings
went unheeded, and accordingly WS [William Stephenson] decided to take action
on his own initiative” by waging a “covert war against the mass of American
groups which were organized throughout the country to spread isolationism and
anti-British feeling.” This included coordination with vehemently anti-German
organizations that were pushing for US involvement in war against Germany. BSC
was especially keen to counter the formidable influence and effectiveness of
the America First Committee. As the official history notes, “because America
First was a particularly serious menace, BSC decided to take more direct
action.” It took measures to “disrupt” America First rallies, and to
“discredit” America First speakers. “Such activities by BSC agents and
cooperating pro-British committees were frequent, and on many occasions America
First was harassed and heckled and embarrassed.”
Gerald Nye
Gerald Nye
British intelligence agents also worked to elect candidates who
favored US intervention in the European war, to defeat candidates who advocated
neutrality, and to silence or destroy the reputations of Americans who were
deemed to be a menace to British interests. An important target of BSC
operations was US Senator Gerald Nye, an influential critic of the President’s
campaign for war. Once, when he was getting ready to address a meeting in
Boston, a BSC-backed group called “Fight for Freedom” “passed out 25,000
handbills attacking him as an appeaser and as a Nazi-lover.”[26]
Another political figure whom BSC operatives sought to discredit was
US Representative Hamilton Fish, a vigorous critic of Roosevelt’s war policy.
Fish was particularly effective because he was intelligent, well educated, and
exceptionally knowledgeable about international relations, with extensive
first-hand understanding of European affairs. British agents funded Fish’s
election opponents, published pamphlets suggesting he was pro-Hitler, released
a faked photo of Fish with the head of the pro-Nazi German American Bund, and
planted stories saying that he was getting financial aid from German agents.
Such underhanded activities was important in finally removing him from Congress
in the November 1944 elections. The BSC history notes that while Fish
“attributed his defeat to Reds and Communists. He might – with more accuracy –
have blamed BSC.”[27]
Hamilton Fish
Hamilton Fish
Fortune tellers were also used by British intelligence to sway
public opinion. Such propaganda, the official BSC history notes, is effective
only with people who are not very discerning or sophisticated. The BSC begins
its description of these operations with condescending remarks about American
gullibility:
“A country that is extremely heterogeneous in character offers a
wide variety of choice propaganda methods. While it is probably true that all
Americans are intensely suspicious of propaganda, it is certain that a great
many of them are unusually susceptible to it even in its most patent form … The
United States is still a fertile field for outré practices. It is unlikely that
any propagandist would seriously attempt to influence politically the people of
England, say, or France through the medium of astrological predictions. Yet in
the United States this was done with effective if limited results.”[28]
In the summer of 1941 the BSC employed Louis de Wohl, who is
described in the BSC history as a “bogus Hungarian astrologer.” He was directed
to issue predictions to show that Hitler’s “fall was now certain.” At public
meetings, in radio appearances, in interviews, and in widely distributed press
items, he “declared that Hitler’s doom was sealed.” De Wohl, who was presented
as an “astro-philosopher,” also sought to discredit Charles Lindbergh, the much
admired American aviator who was also a prominent spokesman for the America
First Committee and an effective critic of Roosevelt’s war policies. De Wohl
claimed that Lindbergh’s first son, who had been kidnapped and killed in 1932,
was actually still alive and living in Germany, where he was being trained as a
future Nazi leader. “There is little doubt,” the BSC history concludes, that
the work of de Wohl “had a considerable effect upon certain sections of the
[American] people.”[29]
British agents also publicized the equally absurd predictions of
an Egyptian astrologer who claimed that within four months Hitler would be
killed, as well as similarly fantastic predictions of a Nigerian priest named
Ulokoigbe. As Stephenson and his BSC colleagues intended, American newspapers
eagerly picked up and spread such nonsense to millions of readers.[30]
The BSC also set up a center that fabricated letters and other
documents, as well as an organization that excelled in spreading expedient
rumors. British agents illegally interecpted and copied US mail. They carried
out wiretapping to get embarrassing information on those it wished to
discredit, and leaked the results of its illegal surveillance. One important
target was the French embassy in Washington, DC, which was wiretapped and
burgled by Stephenson’s agents.[31]
Ernest Cuneo
Ernest Cuneo
An important figure in all this was Ernest Cuneo, a publicist,
lawyer, and intelligence operative who played a key role as liaison between
Stephenson’s BSC, the White House, Donovan’s agency, the FBI, and the media. He
later described the scope of British operations in a memo. The BSC, he wrote,
“ran espionage agents, tampered with the mails, tapped telephones, smuggled
propaganda into the country, disrupted public gatherings, covertly subsidized
newspapers, radios, and organizations, perpetrated forgeries – even palming one
off on the president of the United States (a map that out-lined Nazi plans to
dominate Latin America) – violated the aliens registrations act, shanghaied
sailors numerous times, and possibly murdered one or more persons in this
country.”[32]
A high point of British-White House collusion, and of the BSC
campaign to influence American public opinion, came on October 27, 1941. While
Franklin Roosevelt was not the first or the last American president to
deliberately mislead the public, rarely has a major political figure given a
speech as loaded with brazen falsehood as he did in his address on that date.
His remarks, delivered to a large gathering at the Mayflower Hotel in
Washington, DC, were broadcast live over nationwide radio.[33]
In a nationally broadcast address of Oct. 27, 1941, President
Roosevelt claimed to have documents proving German plans to take over South
America and abolish all the world’s religions.
In a nationally broadcast address of Oct. 27, 1941, President
Roosevelt claimed to have documents proving German plans to take over South
America and abolish all the world’s religions.
After giving a highly distorted review of recent US-German
relations, Roosevelt made a startling announcement. He said: “Hitler has often
protested that his plans for conquest do not extend across the Atlantic Ocean …
I have in my possession a secret map, made in Germany by Hitler’s government –
by the planners of the new world order. It is a map of South America and a part
of Central America as Hitler proposes to reorganize it.” This map, the
President explained, showed South America, as well as “our great life line, the
Panama Canal,” divided into five vassal states under German domination. He
said: “That map, my friends, makes clear the Nazi design not only against South
America but against the United States as well.”
Roosevelt went on to announce another startling revelation. He
told his listeners that he also had in his possession “another document made in
Germany by Hitler’s government. It is a detailed plan to abolish all existing
religions – Catholic, Protestant, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish
alike” which Germany will impose “on a dominated world, if Hitler wins.”
“The property of all churches will be seized by the Reich and its
puppets,” he continued. “The cross and all other symbols of religion are to be
forbidden. The clergy are to be forever silenced under penalty of the
concentration camps … In the place of the churches of our civilization, there
is to be set up an international Nazi church – a church which will be served by
orators sent out by the Nazi government. In the place of the Bible, the words
of Mein Kampf will be imposed and enforced as Holy Writ. And in place of the
cross of Christ will be put two symbols – the swastika and the naked sword.”
“Let us well ponder,” he said, “these grim truths which I have
told you of the present and future plans of Hitlerism.” All Americans, he went
on, “are faced with the choice between the kind of world we want to live in and
the kind of world which Hitler and his hordes would impose on us.” Accordingly,
he said, “we are pledged to pull our own oar in the destruction of Hitlerism.”
The full story about these documents did not emerge until many
years later. The map cited by the President did exist, but it was a forgery
produced by British intelligence. Stephenson had passed it on to Donovan, who
had it delivered to the President. The other “document” cited by Roosevelt,
purporting to outline German plans to abolish the world’s religions, was even
more fanciful than the “secret map.”
The “secret map” cited by President Roosevelt as proof of German
plans to take over South America was produced by British intelligence and
passed on to the White House by William Donovan.
The “secret map” cited by President Roosevelt as proof of German
plans to take over South America was produced by British intelligence and
passed on to the White House by William Donovan.
It’s not clear if Roosevelt himself knew that the map was a fake,
or whether he was taken in by the British fraud and actually believed it to be
authentic. In this case we don’t know if the President was deliberately lying
to the American people, or was merely a credulous dupe and tool of a foreign
government.
The German government responded to the President’s speech with a
statement that categorically rejected his accusations. The purported secret
documents, it declared, “are forgeries of the crudest and most brazen kind.”
Furthermore, the statement went on: “The allegations of a conquest of South
America by Germany and an elimination of the religions of the churches in the
world and their replacement by a National Socialist church are so nonsensical
and absurd that it is superfluous for the Reich government to discuss them.”[34]
German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels also responded to Roosevelt’s claims
in a widely read commentary. The American president’s “absurd accusations,” he
wrote, were a “grand swindle” designed to “whip up American public
opinion.”[35]
That the President’s claims were absurd on their face should have
been obvious to any discerning and reasonably well-informed person. Assertions
that Germany was planning to take over South America were clearly fantastic
given that, first, Germany had been unable or unwilling even to launch an
invasion of Britain, and, second, that German forces at that moment were fully
engaged in a titanic clash with Soviet Russia, a conflict that would ultimately
end with the victory of the Red Army.
Roosevelt’s claim that Hitler was bent on quashing the world’s
religions was not just a falsehood; it was nearly the opposite of the truth. At
the same time he was telling Americans that Hitler’s Germany threatened
religious life in their country and the rest of the world, President Roosevelt
and his government were organizing military aid to the one country that was
ruled by an openly atheist regime, the Soviet Union. While Roosevelt was
speaking, military forces of Germany, Italy, Romania, Finland, Hungary and
other European countries were battling to bring down the anti-religious
Bolshevik state. Millions of Ukrainians, Russians, Lithuanians, Belarusians,
and others who had already been freed from Soviet rule were, with German
support, opening churches and restoring the traditional religious life that had
been so brutally suppressed by the Stalinist regime.
During the war years, Germany’s Protestant and Catholic churches
not only received government financial support, they were packed with
worshipers. In Catholic regions of the Reich, notably in Bavaria and Austria,
crucifixes were displayed in many public buildings, including courtrooms and
school classrooms. The government of one country that was closely allied with
Hitler’s Germany during World War II, Slovakia, was actually headed by a Roman
Catholic priest.
In 1941 few Americans could believe that their President would so
deliberately and emphatically deceive them, especially about matters of the
gravest national and global importance. Millions accepted Roosevelt’s alarmist
claims as true. After all, whom should any decent, patriotic citizen believe?:
Their President, or the government of a foreign country that much of the
American media told them was a mendacious regime dedicated to brutally imposing
oppressive rule over the United States and the entire planet?
The Roosevelt-British propaganda campaign of 1940-41 was based on
a great falsehood: the claim that Hitler was trying to “take over the world.”
Actually, it was not Germany that launched war against Britain and France, but
rather the reverse. It was Churchill, later joined by the US President, who
rejected all German initiatives to end the terrible war. Demanding
“unconditional surrender,” they insisted on the complete capitulation of
Germany, including “regime change” elimination of the country’s government.
The legacy of President Roosevelt’s secretive and unlawful
collusion with a foreign government, including his sanctioning of crimes by
British and US agents, are relevant for our time. That’s especially true because
Roosevelt is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most admirable of
America’s past leaders. He is, for example, one of the very few persons whose
image appears on US coins. Roads, streets, schools and other learning centers
across the country bear his name.
His legacy should concern those who today are understandably
unhappy with the routinely partisan and often polemical presentation of news
and information in the mainstream media. The way that “fake news” and slanted,
sensationalized information were given to the public in 1940-41 by the
mainstream media, in secret collaboration with the White House and a foreign
government, tells us much about how news and opinion can be manipulated in our
country, and by whom.
In 1990 The New York Times issued a kind of apology for having
published, decades earlier, the reporting of its once highly regarded
correspondent in Moscow. In 1932 Walter Duranty’s dispatches from the Soviet
Union earned him America’s highest award for journalistic achievement, the
Pultizer Prize. Only years later did it become clear that Duranty’s portrayal
of life in the USSR amounted to a deliberate whitewashing of reality. In
particular he concealed the famine, starvation, and deaths of millions,
especially in Ukraine, due to the Stalinist regime’s brutal “collectivization”
of the vast country’s rural and farming population. Although reporting by major
American newspapers in 1940-41 about Roosevelt administration’s policies for
war was similarly distored and misleading, neither the The New York Times, The
Washington Post, nor any other paper has been moved to issue a comparable
apology.
President Roosvelt, Prime Minister Churchill and premier Stalin,
at the historic “Big Three” conference in Yalta, February 1945
President Roosvelt, Prime Minister Churchill and premier Stalin,
at the historic “Big Three” conference in Yalta, February 1945
President Richard Nixon is today widely regarded as a disgraced
figure who deserved impeachment for trying to cover up the “Watergate”
break-in. President Trump, many say, should likewise be punished for breaking
the law. If that’s true, how then should we regard Franklin Roosevelt? His
deceit and crimes – which are routinely ignored, excused or justified – vastly
overshadow the misdeeds of Nixon and Trump.
Those who admire Franklin Roosevelt seem to believe that
presidential deception and miscondut are justified if the perpetrator’s motives
or goals are good. One influential scholar who has expressed this view is
American historian Thomas A. Bailey. He acknowledged Roosevelt’s record, but
sought to justify it. “Franklin Roosevelt repeatedly deceived the American
people during the period before Pearl Harbor,” he wrote. “He was like the
physician who must tell the patient lies for the patient’s own good … The
country was overwhelmingly noninterventionist to the very day of Pearl Harbor,
and an overt attempt to lead the people into war would have resulted in certain
failure and an almost certain ousting of Roosevelt in 1940, with a complete
defeat of his ultimate aims.”[36]
Prof. Bailey went on with a further justification: “A president
who cannot entrust the people with the truth betrays a certain lack of faith in
the basic tenets of democracy. But because the masses are notoriously
shortsighted and generally cannot see danger until it is at their throats, our
statesmen are forced to deceive them into an awareness of their own long-run
interests. This is clearly what Roosevelt had to do, and who shall say that
posterity will not thank him for it?”
In spite of all the rhetoric we hear about “our democracy” and
“government of the people,” it seems that our leaders do not really believe
that American-style democracy works as it’s supposed to. They don’t trust the
people to “handle the truth.” The defenders of the Roosevelt legacy apparently
believe that, at least sometimes, political leaders can and must break the law,
violate the Constitution, and deliberately deceive the people for what a
supposedly enlightened elite believes is in the nation’s “real” best interest,
and for what it regards as a “higher” and worthy cause.
Roosevelt set a precedent for similarly deceitful and unlawful
behavior by later presidents. Senator J. William Fulbright, a prominent critic
of President Lyndon Johnson’s deception and disregard for law and the
Constitution during the Vietnam war remarked that “FDR’s deviousness in a good
cause made it much easier for LBJ to practice the same kind of deviousness in a
bad cause.”[37]
“After a generation of presidential wars,” observed historian
Joseph P. Lash, “it is possible to see that, in the hands of Roosevelt’s
successors, the powers that he wielded as commander in chief to deploy the
army, navy and air force as he deemed necessary in the national interest and to
portray clashes in distant waters and skies as enemy-initiated led the nation
into the Vietnam quagmire.”[38]
J. William Fulbright
J. William Fulbright
Roosevelt’s methods seem to have become firmly entrenched in
modern American political life. President George W. Bush, for one, followed in
Roosevelt’s path when he and other high-level officials in his administration,
with support from the mainstream media, deceived the American people to make
possible the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. “I used to puzzle over the question of
how American democracy could be adapted to the kind of role we have come to
play in the world,” Senator Fulbright said in 1971. “I think I now know the
answer: it cannot be done.”[39]
While many Americans today yearn for honest and ethical political
leaders, transparent governence, and “real” democracy, such hopes are likely to
remain elusive as long as the mainstream media, educators and politicians
continue to portray Franklin Roosevelt as an exemplary President, and his
administration as a paragon of leadership, while successfully suppressing or
justifying his record of deceit and wrongdoing.
Endnotes
[1] Basil H. Liddell-Hart, The Second World War (New York: Putnam,
1971), pp. 17-22, 66; Clive Ponting, 1940: Myth and Reality (Chicago: 1993),
pp. 79-80; Niall Ferguson, The War of the World (New York: Penguin, 2006), pp.
387-390; William Carr, Poland to Pearl Harbor (1986), pp. 93, 96.
[2] Patrick J. Buchanan, Churchill, Hitler and `The Unnecessary
War’ (New York: Crown, 2008), pp. 361-366; John Charmely, Churchill’s Grand
Alliance (Harcourt Brace, 1996), pp. 82-83, 178; Clive Ponting, 1940: Myth and
Reality (1993), p. 124; Friedrich Stieve, What the World Rejected: Hitler’s
Peace Offers, 1933-1939.
[3] Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston Churchill,1939-41 (1984),
p. 358. Quoted in: Jon Meacham, Franklin and Winston (2004), p. 51; M.
Hastings, Winston’s War, 1940-1945 (2010), p. 25.
[4] Joseph P. Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill (1976), pp. 23-31; M.
Weber, “President Roosevelt’s Campaign to Incite War in Europe,” The Journal of
Historical Review, Summer 1983.
[5] “America Gets Ready to Fight Germany, Italy, Japan,” Life,
Oct. 31, 1938.
[6] Roosevelt “fireside chat” radio address of Dec. 29, 1940. ;
Regarding the “Atlantic Charter,” see: William H. Chamberlin, America’s Second
Crusade (1950 and 2008); Benjamin Colby, ‘Twas a Famous Victory (1975).
[7] Roosevelt Labor Day radio address, Sept. 1, 1941.
[8] Joseph P. Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill (1976), pp. 360, 415,
429; Stark memo to Secretary Hull, Oct. 8, 1941. Quoted in: J. P. Lash,
Roosevelt and Churchill (1976), p. 426.
[9] Thomas E. Mahl, Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations
in the United States, 1939-44 (1999), p. 16; Steven T. Usdin, Bureau of Spies:
The Secret Connections Between Espionage and Journalism in Washington
(Prometheus, 2018), pp. 101-104; Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days (New York:
Random House, 2013), p. 117; William Boyd, “The Secret Persuaders,” The
Guardian (Britain), Aug. 19, 2006.
[10] Nigel West (introduction) in: William Stephenson, ed.,
British Security Coordination (New York: 1999), pp. xi, xii.
[11] W. Stephenson, ed., British Security Coordination (1999), p.
xxv.
[12] W. Stephenson, ed., British Security Coordination (1999), pp.
xxxvi, xxxiii.
[13] W. Stephenson, ed., British Security Coordination (1999), p.
16.
[14] W. Stephenson, ed., British Security Coordination (1999), p.
14.
[15] W. Stephenson, ed., British Security Coordination (1999), pp.
58, 59.
[16] Steven T. Usdin, Bureau of Spies (2018), esp. pp. 135-140,
325-327; P. J. Grisar, “Sharks Defending Britain From Nazis? How ‘Fake News’
Helped Foil Hitler,” Forward, Oct. 22, 2018; Menachem Wecker, “The true story
of a Jewish news agency that peddled fake news to undo Hitler.” Religion News
Service, October 1, 2018
[17] Steven T. Usdin, Bureau of Spies (2018), p. 135.
[18] S. T. Usdin, Bureau of Spies (2018), pp. 138-139, 326 (n.).
[19] Larry Getlen, “The Fake News That Pushed US Into WWII,” New
York Post, Oct. 3, 2019, pp. 20-21.
[20] S. T. Usdin, Bureau of Spies (2018), p. 142.
[21] Steven T. Usdin, Bureau of Spies (2018), pp. 139, 326 (n.);
Menachem Wecker, “The true story of a Jewish news agency that peddled fake news
to undo Hitler.” RNS, Oct. 1, 2018
[22] Thomas E. Mahl, Desperate Deception (1999), pp. 70-86; S. T.
Usdin, Bureau of Spies (2018), pp. 113-116, 154-155; W. Stephenson, ed.,
British Security Coordination (1999), pp. 81-84.
[23] W. Stephenson, ed., British Security Coordination (1999), pp.
59, 60, 61.
[24] W. Stephenson, ed., British Security Coordination (1999), p.
68.
[25] W. Stephenson, ed., British Security Coordination (1999), p.
69.
[26] W. Stephenson, ed., British Security Coordination (1999), p.
74.
[27] W. Stephenson, ed., British Security Coordination (1999), pp.
74, 80; T. E. Mahl, Desperate Deception (1999), pp. 107-135; Steven T. Usdin,
Bureau of Spies (2018), pp. 119-127; Christopher Woolf, “How Britain Tried to
Influence the US Election in 1940,” PRI, Jan. 17, 2017.
[28] W. Stephenson, ed., British Security Coordination (1999), pp.
102.
[29] W. Stephenson, ed., British Security Coordination (1999), pp.
102-103, 104; S. T. Usdin, Bureau of Spies (2018), p. 139.
[30] W. Stephenson, ed., British Security Coordination (1999), p.
103.
[31] W. Stephenson, ed., British Security Coordination (1999), pp.
104, 105, 107, 109; Steven T. Usdin, Bureau of Spies (2018), pp. 102, 140,
145-148.
[32] Thomas E. Mahl, Desperate Deception: British Covert
Operations in the United States, 1939-44 (1999), pp. 16, 193; Michael Williams,
“FDR’s Confidential Crusader,” Warfare History Network. Jan. 17, 2019.
[33] John F. Bratzel, Leslie B. Rout, Jr., “FDR and The ‘Secret
Map’,” The Wilson Quarterly (Washington, DC), New Year’s 1985, pp. 167-173; Ted
Morgan, FDR: A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), pp. 602, 603,
801 (notes); Mark Weber, “Roosevelt’s `Secret Map’ Speech,” The Journal of
Historical Review, Spring 1985.
[34] “The Reich Government’s Reply To Roosevelt’s Navy Day
Speech,” The New York Times, Nov. 2, 1941; Documents on German Foreign Policy,
1918-1945. Series D, Vol. XIII, (Washington, DC: 1954), pp. 724-725 (Doc. No.
439 of Nov. 1, 1941).
[35] Joseph Goebbels, “Kreuzverhör mit Mr. Roosevelt,” Das Reich,
Nov. 30, 1941. Nachdruck (reprint) in Das eherne Herz (1943), pp. 99-104.
English translation: “Mr. Roosevelt Cross-Examined.”
[36] Thomas A. Bailey, The Man in the Street: The Impact of
American Public Opinion on Foreign Policy. (New York: 1948), pp. 11-13. Quoted
in: W. H. Chamberlin, America’s Second Crusade (Indianapolis: Amagi/ Liberty
Fund, 2008), p. 125.
[37] Joseph P. Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill, 1939-1941 (New York:
1976), pp. 9, 10, 420, 421; Address by Fulbright, April 3, 1971. Published in:
Congressional Record – Senate, April 14, 1971, p. 10356.
[38] J. Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill (1976), p. 421.
[39] Address by Fulbright, April 3, 1971. Congressional Record –
Senate, April 14, 1971, p. 10356.
Bibliography / For Further Reading
Nicholson Baker, Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the
End of Civilization. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008
Harry Elmer Barnes, ed., Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace.
Institute for Historical Review, 1993
William Boyd, “The Secret Persuaders,” The Guardian (Britain),
August 19, 2006.
John F. Bratzel and Leslie B. Rout, Jr., “FDR and The ‘Secret
Map’,” The Wilson Quarterly (Washington, DC), New Year’s 1985 (Vol. 9, No. 1),
pp. 167-173.
Anthony Cave Brown, The Last Hero: Wild Bill Donovan. New York:
Times Books, 1982
Patrick J. Buchanan, Churchill, Hitler and `The Unnecessary War’:
How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World. New York: Crown, 2008.
William H. Chamberlin, America’s Second Crusade. Chicago: 1950;
Indianapolis: 2008
John Charmley, Churchill’s Grand Alliance: The Anglo-American
Special Relationship, 1940-1957. Harvest/ Harcourt Brace, 1995.
Benjamin Colby, ‘Twas a Famous Victory. Arlington House, 1975
David Cole, “Tyler Kent and the Roosevelt Whistle-Blow Job,”
Taki’s Mag, Nov. 19, 2019.
Jennet Conant, The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring
in Wartime Washington. Simon & Schuster, 2008.
Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy,
1932-1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Hunter DeRensis, “The Campaign to Lie America Into World War II,”
The American Conservative, December 7, 2019
Larry Getlen, “The Fake News That Pushed US Into WWII,” New York
Post, Oct. 3, 2019.
P. J. Grisar, “Sharks Defending Britain From Nazis? How ‘Fake
News’ Helped Foil Hitler,” Forward, Oct. 22, 2018.
Henry Hemming, Agents of Influence: A British Campaign, a Canadian
Spy, and the Secret Plot to Bring America into World War II. PublicAffairs,
2019.
Robert Higgs, “Truncating the Antecedents: How Americans Have Been
Misled About World War II.” March 18, 2008.
Herbert C. Hoover, Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover’s Secret
History of the Second World War and its Aftermath (George H. Nash, ed.).
Stanford University, 2011.
David Ignatius, “Britain’s War in America: How Churchill’s Agents
Secretly Manipulated the U.S. Before Pearl Harbor, The Washington Post, Sept.
17, 1989, pp. C-1, C-2.
Tyler Kent, “The Roosevelt Legacy and The Kent Case.” The Journal
for Historical Review. Summer 1983 (Vol. 4, No. 2), pages 173-203. With
Introduction by Mark Weber.
Warren F. Kimball, The Juggler: Franklin Roosevelt as Wartime
Statesman. Princeton University Press, 1991
Charles C. Kolb. Review of: W. S. Stephenson, ed., British
Security Coordination: The Secret History of British Intelligence in the
Americas 1940-1945. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. December 1999.
Thomas E. Mahl, Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in
the United States, 1939-44. Brassey’s, 1999.
Jerome O’Connor, “FDR’s Undeclared War,” Naval History (U.S. Naval
Institute), Feb. 1, 2004.
Joseph E. Persico, Roosevelt’s Secret War: FDR and World War II
Espionage. Random House, 2001.
“The Reich Government’s Reply To Roosevelt’s Navy Day Speech,” The
New York Times, Nov. 2, 1941. ( http://ibiblio.org/pha/policy/1941/411101a.html
)
Bruce M. Russett, No Clear and Present Danger: A Skeptical View of
the U.S. Entry into World War II. New York: Harper & Row, 1972
Friedrich Stieve. What the World Rejected: Hitler’s Peace Offers,
1933- 1939.
Steven T. Usdin, Bureau of Spies: The Secret Connections Between
Espionage and Journalism in Washington. Prometheus, 2018
Steve Usdin, “When a Foreign Government Interfered in a U.S.
Election – In 1940, by Britain,” Politico, Jan. 16, 2017.
(
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/when-a-foreign-government-interfered-in-a-us-electionto-reelect-fdr-214634
)
Mark Weber, “The ‘Good War’ Myth of World War Two.” May 2008.
( http://www.ihr.org/news/weber_ww2_may08.html )
Mark Weber, “Roosevelt’s `Secret Map’ Speech,” The Journal of
Historical Review, Spring 1985 (Vol. 6, No. 1), pp. 125-127.
( http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p125_Weber.html )
Menachem Wecker, “The true story of a Jewish news agency that
peddled fake news to undo Hitler.” Religion News Service, October 1, 2018
(
https://religionnews.com/2018/10/01/the-true-story-of-a-jewish-news-agency-that-peddled-fake-news-to-undo-hitler/
)
Michael Williams, “FDR’s Confidential Crusader,” Warfare History
Network. Jan. 17, 2019.
(
https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2019/01/22/fdrs-confidential-crusader-2/ )
Christopher Woolf, “How Britain Tried to Influence the US Election
in 1940,” Public Radio International, January 17, 2017
(
https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-01-17/how-britain-tried-influence-us-election-1940
)
(Republished from Institute for Historical Review by permission of
author or representative)
https://www.unz.com/article/collusion-franklin-roosevelt-british-intelligence-and-the-secret-campaign-to-push-the-us-into-war/