LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Franklin Delano Roosevelt: War
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Frustrated, some of Roosevelt's own appointees concluded that he was a sloppy administrator. In one sense their complaint was just, for Roosevelt welcomed rivalries among his subordinates. One bitter public quarrel pitted Vice President Henry Wallace, who had replaced Garner on the Democratic ticket in 1940, against Secretary of Commerce Jesse Jones. FDR had assigned both Wallace, a liberal, and Jones, a conservative Texas banker, important responsibilities in procuring urgently needed war supplies. Wallace was eager to spend money aggressively in underdeveloped countries and to introduce social reforms in the process. As other members of the administration chose sides, Roosevelt had to relieve both officials of their special assignments.
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Once safely reelected, Roosevelt asked Congress for a plan to aid Britain, which he disingenuously called Lend-Lease; the theory being that America would somehow be repaid after the war. Thus sugarcoated, the bill passed, despite much ranting by isolationists. At first America had little to lend or lease as rearmament lagged far behind need, which became all the greater in June 1941 when Germany attacked the Soviet Union. In the fall of 1941, Roosevelt tried to provoke a German declaration of war by ordering U.S. warships to escort convoys and fire upon U-boats. Despite considerable provocation, Hitler failed to comply.
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[B]y mid-1941, Roosevelt had committed the U.S. to the Allied side with a policy of "all aid short of war." Roosevelt met with Churchill in August 1941, to write the Atlantic Charter in what was to be the first of several wartime conferences. The War Department's "Victory Program," provided the President with the estimates necessary for the total mobilization of manpower, industry, and logistics to defeat Germany and Japan.[25] The program ... planned to dramatically increase aid to the Allied nations and to have ten million men in arms, half of whom would be ready for deployment abroad in 1943. Roosevelt was firmly committed to the Allied cause but his war plans were published by the isolationist Chicago Tribune days before Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.[26]
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Roosevelt's military policies ... provoked controversy. In 1941 critics blamed him for leaving Pearl Harbor unprepared. Extremists even claimed that he invited the Japanese attack in order to have a pretext for war. In 1942 liberals complained when he cooperated with Jean Darlan, the Vichy French admiral who until then had been collaborating with the Axis, in planning the Allied invasion of North Africa. In 1943, FDR's opponents grumbled that his policy of unconditional surrender for the enemy discouraged the anti-Hitler resistance within Germany. Other critics complained that he relied too heavily on strategic bombing.
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By then Roosevelt had focused his attention on the developing world crisis. In East Asia, Japan had seized Manchuria and large parts of China. In 1938, in his famous Quarantine speech, he proposed that peaceful nations stop aggressors like Japan by cutting off their trade. This proposal fell on deaf ears. Nazi Germany dominated Europe after defeating France and its allies in June 1940. Of the great powers, Britain alone remained at war with Hitler.
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In pressing for help to the Allies, Roosevelt was running ahead of public opinion — there was widespread opposition to involvement in the war — and doing so at a time when a presidential election was imminent. Roosevelt defied tradition by seeking and gaining nomination for a third term. He remained popular but circumstances were not as propitious as in 1936. His decision to run was used against him and the Republicans nominated a popular and moderate candidate, Wendell Willkie. Promising not to send Americans into foreign wars, Roosevelt won comfortably, but not as decisively as he had four years before. He won 27 million votes to 22 million for Willkie.
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