Abstract
President Franklin D. Roosevelt read his message to Congress inside his rail car only after it pulled out of Charleston, West Virginia, and rolled along the Kanawha River on September 3, 1940. He waited for the newspapermen traveling with him to file into his small sitting room that normally sat seven or eight comfortably but now had to accommodate twenty. By all accounts, the air was thick with expectation and the U.S. president reveled in the history of the moment. His first words were to say that he was about to announce the most important event in the defense of the United States since Thomas Jefferson’s purchase of Louisiana. He grinned at his captive audience—“flourishing his ivory cigaret [sic] holder, professorial, relishing the historicity of the scene”—and told those gathered that the United States would send fifty aged destroyers to embattled Britain in exchange for base sites in the Western Hemisphere.2 The House of Representatives would, he said, be informed of the deal in twenty-two minutes time. As no appropriations were necessary, the president maintained that he did not need Congressional approval. “What electrified the crowded roomful of correspondents,” Time Magazine reported, “was the audacity with which the deal was consummated: it would be presented to Congress for approval. A Congressional veto was out of the question. Congress was being told about it as a fait accompli.”3
Some future painter of historical canvases, some Trumbull or Carpenter or Constantino Brumidi, seeking to record the epochal in the American story, may find worthy of his brush the press conference at which President Roosevelt read his Congressional message on the Anglo-American exchange of destroyers for air and naval bases. The scene was informal—the sitting room of a railway car, the President in suit of blue, his cigarette in the familiar ivory holder, the reporters around him, some sitting at his feet—yet present were the very stuff and drama of the historic moment. Whether for good or ill, the message revealed the isolationism that had dominated American thinking for two decades had been discarded, and the United States in the name of national defense had turned down a road that, whatever its ruts, bog holes or thank-you-mams, pointed toward greater influence and greater power. Other generations would probably have called it the road of destiny, “manifest destiny.”
Francis Brown, The New York Times (September 15, 1940)1
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Notes
Francis Brown, “For America the Horizons Widen,” New York Times (September 15, 1940), 109.
“The Big Deal,” Time Magazine (September 16, 1940).
Hanson W. Baldwin, “Problems of Defending Hemisphere Are Many,” New York Times (January 2, 1940), 70.
Stetson Conn and Byron Fairchild, The Framework of Hemisphere Defense (Washington, DC: Center of Military History of the U.S. Army, 1958), 22; Stetson Conn, Rose C. Engelman, and Byron Fairchild, Guarding the United States and Its Outposts (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1964), 391–393.
Mark A. Stoler, Allies and Adversaries: The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Grand Alliance and US Strategy in World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 24.
Conn, Engelman, and Fairchild, Guarding the United States, ix.
John Major, “The Navy Plans for War, 1937–41,” in Kenneth J. Hagan, ed., In Peace and War: Interpretation of American Naval History, 1775–1978 (Westport: Greenwood Press), 237.
“For Our Defense,” New York Times (September 8, 1940), 73.
Donald A. Yerxa, “The United States and the Caribbean, 1914–1941,” in Daniel Masterson, ed., Naval History: The Sixth Symposium of the United States Naval Academy (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1987), 257.
“The Strategic Geography of the Caribbean Sea,” Time Magazine (July 29, 1940).
A National Geographic Society bulletin was reproduced in “U.S. Defence Bases in the Atlantic Number Four,” The Royal Gazette and Colonist Daily (October 31, 1940), 6.
Major, “The Navy Plans for War,” 243. These fears were realized after the outbreak of war in 1939. Germany’s mastery of the skies enabled it to invade and quickly subdue Poland in September 1939, neutral Norway and Denmark in April 1940; Holland, Belgium and France in May—June, 1940.
Fitzroy Andre Baptiste, “The British Grant of Air and Naval Facilities to the United States in Trinidad, St. Lucia and Bermuda in 1939,” Caribbean Studies 16, 2 (1976), 5–9; also see his book, War, Cooperation, and Conflict: The European Possessions in the Caribbean, 1939–1945 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), 12.
Six weeks after the Munich settlement of appeasement, Roosevelt declared that the United States must be prepared to resist an attack on the Western Hemisphere “from the North Pole to the South Pole, including all of North America and South America.” Conn and Fairchild, The Framework of Hemisphere Defense, 3.
Major, “The Navy Plans for War,” 250.
“Purchase ofAllied Islands Near Canal Is Favored by Voters, Gallup Survey Finds,” New York Times (June 14, 1940), 10.
Prescott Childs, U.S. Foreign Service, Barbados, to John Hickerson, State Department, June 24, 1940, RG 49 Secretary of State Decimal Files, 1940–49. 8440.01/6–2440, Box 5062. NARA.
Francis Brown, “For America the Horizons Widen,” New York Times (15 September 1940), 109.
Donald A. Yerxa, “The United States and the Caribbean, 1914–41,” in Daniel Masterson, ed., Naval History: The Sixth Symposium of the United States Navrxl Academy (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1987), 256.
Mary Renda, Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press).
Francis Brown, “For America the Horizons Widen,” New York Times (September 15, 1940), 109.
Stuart Creighton Miller, “Benevolent Assimilation”: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899–1903 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 13–14.
Quoted in Gertrude C. Bussey, President, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, December 17, 1940, in RG 59 Decimal File, 1940–44, 811.34544/620. Box 3790, NARA.
Charles A. Petioni, Chairman, Caribbean Union, “West Indian View,” New York Times (19 January 1941), E9.
President Roosevelt was quoted in the Journal, a U.S. Women’s Magazine, as saying that he did not covet the base colonies. He wanted bases, not headaches: “Trinidad? No thanks. What a problem you have there—what a scrambled population … What an ethnic potpourri you have there! No thank you.” He dismissed any designs on Newfoundland because it was a “bankrupt colony” and on Bermuda because it was already an American resort whose wealthy visitors enjoyed vacationing under a different flag. Quoted in “U.S. Does Not Want to Rule Trinidad: ‘Ethnic Potpourri’” Trinidad Guardian (August 25, 1942), 1.
Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorandum, August 2,1940, File: Navy Destroyers and Naval Bases, 1940 part 1, Box 62 (PSF). Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library (FDR Library). Hyde Park, NY.
“Leahy Insists on New Bases in Caribbean as ‘Almost’ Essential to Panama Defense,” New York Times (August 19, 1940), 8.
Joseph Kennedy to Secretary of State, August 15, 1940, RG 59, Decimal File: 1940–44, 811.34544. Box 3786, NARA.
Secretary of State to William H. King, Senator, Appendix from King, “A Proposal for the Immediate Leasing of Military Bases in Certain Territories of Great Britain in the Western Hemisphere …” RG 59. Decimal File: 1940–44, 811.34544/8, Box 3786, NARA.
Joseph Kennedy to Secretary of State, August 29, 1940, RG 59, Decimal File: 1940–44, 811.34544/26/9. Box 3786. NARA.
Cordell Hull, “Memorandum of Conversation,” “U.S.-British Negotiations Regarding Exchange of Naval Bases and Destroyers,” August 25, 1940, RG 59. Decimal File, 1940–44. 811.34544/10. Box 3786. NARA.
Lord Lothian to Cordell Hull, 25 August 1940, RG 59. Decimal File, 1940–44. 811.34544/121/10. Box 3786. NARA
“For Our Defense,” New York Times (September 8, 1940), 73.
Editorial, “Ships from America,” London Times (September 4, 1940).
Eric Williams, Forged from the Love of Liberty: Selected Speeches of Dr. Eric Williams (Trinidad: Longman Caribbean, 1981), xxv.
U.S. Embassy in Great Britain to the Secretary of State, 6 September 1940, RG 59. Decimal File, 1940–44. 811.34544/35. Box 3786. NARA.
Boersen Zeitung quoted in telegram from U.S. Embassy in Great Britain to the Secretary of State, September 4, 1940, RG 59. Decimal File, 1940–44. 811.34544/17. Box 3786. NARA.
U.S. Embassy in Great Britain to the Secretary of State, September 6, 1940, RG 59. Decimal File, 1940–44. 811.34544/35. Box 3786. NARA.
Canadian Press wire story, “Anglo-U.S. Deal Gives Axis Powers Concern,” The Royal Gazette and Colonist Daily (Thursday, September 19, 1940), 1.
Department of State, Division of the American Republics, “Reaction to the Destroyers-Naval Bases Trade in Latin America,” September 10, 1940, RG 59. Decimal File, 1940–44. 811.34544/92. Box 3786. NARA.
The newspaper was quick to note that the islands lay just 666 nautical miles from New York City, or “a three hour flight for bombing planes.” It was also noted the islands “almost” lay on the Great Circle Route from Europe to the north of Europe; that it was an important clipper station; and commanded important North Atlantic sea lanes. “U.S. Bases Bring the Colony into News,” The Royal Gazette and Colonist Daily (September 11, 1940), 1.
Stanley Truman Brooks, “Gap in Defence Closed by Newfoundland Base,” The Evening Telegram, St. John’s Newfoundland (Tuesday, February 18, 1941), 5.
It was also noted that the German dirigible Hindenburg had flown the Great Circle Route over Newfoundland and that: “Sometimes the liner would hang nearly motionless over the headlands, provoking the belief in many circles that photographs of the island were being taken.”
Alexander Zeidenfelt, “The Trinidad Base in World War II.” File: “Trinidad, BWI (1942–52). Box 84. Naval Historical Centre. Washington Navy Yard.
Harold Denny, “We Begin to Man Our New Bases,” New York Times (January 19, 1941), E6.
Editorial, “Our New Bases,” New York Times (September 5, 1940), 22.
28 August 1940. The Joint Planning Committee to Chief of Naval Operations and the Chief of Staff of the Army. File 2. Box 5. John W. Greenslade Papers. Library of Congress (LoC). Washington, DC.
Hanson W. Baldwin, “U.S. Seen As Gainer in Destroyers Deal,” New York Times (September 4, 1940), 14.
Charlie Whitham, “On Dealing with Gangsters: The Limits of British ‘Generosity’ in the Leasing of Bases to the United States, 1940–41,” Diplomacy & Stcttecraft 7, 3 (November 1996), 591.
The Joint Planning Committee to Chief of Naval Operations and the Chief of Staff to the Army, August 28, 1940, File 2, Box 5, John W. Greenslade Papers. LoC.
Born on January 11, 1880 in Bellevue, Ohio, Greenslade had served on a cruiser during the Cuban campaign of the Spanish American War. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and served in the Philippines from 1899 until 1902. He later taught electrical engineering, ordinance and gunnery at the Naval Academy before being given command of large surface vessels throughout the 1920s, including the battleship Pennsylvania. He commanded the battleship division of the U.S. fleet, and the submarine force, before being named the senior member of the President’s Board of Selection. John Willis Greenslade Papers. LoC.
Born in 1887 in York, Pennsylvania, Jacob Devers would become best known for commanding the Allied Sixth Army Group in Europe later in the war. This field artillery specialist was a strong strategist who had a profound influence on the Board of Experts deliberations. He was promoted to Major General in October 1940. While the work of the Board was watched closely by the world’s media at the time, it is indicative of its fading importance that the substantial biographical descriptions of Jacob L. Devers posted on the Web sites of the Eisenhower Presidential Library (where his records are kept) and Arlington Cemetery (where he is interred) fail to mention his work on the Board of Experts in 1940.
The other members were Captain R.S. Crenshaw, U.S. Navy; Captain D.W. Rose, Supply Corps, U.S. Navy; Lt. Colonel H.J. Maloney, Field Artillery, U.S. Army; Lt. Colonel J. D. Arthur, Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army; Commander K.B. Bragg, Civil Engineer Corps, U.S. Navy; Commander C.T. Durgin, U.S. Navy; Commander H. Biesemeier, U.S. Navy (Aide to President and Legal Advisor to the Board); Ltn. Colonel O.T. Pfeiffer, U.S. Marine Corps; and Major Townsend Griffis, Air Corps, U.S. Army. File 2. Members, Advisers and Aides on the President’s Board of Naval Experts. Box 5. John W. Greenslade Papers. LoC.
January 6, 1941. From Board to Survey and Report on Adequacy and Future Development of the Naval Shore Establishment to the Secretary of the Navy. File 1:Greenslade Board Report. Box 196. Strategic Plans Division— Records. Post-War Planning and Sea Frontier Sections (Series XIV). Naval Historical Center (NHC). Washington Navy Yard. Washington, DC.
United States. Building the Navy’s Bases in World War II: Hisory of the Bureau of Yards and Docks and he Civil Engineer Corps, 1940–1946, Volume 2 (Washington, DC: Government Printing, 1947). File: Trinidad, BWI (1942–52). Box 84. NHC.
November 8, 1940. Outline of Local Defenses for Bases Acquired from Great Britain in the Caribbean Area and British Guiana. File 2. Box 5. Greenslade Papers. LoC.
Memo (1) COS (40) 704, War Cabinet, Chiefs of Staff Committee. U.S. Bases in the Western Atlantic Report, 4 September 1940 meeting, CAB 98/6, War Cabinet. Committee on U.S. Bases, USB (40) and (41) Series. Minutes and Memos. PRO
“Experts Make Fast Start on Survey of U.S. Air & Naval Base Sites Here,” Royal Gazette and Colonist Daily (September 6, 1940), 1.
File 2. Department of Navy. General Board. Washington. Box 5. Greenslade Papers. LoC.
John O’Reilly, “Long Tranquil Bermuda Amazed to Find Itself a Defence Bastion,” The Royal Gazette and Daily Colonist 27 (December 1940), 8.
Memo (1) COS (40) 704, War Cabinet, Chiefs of Staff Committee. U.S. Bases in the Western Atlantic Report, 4 September 1940 meeting, CAB 98/6, War Cabinet. Committee on U.S. Bases, USB (40) and (41) Series. Minutes and Memos. PRO.
Conn, Engelman and Fairchild, Guarding the United States and Its Outposts, 368.
Harold Denny, “We Begin to Man Our New Bases,” New York Times (19 January 1941), E6.
September 17, 1940. Harold B. Quarton, American Consul General to Secretary of State. Box 34. RG 84. NARA.
File 6: Newfoundland. Box 6. Greenslade Papers. LoC.
Rear Admiral J.W. Greenslade to Governor of Trinidad, October 10, 1940, Box 1, RG 84. Port of Spain (Trinidad, BWI) Consulate, NARA.
May 9, 1951. Brief History of Trinidad. Box 10. Field Liaison and Records Section. Base Maintenance Division, 1930–1965. NHC.
Outline of Local Defenses for Bases Acquired from Great Britain in the Caribbean Area and British Guiana, 8 November 1940, File 2, Box 5, John W. Greenslade Papers, LoC.
Fitzroy André Baptiste, War, Cooperation and Conflict: The European Possessions in the Caribbean, 1939–1945 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), 87.
Governor of Trinidad to the Secretary of State, January 22, 1944, DO 35/1736. PRO.
U.S. Embassy, London, January 8, 1941, RG 59. Decimal Files, 1940–44. 811.34544/423. Box 3789. NARA. Questions about the legality and morality of the deal were raised by the U.S.-based West Indian National Council and by the Inter-Caribbean Labor Party. W.A. Domingo, President, West Indian Council to FDR, 27 December 1940, RG 59: Decimal File, 1940–44. 811.34544/621. Box 3790, NARA. The Inter Caribbean Labor Party, 25—Caribbean Labor Party went so far as to say that the acquisition of the bases was “unlawful.” February 1941, RG 59: Decimal File, 1940–44. 811.34544/641. Box 3790, NARA.
Alexander Zeidenfelt, “The Trinidad Base in World War II,” File: Trinidad, BWI (1942–52), Box 84. NHC.
“Base Experts Fly over Caribbean,” New York Times (October 21, 1940), 4.
Monograph Histories of USN Overseas Bases, Volume 1 (Atlantic Area), 1951–1954. Box 10. Field Liaison and Records Section. Base Maintenance Division, 1930–1965. NHC.
The Board had difficulty selecting base sites in the Bahamas. At first, the Board recommended building a seaplane base and landing field on Mayaguana Island, one of the outer islands, but President Franklin Roosevelt overruled the decision during his inspection trip in December 1940. The facilities were built on Great Exuma instead.
United States. Building the Navy’s Bcases in World War II: History of the Bureau of Yards and Docks and the Civil Engineer Corps, 1940–46, Volume 2 (Washington, DC: Government Printing, 1947).
Fitzroy Andre Baptiste, War, Cooperation and Conflict: The European Possessions in the Caribbean, 1939–1945 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), 91–92.
November 8, 1940. Outline of Local Defenses for Bases Acquired from Great Britain in the Caribbean Area and British Guiana. File 2. Box 5. Greenslade Papers. LoC.
In St. Lucia, 90 police and a part-time militia of 160 were armed with rifles and a few machine guns. Antigua had 60 police and a “volunteer” force of 90 white settlers. There were only 3 machine guns and 260 rifles on the island. Conn, Engelman and Fairchild, Guarding the United States and Its Outposts, 357.
Canada sent troops to Jamaica in May 1940 (“Y” Force), to the Bahamas in June 1942 (“N” Force), and to Bermuda in October 1942 (“B” Force). There was also a small detachment sent to British Guiana. These units were made available for aid to the civil power (internal security). January 22, 1946. Memorandum. Lieutenant General Charles Foulkes. Re: Query from Canadian Press. File 821-A-406. Volume 2802. RG 25. National Archives of Canada (NAC).
Conn, Engelman, and Fairchild, Guarding the United States, 357.
September 2, 1941. British Joint Staff Mission in Washington. U.S. Bases-Defence Questions. Note by the Joint Secretaries. Enclosures I, II, and III. File 821-B-40C. Volume 2802. RG 25. NAC.
November 14, 1942. Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations to Commander of Caribbean Sea Frontier. “Command Relations in Jamaica, BWI.” File: 4 Caribbean Sea Frontier. Box 210. Post-War Planning and Sea Frontier Sections (Series XIV). Strategic Plans Division—Records. NHC.
Robert P. Patterson, Assistant Secretary of War, to President, October 8, 1940, File “War Department, June-December 1940,” OF 25, Box 5, Caroline Ware Collection, Box 8. FDR Library.
Ulysses Lee, The Employment of Negro Troops (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1966), 429.
There is abundant proof that such a policy was maintained. See, for example, Conn and Fairchild, The Western Hemisphere, 407–408.
Eisenhower was quoted as saying this in March 1942 in Graham Smith, When Jim Crow Met John Bull: Black American Soldiers in World War II Britain (London, 1987), 27.
The 99th Coastal Artillery unit was the only African-American formation to be deployed in the base colonies. Their arrival in Trinidad in May 1942 came despite the protests of the colonial administration. Susan Campbell, “‘En’less Pressure’: The Struggle of a Caribbean Working-Class in their International Trinidad, 1919–1956” (Ph.D. thesis, Canada: Queen’s University, 1995), 266. See also Annette Palmer, “Black American Soldiers in Trinidad, 1942–44,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 14, 3 (1986), 203–218.
Annette Palmer, “The Politics of Race and War: Black American Soldiers in the Caribbean Theater during the Second World War,” Military Affairs 47, 2 (April 1983), 60–61.
U.S. Consul General Sidney A. Belovsky to William P. Snow, Assistant Chief, Division of British Commonwealth Affairs, 22 September 1949, File 142–52: Newfoundland Bases (General) (September 1949), Box 22, RG 59: Secretary of State, Permanent Joint Board of Defense, American Section, NARA.
Foster Dulles, Secretary of State to President Franklin Roosevelt, August 7, 1943. Decimal File, 1940–44, Confidential 811.34544. Box C82. RG 59. NARA.
Memorandum of Conversation, “Stationing of Puerto Rican or negro troops in Caribbean islands,” Department of State, October 29, 1943. Decimal File, 1940–44, Confidential 811.34544. Box C82. RG 59. NARA.
Joseph T. McNarney, Deputy Chief of Staff, to Field Marshall Sir John Dill, Combined Chiefs of Staff Building, October 28, 1943. Decimal File, 1940–44, Confidential 811.34544. Box C82. RG 59. NARA.
A.A. Berle, Jr., to Mr. Hickerson, November 2, 1943. Decimal File, 1940–44, Confidential 811.34544. Box C82. RG 59. NARA.
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High, S. (2009). The United States and Hemispheric Defense. In: Base Colonies in the Western Hemisphere, 1940–1967. Studies of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230618046_2
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