The Jew Who Defeated Hitler Page 16
As war raged in Europe, the Morgenthau family was changing with the children reaching adulthood and the adults feeling the ravages of old age. Henry III had graduated from Princeton University and was now working for the Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority.60 Robert, the family’s golden boy, was at Amherst College. In July, he warmed his father’s heart by enlisting in the US Navy Reserve, though his mother was worried for his safety.61 He twice invited Eleanor Roosevelt to address the Amherst Political Union, but they had trouble arranging dates.62 He also was chairman of the Chest Drive, a fundraising campaign for the war effort, at Amherst, which aimed to raise $4,500 that year, of which $1,350 would be used to buy an ambulance for the British.63
On Boxing Day, Joan Morgenthau debuted at the White House, believed to be the first time anyone other than a relative of a president had held her coming-out party at the presidential mansion. The Morgenthaus had remained in Washington for the holidays and enjoyed Christmas dinner with the Roosevelts.64 Then on December 26, Joan, clad in a gown of white tulle embroidered with sprays of silver sequins and wearing a pearl bracelet and necklace, stood beside the president and First Lady to receive several hundred guests who dined at midnight in the State Dining Room. At 3:00 a.m., Morgenthau and a few others decided it was time to go home, so he asked the orchestra to play “Good Night, Ladies,” a closing song for dances of the day. It had no effect, so the bandleader had the band play “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which forced everyone to stop dancing and sing. That ended the evening.65
Though the family remembered Joan as being reluctant to hold the affair at the White House, she was effusive in her thanks to Eleanor Roosevelt. “It was the biggest occasion of my life and I haven't gotten over it and probably never will,” she wrote the First Lady. “Everyone was thrilled to be received by you and the President and they seemed delightfully surprised that a party at the White House could be as informal and as much real fun as you made this one.”66
Josie Morgenthau, the secretary’s mother, once so bubbly and gregarious, was growing increasingly vague and needed more attention. “Mama has not been quite well the last few days,” Henry Sr. wrote his son in July.67 Henry Sr. himself was magnificent in old age. “There is no dimming of memory or interest, no sign of great age even in his appearance,” the New York Times would write on his eighty-fifth birthday in 1941.68 Elinor Morgenthau’s health continued to decline, though she refused to abandon FDR and the Democrats in an election year. “I feel so keenly about this election that I would be the most miserable person if I hadn't been able to do even a very small share of the work,” she wrote Eleanor. “I am so glad you asked me this fall to go to headquarters.”69 Henry III noticed his mother was losing sway with her husband, as was the original Henry Morgenthau.
Into this advisory void stepped Henrietta Klotz, whose responsibilities and devotion extended light-years beyond the traditional concept of a secretary. As well as overseeing a large clerical staff and controlling the secretary’s appointments, she was privy to Morgenthau’s secrets. She lunched with her boss most days in the little dining area whose walls bore framed editorial cartoons depicting Morgenthau. She received dictation for the Morgenthau Diaries, which included the secretary’s most intimate thoughts, from the debate on armaments and finance to the discussions with Eleanor Roosevelt on whether he should resign. Klotz was privy to more secrets at the heart of the government than all but a handful of people.
Blonde, intelligent, and ambitious, she was born Henrietta Stein and later married Herman Klotz. She was twenty-one when she joined Morgenthau as an administrative assistant at the American Agriculturalist. Morgenthau tested her by hiding money and seeing if she would hand it in. She returned the money and told him she would quit if he tried that again. Morgenthau’s trust in her and dependence on her were absolute, which is not to say their relationship was always harmonious. He once threw a fork at her face, drawing blood, when she lobbied on behalf of a colleague for a policy Morgenthau had already rejected. Morgenthau sent her roses the next day as an apology. Their relationship was complicated by Elinor Morgenthau’s jealousy of her husband’s attractive secretary. Klotz revered the brilliant Mrs. Morgenthau—so much so that she named her only child, a young girl who was almost blind, Elinor Klotz. But when Fortune magazine profiled Morgenthau in 1934, it included a photo of Klotz, saying she “keeps large secrets gracefully.” Acting on orders from home, Morgenthau forbade Klotz to be photographed by the media again. On another occasion, Elinor received an anonymous letter reading, “Get rid of this woman. She has lunch with your husband. I don't trust her.” They later learned it was written by a security guard who had been pestering Klotz to find jobs for his friends.70 There is no evidence that Klotz’s relationship with Morgenthau was anything more than professional, but she revered him. “Henry Morgenthau Jr., is the simplest person I know, full of life and fun,” she once said. “He’s a very warm person. He hates to make money. He’s serving a hundred and thirty million people and the only thing that interests him is what’s good for the people.”71
Klotz wanted Morgenthau to take a greater interest in the European Jews. His father and wife always cautioned him to represent all Americans, not just Jewish Americans. But Klotz understood the massive tragedy developing in Europe, and she wanted the secretary to help end the suffering.
Following a badly needed vacation, Morgenthau returned to his desk on August 5 to find further requests from Purvis and uniformed guards posted at his door as the war raised security concerns. He found the guards annoying. “Why any of them should sit in front of my door, I don't know,” Morgenthau told reporters. “It seems very silly to me.”72 Of greater importance was Purvis’s memorandum from Churchill asking for aid. “The need of American destroyers is more urgent than ever in view of the losses and the need of coping with the invasion threat as well as keeping the Atlantic approaches open and dealing with Italy,” wrote the prime minister. “As I have repeatedly explained the difficulty is to bridge the gap until our new wartime production arrives in a flood.”73
In Morgenthau’s absence, the cabinet had begun to discuss a plan with the British to swap old US destroyers for bases in British possessions in the Western Hemisphere. Morgenthau liked the plan but reminded the cabinet that British needs extended beyond destroyers. He wanted to send Britain every second Allison engine produced and the bombers’ new bombsights, considered top secret by the military. With Willkie supporting the bomber agreement, Roosevelt decided to announce the destroyer deal at his August 16 press conference. At a meeting of close advisers, Morgenthau cautioned the president against revealing any discussions on giving the British motor torpedo boats, which Congress had already ruled out. “Hopkins contributed next to nothing but seemed very excited and eager,” Morgenthau told his diary.74
In early September, the British asked for twenty-three motor torpedo boats, five Flying Fortresses, five flying boats, and 250,000 rifles. The president ruled out the torpedo boats, but Purvis worked with Morgenthau and Stimson on the rest of the request. All three were surprised that the final contract drawn up by the State Department and the British Foreign Office detailed the transfer of fifty destroyers but mentioned no other armaments. Stimson tried to persuade Roosevelt to include the rifles and airplanes, but Hull convinced him that reopening the deal would provoke criticism. Morgenthau therefore tried to strike a separate deal that would meet Britain’s needs. “Get what you can, Henry,” Roosevelt told him. But the navy ruled it could not spare even five PBY-5 flying boats, though it promised the Brits more in 1941. Morgenthau was astonished, and his despair grew when he learned the United States shipped only seventeen planes to Britain between September 1 and 14, other than training planes and P-40s with no engines.
“The English have got to have more planes,” Morgenthau pleaded with the president on the morning of September 19.
“They can have whatever they want,” replied the president. “But you had better work this out with the Army, Navy and Knud
sen.”
Rather than be outraged, Morgenthau warned the president he would likely drag the military to the Oval Office to be told to help the British. “Of course, this is going to be very hard work for me, but if the President will give me his continuous backing on this I will have no trouble,” Morgenthau dictated into his diary.75
Again Morgenthau proposed to the brass on September 20 that the British get half the production of P-40s and flying boats, and all seemed to support the idea. But five days later, Robert Patterson of the War Department reported that Marshall needed more equipment for training, including P-40s.76 By late September, Morgenthau confided to a few close acquaintances that he was no longer able to influence the president. The secretary was frustrated that he wasn't getting the information he needed from the British. Morgenthau spent three hours on September 25 with Roosevelt, who berated him because the figures he had received from Churchill and Lord Beaverbrook did not agree with the figures Morgenthau had gotten from Purvis. What’s more, there were indications the British had not trained enough pilots to fly the few planes they did receive. The next day, Morgenthau demanded Purvis get consistent figures from Churchill and Beaverbrook. “The one person that they ought to take into their confidence is you and me,” said Morgenthau, his mood doing nothing to improve his grammar or his math. “You have never heard me talk like this before but here we are in this whole thing, you know, and have worked this thing up and everything, and then for them to treat you and me like this isn't right.” Suspicious by nature, Morgenthau was angered that the British brought in two senior officials to assist Purvis and report to London. The secretary preferred working alone with Purvis.77
Marshall in late September told the president that the United States had only forty-nine large bombers fit for duty other than those in Panama and Hawaii. And with the Battle of Britain at its apex, Britain continued to ask for more arms. Stimson and Marshall supported a compromise under which the Brits relinquished 120 engines needed for US bombers and in return got twenty-six B-24 bombers as well as the rifles, bombsights, and half the flying boats they had asked for. “Pretty good for one morning,” Morgenthau told Purvis. By this time, Morgenthau believed it would be a rule of thumb that the Brits would get half of the US arms production.78
Beaverbrook himself cabled Morgenthau to say he had told his pilots the United Kingdom would have a stream of aircraft sufficient to see them through to victory. “This pledge is only possible owing to the help we derive from you,” said Beaverbrook. “We cannot acknowledge your assistance but we hope the day will come when you will visit us and receive from our lads the thanks we owe you.” To another British colleague, Beaverbrook said the British could never repay Morgenthau. “I have tried to express it to him,” he wrote. “We could not have got on so far without his backing.”79 Within the US government, Morgenthau was regarded as the person who kept arms flowing to Britain. Dean Acheson, the State Department official whom Morgenthau had replaced as under secretary of the Treasury in 1933, said Morgenthau was “entirely responsible” for the fact that the British kept fighting from Dunkirk to early 1941.80 “A great deal of the success of the initial efforts to get airplane production moving was due to his hard, stubborn and concentrated attention to detail in organizing the placement of orders by the British and the French,” said Donald Nelson, who would become chairman of the War Production Board.81
Increasingly frustrated by the lack of structure, Stimson was now pressuring Roosevelt to define the responsibilities of the various departments and to coordinate the British and American armament needs. But he was skeptical that Roosevelt would ever create “systematic relations, because that is entirely antithetic to his nature and temperament.”82 Morgenthau offered to leave the procurement program at an October 1 lunch, but Stimson said the problem was the way “the President went off half-cocked” without listening to Marshall or the other generals. They both knew Roosevelt was not going to formalize the structure.
The British now warned of an imminent invasion by sixty of the best German divisions and a superior air force and said they needed American help in arming and transporting a large army they were assembling in the Middle East. “The U-boat and air attacks upon our only remaining life line, the northwestern approach, will be repelled only by the strongest concentration of our flotillas,” Sir Arthur Salter, an official with the Ministry of Shipping, wrote Morgenthau and Roosevelt on October 27. He pleaded for an accelerated arms program immediately, saying, “The world cause is in your hands.”83
By late October 1940, Morgenthau was working to deliver an additional 11,700 aircraft, bringing their total for delivery by June 30, 1942, to 26,075. The British wanted 200,000 machine guns for these planes. For ground forces they wanted a combination of British and American weaponry comprising a total of 1.3 million rifles; 4,000 antitank guns;750 antiaircraft guns; 2,800 field guns; as well as tank guns, mortars, field guns, and machine guns. It was an unimaginably huge arsenal, and much of it would be surplus US production. The task was, however, made easier by the proposed standardized munitions for both the US forces and the British forces.
Roosevelt favored the proposal, and Morgenthau assembled the top military brass in his office on October 29. “The English are not going to win the war without our…military help,” said Frank Knox at the outset of the meeting, a view they all agreed with. Though worried about stripping the US forces, Stimson listed items that could be spared and promised to work toward meeting the other requests. Morgenthau told the president the military agreed to the order and Roosevelt—criticized by Willkie for not doing enough to help the British—announced the order in Boston the next night. “The British have now asked for permission to negotiate again with American manufacturers for 12,000 additional planes,” said FDR. “I have requested the request be given most serious consideration.” He said it would bring the British order to twenty-six thousand planes, require plant expansion, and be accompanied by increased orders for land-based weapons. Though falling short of the three thousand planes a month Morgenthau wanted, it was an achievable program and helped Roosevelt win an unprecedented third presidential mandate on November 5, capturing thirty-eight states and almost 55 percent of the popular vote.84
The problem of British finances received little attention during the campaign but soon broke into the open and increased the pressure on the United States to provide financial aid. On November 25, Lothian told reporters that Britain was “beginning to come to the end of her financial resources.”85 The British privately estimated they had ordered $2.1 billion in arms and had agreed to invest about $700 million to increase production capacity and to make a down payment of about $500 million.86 Harry Dexter White estimated the true cost was closer to $5 billion. Morgenthau did not know what the British could raise by selling assets but was certain it didn't add up to $5 billion. The American government and public now understood this would be an expensive war for the United States as well as Britain. Morgenthau had asked Congress in November to extend the debt limit by between $15 billion and $20 billion, and the move drew little notice. Media reports estimated US military expenditures over five to seven years could run as high as $50 billion, compared with annual expenditures of $1.8 billion two years earlier. And there was an acceptance that the British orders created additional US capacity, which would be needed even if Britain did fall.
With Roosevelt vacationing aboard the USS Tuscaloosa, Morgenthau called a meeting on December 3 of Hull, Stimson, head of the Export-Import Bank Jesse Jones, and senior military leaders to explain that the president wanted the United States to proceed with the construction of plants to make arms for the British. However, the British simply didn't have the resources to pay for them. The United States could not lend Britain the money without the approval of Congress, which didn't convene until January. Marshall agreed to show Congress that the British orders would allow the military to arm and equip about three million men. British treasury official Sir Frederick Phillips told Morgenthau on Decem
ber 6 that the British wanted “a free gift of munitions and aircraft.” Failing that, Britain would need a loan that could be repaid after the war.87 On December 11, senior officials led by Morgenthau leaked to the media that Congress would likely be asked to allow the United States to lend money to the United Kingdom.88
When Roosevelt and Morgenthau lunched again on December 17, the president lightheartedly told his friend he hadn't looked at a single report while he was away. Morgenthau filled him in on his talks with Phillips and the request for a loan. Roosevelt took it all in and replied by saying, “I have been thinking very hard on this trip about what we should do for England, and it seems to me that the thing to do is to get away from the dollar sign.”89