[lit-ideas] Re: The Surgical Strike Option
- From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 00:22:46 -0800
I asked to be reminded of what illegal acts FDR had engaged in to get
'war material' to Britain after Dunkirk.
And Eric said:
Here's a reference [from a book by Frank Freidel]:
The Neutrality Acts would, however, require the Administration to
terminate sales to all belingerants (sic) if war was declared. The President
saw the need to revise the Neutrality Acts. In the interim he
implemented, through British and French officials, plans to evade the
Neutrality Acts. One method used was to ship parts to Canada where they
were assembled at plants near U.S. factories and then shipped on to the
Allies. The President and French representative Jean Monnet, the future
mastermind of the Common Market, in secret talks on October 19, 1938 at
Hyde Park had discussed just such an operation which could produce 5,000
planes annually.
The evacuation of Dunkirk took place at the end of May and the beginning
Of June, 1940.
It's certainly no secret that FDR wanted to revise the Neutrality Law to
allow aid to the Allies, but this is irrelevant to the question at hand.
The 1935 law was made 'permanent' on May 1, 1937, but it allowed
cash-and-carry sales of goods to belligerents for two years afterwards.
On November 4, 1939 FDR signed a bill to revise the Neutrality Law (an
attempt to revise it had failed to pass the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee earlier, 12-11). The revision allowed sales of arms to
belligerents (Britain and France), but only if they were cash-and-carry.
In August 1940 FDR issued an executive order in which some junkyard US
destroyers could be traded for bases in British possessions overseas; it
also allowed British aircrews to train in the US, and for British ships
to be repaired in US ports.
In December, FDR proposed lend-lease at a press conference; it was
passed by Congress and signed by FDR on March 11, 1941. Churchill
famously called it 'the most unsordid act in history.'
Whatever conversations FDR may have had with Jean Monnet about giving
France aircraft by secretly shipping parts for later assembly to Canada,
they obviously came to nothing. No aircraft were shipped to the Allies
except under the conditions I've sketched here until after America
entered the war. No such over-the-border scheme was ever carried out, in
spite of what Monnet and Freidel may have been drinking.
Send those snow pictures, Eric.
Robert Paul
Reed College
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