American Armed Forces at the European Theater during the Second World War: The Increased Difficulties of High Command. Part one

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Like most wealthy Americans in the eastern United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt traveled extensively in his young years and studied in Europe. (He became a cripple only at the age of 38 as a result of polio disease.) He early perceived the historical and cultural heritage that links the US to Europe, but it is difficult to say when exactly during the crisis of 1938-1940, Roosevelt realized that the struggle of Europe against Fascism is inevitably connected with the fate of America. Perhaps this happened even during the preparation of the deal in Munich, which he tried to prevent, and then, blamed. "A world based on fear is no more durable than the world extracted by the sword," he warned.

If, by the end of 1940, Roosevelt did not yet agree with the inevitability of ultimately American intervention, he simply deceived himself. He was thinking about the war already that day in December 1940, when he appeared before correspondents in the White House.

Suppose that a fire broke out in my neighbor's house, the president said, and I have a hose for the entire length of the garden that separates our houses, and with this hose the neighbor could join the hydrant in order to put out the fire. "And now, what should I do?" Asked the president, "I do not tell him:" Listen to a neighbor, my garden hose cost me $ 15, and you have to pay $ 15 for it. "He does not need these 15 dollars, Roosevelt - he only wants to return the hose after the fire is extinguished "

It was in the final days of 1940 that an undeclared war began for Roosevelt and the American people. One evening in late December, the president directly stated this before a whole battery of microphones and newsreel lenses in the course of another conversation about the fire. "If England falls," the president said, "we are all here in America, we will live at the barrel of a pistol loaded with explosive bullets, explosive both economically and militarily." We must produce weapons and ships with full energy, use all available at our disposal resources ... We must become a great arsenal of democracy. "

A few days later, Roosevelt appealed to Congress to ensure, as he called, four freedoms - freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from poverty, freedom from fear. In the second week of January 1941, the leaders of the majority of the House of Representatives and the Senate presented the bill the president was seeking: a bill that would make the United States a true arsenal of democracy. The secretary of the House of Representatives put the stamp "HB 1776" on the document, which meant acceptance of it on all points without exception.

By a significant majority of votes, the House of Representatives and the Senate approved the bill. On March 11, the president signed it. Congress conferred on him broad powers to "sell, transfer, exchange, lease, lend, or otherwise transfer" military property "to the government of any country whose defense, according to the president, plays an important role in ensuring the security of the United States." This law was important. Thanks to him, it was possible to help England, China, and later the Soviet Union on hard days for them. Then this law was called lisland. Gradually, he became known as Lend-Lease.

If Germany and Italy were ready to start a war against the United States in the earlier stages of 1941, the adoption of the Lend-Lease law would have been quite sufficient. But not one of them, as it turned out later, did not even think about such a step at that time. For Italy, tied to its senior partner, there was no real choice. Moreover, the events of the previous autumn, when Mussolini attacked Greece without the knowledge of his allies, especially showed the weakness of the Italian legions.

In view of British aid to Greece, Hitler had to go to the aid of his stubborn ally not so much for the sake of preserving prestige, but because the unfulfilled flame in the Balkans could adversely affect the fulfillment of the enormous task that the Führer placed before his armed forces at the beginning of the summer of 1941. Having received a temporary rebuff in the air war with England, Adolf Hitler now decided to carry out a clash, which he temporarily postponed, with secret spite, by concluding the German-Soviet pact - a clash with Bolshevism.

As for Japan, which since the summer of 1940 closely associated itself with Rome and Berlin with the anti-American Tripartite Act, the United States was for her an unavoidable adversary. The beginning of the study by the Japanese of the sudden attack on the US naval base of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii virtually coincided with the first consideration of the Lend-Lease law in Congress; However, beforehand, Japan had to take certain steps against the collapsing British, French and Dutch empires in southeast Asia. The Japanese are not yet ready to attack the United States.