Summary

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The Debate Over Lend-Lease

Franklin Roosevelt’s Proposal for Lend-Lease Doc A: From Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 8th Annual Message to Congress, January 6, 1941: http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=83 I also ask this Congress for authority and for funds sufficient to manufacture additional munitions and war supplies of many kinds, to be turned over to those nations which are now in actual war with aggressor nations. Our most useful and immediate role is to act as an arsenal for them as well as for ourselves. They do not need manpower. They do need billions of dollars worth of the weapons of defense. The time is near when they will not be able to pay for them in ready cash. We cannot, and will not, tell them they must surrender, merely because of present inability to pay for the weapons which we know they must have. Let us say to the democracies: "We Americans are vitally concerned in your defense of freedom. We are putting forth our energies, our resources, and our organizing powers to give you the strength to regain and maintain a free world. We shall send you, in ever-increasing numbers, ships, planes, tanks, guns. This is our purpose and our pledge." The happiness of future generations of Americans may well depend upon how effective and how immediate we can make our aid felt.

Opposition to Lend-Lease Doc B: Radio Address by Sen. Burton K. Wheeler (D-MT), December 31, 1940: http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1592 Burton Wheeler, a Democrat from Montana, served in the Senate from 1928 to 1946. Although a staunch Roosevelt supporter in the early 1930s, he broke with the president later in the decade, and had emerged by 1939 as one of the nation’s leading opponents of FDR’s foreign policy. In late 1940, Wheeler helped to found the America First Committee, whose goal it was to strengthen American defenses while at the same time staying out of any European entanglements. We sympathize with the oppressed and persecuted everywhere. We also realize that we have great problems at home, that one-third of our population is ill-fed, ill-housed and ill-clad, and we have been told repeatedly, upon the highest authority, that unless and until this situation is corrected our democracy is in danger. I fully subscribe to this view. Believing as I do, in this thesis, I cannot help but feel that we should settle our own problems before we undertake to settle the problems of Asia, Africa, Australasia, South America and Europe. As Americans, interested first in America, what is our present stake? Our stakes are our independence, our democracy and our trade and commerce. Every red-blooded American would fight to preserve them.

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Just as I love the United States so do I dislike Hitler and all that he symbolizes. My sympathy for the British is both deep and genuine and is exceeded only by the depth and sincerity of my Americanism. No anti-British feeling dictates my opposition to the evasion or repeal of the Johnson and Neutrality Acts. I oppose all these because they lead us down that road with only one ending, total complete and futile war. Remember, if we lend or lease war materials today, we will lend or lease American boys tomorrow. Last night we heard the President promise that there would be no American expeditionary force, but we received no promise that our ships and sailors and our planes and pilots might not at some time within the near future be cast into the cauldron of blood and hate that is Europe today. Support of Lend-Lease Doc C: Radio Address by Sen. Tom Connally (D-TX), February 17, 1941: http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1594 Senator Connally, a Democrat from Texas, was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a key supporter of FDR’s international policies. To those who oppose the bill, I pose the question: If we follow your wishes and defeat this bill, what shall then be our course? Shall we do nothing? Shall we close our eyes to the tide of conquest which has already engulfed peaceful and neutral nations and condemned to enslavement their people? Shall we close our ears to the oft-proclaimed plans of the dictators to establish a "new world order"? Shall we close our minds to the coarse and brutal scorn with which Hitler and Mussolini speak of democracy? There is danger. There is real danger. The cold-blooded dictators, intoxicated by conquest, with their ambitions fanned to fury by the lust for power and mastery of the human race, and backed by the most powerful and relentless military machine known to the annals of war, threaten the security and safety of democracies everywhere. They await only the moment of their choice to strike down freedom and constitutional government wherever they may exist on the face of the globe. This bill is America’s answer to their challenge. We propose to keep the war away from our shores. We propose to preserve our own freedom and that of the western world. As an essential step in our own national defense, to aid Britain in holding the line until we can be more adequately and thoroughly prepared, to keep the war away from our own shores, to furnish supplies and munitions and thus save calling of men to defend our own soil, to oppose and resist the establishment of world dictatorship and the destruction of free government in order that military masters may not establish a "new world order" on the ruins and ashes of liberty, I am supporting the Lease-Lend Bill. The voice of America demands that we act now. We must not wait until the invader sets his footsteps upon our soil or challenges us upon the sea and in the air.