by declaring that, “We shall continue to observe a true neutrality in the disputes of others,” and the president, in one of his few foreign policy statements that year, said on August 14, 1936, in Chautauqua, New York, “We shun political commitments which might entangle us in foreign wars; we avoid connection with the political activities of the League of Nations…. I hate war. I have passed unnumbered hours, I shall pass unnumbered hours, thinking and planning how war may be kept from this Nation.”30 This “I hate war speech” was typical of Roosevelt’s sleight-of-hand approach because, while it roundly condemned war, it did not recommend ostrichlike isolation either, as is evident in the caveat, “We are not isolationists except in so far as we seek to isolate ourselves completely from war. Yet we must remember that so long as war exists on earth there will be some danger that even the Nation which most ardently desires peace may be drawn into war.”31
At the time when Roosevelt was making these remarks about peace, the Germans were hosting the peaceful Olympic Games in Berlin (August 1–16, 1936). The games were a propaganda triumph for the Nazis. Anti-Jewish activities temporarily ceased all over Germany and the international community was impressed by how successfully the games had been managed by the Nazis. Hitler had by then restored economic prosperity and political confidence, and he was about to embark on three years of remarkable diplomatic triumphs. At the very time when the eyes of the world were focused on the Olympic Games in Berlin, Adolf Hitler composed a top secret memorandum in his aerie at Obersalzberg on economic strategy and rearmament. The document, which was greatly at odds with the Olympic spirit of peace and international goodwill, reflected Hitler’s impatience with the slow pace of German rearmament and his insistence that the German economy must be ready for war within four years. Hitler’s memorandum bluntly stated, “We are overpopulated and cannot feed ourselves from our own resources…. The German armed forces must be operational within four years. The German economy must be fit for war within four years.”32
While Hitler had war on his mind, Roosevelt thought of peace. In the spring of 1937 he sprang a novel idea on the German ambassador, Hans Luther. Why not establish a new and simple policy for rearmament that specified that no nation should manufacture armaments heavier than a man could carry on his shoulders? If followed, this policy should go a long way in preventing aggression. Luther passed along Roosevelt’s brainstorm, and so did Ambassador Davies, who stopped in Berlin before going back to Moscow. Davies later claimed that he saw Schacht, who allegedly told him that the president’s plan was “so simple as to be the expression of a genius.”33 It was “absolutely the solution.” The ingenious plan, however, fell on stony ground with the führer.
While Hitler was composing his readiness for “war in four years” memorandum at Obersalzberg, the spirit of peace prevailing at the Olympic Games could not gloss over the fact that bloody civil war was breaking out in Spain. The United States promptly announced a policy of strict nonintervention, prohibiting arms shipments to any of the warring factions. The Germans, however, openly aided Franco and his anti-Republican forces, and when the German pocket battleship Deutschland was attacked by the Republicans in May 1937, the Germans shelled the Spanish town and harbor of Almeria. German and Italian aid to Franco increased substantially over time. Hitler dispatched various forces to Spain, including the Condor Air Legion, a tank battalion and technical advisors. The Condor Air Legion later distinguished itself by pulverizing the Spanish town of Guernica and its civilian population, thus giving the world a preview of terror bombing from the air.
The Fascist powers were gathering and threatening the Western powers in 1936 and 1937. The groundwork was being set for the Rome-Berlin Axis, and when Franco finally prevailed in 1939, France, one of the few remaining democracies on the continent, found itself encircled by three Fascist powers—Spain, Italy, and Germany. On November 25, 1936, Germany and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, which was designed to monitor and counter Soviet-backed support to international Communist parties.
In 1937 Japan attacked China, an event that signaled the opening round of World War II. The Japanese had been on the move since 1931 when they invaded Manchuria and set up the puppet state of Manchukuo, a move that was condemned by the League of Nations. Japan promptly left the League and proceeded to exploit Manchuria’s resources for the Japanese war economy.
Behind the scenes, Hitler was not idle either in preparing his expansionist agenda. The tone of his public speeches also began to change as he cast off his pretensions for peace in favor of belligerent diatribes. In September 1937 Hitler and Mussolini consolidated their growing friendship, culminating in a spectacular state visit by Il Duce to Germany in late September and Italy’s adherence to the Anti-Comintern Pact. The Nazis dazzled Il Duce with an awesome display of military might. The result was the beginning of the “brutal friendship” between the two dictators.
Across the ocean, Roosevelt was carefully monitoring the aggressive words and actions of the Fascist nations. On October 5, 1937, the president gave a speech in Chicago, subsequently termed the “Quarantine speech,” in which he condemned the creeping “reign of terror and international lawlessness,” evidenced by the bombing of civilian populations, sinking of ships, and wanton acts of violence committed without a declaration of war. He reminded the American people that they were not immune from such international aggression, warning, “Let no one imagine that America will escape, that it may expect mercy, that this Western Hemisphere will not be attacked, and that it will continue tranquilly and peacefully to carry on the ethics and arts of civilization.”34 It has been thought that the president primarily had the Japanese in mind, for he made the speech shortly after the Japanese had attacked China. The German diplomats in Washington, however, wondered whether the president’s message was not also aimed at them. Ambassador Dieckhoff, who had replaced Luther, immediately asked for clarification about the aggressors Roosevelt had in mind. Sumner Welles, the American Under-Secretary of State, told him that the gist of the president’s speech had been the promotion of peace. If any aggressor had been referred to, it was the Japanese rather than the Germans or Italians. Welles then added a most revealing comment, which must have jumped out at Dieckhoff. It was a prophetic warning that “if a world conflict should break out in which Great Britain becomes involved, the United States will be thrown, either at the beginning of the conflict or soon thereafter, on the British side of the scale.”35 Hitler took Roosevelt’s Quarantine speech just as seriously as Dieckhoff did. According to his adjutant Nicolaus von Below, Hitler saw the speech as a turning point in American foreign policy.36 Hitler was offended by Roosevelt’s remark that 90 percent of the world’s population was threatened by 10 percent of aggressive nations and that he seemed to think that Germany was one of these aggressive nations. He attributed FDR’s sudden interest in foreign policy to his failed economic remedies, as evidenced by the increased unemployment in the U.S. workforce. Hitler suspected that Roosevelt was looking to rearmament as a way out of the recent economic downturn in the U.S. economy—the depression within a depression, as some critics of FDR have called it. Hitler said that FDR needed to get congressional approval for large rearmament appropriations and to get it he would incite the American public against so-called aggressor nations, notably headed by Germany.
Roosevelt’s first forceful pronouncement in foreign affairs was prompted by a growing worldwide danger to American interests both in the Pacific and in Europe. He viewed these threats as analogous to an epidemic: “When an epidemic of physical disease starts to spread, the community approves and joins in a quarantine of the patients in order to protect the health of the community against the spread of the disease.”37 How he proposed to quarantine the aggression the president did not explain.
Roosevelt, acutely aware of the gathering storm, was groping for a new policy to replace neutrality. As happened several times in his administration on matters relating to foreign affairs, the president took the easy way out by letting things drift, hoping that events abroad would galvanize the American people to the point of demanding more aggressive measures against the Fascist powers. In his Quarantine speech, the president did not name the international lawbreakers, though it was obvious to his listeners that he had Japan, Germany, and Italy in mind. The Quarantine speech was
