The chaotic American mobilization in World War II
Two things are apparent at the outset of The Washington War in author James Laceyâs list of âThe Washington Warriors.â First, many of the names are unfamiliar to most readers. Several certainly were to me. Some have never appeared anywhere else in my reading on World War II even though Lacey describes them as âFDRâs inner circle.â And, second, he pulls no punches, rendering such judgments as âhe wasted his talent on revenge plots and petty jealousiesâ and âa man without friends or the desire to make any.â Youâre not likely to find such characterizations in books by academic historians. And yet, despite the often unflattering comments about the players, itâs clear on reading further in the book that Lacey has told a story that is both central to gaining perspective on the war and far too often ignored.
âWars are won in conference roomsâ
As the author notes, âBattles are won on the fighting fronts, but wars are won in conference rooms.â Lacey pokes his head into those conference rooms and examines the plans, memorandums, and correspondence among the politicians, the military brass, and the bureaucrats whose nonstop bickering and maneuvering for power shaped the course of World War II. Itâs a fascinating tale and essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand how the Allies won. Because itâs clear in Laceyâs telling that the end was never foreordained.
The Washington War: FDRâs Inner Circle and the Politics of Power That Won World War II by James Lacey (2019) 542 pages â â â â â
Office politics and bureaucratic wrangling in FDRâs inner circle
Most accounts of the Allied victory in the Second World War hinge on the titanic battles at Stalingrad, Midway, Normandy, and in the Atlantic. Lacey draws our attention instead to the âtitanic rowsâ in Washington among the politicians and bureaucrats and military men â arguments that sometimes degenerated into shouting matches involving the American and British Chiefs of Staff, members of Congress, and the ill-prepared and sometimes incompetent bureaucrats heading the government agencies that proliferated under FDR. âBy 1942,â Lacey notes, âso many [âalphabet agenciesâ] had been birthed â WPB, OPA, BEW, NWLB, etc. â that no one had any idea of what all the acronyms stood for, or for that matter what they all did.â Itâs sometimes difficult to see who was calling the shots.
Even Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill come across as erratic at times, with FDR portrayed as âthe most Machiavellian of U.S. presidentsâ and the Prime Minister as obsessively focused on preserving the British Empire. You may wonder as you read all this how on earth the Allies ever won the war â unless you understand that the Axis powers blundered from one strategic error to another and defeated themselves in a war they should never have begun.
Did politics and maneuvering for power hamper the Allied war effort?
However, Lacey brings a charitable perspective to the scene he portrays. âMy assumption when I began this book was that such fights hampered the war effort. But the more I delved into the clashes that made up the Washington war, the clearer it became that these titanic rows almost always led to better outcomes than would have prevailed had there been a single man or apparatus directing events.â But itâs hard to take that view in light of the two yearsâ lost in the struggle to amp up arms production and the Alliesâ failure even to acknowledge the Holocaust until a third of Europeâs Jews were dead.
FDRâs inner circle includes unfamiliar names
All the usual suspects figure in Laceyâs account of the war behind the scenes. FDR and Churchill. Harry Hopkins. Marshall, King, Leahy, Stimson, Knox, Hull, and Welles. But other, far less familiar names crowd onto center stage, too. Among them were the following:
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Mobilization was slow
Historians celebrate the extraordinary productive capacity of the American economy in most accounts of the war. In The Washington War, by contrast, Lacey details the chaotic and counterproductive bureaucratic infighting and political meddling that got in the way of mobilization. Power politics in FDRâs inner circle prevented the country from fulfilling the promise of the Arsenal of Democracy for more than two years following his storied speech on December 29, 1940. In the authorâs account, it becomes clear that production of war materiél only went into high gear when former Senator and Supreme Court Justice James F. Byrnes took charge of the Office of War Mobilization in May 1943. In that capacity, Byrnes effectively functioned as deputy president in charge of domestic affairs, freeing up FDR to concentrate on the conduct of the war. Where necessary, he knocked heads together, something the President was never prepared to do.
Surely, more than seven decades after the fact, Lacey got some things wrong. His judgments of individuals may be flawed in some cases. He might have misconstrued the intentions of one or another of the figures he describes as central to the story, and possibly even in most. But the Big Picture he paints is an accurate reflection of the chaotic reality that prevailed in official Washington during the war years. Because FDR wanted it that way. The President made an art of setting up rival power centers around himself â so that no one could gain the power to threaten him. In fact, itâs surprising that he finally acquiesced to the appointment of Justice Byrnes to the Office of War Mobilization in 1943. Until it became unavoidably clear that the mobilization was badly lagging, and his own health began growing worse, did he take that step.
About the author
James Lacey teaches at the Marine Corps War College and works as a military analyst for the Institute for Defense Analyses. His publisher notes that âHe is a widely published defense analyst who has written extensively on the war in Iraq and the global war on terrorism. He served more than a dozen years on active duty as an infantry officer. Lacey traveled with the 101st Airborne Division during the Iraq invasion as an embedded journalist for Time magazine, and his work has also appeared in National Review, Foreign Affairs, the Journal of Military History, and many other publications. He lives in Virginia.
For more reading
For a different perspective on American mobilization for World War II, see Freedomâs Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II by Arthur Herman (World War II: when America was united in common purpose).
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