World War II and British Influence on American Foreign Policy Prior to Pearl Harbor

Britain learned the hard way in World War I that it could not preserve and protect its empire without having the United States, with its economic and military strength, to help fight its wars to ultimate victory. The British openly sought American aid in advance of the European war that started in September 1939. On June 10, 1939, King George VI and his wife, Queen Mary, came to America and visited the Roosevelts at Hyde Park. According to King George’s biographer, Roosevelt, in private conversations with the king, secretly promised the king full American support for the British Empire. Roosevelt agreed to set up a zone in the Atlantic to be patrolled by the U.S. Navy, and the king’s notes show that Roosevelt intended to sink German U-boats and await the consequences. The biographer of King George VI, John W. Wheeler-Bennett, concludes that these agreements served as the basis for the destroyer deal as well as for the Lend-Lease Agreement made much later.[86]

Another very important matter, related directly to secret conversations between Roosevelt and Churchill before America entered the war, is known as the “Tyler Kent Affair.” Tyler Kent, a code clerk in the American Embassy in London, intercepted coded communications between Roosevelt and Churchill, who at that time was merely the first lord of the Admiralty. The code was supposed to be used only by the American Embassy in communications with the president and diplomats back in Washington. In other words, in violation of proper protocol, the president of the United States was not communicating with the head of the British government but was secretly negotiating with Churchill, who would not become prime minister for several months. Tyler Kent became concerned about the fact that these conversations revealed secret plans by which America was to be brought into the war in violation of the U.S. Constitution without a declaration of war by Congress. Scotland Yard learned that Kent had discussed these decoded messages with, and possibly showed them to, Captain Archibald Ramsay, who was a member of the British Parliament and known to be unsympathetic to the jingoistic Churchill.

Churchill became prime minister in May 1940 and immediately ordered the arrest of both Kent and Ramsay. The American government (Roosevelt) could have asserted diplomatic immunity for Kent and thereby prevented his trial but instead conspired with the British government (Churchill) to waive that immunity and allow Kent to be tried secretly in a British court. Kent was found guilty of violating the British Official Secrets Act of 1911 and was placed in a British prison, where he remained for seven years and was not allowed to return to America until after World War II ended. Tyler Kent’s information concerning the secret plans of Roosevelt and Churchill to bring America into the war, if revealed to the American people through a public trial in Britain, would have proved at least embarrassing to Roosevelt’s administration and may even have led to his impeachment. Churchill also wanted the matter kept from the British people, therefore Ramsay, even though he was a member of Parliament, was held at Brixton Prison without any charges or a trial and was not released until September 1944. On the morning following his release from prison, he resumed his seat in the House of Commons and remained there until the end of that parliament.[87]

Another important matter to consider for the background of the Pearl Harbor story relates to a close personal friend of Winston Churchill, a Canadian citizen by the name of William Stephenson, who later became known by his code name, Intrepid. The full story of how Intrepid helped Churchill and Roosevelt drag America into World War II can be seen in three books: A Man Called Intrepid, The Quiet Canadian, and the very recent Desperate Deception.[88] One of Intrepid’s agents was Ian Fleming, the author who popularized this secret British agency in novels and movies about James Bond.

Stephenson had made millions through the military-industrial complex of Great Britain during World War I, and it was at this time he became a close personal friend of Churchill. When Churchill became prime minister in May 1940, a year and a half before Pearl Harbor, he immediately arranged for financing from the royal family and, without any knowledge of Parliament, established a secret organization headed by Stephenson to be located rent-free in Rockefeller Center in New York.[89] Roosevelt had full knowledge of and was in agreement with this, but the U.S. Congress knew nothing of this deceitful action. The primary purpose of this organization was to help Roosevelt and Churchill bring America into the war through false propaganda, the creation of false documents, and whatever other means were necessary, apparently even including the murder of an American citizen who had established a supply of oil for Germany—a completely legal business relationship at the time.[90] Roosevelt stayed in constant contact with Intrepid primarily through an American lawyer by the name of Ernest Cuneo, whose code name was Crusader.[91]

Two false documents used by Intrepid were important in bringing America and Germany into the war against each other. First, Intrepid provided a false map that knowingly was used by Roosevelt in a national radio speech to the American people on October 27, 1941.[92] This document allegedly was obtained from a German spy and purported to show Hitler’s secret plans for an invasion of South America, thereby demonstrating an imminent danger to America. Intrepid also created a false document that was put into Hitler’s hands as an allegedly stolen secret plan of the American government.[93] It was received by Hitler on December 3, 1941, and purported to show Roosevelt’s secret plans to make a preemptive strike against Germany without a declaration of war by the U.S. Congress. This document played a role in Hitler’s decision to declare war against America on December 11, 1941, which surprised almost everyone except Roosevelt, Intrepid, and Churchill.

Intrepid also provided ammunition to attack Roosevelt’s political enemies, such as Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford, by creating false information that made it appear they were Nazi sympathizers.[94] Also, he launched a concerted effort that eventually destroyed the political career of a very distinguished Congressman, Hamilton Fish, who represented Roosevelt’s district and who had opposed almost all of Roosevelt’s foreign policy ideas on interventionism.[95] Intrepid exercised heavy influence over popular political writers like Dorothy Thompson, Walter Winchell, and Walter Lippman.[96]

It is important here to interrupt the story about Intrepid to discuss Lippman’s views and the British group he worked with to influence America’s entry into the war. The immense value of Walter Lippman to the British as a propagandist is clearly shown in David Gordon’s excellent study of false war propaganda in general, and his case study of Lippman in particular.[97] Lippman argued that America should intervene in World War II because Germany was clearly a “menace” to the British Empire, and he concluded that since America’s interests were “equated” with the British, Germany was equally a threat to America. Gordon points out that Lippman was the most influential American political commentator from 1930 through 1950 but that he did not manifest his real intentions until after World War II ended. In a short volume entitled Isolation and Alliances, which appeared in 1952, Lippman wrote about the American and British alliance:

We were on the right course, as I see it, during the war—specifically, between 1942 and 1945. . . . During those years we had a close partnership, one might call it an organic alliance, which managed the business of war and peace in the Western world—managed it for what we have come to call the Atlantic Community.[98]

Lippman wanted a partial repeal or reversal of the American Revolution and the establishment of at least a permanent alliance with the British Empire. Gordon concludes that:

Lippman, like Woodrow Wilson, had a hidden agenda. For this foremost columnist, the aim was not world government based on universal principles. Rather, it was a permanent union of the United States and Britain.[99]

Professor Carroll Quigley tells us that the British portion of the Anglo-American Establishment was very much in control of the intelligence and propaganda activities of the British government in America, with two of the British members of the Milner Group—Lord Lothian and Lord Halifax—serving as ambassadors to America. Quigley points out how significant this group was just prior to World War II:

Of even greater significance was the gathering of Milner Group members and their recruits in Washington. The Group had based most of their foreign policy since 1920 on the hope of “closer union” with the United States, and they realized that American intervention in the war was absolutely essential to insure a British victory. Accordingly, more than a dozen members of the Group were in Washington during the war, seeking to carry on this policy.[100]

Intrepid, who was obviously working for the Milner Group as a propaganda specialist, influenced Roosevelt even to the point that most of Roosevelt’s important speeches on foreign policy were first cleared with Intrepid before they were actually given, so that the British agent could edit and revise them.[101] Also, Intrepid’s agency became intimately involved in changing the results reached by Gallup polls.[102] Furthermore, Intrepid and his organization helped rig the Republican Party nomination for Wendell Willkie, whose foreign policy stance was almost identical to that of Roosevelt, thereby removing foreign policy as an issue in Roosevelt’s bid for an unprecedented third term.[103] Intrepid’s agency created false passes for a large number of Willkie supporters to come into the convention hall and chant for him throughout the convention, and they cut off the microphone for Herbert Hoover’s speech.[104]

Intrepid’s agency neutralized the opposition from Michigan Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, who was a Republican and a staunch opponent of an interventionist foreign policy, thereby removing a strong potential threat to Roosevelt’s reelection. The British provided three mistresses to Vandenberg, and then the senator’s opposition to Roosevelt was compromised by the threat of disclosure.[105] Vandenberg later became a staunch interventionist and even helped President Harry Truman launch America into the cold war after World War II.

Intrepid followed the example first set by Sir William Wiseman, head of the British Secret Service in America during World War I, who had played a major role in getting the U.S. into that war. Wilson’s adviser, Colonel House, “habitually permitted Sir William Wiseman . . . to sit in his private office in New York and read the most secret documents of the American Government. House’s father and mother had both been English.”[106]