As a euphemism for genes, “blood” was very much an issue in 1939. A small but effective group was spreading the propaganda that humanity would be improved by encouraging the ablest and healthiest people to produce more children and the “deficient” to produce fewer or no children at all. Several states were officially sterilizing those deemed to be inferior. Hitler proudly pointed out that he was only observing the laws of several American states, including California, that allowed for the forced sterilization of the “unfit.” The belief system, known as eugenics, held that certain good or bad genes were the monopoly of certain races and ethnicities, fueling the Nazis’ claim that they were creating a superior race.5
In addition to the isolationist faction, antiwar movements on American college and university campuses grew along with pro-German sentiment, egged on by radio priest Father Charles Coughlin and the minister Gerald L. K. Smith, both of whom preached anti-Semitism and lauded American fascism. The America First Committee—founded by pacifist Yale students but eventually dominated by conservative isolationists—became the most significant of the organizations fighting to keep America out of the European war.
The autumn of 1939 was a period of anxiety as the world tried to anticipate when Hitler would pick his next victim. Aggression finally came on November 30, but the aggressor was the Soviet Union, not Germany, and Finland was the victim. The attack was a clear act of aggression aimed at acquiring more territory, and it resulted in the Soviet Union’s expulsion from the League of Nations.
The ongoing reorganization of the United States Army made few headlines, and Roosevelt’s modest increase in the size of the infantry made scant difference. As military reporter John G. Norris wrote in the Washington Post on October 8, “The United States will still have to be grouped with small nations of the world in the size of their military establishment. It will rank perhaps 14th or 15th, gaining a rung or two by its own enlargement and by the disappearance of the Polish army, which ranked way ahead of the United States.”6
The invasion of Poland by the Nazis provided a stark reminder for the United States of its own weaknesses. Although popular attention seemed to be placed on the apparent superiority of the tanks of Hitler’s Panzer divisions, an even greater concern to Marshall and other military planners was how the airplane had been used by the Germans in the blitzkrieg that had razed Poland. As Donald M. Nelson, an American official later charged with the responsibility for arms production during the war, recalled: “Nothing like this technology for completely demolishing a modern nation had ever been seen before. Production centers had been smashed, communications completely disorganized. With their air force obliterated, the Poles might as well have been fighting with clubs. These reports were electrifying to the men who, sooner or later, would be responsible for American defense or war production.”7
The year ended with Roosevelt and Marshall working with quiet determination to improve the Army in size and efficiency, despite Secretary of War Woodring’s opposition. The situation was dire. “On New Year’s Day of 1940, when the peril was beginning to close in on us, the United States Armed Forces might almost have been called our ‘Disarmed Forces’” was Nelson’s view of the situation.8
At the end of December, Woodring had presented his annual report on the state of the military to the president and asserted once again that national defense could not be defined in terms of manpower or money but rather in terms of the efficiency of new weaponry. He argued, “One million naked savages armed with 1,000,000 spears and 1,000,000 shields would be slaughtered by 100 men armed with 100 of the Army’s new semiautomatic shoulder rifles and a baker’s dozen of the Army’s new tanks.”
What Woodring did not point out was that these new weapons were in short supply, and many of the specific items existed only as prototypes. Only 15,000 of the Garand M-1 rifles he alluded to were then available, and only 300 new ones were being produced a week. Also, pitting “naked savages” against the United States Army displayed Woodring’s unwillingness to confront the fact that the next war was not going to be fought with spears and shields but with arms, aircraft, and armored vehicles forged from German steel.9
In January 1940, Roosevelt tried once again to move Woodring out of the way, this time offering him the ambassadorship to Italy. Again Woodring declined, choosing to hold on to his office despite the fact that a large part of the United States Army now saw him as a roadblock rather than a facilitator. Marshall, on the other hand, was letting Congress know in no uncertain terms that the Army was improperly trained and prepared. “We have been forced [by lack of funds] to build up our technique of command and control, and even our development of leadership, largely on a theoretical basis,” he declared at one point.10
Congress listened but was slow to move, as the clouds of war seemed to be dissipating rather than gathering. Over the winter of 1939–40, a certain quiet fell over Europe, which led to a feeling of stalemate and inaction that lasted into the spring and past Easter. Some described the inactivity as a truce of sorts and the basis for a negotiated settlement. The situation became known as the Phoney War,* an odd, slangy phrase that came into use within days of Poland’s defeat.11 During this time, French and German troops eyed one another across Germany’s Siegfried Line and France’s Maginot Line, the latter a 280-mile-long defensive line of concrete fortifications, obstacles, and installed weapons built in the 1930s to deter invasion by Germany. Named for André Maginot, a former French minister of war, it ran along the entire length of the Franco-German border. The French believed it to be impregnable.
In the United States, the issue of the Phoney War became fodder for columnists and editorial writers, some of whom saw it as a hiatus in a larger period of aggression. “It is being said that this is a phoney war. But we shall understand the war better if we remember that it was preceded by eight years of phoney peace,” wrote Walter Lippmann in his widely syndicated New York Herald Tribune column in late October. “From the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 until the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, the peace of the world was disintegrating under the demoralization of class war, the pressure of subversive propaganda and intrigue, and the intimidation of armed and ruthless conspirators.” He concluded by calling the phoney peace an act of war.12
But Lippmann appeared to be in the minority, as others declared the Phoney War* to be the end of, or a long-term deferral of, hostilities. As journalist and Army historian Mark Skinner Watson later wrote about this period, it had “lulled the fears of only the uninformed, but the uninformed were numerous.”13
Many of those who had fled Paris and London fearing a Nazi attack returned home reassured that the Nazi saturation bombing they had dreaded had not come to pass. By Christmas, Londoners were neglecting to carry the gas masks they had been issued, and many prefabricated bomb shelters lay unclaimed at distribution points. By the end of January, nearly 60 percent of Britain’s 1.5 million evacuees had returned to their homes. And 43 percent of British schoolchildren had returned to their classes, often to schools that had been shut down in September 1939 because they were in areas considered dangerous and now needed to be reopened to accommodate the children who had returned to their homes.14
The Phoney War compromised the British public’s dedication to fighting the war against Germany. There was widespread antipathy toward food and gasoline rationing, blackouts, and other wartime restrictions that now appeared to be unnecessary. Citizens of England and France had to be constantly reminded that their countries had already declared war on Germany.
Especially in the United States, odd opinions and prophecies were frequent, including those relentlessly spewing forth from the mouth of Charles Lindbergh.