Framework Chapter II - The Crisis of 1940

Germany broke the spell of the "phony war" on 9 April 1940 by invading Denmark and Norway. The United States by then had only partially completed its preparations under plans drafted in 1939 for maintaining American neutrality and at the same time forestalling military attack on the Western Hemisphere. In RAINBOW 1, the Army and Navy had an approved plan for hemisphere defense, but the ground forces and, even more seriously, the air forces, of the Army were still considerably below the strength needed to execute/missions under the plan. American naval power was concentrated in the Pacific with only enough vessels in the Atlantic to maintain the neutrality patrol, because the United States since September 1939 had counted on British and French naval power to provide the bulwark against any German thrust across the Atlantic. Assisted by the neutrality act of November 1939, the administration was encouraging the British and French to make "cash and carry" purchases of American arms, with the primary objective of building up a balance of military power in western Europe that would minimize the chances of involving the United States in the war.
The Defeat of France and Repercussions in America
Hitler loosed the full power of the German military machine against the West on 10 May 1940. When interviewed that day by newsmen, the President was no longer willing to say, as he had the preceding September, that he thought the United States could keep out of the war. Instead, he considered the chance of involvement to be "speculative."
Four days later the German Army crashed through the Sedan gap, and the outlook suddenly assumed an ominous cast for the United States as well as for France and Great Britain.
The British and French realized at once that the German breakthrough threatened their imminent defeat on the Continent, and they made immediate and urgent appeals to the United States for aid. On 15 May the new British Prime Minister, Winston S. Churchill, asked President Roosevelt to turn over to Britain thirty-five or more old-type destroyers, several hundred modern aircraft, and antiaircraft equipment and ammunition. He also wanted assurances that Great Britain could obtain American steel, and he requested that the United States dispatch naval forces to Irish ports and to the Singapore area. On the same day that the Prime Minister made his requests, he pledged that, regardless of what Germany did to England and France, England would never give up as long as he remained a power in public life, "even if England . . . burned to the ground." "Why," he added, "the Government will move to Canada and take the Fleet and fight on." President Roosevelt realized that compliance with these British requests would force the United States to shift from a policy of neutrality to one of nonbelligerency, if not open war. This he was unwilling to approve, though he and his advisers fully appreciated the gravity of the situation and prepared to meet it as best they could within limitations imposed by the existing military means of the United States and the state of public opinion.
Decisions on National Policy
With war plans in the making that took into account the new and grave turn in the war situation, the services felt the need of obtaining the President's decision on a number of broad questions of policy in national defense. President Roosevelt laid the groundwork for more detailed decisions in an address delivered at Charlottesville, Virginia, on 10 June 1940. After affirming that "overwhelmingly" the American people had now become "convinced that military and naval victory for the gods of force and hate would endanger the institutions of democracy in the western world," the President announced that henceforth the United States would pursue two "obvious and simultaneous" courses: "We will extend to the opponents of force the material resources of this nation; and at the same time we will harness and speed up the use of those resources in order that we ourselves in the Americas may have equipment and training equal to the task of any emergency and every defense." As the President subsequently pointed out, in June 1940 American industry was not yet geared to wartime production, and it would take industry time to change from a peace to war status. "To gain that time," he wrote, "it was necessary for Great Britain to maintain its defense, for if Britain were to fall it was clear that we would have to face the Nazis alone-and we were not physically prepared to do so." In a sense, the President's Charlottesville address constituted a public announcement of the impending shipment of large quantities of surplus Army stocks to the French and British.
When Hitler struck at western Europe in April 1940, the Regular Army, had an enlisted strength of 230,000, approximately that authorized the preceding September. Following the President's messages of 16 and 31 May, Congress in early June authorized an increase in Regular Army enlisted strength to 375,000. Until mid June the Army had planned to reach this strength as rapidly as possible through enlistment of volunteers rather than through adoption of a selective service system, but the French collapse convinced General Marshall that a selective service system must be adopted. Prompted by the urgings of a group of influential civilians (including Henry L. Stimson, soon to become Secretary of War), Senator Edward R. Burke and Representative James W. Wadsworth on 20 June introduced a bill proposing a selective service system similar to that embodied in current Army plans for rapid military expansion. On 24 June General Marshall and Admiral Stark recommended to President Roosevelt the "immediate enactment . . . of a Selective Service Law along the lines of existing plans, to be followed at once by complete military and naval mobilization." As noted previously, the President approved the recommendation in principle but objected to the system that the Army wanted to adopt. By the time that Secretary Stimson assumed his new office on 10 July, the President had yielded his objections to the selective service bill then under discussion in Congress, and General Marshall was able on 12 July to make a forthright statement in its favor and also one for the immediate induction of the National Guard into federal service. After extended debate, Congress on 27 August authorized the induction of the National Guard and the calling up of the Army's Organized Reserves. On 14 September it passed the Selective Service and Training Act. These measures, together with an additional authorized increase in Regular Army strength, were designed to produce a 1,000,000-man army by the beginning of 1941 and a 1,400,000-man army (200,000 larger than contemplated in the 30 June munitions program) by 1 July 1941.