The Great Debate: Roosevelt, the Media, and the Coming of the War, 1940-1941

Abstract

For almost eighteen months before the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, the United States had been edging toward confrontation with the Axis powers. Diplomatic and economic pressures on the Japanese moved the nation inexorably toward a showdown in the Pacific, while aid to Britain and naval policy in the Atlantic ultimately brought confrontation and conflict with Germany. As administration policy unfolded, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought public approval for measures short of war while preparing the American people to accept and to support total involvement should it become necessary. His leadership produced a surfeit of information and images suggesting the threat of Nazi aggression and the success of America's mobilization effort. But the president tended to be uncommunicative or vague on many policy issues and deliberately sought, with the collaboration of the mass media, to avoid controversy and to stifle national debate. The result was that when war did come, a great many Americans remained uncertain of the circumstances (beyond the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor) that led them into global conflict. ' Roosevelt's public information strategy reflected in large measure the ambiguous situation he confronted. Historians are uncertain to this day of Roosevelt's intentions. Did he intend all along to take the nation to war, or simply to contain Adolf Hitler and the Japanese warlords by interventionist measures short of hostilities? David Reynolds argues persuasively that Roosevelt may never have been certain of the role the United States would play in the world conflict.2 If that is true, as seems likely, Roosevelt was not in a position to argue forthrightly either the necessity of American involvement in the war or the certainty that supplying Hitler's enemies would make it unnecessary. In refusing to commit himself publicly, he was reflecting his fear