Analysis: We Need Tanks, Not Talk

Date: January 13, 1942

Author: Wendell L. Willkie

Genre: speech

Summary Overview

Wendell Willkie addressed the annual dinner of the United States Conference of Mayors just over a month after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. Willkie, a former Republican presidential candidate who had opposed Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt's third term in 1940, had become a surprise supporter of Roosevelt's war policy. Willkie was an early supporter of the idea of a draft to increase military preparedness, but during the 1940 campaign, when Roosevelt actually instituted one and the isolationist wing of the Republican Party objected, Willkie changed his position. However, after losing the election, Willkie joined his former rival in campaigning for increased material support to Great Britain and against isolationism. In the days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Willkie was one of the strongest advocates of large-scale mobilization, arguing that the greatest victory for democracy would be to win on the battlefield.

Defining Moment

Wendell Willkie was a surprise Republican candidate for the presidency. A former Democrat, successful businessman, and the son of German immigrants, Willkie had never held public office. The key issues in the campaign were the war raging throughout the rest of the world and the unprecedented third term pursued by Roosevelt. In 1940, the United States still maintained official neutrality in the war, although Roosevelt worked closely with Great Britain and its allies to provide material support for their defense. The nation, and particularly the Republican Party, was deeply divided. Isolationists believed that war should be avoided at almost any cost (and were thus opposed Roosevelt's assistance to the Allies), while interventionists (also known as internationalists) believed that the survival of the United States and of democracy in the world depended on the defeat of the totalitarian governments of Germany and its allies.

In May 1940, Willkie was running a distant fourth in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. He was best known for his opposition to Roosevelt's New Deal economic policies, which had crippled his own business, but his support for the war effort was similar to Roosevelt's. He was the least isolationist of all of the Republican candidates, and as Germany began making remarkable gains in Europe and public sentiment began to shift toward greater support for Great Britain, Willkie surged ahead in the polls. By the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in June, he was in second place, boosted by grassroots Willkie Clubs that sprang up across the country. By the end of the convention, his vocal supporters had pushed hard for, and won, his nomination. It was considered one of the most dramatic upsets in the history of political conventions.

Once he achieved the nomination, Willkie focused his opposition to Roosevelt on the inappropriateness of a third term for the president, and he was also very critical of Roosevelt's New Deal programs. Neither of these two arguments had much traction with voters. Though many people were skeptical of a third presidential term in general, the special circumstances of the war made the continuity of leadership far more palatable. Many Americans blamed the Republican Party for starting the Great Depression, and had benefitted directly from New Deal programs. Roosevelt had widespread support and led in every preelection poll. The issue of the moment was the war, and Willkie first accused Roosevelt of inadequately preparing the nation militarily and then accused him of being too aggressive in his pursuit of involvement. Roosevelt urged material support for the Allies but continued to support neutrality publically. On November 5, 1940, Roosevelt won the election for a third term with 27.3 million votes to Willkie's 22.3 million.

After the election, Willkie abandoned his flirtation with isolationism and threw his support behind Roosevelt and his interventionist and internationalist policies. He supported the liberal terms of the Lend-Lease Program, which allowed for nearly unlimited aid for Great Britain, and traveled across the world as Roosevelt's representative in 1941 and 1942.

Author Biography

Wendell Lewis Willkie was born in 1892 in Elwood, Indiana, the fourth of six children born to two lawyers, Herman Willkie and Henrietta Trisch Willkie. His father was a German immigrant from Saxony, and his mother was among the first women lawyers in Indiana. After graduating from high school, Willkie earned a BA from Indiana University and then a law degree from Indiana University School of Law in 1916. When the United States entered World War I, Willkie enlisted in the army, and provided legal assistance in Europe. After his discharge, he worked as a corporate lawyer for several corporations, and in 1933, he became the president of the electrical company Commonwealth & Southern Corporation. When the Tennessee Valley Authority, one of Roosevelt's New Deal programs, began offering inexpensive electricity to customers of existing power companies, Willkie argued that it was unconstitutional for the government to compete with private enterprise. A longtime Democrat, Willkie became a Republican after his company was forced to sell its holdings in the Tennessee Valley.

Willkie ran against Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election and lost. After the election, Willkie worked with Roosevelt to advocate for support to Great Britain and its allies. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States joined the war, and Willkie campaigned in support of the war effort. Willkie contemplated a run for the presidency in 1944 but withdrew after his campaign failed to attract widespread support. Willkie had a history of cardiovascular problems and suffered a fatal heart attack on October 8, 1944.

Document Analysis

This speech was given at a meeting of mayors from across the country, and Willkie begins by addressing his history as a candidate for the nation's highest office and how this experience reminds him of how “an election in which free people exercise their right to choose their own leaders is the very essence of democracy.” He says the experience of campaigning for the presidency gave him a profound appreciation for democracy, and so he intends to address the threat that the war poses to democracy.

Speaking just over a month after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Willkie cautions that the attack was neither simply a “piece of treachery to be avenged” nor “a costly and humiliating defeat whose stigma we must erase,” but rather an event that requires a radical change of view for the American public. It was proof that the United States would no longer be able to see itself as separate from the rest of the world. He asserts that isolationism, a popular sentiment in the country before Pearl Harbor, is the “blind illusion that disturbances in other parts of the world are no concern of ours.” The attack on Pearl Harbor was thus a “painful but necessary awakening.”

Now that Americans have been roused from their “national aloofness,” they also need to realize that they are fighting “not only armies, but ideas.” The totalitarian regimes of Germany, Japan, and Italy had used their complete control of economic systems and their population to make a very efficient war machine. The German or Japanese worker, under the complete control of their government, could be very easily managed. Resistance, political or economic, was quickly suppressed. This streamlining of the economy seen in the Fascist system was very appealing and caught the “imagination of millions” in Canada, Britain, and even the United States. The only way to fight this way of thinking, Willkie asserts, is to defeat it in battle—to prove that the American way of life is “not only more self-respecting, more humane and more happy than theirs, but more effective as well.” Though economic and military efficiency may not have been the primary gifts of democracy, now that this way of life is being tested, “self-governing people must make themselves function efficiently to meet the danger.”

The declaration of common purpose issued by the United Nations just days before this speech was a good first step, in Willkie's opinion, but now it is crucial that the democracies lead the opposition to the “fanatical fatalism” of the Axis powers. To do so, they must meet and exceed the productive capacity of the totalitarian governments and put aside petty differences and unnecessary obstacles to do so. Willkie understands that Nazi domination had as one of its goals a unified economic system, to be brought about by brutality and force where necessary; he argues that the world should recognize the advantages of greater economic unity but bring it about through voluntary cooperation. The world must see that “democracy can cope with economic problems.” The democracies opposing the Axis powers must prove that they are “strengthened by a moral force which regimented robots can never understand.” The speed with which the entire United States economy can be turned to war production will provide this proof, he says.

Glossary

fatuously: foolishly or inanely, especially in an unconscious, complacent manner; silly; illusory

hermetically: so as to be airtight

juggernaut: any large, overpowering, destructive force or object, as war, a giant battleship, or a powerful football team; anything requiring blind devotion or cruel sacrifice

pigmy: disparaging and offensive slang for a small or dwarfish person

platitudes: a flat, dull, or trite remark, especially one uttered as if it were fresh or profound

prostrate: to lay flat, as on the ground; to case oneself face down on the ground in humility, submission, or adoration

stigma: a mark of disgrace or infamy; a stain or reproach, as on one's reputation

Bibliography and Additional Reading

Beevor, Antony. The Second World War. New York: Little, Brown, 2012. Print.

Neal, Steve. Dark Horse: A Biography of Wendell Willkie. Lawrence: UP of Kansas, 1989. Print.

Peters, Charles. Five Days in Philadelphia: 1940, Wendell Willkie, FDR, and the Political Convention That Freed FDR to Win World War II. New York: Public Affairs, 2006. Print.