f reedom of a ction 137Wilson had erred in 1914 by not intervening early to head off violent
confrontation. Initially, Roosevelt tried to play the role of neutral
broker. He pushed for the Munich conference, only to be dissatisfi ed
with the outcome. Chamberlain and France’s Edouard Daladier had
failed to show suffi cient fi rmness against Hitler’s bluster, the president
complained, though he was no more willing than they to stand up to
the German führer. It quickly became evident that appeasement had
failed to quench Hitler’s thirst for a larger empire. In March 1939, only
a few months after Munich, he resumed his expansionist approach with
the bloodless occupation of the remainder of Czechoslovakia. Tensions
escalated in the wake of this move, as European nations accelerated
their preparations for a clash that daily seemed less and less avoidable.
Up to the very eve of war Roosevelt continued to issue appeals for peace
and off ered to mediate, but he did so mostly to make clear to the Amer-
ican people that the onus for war lay with Germany.
Two factors persuaded Hitler that he could ignore the United States
as he contemplated his next aggressive moves. First, Roosevelt did not
possess the one thing that counted in the führer’s eyes—a signifi cant
military force. To reassure the British against the possibility of a simul-
taneous Japanese move against the key Royal Navy base at Singapore,
the president in 1939 transferred much of the U.S. Navy to the Pacifi c.
But this strategic relocation meant the American fl eet did not matter to
Germany. Nor did the president have any troops to send to Europe,
because the Army had shriveled again after the First World War to fewer
than 200,000 active duty personnel. In the wake of Munich, Roosevelt
asked Congress to appropriate $500 million for defense. Where defense
spending made up less than 7 percent of the federal budget in 1934, the
share of defense outlays would roughly double by 1939. Most of the
money, though, would go to building a large air force that might deter
an aggressor from striking the United States, and none of those planes
would be ready for several years. Just as important, to impress Hitler
Roosevelt needed to make a clear commitment that the United States
would support Great Britain, France, and Poland. He had signaled
through back channels to the British and French governments that the
United States would put its enormous industrial resources at their dis-
posal. But he refused the public declaration of American support that
might have made Hitler fl inch.