144 e lusive v ictories
Germany and Italy. Accordingly, the British drew major formations
from Australia, New Zealand, and India for service in the Middle East,
replacing them with untrained troops, and sent obsolete equipment to
defend its key Far Eastern outposts.
Th ese developments again compromised American options. Where
previously the Roosevelt administration had relied on other nations to
take the lead in blocking the Japanese, it now found itself assuming that
role. Th is posed hard choices for Washington. Should America stand by
as the Japanese upped their demands on the orphaned colonial govern-
ments as, for instance, when Tokyo insisted on increasing oil purchases
from the Netherlands East Indies? Or should the United States
demand fi rmness and take steps more likely to provoke war? From a
pure military standpoint, the answer seemed plain enough—draw in
American forces to the Western Hemisphere until they were suffi cient
to meet wider threats. In that spirit, the commander of the U.S. Navy’s
Pacifi c Fleet, Admiral James O. Richardson, recommended recalling it
from Hawaii to San Diego. Such a move, however, would remove the
fl eet as a chip in the eff ort to deter Japan, and the president rejected it
and found himself a new admiral, Husband E. Kimmel, who served
until the Pearl Harbor disaster.
One other pivotal event transformed the set of choices open to the
president: on June 22, 1941, Germany attacked the Soviet Union. Th e
immediate eff ects were far-reaching. With Germany committing the bulk
of its army to the east, any threat of invasion of Great Britain vanished.
But initial Russian defeats and rapid German advances raised the grim
possibility that the Nazi war machine would gain control over all the
resources—particularly the oil fi elds in the Caucasus—it needed to
become self-sufficient. As Soviet armies surrendered or retreated,
Moscow’s requests for aid became more urgent, another major call on
American military production. But with output of war items still very
limited, help meant the diversion of equipment that would further slow
the buildup of American forces. Here, repeating his approach when
Great Britain seemed on the verge of defeat the year before, the pres-
ident overruled his military chiefs and insisted that help be sent to the
Russians. No significant aid could reach them in time to stem the
German tide in 1941, but Roosevelt understood the value of making a
good-faith gesture in their moment of peril.