Destroyers For Bases Agreement - Background

Background

The Second World War started in September 1939. After the eight month interlude of the Phony War, France and the Low Countries were quickly overrun by the Nazi German Blitzkrieg in the Battle of France in May 1940. This left the United Kingdom and Empire fighting alone (or almost alone after the Italian attack on Greece that autumn) against Germany.

The Chiefs of Staff Committee concluded in May that if France collapsed, "we do not think we could continue the war with any chance of success" without "full economic and financial support" from the United States. Although its government was sympathetic to Britain's plight, American public opinion at the time overwhelmingly supported isolationism to avoid U.S. involvement in "another European war". Reflecting this sentiment, Congress had passed the Neutrality Acts three years previously, which banned the shipment or sale of arms from the U.S. to any combatant nation. Additionally, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was further constrained by the upcoming 1940 Presidential election, as his critics sought to portray him as being pro-war.

By late May, following the evacuation of British forces from Dunkirk, France, in Operation Dynamo, the Royal Navy was in immediate need of ships, especially as they were now fighting the Battle of the Atlantic in which German U-boats threatened Britain's supplies of food and other resources essential to the war effort.

With German troops advancing rapidly into France and many in the U.S. Government convinced that the defeat of France and Britain was imminent, the United States sent a proposal to the United Kingdom through the British Ambassador, the Marquess of Lothian, for an American lease of airfields on Trinidad, Bermuda, and Newfoundland. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill initially rejected the offer on May 27 unless Britain received something immediate in return. On June 1, as the defeat of France loomed, President Roosevelt bypassed the Neutrality Act by declaring as "surplus" many millions of rounds of American ammunition and obsolescent small arms, and authorizing their shipment to the United Kingdom. But Roosevelt rejected Churchill's pleas for destroyers for the Royal Navy.

By August, while Britain and the Empire stood alone against Germany, the American Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy reported from London that a British surrender was "inevitable". Seeking to persuade Roosevelt to send the destroyers, Churchill warned Roosevelt ominously that if Britain were vanquished, its colonial islands close to American shores could become a direct threat to America if they fell into German hands.