U-235, Lend-Lease and Barbarossa

Ahh...chapter 46 and I am finally past all the lurid details of sordid love affairs and on to the real meat of the story: the race to harness the uranium isotope U-235, the machinations of FDR via the Lend-Lease Act and Operation Barbarossa. In these chapters (40-46), Wouk paints a pretty realistic picture of history. I understand this period in our nation's history better now that I ever have. It helps me appreciate the complexity and precarious nature of geo-political relationships, and I'm left with a broader perspective regarding our nation's current international engagements. As the war in Europe heats up, Pug is called back to the U.S. to take on a job in War Plans: the division of the military responsible for, well...planning a war. He is glad to be out of Berlin, especially after the insulting bribe proffered him by the inscrutable and duplicitous German banker, Wolf Stoller. Pug's American-style rebuff made me proud. Men of his integrity were as rare then as they are now. The Lend-Lease Act (PL 77-11) was something I didn't recall much about from my history classes. This says as much about me as it does about my public school education. The legislation was highly controversial in its time but critical to the outcome of the war. Starting in March, 1941--before the U.S. had officially entered the war--in an act to "promote the defense of the United States" the U.S. supplied the U.K., U.S.S.R. and other allied nations with materials for making war against Nazi Germany. This Act gave President Roosevelt exclusive and unusual powers to provide materials (for making planes and ships) to any nation he deemed worthy. It is frightening to think that one man was actually granted that much power. By 1945, when the war was ending and the program expired, the U.S. had shipped close to $800 billion (today's dollars) worth of supplies and materials to the U.K. The materials, without which the U.K. would most certainly have lost the war, were shipped via merchant marine vessels under the watchful escort of American destroyers. These "convoys" enabled the U.S. to subsidize England's efforts to fend off the Nazi's while remaining in compliance with the Neutrality Act. This legislation prohibited the U.S. from selling any supplies or materials to "belligerents" no matter whose side we were on. The Lend-Lease program also enabled the construction of air fields in Canada and Alaska for the purpose of supplying materials to the U.S.S.R. via Siberia (the Arctic Convoy). Michener writes about this in Alaska. In Winds, FDR invites Pug to sail on a north Atlantic convoy mission to Iceland as a guest, but not as an officer. Pug accepts of course, and is happy to get out from behind his desk and out to sea. He wants to command his own ship, but getting a flag rank always seems just out of reach. Most of Pug's contemporaries have received this promotion, but for some reason Pug has not. I haven't figured out why; he seems to be the most honorable man in the bunch. Barbarossa was the German code name for the Nazi invasion of Russia. Most historians consider this move to be the Fuhrer's greatest mistake because at the time (June, 1941) he could have invaded the exhausted England and probably won the war. Instead, he gambled and made a grab for the oil fields of Romania. Although initially successful, he ultimately lost, albeit four years later. The loss of life, Russian and German, has never been fully accounted. I have read estimates that 70 million people died during this war; most of them were civilians. I have a feeling that pretty soon the war will hit closer to home for the Henry family. Warren Henry, now Navy Lieutenant Henry, United States Pacific Fleet is stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Briny is somewhere in the Pacific on a submarine. Natalie and Uncle Aaron are on their way back to the States. Pug and Rhoda have just purchased a house in D.C. so they can stay put and enjoy their new grandson. Daughter Madeline is well on her way to a successful career at CBS, and December, 1941 is approaching.