The Ten Day Capital
St. Louis was the capital of the United States for precisely ten days, from September 6th until September 15th, 1943. After his departure from Washington, D.C. on the 2nd, President Roosevelt had initially been flown to Atlanta, where he paused for a day in order to contact General Eisenhower in Washington, D.C. Hearing of the collapse of the Washington Perimenter, FDR ordered Eisenhower to defend the city strongly but not to lose his army doing so. FDR was then flown westward to Chicago, arriving on the 3th. He spent two days conferring with Mayor Kelley about his recent arrests of hundreds of German-Americans and their worries about a revival of the German Bund in the Midwest.
Finally, on the 5th, the President's plane took off for St. Louis, landing at Lambert Field early on the morning of September 6th. The citizens of the city were delighted at his arrival, reassured that the government had not forgotten them. They lined the streets as the President was driven from the airfield to his new 'White House'. The federal government offices had been set up in the Old Courthouse Building on the riverbank, the same building where the Dred Scott case had begun back in the 1850's.
The Old Courthouse Building in St. Louis, home of the federal government for 10 days
The facilities in St. Louis were crude and ad-hoc, but promised to house the executive branch after some work was put in.
For Roosevelt, however, St. Louis only sharpened his decline. Lack of sleep and the hectic schedule and stress of a losing war had begun to seriously aggravate Roosevelt's already handicapped condition. His skin paled, his hair began to thin, and his appearance aged years almost overnight. Yet he continued to work, trying to keep his government together and maintain armies in the field to defy the Germans.
As he took up his duties in St. Louis on the 7th, the bad news began to pour in. Washington was under heavy attack. MacArthur had given General Bradley permission to surrender his forces in New York, and the Germans threatened to break out of the Northeast. And it didn't end there.
On that same day, a German aerial attack on the Pentagon that shattered the newly constructed building, causing many casualties and decimating those government and military high officials who had chosen to remain in the District of Columbia. Among the deaths were those of Secretary of War Harry Stimson and Chief of Staff General George Marshall. In one blow, FDR had lost his closest military advisors.
George Marshall and Harry Stimson
The loss of Stimson and Marshall struck FDR hard, for with them went the best men for liaison between the civil and military authorities. As if to emphasize this new reality, General Douglas MacArthur, having been promoted from his army command in the Northeast, arrived in St. Louis. Now, on the morning of the 8th, the two conferred and Roosevelt immediately promoted him to 5-star general and the new Chief of Staff of the United States military. With Marshall, Bradley, and soon Eisenhower lost, FDR turned to the man he deemed competent and confident enough to turn defeat into victory.
Yet MacArthur's impact would have to wait, for on the 10th, word arrived of the fall of Washington, D.C. A stunned St. Louis took the news as best they could, some openly denying the reports, others moved to tears. For the first time in this Midwest city, the war had become very real.
More reports flooded in during the next few days. The German crossing of the Potomac, panzers in Richmond, Eisenhower's retreat into the Shenandoah, the rumored execution of American generals in prison camps, Bund rallies in Cleveland and Cincinnati, and much more.
By the afternoon of the 13th, it had been decided that St. Louis was no longer fit as a federal capital. It was now in an exposed position to the distant German advance, and indeed, the Old Courthouse was right on the riverbank, and would be exposed to German bombardment from the earliest.
The decision was made to leave the city and establish the federal government in California, either Los Angeles or San Francisco. Congress had long since departed for the West and was indeed clamoring for FDR to join them in Los Angeles. Most of the country was still free of the German army and had to be governed - and rallied. When General MacArthur insisted on staying in St. Louis to meet the German advance, Roosevelt refused and ordered him to the West Coast. He would not lose another Chief of Staff.
The President and his party departed St. Louis on the morning of the 15th, with General MacArthur following a few hours later. It took twelve flights by C-47 Dakotas to move all of the staff and files which had accompanied FDR. In the course of seven hours, St. Louis had gone from the center of the country to a forgotten bywater.
As October approached, the federal government of the United States was on the West Coast, over a thousand miles from the front lines, and almost completely separated from any divisions still in the field. The separation of the military and the civilian government, having begun with the German assault on Washington, began to worsen as the weeks progressed.
As for St. Louis, it's ten-day sojourn as a national capital did little to protect it . Indeed, when German paratroopers landed in Illinois and the first German guns began to rumble in the distance, St. Louis became an even more inviting target because of this brief fame. And the citizenry would pay dearly.
St. Louis, November 1943, after the first serious bombardments by German artillery - NW corner of Maryland and Whittie Streets