Arsenal of Technology: A Hearts of Iron 3 AAR
Chapter Three: Of Battleships and Baseball Bats (Part 2)
The Cabinet meeting continues…
0937 hours ET, 8 January 1936, The White House exterior, Washington D.C.
On a tree branch outside the West Wing, a squirrel ran out and briefly paused, appreciating the sun on its fur in the midst of an otherwise cold and dreary winter morning. A slight breeze ruffled the squirrel’s fur, and for a moment it shivered from the chill. The breeze passed, and the squirrel resumed basking in the light, trying to remember where it had left its nuts.
Suddenly, a loud shout broke the morning silence to shocking effect:
“OVER MY DEAD BODY‼”
Startled, the squirrel scampered off to find a more relaxing location to resume its musing, while the White House lawn was filled with the echoes of angry shouting from the occupants within.
* * * * *
0905 hours ET, earlier that morning
As the members of the Cabinet took their seats again, placated with a pot of Missy LeHand’s finest dark roast, J. Edgar Hoover stood up to deliver his report on homeland security.
“Mr. President, esteemed members of the cabinet, and Commie-in-Chief Hull—”
A loud harrumph sounded from across the table.
“—it is with great distress that I must bring you a most disturbing report. Communist activity is not only in the rise in Oklahoma, it has in fact
tripled in the past week!”
Those around the table gasped at this news, except for the President who simply inquired, “Director Hoover, this wouldn’t be about that report you sent me last Thursday, would it?”
“Well, yes, Mr. President,” Hoover replied, “I assume that you read it, of course, and are aware of the grave threat this rise in Communist sympathy poses to our great Nation.”
“Would you please inform the rest of this Cabinet, for the sake of discussion, just how many Communist sympathizers your agency has discovered in Oklahoma?”
Hoover fidgeted a bit. “As I said, Mr. President, three times as many as last week.”
“And how many Communists were you aware of last week?” Roosevelt pressed the question. The rest of the men at the table leaned forward in their chairs, eager to hear the answer.
Hoover adjusted his tie, attempting to look confident. “Well, ah…one, Mr. President.” At this, the rest of the table broke out alternatingly in laughter at this overblown matter, and insolence for the colossal waste of their time.
Roosevelt looked over his glasses at Hoover. “Well, then, seeing as three Communists hardly constitute a threat to our National security, I suggest we move on with the agenda, Director.”
Dejected and deflated, Hoover complied. “In other news, the Federal Bureau of Investigations currently has nine teams of agents trained and deployed throughout the United States. All of our operatives have been instructed to seek out and neutralize foreign intelligence assets – with a particular emphasis on intercepting those attempting to sway our citizens to the Soviet way of thinking.” Hoover placed special emphasis on that last part.
Roosevelt looked up from perusing Hoover’s report with another question. “I see from your report that we have been fairly successful in this effort, detecting two hostile spies already. However, I do not see which foreign power was responsible for the presence of those operatives. Do you have that information for me?”
Hoover shook his head. “Unfortunately, the operatives, um…forgot to file their paperwork. Yes, uh, a very unfortunate mistake. The agents responsible have been assigned to undergo, hmm…remedial paperwork training with the Internal Revenue Service, yep, yep.”
Roosevelt suspected that part or all of that answer had been a fabrication, but he was eager to move on. “Very well, Director, thank you for that stimulating discussion. Now, what’s next on the agenda?”
* * * * *
After a few brief reports from some of the less-important departments (Secretary of War Dern delivered a particularly engaging speech consisting of five words: “We are not at war.”), William Friedman was up next to deliver a report on the Signals Intelligence Service. Roosevelt was particularly looking forward to this part of the meeting, since it would be the first real update on the crisis in Ethiopia that hadn’t been filtered through the Italian propaganda machine. Thankfully, the coffee was just starting to kick in, and Roosevelt had no difficulty paying full attention.
“To begin with, I’d like to note for the Cabinet that we have a total of eighty-one teams of intelligence operatives spread throughout the majority of foreign nations in the world.” Friedman began. “This being said, many of those operatives are not expected to remain in their current positions for long, due to a combination of budget cuts imposed by Congress and global increases in counter-intelligence activity due to the increasingly-belligerent international environment.”
“Boo, boo!” Hoover gave in to his compelling need to make himself heard. “Enough about budget cuts, talk about the war!” Simultaneously with Hoover’s mention of war, the various Chiefs of Staff experienced a synchronized caffeine kick, and were suddenly quite attentive.
“Ah, Mr. President?” Friedman was somewhat unsettled from the unexpected outburst. Roosevelt nodded, giving him the go-ahead. “Well, moving on then, I’ve prepared a helpful set of maps to summarize the most recent developments in this conflict.”
In the first week of 1936, the Ethiopians appear to have the better of the Italians, having taken control of two provinces with rapid advances. The Italians have struck back in the north with a thrust into the center of the Ethiopian lines.
“As you can see, the situation this early in the year is fairly back-and-forth, but the Abyssinians appear to have the advantage thus far, notably advancing to the Red Sea coast in the past week. That said, at this point we have only a very limited number of ‘observers’ on the ground, so the actual status of the Italian East African Army is still quite uncertain. However, the reports I have seen so far indicate that the early Abyssinian victories are temporary in nature, as the Italians are still in the process of organizing their forces despite being nearly three months into the war.”
“Leave it to the Italians to declare war without deploying their army first!” General Craig wryly observed, drawing a few quiet chuckles from his fellow Chiefs of Staff.
Roosevelt had a few concerns, however. “Hold on a minute. You mentioned that our observers are very limited in number. Just how few men on the ground do we have?”
Friedman retrieved a document from his seat at the table and handed it to Roosevelt. “At the moment, we have three teams of observers who have sufficient training to undertake this mission, most of whom have been redirected from missions with the diplomatic corps. Most of these individuals are still in transit from Rome to East Africa, and as a result while we have some fairly recent reports on the Italian economic and political situation, we have very little intelligence regarding their military efforts thus far.”
Roosevelt nodded. “Well, as long as we’re getting our men trained and deployed as quickly as we can, I suppose.”
“We’re doing our best, Mr. President,” Friedman affirmed. “That is all I have to report on at this time. Mr. Hoover, was that quite satisfactory?”
Hoover shrugged, “I don’t know…I guess I thought it would be
funnier, somehow.”
* * * * *
To conclude the meeting, General Craig had been requested to give a brief update on the status of the military he kept complaining was “underfunded” and “woefully unprepared”. He was only too happy to oblige.
“Now, I won’t go into detail, since I know not all of the Cabinet members are what you could call ‘numbers men’, but suffice it to say that this data clearly indicates that while the Navy and Air Corps are more than adequately funded, the Army is woefully undersized and requires a sizable allocation of funding and production orders to bring up to a respectable standard.”
“Now that’s a load of horse hockey!” Chief of the Navy William H. Standley was quick to interject. “You grunts have more brigades than the Navy has got ships! If any branch needs attention, it’s clearly the Navy, especially since many of our ships are older than the average Army grunt and in desperate need of replacement.”
“Ah, if I might add, gentlemen,” Chief of the Air Corps Oscar Westover timidly tried to make himself heard, “The Air Corps could use just a small investment to build some new—”
“Shut up, Oscar,” Craig snapped.
“Yeah, no one cares about your piddly planes,” Standley added.
“Sorry, sorry…” Westover quietly sunk back in his chair.
“Anyways, Mr. President,” Craig resumed making his arguments, “You will readily see from this diagram that not a single one of our infantry or National Guard divisions has an artillery regiment to support them in combat. Our Navy men have dozens of 14-inch guns at the ready, while the largest caliber available to our noble Army heroes is Smith & Wesson! This is clearly an intractable situation.”
“Smith & Wesson, Mr. President, is a quite respected name and is certainly more than enough for the job our Army boys have to do,” Standley rebutted Craig’s argument. “The Navy has the critical task of protecting not only our Nation’s coastline but also all of our overseas possessions. The Army boys, well, what do they really have to do besides stand in line and look pretty?”
“Gentlemen, please…” Roosevelt attempted to regain control of the Chiefs.
“We need more ships, Mr. President!” Standley exclaimed. “We must be able to fight in two oceans at once. The Japanese have us outnumbered in the Pacific, to say nothing of the Royal Navy in the Atlantic if things take a turn…”
“Forget the Royal Navy!” Craig roared, “What if we wanted to invade Canada? Mr. President, artillery must be the Nation’s number one priority!”
At yet another mention of invading Canada, Roosevelt finally snapped. “If you don’t both calm down and let me make the decisions here, I’ll demote you both so far down, you’ll be peeling potatoes for a dozen years!”
Both Craig and Standley were taken aback by Roosevelt’s ranting. Standley quietly took his seat, knowing what was good for him. Craig did not, choosing instead to reply directly to Roosevelt, “Mr. President, I apologize for the intensity of our discussion, but it really is absolutely imperative that the Army receive more funding. In fact, if there is not an increase in funding to raise artillery regiments in the next budget, the Army will be forced to pursue alternative financial options…most likely in the form of taking out a loan from a bank.”
“OVER MY DEAD BODY‼” At the mention of the trigger word, Wagner went into a flying frenzy, attempting to leap at Craig across the table but fortunately being restrained by his fellow Cabinet members. Unable to reach his opponent, Wagner settled for ranting incoherently about banks in Craig’s general direction.
Alarmed by the rapidly-developing hostilities within his Cabinet, Roosevelt quickly made his move, “Well, if there is nothing else, this concludes the meeting. Let us all disperse and return to our duties – quickly!”
The rest of the Cabinet was more than happy to oblige.
* * * * *
Notes
J. Edgar Hoover is, of course, the most famous head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In OTL he served in his position for a whopping 48 years, from 1924 until his death in 1972. In popular lore, he is best known for capturing or killing numerous high-profile gangsters in the 1930s. Perhaps more importantly in the long term, though, he was largely responsible for building the FBI into the preeminent organization in domestic intelligence, an effort which included major expansions to the FBI fingerprint files and the creation of a new evidence laboratory in 1932. In OTL, he was not known as a strong anti-Communist until after the War, but anti-Communist sentiment throughout the country was certainly high enough during this time period to motivate a man as paranoid as Hoover.
William F. Friedman led the US Signals Intelligence Service (SIS), the predecessor to the modern NSA, for over 25 years, from its inception in 1929-1930 until his retirement in 1956 (by which time the department had been renamed as the National Security Agency). Aside from his legacy as an intelligence boss, his greatest contribution to US military history was most likely his solution of rotary cipher machines and his development of a new cipher which eliminated the vulnerabilities he had discovered, the SIGABA machine. He also spearheaded the effort to break the new Japanese cipher throughout 1939 and 1940, leading to the decryption of Japanese intercepts indicating the probable onset of war in late 1941 – a subject of some controversy even today. His wife, Elizebeth (spelled as written), was also a respectable cryptographer in her own right, and is sometimes known as America’s first female cryptologist. However, she spent most of her career with the US Navy, and did not work very much with her husband after the early 1920s or so.
General Malin Craig served in OTL as Army Chief of Staff from 1935-1939 before retiring briefly before being recalled for service in 1941. He was noted particularly for his aggressiveness and tenacity during the Great War, and served in various capacities during the interwar period. As Chief of Staff, Craig made a sticking point out of the Army’s lack of preparedness in both manpower and equipment, although perhaps not as brusquely as in this ATL.
Admiral William H. Standley was the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) from 1933-1937. Unlike Craig, his service during the Great War was spent at home, pushing for enlargements to the Naval Academy buildings to accommodate the large increase in seamen-in-training after the US joined the war. He did command several vessels both before and after the war, culminating in taking command of the US Fleet Battle Force in 1933 (fun aside: the title “Commander in Chief, United States Fleet” was abbreviated as “CINCUS”, pronounced “sink us”; Navy men certainly never lack for bravado…).
General Oscar Westover was the fourth Chief of the Air Corps from 1935-1938. He spent most of the interwar period involved in various military aviation projects, becoming proficient in piloting balloons, airships, and airplanes before simultaneously commanding and attending the Air Corps Tactical School (I can imagine that the instructors would have felt a certain pressure to award him high marks!). During his time as Chief of Staff, Westover was a big proponent of keeping the Air Corps integrated with the Army, rather than developing a separate Air Force branch as many other airmen wanted. As seems to be traditional for airmen of the period, he died in a plane crash in 1938.
* * * * *
With that, the traditional start-of-game information dump has been achieved, and the gameplay may now begin in earnest! Updates from this point may be more frequent but shorter, following the various events that occur both historically and seemingly at random, perhaps punctuated by longer expositions on various historical points of enduring interest…