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On the morning, some months later, when Germany invaded Russia, Hopkins was telephoning Government lawyers to see if Russia could be included under Lend-Lease. The consensus was that she could. Six weeks later, when Franklin Roosevelt found out that no shipment of munitions had yet been sent, Harry Hopkins was in England arranging the Atlantic Charter conference. He got a cable ordering him forthwith to Moscow. Two days later he was closeted alone with Stalin in the Kremlin.
He had two audiences with the dictator, was given a glimpse of Russia's huge arsenal of planes and tanks, found out that most Russian generals were warriors first and Communists second. He made up his mind that Russia, too, would hold. This was an opinion then scouted by virtually all U.S. military men.
By now all Washington knew that Harry Hopkins had "gone to war." For many a month, his chief job was to wheedle and wangle more & more U.S. supplies for Russia, and see that they got there. He was living in the Lincoln Room at the White House, and had the President's ear night & day. When Franklin Roosevelt tried to have the Neutrality Act repealed, Harry Hopkins lay down on his couch one day after lunch, called in legal counsel, and dictated a message to Congress in 90 minutes. It was delivered, over the President's signature, with hardly a comma changed.
The Sight Raiser. Harry Hopkins was in the President's study, munching an apple, when Franklin Roosevelt got the news of Pearl Harbor. Now the job of being a constant goad on production was added to Hopkins' functions. He listened to the bustling airmen, and agreed without batting an eye that the U.S. could meet their seemingly fantastic wants. It was he who always put the ostrich egg in the hen coop, who always raised the sights over the last highest production estimate. In 1941, shown the estimated merchant-ship construction for the year, he blandly doubled the figure. At year's end, the total construction was even higher.
He urged the President to establish the Office of War Mobilization, and helped persuade Jimmy Byrnes to step down from the Supreme Court and take the job. He lost one fight: he wanted a National Service Act right after Pearl Harbor. But the President vetoed the idea, on the grounds that public opinion would not accept it. (Once a Presidential course is set, Hopkins stops arguing. He also defers to no one in his estimate of the President's ability to gauge public opinion.)
In London he had been known as "Mr. Hurry Upkins."* He was the same at home. Generals and civilians in the Pentagon swear that they could always tell when Hopkins was absent from the White House, on trips or because of illness, by the slowness with which papers and orders moved through. When he returned, there was a prompt flurry of activity. Lately, Hopkins' influence on Presidential appointments has been strongly felt—notably in the new State Department "team." But to people who insinuate that Hopkins forces the President's hand, his private reply is that they do not know Franklin Roosevelt's Dutch temper.