Navy Day & Peacetime Strategies

by Bill Doughty

Fleet Adm. William D. Leahy

In "The Second Most Powerful Man in the World: The Life of Admiral William D. Leahy, Roosevelt's Chief of Staff" (Dutton, Penguin House, 2019) author Phillips Payson O'Brien shows how Leahy helped shape strategies to win World War II and the Cold War.

That may sound like a bold statement, yet unimpeachable evidence rests in the text, notes and appendices of O'Brien's excellent biography of an under-recognized American hero of the last century.

In the early days and months of his presidency, Truman wisely trusted and listened to Leahy, who had been FDR's right hand throughout the Second World War. Leahy's old friend William Bullitt, a former ambassador to France, like Leahy, suggested Truman give a postwar speech similar to Woodrow Wilson's post-WWI Fourteen Points speech.

Leahy was inspired to present foreign policy and wrote "the most important speech that Harry Truman would give in the first two years of his presidency."

O'Brien provides Leahy's personal copy of the fundamental points underlying U.S. foreign policy as Appendix B. These points were announced by President Truman in his Navy Day speech, October 1945, and they ring loudly today in territorial issues related to Palestine/Israel, Hong Kong/China, South and North Korea, Kurdistan/Turkey/Syria, and Ukraine/Russia.

Point number 4 seems to speak to what happened in the Russian attack on the 2016 U.S. election and what is happening currently in the constitutional crisis unfolding in the United States. Point number 7 shows the ongoing commitment to protecting freedom of the seas as part of a global commons.

"1.  No territorial expansion or selfish advantage. No plans for aggression against any other state, large or small. No objective which need clash with the peaceful aims of any other nation.

2.  The eventual return of sovereign rights and self-government to all peoples who have been deprived of them by force.

3.  No territorial changes in any friendly part of the world unless they accord with the freely expressed wishes of the people concerned.

4.  All peoples who are prepared for self-government should be permitted to choose their own form of government by their freely expressed choice, without interference from any foreign source.

5.  By the combined and cooperative action of our war allies, help the defeated enemy states establish peaceful democratic governments of their own free choice. And try to attain a world in which nazism, fascism, and military aggression cannot exist.

6.  Refuse to recognize any government imposed upon any nation by the force of any foreign power.

7.  All nations should have the freedom of the seas and equal rights to the navigation of boundary rivers and waterways and of rivers and waterways which pass through more than one country.

8.  All states which are accepted in the society of nations should have access on equal terms to the trade and the raw materials of the world.

9.  The sovereign states of the Western Hemisphere, without interference from outside the Western Hemisphere, must work together as good neighbors in the solution of their common problems.

10. Full economic collaboration between all nations, great and small, is essential to the improvement of living conditions all over the world, and to the establishment of freedom from fear and freedom from want.

11. Continue to strive to promote freedom of expression and freedom of religion throughout the peace-loving areas of the world.

12. The preservation of peace between nations requires a United Nations Organization composed of all the peace-loving nations of the world who are willing to jointly use force, if necessary, to insure peace."

Navy ships, planes & lighter-than-air vessels, Hudson River, Navy Day 1945.

According to O'Brien, "The final text of the speech is the best summary of Leahy's outlook as it had evolved to that time and was both a statement about the coming Cold War and an attempt to keep alive the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt."

Here's an excerpt from Truman's actual Navy Day Speech focusing on a commitment to global cooperation, outlawing of nuclear weapons and a peaceful future for the world's citizens. As Truman delivered the speech, Leahy sat by his side.

   "The world cannot afford any letdown in the united determination of the allies in this war to accomplish a lasting peace. The world cannot afford to let the cooperative spirit of the allies in this war disintegrate. The world simply cannot allow this to happen. The people in the United States, in Russia, and Britain, in France and China, in collaboration with all the other peace-loving people, must take the course of current history into their own hands and mold it in a new direction – the direction of continued cooperation. It was a common danger which united us before victory. Let it be a common hope which continues to draw us together in the years to come.   The atomic bombs which fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki must be made a signal, not for the old process of falling apart but for a new era—an era of ever-closer unity and ever-closer friendship among peaceful nations.   Building a peace requires as much moral stamina as waging a war. Perhaps it requires even more, because it is so laborious and painstaking and undramatic. It requires undying patience and continuous application. But it can give us, if we stay with it, the greatest reward that there is in the whole field of human effort ...   The immediate, the greatest threat to us is the threat of disillusionment, the danger of insidious skepticism—a loss of faith in the effectiveness of international cooperation. Such a loss of faith would be dangerous at any time. In an atomic age it would be nothing short of disastrous ...   What the distant future of the atomic research will bring to the fleet which we honor today, no one can foretell. But the fundamental mission of the Navy has not changed. Control of our sea approaches and of the skies above them is still the key to our freedom and to our ability to help enforce the peace of the world.   No enemy will ever strike us directly except across the sea. We cannot reach out to help stop and defeat an aggressor without crossing the sea. Therefore, the Navy, armed with whatever weapons science brings forth, is still dedicated to its historic task: control of the ocean approaches to our country and of the skies above them.   The atomic bomb does not alter the basic foreign policy of the United States. It makes the development and application of our policy more urgent than we could have dreamed six months ago. It means that we must be prepared to approach international problems with greater speed, with greater determination, with greater ingenuity, in order to meet a situation for which there is no precedent.   We must find the answer to the problems created by the release of atomic energy—we must find the answers to the many other problems of peace—in partnership with all the peoples of the United Nations ...   In our possession of this weapon, as in our possession of other new weapons, there is no threat to any nation. The world, which has seen the United States in two great recent wars, knows that full well. The possession in our hands of this new power of destruction we regard as a sacred trust. Because of our love of peace, the thoughtful people of the world know that that trust will not be violated, that it will be faithfully executed.   Indeed, the highest hope of the American people is that world cooperation for peace will soon reach such a state of perfection that atomic methods of destruction can be definitely and effectively outlawed forever."

The speech was delivered at a Navy Day celebration in New York City October 27, 1945.

President Harry S. Truman is piped aboard USS Missouri (BB-63), during the Navy Day fleet review in the Hudson River, New York City, 27 October 1945. Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy is just behind the President. (National Archives and Naval History and Heritage Command)

(A clip from the Navy Day 1945 speech.)