Creating America: My campaign manager was Roosevelt

Chapter 23 Washington, Navy Department

The dark corridors and smoke-filled conference rooms of the Albany Parliament Building collapsed instantly in Leo's mind.

The scene suddenly changes.

Leo found himself in a large, brightly lit office.

Sunlight streamed through the huge windows, offering views of the Washington, D.C. cityscape and the silhouette of the Lincoln Memorial under construction in the distance.

The office walls are covered with world maps depicting various complex nautical routes, as well as design blueprints for the latest Dreadnought-class battleships and destroyers.

The constant ringing of telephones and the clatter of typewriters formed the heart of a massive, high-speed bureaucratic machine.

U.S. Navy Department.

Roosevelt was sitting behind a huge mahogany desk.

He was much more mature than he was in Albany. His facial features were more defined, and his eyes lacked the sharpness and vigor of a young reformer, but instead possessed the depth and experience of someone who wielded power.

He was quickly reviewing a document, making annotations with his pen from time to time, and then decisively signing his name.

His position is Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

A position that sounds like a deputy, but actually holds real power in the day-to-day operations of the Navy.

"My second step is to gain real power and accumulate experience."

Roosevelt's voice-over became serious.

"The struggle against the Albany and Tammany Associations earned me national renown, but it also brought me to a sobering realization of reality."

"Lofty ideals and beautiful slogans alone cannot change anything."

"You need power, but you also need the deepest understanding of how this complex machine of power works."

"I worked at the Navy Department for seven years."

Leo's perspective begins to show those seven long and crucial years of work in a fast-forward manner.

He saw Roosevelt standing on the hearing bench on Capitol Hill, facing a group of congressmen who knew nothing about naval affairs but were meticulous about every penny.

He argued heatedly with legislators from Midwestern agricultural states over a budget to add two new battleships to the Pacific Fleet.

He was talking about how Hawaiian sugar and California oil were transported to the East Coast via the Pacific shipping routes.

He used the most practical economic benefits to persuade these inland legislators that a strong navy was also in their vital interest.

He saw Roosevelt wearing a hard hat, standing in the shipyard in Philadelphia.

In the massive dry dock, the keel of a warship is being laid.

Sparks flew everywhere, and the noise was deafening.

He stood with the oil-splattered engineers and shipbuilders, pointing to the huge blueprints, discussing the armor thickness of the new battleship, how it should withstand attacks from new armor-piercing shells, and whether its gun caliber could surpass the latest British and German models.

He understands these things; he's a true expert.

He saw Roosevelt standing on the dock at Norfolk Naval Base.

Behind them were rows of gray warships. Young marines, dressed in khaki uniforms and carrying rifles, were about to board transport ships and head to the European theater of World War I.

Roosevelt stood on the high podium and addressed these young men who were about to embark on their expedition.

His voice was loud and powerful, full of encouragement.

He told them that they were fighting not only for French soil, but also for the freedom of navigation on the seas upon which the United States depended for its survival.

"Leo, you must remember, ideals and passion cannot govern a country," Roosevelt's voice rang out. "What you need is experience, knowledge, and the ability to transform complex ideas into concrete, actionable steps."

The scene finally freezes on a tense emergency meeting.

On the wall of the conference room hung a huge map of the Atlantic Ocean.

The map was marked in red with the locations of countless Allied merchant ships that had been sunk.

During World War I, German U-boats launched unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic Ocean. They appeared and disappeared like wolves, recklessly attacking merchant convoys that were supplying goods to Britain and France.

The admirals of the Navy Department, those old-school naval commanders with white beards who believed in "big ships and big guns," were helpless in the face of this.

Their battleships were designed for open-ocean battles and were simply no match for these agile underwater killers.

Just when everyone was at a loss, Roosevelt stood up.

He walked up to the map and proposed a plan that sounded almost insane at the time.

He used a long pointer to draw a line on the map from the northernmost point of Scotland all the way to the coastline of Norway.

"Gentlemen," he said, "we can't hunt them across the entire Atlantic, but we can completely trap them in their lair."

His plan was to lay a massive minefield barrier in the North Sea, a region hundreds of kilometers wide and characterized by high winds and rough seas.

Using tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of mines, an insurmountable wall of death was formed, completely blocking all passages for German submarines to enter and exit the Atlantic Ocean.

A collective gasp filled the conference room.

The generals considered the plan a pipe dream.

They believed that laying mines in such a vast and treacherous sea area was technically impossible.

Moreover, the required funds and resources will be astronomical.

"This is insane!" exclaimed a naval operations chief, slamming his fist on the table. "We don't have that many mines, and we don't have that many ships!"

Roosevelt personally took his plan to Congress and to the White House.

He explained the feasibility and immense strategic value of the plan to President Woodrow Wilson and leaders in Congress.

He personally negotiated with steel companies in Pittsburgh and DuPont Chemicals in Delaware to secure sufficient supplies of steel and explosives for this massive project.

Ultimately, he turned this crazy plan, which everyone thought was impossible, into reality.

A massive fleet relentlessly dropped tens of thousands of mines into the frigid North Sea, day and night.

This "northern minefield" effectively contained the threat of German submarines and made a significant contribution to the eventual victory in the Battle of the Atlantic.

"Without those seven years of experience at the Navy Department," Roosevelt's voice rang out, "I could not possibly know how to manage a massive federal agency with hundreds of thousands of employees."

"I have no idea how to formulate and execute a national budget of tens of billions of dollars."

"I have no idea how to deal with or negotiate with those greedy arms dealers and cunning members of Congress."

"Without that experience, I would never have been able to command the entire nation's war machine during World War II."