BtZ42, 21: Slothrop backstory in UK

Wed Apr 6 10:04:17 CDT 2016

Was Slothrup "Lend-Lease?"

https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/lend-lease

MILESTONES: 1937–1945
Lend-Lease and Military Aid to the Allies in the Early Years of World War II

During World War II, the United States began to provide significant
military supplies and other assistance to the Allies in September 1940,
even though the United States did not enter the war until December 1941.
Much of this aid flowed to the United Kingdom and other nations already at
war with Germany and Japan through an innovative program known as
Lend-Lease.

When war broke out in Europe in September 1939, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt declared that while the United States would remain neutral in
law, he could “not ask that every American remain neutral in thought as
well.” Roosevelt himself made significant efforts to help nations engaged
in the struggle against Nazi Germany and wanted to extend a helping hand to
those countries that lacked the supplies necessary to fight against the
Germans. The United Kingdom, in particular, desperately needed help, as it
was short of hard currency to pay for the military goods, food, and raw
materials it needed from the United States.

Though President Roosevelt wanted to provide assistance to the British,
both American law and public fears that the United States would be drawn
into the conflict blocked his plans. The Neutrality Act of 1939 allowed
belligerents to purchase war materiel from the United States, but only on a
“cash and carry” basis. The Johnson Act of 1934 also prohibited the
extension of credit to countries that had not repaid U.S. loans made to
them during World War I—which included Great Britain. The American military
opposed the diversion of military supplies to the United Kingdom. The
Army’s Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, anticipated that Britain
would surrender following the collapse of France, and thus American
supplies sent to the British would fall into German hands. Marshall and
others therefore argued that U.S. national security would be better served
by reserving military supplies for the defense of the Western Hemisphere.
American public opinion also limited Roosevelt’s options. Many Americans
opposed involving the United States in another war. Even though American
public opinion generally supported the British rather than the Germans,
President Roosevelt had to develop an initiative that was consistent with
the legal prohibition against the granting of credit, satisfactory to
military leadership, and acceptable to an American public that generally
resisted involving the United States in the European conflict.
[image: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill]

*British Prime Minister Winston Churchill*

On September 2, 1940, President Roosevelt signed a “Destroyers for Bases”
agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, the United States gave the
British more than 50 obsolete destroyers, in exchange for 99-year leases to
territory in Newfoundland and the Caribbean, which would be used as U.S.
air and naval bases. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had
originally requested that Roosevelt provide the destroyers as a gift, but
the President knew that the American public and Congress would oppose such
a deal. He therefore decided that a deal that gave the United States
long-term access to British bases could be justified as essential to the
security of the Western Hemisphere—thereby assuaging the concerns of the
public and the U.S. military

In December 1940, Churchill warned Roosevelt that the British were no
longer able to pay for supplies. On December 17, President Roosevelt
proposed a new initiative that would be known as Lend-Lease. The United
States would provide Great Britain with the supplies it needed to fight
Germany, but would not insist upon being paid immediately

Instead, the United States would “lend” the supplies to the British,
deferring payment. When payment eventually did take place, the emphasis
would not be on payment in dollars. The tensions and instability engendered
by inter-allied war debts in the 1920s and 1930s had demonstrated that it
was unreasonable to expect that virtually bankrupt European nations would
be able to pay for every item they had purchased from the United States.
Instead, payment would primarily take the form of a “consideration” granted
by Britain to the United States. After many months of negotiation, the
United States and Britain agreed, in Article VII of the Lend-Lease
agreement they signed, that this consideration would primarily consist of
joint action directed towards the creation of a liberalized international
economic order in the postwar world.

On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 9:48 AM, Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:

> Rather than asking if TS is a reliable narrator (which I believe he is,
> regarding the first Blitz and the 3 years anyway) I would like to ask:
> could it be that he is there, in London, kind of not officially and then,
> in November 1941, as a kind of avantgarde?
>
>
> On April 6, 2016 6:15:40 AM Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> >is Slothrop  is a reliable narrator?
>>>>
>>>> The diction of the first quotation is Slothrop's, and I could question
>>>> it as "his version." But the "three years" below has free-indirected its
>>>> way into a more ornate, faintly old-fashioned narratorial voice which
>>>> goes on to disparage his "barbarities" and "lapses."
>>>>
>>>> It's the same voice that starts us caring about the Tyrone-Tantivy
>>>> friendship, which told us about the history of the bananery, and which
>>>> will present the Slothrop genealogy coming up on 26, and so on. So if it
>>>> isn't reliable (within the arena of fiction, of course), we're going to
>>>> have to put "well, maybe" on a lot more than just Tyrone 1940-1944.
>>>>
>>>> I'm not prepared to do that. GR's narrator is (or if you prefer, GR's
>>>> narrators are) sly, tricky, oblique, sometimes more addled than Tyrone at
>>>> St. Veronica's. But there remain distinguishable degrees of credence and
>>>> doubt, or we slide into "it was all a dream, and we have no way of really
>>>> knowing he was Tyrone Slothrop of Mingeborough rather than Maureen Perkins
>>>> of Pasadena." In which case I'm bored, and gone.
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 10:24 PM, Gary Webb <gwebb8686 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> The question to ask is wether or not Slothrop  is a reliable narrator?
>>>>> How much of what he says is true? We generally want to take what he says to
>>>>> be true at face value, and maybe it is... But when people go back to verify
>>>>> anything about him, it all gets distorted, e.g. SEZ WHO ...
>>>>>
>>>>> On Apr 5, 2016, at 9:47 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> If it was maybe uncommon enough to be notable (if not
>>>>> strange/aberrant) that he was there before the first Blitz, despite there
>>>>> being no overt reason why that'd be the case, maybe we're sposed to feel
>>>>> like/wonder if this is him preemptively gravitating toward the sites of
>>>>> future rocketfalls like the docs suspect...Beyond even the zero of the
>>>>> start of the US's involvement in the war. Gravity pulls him through
>>>>> military-bureaucratic probability...
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 8:38 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm not positive: Jove *does* nod. There's that "seventh Christmas of
>>>>>> the War" (126), best explained as a simple miscount... and the much-argued
>>>>>> ambiguities of Bianca's age, which IMHO result from a mixture of
>>>>>> carelessness and deliberation.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But yeah... Slothrop in London "comes into focus" with the first V-2,
>>>>>> and the book's main narrative with his visits to V-2 impact sites, and Them
>>>>>> taking an interest in his map. As best I remember, this page is almost all
>>>>>> we know of him between Harvard and summer 1944. I can imagine Pynchon
>>>>>> wanting Slothrop to have experienced the 1940-41 Blitz, as a
>>>>>> baseline/contrast to heighten what's different about the rockets, and just
>>>>>> accepting the resulting timeline...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But I can also imagine Pynchon wanting us to wonder: Did *They* want
>>>>>> Slothrop to experience the first Blitz as a baseline...?  Heh-heh-heh...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I may have been primed for this by knowing very little about what my
>>>>>> father did as a Marine war correspondent in Londonderry in 1942-43. The
>>>>>> USMC detachment there provided shoreside security for a large joint
>>>>>> convoy/naval base, and I know he did the routine news releases about a
>>>>>> promotion for Cpl. Morris of New Orleans, high morale, training, toys for
>>>>>> the local orphanage, etc. But given the tight security around all Atlantic
>>>>>> shipping (because of U-boats), he couldn't have been able to write much
>>>>>> about the central activities -- the reason for being there -- of the USMC
>>>>>> or USN. So what *was* he doing? Heh-heh-heh...
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 8:18 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Wow. Nice find. I wonder under what pretense Slothrup believes he is
>>>>>>> serving in the UK before any formal US involvement.  This is surely not an
>>>>>>> accident by Pynchon.  He's too precise for such a big gap to be accidental.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> David Morris
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Tuesday, April 5, 2016, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> "A lot of stuff prior to 1944 is getting blurry now. He can
>>>>>>>> remember the first Blitz only as a long spell of good luck."
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> So Slothrop was in London for the first Blitz, usually dated 7 Sep
>>>>>>>> 1940 to 11 May 1941, heaviest for the first 2-3 months. That means a
>>>>>>>> minimum of 3 1/2 years -- 4 yrs and 2 months if he witnessed the whole
>>>>>>>> thing, which is closer to the feeling I get here.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Keep in mind that the US didn't enter WWII until Dec 1941... Lend-Lease
>>>>>>>> cooperation began after Mar 1941... and even the dodgy swap of US
>>>>>>>> destroyers for rights at UK bases in the Western Hemisphere was Sep 1940.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Compare also to "these three years" farther down the page, applied
>>>>>>>> to Slothrop's friendship with Tantivy and the shared office at ACHTUNG.
>>>>>>>> Which would take that back to Nov. 1941, again before US entry into the war
>>>>>>>> and *long* before -- historically -- there was any special focus on
>>>>>>>> "technical intelligence" re "Northern Germany," i.e. V-2s.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> No note on this discrepancy -- or at least loose end -- at the
>>>>>>>> Pynchon Wiki or in Weisenburger's Companion.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> So... Does GR explain anywhere what US Army Lt. Slothrop was
>>>>>>>> *doing* in London in 1940-1941? It's not necessarily a ***CLUE*** - even
>>>>>>>> without formal alliance, even in peacetime, likely allies with shared
>>>>>>>> strategic concerns often maintain small military missions in each other's
>>>>>>>> capitals.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> But given what we'll later learn about plans for Slothrop going way
>>>>>>>> back... maybe we're *supposed* to wonder about it, hmmm?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> www.innergroovemusic.com
>>
>>
>
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