Washington Goes To War

Washington Goes to War By David Brinkley A Review Essay by Sally Morem How many fiction writers could make their make-believe cities as real and vital as David Brinkley made his real-life city? I knew I had to review this book as I began to read the first few pages. Washington, DC, just before and during World War II, is of particular interest because of the huge changes that had swept over the city as a result of world-shaking events. Washington had been up till that era essentially a small, sleepy Southern town with only one unusual feature: It played host to office holders, bureaucrats, lobbyists, reporters, job seekers, and diplomats who swarmed over Capitol Hill and the White House from across the nation and around the world every political season. David Brinkley was the perfect author for this book. He had lived in Washington since the late Thirties and was able to spice the book with a number of his personal experiences. Many years later, he served as half of the renowned Huntley-Brinkley anchor team on NBC’s nightly national news broadcast. And many years after that, he was the host of a Sunday morning interview show, This Week, in which he gently guided commentators and guests through the intricacies of the political topics of the day. I watched that show regularly and always had the feeling that Brinkley was prepared to ask the questions viewers at home would like to ask. He asked blunt questions at times, but no one ever got mad at him because he did it with such dry humor. What viewers saw on This Week readers read in Washington Goes to War. The writing is vintage Brinkley. He was always impossible to pin down ideologically, but always ready with a well-turned phrase, which got to the heart of the matter.

Here is how he handled the description of one part of Washington’s wartime alphabet soup bureaucracy—the Central Administrative Services or CAS— in charge of office supplies, car pools, mail deliver, etc.: The catalogue of CAS’s sins and failures was a long document of laziness, carelessness, stupidity, delays, errors and, not least, simple theft. One investigation revealed that during gasoline rationing when government automobiles were left in the CAS repair shop, mechanics routinely drained their tanks and stole the gasoline for their own use. Chauffeurs reported that, time after time, when they drove away from the CAS stop, their engines stalled and died in traffic. Brinkley’s flat and droll descriptions of such chicanery should leave readers far more skeptical about perennial claims made by politicians about how much more efficient and transparent American economic activity would be if only more of it would be placed in the caring and compassionate hands of government. It is difficult to tell which aspect of bureaucracy made Brinkley more disgusted—dishonesty or stupidity. He revealed the fact that productioncontrol bureaucrats ordered industry to stop making typewriters and to retool for weapons production, ignoring the obvious fact that typewriters were crucial to the inner workings of huge new bureaucracies springing up in the nation’s capital. As a result of this unwarranted intrusion in the decisionmaking processes of private industry, government officials were forced to spend their valuable time going around the country, begging people for donations of their personal typewriters to the war effort! Washington Goes to War is full of stories like that. World War II, even before America declared war, had forced Washington to take on world responsibilities it was ill-equipped to handle. But, when they had to, Washingtonians could work with amazing speed. Read my very favorite part of the book. Admire the speed and determination with which those crazy Americans built what is still the world’s largest office building: …in late September 1941, while Roosevelt still wavered about the location, the army just went ahead. General Somervell…was a West Point engineering graduate whose previous projects had included New York

City’s LaGuardia Airport. He simply told the contractor to start work. By the time Roosevelt found out about it a month later, the foundations were already in place. The construction moved ahead with incredible speed. At one point, thirteen thousand men were working around the clock, with enormous banks of arc lights burning through the night. Accident rates were 400 percent higher than average. Three hundred architects worked in a large, abandoned airplane hangar near the construction site. They were trying, and failing, to design the building fast enough to keep up with the workmen. Construction foremen were snatching blueprints off their desks even before they finished drafting them. Alan Dickey, one of the architects, recalled another architect asking him, “How big should I make that beam across the third floor?” Dickey answered, “I don’t know. They installed it yesterday.” By May 1942, half-a-million square feet were ready for occupancy, and the army began moving in. Military guards lined the route from the old Munitions Building on the Mall, across the Fourteenth Street Bridge and through muddy fields to the half-finished structure. Armored trucks rolled in with secret files. Movers carried in office furniture so hurriedly that workers the next day deluged their supervisors with complaints about broken lamps and damaged desks. For months more, Pentagon workers had to fight construction barriers, wet cement, noise, and dust so thick, one remembered, “you could write your name on any desk with your finger.” By early 1943, the Pentagon was complete—a building big enough to house forty thousand people and all their accoutrements, the largest building in the world, conceived, funded, designed and constructed in a little more than a year. And on the day it was finished, it was already too small. Brinkley interviewed servicemen, government workers, newspaper reporters, school teachers, entertainers, hotel managers and college professors for their memories of wartime Washington. He also used a large number of documents in government archives and libraries, mining them for the most telling details, some of which I’ve highlighted above. This research paid for itself by bringing Brinkley’s story to life.

Washington Goes to War is unlike any history book I’ve ever read because author Brinkley himself shows up obliquely in the narrative from time to time as “the young reporter.” His personal story is blended in with those of dozens of other people. The book is not an autobiography, however. Personal history? Is this a new sub-genre? Perhaps. This is indeed personal history, a core sample taken of the stories of hundreds of thousands of Americans thrown together into tight quarters under enormous stress. This is the story of a city transformed by war, even though it was never attacked during that war. This is the story of a city Brinkley clearly knew and loved. Read this book. You will discover the delights of the incredible complexity of individuals interacting with each other in a society undergoing revolutionary change. As a result, you will learn what history is all about. Names and dates are important to learn. They serve as intellectual scaffolding for understanding what was. But, Brinkley gives you the whole thing, the bone, muscles, and meat of history. The anger and amusement of day-to-day life, of people doing what they could to protect and defend their society from ruthless enemies. I count the writing of this book as David Brinkley’s greatest public service.

David Brinkley, Washington Goes to War, New York: Knopf, 1988