ource of the bauxite for 60 per cent of America's aluminum production. (Morgenstern 85+)These were the things he was doing and saying openly. Here are some of the things that he was doing secretly: On April 21, 1941, he directed units of the Atlantic fleet to "trail" German and Italian merchant and naval ships and aircraft and to broadcast their movements in plain language at four-hour intervals for the convenience of British and allied warships and planes. On May 22, 1941, he ordered Adm. Stark to prepare an expedition of 25,000 men to seize the Azores from neutral Portugal. Plans to seize Martinique, French possession in the Caribbean, were laid at the same time.On August 11, 1941, at the Atlantic conference, he revived the plan to seize the Azores, which had been left in abeyance. Prime Minister Churchill agreed at the same time that Britain would seize the Canary Islands from Spain and the Cape Verde Islands from Portugal. On August 25, Roosevelt ordered the Atlantic fleet to "destroy surface raiders”.On September 13, 1941, he ordered the fleet to protect ships of any nationality between American ports and Iceland, and to escort convoys in which there were no American vessels. On September 14, the crew of the Coast Guard cutter "Northland" seized a German trawler in Greenland waters and took the first prisoners of a war not yet acknowledged." On September 26, Roosevelt promulgated "Western Hemisphere Defense Plan No. 5," which, while assigning new tasks to the fleet, stated that it must be recognized that "the United States is not at war in the legal sense," and hence would have no belligerent rights under international law. On October 11, 1941, he implemented this hemisphere defense plan with an order assigning American warships to operations under British and Canadian naval command and placing sixty British Royal Navy and Royal Canadian Navy destroyers and corvettes engaged in convoying "under the strategic direction of t...
