Sinking of the USS Reuben James

The sinking of the USS Reuben James brought the human cost of the gathering war into view: a German U-boat attacked and sank the American destroyer off Iceland on October 30, with 115 men lost. The book places the disaster amid Washington’s growing talk of war, but also emphasizes how little that talk seemed to alter the country’s apparent complacency.

The sinking and its setting

The attack took place off the coast of Iceland. The account gives the event in stark terms: an American destroyer was sunk by a German submarine, and 115 men died. It offers no further detail about the engagement, the ship’s last moments, or the individual men aboard; the loss is registered through its location, cause, and toll.

Washington’s uneasy expectations

By this point, talk of war had become commonplace in Washington, though the book says that no one seemed to be doing anything very specific about it. On December 2, during a stop in the city, David Lilienthal, head of the Tennessee Valley Authority, wrote in his diary that war with Japan, rather than Germany, seemed only days away. Yet people appeared unconcerned. His doubt that the democratic system could cope with the world as it was turns the sinking into part of a wider picture of danger recognized in conversation but not fully met with action.

Warning and aftermath

On December 4, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox declared that the United States Navy would not be caught napping, whatever happened. The assurance sits uneasily beside Lilienthal’s impression of public indifference and the earlier loss of 115 sailors. The account then moves to the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the transition to all-out war, placing the sinking among the warnings that preceded that decisive change without presenting it as the cause of the country’s entry into war.